ROMA HISTORY AND CULTURE: Exit, Pursued By A Bear (A Hypothesis)
At the IMC Leeds 2018 the traditional session on medieval animals turned to the topic of bears. Much was made of their significance of bears in the cultures of northern European nations. Little was remarked upon of the existence of bears in the Central Eastern Europe and parts of the Middle East – primarily the Syrian Brown Bear ( Ursus Arctos Syriacus ). In response to a question stemming from her paper Irina Metzler remarked on the legal restrictions which were placed on people described as ‘those who keep bears’ – with the implication that this speaks to individual people rather than a particular group of people. I would suggest an alternative possibility, which may stem from a confusion over a single term – Ursari.