Gripla - 20.12.2018, Page 40

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as microcosm, the image of the world.29 What Bede and others describe
in words – and which also appears in Af natturu mannzins ok bloði – has a
pictorial form in a well-known diagram in Isidore of Seville´s De natura
rerum, a diagram that was widely copied, reworked and circulated in differ-
ent contexts during the Middle ages.30 the diagram shows the intercon-
nection (syzygy) of the elements, seasons and the humours.31 at the centre
are the words: world, year, man (mundus, annus, homo). With interlacing
circles, the schema displays in a clear visual way the four combinations
of: fire, dry, hot, summer, red bile; air, moist, hot, spring, blood; water,
moist, cold, winter, phlegm; earth, dry, cold, autumn, black bile. a diagram
of this type appears in a number of medieval European manuscripts and
was adapted to different contexts – even painted on walls and ceilings.32
Sometimes, the zodiac was incorporated into the system, or the four ages
of man, as is the case in a diagram in the Icelandic manuscript GKS 1812
4to – a compilation that represents the remains of at least three different
enim quatuor humores...” Exp. “...regnat in senectute.” on the dating of this work, its dis-
semination and sources, see Charles Burnett, “Introduction,” ibid., 2–3, 15–16.
29 the authority most often credited with the idea was Plato, see Elizabeth Sears, The Ages
of Man: Medieval Interpretations of the Life Cycle (Princeton: Princeton university Press,
1986), 20; tullio Gregory, “the Platonic Inheritance,” A History of Twelfth-Century Western
Philosophy, ed. by Peter Dronke (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1988), 62–63.
30 regarding the dissemination, reproduction and influence of the diagram, see Sears,
The Ages of Man, 17–20; Peter Vossen, “Über die Elementen-Syzygien,” Liber Floridus:
Mittellateinische Studien: Paul Lehmann zum 65. Geburtstag am 13. Juli 1949 gewidmet von
Freunden, Kollegen und Schülern (Saint ottilien: Eos, 1950), 33–46; also John anthony
Burrow, The Ages of Man: A Study in Medieval Writing and Thought (oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1986), 17–26. on Isidore as a source for Bede in this context, see faith Wallis,
“Introduction / Commentary,” The Reckoning of Time (Liverpool: Liverpool university
Press, 1988), 319–20.
31 as printed in Isidore of Seville, Traité de la nature, suivi de l'Épître en vers du roi Sisebut
à Isidore, ed. and trans. by Jacques fontaine, Bibliothèque de l’École des hautes études
hispaniques 28 (Bordeaux: féret, 1960), 216. Isidore speaks on the harmony between the
elements and the nature of each element (cold, hot, moist, dry) in 11. 1–3, but on the seasons
and their nature in 7. 4.
32 there are numerous examples. Such a diagram can for example be found in a medieval
manuscript of William of Conches’ Philosophia mundi and in a manuscript connected
to Pseudo-Bede, De mundi constitutione, see Burnett, “Introduction,” 6, 8–9. about the
diagram on the ceiling of the crypt of the Italian Cathedral of anagni, painted c. 1250, see
Sears, The Ages of Man, 20.