![]() You can see more marginal scenes of the rabbit’s revenge at Sexy Codicology, Colossal, and Kaneko-James’ blog. Given how often we denizens of the 21st century have trouble getting humor from less than a century ago, it feels satisfying indeed to laugh just as hard at these drolleries as our medieval forebears must have - though many more of us surely get to see them today, circulating as rapidly on social media as they didn’t when confined to the pages of illuminated manuscripts owned only by wealthy individuals and institutions. Then, of course, we have the bunnies making their attacks while mounted on snails, snail combats being “another popular staple of Drolleries, with groups of peasants seen fighting snails with sticks, or saddling them and attempting to ride them.” We see this in the Middle English nickname Stickhare, a name for cowards” - and in all the drawings of “tough hunters cowering in the face of rabbits with big sticks.” Usually, the knight is drawn so that he looks worried. Sometimes the snail is all the way across the page, sometimes right under the knight’s foot. ![]() Later he had to fight to get his reputation back, and his wife (although she did nothing wrong) was punished by being forced to remain silent.This enjoyment of the “world turned upside down” produced the drollery genre of “the rabbit’s revenge,” one “often used to show the cowardice or stupidity of the person illustrated. Sometimes the snail is monstrous, sometimes tiny. Because women are the reason why knights get lazy! It is an idea that appears for example in the 12 th century story about Erek and Enida: Erek was a great knight but when he got married he abandoned all his knight duties because he preferred to have a good time with his wife. That is a tempting hypothesis – a snail is so slow, and so soft, and so moist… and it is seemingly unarmed, yet it confronts a well-armed knight!Īctually, connecting a snail with femininity goes very well with interpreting it as a symbol of sloth. According to some scholars, a snail may symbolize femininity. Therefore, fighting it is obligatory for a christian knight, and that may explain the presence of the motif in the books of prayers.Īnd finally… let’s get politically incorrect. The Church Fathers widely discussed this problem and finally Saint Thomas of Aquinas placed acedia among Seven Deadly Sins (sloth). Actually we should say that the snail refers to acedia – that is an apathy, a depression, a sadness and a despondence. ![]() However, most probably snail symbolises laziness and sloth, and those were in the Middle Ages condemned as one of the worst sins of the knights – so it is understandable that knights should fight them. As Elizabeth Moore Hunt explains in Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts, 1270-1310 (a book just begging to be cited in discussions like this one), the natural baseness of the animal makes it unworthy prey for splendid jousting gear and thus a humorous parody of the. Shakespeare uses a word “snail” in the meaning of “cuckold”, as snails have horns. Even when the knight looks dashing and brave, the snail is meant to undermine his bravado. In the 14 th century La Vie du Prince Noir (by Chandos Herald) “snail-imitation” is listed among the courtly entertainments. Knights are often pictured fighting snails in medieval manuscripts - but their significance has been lost in the slime of time. In the comments under that BL post there are more proposals from the readers – it is very interesting that the snail is present in many nursery rhymes in different languages. Also, the snail could just symbolize the forces of evil, as it is a garden pest. Other hypotheses say that this image is supposed to symbolize the fight between aristocracy (the knight) and the plebs (the snail). 359), an early medieval composite manuscript (this section was written in northern Italy in the ninth century) the snail recipe is the last entry of the group (found on the final two lines). Lilian Randall proposed that the snail might refer to the Lombards, who were described as non-chivalrous and traitorous (as in opposition to the knights) – but that doesn’t explain the presence of this motif on the margins of religious books, as Psalters or Books of Hours. Figure 1: A group of recipes for teary eyes (Ad lacrimas oculorum) in St. In the mid 19 th century Auguste de Bastard d’Estang suggested that it is a scene referring to the Resurrection, as it appeared in two manuscripts close to the miniature showing the Raising of Lazarus. Lately there has been an interesting post on this issue published at the blog of British Library – it collects various hypotheses on what may be the meaning of this motif, and the readers add more proposals in their comments. One of the most interesting motives is a fight between a knight and a snail, quite popular in the 14 th– and the 15 th-centuries manuscripts. Because those margins are full of very interesting things: notes, but most of all crazy pictures: funny, weird or disturbing… The margins of medieval manuscripts are fascinating and I will surely get back to this topic many times.
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