The Six Days of Creation in a Twelfth Century Manuscript

Abstract

Catalogued as Ms. number I in the Bibliotheque Municipale at Verdun is a volume which comes from the same town and contains local chronicles and lives of the saints.' Apart from a few initials, the only ornament of the manuscript is a frontispiece (fol. Ir),2 the whole of which is taken up by a pictorial representation without accompanying or explanatory text (P1. 37a). From its style the manuscript can be dated about I Ioo. The closest parallels to it which I can quote are the illustrations to the Bible of Saint B&nigne, executed between I077 and 111 2. The miniature contains many unusual features which will be made clear by a detailed description. But in describing it we shall be compelled to presuppose the actual explanation. Afterwards we shall consider the formal analogies and parallel cases which led to this explanation and which confirm it. Among the familiar elements in the design the most evident are the four heads in the corners representing the Winds ; beside these are the four Seasons, but arranged in an unusual order. In the bottom left corner is Winter, warming his hands at a fire; in the bottom right corner, Spring cutting the vine tendrils ; at the top on the left Summer, naked except for a cloak across his shoulders, and holding in each hand a bushy branch ; at the top on the right Autumn, and beside him a branch of vine with grapes on it. This arrangement is peculiar, because it follows neither the usual order-Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter-nor the usual division into contrasted pairs-Summer and Winter, Spring and Autumn. Instead it pairs off, apparently arbitrarily, Winter with Spring, and Summer with Autumn. The key to this unexpected disposition is to be found in the two figures enclosed in circles which occupy the spaces between the Seasons. At the bottom stands a woman, with her head and hands completely covered by a dark mantle, who represents Tenebrae; at the top is a man holding a light in his hands, standing for Lux. Now the order of the Seasons becomes comprehensible, for it was evidently determined by this juxtaposition. Winter and Spring stand beside Tenebrae; Summer and Autumn flank Lux. The longest night marks the transition from Winter to Spring, the longest day the transition from Summer to Autumn. The figures of the Winds and the Seasons fill in the corners round a central circular composition. One would expect to find in the middle something like Annus, in a circle divided into twelve parts containing the signs