The elephant rat portrayed in the Hours
of Joanna the Mad (public domain)
It's been quite a while since I last presented a
ShukerNature Picture of the Day, but what better way to reintroduce this
intermittent feature than with a creature so exotic in form that even though it
doesn't exist, it should do!
I am referring to an extraordinary mini-beast of
the medieval marginalia, i.e. one of the innumerable creatures of curiosity and
composite nature (variously dubbed grotesques if strange or drolleries if
humorous) that populate and decorate the edges of illuminated manuscripts
prepared many centuries ago by monks and other theological scholars or
chroniclers. In a previous ShukerNature blog article (click here),
I documented one particularly intriguing example that has appeared in several
such works – the snail-cat. Now, here is another, which for obvious reasons I
am herewith officially dubbing the elephant rat.
A snail-cat, depicted in the Maastricht
Hours – an illuminated devotional manuscript produced in the Netherlands
during the early 1300s (public domain)
As can be seen from the illustration opening this
present ShukerNature article and which, to my knowledge, is the only example of
such a bizarre composite, the elephant rat deftly combines the head and body of
a typical rat with the long trunk and tusks of an elephant, plus a series of
odd, knobbly protuberances all over its back that seem entirely peculiar to
itself. And as if all of that were not distinctive enough, this remarkable
rodent also sports an exceptionally fine set of white bushy side-whiskers.
The illustration in question is from folio 203r
('r' referring to the folio's recto side) of an illuminated manuscript known variously
as the Hours of Joanna the Mad or, more formally, as the Hours of
Joanna I of Castile. This particular folio is part of a section of the Hours
that deals with the Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Joanna
the Mad, Queen of Castile (from 1504) and Aragon (from 1516); portrait by Juan
de Flandes, c.1500 (public domain)
Quoting from my earlier snail-cat article:
The
Hours of Joanna the Mad is an illuminated book of hours
manuscript that had originally been owned by Joanna of Castile (1479-1555), the
(controversially) mentally-ill consort of Philip the Handsome, king of Castile.
It had been produced for her in the city of Bruges (in what is now Belgium)
some time between 1486 and 1506, but is now held as Add.
MS 18852
in the British Library. As
with so many others of its kind, this illuminated manuscript's margins are
plentifully supplied with grotesques and drolleries.
The elephant rat is unquestionably
among the most memorable of these, and serves as a good example of both
categories by being both strange and humorous.
The complete folio 203r from the Hours of Joanna the Mad containing
the elephant rat depiction (public domain)
And while on the
subject of humour, it is widely believed by researchers of medieval manuscripts
that a considerable number of these marginalia monsters arose as nothing more
significant or symbolic than attempts by the manuscripts' illuminators and
copiers to stave off the boredom induced by very long, tedious hours working
upon them by slyly inserting these fantasy creatures as subversive jokes and
mockery of the deadly serious nature of the manuscripts' official, devotional
content. Or, to put it another way, they are merely medieval doodles, but
delightful ones nonetheless, well worth documenting and celebrating in their
own right.
Speaking of which: as noted earlier, I
am presently aware of only a single elephant rat representation in illuminated
manuscripts – the one documented by me here. But as with snail-cats, there may
be additional examples tucked away in the margins of others. So if anyone
reading this ShukerNature article is aware of such examples, I'd greatly
welcome details!
The
Hispaniolan solenodon Solenodon paradoxus. Solenodons are quite large
but exceedingly-endangered West Indian insectivores that are probably the only modern-day,
real-life creatures offering even the remotest outward resemblance to the
medieval, imaginary elephant rat (© Sandstein/Wikipedia – CC BY 3.0 licence)
Posts
When I was little I was shown a dead Elephant Shrew, and then decided to draw it later from memory.
ReplyDeleteWhen I drew the whiskers, I remember wondering if it had tusks (I couldn't remember)! Assuming it had tusks, because it was after all an Elephant Shrew, I drew the tusks in - and made a bit of a mess as I could not figure out where the whiskers and tusks went!
I think that this elephant rat originated in much the same way, as either a very erroneous attempt to illustrate a real creature, or, more likely, a deliberately humorous invention created by some bored medieval illuminator.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_shrew
ReplyDeleteYes,I thought about elephant shrews - or sengis as they are nowadays termed - in relation to this creature, but they bear no resemblance at all, less even than the solenodons. My feeling is that this was simply a humorous invention by some bored illuminator, much the same as the snail-cats and suchlike, combining an elephant's head with the body of a rodent most likely.
Delete