Gripla - 20.12.2011, Síða 93

93
again would a flood come to destroy the world, Bede goes on linking the
aqueus and the igneus colours to the baptism rite, where water and the Holy
Ghost’s fire represent the means to salvation for Christians:
Arcus autem duos colores habet, id est aquae et ignis, quae isto
significantur. Arcus vero ante diluvium non fuit, sed post diluvium
Noe filiisque illius in signum securitatis a diluvio a Domino datur;
sic baptismum, signum securitatis est Ecclesiae Christi a vindicta.
Etenim homines in baptismum per aquam et ignem Spiritus sancti
salvantur.73
“The rainbow has two colours, that is of water and of fire, which
signify this. There was no rainbow, indeed, before the flood, but
after the flood it is given by the Lord to Noah and to his sons as a
sign of protection from the flood; in the same way, baptism is a sign
of the protection of the Church of Christ from punishment. As a
matter of fact, in the baptism men are saved through water and the
Holy Ghost’s fire.”
On the other hand, Bede continues, the rainbow is also said to have three
colours:
Aliter arcus tres colores habere dicitur, id est, hyacinthinum, et
onidis, et puhinum,74 id est, scandalum poenitentiae, et vita actualis,
et ardor spiritualis in ratione baptismi.75
“On the other hand, the rainbow is said to have three colours, that is
of hyacinth, and of onyx, and of purple, that is penitential scandal,
and active life, and spiritual ardor in the doctrine of baptism.”
The colour-imagery Bede is elaborating here is probably inspired by
the twelve precious stones of the heavenly Jerusalem in Apoc. 21, about
which he offered his own interpretation according to the various colours
and qualities of each stone in Book 3 of his Explanatio Apocalypsis.76 Here
he places hyacinthus, ‘caeruleum colorem habens’, as a sign of the soul’s
73 Cf. Bede, In Pentateuchum commentarii. Genesis, 9, in PL 91, col. 227 A.
74 To be intended as puniceum.
75 Bede, In Pentateuchum commentarii. Genesis, 9, ibid.
76 Cf. Bede, Explanatio Apocalypsis III, 21, in PL 93, cols. 197–203.
THE RAINBOW ALLEGORY