We love medieval doodles, from meticulously illuminated manuscripts to ink paw prints, but especially the humorous images of rabbits and snails doing things you won't find in nature. You have to wonder about the circumstances that led to these bizarre drawings. Now we have the story of how one particular volume came to be emblazoned with such creatures plus the spitting image of Yoda.
The Smithfield Decretals is a copy of the Decretales of Pope Gregory IX. It was published in the 1230s in French, with wide blank margins that were meant for scholars to add their own notes. That's not what happened, though. Someone in England got the copy some time before 1340, and knowing that books are better with illustrations, hired artists to add pictures to the margins. It's possible that the owner could not read French, and maybe hoped the artists could. But the artists either couldn't read French, either, or they didn't care about the dry papal correspondence in the text. They just went with what they knew was funny, and that included giant hares and snails and scenes of gruesome violence. Read more about the Smithfield Decretals at Open Culture. -via Nag on the Lake
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