Why knights fought snails in medieval art
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- čas přidán 28. 03. 2017
- Look in the margins of medieval books and you'll find an unusual theme: knights vs. snails. Follow Phil Edwards and Vox Almanac on Facebook for more: / philedwardsinc1
Lillian Randall's paper is here: www.scribd.com/document/26315...
And Michael Camille's book about marginal art can be found here: www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/displa...
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/b...
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Medieval snails and knights - who knew? It turns out that medieval illuminated manuscripts featured a lot of bizarre imagery in the margins, but this pocket of art history might be one of the most intriguing.
Scholar Lilian Randall provides the best theory for the unusual motif: these medieval knights fought snails in the margins because snails represented the Lombards, who had become widely despised lenders throughout Europe. Snail was an insult and, over time, it became a type of meme detached from its original meaning.
Of course, like much of art history, this theory is just a theory. But it gives us an insight into the rich culture of marginal art and all the complexity, confusion, and amusement that sits on the side of the page.
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The answer is simple, in medieval times giant snails were a real menace but thankfully the brave Knights of Europe wiped them all out for us.
Just like how lamps have shrunk Moths, Newton invented gravity to shrink the snails.
The government wants us to believe no beasts can touch us, but I fear the day the moths and snails go back to their original size.
ur one of the time travelling knights!!
even tho theres no such thing as timemachine in the middld ages
This is my head canon now
@@wackwacker8623 lol 🤣 good thing Newton invented gravity huh?
Knight Jiub
This is not a question I've ever asked, nor was I ever going to ask. yet here I am for an answer
Jordan Guy This is how we all feel, I think. Weird. But it's such an intriguing video title, we all just clicked on it.
😂
The answer lies in the stars. Specifically; a snail can be seen in Cassiopeia, where also can be seen the shining 'countenance divine' of William Blake's 'Jerusalem'. This countenance is that of the biblical god (c.f. 'snails! - short for 'god's nails' - being an interjection of surprise and es-car-got translating loosely as 'you're for god') and it is this the knights are confronting, with good cause. There is some myth about the snail returning to Jerusalem (can't locate it at the moment) and I think it safe to say that it is well on it's way. Happy days ahead!
Nick Addey I always thought that the snails represent the French, given how the french like to eat snails and it would have been a bit ridiculous to paint a giant clove of garlic, I feel a bit sorry for the knights who had to fight giant snails”my liege why doth That fellow from palastine George get to fighteth a dragon while I must slay a giant snail”speaking in RPG terms would a giant snail be more or less dangerous than a slime?
O wow I saw you on a Jack stauber video and I see you in this comment section as well. Nice profile pic btw
everybody gangsta till the giant snail start fightin
Then nobody helps with the dishes after...
That giant snail that fights everybody really, really hard but also really, really slow
Just throw salt.. problem solved 😌
You laugh but just wait....the great prophecy shall come true
The correct title would have been, "Rare medeival memes"
Medieval Memes that Kept Them Ol Nobles from Ending it All
Medeival?
Andy 🔥 comment.
1k!
Pepe!
This is the medieval times' equivalent to today's "this meme will be hard to explain in 100 years"
True
I don no If anyone cares but I made the likes 420
Hahaha, true. XD
“Here you can see an image of a common guy with a green shirt immersed in some sort of blue flame….”
Try explaining 4 year old memes.
Its quite obvious that they were fighting giant snails hundreds of years ago
Or that people were much smaller then.
@@GrassPossum They wouldn't have written normal sized books then. I think we should leave behind these childish conspiracies about tiny knights and stick to the hard science of gigantic snails.
anAccountMustHaveAName its not exactly ‘hard’ science, unless we talk about the shells
@B. J. If giant snails aren't real, then explain how you were so slow to get a joke.
That’s what the History Channel would interpret from this
*_So basically this is the birth of shitposting?_*
Nah shitposting dates back to Egypt.
@Aleksa Petrovic
Really shitposting is as old as drawing and writing themselves.
Can you speak like a person?
@Aleksa Petrovic the egyptians are as old to the romans as the romans are to us
@@guyfacks1320 That is freaking mindblowing, but yeah. Actually I think the Egyptians would have been even more slightly older to the Romans than the Romans are to us (today)...
i have a feeling it was probably over something dumb. like a well-known person freaked out over a snail once and they started mocking them through drawings of snails vs knights
Kind of like sarcasm?
But nope it was racial slur
Hmm..."Knights vs. Snails"...yeah, that sounds like the next big Dream Works hit! :D
and thus dank medieval memes were born
Doubtful, it was some group so powerful that you couldn't ridicule them. To see who rules over you look to he who you cannot ridicule. Or count the cookies one can bake per year.
RIP dude at the end. Horrifically murdered by a mutant snail from the 1300s. Gone too soon.
KSJDbv you're right. Mutant snails are no joke.
How insensitive my family was killed by mutant snails
It was a decoy snail
TheOtherNeutrino If that's the decoy snail where's the real one...
Luis Carvalho right behind you!!!
Knights were the athletes superstars of the time. Monks were the academics.
Maybe the nerds were mocking the jocks?
A time when nerds bullied jocks?
@@bluemantis1448 In their little margin world, yes :)
Nah it's probably the king hired those knights to kill any snails they could find for if anyone touches the king he'll die.
Haha! Nice
@@bluemantis1448 not so much bullying as satire? 😂
When you are lvl 1 player, so you have to fight some snails to get some xp.
I know right
The grind
Exactly
Snail: *slimes* on Knight's foot
Knight: DEMON!!! 🗡️
an f in the chat for the knight getting his foot stabbed
@@berry.mixxxx F
@@berry.mixxxx F
@@berry.mixxxx F
@@berry.mixxxx F
600 years from now: why astronauts fought rainbow farting toast cats in digital era internet art.
We'll never know...
The mystery will be unveiled , but until then...
Laerei ajakjsjjsjjehfbiejddjiosjenosodnowienodjdjowkemksidniwisn*djdj*eein(ejiiejdiiskwi*×××
Is that actually a thing?
Opinunate ted Well Nyan Cat is the thing he described being fought.
its a older meme sir but it checks out
an*
Thank you Robert EO Speedwagon of the Speedwagon Foundation from the popular anime manga franchise Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
@@krabbza obnoxious*
This technically is a meme since a meme is an “element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.”
Stop talking.
Memes are like viruses if you think about it
real definition of meme
Haruka Saigusa bro what he do tho
@@harukasaigusa8906 no u
"Yo dude look at this snail i just drew"
"Hey thats a good one!! Imma draw one too."
Medieval meme stealing
yup it's terriffying to think that our humor will just go full circle and revert back to banana slipping gags
Man, this guy just ignoring the invasion of the giant alien snails.
gingersassy I know right? Those men died valiantly.
It's shameful. My friend's ancestors died in that war.
You mean the Snailens right?
Damnit, someone in the comments above already used my joke..
Cody Green is a genius.
I just kind of learned that medieval monks made memes.
I can die happily.
Hobbesfield well that escalated quickly , well for medieval time standards
There are even older memes. The Three Hares meme is about 1500 years old from China, The Abracadabra is from the Roman Empire and The Sator square dates to the roman republic.
And Kilroy has existed since the dawn of man.
History's first trolls!
It's really not hard to imagine when you realize that a bunch of dudes who all lived in monasteries totally remote from the rest of the population were in control of almost all written information
Back then they go braggin about "I fought snails more fearsome than you!"
Just like how an f-1 racer today could say "I've seen snails faster than you!"
In the next few decades, it would be mud crabs.
@@lemiov6885 Why mud crabs?
@@Corvus__ it's an elder scrolls game reference hehe
@@kitsandcards7968 So mud crabs, aren't a real thing?
False. The Knights were granted immortality but in exchanged a snail hunted them down, if caught the Knights would perish. The photos depict said events.
We have come full circle haven't we?
The reason we don't see them is because the knights won. The greatest heroes we never knew
Yeah, Don Quixote wiped the giant snails out before he took on the windmills.
Otherwise we would have heroic stories about snails and dragons nows.... and let's not talk about snail movies..
Surely you jest. Knights were wiped off the map centuries ago.
My brother is still fighting snails in his garden to this day.
chistine lane history favors the victor
Yes it is most accurate to say the snails are a meme. In my law class we ran over an ancient Roman law that required individuals to flee from battle if an avenue of retreat was available, rather than to fight an aggressor. This law was meant to prevent personal skirmishes from resulting in pointless death. Two aggrieved parties would menace each other with weapons then slowly back away to avoid combat while keeping their honor. In the margins of the book containing this law, there is a knight defending himself from a snail. Obviously, the point is that he could easily run away from the snail. That's the punch line. Like any meme, every time it appears the joke is slightly different until the original meaning is obscured. The joke might have several origins; there's no telling where it came from.
one of the most interesting comments here ,Sir, thank you.
That's really freakin' cool.
Do you happen to remember the title of the manuscript with the aforementioned law and the drawing?
Ixian Technocrat Ah well it would probably have been out of the Code of Justinian. That's all I remember.
If you removed the old law then you'd have to find every reference to it and change it appropriately, then check the references to _those_ laws to make sure they still made sense...
New laws sort of overwrite old ones. There's that one about it being legal to shoot a Welshman with a longbow, but newer laws about bodily harm have priority.
So, it’s confirmed. Snail vs knight was a medieval meme. We’ve been memeing way longer than we get credit for.
Even longer than you think. Ancient romans shitposted on rocks and the walls of their public structures, leaving such important messages as "On April, 19th I baked a bread"
Absolutely. Dawkins just rehashed some classical rhetorical analysis as an evolutionary advantage. Even “meme” is just a variation and abbreviation of “enthymeme.”
The snails were very clearly just a meme for the medival arts
J
Legends says that the French Knights are still fighting with snails in their fancy restaurants.
How dare you insult my French forefathers..."I fart in your general direction." ( Monty Python and The Holy Grail) couldn't resist the opportunity to use that line!
Also the snails are eaten in the region of catalonia in spain
Deww nut git funnee with ME, Meeseuer - - Sir Jacques Clouseau, Knights of the Ringside Tables
Snails are widely eaten across Europe and can be popular village food, e.g on the island of Lebos. In fact you’ll sometimes find snails in the frozen section of Lidl (not by accident) even in the UK.
The knights killed off the really big snails. So only the little itty bitty mollusks were left.
@brainchild. Nonono, the knights didn't kill off the big snails - the normal, everyday mollusks, decimated the small anti-mollusc knights to extenction. So we still have snails today, but no knights, especially tiny ones.
Breaking Darwin
Obviously people back then were just immortal,the snail is inevitable.
Finally someone said it 💀
Oh this is Christmas *WAAAR IS OVER IFF YOU WANT IT and what have we done
My theory is that it's a representation of them fighting boredom.
You'd be wrong.
Yes, before printing press, medieval scriber are very boring and time consumming job, they lose time to socializing with other people.. the snails symbolizing slowness and boredom
YES! Finally! I knew I wasn't the only one think that.
Or sloth…
So..
Are you telling me..
That snails are the memes of the 14th century???
They had memes. They had swords and pretty people. They were cool.
Fiona Cowell Lmao 😂😂😂😂👏👏👏👏👌👌👌👌👌
Fiona Cowell yup, they were people just like u and me, they also had their jokes, memes and running gags
The Banana Melon dude my name's henry you should expect me to talk like that.😂
JIM
England, making memes since 1200
Donald J Trump isn’t New York your city?
Leonard Marc Ramos
America is his city
Jescide Life and all of these Londons' still
The manuscripts (in this video) are written in old french.
So I doubt any of those are from england.
Harry Sinclair before it was cool. 😎
The snail has finally caught up with them...it's their final day, and they are going down by their own terms!
Goku: I’ve got the strongest enemies
Knights: Hold my beer
To be fair... I haven't seen goku fight a snail ...yet.
Thomas Ridley Freiza will turn to a snail I tell you!
@@cluckcluck6494 r u gay
Hold my snails
Hold my mead.
Maybe they really hated escargot.
I was expecting to find that the snail represented the French, a traditional foe of the English and notorious eaters of the cuisses de grenouilles, flesh of le cheval and more pertinently, as you have pointed out, the escargot in question... but apparently not.
Don't trifle with truffles!
:)
and the french
mugensamurai or the french
are you in the wrong timeline?
God. I can heard the future historians trying to describe 21st century memes to our distant future generations. "Here we see a photograph of a young person outlaid with a black border. Notice the ancient text encircling the photograph...its true meaning lost to time. Dr. ---- has been studying their cryptic texts for years and theorized...."
My most profound hope is that I'm somehow transported to the future you're describing. I'm basically a meme scholar, I can explain them all about it and finally feel like I'm good at something.
This sounds like a joke on Futurama
All memes will disappear. The 21st Century will be known as the Dark Ages 2 without any written documents.
Why? Because in 2017 I can't even use links to the digital articles from 1999, because whole newspapers and portals disappeared and when you google after them you may probably find some notes that they ever existed. The digital world is as stabile as the Facebook account with hundreds of pictures and wise words which get banned and goes to the digital nirvana during the one single minute.
That thought has always been darkly amusing to me. We have "all" the information in the world at our fingertips, but when our civilization collapses and the next one rises, it is almost a given that there will be almost no written accounts of it given our reliance on electronics and transitional media that is wiped daily.
Crazy, huh?
Brandon Bricker it's like this analogy:
Building a tent with no beams, instead we all have to blow as hard as possible to collectively help keep the tent up. If we all stop blowing, it ceases to be a tent and is, instead, simply just a very large blanket. Our current society relies on us ALL partaking in the fields of economics, politics, religion, and all other factors prevalent in our society.
I imagine a video in 2420: Why 2020 memes used to have a frog named Pepe?
No need. There's already a doc out on that.
Title : why knights are fighting snails in images
Video: we don’t know exactly why
J
Don't have to waste my time now,👍
Actually, in medieval times animals represented something. Snails possibly represented slothfulness, so fighting slothfulness and to keep copying might have been a theme many monks writings these books were familiar with.
You know what represents slothfulness even more than snails?
Sloths.
Walked right into that one, didn't you?
Sloths lived in America.
Walked right into that one, didn't you?
@@rin_etoware_2989 and America is a sea away from europe
Swam right into that one, didn´t you?
@@thatonehamster4130 and swimming wasn't invented yet in medieveal Europe
Boated, idk, right into that one, didn't you?
they actually represented strength, because they carry their houses on their backs.
1:40: Praying is no use, knight. Snails never do anything quickly!
Shellikybookies. There's a wonderful Irish children's song about snails, and that's what they were called.
There is an explenation:
The knights were french
*shook*
shut up
"En garde, escargot!"
Remember the Lombards were defeated by Charlemagne was also French. A French king at that.
I don’t like French. Or Northern Italians
Modern snails aren’t what their ancestors once were. Ancient snails used to tower over man, and we had to fight them off with fire and salt.
obviously it's because there used to be giant killer snails and the brave heroes killed them all which is why there isn't any anymore
Their weapon were made of salt
They probably played Bastion.
crusades was actually about snail wars
But there still are snails arround, what we lack is knights. Huw...
The brave men didn't kill the snails... The brave men rode them.
So it turns out the Monty Python joke about the killer rabbit (and other small animals) has been a long running joke in Europe.
gladomi Ah yes, I remember when King Arthur was arrested and put in a police van before he could fight the battle for the holy grail. Oh, and how could I have forgotten about the holy hand grenade? Those crazy scribes sure were inventive
Gilliam took various liberties for the sake of comedy, but if you remove the jokes it ironically follows the original plot of the legends closer than most other adaptations.
but if you remove the jokes theres barely anything left... a dude named Arthur riding around with a bunch od dudes... -_-
Which is exactly what it was... What did you think there was some like intense war or something? It's a Dude named Arthur who happens to be king of Wales/Britannia traveling through some shithole looking for the Holy Grail.
Just clarifying something, they were called illluminated manuscripts because they often had gold leafing/inks that appeared to make the pages glow under candle light.
Thanks!
He tried to fight the immortal snail, a brave soul
In short these are basically medieval memes.
The Lard Maker now i'm actually thinking what people in 1000 years from now will think about today's memes
or snails pictures were just medieval trolls
Croz Raven my thoughts exactly
Medieval memes
Lion: I'm the king of the jungle
snail: *I'm about to end this man's whole career.*
😂😂😂
They fought the snails to protect themselves from the legion of the Immortal Snails; they succeeded, and got rid of all except one.
They used creative mode, by the way. Deleted all except the last.
FINALLY! An answer I've been looking for!
Thank you. So much.
Yes and I also wanted to know about the snails!
vixen768 no way, totally medieval world's misconception of ammonite fossils that could be quite large. You can see in the illustrations that sometimes they look more like modern day Nautilus's... or squid like in the opening... but... who can prove ammonites didn't walk on land? Maybe some were alive then still. >:)
The day I think about why knights fought snails is the day when Vox upload this video
Okay the problem is that this is just an opinion. Take your "answer" not as fact.
TLDR: Snails represent the Lombards, who were thought to be slimy merchants who carried their homes on their backs. The snail is a jest insult to the name of the time. (1400 Memes)
@@tijuanaforeplay8232 hehe, I understood that.
Oy Vey
Only 1400s kids will understand 👍👌
lol just no, that's just ONE interpretation but no one knows for sure.
Immortal snail meme predecessor
It’s all fun and games till the giant snail comes squirming into the room
This was hilarious and informative. This has sparked an interest in me for medieval manuscripts that did not exist before. Thank you, Vox.
We linked the main paper/book in the description.
If you want to just look at gorgeous medieval ms scans, this one is great:
brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3433279
You'll find a snail/knight battle on 169r.
brbl-zoom.library.yale.edu/viewer/1020266
-Phil
Thanks again!
It might be worth taking a look at the British Library too, they have a fairly substantial collection of digitised manuscripts
www.bl.uk/manuscripts/
Okay, Thanks, I'll do that!
Are you older than 13, April?
this means there were huge snails back then but the knights killed them all
David Blaze Definitely
Is it ok to draw in the margins of my school books now????
2019: Why knights fought snails in medieval art
2119: Why players fought chickens in CSGO
Snails=boredom. Reading=fighting boredom. Knights fighting snails=reading to pass time.
Nice. I would have thought rather snail = time, knight fighting against snail = scribe finishing a manuscript after a loooong time of hard work
And we thought we invented memes, turns out memes are hundreds of years old
Ares5933 during ww 2 memes were a thing too
Ares5933 memes started existing when culture did
memes were born far before humanity, they will also outlive us all.
Memes are a new invention, like water and dirt.
So basically: how an ethnic slur became a meme for perhaps a few generations of scholarship.
Did medieval knights do battle with snails?
Ancient Astronaut Theorists say “yes”
Someone please make this ancient meme great again!
D O U B L E
E
E
Here's a thought- the pictures were charms to protect the manuscripts from being eaten by snails.
I really like that first "snail" at 0:34. It's like a cat-snail. Cnail.
Gary?
I wonder if they actually had memes inb4 christ. Imagine some egyptian kids drawing mummies with shiny eyes doing t poses on scrolls without any explanation.
It happened.
Nice profile pic.
There is one. When archaeologist found a place in Egypt with lots of pillars they noticed that one of them had hiyeroglifs. So they climbed up that very tall pillar to see what it said. It said:"This is a veryyyy tall pillar".
of course they had memes. memes are a human thing. they were just called common jokes up until recently.
Romans had graffiti accusing each other of buggery and cuckholdry, by at least year 79, as demonstrated by inscription preserved at Pompeii.
TLDR: IT'S A MEME
*TL;DW
noname6500 "Tis a meme ye dip."
-13th century monks.
*TLDW
Medieval memes need to make a comeback 🤔
I want Vox to make a video about: Why knights fought RABBITS in medieval art
i.pinimg.com/originals/67/00/c4/6700c497d421ae1d0f032e740f7dfd00.jpg
They have
www.reddit.com/r/trippinthroughtime/?st=JD6NYJK0&sh=d881a549
Oh I thought this was a meme.
+Matt B: What's going to do? Nibble your bum?
That's what I was thinking
So this was the first time the snail was hired to catch some dude? O.o
"And so, good Knight, thou will have to fight thy Giant Snail for your promotion."
*VINTAGE MEMES! VINTAGE MEMES! GET YOUR PERFECTLY PRESERVED 700 YEARD OLD MEMES RIGHT HERE LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!*
So snails are medieval Pepes?
Now would be a great time to invest in rare snails before the normies realise.
Imagine future scientists being like "at the dawn of the third millennia people liked to draw frogs"
𝖄𝖊 𝖔𝖑𝖉𝖊 𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙𝖕𝖔𝖘𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌
Fromsoft missed the biggest opportunity to add a snail boss in Dark Souls.
the Phalanx in the Painted World of Ariamis are kinda snails
I think this is my new favorite Vox video. Meme in peace, scribes. Meme in peace.
Love the "pray that 🐌 kills you quickly" interesting fact an ex roommate and I would make our own paper and keep it in the basement guess what creature loves to eat fresh paper? 🐌
So I imagine it was a precaution toward being diligent in the care of precious paper
Oh gosh, I hadn't thought of that at all.
So it was a charm of sorts to frighten snails away. Cool!
Plot twist: the crusades were actually just wars about killing giant snails, which were considered a delicacy for the elite.
the immortal snail came for them
What if snails represented procrastination? Imagine you live in a monastery. People judge you harshly all the time, you're pressured to produce, but you never really go anywhere and probably lack motivation all the time. "Sloth" or laziness is a sin. Maybe it was an inside joke about how hard it was to fight off their laziness and actually make the manuscript they were always talking about
honestly that was my interpretation as well
Hmm yeah i gathered that too
One of the 7 deadly sins, along with the 7 virtues a big part of Western culture that conveniently disappeared.
So it's basically the Wilhelm scream of Gothic literature. Cool.
IamMeHere2See I
2:52 *First Battle Royale Mode, colorized (1260)*
everybodys gangsta till the snails roll up in the castle
so...knights battling snails was an ancient meme?
Emily Daenzer it would appear so 😐
Plottwist Giant Snails Exist!!!
THINK Godd Loooooool best comment EVER
God, I really hope not so...
The knights killed them.
So the immortal snail is real?
Someone agreed to be immortal, that's what.
Last time I came this early, it was the dark ages
*dank meme age
the internet doesn't need to know your fetishes.
Ride The Track and giant snails roamed the earth.
more like the dank ages
Mh
One interesting theory I've heard about the rabbits and snails is that they're simply there because the people writing the manuscripts were monks and one of the main duties of monks was gardening. And who are two of
a gardener's main enemies? Rabbits and snails.
The immortal snail.
Jontron: im a brave boi
*see a snail*
Jontron: NOT A BRAVE ENOUGH BOI FOR THIS!
+Vox, why don't we see cars in medieval art?
warhammernerd52 those things are way too hard to draw
the rare medieval pepe
Randall Stephens
YES
XD
Who Also.. just got a New Tattoo idea!!????
Did you actually do it??
i think they include it in their drawing because the snails are beautiful and easy to draw because it moves slooooooooooowlyyyyyyy. 🐌
*Insert comment here stating that the snails were medieval dank memes because no-one has commented this before*
1000 years from now they will believe that primordeal Hello Kittys went to war with Cosmic Space Kittens with bad grammer ( has Cheeseburger)... Lol
𝕿𝖍𝖞 𝖒𝖊𝖒𝖊 𝖎𝖘 𝖉𝖆𝖓𝖐
Stop, it's cringy - its 2018, old stale cringy memes are not funny anymore
the snail shape also resembles Egypt and the Gulf that boarders it, its a snail shape....
and MEMES will return... MOCK MY WORDS Blasphemer!!!... Lol J/K
Neptunes Lagoon *grammar. Oh, the irony.
Memes are a thing, stale memes are just cringe
Immortal snail existed in the middle ages
*clap clap* meme review.
Vox: Answering the important questions.
It's interesting how the monks could draw clothes perfectly but knew barely anything about anatomy.
360sblulev I can't believe your comment got upvoted
I'm not complaining about humans combined with animals or other impossible stuff, that would be hypocrytical of me because I like to draw crazy creatures too, I have nothing against it. It just seems weird for me that they made the clothes look extremely realistic while the faces and body proportions of normal humans are kinda off.
Max Hofman Words and symbols had litteral reality bending property in the mind of the ancient people (especially when a nobleman can get killed with one word), so artists would often refrain from drawing living things too well by fear of the drawing becoming alive or of fear of blasphemy. There's that sort of motif in many story from the Jewish golems to Pinocchio. This is also why Egyptian drew the way they did, and were afraid of writing some people names on walls. And this is also where the concept of spells comes from.
That's cool to know! Thanks for informing me.
Keep in mind that a lot of it was stylistic, and the styles changed over time.
BEHOLD THE MIGHTY SNAIL MEME!!! one of the oldest memes in history
Seems like we’re heading back into *The Dark Ages* - so why not learn more about Medieval Art?
My own hypothesis on the manuscript snail phenomenon is much simpler, less psychologically venturesome, and dare I say nearer-fetched. It goes as such: SNAILS ARE ARMORED.
Even simpler: snails eat paper(--> enemy of books) and they put up the fighters against the snails to give the book some protection. Not that the snails would care..