Saint Barbara, baths, towers, and canons

[arca_libraria]

Marco, thank you for such a thoughtful response and for so much helpful material to read. I had noted the crucifix-shaped object on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. before, but not the imperial crown in Libra. There is so much going on in the zodiac-circles, but the overall context makes it very hard (for me) to interpret what such a hat might or might not mean.

Thank you for sharing Ellie Velinska's blog post – it was a really interesting read. In many versions of her Vita, Saint Barbara's own father was struck by lightning and killed after he executed her. In the later middle ages, this relationship to lightning caused her to be associated with explosions, storms and artillery including canons, indeed some statues and images of Saint Barbara show her with a canon rather than a tower or chalice.

This is a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. where she holds a cannon ball

Regarding the text on f. 116v, I agree, crosses such as those are a common feature of many medieval charms and prayers. In early medieval liturgical manuscripts those crosses were placed in the text where the priest or celebrant was to make the sign of the cross, and from there the symbol made its way into other types of text. A lot of healing charms and prayers (I have seen examples from c. 950 onwards) use the cross symbol, particularly after holy names or each word in "nonsense" rhyming passages - whether it was intended that the reader or performer of the text should make a sign of the cross each time for those texts is not clear, but they're a very common feature of medieval healing charms.

I still think that the manuscript objects the VMS most closely resembles are the herbals/scientific miscellanies produced in medieval Europe even if there are also some non-European influences on the VMS as well. I also think that some of the religious elements could be there because medieval Europeans had a visual culture that was heavily influenced by Christian art and symbolism so ideas and motifs could easily appear in non-religious objects without any deliberately Christian intention. I don't think that Saint Barbara's life story is the key to the VMS as a whole, but I do think there are some unusual iconographic and symbolic parallels that might help to understand the context in which the VMS was produced.