we've all been there after a long day at
work is sit down and binge read some
Arthurian romances
they're called illuminated manuscripts
because they're illuminated with
illustrations in the borders colorful
drawings and very special doodles in the
margins but among all those steroidal
rabbits and this hooded person laying
literal eggs there's actually a theme a
lot of medieval knights in these
manuscripts are fighting snails why is
this happening the largest snail alive
is 15.5 inches snout to tail so why does
this night look like he's in for the
fight of his life
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illuminated manuscripts were handwritten
scribes painstakingly transcribed the
same Bibles devotionals and stories they
also decorated the margins by the 1960s
one scholar thought these margins were
worth attention
Lillian Randall was particularly
intrigued by the snail in gothic
marginal warfare she developed a theory
about why a book like this might include
a winged Knight fleeing snails and why
it showed up again and again and again
Randall found more than 70 snail
fighting heroes in just 29 manuscripts
most of which were made between 1290 and
1310 pray for yourself Knight pray that
the snail will kill you quickly
sometimes the margins rift on the text
sometimes they were disconnected but
Randall connected them to historical
stereotypes the biggest was that the
lombards were greedy mean and cowardly
the Lombards were Germanic people that
had invaded Italy they were warriors
but in 772 they were badly beaten by
Charlemagne that permanently stained
their reputation by late 12 hundreds
when those snail pictures started
getting popular the lombards had become
lenders and pawn brokers spread
throughout Europe they didn't have full
rights they couldn't even own arms but
they did have power that combination of
power and impotence
Randall argued made them targets snail
was the appropriate in Soul snails
carried their houses on their backs as
they retreated just as the lombards had
from Charlemagne they were slimy like a
lot of Europeans probably saw their
lenders calling Lombard snails was an
anti foreign slur that later grew into a
bigger trope it appeared in what was
probably a medieval pattern book with
models that helped other scribes draw
and snails showed up in many different
combinations later on here's a snail
monkey rabbit Battle Royale from the
1400s snails were slow but they spread
we can't be certain what the Knights and
snails meant because they meant
different things as the image became a
cliche the same way people don't explain
their memes today scribes didn't
annotate their games in the margins
Randall's argument fits with the timing
in history but people also speculate
that snails represented the slowness of
time or the insulation of the ruling
class we can only be certain about one
thing the snails reveal something along
with everything else in the margins as
scribes labored over transcriptions of
hallowed works reproducing every line
they snuck in additions jokes and riffs
in the margins of the text the drawings
were fantasies but they were made by
artists who sought to parody the
indignities and absurdities of their own
world the margins were the only space
left so they turned them into a
self-portrait
except for this guy he's just gonna get
murdered by snail so this video just
scratches the surface when it comes to
weird medieval art and possible
interpretations Michael Camille wrote a
whole book about art in the margins and
he highlights one figure it's the
Gorillaz and he's supposed to represent
bodily appetites it's very cute and a
little disgusting
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