What is a butt tuba and why is it in medieval art? - Michelle Brown
A rabbit attempts to play a church organ,
while a knight fights a giant snail
and a naked man blows a trumpet
with his rear end.
Painted with squirrel-hair brushes
on vellum or parchment
by monks, nuns, and urban craftspeople,
these bizarre images populate the
margins of the most prized books
from the Middle Ages.
Their illustrations often tell a second
story as rich as the text itself.
Some images appear in many
different illuminated manuscripts,
and often reinforce the religious
content of the books they decorated.
For example, a porcupine picking
up fruit on its spines
could represent the devil stealing
the fruits of faith--
or Christ taking up the sins of mankind.
Medieval lore stated that a hunter
could only capture a unicorn
when it lay its horn in
the lap of a virgin,
so a unicorn could symbolize
either sexual temptation
or Christ being captured by his enemies.
Rabbits, meanwhile, could represent
human’s lustful natures—
and could redeem themselves through
attempts to make sacred music
despite their failings.
All of these references would have
been familiar to medieval Europeans
from other art forms and oral tradition,
though some have grown more
mysterious over the centuries.
Today,
no one can say for sure what the common
motif of a knight fighting a snail means—
or why the knight so often
appears to be losing.
The snail might be a symbol of the
inevitability of death,
which defeats even the strongest knights.
Or it could represent humility, and a
knight’s need to vanquish his own pride.
Many illuminated manuscripts were
copies of religious or classical texts,
and the bookmakers incorporated their
own ideas and opinions in illustrations.
The butt tuba, for example,
was likely shorthand to
express disapproval with--
or add an ironic spin to--
the action in the text.
Illuminations could also be used to
make subversive political commentary.
The text of the "Smithfield Decretals"
details the Church’s laws and
punishments for lawbreakers.
But the margins show a fox being
hanged by geese,
a possible allusion to the common people
turning on their powerful oppressors.
In the "Chronica Majora,"
Matthew Paris summarized a
scandal of his day,
in which the Welsh prince Griffin
plummeted to his death
from the tower of London.
Some believed the prince fell,
Paris wrote,
while others thought he was pushed.
He added his own take in the margins,
which show the prince falling to his death
while trying to escape on a rope
made of bed-sheets.
Some margins told stories of
a more personal nature.
"The Luttrell Psalter,"
a book of psalms and prayers commissioned
by Sir Geoffrey Luttrell,
shows a young woman having her hair done,
while a young man catches a bird in a net.
The shaved patch on his
head is growing out,
indicating that he is a clergyman
neglecting his duties.
This alludes to a family scandal
where a young cleric ran away with Sir
Geoffrey’s daughter Elizabeth.
The family’s personal spiritual advisor
likely painted it into the book
to remind his clients of their failings
and encourage their spiritual development.
Some artists even painted themselves
into the manuscripts.
The opening image of Christine de
Pisan’s collected works
shows de Pisan presenting
the book to the Queen of France.
The queen was so impressed by de Pisan's
previous work
that she commissioned her own copy.
Such royal patronage
enabled her to establish her own
publishing house in Paris.
The tradition of illuminated manuscripts
lasted for over a thousand years.
The books were created by individuals or
teams for uses as wide-ranging
as private prayer aids, service books
in churches, textbooks,
and protective talismans to
take into battle.
Across all this variation,
those tricky little drawings
in the margins
are a unique window into the
minds of medieval artists.
