But as with any medieval image that appears in various countries across several centuries, there is never going to be one uniform meaning that covers all of the pictures. Rabbits are portrayed in a far more uniform way than some of the other marginalia, and the fact that they so commonly appear attacking or hunting men or dogs, means it is fairly agreed-upon that these images of rabbits are intended to be some humorous role-reversal of the real world, where rabbits finally take their revenge against those who hunt and eat them in real life. 1294-1297 Boulogne-sur-Mer, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, France ca. Perhaps it was indeed a warning not to be a fool.
Clearly, it was imagery that an ordinary person was expected to understand. This is very similar to the images seen in marginalia. One particular one from the fifteenth century shows a hunter being spitroasted by rabbits who are also boiling his hunting dogs in a pot. Many depict a moral, and in these misericords we find some of these pesky rabbits.
#Medieval manuscript art snails series#
In Manchester Cathedral, there are a series of woodcarvings that were carved into the underside of the quire stalls, or ‘misericords’. In this way, the marginalia actually leaps off the page and enters more physical representations. ‘Stickhare’ was a Middle English name for cowards, and in many of these marginalia the rabbits are attacking humans with huge sticks, or have impaled them on sticks. Linked to the previous theory, some people take this as a very literal interpretation one would have to be very stupid to be caught by a rabbit, and so the person in the picture must be a fool. 2) The rabbits represent the stupidity of the human in the text or image The rabbits getting their ‘revenge’ on humans or hunting dogs was a continuation of this theme.
#Medieval manuscript art snails full#
A boy was chosen, perhaps from the cathedral choristers, and they would parody the real bishop, being dressed in full bishop’s robes, being attended by boys dressed as priests, and performing ceremonies and offices (except mass). One such was the custom of a ‘boy bishop’ which was commonly held on the feast of Holy Innocents (remembering Herod’s massacre of babies) or the Feast of Fools. There were several customs in the medieval period that used the upside-down world as its trope. This idea of an upside-down world was one familiar to medieval people, not just through images in their books, but in celebrations in the physical world. So what are the reasons for this transformation? Unlike snails, there seems to be far more unity in what they represent, but I’ll go through a few theories (with lots of pictures to boot). In the doodle margins of manuscripts where anything went, however, rabbits often transformed into violent, murderous creatures (like, seriously, there is some graphic stuff in here!). Probably for the same reason we liken rabbits to hot-and-heavy people today rabbits breed, a lot. Finally, they could represent fertility – just like a cockerel can be a term for a male body part, in the medieval period the Anglo-French and Spanish adjusted their word for rabbit into a term for the female body part. Sometimes they represented cowardice, due to their propensity to bolt at the first signs of potential trouble. They represented purity and helplessness, often being tied to images of Christ. In traditional medieval symbolism, rabbits were generally good or harmless creatures. A few months ago, I wrote about why there are so many snails crawling the pages of medieval manuscripts. Pages upon pages of doodles in the margins showing imaginary creatures, hybrid animals, people doing all manner of activities, and many, many animals. The pages of medieval manuscripts might be something that sounds very boring, but for those in the know, they read more like fantastical comic books.
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