Murdering Medieval Easter Bunnies

The British Library’s Royal MS 10 E iv, aka the Smithfield Decretals, is a late fourteenth-century law book containing many illuminations, including images of rabbits trying a captured hound for crimes unspecified.

Did the hound escape the above trial by bunny? Find out what happened to Fido later on.

In the meantime, get a load of the rabbit in Pontifical of Guillaume Durand, Avignon, produced before 1390:

And there’s the Ormesby Psalter (Bodleian Library MS. Douce 366), “a psalter, a collection of Psalms meant for contemplative reading”:

Terrifying stuff. And it gets worse. The armed rabbits have allies. Like the snails:

Fido was hanged from the neck until dead. He was then, most likely, soaked in gravy and canned.