a reminder of mortality and a funny image), but I think we can sometimes be too wary of acknowledging the explicit role of humour in marginalia. This isn't to say it can't be both things at once (e.g. While I am appreciative of the wealth of interpretation Camille offers, I think there is really something to be said for considering what it implies to have expensive religious texts peppered with deliberately comic images carefully penned into the margins. Nonetheless, given what we know about the contemporary chivalry genre in literature, it isn't a huge leap to see the humour in an armoured knight baulking at fighting a snail (however large!). He noticed that in two manuscripts there were marginal snails very close to miniatures of the Raising of Lazarus (for those not aware, this is a Biblical story where Jesus brings. One of the first people to pick up on the strange addition of snails to manuscripts was Comte de Bastard in 1850. And marginalia provide layers of information as to. Arguing that historical material was valued for its comedy is often a bit of a cop-out that puts a stop to further analysis, and it's something I am often wary of. 1) The snails represent death/the Resurrection. Manuscripts can be seen as time capsules, says Johanna Green, Lecturer in Book History and Digital Humanities at the University of Glasgow. While I appreciate his arguments for the potential rationale behind the snail imagery, I always felt that he is quite shy of engaging in the idea that it was simply entertaining. “It is pleasing to see that once again a significant number of treasure finds are to be acquired by museums near to the find spot, retaining the local context that is often so important for these objects.Came here to flag up Camille's work, pleased to see that someone else had got here first! It's an interesting read and the history of interpreting (or often, not-interpreting) these images that he describes is a really useful reminder of how significantly the study of books has changed in even a relatively short period of time. Hartwig Fischer, the director of the British Museum, said: “Every year I am delighted that archaeological objects uncovering pieces of our history are still being discovered, which all contribute to our understanding of the past. Preliminary treasure figures for more recent years are 1,3 and 1,0. Of these, 347 were acquired by 108 different museums. The newly published report reveals that 1,094 cases were reported as treasure in 2018, consisting of more than 20,906 individual artefacts. Or the image may have been based on reports of such exotic creatures from travellers or pilgrims returning from the east, or the Crusades. There was one, however, in the royal menagerie of Henry III at the Tower of London between 1255-57, a gift from Louis IX of France. Nenk said few people in medieval England would have seen a live elephant. It would have been used to seal letters or documents and is unusual in that it depicts an elephant carrying a castle – or howdah – on its back.

They include an uncommonly decorated mirror and tweezers that highlight the care and attention to personal appearance that people took in late iron age Britain.Īnother is a gold medieval seal matrix, dating from 1250-1350, found in the parish of East Walton, Norfolk. Other unusual 2020 finds include various iron age objects, dating from 80BC-AD100, found near Kensworth, Bedfordshire. The British Museum revealed some of the more unusual 2020 finds, mostly by amateurs with metal detectors, as it published the latest annual treasure report covering objects found in 2018. “What it meant to the owner, or what went through the mind of the maker … I just don’t know,” said Nenk. The museum called it a form of “medieval meme”. Less so are the comic intricacies of a male knight wearing a Norman-style helmet, apparently praying, with one leg lunging forward as he steps from a snail on a goat. That at least is graspable for modern audiences. Nenk said satire was often found in medieval material culture, with one of the most popular visual gags being a monkey, in place of a doctor, examining a flask of urine for its clarity and colour – the go-to method for diagnosing medieval ailments. That could mean it is “a satirical reference to cowardly or non-chivalric behaviour of opponents in battle, or as a parody of the upper or knightly classes”. Nenk said snails were often depicted in the margins of medieval illuminated manuscripts, thought to symbolise cowardice. The best guess is that its owner commissioned it and wore it as a badge, or attached it to a leather belt or strap. The “snail-man” object, just over 2cm long, was discovered by a metal detectorist in a field near Pontefract, West Yorkshire, in September last year.

Snails medieval manuscripts