"The farmers said there are too much snails eating their crop" "Shit what do they expect us to do? Send some knights, slay the beasts?" "Heheh, that's funny, i'm gonna make that into a meme"
@@overlorddante Oh shit, future generations might actually think spiders of our time were so venomous that we had to burn down houses just to ensure their riddance.
One hypothesis about the snails that popped into my head is that maybe it's just them complaining about how snails eat all the plants, either because the monks writing books were themselves gardeners or because it was a common complaint from farmers which the writers found funny.
Well if we're going with that extension. It could be images of the local lord (who would recieve a tax of all produce from his serfs) who would be striking down the hated foe of his peasantry.
I imagined knights laying in the armor which is hard to take off, under a tree or in grass and snails getting on it or in it. I wonder how much more prevalent snails used to be
the real mistery to me is, how today's peoples believe that medieval monks had no sense of humor. excuse me? they were basically the ancestors of today comic artists and meme writers. just look up on how they made fun of popes and kings. or their own brothers and scholars...
Exactly!!!! Critics to the higher ranks of the church and politics were rampantly shown through the miniatures of the books that monks copied, decorated and kept
And monks where one of the types that could get away with it the most out of anyone too. That and they were the most skilled artist the time before the renaissance started.
@@jagmannenarbrand8373 Well I mean regular people also made fun of famous and high standing people and institutions in this period, it just hasn't really been preserved but we have scattered evidence of it. In general people just didn't really care about it. The monks just had more of an international shared culture so a monk from Germany might find a century old manuscript from France making fun of a pope in the margins and laugh at it because he agrees with it and in that way the jokes could spread.
If I had to guess? Probably the same reason Shakespeare is seen as highbrow in the modern day; Historical references being lost to time and pop culture interpretations of that era overtaking what little we know of what those times were actually like. ...though a very smug, shitty little part of me wants to point at events like the Spanish Inquisition and smarmily retort something along the lines of "no, they didn't" or "the ones that HAD a sense of humor learned to keep their heads down or got murdered by the ones who didn't."
What I've heard is that a lot of the boys sent off to be monks were the younger brothers of large families -- the ones with no strong marriage prospects -- so they weren't exactly there by choice, and those whose temperament didn't suit the life they found themselves locked into managed to blow off a little steam by doodling naughty pictures in the margins and such. An interesting thought, and a reminder that people need to be free to pursue a life that is meaningful to them, not just shoved off into an "honorable" calling by parents who cared more about their older kids.
200 years later when people try to decipher modern memes "Historians theorize Pepe the frog to be a symbol of despair and wrath during the early 21st century"
You have it right in one word - virtue. The snails represented the knight's "member" and the joke was their fight against such! (The artists for manuscripts were often monks back then and they had their own battles with their snails.)
@@michaelwinter8583 I wonder if this is linked to the Roman usage of "oysters and snails" to represent genitalia? Is that where these Christian monks picked up this symbolism?
I saw a video of the legends and demons they used to believe in medieval times, and one of them was just a oversized snail, the snail itself represents death, how aging takes time and is slow but it comes to all, maybe tha's why they used a snail as a metaphor.
Fun fact: The Killer Rabbit in Monty Python may have been a deliberate reference to that art. Given how Terry Gilliam did browse those old medieval art books for illustrations to use for their animations, and the Pythons were actually deeply familiar on a scholarly level with Arthuriana! Not even kidding, I've heard some say that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is one of the most accurate King Arthur adaptations ever!
Yes, I've heard this too, about the rabbit reference. I believe there's also an animation that was cut from the film that featured a giant snail! I've also heard it said that Holy Grail is one of the most accurate Arthurian tellings, but this one I'm dubious about... XD That being said, I am about half way through Volume 1 of Le Morte D'Arthur, and I have read maybe a couple of things that possibly inspired bits of the film... Haven't run into the Knights who say "Ni" yet, though...
@@JettMoonwing No you don't. Buy some good books related to the subject, study them yourself, and you will have learned vastly more and spent vastly less.
I like the thought of two guys making random art of snails folding knights and laughing. "Geralt! I present you something to tickle your funniest bone!" "Arnold of Wessex, I can not wait to see this." *Snail eating a knight while the others look on in apathy* "My goodness, what an amusing art concept!"
Maybe the snail one had to do with the way snails shells are permanent fixtures and therefore they are always ' suited in armor and ready for battle ' ? Shit dude I dunno, snails are cool though.
Either that or the monks that probably drew a bunch of these pictures got pissed at the snails eating all their plants in the monastery gardens and drew snails being attacked by knights as a way to vent.
"How silly, knights fighting snails and other small animals... now let me go back to this RPG and this side quest where I must kill the rats infesting a warehouse, using my armor and sword"
@@wispererflame7286 Dark Souls but all of the enemies are replaced with things knights fought in medieval manuscripts that look exactly like those drawings but kill you instantly.
3:15 okay now that's actually an interesting dread horror concept when you give it some thought. Encountering a walking skeleton is naturally unsettling, despite the memery... but when the skeleton is your own rotting corpse harassing you for being a shit person, that's actually effective dread.
The snail thing is pretty easy to explain. What most people forget is that the word Knight derives from the Northern European word "Knecht" which used to mean indentured servant. Snails were a plague in the fields, so one of the tasks of early knights was to kill snails. When they became real knights, as we see them today, not enough time had passed to forget that, hence the "Knights versus Snails" thing ;)
Artist 1: hey, lilliam, check out what I drew. Artist 2: lmoa wtf is that Artist 1: it’s a rabbit riding a dog fighting a snail Artist 2: *laughing* Artist 1: *laughing* Both: *laughing*
"What do the badgers, the mushroom and the snake represent? Was it an allegory of the ferocity of the badger, the toxicity of the mushroom and the untrustworthiness of the snake as representing the negativities that permeated the society of the 2000s?"
"The old archives shows a link that when accessed, takes you to a video of a man named Rick Astley dancing in front of a mic while the drum beat plays"
I heard one theory that the snails aren't really the joke, it's the people cowering at the snails who were. It's been hypothesized that the knights who're the snail's victims are from one infamously cowardly clan of nobles, who's knights tended to flee from battles. and the monks just drew up these snail jokes to poke fun at em.
I think that the drawings of knights fighting snails was meant as a inside joke in monasteries by monks. Many of them were the younger sons of nobles so they were sent to be monks whilst their elder brothers became knights.
There is also the theory that there was a tendency for monasteries to become infested with snails, and the drawings reflected the monks' wishes for a brave knight to come save them from a pest that was not dangerous, but probably annoying and damaging to their food supply.
Also, the snail may be some hyper intelligent immortal snail that escaped from a Tungsten sphere launched into space, but it somehow ended on medieval times and now it's seeking revenge.
Another thing about these is that the often warped and messy quality is because a large portion of these drawings were absolutely tiny. They were just drawn in margins and as small illustrations in the corner of a page like a comic panel. So the lack of detail and weirdness is because we’re blowing up tiny images bigger than they would have ever been seen.
I wonder if the snails are meant to represent the neverending struggles that medieval peasant farmers had when trying to stop snails eating their crops? What if knights are depicted as fighting them as they were perceived as a massive threat at the time. If the snails eat the crops, there is not food and no food means famine and starvation. They didn't have pesticides to deal with them back then (though I know that there are methods involving eggshells, salt, or Alcohol that can stop them from getting to the crops).
The only problem with this take is that there would be at least as much art of knights fighting grasshoppers/locusts. It might've been a factor in the memes popularity, but not the only source of it.
the snails represent the constant struggle of working in the field and fighting the pests glorifying the peasant worker as being comparable to a knight
Historian Lillian Randall suggested, in her book "The Snail in Gothic Marginal Warfare" that the snail was a symbol for the Lombards... an influential Italian family that became wealthy money lenders during the medieval period.
I saw a video about the knights and snails in medieval art saying they usually appeared in the margins of books as sort of embellishments and doodles, so my theory is that they are one of the first memes, spread through writers reading others’ works, thinking its funny, then doing their own version in their own writing.
Laziness: That's what snails symbolize. It's because of the popular medieval sayings. In many European countries they have been lost, but they are still common in countries like Spain and Italy. Laziness is a cardinal sin and the copyists were monks. "Lazy like a snail", "Slimy (non pure) like a snail" ... A reminder to fight laziness.
I LOVE the drolleries (the bizarre rabbit/snail/knight art)! If they are indeed just supposed to be funny, it goes to show how humans never changed. If I had to handwrite an entire book myself, I'd start doodling in the margins too. Heck I already do.
My favorite theory for the snails & rabbits is that the monks drawing these frequently kept medicinal gardens, so the little drawings were them complaining about pests
According to my friend, who is a savant with a degree in the Classics, the snails and rabbits were meant to poke fun at political figures, like Knights and Lords. The idea being that nobles were so cowardly, rabbits could stew them along with their hunting dogs, and knights were so lazy, snails were a match for them.
The one with the snails i can remember a few years back someone explained to me that they way back had snail problems and they have eaten a lot of their crops and needed to constantly fight against them. So they just painted warriors fighting snails as a vent i guess of their frustration
You have to be quicker than your opponent, healthier, and stronger. All simple things which a knight or squire would likely die from battle for if lacking any. So yes the snail is likely a symbol to express everything opposing a noble knight’s symbol/way of life. EDIT: It just happens to be funny to us now because snails aren’t really a “threat” to our symbols or crop yield
I agree that the snail likely is a metaphorical anti-knight but that doesn't have to mean it wasn't humorous. It's like today the Joker bonking Batman with a ridiculous prop.
I like the theory that the monks drew snails and knights fighting because they just hated snails munching on their gardens, and it seemed like they were impossible to get rid of.
this /sorta/ relates to the ‘too chill?’ section, but a lot of greek (specifically) artists drew dying soldiers/royalty in neutral expressions to highlight the beauty the human being is graced with. the ancient greek were obsessed with the concept of beauty & perfection, which meant their frescoes & portraits had to depict people (even dying soldiers) as ‘graceful’, never to be caught off-guard, as that’s assumed to create an unappetising feeling when the paintings are looked at. literally just learnt that in my high school history class yesterday, the more you know!
I imagine many of those weird, out of place, "alien-like" cave paintings, statues and drawings were also just humourous fun much like some of these medieval paintings. Or maybe even just remnants of kids learning how to paint and sculpt or just from people with much less practice or with wild imaginations.
I imagine snails were an unstoppable annoyance in the best of times, and passed enough that to a garden to starve your family, in the worst of times. They probably seemed like an invading force one would never fully defeat, and could never demoralize. They just wanna munch.
I always thought the snails where just Monks getting board and so deciding to doodle or have a little fun while writing the books. But while watching this, I had a thought. Like what if there was a serious issue with snails and other bugs eating the books and such in libraries (I know first hand how annoying it can be when the snails get to your books), so what if its more the Monks showing thir frustration at the pests eat their works by just doodling them in combat, and enamy of a knight, much like the snails are teh enamies of the book keepers. I don't know, just a thought.
@@CuriousArchive wow! Your content is amazing. Interesting subject matter and quality information, editing and narration. You will soon be a large channel, I have no doubt in my mind. Thanks for the amazing videos!
Perhaps the snails were portrayed in a much more literal sense than some modern scholars are postulating : That of a formidable agricultural enemy. In the absence of modern pesticide application, snails were agricultural parasites that caused devastating irreversible crop destruction. In this light, the depicted knights' dire desire to concur this agricultural beast is very logical.
I had thought the snail thing was because snails eat paper and vellum and thus the monks were constantly at war with the snails to stop them eating the manuscripts. I guess it isn't as well known today, but getting snails in your letterbox eating your letters is a major issue that still happens.
I believe the skeletal figures that appear in paintings and sculptures during the medieval period are called Inferi, and often appeared in these things as escorts to the afterlife for those who were dying. I don't know if they appeared in Medieval art before the Black Death, but they certainly took off as a motif afterward. Perhaps they were a response to the trauma of so many people dying, a way of accepting what happened, but, whatever the reason behind their appearance, it makes for some very unsettling art, at least to our eyes.
I am an organic farmer. Snails are my nemesis. They can wipe out a small garden over night. My guess is back then when the food you grew was life. Snails were evil. Starving to death over winter was not very pleasant. Your livestock would suffer too. Not only eating their winter forage but snails are huge carriers of parasites. And rabbits come in a close second.
"The farmers said there are too much snails eating their crop"
"Shit what do they expect us to do? Send some knights, slay the beasts?"
"Heheh, that's funny, i'm gonna make that into a meme"
dude, you may have just solved it...
Maybe it's what ca ment about class devision? Coz the knights were in-charge of most of the farmers at the time.
1 0 0
That’s what I thought as well. Humor derived from a severe over reaction, like how some joke about burning down their house just to kill a spider.
@@overlorddante Oh shit, future generations might actually think spiders of our time were so venomous that we had to burn down houses just to ensure their riddance.
One hypothesis about the snails that popped into my head is that maybe it's just them complaining about how snails eat all the plants, either because the monks writing books were themselves gardeners or because it was a common complaint from farmers which the writers found funny.
I always thought they were meant to represent the French, and the medieval england monks were just mocking them
@@wombataldebaran9686 Close, Their mocking the lombards
Well if we're going with that extension. It could be images of the local lord (who would recieve a tax of all produce from his serfs) who would be striking down the hated foe of his peasantry.
@@effigytormented No, that's actually what this is, they are shitting on Italians.
I imagined knights laying in the armor which is hard to take off, under a tree or in grass and snails getting on it or in it. I wonder how much more prevalent snails used to be
the real mistery to me is, how today's peoples believe that medieval monks had no sense of humor. excuse me? they were basically the ancestors of today comic artists and meme writers. just look up on how they made fun of popes and kings. or their own brothers and scholars...
Exactly!!!! Critics to the higher ranks of the church and politics were rampantly shown through the miniatures of the books that monks copied, decorated and kept
And monks where one of the types that could get away with it the most out of anyone too. That and they were the most skilled artist the time before the renaissance started.
@@jagmannenarbrand8373 Well I mean regular people also made fun of famous and high standing people and institutions in this period, it just hasn't really been preserved but we have scattered evidence of it. In general people just didn't really care about it. The monks just had more of an international shared culture so a monk from Germany might find a century old manuscript from France making fun of a pope in the margins and laugh at it because he agrees with it and in that way the jokes could spread.
If I had to guess? Probably the same reason Shakespeare is seen as highbrow in the modern day; Historical references being lost to time and pop culture interpretations of that era overtaking what little we know of what those times were actually like.
...though a very smug, shitty little part of me wants to point at events like the Spanish Inquisition and smarmily retort something along the lines of "no, they didn't" or "the ones that HAD a sense of humor learned to keep their heads down or got murdered by the ones who didn't."
What I've heard is that a lot of the boys sent off to be monks were the younger brothers of large families -- the ones with no strong marriage prospects -- so they weren't exactly there by choice, and those whose temperament didn't suit the life they found themselves locked into managed to blow off a little steam by doodling naughty pictures in the margins and such. An interesting thought, and a reminder that people need to be free to pursue a life that is meaningful to them, not just shoved off into an "honorable" calling by parents who cared more about their older kids.
I bet these monks had gardens. Snails and Rabbits are truly fearsome enemies when you are trying to save your tomatoes and beans.
It must certainly be hard to save tomatoes that hadn’t been discovered yet.
@@Rand0mPeon
Well, now I'm wondering what contemporary Mesoamerican art survived and if there are any memes in it.
@@Rand0mPeon there is some scriptures
about tomatoes made by italians in the 16th century
@@Smoke-bb6yg Yes, but the 16th century is after the Americas were discovered. The snails drawings were during the medieval era.
@@Rand0mPeon ah yes my bad, i just checked it's the start of the renaissance
200 years later when people try to decipher modern memes
"Historians theorize Pepe the frog to be a symbol of despair and wrath during the early 21st century"
Seems legit.
Isn't it just that?
Well, it kinda is.
I don't know what pepe the frog is now 😂 never even seen or heard of it until this comment section.
@@tomasvrabec1845 how
Maybe they're making fun of knights themselves as being so hyper-competitive they'll even fight snails, just by virtue of the fact they're armored.
You have it right in one word - virtue. The snails represented the knight's "member" and the joke was their fight against such! (The artists for manuscripts were often monks back then and they had their own battles with their snails.)
@@michaelwinter8583 I wonder if this is linked to the Roman usage of "oysters and snails" to represent genitalia? Is that where these Christian monks picked up this symbolism?
I saw a video of the legends and demons they used to believe in medieval times, and one of them was just a oversized snail, the snail itself represents death, how aging takes time and is slow but it comes to all, maybe tha's why they used a snail as a metaphor.
The snail is armoured, therefore it desires combat.
@@dumoulin11 Oysters and snails have long been considered aphrodisiacs - I would say that the monks were against their use.
Fun fact: The Killer Rabbit in Monty Python may have been a deliberate reference to that art. Given how Terry Gilliam did browse those old medieval art books for illustrations to use for their animations, and the Pythons were actually deeply familiar on a scholarly level with Arthuriana!
Not even kidding, I've heard some say that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is one of the most accurate King Arthur adaptations ever!
Yes, I've heard this too, about the rabbit reference. I believe there's also an animation that was cut from the film that featured a giant snail!
I've also heard it said that Holy Grail is one of the most accurate Arthurian tellings, but this one I'm dubious about... XD That being said, I am about half way through Volume 1 of Le Morte D'Arthur, and I have read maybe a couple of things that possibly inspired bits of the film... Haven't run into the Knights who say "Ni" yet, though...
Yup, I had a class on Arthurian legends. The Pythons weaved in a lot of good references that'd remain unrecognised by non-nerds 😁
@@bib4eto656 Wow, a class on Arthurian legends? That's something I need in my life! :D
@@JettMoonwing No you don't. Buy some good books related to the subject, study them yourself, and you will have learned vastly more and spent vastly less.
400 years from now future historians will ponder the deeper significance of the two-legged horse running or the symbolic meaning of the nyan cat
What horse?
"they seemed bizarrely fixated on the manner a canine might hypothetically wear trousers"
Not if we archive them really carefully
@@acat7798 Furries.
@@acat7798 this one
ruclips.net/video/jd8219Nj2so/видео.html
The image of a knight begging for mercy from a snail is just hilarious
Boomer Humor: "I hate my wife"
Millenial Humor: "I hate my life"
Gen Z Humor: goes back to medieval humor appearently
I'm sure we can dig up wife stories in the medieval times too. Usually sleeping with the devil,or dragons.
@@marcdev8516 well, at least we know stories about how terrible the new generation of young people are are about as old as humanity
I wish lmao
Where's Gen X?
@@ericstoverink6579 ded
As an artist, I understand medieval artists’ struggle with same-face syndrome lmao
I like the thought of two guys making random art of snails folding knights and laughing.
"Geralt! I present you something to tickle your funniest bone!"
"Arnold of Wessex, I can not wait to see this."
*Snail eating a knight while the others look on in apathy*
"My goodness, what an amusing art concept!"
Maybe the snail one had to do with the way snails shells are permanent fixtures and therefore they are always ' suited in armor and ready for battle ' ? Shit dude I dunno, snails are cool though.
Either that or the monks that probably drew a bunch of these pictures got pissed at the snails eating all their plants in the monastery gardens and drew snails being attacked by knights as a way to vent.
I was thinking it may be more literal than that. like you see snails after it rains, making the battlefield slick and more dangerous?
"How silly, knights fighting snails and other small animals... now let me go back to this RPG and this side quest where I must kill the rats infesting a warehouse, using my armor and sword"
now i want to fight rabits and snailsanils for a change
@@wispererflame7286 Dark Souls but all of the enemies are replaced with things knights fought in medieval manuscripts that look exactly like those drawings but kill you instantly.
0:29 I like that they even added lines to express surprise, as if it's a comics.
3:15 okay now that's actually an interesting dread horror concept when you give it some thought.
Encountering a walking skeleton is naturally unsettling, despite the memery... but when the skeleton is your own rotting corpse harassing you for being a shit person, that's actually effective dread.
Someone should make a horror game/movie bassed on that.
Babies as short pudgy bald men is my favorite medieval meme. It freaks me out, I love it.
The snail thing is pretty easy to explain. What most people forget is that the word Knight derives from the Northern European word "Knecht" which used to mean indentured servant. Snails were a plague in the fields, so one of the tasks of early knights was to kill snails. When they became real knights, as we see them today, not enough time had passed to forget that, hence the "Knights versus Snails" thing ;)
Artist 1: hey, lilliam, check out what I drew.
Artist 2: lmoa wtf is that
Artist 1: it’s a rabbit riding a dog fighting a snail
Artist 2: *laughing*
Artist 1: *laughing*
Both: *laughing*
No. No, this explanation makes no sense. I don’t think two humans engaged in tedious and painstaking work would do something to amuse themselves.
Imagine, people in medieval times had to fight 60 cm snails for their food, eventually they all went extinct
Yep, I can confirm it, I was the spear
Who went extinct? Snails or people?
@@MartaTarasiuk 'giant' snail
[gets stabbed]
"Ah, it's just a flesh wound"
That's what you say when your limbs get lopped off.
I've had worse.
Tis' but a scratch
In many centuries, historians will try explaining our humour.
“They seemed to worship a froglike humanoid they called paqe, drawing numerous depictions of them”
Imagine the future historians trying to explain shitposting
I don't understand it NOW.
"What do the badgers, the mushroom and the snake represent? Was it an allegory of the ferocity of the badger, the toxicity of the mushroom and the untrustworthiness of the snake as representing the negativities that permeated the society of the 2000s?"
"The old archives shows a link that when accessed, takes you to a video of a man named Rick Astley dancing in front of a mic while the drum beat plays"
Man, Medieval art was ahead of his time before wojak
It better then wojak
I think art is always ahead of its time.
3:21 l like how they aren't even scared , but rather seem to be disapointed .
I heard one theory that the snails aren't really the joke, it's the people cowering at the snails who were. It's been hypothesized that the knights who're the snail's victims are from one infamously cowardly clan of nobles, who's knights tended to flee from battles. and the monks just drew up these snail jokes to poke fun at em.
Sir Robin's relatives, then?
Yes: ruclips.net/video/6ISOK-XtvYs/видео.html
"These snails look like they mean business..." 😂
I think that the drawings of knights fighting snails was meant as a inside joke in monasteries by monks. Many of them were the younger sons of nobles so they were sent to be monks whilst their elder brothers became knights.
Lol, monk bros hating on their older siblings 😂
There is also the theory that there was a tendency for monasteries to become infested with snails, and the drawings reflected the monks' wishes for a brave knight to come save them from a pest that was not dangerous, but probably annoying and damaging to their food supply.
Also, the snail may be some hyper intelligent immortal snail that escaped from a Tungsten sphere launched into space, but it somehow ended on medieval times and now it's seeking revenge.
Holy fucking shit.
The three nobles and the three dead sounds like Scrooge meeting the 3 spirits in a Christmas tale… maybe just me thinking that
I noticed that as well tbh although it is kinda a basic concept that "you will be visited by spirits to change your ways"
weren't the rabbits symbolic for lust, or more broadly, sinful people?
and in a similar vein, the snail for the sin of sloth?
Maybe I am a rabbit.
Rabbits were servants of satan
@@t.wcharles2171 Hares were a symbol of the trinity, actually. They weren't at all linked to fertility or pagan anything in medieval times.
@@toomanymarys7355 later in the renaissance however they were seen as a sign of witchcraft
Another thing about these is that the often warped and messy quality is because a large portion of these drawings were absolutely tiny. They were just drawn in margins and as small illustrations in the corner of a page like a comic panel. So the lack of detail and weirdness is because we’re blowing up tiny images bigger than they would have ever been seen.
That one jousting a snail. Literally “classic”.
I wonder if the snails are meant to represent the neverending struggles that medieval peasant farmers had when trying to stop snails eating their crops? What if knights are depicted as fighting them as they were perceived as a massive threat at the time. If the snails eat the crops, there is not food and no food means famine and starvation.
They didn't have pesticides to deal with them back then (though I know that there are methods involving eggshells, salt, or Alcohol that can stop them from getting to the crops).
I dealt with snails infesting gardens before.I wouldnt call it a struggle.
The only problem with this take is that there would be at least as much art of knights fighting grasshoppers/locusts. It might've been a factor in the memes popularity, but not the only source of it.
the snails represent the constant struggle of working in the field and fighting the pests glorifying the peasant worker as being comparable to a knight
6:28 all these years later i finally know where that dumb joke from one of the scary movies where the plant rolls the dude and smokes him comes from.
He turnedeth himself into a snail. Funniest shit I hath ever seen.
Historian Lillian Randall suggested, in her book "The Snail in Gothic Marginal Warfare" that the snail was a symbol for the Lombards... an influential Italian family that became wealthy money lenders during the medieval period.
I saw a video about the knights and snails in medieval art saying they usually appeared in the margins of books as sort of embellishments and doodles, so my theory is that they are one of the first memes, spread through writers reading others’ works, thinking its funny, then doing their own version in their own writing.
Laziness: That's what snails symbolize. It's because of the popular medieval sayings. In many European countries they have been lost, but they are still common in countries like Spain and Italy. Laziness is a cardinal sin and the copyists were monks. "Lazy like a snail", "Slimy (non pure) like a snail" ... A reminder to fight laziness.
I LOVE the drolleries (the bizarre rabbit/snail/knight art)! If they are indeed just supposed to be funny, it goes to show how humans never changed. If I had to handwrite an entire book myself, I'd start doodling in the margins too. Heck I already do.
My favorite theory for the snails & rabbits is that the monks drawing these frequently kept medicinal gardens, so the little drawings were them complaining about pests
2:12
King: "come on man, do you really have to stab me like that?"
According to my friend, who is a savant with a degree in the Classics, the snails and rabbits were meant to poke fun at political figures, like Knights and Lords. The idea being that nobles were so cowardly, rabbits could stew them along with their hunting dogs, and knights were so lazy, snails were a match for them.
" taking their chillness a little too far "
😂😂😂😂😂
4:06 That’s the way rabbits used to be. We’ve just forgotten.
Perhaps medieval people thought Ammonite shells were the shells of gigantic snails
Praise the Helix Fossil
The one with the snails i can remember a few years back someone explained to me that they way back had snail problems and they have eaten a lot of their crops and needed to constantly fight against them. So they just painted warriors fighting snails as a vent i guess of their frustration
You have to be quicker than your opponent, healthier, and stronger. All simple things which a knight or squire would likely die from battle for if lacking any.
So yes the snail is likely a symbol to express everything opposing a noble knight’s symbol/way of life.
EDIT: It just happens to be funny to us now because snails aren’t really a “threat” to our symbols or crop yield
I agree that the snail likely is a metaphorical anti-knight but that doesn't have to mean it wasn't humorous. It's like today the Joker bonking Batman with a ridiculous prop.
I like the theory that the monks drew snails and knights fighting because they just hated snails munching on their gardens, and it seemed like they were impossible to get rid of.
This is a injustifed underrated!
So good man! You deserve more views!
this /sorta/ relates to the ‘too chill?’ section, but a lot of greek (specifically) artists drew dying soldiers/royalty in neutral expressions to highlight the beauty the human being is graced with. the ancient greek were obsessed with the concept of beauty & perfection, which meant their frescoes & portraits had to depict people (even dying soldiers) as ‘graceful’, never to be caught off-guard, as that’s assumed to create an unappetising feeling when the paintings are looked at. literally just learnt that in my high school history class yesterday, the more you know!
Basically ars bene moriendi
I imagine many of those weird, out of place, "alien-like" cave paintings, statues and drawings were also just humourous fun much like some of these medieval paintings.
Or maybe even just remnants of kids learning how to paint and sculpt or just from people with much less practice or with wild imaginations.
6:42 - well, it's not a baby, but actually Pope Leo X. Which probably makes it even funnier.
6:22
guy 1: He turned himself into a pickle, funniest shit I've ever seen.
I'm pickle Rick!
This channel is criminally underrated
Also, remember me when you're famous curious archive
That's right
It’s growing though, I remember when they had 69 subs a few weeks ago, now they have 69 K subs
They’re actually doing really well considering how new the channel is.
I called the cops, that criminal channel won't get away.
I imagine snails were an unstoppable annoyance in the best of times, and passed enough that to a garden to starve your family, in the worst of times. They probably seemed like an invading force one would never fully defeat, and could never demoralize. They just wanna munch.
I always thought that the reason why medieval faces looked like that was because artists didn't know how to draw that good yet.
The Greeks and Romans were even earlier but they did some photo-realistic stuff. Check out the Fayum portraits.
i would like to believe that the snails were the first shitpost trend
This channel is an underrated hidden gem
500 years historians will be like “we think the ancients worshiped Doge as as deity”
“Jesus was a homunculus” WAS NOT THE TAKE I EXPECTED IN THE SLIGHTEST BUT ABSOLUTELY THE INSPIRATION I NEED FOR CERTAIN THINGS
That's the same as saying god was an allien
@@felipecosta-kv2fx DONT GIVE ME IDEAS DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW GULLIBLE I AM
@@scooby-doovillain no
@@felipecosta-kv2fx in a mean of logic, yes, god is indeed an alien
@@felipecosta-kv2fx and Allien? So- Raptor Jesus confirmed?
Great videos, as always. Thank you for your fascinating videos and subjects.
Thanks for watching!
@@CuriousArchive please do one on warfare
5:40 I've always wondered about that painting. So, it is real
The snail meme is eternal.
This is the kind of content I subbed for.
Memes from the olden days.
Ancient civilization memes next?
The fact Memes are actually one of the way to show our feelings and expressing what we are thinking about something, yes it's maybe just a meme
I always thought the snails where just Monks getting board and so deciding to doodle or have a little fun while writing the books. But while watching this, I had a thought.
Like what if there was a serious issue with snails and other bugs eating the books and such in libraries (I know first hand how annoying it can be when the snails get to your books), so what if its more the Monks showing thir frustration at the pests eat their works by just doodling them in combat, and enamy of a knight, much like the snails are teh enamies of the book keepers. I don't know, just a thought.
4:42 "Instruct me how to Douglas"
6:22 and then, he turns himself into a pickle, funniest shit i ever seen
1:25 I love how the baby is just straight up Vladimir Putin 🤣
maybe Vladimir Putin is Jesus?
I also love the famous proportions, for example man beeing bigger then castle walls but still using ladders for a siege and other disproportions
Joseph Ducreux is my favorite painter
The snails was a way of saying "don't forget to like and subscribe".
Medieval knights fighting against snails are basically just memes. can't change my mind
Because they truly are
@@Maatkara1000 that's what i just said
i think the monks just hated snails because the snails eat the monks' garden.
the skeleton in the right is looking in to my soul 3:46
Dude must have a stockpile of impressive videos. Each video is so well made that it must've taken weeks to produce each one.
For real
Haha it takes a while for some videos, but I didn't start production on this one until earlier this week
@@CuriousArchive wow! Your content is amazing. Interesting subject matter and quality information, editing and narration. You will soon be a large channel, I have no doubt in my mind. Thanks for the amazing videos!
@@cameronscottnolan Thanks!
If I have one problem with RUclips, it's the lack of a ♥️ option for videos like this one, because it truly deserves it.
Perhaps the snails were portrayed in a much more literal sense than some modern scholars are postulating : That of a formidable agricultural enemy. In the absence of modern pesticide application, snails were agricultural parasites that caused devastating irreversible crop destruction. In this light, the depicted knights' dire desire to concur this agricultural beast is very logical.
*When you don’t get the joke so you spend 4 weeks researching it for “science”*
"Research for science"
I had thought the snail thing was because snails eat paper and vellum and thus the monks were constantly at war with the snails to stop them eating the manuscripts. I guess it isn't as well known today, but getting snails in your letterbox eating your letters is a major issue that still happens.
The thumbnail image:
I thought a big cocoon would give a big butterfly.....
I believe the skeletal figures that appear in paintings and sculptures during the medieval period are called Inferi, and often appeared in these things as escorts to the afterlife for those who were dying. I don't know if they appeared in Medieval art before the Black Death, but they certainly took off as a motif afterward. Perhaps they were a response to the trauma of so many people dying, a way of accepting what happened, but, whatever the reason behind their appearance, it makes for some very unsettling art, at least to our eyes.
Conclusion: Medieval Monks had a Monty-Python level if absurdist humor
Also why does 1:10 look like Jeremy Clarkson
Monk: draw crazy rabbits
People: that's the funniest shit I have ever seen
I am an organic farmer. Snails are my nemesis. They can wipe out a small garden over night. My guess is back then when the food you grew was life. Snails were evil. Starving to death over winter was not very pleasant. Your livestock would suffer too. Not only eating their winter forage but snails are huge carriers of parasites. And rabbits come in a close second.
Wise dude, please continue delivering such a good content.
This channel is so interesting! I hope one day U reach a Million subs!
Okay, you covered the 'knights vs snails' marginalia, but didn't mention the butt trumpets, so I can only give this an 8 out of 10. ;)
Sackbuts.
...I’m debating whether I should google that or not.
@@YaoiHoshi I'd say it's not safe for work, but so cartoon-y and ridiculous as to not traumatize you.
That picture of the rabbits besieging the castle is my favourite medieval illustration.
The baby in the thumbnail is like
"Just play along! I'll explain later"
4:21 this image is comedy gold 🤣🤣🤣
The snails i bet was a joke about how slow armored soldiers are that they couldnt beat a snail, not really all that hard to comprehend.
Thank you 🙏 for your support Curious Archive
I think anyone confused about epic battles with snails has never had a garden or farm.
Neat analysis! Thanks for uploading!
Just found your channel a week ago. It’s gonna blow up bro.
Medieval knights: "I fear no man, but that thing... *stares at a snail* it scares me"
😂
rabbits ruining crops, hard as fuck to chase, eternal nightmare of wanting to watch the crops, staring at the rabbits with distaste