{"id":9584,"date":"2024-03-22T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-22T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/?p=9584"},"modified":"2025-05-23T09:42:05","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T13:42:05","slug":"medieval-rabbits-ancient-symbolism-english-migration-and-murderous-marginalia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/2024\/03\/22\/medieval-rabbits-ancient-symbolism-english-migration-and-murderous-marginalia\/","title":{"rendered":"Medieval Rabbits: Ancient Symbolism, English Migration, and Manuscript Marginalia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From its earliest recordings in African, Indian, and Egyptian cultures, the hare, which later became interchangeable with the rabbit, has been recognized as a symbol of generative powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the ancient Greco-Roman world, the hare symbolized fertility, as well as love and lust. The hare was the favored sacrifice to the gods of love, Aphrodite and Eros.[1]<\/a> Consumption of the animal\u2019s flesh was thought to enhance the beauty in the eater for several days. The animal\u2019s body was also incorporated into medicines meant to cure conditions connected with sex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Roman mosaic depicting a hare, dated to the 4th<\/sup> century and discovered in Cirencester, England. The mosaic was excavated in 1971 and is housed at the Corinium Museum. Photo credit: Isobel Wilkes, \u201c<\/strong>Hares in Roman Art<\/strong><\/a>\u201d.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hares and rabbits were known as prolific breeders, but the classical world often exaggerated the creature\u2019s capacity for reproduction. Aristotle, for example, believed the rabbit was capable of superfetation \u2013 that is, he thought a pregnant rabbit could become pregnant again, thereby gestating multiple litters at once. These ideas persisted into the Middle Ages, passed down by Aristotle and other philosophers such as Herodotus, as well as Pliny the Elder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his Naturalis historia, <\/em>written during the first century, Pliny the Elder characterizes hares and rabbits as the only animals that superfetate, \u201crearing one leveret while at the same time carrying in the womb another clothed with hair and another bald and another still an embryo.\u201d He also discusses how wild rabbits laid waste to Spain. Describing their fertility as \u201cbeyond counting,\u201d he says that \u201cthey bring famine to the Balearic Islands by ravaging the crops.”[2]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

England, however, did not share Spain\u2019s poor experience with rabbits. Although hares are indigenous to the British Isles, rabbits are not. They were introduced to England by the Normans in the 13th<\/sup> century and were raised for their meat and fur.[3]<\/a> They were also kept as pets and were a particular favorite of nuns.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Woman flushes a rabbit from its warren using a ferret or a small dog in the Taymouth Hours, England, c. 1260, British Library, Yates Thompson MS 13, f. 70v.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rabbits did not initially thrive in the British climate, and they required careful tending by their owners, who constructed warrens for them. As Mark Bailey explains, \u201cIn modern usage the rabbit-warren refers to a piece of waste ground on which wild rabbits burrow, but in the Middle Ages it specifically meant an area of land preserved for the domestic or commercial rearing of game.\u201d[5]<\/a> These artificial burrows called \u201cpillow-mounds\u201d protected domestic rabbits from the elements and provided a dry, earthen enclosure that supported both survival and breeding.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rabbit warren depicted in the Luttrell Psalter, c. 1320-40, Lincolnshire, England, British Library, Add MS 42130, f. 176v.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Despite their modern reputation as pests, rabbit populations were primarily confined to privately owned warrens in medieval England. They were not considered vermin but, rather, valuable commodities, and they were protected by law. Poachers were a problem, as were the rabbit\u2019s natural predators, which included the fox, stoat, weasel, polecat, and wildcat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hunter approaches a rabbit warren with his dog in the Rutland Psalter, c. 1260, England, British Library, Add MS 62925, f. 57v.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Yet in medieval English literature, rabbits retain their symbolic association with reproduction, as exemplified by Geoffrey Chaucer\u2019s Parliament of Fowls<\/em>, a Middle English poem dated to the mid-14th<\/sup> century. Set in a garden during springtime, the poem centers a congregation of birds that meets to select their mates and explores themes related to love and marriage, as well as breeding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rabbits, or \u201cconyes,\u201d are depicted at play amidst the gathering of birds:  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On every bough the briddes herde I singe,
With voys of aungel in hir armonye,
Som besyed hem hir briddes forth to bringe;
The litel conyes to hir pley gonne hye. (Chaucer 190-93)[6]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I heard the birds on every branch singing
Like the voice of an angel in their harmony,
Some had their young beside them;
The little rabbits were busy at their play. (my translation)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now virtually obsolete, the term coney <\/em>was used in medieval England to differentiate an adult rabbit from a younger one. Deriving from the pun made possible by the Latin word for rabbit, cuniculus<\/em>, and the Latin word for the female genitalia, cunnus<\/em>, the term was also used as sexual slang in the medieval period and well beyond.[7]<\/a> Essentially, coney<\/em>, or cunny, <\/em>was a crass term that referred to the vulva or vagina, to a woman or women, or to sexual intercourse.[8]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bestiary rabbit catalogued under the Latin name cuniculus in the Liber de natura rerum<\/em>, c. 13th<\/sup> century, France, Biblioth\u00e8que Municipale de Valenciennes, MS 320, f. 58r.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Despite its long-standing sexual symbolism, the rabbit was simultaneously imparted with sacred symbolism in the Middle Ages. In England, the rabbit became a symbol of purity when portrayed alongside the Virgin Mary. The animal also functioned as a symbol of salvation. As David Stocker and Margarita Stocker explain, \u201ctheir sacred meaning is not as divorced from their profane meaning (libidinousness) as may at first appear. One the one hand, their symbolism of lust and fertility refers to the carnal body; on the other, their symbolism of salvation and resurrection refers to the \u2018body of this death\u2019 from which the soul is saved.\u201d[9]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, the theologian and philosopher Saint Augustine, writing between 397 and 400 CE, connects the rabbit with Christianity, further attesting to how the animal’s sexual and spiritual symbolism culturally coexisted. Discussing the rabbit in relation to salvation, Saint Augustine renders the creature a symbol of cowardice. He describes the rabbit as \u201ca small and weak animal\u201d that is \u201ccowardly\u201d and then draws a parallel between the rabbit and the fearful man: \u201cIn that which he fears, man is a rabbit.\u201d[10]<\/a> Later in the Middle Ages, the rabbit \u201cdenoted a soldier who burrowed underground or someone who fled from his pursuers.\u201d[11]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the rabbit\u2019s connection with cowardice, then, provides some insight into the images depicting bunnies as antagonistic and often murderous beasts in the margins of medieval manuscripts. Immortalized on screen by Monty Python\u2019s Rabbit of Caerbannog and more recently popularized on social media, the rabbit adopts many forms and runs rampant across the pages of manuscripts from England and Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rabbit strikes a knight with a lance in the Breviary of Renaud, c. 1302-05, France, Biblioth\u00e8que municipale, MS 107, f. 141v.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rabbits spar with knights, wield axes at kings, and lay siege to castles. They ride snails with human faces and carry hounds on their shoulders into battle. They beat, they behead, they hang, they flay. Ranging from delightfully strange to strangely sadistic, the images of rabbits enacting violence reveal a world turned topsy-turvy through their reversal of expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rabbit beheads a man with a sword\u2014the final image in a series of five that features rabbits hunting, capturing, and killing a man\u2014in the Smithfield Decretals, c. 1340s, London, England, British Library, MS 10 E IV, f. 61v.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But medieval bunnies are not all bad. In bestiaries, they pose timidly in their portraits or express fear as they flee from hunting dogs. They frequently adorn decorative borders sans weapons and sometimes appear surprisingly realistic, as in the stunning illumination from the Cocharelli Codex below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pair of hares in the Cocharelli Codex, c. 1330-40, Genoa, Italy, British Library, Add MS 28841, f. 6v.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Although the killer coney and the cowardly knight have become a familiar motif, it is not a reflection of the rabbit population ransacking the English countryside, as some might be inclined to suspect. After all, wild rabbits did not become abundant until centuries later. But whether turning the world upside down or nestled benignly within a manuscript border, rabbits in medieval marginalia showcase their multifacetednous as an enduring and aptly inexhaustible cultural symbol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emily McLemore, Ph.D.
Alumni Contributor, Department of English<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> Claude K. Abraham, \u201cMyth and Symbol: The Rabbit in Medieval France,\u201d Studies in Philology<\/em>, vol. 60, no. 4 (1963), pp. 589-597, at 589.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Pliny the Elder, Natural History<\/em>, Loeb Classical Library<\/a>, at 153.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> Mark Bailey, \u201cThe Rabbit and the Medieval East Anglian Economy,\u201d The Agricultural History Review<\/em>, vol. 36, no. 1 (1988), pp. 1-20, at 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets<\/em>, Boydell Press (2012), pp. 14.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a> Bailey, 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a> Geoffrey Chaucer, Parliament of Fowls<\/em>, http:\/\/www.librarius.com\/parliamentfs.htm<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a> Beryl Rowland, Animals with Human Faces: A Guide to Animal Symbolism<\/em>, University of Tennessee Press (1973), pp. 135.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/a> cunny, n. Oxford English Dictionary<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9]<\/a> David Stocker and Margarita Stocker, \u201cSacred Profanity: The Theology of Rabbit Breeding and the Symbolic Landscape of the Warren,\u201d World Archaeology<\/em>, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 265-72, at 270.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[10]<\/a> Stocker and Stocker, 271.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[11]<\/a> Rowland, 135.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From its earliest recordings in African, Indian, and Egyptian cultures, the hare, which later became interchangeable with the rabbit, has been recognized as a symbol of generative powers. In the ancient Greco-Roman world, the hare symbolized fertility, as well as love and lust. The hare was the favored sacrifice to the gods of love, Aphrodite … <\/p>\n

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