Two unique experiences were the inspiration for this admittedly strange comparison of killer rabbits in the marginalia of medieval manuscripts and the play adaptation of Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead by Complicité*. The first inspiration was derived from attending the Medieval Worlds residential at Corpus Christi Cambridge, which opened my eyes to the fascinating and wonderfully bizarre world of medieval manuscripts. Since then, I have been struck by the prevalence of rabbits in manuscripts, particularly in the marginalia where they are often depicted in unconventional ways. The second inspiration came from witnessing the masterpiece theatre adaptation of Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead by Complicité after being offered a spare ticket to accompany my school’s drama students. It was a wonderful cacophony of humour, horror, feminism, thrill and adrenaline-racing music. What I could never have predicted is how these polarised experiences could have anything in common.
Like our countryside, the marginalia of medieval manuscripts are riddled with rabbits. The good, the bad and the mad- they can all be found in the margins of these medieval wonders. The title of this article aside, rabbits are also presented in arguably more conventional marginal scenes. Jon Kaneko-James explains that in Medieval Art, rabbits were commonly depicted in a way suggestive of “purity and helplessness”, lending themselves to accompany medieval portrayals of Christ, “portraying a veritable petting zoo of innocent, nonviolent, little white and brown bunnies going about their business in a field”. Rabbits are also depicted in scenes of medieval rural life. This can be seen in the Taymouth Hours which contain a series of images showing a medieval lady hunting rabbit, and equally rabbits often accompany scenes of natural beauty exemplified in The Cocharelli Codex. Nevertheless, one of the most fascinating variety of our furry-friends is of the murderous, violent killer kind, as seen in manuscripts such as the Arnstein Passional c. 1170 and most prominently in the Smithfield Decretals c. 1340. In the Arnstein Passional, a decorated letter ‘T’ is used as gallows on which two rabbits (or hares) hang a human hunter. The Smithfield Decretals makes a particulary interesting case of murder-by-rabbit, as it depicts a killer rabbit not only once, but in several marginal scenes. These scenes chart a rabbit’s revenge on firstly a hunter, shooting him in the back before tying him up and hauling him to a rabbit to be tried. The guilty verdict delivered, he’s executed by decapitation. Nevertheless, these rabbit’s revenge knows no bounds, as they progress to seek vengeance of hounds. Intrinsic similarities can be seen between these murderous creatures and incrimination of animals in Tokarczuk’s novel and play adaptation by Complicité. Set in an isolated village in rural Poland, the play follows its 65 year old protagonist and narrative voice, Janina. It is in this village, where hunting is at the forefront of daily life, a series of murders take place, starting with her neighbour Big Foot who is found with a bone jammed in his throat. Janina skilfully convinces her audience that the series of murders are the animal’s doing, and in doing so, Tokarczuk uses the voice of her protagonist to explore a subversion of the natural order by placing the victim (the animals) in the position of the killer (the hunters) to advocate against hunting and for vegetarianism. The margins of medieval manuscripts are used much to the same effect. It is in the margins that monks could explore social changes and alternate psychological possibilities, such as the idea that these docile and innocent creatures could gain revenge on those who hunt them. Rosemarie McGerr argues that the margins “can be read as spaces of ambiguity and dialogue that allow for interrogation of constructions of otherness” which resist the normal areas of classification. Nonetheless, despite their absurd and radical nature, the margins still have an “off-centre” relationship with the main text. This “off-centre” relationship is apparent in the play, Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead, between what is essentially a conventional murder mystery- it is revealed that Janina herself was actually the killer- and the more radical suggestion that such brutal acts could be the doing of the unsuspecting animal. Tokarczuk was aware that she wanted to do more with her novel than just reveal who is the killer, declaring it “is wasting paper and time”, and instead her audience is subject to an alternate psychological possibility that animals too can murder humans, like we have murdered them since the dawn of civilisation and like the medieval monks who decided to turn rabbits into hunters. It is easy to disillusion ourselves from the principles of a period which terminated eight centuries ago, and yet the comparisons which can be made between medieval manuscripts and a contemporary play suggests we should consider doing otherwise. Regardless of whether the perverse depiction of rabbits in medieval marginalia was used with or without the intention of encouraging anti-hunting habits, it is clear that the people of the Middle Ages were conscious of their interaction with nature and mother nature’s ability to seek revenge. Creative mediums have always offered artists and playwrights alike with a safe space to resist the conventional, and in both the medieval marginalia and the play Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead, we see presented a “world turned upside down” (Kaneko-james). *(I refer to the play adaptation of Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead by Complicité in this article, because I don’t wish to make an untrue comparison to the novel having only watched the play. I also make the plot of the play explicit.) Bibliography Armitstead, C. (2022, October 24). Mud, murder and homemade schnapps: eco-thriller Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead roars back. The Guardian. Retrieved from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/oct/24/drive-your-plow-over-the-bones-of-the-dead-complicite-simon-mcburney-olga-tokarczuk Jackson, E. (2021, June 16). Medieval killer rabbits: when bunnies strike back. Retrieved from British Library Medieval manuscripts blog: https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2021/06/killer-rabbits.html Marshall, C. (2019, March 29). Killer Rabbits in Medieval Manuscripts: Why So Many Drawings in the Margins Depict Bunnies Going Bad. Retrieved from Open Culture: https://www.openculture.com/2019/03/killer-rabbits-in-medieval-manuscripts-why-so-many-drawings-in-the-margins-depict-bunnies-going-bad.html Perry, S. (2018, September 21). Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk- the entire cosmic catastrophe. The Guardian. Spencer-Hall, A. (2018). Embracing the Medievalist Margin. The Ballad of the Lone Medievalist, 161-168. Westwell, C. (2020, April 13). Medieval rabbits: the good, the bad and the bizarre. Retrieved from British Library Medieval manuscripts blog: https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2020/04/medieval-rabbits-the-good-the-bad-and-the-bizarre.html
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The coronation of King Charles III, which takes place on Saturday 6th May 2023, promises to be a momentous occasion. A statement published by Buckingham Palace in October 2022 stated that “The Coronation will reflect the monarch’s role today and look towards the future, while being rooted in longstanding traditions and pageantry”, and yet in its reflection of the world today, the coronation also offers a window to a past of some 1,000 years. The ceremony we shall witness on Saturday, whether it be on the television screens or performed before our very eyes, will not just mark the beginning of a new era, but pay homage to a past dating back to ancient civilisation. However, in light of Dr Matthew Payne’s assertion that “All coronation services are based to a greater or lesser extent on their predecessors”, I wish to explore the evolution of the coronation ceremony and more importantly, how significant are coronation ceremonies in our 21st century society?
Although the Ancient Egyptians were the first to establish elaborate coronation ceremonies in which Pharaohs would be inaugurated through a series of rituals and festivals, the use of ritualistic ceremonies to signal the accession of a new ruler have existed since the beginning of civilisation. Despite their purpose of emphasising the divinity of a new ruler still playing a prominent role in our coronation services today, we can look to the Middle Ages to recognise the first instance of a coronation-like ceremony taking place in England. The consecration of Egrith, son of Offa who ruled Mercia from 757 to 796, as King of Mercia in 785 and the consecration of Eadwulf as King of Northumberland in 795 are the earliest references made to coronation-like ceremonies in England. The first English coronation to be recorded in detail is that of Edgar who was crowned King of England in 973 in Bath. By 1043, many of the key elements of the coronation regalia recognised today had appeared, including the crown, orb and sceptre. In the manuscript of St Cuthburt, King Athelstan (r.924-39) is depicted in the earliest surviving image of an English king wearing a crown. Nevertheless, Edward the Confessor- crowned in 1043 at Winchester- is the first English King to be depicted holding all the key elements of the coronation regalia including the crown, orb and sceptre, in the first surviving original seal for an English king. The coronation of William the Conqueror in 1066 does not only possess a significance for taking place on Christmas day, but it was the first coronation to be held in Westminster Abbey, the sacred house where we will see King Charles III be coronated on the 6th of May. It is these rich medieval roots that we will see reflected in the coronation service of King Charles III, more than 1,000 years later, in the 21st century. Since its medieval origins, the purpose of the coronation has been subject to a transformation whilst still maintaining a fundamentally religious focus. The coronation ceremonies of Western Europe between c. 410-1066 developed out of a necessity to bring stability to a nation ravaged by war, and to increase the Church’s involvement in the affairs of the state. As a result, religion was placed at the centre of Early Medieval coronation ceremonies. Such an emphasis on religion was achieved through the use of oil in anointing the new ruler instead of being crowned, turning monarchs into “Lord’s anointed”. In reflecting the anointings of David and Solomon in the Old Testament, the use of oil highlighted the sacred power the monarch possessed. Thomas Asbridge highlights the significance of the act of anointing Richard I in 1189 as being “the coronation’s central drama- the moment at which Richard was deemed to have been remade as a divinely ordained king: God’s chosen representative on Earth”. Some centuries later, the purpose of the coronation still retained an inherently religious importance although being of a more performative nature. This was effectively demonstrated 70 years ago, during the coronation of Elizabeth II. Not only was the coronation the first to be televised, but the late Queen demonstrated an assured understanding that her role was now that of a national symbol and the purpose of the coronation being the assertion of that. Elizabeth II was during her coronation, “a thing that only existed to be looked at”, as described by Hilary Mantel. In October 2022, Buckingham Palace released a statement which said that the coronation of King Charles III “will reflect the monarch’s role today and look towards the future, while being rooted in longstanding traditions and pageantry”, the purpose of his coronation inevitably to be illustrated on Saturday. Many of the features of the coronation of the past have been retained in the service we will bear witness to during King Charles III’s coronation. The most significant example of this lies in the Coronation Oath which remains a legal requirement, an oath taken by the monarch who swears to govern the peoples of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth Realms “according to their respective laws and customs”. The Coronation Oath Act of 1688 provided the oath taken by King William II and Queen Mary II and all future monarchs including our present-day king. However, even though the fundamental message of the oath remains unchanged, the oath acts as a reflection of constitutional developments and so is indeed subject to some amendments. For instance, King Charles III’s oath will acknowledge external and not internal constitutional developments. Similarly, the use of the fundamental items of the coronation regalia including the crown, orb and sceptre dates back to some of the earliest ritualistic coronation-like services of Ancient History, albeit not the originals. It is evident that the coronation possesses a monumental historical significance, however what importance does it still maintain in our 21st century society? As we look to previous coronations to gain an understanding of the socio-political contexts they were performed in, coronations continue to offer, as suggested by Alice Hunt, an opportunity for “the British monarchy to reinvent itself, and keep itself visible, relevant and effective” and in doing so, suggest the kind of future we can look to live in. Although coronations are no longer necessary for the monarchy to assert their divine power and to encourage dynastic stability, they provide an important opportunity for the monarch to define the nature of the reign they endeavour to lead, whilst interweaving elements from the past and present essential in ensuring the success of our constitution today. They are the only instance where we can see the past, the present and the future enacted in a single day, and so in that respect the coronation remains significant. Bibliography Snow, D. (Host). Whitelock, A. (Guest). (2023, April 24). The History of Coronations [Audio podcast episode]. In Dan Snow’s History Hit. History Hit. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/dan-snows-history-hit/id1042631089?i=1000610321233 Brindle, S. (n.d.). The History of the Coronation. English Heritage. Retrieved May 2, 2023, from https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/coronation-history/ Torrance, D. (2023, April 19). Changes to the Coronation Oath. House of Commons Library. Retrieved May 2, 2023, from https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/changes-to-the-coronation-oath/ Torrance, D. 'The coronation: History and ceremonial'. (Briefing Paper No CBP 9412, House of Commons Library 5 May 2023). CBP-9412.pdf (parliament.uk) [Westminster Abbey]. (2023, February 1). Spotlight on coronations: The Liber Regalis [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKv5T4iBeao&t=1s Hunt, A. (2023, May 3). The power of royal pomp and pageantry. History Extra. Retrieved May 5, 2023, from https://www.historyextra.com/period/general-history/royal-ceremonies-soft-power/ Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2022, June 27). Offa. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Offa-Anglo-Saxon-king (n.d.). An Introduction to Early Medieval England (c. 410-1066). English Heritage. Retrieved May 5, 2023, from https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/story-of-england/early-medieval/ |
AuthorMy name is Lily, a student in Year 12 who's passionate about History. My interests mainly span across the Medieval and Early Modern periods, however I intend to populate this blog page with anything that interests me, with the hope that it may fascinate you too. Categories |