In 2013 a group of medievalists from Britain went into a store to look up medieval genealogical scrolls. During their visit they came across a late-13th century manuscript from England titled
Royal MS 14 B V. This was an example among others of the medieval illuminated manuscripts that are full with unexplained doodles of images of rabbits killing humans and of snails fighting with the knights.
They abound in the margins of gothic manuscripts, and other blank spaces of 13th and 14th century English texts, sketches and notes. Oddly the scene is recurring: a brave knight in shining armor facing down a snail. The snail may be huge or sometimes tiny. The snail may go all the way through the page, or at times just under the foot of the knight. In some draws the knight looks afflicted, dumbfounded, or even defeated by his opponent.
Scholarly no one knows what the scenes really mean. The British Library chances the scene might represent the Resurrection, or it might pose for the Lombards, the Germanic people who ruled Italy from 568 to 774 AD, as proposed by Lillian Randall, who in 1960 also wrote the book
The Snail in Gothic Marginal Warfare. As claims Randall, ‘the snails portray
Lombards,’ “a group vilified in the early middle ages for treasonous behaviour, the sin of usury, and ‘non-chivalrous comportment in general.” But this latter theory was counterattacked by other researchers in the British Library since
’the knights are shown on the losing side of the battle with snails.’
“Resurrection” was ventured by the historian Comte de Bastard in 1850 since in two manuscripts the drawing was in the vicinity of the miniature depicting the “Raising of Lazarus.” In the story, from the New Testament, Jesus raises Lazarus of Bethany from the dead after four days of his entombment.
But the medievalist Lisa Spangenberg says that “the armored snail fighting the armored knight is a reminder of the inevitability of death,” a sentiment captured in the Biblical Psalm 58:
Let them melt away as waters which run continually: when he bends his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces. As a snail which melts, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.
Lilian Randall’s research also shows various pictures of snails climbing a ladder that metaphorically could portray the social ladder. Thus, the snails depicting the poor class, that is, the common folk rising against a dominant aristocracy wherein are the wealthy knights. The valiant snails could be an annotation on social oppression.
left: individual striking snail in Smithfield Decretals
Also is conspicuous that the illuminated medieval manuscripts were constructed in a way to galvanize the attention of the readers. Thus illustrations on the margin of the books sometimes bring some artwork supposed to “engage” the audience.
Another allegation, to explain these permeating depictions, blames the gastropod as the enemy of the person writing the manuscripts. Again the problem is that this doesn’t explain why the knights are always
losing to the “villain.” Anyway, who should be the good guy?
At last, in fact in the history of earth there were big snails, and possibly some larger than humans. In temperate climates from the USA and across Europe have been found fossils of giant cephalopods like the
Pachydiscus Seppenradensis. These real giant snails
could face medieval knights but their timing doesn’t collaborate. Fossil records date the
Parapuzosia back to the early-to-late Cretaceous period of Earth’s history. Therefore these snails shared the environ with “saurus” like the Ankylosaurus.
Notice that knight has a snake around the scabbard of his sword.
So, supposing that the knights were not clashing against really giant snails, what does mean all the insistent imagery of knights fighting powerful snails? Could they be minuscule knights combating normal-sized snails over twigs and foliage?
The Snail in Gothic Marginal Warfare by L. Randall
As stated in The Snail in Gothic Marginal Warfare by Lilian Randall, the “snail confrontation” was most popular between 1290 and 1325. The fringe drawings depicted a knight battling against a magnanimous gastropod. This uncanny tendency, Randall notes, was pretty extensive, emerging up in French, English, and Flemish manuscripts. The works stretched from “psalters” and “breviaries” to “pontificals” and “decretals”.
According to Randall, the majority of the mollusk pictures were ordinary in quality and presenting a knight dueling the snail. “In composition the motif varies little from country to country. The most common form of representation shows a knight armed with mace or sword confronting a snail whose horns are extended and often pointed like arrows …”
Sometimes, the snail-battlers were naked. “In one instance,” Randall elaborates, “a nude woman opposes the snail with spear and shield.” Sometimes the knight was not human or only half human. Randall asserts that metamorphosing knights into half-human hybrids was a popular little trend-with-a-trend, which some artists took to its logical extreme: replacing the human knights entirely with animals. Thus we have “an ape armed with sword or crossbow or on horseback with a spear; a cat stalking a snail with the head of a mouse; a dog, dragon, ram, or even a hare in fierce opposition.”
As claims Randall, the “principal connotation” of the motif is satire. Since human knights are often seen frightened before—or, indeed,
losing to—the inoffensive, slow snails, it makes sense that the image is a way to emphasize cowardice. However Randall does not note that peculiarly some gastropods own a sexual organ known as “
love dart” that resembles a jousting gear. So they could “attack” in certain sense.
In similar way Elizabeth Moore Hunt remarks in her
Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts, 1270-1310, “…the natural baseness of the animal makes it unworthy prey for splendid jousting gear and thus a humorous parody of the knight in arms.” “Also suggested as a possible meaning for the threatening snail is ‘social-climbing.’ The growth of the urban bourgeois and patrician classes occasioned scuffles between the count and the towns; meanwhile the nobility was experiencing social anxieties in the face of increased monarchial power.” This could reason the peaceful snail drawings that Randall describes such as, “two snails with monstrous heads atop a series of steps” and “three snails ascending a ladder.”
Randall also identifies the slugs as a known insult to the Lombards derided in the accounts of their surrender to King Charlemagne in 772. “At what date the snail became part of this legend is difficult to determine,” “…although the association of Lombards and snails doubtless existed in oral tradition some time before its transcription towards the middle of the twelfth century.” Randal asserts that about the 13th century, Lombards became a detested ethnic people in northern Europe, as they “monopolized” occupations like pawnbroker and usurer. “They did not hold full rights of citizenship, including the right to bear arms, a restriction which may have abetted the notion of their military ineffectuality.” But Randall allows room to doubts as in her conclusion she settles herself between the Lombard theory and mere satire.
As matter of fact, Harvard professor Jan Ziolkowski gives a somewhat different panorama. In his book
Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750-1150, the 12th century poem “The Lombard and Snail” is told a “downscaled epic” with a Lombard “read[ying] himself to do battle with a snail” —this quite interesting poem can be seen in the next posts.
Shells
It is curious how the medieval illustrators find shelter in shells to multi animal forms, even human and hybrids. Could those be stealing the snails’ armor? The shell-man and shell-goat below are from the
Breviary of Renaud de Bar.
Mother Goose (fairy tales)
Snail, snail, come put out your horn,
Tomorrow is the day to shear the corn.
Another song:
