If there's anything to learn from medieval marginalia, it's that snails once had their own society
Aux Features Snails
We all know medieval marginalia is full of some pretty sick snail fights. No one knows why, exactly, but there are hundreds of old drawings of snails in combat with knights in old manuscripts. The snails are depicted to be the size of a large dog and they’re usually seen going one-on-one with soldiers for a nice joust or sword fight. But Twitter user @erik_kaars introduces us to a new concept: medieval snail ecology and society.
For one, look at this weird snail cat thing, which has a face that doesn’t look too far off anyone starring in a certain upcoming musical film.
Then there are the half-snail, half-humans, who also have jobs. There’s a snail-monk, who definitely blesses the salt away from the earth, and little snail-kids, who, despite their sinister faces, are thankfully nothing like what Junji Ito might have us believe.
Also, as Wade points out, the existence of snail-monks implies there’s some kind of snail-god to worship. Which could also mean there is an implied snail church holding its own snail-congregation. The existence of the Church of Snails would also mean snails had to build said church, which would then mean snails building things using practical items like hammers, nails, and ladders, which would probably take so much fucking time. Plus, if snail versus knight action is truly a thing in the medieval marginalia universe, that means snail warfare, and massive snail armies had to be trained.
Wade also shows off some other weird snail things, like a small monkey playing a snail some music by way of brass instrument, and a snail-hog hybrid animal. Snails were also vehicles for some knight friends, but when they needed a lift they preferred to ride cats as opposed to themselves.
If only Medieval Times could adopt massive snail-horses for their live shows.
18 Comments
“Do you, Marge, take Homer, in richness and in poorness, poorness is underlined, in impotence and in potence, in quiet solitude or blasting across the alkali flats in a jet-powered, monkey-navigated … and it goes on like this”
Well that is both weird and delightful.
The whole “snail” thing is explained pretty thoroughly in Voynich. Now where did I put that cipher…
This could have been an interesting explanation of medieval symbolism, but I guess snark is much easier and requires zero research.
I think you may have strayed into the wrong part of the web, sir. JSTOR is over there…
The AV Club’s discussion of medieval symbolism has really fallen off since they moved over to Kinja.
Their coverage of 18th century French poetry is even worse. Merde!
It’s the futility of existence. Fighting snails is fighting death itself. The snails always win.Also:First they didn’t have the bamboo umbrellas for the wine, and now snails on the food.
I think the relevant movie clip to post after your comment would be from Peter Greenaway’s “A Zed and Two Noughts”. But then I also thought that inspired the snails from season 3 of “Hannibal”, since they also cribbed from “The Cook, the Thief…”, but apparently Janice Poon just came up with it without reference to any films.
This wasn’t snarky so much as it was just sort of endearing and also, this isn’t a university, it’s the AV Club.
In 2002, they woulda leaned into the deep dive.
Well, it says at the top of the article that no one really knows why snails were so popular. I know Shakespeare used snails in a cuckolding joke (because they have horns, you see), so part if me suspects this was all a dirty joke that got out of hand.
Do snail armies slug it out?
they did, but wars were never the same after J. Conch Oppenheimer discovered salt and replied “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”
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What the snail said while riding on the back of a turtle: WHEEEEEE!
Some of these are cool because they are not so much meant to be real as we all know. They are the comic books of the times and the superheros.