In this image the rabbit is taking on some of the qualities associated with the lion: boldness, savagery, strength. Nevertheless it is a rabbit whacking a giant sword into the neck of a bound, kneeling man. What is going on? The truth is, we don’t really know. It may be something allegorical or symbolic, where aspects of animal behaviour are representative of the moral attributes of human beings. The great exemplar is the lion, the animal whose name means ‘King’ and who is at the head of all the bestiaries. “The nature of the lion is such that he is not enraged by men if he is not harmed by them,” says the Bestiary. “Unreasonable men should learn by this example; for men grow angry even when they are not harmed, and oppress the innocent…” The lesson to be drawn? People should imitate the merciful behaviour of lions where great strength is inclined to peace.
Rabbits were often associated with fertility, renewal, birth etc. They were bred in warrens for eating, they furnished pelts, they were peaceful creatures, easily startled, harmless to people. So the wild, vicious rabbits of the illuminations seem incredible.
It is not really known why medieval illuminators drew so frequently on such surprising rabbit imagery, portraying extravagant ideas and designs in a kind of short-story picture art. These images are at once highly amusing and wholly perplexing.
On the whole, the medieval imagination had a completely different conception of the natural world from our modern one. Aristotle had studied nature in an investigative way in classical times and had tried to sort and categorise plants and animals according to a rational taxonomy. But in the medieval period throughout Europe religious teaching dominated the understanding of nature and its creatures. All thought about the nature of the world and its creatures was entirely Christianised. References to Biblical stories also shaped people’s thinking about animals. Bestiaries were written but these were not studies in the sense we understand. They were collections of stories, lore, legends, traditional fable, hearsay and the scrambled scraps of folk wisdom concerning animals both actual and imaginary.
Occasionally there might be brief and basic descriptions of real creatures and their habits, but for the most part compilers of bestiaries are concerned with the moral interpretation of God’s creatures. Some animals are associated with the devil. Bestiaries also contain fantasy animals, creatures from myth or story, composite creatures like the gryphon:
“The gryphon is at once feathered and four-footed. It lives in the south and in mountains. The hinder part of its body is like a lion; its wings and face are like an eagle. It hates the horse bitterly and if it comes face to face with a man, it will attack him.”
Quoted from Bestiary, translated and introduced by Richard Barber, 1993, Boydell Press, Woodbridge
Unfortunately this collection makes no mention of the rabbit. But there is an entry on the Hare (Lepus).
“The hare is called light-footed because it runs swiftly. It is a swift creature and fairly timid. The hare represents men who fear God, and who put their trust not in themselves, but in their Creator.”
There are many Christian stories, or Saints’ Lives where a hare plays a minor role. One of the episodes that Eadmer reports in the Vita Sancti Anselmi has Archbishop Anselm encountering a hare.
“Anselm left court and while he was hastening to Hayes, some boys of his household with their dogs chased a hare which they came upon in the road. As they were pursuing it, it fled between the feet of the horse on which Anselm sat. The horse stood still; and Anselm, knowing that the wretched animal looked to find a place of refuge beneath him, and not wishing to deny it the help it needed, drew his horse by the reins and kept it still. The dogs came round, snuffling about on all sides and restrained against their will, but they could neither make it move from under the horse, nor harm it in any way. [……..] But Anselm, when he saw some of the horsemen laugh and make merry at the expense of the cornered animal, burst into tears and said: “You laugh, do you? But there is no laughing, no merrymaking for this unhappy beast. His enemies stand about him and in fear of his life he flees to us asking for help. So it is with the soul of man; when it leaves the body its enemies (the evil spirits which have haunted it all along the crooked ways of vice while it was in the body) stand round without mercy, ready to seize it and hurry it off to death.”
Vita Sancti Anselmi, translated RW Southern, Nelson’s Medieval Texts, London 1962 p.89
So the story of the hiding hare becomes a parable of the soul. This is a typical use of an animal story in a Saint’s Life of the time. The world is full of moral lessons and instruction, including the fate of a hare. This tale has a happy outcome, the dogs were hauled away and the hare “leapt up unhurt and swiftly returned to its fields and woods.”
For a contextualised retelling of the full story see The Remarkable Tale of the Bull and the Sheep (p. 20)
Do these rabbits have some subversive role, suggesting a sort of ‘world turned upside down’ scenario? Do they represent a carnivalesque overturning of order, a satire on the way things are ? Perhaps in the rabbit iconography we see an overturning of order for a brief while – the duration of carnival – after which things revert to the established norm. Carnival is not revolution. It is licensed disruption, and thus a mechanism for discharging social energies in a non-destructive way – celebratory rather than hostile. If it challenges order, it does so only briefly.
I like to view these rabbit depictions as a form of humorous escapism, a play of imagination, a subtle but naughty commentary revealing aspects of the human mind we don’t associate with medieval people, especially monks, but why not? There is no reason why these qualities were not part of the human psyche then just as they are now. Certainly ribaldry, even scurrility, was present in folk tales throughout the west, people have laughed, joked, mocked and scorned unceasingly throughout every age – but it happens that some ages have more resulting evidence than others. Perhaps what we see in the rabbit obsession is an aspect of the art of comedy and satire which simply belongs to the age of illuminated manuscripts.