A cunicularium is an establishment of

animal husbandry Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, fibre, milk, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, selective breeding, and the raising of livestock. Husbandry has a long history, startin ...

dedicated to the raising of rabbits for meat and fur. This enterprise is known as cuniculture.

Etymology

The term was coined in

mediaeval Latin Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. In this region it served as the primary written language, though local languages were also written to varying degrees. Latin functioned ...

as ''cunicularium'' (plural ''cunicularia''), from Classical Latin ''cunicularis'' "pertaining to the rabbit", itself from ''cuniculus'', from which the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

" cony" (the

European rabbit The European rabbit (''Oryctolagus cuniculus'') or coney is a species of rabbit native to the Iberian Peninsula (including Spain, Portugal, and southwestern France), western France, and the northern Atlas Mountains in northwest Africa. It has ...

''Oryctolagus cuniculus'') derives. The Latin is taken from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

κύνικλος ''kúniklos'' (''kýniklos'') (compare

modern Greek Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...

κουνέλι ''kouneli''). The earliest known use of this word is in

Polybius Polybius (; grc-gre, Πολύβιος, ; ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic period. He is noted for his work , which covered the period of 264–146 BC and the Punic Wars in detail. Polybius is important for his analysis of the mixed ...

: An etymology has been proposed for the Greek word deriving it from a word meaning "burrow"; but it is more probable that evolution was to "(rabbit) hole" from "rabbit", rather than the reverse. It is most likely that the word is ultimately borrowed from the

Iberian language The Iberian language was the language of an indigenous western European people identified by Greek and Roman sources who lived in the eastern and southeastern regions of the Iberian Peninsula in the pre-Migration Era (before about 375 AD). The a ...

History

Ancient history

first described the cony at about the time that

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...

fell under the sway of the

Romans Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...

. However, the cony was introduced to the Romans from

Iberia The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...

, as they quickly developed a taste for

laurices The term laurices refers to the fetus of the rabbit (''Oryctolagus cuniculus'') prepared without evisceration and consumed as a table delicacy. The word is the plural of the Latin word laurex (variant ''laurix'', n. masc., pl. ''laurices''; Englis ...

after their conquest of

Hispania Hispania ( la, Hispānia , ; nearly identically pronounced in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Italian) was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula and its provinces. Under the Roman Republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces: Hispani ...

. Rabbits are described by

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic '' ...

in his

Naturalis Historia The ''Natural History'' ( la, Naturalis historia) is a work by Pliny the Elder. The largest single work to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day, the ''Natural History'' compiles information gleaned from other ancient authors. ...

in the 1st century. The Romans are known to have raised rabbits in stone pens, probably to facilitate the harvesting of

. However, they seemingly did not use the term ''cunicularium''; and the industry apparently collapsed as the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Roman Republic, Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings aro ...

fell.

Early Middle Ages

With the rise of

monasticism Monasticism (from Ancient Greek , , from , , 'alone'), also referred to as monachism, or monkhood, is a religious way of life in which one renounces worldly pursuits to devote oneself fully to spiritual work. Monastic life plays an important ro ...

several centuries later, a renewed interest in cunicularia arose, in part because they were productively and easily implemented within the monastic economic context. It was during this period that the ''cunicularium'' became established.

Late Middle Ages

''Cunicularium'' was borrowed into

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...

as ''conygere'', ''conyger'', giving rise to numerous later variants such as ''conygarye'', ''conyrie'', and ''conygree''.

Difference between a warren and a cunicularium

Although the words have become nearly synonymous in modern English, the two institutions followed parallel, but separate paths in their development. The common, or domestic warren developed out of the

free warren A free warren—often simply warren—is a type of franchise or privilege conveyed by a sovereign in medieval England to an English subject, promising to hold them harmless for killing game of certain species within a stipulated area, u ...

hunting franchise. This was because only by creating a ''close'', or enclosed area for the freeholder's domestic stock of rabbits, could that person claim ownership of the rabbits in it. A domestic rabbit which escaped into a nearby

could not be claimed as property, even if the freeholder held title to the soil over which the warren extended, unless that individual also possessed the royal warrant of them, or unless it had escaped from a ''close''. Such a ''close'' was called a "cony-garth". A rabbit escaped from the cony-garth was the property of the freeholder. Note that in the following quote from a medieval law forbidding commoners the means to hunt, ''warrens'' are still distinct from ''connigries''. {{cquote, That divers artificers, labourers, servants, and grooms, keep greyhounds and other dogs, and on the holidays, when good Christian people be at church hearing devine service, they go hunting in parks, warrens, and connigries of lords and others, to the very great destruction of the same; and sometimes under such colour they make their assemblies, conferences, and conspiracies to rise, and disobey their allegiance.

References

Animal breeding Animal husbandry Leporidae