>>96840206
>>96833515
>>96833841
>>96834037
>>96869210
The answer is, as it very often is with ancient history, "we don't know". We can put forth a bunch of theories, but essentially there's no all-fitting solution. We can only look at the art this era produced and try to interpret how the people who made this kind of art saw the world, and what the snail and the knight might have represented to them.
Sauces for general interpretations:
>https://nicholasrossis.me/2019/04/07/what-did-knights-have-against-snails/
>https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231221-the-mystery-of-the-medieval-fighting-snails
Sauce for the snail as Longobard interpretation:
>The Snail in Gothic Marginal Warfare
>Lilian M. C. Randall
>Speculum, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Jul., 1962), pp. 358-367
>https://www.jstor.org/stable/2852357
Contribution from The University of Chicago Press