(Natural History, Book 8, 81)įANTASTIC! Pliny actually mentions a desired military action against Rabbits! Who knows, maybe Graham Chapman, or John Cleese, or Eric Idle, or Terry Gilliam, or Terry Jones, or Michael Palin (writers of Monty Python and the Holy Grail) came across Pliny’s writing and took inspiration from it… in the end most of them studied between Oxford and Cambridge Chapman, especially, studied medicine and might have given a look at Pliny’s work… But these are all conjectures.Īnyway, sometimes the medieval bunnies just want to have some fun and do a game of jousting with their animal friends rather than killing knights. By eating all the crops, rabbits brought famine to the Balearic Islands, to such extent that the people there petitioned Augustus to send troops to fight the beasts. Speaking about Pliny the Elder, it is extremely interesting to read what he has to say about rabbits: (Natural History, Book 8, 81) The link between Killer Rabbits and Monty Python Some say that the hare is as many years old as it has folds in its bowels, and that it is a hermaphrodite that can reproduce without a mate. When the auto-complete results are available, use the up and down arrows to review and Enter to select. The white hares of the Alps are thought to eat snow in the winter, for they turn color when the snow melts. See more ideas about medieval art, medieval manuscript, illuminated manuscript. Yes, but, what about the hare? Well, the hare, called by its latin name ‘ lepus’, also has a entry in the Bestiaries and, of course, it has a Christian symbol behind it: In theory, the hare represented the man that feared God, but put his trust in him, and not in people (unlike the hedgehog… but that is another story.)įrom a more scientific point of view, Pliny the Elder tell us: The information that people would get from these manuscripts would influence their daily lives, to a certain point. Today, Bestiaries are fascinating sources that give us a peek into the medieval mind and culture. Their main objective was to moralize the reader. For example: the panther was thought to be a “multi-coloured beast” that breathed “a very sweet smell” that would attract other animals the beaver would amputate its testicles because it knew that the hunter wanted them alone, rather than the whole animal, in order to make a powerful medicine or the foul dragon (aka, the Devil), the only arch-enemy of the elephant and the panther (aka, Jesus Christ).Īs it is easy to understand, these texts contained myths and superstitions and had quite the share of fantasy in them. In these books it is also explained what their symbolism was in the middle ages, and what they represented within Christian religion. Here at Sexy Codicology, we got curious and asked ourselves: “ What do Bunnies represent in Medieval Culture?”Ī very useful primary source to consult is a medieval Bestiary (a so-called “Book of Beasts”), a genre of manuscripts typical of England, which present a collection of various animals’ descriptions, both real and mythical ones. A psychotic killer bunny from - Paris, Bibl.
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