Animals

Medieval illustrators were obsessed with cats licking their bums – ye beste 11

If you’ve never googled ‘marginalia’, you’ve yet to experience one of the weirder aspects of medieval artistry – the decorations around the borders of pages.

For some reason, no matter what was going on with the written word, the artists – usually monks – felt they had carte blanche to be as strange or as gross as they felt like.

For instance, there are more murderous rabbits than you can fire an arrow at.


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Levitating snails that looked pretty dangerous.


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Not to mention the flatulent clergy.


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Another recurring theme of both marginalia and main illustrations is the cat giving its nether regions a good clean – and these are some excellent examples.

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BONUS

It gets weirder. Just ask this nun when she’s finished harvesting the fruit of the phallus tree.


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Source British Library, History of Yesterday, Sad and Useless Image Sad and Useless