A medieval Welsh poem of the fifteenth century has the lines:

"There's a holy girl here, a branch of the choir, Petitioning you, of Ifor's kind: Abbess, a good goddess, Of holy Llanllyr, where there's a full moon. It is Dame Annes who, If she were at your court, would wish to have an ape from you"

Annes was given her ape, described in the poem as

"A lout he is who would make the hair Of a straight-capped old English man curl forever"

Monkeys were a popular medieval pet, though not as common as cats or dogs. Sometimes they are described as apes, but it is thought that they actually mean a type of monkey, based on descriptions and images of them. The likely species is an African tailed monkey of the Ceropithecus genus. Another possibility, matching the description of the monkey in the poem quoted above, is a Barbary ape (macaca sylvanus). These were probably imported to northern Europe via Muslim Spain or southern France's trade links with the Mediterranean.

Having a pet monkey was particularly worrisome for the church. In the early twelfth century, Hugh of St Victor, a German theologian, condemned clerics that owned one:

"Even though the ape is a most vile, filthy, and detestable animal, the clerics like to keep it in their houses and to display it in their windows, so as to impress the passing rabble with the glory of their possessions."

John Peckham, archbishop of Canterbury from 1279-92, banned the abbess of Romsey from keeping pet monkeys in her bedroom. One of the reasons for the church's opposition was that monkeys were associated with sin. The devil was sometimes depicted as an ape. One medieval Welsh poem also describes an ape as 'The devil's servant mocking man'. Another association was with degenerate man, and therefore promiscuity. The eleventh-century Benedictine (later saint) Peter Damian recounted a story about a monkey in one of his letters. Supposedly a Ligurian count called William had acquired one as a pet. However, William's wife soon became very familiar with the monkey and began a relationship with it. One day the monkey saw William sharing a bed with the countess, and it became jealous and killed William. Whilst this story probably never happened (it may have roots in Islamic or Greek literature), it does indicate that the idea of having a pet monkey was by no means alien even in the eleventh century.

These associations with sin and lust didn't stop churchmen from owning monkeys. The chronicler Richard of Durham claims that Robert Coquina, bishop of Durham from 1274-83 owned two monkeys that ate peeled almonds off a silver spoon. Richard describes keeping such pets as 'the custom of modern prelates'.

Pet monkeys weren't just restricted to ecclesiastics, they were also sometimes owned by burgesses (urban traders and craftsmen). In Southampton the remains of a Barbary ape were excavated from a house that once belonged to the burgess Richard of Southwick (d. c. 1290). Alexander Neckam, an English theologian in the twelfth century, told the story of an entertainer that visited tournaments accompanied by his two monkeys. He trained two dogs to act as horses and then armed the monkeys with lances, swords, and shields and would have them joust. Neckam doesn't provide any detail about the entertainer, his name, where this happened, and so the story does seem unlikely (I am uncertain of a monkey's capacity to be trained as a jouster). But his other anecdote of a man strangled by his monkey that he had trained to dance does seem more plausible.

However, most of all monkeys were pets for the nobility and royalty as they were expensive and so could serve as status symbols. Neckam claims that they could often be found at noble and royal courts. John, duke of Berry (1340-1416), owned a pet monkey in 1376, when he twice commissioned an iron chain to tie it up. The queen of France, Isabeau of Bavaria, was given four monkeys by the duke of Burgundy in 1413. As Peter Damian and Alexander Neckam's story suggest, having a pet monkey was quite dangerous. It could also be destructive. In 1288 the duke of Burgundy's monkey ripped the seal off and tore up a charter of the duke's ancestor, Odo. The document had to be copied out again and the monkey's responsibility for this is noted in the new charter:

"quas quidem litteras quidam simius noster anno et die predictis in presencia nostra laceravit casu fortuito, sigillum a scriptura separando."

"Which certain letters fell fortuitously [and] our monkey tore apart in our presence the year and day aforesaid, separating the seal from the letter."

Sources:

Thierry Buquet. Preventing ”Monkey Business”. Fettered Apes in the Middle Ages. http://mad.hypotheses.org/37. Blog post, published in the Medieval data Network blog (http://mad.hypotheses.org). 2013.

Jane Cartwright, 'Abbess Annes and the Ape', in Janet Burton and Karen Stöber (eds), Monastic Wales: New Approaches (Cardiff, 2013), pp. 191-208.

Conseils pour l'édition des textes médiévaux: Fasicule II Actes et documents d'archives (Paris, 2001).

H. W. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London, 1952).

Alexander Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, Libri Duo, ed. by Thomas Wright (Cambridge, 1863).

Joyce E. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (Abingdon, 2011, 2nd ed.).

Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets (Woodbridge, 2012).