Dragons, Dogs & Amadillos?

[Koen G]

An essential webpage for the Speculum is the Warburg iconographic database. Here's their summary of the Speculum's chapters: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

We're interested in Gideon, so I control-f "Gideon", and it appears his story prefigured the Annunciation:

ll. 65–86: Mary was chosen as Gideon was chosen to deliver Israel through the fleece moistened by heavenly dew. The fleece prefigures the human nature put on by Christ: as the dew did not damage the wool so Mary preserved her virginity.

When the Medieval European read about Gideon, all they were thinking was "cool story, but how can I link this to Jesus?" Hence, the medieval mind was constantly trained to insert Jesus into things that are not about him. It's constant theological gymnastics that are hard to follow for the uninitiated.

Slightly unrelated: the granddaddy of all prefiguration (or Typologies, as they are called) is Jonah and the fish as Resurrection from the dead. Matthew has Jesus himself showing how the OT can be used to apply to him. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:

38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees told Jesus,[a] “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.”

39 But he replied to them, “An evil and adulterous generation craves a sign. Yet no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah, 40 because just as Jonah was in the stomach of the sea creature for three days and three nights,[b] so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.

Jonah stepping out of the fish is our best visual parallel for the fish nymph on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , which also has the cross nymph on top. Resurrection from the grave happens at the bottom (literally from the ground), while the triumph of Ecclesia occurs at a loftier level.

The problem, as usual with Q13, is that nothing is quite right. If the thing is meaningful at all (which I suspect it is given the various thematic threads), we haven't figured out yet how.