Medieval Violent Bunnies and Knighthood

Medieval violent bunnies onstage for this post, which makes me laugh no matter what.

We do not expect these furry (mostly) vegetarian creatures to be shown inciting bloodshed, or picking on poor unarmored monks (slide two), or mauling naked men when they are sleeping (slide three), or viciously destroying King Arthur’s entourage (the Rabbit of Caerbannog, slide four, as real as King Arthur).

It of course is the inversion of violence that makes us laugh — but it also puts the realities of a society front-and-center. Violence was something to be worried about. And in the 11th century in modern-day France, members of the Church were very concerned. After all, they had no armies, and the endemic warfare among aristocrats had made them easy prey. All of this led to the famous “Truce of God” pronouncents of the era.

With the Truce of God, the Church encouraged knights (with threats of excommunication, ie, hell) to take oaths promising not to commit violence on certain days — Lent, maybe, or saints’ feast days. The idea was to limit the periods of killing. You know what they say: once you introduce these sorts of restrictions, pretty soon you will end up with the whole thing banned . . . Except that didn’t happen, of course.

Nonetheless, some of the vows for the Truce of God are as funny as murderous rabbits. For instance the leader Robert the Pius (d. 1031) declared that he would “not attack noble ladies travelling without husbands nor their maids, nor widows or nuns unless it is their fault”. One here may imagine secret ninja forces of violent nuns banded together with vicious rabbits.