Honestly, I can't really blame medieval scribes for making animals look Like That. It's easy to forget that manuscripts being copied by hand means the illustrations were reproduced that way, too, so often what we're looking at is a redrawing of a redrawing of a redrawing where nobody involved has ever personally seen the animal it's supposed to be. Like, if I drew animal you'd never seen, then asked you to copy my drawing without references, then asked your buddy to copy your drawing without referring back to mine, and so forth, I'd be surprised if it didn't end up looking like a space alien after as few as half a dozen steps!
okay i get it for like. wild animals. deer and whatnot. but i simply refuse to believe none of them have ever seen a horse
Horses famously resist accurate depiction, a phenomenon remarked upon by artists even today; this effect may be ontological in nature.
Medieval art often depicts knights riding all sorts of fanciful beasts; modern scholarship suggests that at least some figures traditionally identified as badly drawn horses are in fact meant to be weasels.
Centuries of selective breeding have resulted in a contemporary horse which very little resembles the horses of a thousand years ago; horses during the medieval period just looked like that.
They drew horses badly on purpose because, during the medieval period, most scribal work was performed by Roman Catholic monasteries, and as we know, all horses are Protestants.
The monks haven't been allowed to come down and look at visitors' horses ever since the Incident.
