We have used multispectral imaging to photograph a selection of the damaged items, and our conservation team has employed new techniques to re-house some of the most vulnerable fragments and to improve the handling of the bound volumes. Thanks to the incredible generosity of the Goldhammer Foundation, since 2020 the Library has been engaged in a project to bring some of the fragmentary Cotton remains to life. One of the burnt pages from a 10th-century Irish Psalter: Cotton MS Vitellius F XI, f. The fire-damaged survivors are held today at the British Library, but many of them remain extraordinarily difficult to handle or are too blackened to be read with the naked eye. Some of these items escaped the flames intact, others were singed or damaged by the water used to douse the fire, while many hundreds were burned significantly or completely destroyed. On the night of 29 October 1731, a fire took hold below the room which held the famous Cotton collection, containing many of the most iconic historical and literary treasures from early times, among them Magna Carta, Beowulf and the Lindisfarne Gospels. After a guilty verdict is delivered, the ruthless rabbits drag the hunter away and behead him.One of the most catastrophic episodes in modern library history was the Ashburnham House fire. First a rabbit archer shoots the hunter in the back, then the rabbits tie him up and haul him before a rabbit judge to be tried. In this series of scenes, we see how a group of giant beefy rabbits get their gruesome revenge on a hunter. This manuscript contains multiple series of marginal scenes in which stories unfold over consecutive pages like a comic strip. Perhaps the most elaborate example of the killer bunny theme appears in the Smithfield Decretals, illuminated in London in the 1340s. So here, rabbits are violent hunters hellbent on punishing anyone who has committed crimes against rabbit-kind. But in decorated initials and marginalia, medieval artists often depicted ‘the world turned upside down’, where roles are reversed and the impossible becomes the norm. In real life, rabbits and hares are docile prey animals. This image gives us a clue about why medieval artists showed rabbits behaving so violently. The Arnstein Passional, Arnstein, Germany, c. Rabbits hang a hunter from a decorated letter ‘T’. The rabbits stand on their hindlegs and point with their front paws as if jeering in sinister glee. His identity is made clear by the hunting horn slung over his shoulder. This decorated letter ‘T’ is being used as a gallows on which two rabbits or hares hang a human hunter. While re-cataloguing the Arnstein Passional, made at Arnstein Abbey in Germany around the 1170s, for the Harley cataloguing project, we spotted a particularly early example of killer bunny imagery (could it be the earliest known?). These darkly humorous images of medieval killer bunnies still strike a chord with modern viewers, always proving a hit on social media and popularised by Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s Beast of Caerbannog, ‘the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!’. Rabbits can often be found innocently frolicking in the decorated borders or illuminations of medieval manuscripts, but sometimes, for reasons unknown, these adorable fluffy creatures turn into stone-cold killers. yes that’s right, we’re talking about medieval bunnies. Vengeful, merciless and brutally violent.
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