>>40067081I remember reading that a lot of drawings done in medieval manuscripts were often the scribes expressing themselves, having a giggle or just outright trolling someone. Nobody seems to have delivered an exact explanation upon which everyone agrees. The worst bit is how it's so susceptible to interpretation. For instance, among the first google searches that one might return on the topic of "snails in medieval manuscipts" is a British Museum blog on the topic in which it mentions a number of possible explanations including "even a saucy symbol of female sexuality," which seems like utter bullshit pushed by some "academic" in a British college somewhere.
Despite all of this clamor, however, it seems that perhaps the most accepted explanation for snails fighting knights in the narrow spectrum of manuscripts found between the late 13th and early 14th centuries might be that the snails were used as a metaphor for the Lombard people. These former invaders had once threatened much of Europe before the founding of what would become the Holy Roman Empire under Charlemagne, but once they were dismissed as a military threat, the Lombards became merchants who wielded a different kind of more subversive power throughout the continent. These Lombards were so hated that even some scribes of the time penned in these motifs just to shit on them in the text format (which was a blindingly expensive way to convey an insult at the time considering how time-consuming and labor-intensive it was to write a book). Think of it as the ultimate teabag.
TL;DR: Nobody really knows, but the most accepted explanation is the Lombard people had basically become the seedy jews of the time, and some scribes felt compelled to shit on their reputation in the most powerful way possible.
