20 killer rabbits from medieval books: why these animals were painted as evil

Images in the middle Ages was drawing really weird: we already showed you 20 thumbnails, which deal with people, but they absolutely do not care. And now came the rabbits. These peaceful rodents like medieval paintings rampant: attack anything alive, besieged the castles, threatened with axes and even ride on the snails.

Drollery (from the French drôlerie trick, eccentricity), or marginalia — the pictures in the margins of medieval manuscripts. Their most interesting feature was that these Mexican miniature pictures usually had no relation to the text.

The beginning of his considered XIII century: it was then that artists came into Vogue, to give vent to their unrestrained imagination, attacking the reader a pile of comic stories and ridiculous sketches.

The question is, why rabbits remains open. If you look at the thumbnails, it becomes evident that the rabbits they perform the role of humans: hunt, fight, kill, execute people (even kings!), spend the rites of the Church (!) — and despite the fact that painted manuscripts mostly monks.Perhaps there is some social commentary, maybe even political satire. Perhaps the monks just thought it was funny that the rabbit — creature in all respects harmless and useless, suddenly acts in the most unusual bloodthirsty role.

There are more scholastic explanation: the hares (the rabbits) are considered unclean animals, it comes from the old Testament (however, a few far-fetched, Christianity is not all borrowed without looking from the old Testament). And dogs — on the contrary, signify faithfulness and virtue. So the rabbits-murderers symbolize sin and the harm that sin brings to people, and dogs, who often resist the rabbits in these figures symbolise the struggle against sin.