Excuse me, this book has a hare in it.
Part of the fun in dealing with older materials is coming across the occasional doodle or illustration added to the margins. This charming little creature comes from Decisiones antiquae et novae Rotae romanae (Old and new decisions of the Roman Rota), edited by Wilhelm Horboch sometime in the late 14th century, though our edition was printed around 1477.
The inspiration for the rabbit comes from the text directly to the right of the picture “…vbi iacet lepus…” (where the rabbit lies), and the annotator helpfully captioned his work at the bottom of the page with “Hic jacet lepus” (here lies the rabbit). Now, this particular rabbit is lying in the middle of a piece of canon law about privileges and confused jurisdictions, which begs the question – why the rabbit? Well, if the results of searching on Google can be trusted, “hic iacet lepus” is a colloquialism for “here’s the solution.”
Who knew rabbits were so handy?
- ANNA FRANZ, Rare Book Fellow
