The snail cosmology of medieval manuscripts

We're no strangers to the delights of the rude drawings that monks doodled in the margins of medieval manuscripts around here (1, 2, 3), but University of Bonn medievialist Erik Wade's epic Twitter thread on the astonishing variety of snail-doodles is genuinely next-level.

Whether it's the snail-gods that snail-monks pray to, or the snail jousting tourneys, the lives of these molluscs was rich and complex: from the snail/human friendships to the lost art of nude snail-riding.

(via Super Punch)

Thread: everyone knows that medieval art is filled with snails fighting knights, but there's actually a whole medieval snail ecology and society, from snail-birds to snail-monks. And, ofc, snail-cats. WARNING: this thread gets very very silly. (Paris, MS. 62) pic.twitter.com/VDxqRya481

— Erik Wade (@erik_kaars) July 17, 2019