Why are there so many medieval paintings about fighting giant snails?

>>2357261

INDEED, TRULY A MYSTERY; IF ONLY THERE WERE MULTIPLE CLEAR DEPICTIONS AVAILABLE FOR US TO SEE... IT IS AS IF AT SOME POINT IN THE PAST HUMANS BATTLED GIANT SNAILS.

>>2357261
Mollusks

Ye Olde Memes

>>2357261
The giant man-eating snail was only wiped out in the 14th-15th centuries.

>>2357334
>tfw you were born too late to be a monk in the heyday of snailposting

They'd fuck up your parchments or something along those lines, so it became a meme

>>2357338
>The giant man-eating snail was only wiped out in the 14th-15th centuries.
Sooner than that actually. The extinction of the giant man eating european snail was a major impetus of the First Crusade. Thousands of battle hardened knights found themselves in need of something else to fight and the Pope made use of that while also moving these troublemakers out of Europe, it was a win-win move.

It's funny the French never lost the tradition of feasting on the flesh of defeated snails.

>>2357343
kek

It doesn't look like he is fighting.

>>2357261
>Why are there so many medieval paintings about fighting giant snails?

He is not fighting that snail -- he appears to be worshiping it.

File: that fucking snail servicing a tricycle on an ovecast day.jpg (188KB, 565x600px) Image search: [Google]

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>>2357347
Looking at the image, this guy may have a poit. The guy has his sword struck in the ground -- a pretty good "you shall not pass" message, visually. And he is imploring the snail, pleading with the snail -- "Don't come onto this page and eat the the parchment, destroying the words I am dedicating my life to writing, please, Mr. Snail," seems a likely message.

Snails can fuck you up bad when you're not watching

File: snail6.jpg (93KB, 760x373px) Image search: [Google]

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>>2357261
Piss on the snails, sez I.

File: snail4.jpg (129KB, 760x390px) Image search: [Google]

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>>2358256
Indeed. This guy is definitely not fighting. Though he may be begging for sex.

Tbh they aller look like they are from the same book/same artist. Probably a monk who had à weird fetish around snails ?

>>2357261
gugel nose ahl

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-were-medieval-knights-always-fighting-snails-1728888/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3tva6h/why_are_there_so_many_medieval_paintings_of/

http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/09/knight-v-snail.html

http://aleteia.org/2016/06/22/why-did-medieval-knights-fight-snails/

http://historybuff.com/historians-still-have-no-idea-why-knights-are-battling-snails-in-so-many-medieval-drawings-NlKpDL2WdJY6

Monks did the artwork, and also spent their time doing shit like gardening and writing stuff.

Snails happen to love fucking up gardens and parchment like >>2357347 said.

So while they enact medieval pest control, they spend some time doodling it, only with a knight shoving a lance through one of the bastards instead of just having Brother Rodric sit by a bush and pick snails off it.

>>2357261
>>2358321
>>2358325
Wtf is this lol.

File: snail.jpg (91KB, 636x449px) Image search: [Google]

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What's wrong, "brave" knight? Are you feeling... shell shocked?

File: IMG_1003.jpg (31KB, 650x487px) Image search: [Google]

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Who wins?
one thousand fighting knights.
OR
14 giant man eating snails?

>>2357261
>>2358321
>>2358325
>>2358672
Any more rare snails we should be aware of?

>>2358612
Petition for someone to make a greentext about a NEET monk REEing over snails

File: snail2.jpg (318KB, 720x627px) Image search: [Google]

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>>2358766

It's an old middle age meme. There's some stuff up about it online. It doesn't have any real significance. It'd be like future scholars trying to figure out pepe, Millhouse, and all that other shit.

>>2357261

Because shockingly, medieval people weren't aliens. They had a sense of humour just like us. They got bored and drew weird doodles in the margins, or were directly commissioned to draw weird, fantastical creatures in the margins.

>>2357261
Battling sloth.

I love this thread.

>>2357261
Snail was a symbol of sloth. A Christian (and thus, Knight) must fight with sins, sloth included. That's the first thing.
Second is, monks really fucking hate snails for fucking up their gardens. Thus making them evil and knights fight evil so you have minatures of knights and snails.
Third anserw is that shitposting is nothing new so does memes. Someone should post pic of shitpost of Pompeii. Middle ages were not so diffrent.

>>2357261
They're JoJo references

>>2358921
reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_graffiti

>>2358921
Didn't the people who commissioned these codexes get pissed off at the monks for doodeling their memes on the margins of (presumably) serious works? Or did they have so few literate men that they had no choice but to accept the codexes like that?

>>2357303
Go back to /fa/ you worthless piece of shit
it's bad enough that you're there already

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>>2362263
I'd say those were added value more than anything.

Also some of the works would be for their own use so they'd probably let loose more in those.

File: penis tree.jpg (72KB, 800x490px) Image search: [Google]

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Can this now be an illuminated manuscript thread?

File: knoights.jpg (94KB, 800x402px) Image search: [Google]

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>>2358766
More Knights of the Holy Snail

>>2362412
Are these maybe references to giant ammonite fossils that were found and identified as mythical beasts, just like dinosaurs were though to be dragons.

>>2362311
>wild vulpex in the picture