Check out this 12th century mosaic on the west wall of the Church of Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello, Venice, Italy. The animals that have eaten up humans have to barf them back up again when it’s resurrection time. Eww. But this picture gets at some of the crazy logic loops that Medieval people had about humans and animals and where they all go after they die.
For the most part, Medieval theologians didn’t think non-human animals had souls. Souls were part of humans because we are ‘rational creatures’ versus ‘brute animals’ (Augustine 4th c). The great theologian Thomas Aquinas in his 13th c _Summa Theologica_ declared that animals are ‘without intellect’ and therefore ‘not made in God’s image’ and therefore not eligible for heaven.
Sometimes thinkers had a hard time because it seemed like some animals acted rationally. So they invented a sixth sense to explain it away, a sense called “estimativa” which enables beasts to perceive intentionality. Safe from having our identities blurred on a spectrum with animals, humanity’s soul, and thus ability to go to heaven, seemed predicated only on our ability to have logical reasoning.
And yet, heaven was supposed to be corporeal, according to Christian theology. It was described as a fantastic city filled with the perfected bodies of the resurrected. Would heaven have animals in it? Medieval thinkers only thought that animals had purpose insofar as the beasts served their human masters. Because in heaven humans would have no need for clothing, work, or food, there would be no need for animals in heaven.
However, how would human bodies be able to manifest on Judgement Day if their bodies had been eaten by lions or whatnot? If the animals had to vomit them back up, as shown in this mosaic, wouldn’t that mean they were in heaven? At least one Medieval theologian posited that animals and humans would co-exist in paradise, with all appetites having been divinely turned into vegetarian ones.
The division between rational and soul-bearing humans and irrational beasts was a way for Medieval thinkers to proclaim their specialness, and it has left a heavy footprint that informs our treatment of animals today.
Sources: “Do animals go to heaven? Medieval philosophers contemplate heavenly human exceptionalism,” Joyce E Salisbury, _Athens Journal of Humanities & Arts_ vol 1, Issue 1, pp 79-86
