Searcher > 26-06-2021, 03:08 PM
Quote:In the middle of the fourteenth century, the Franciscan friar John of Rupescissa sent a dramatic warning to his followers: the last days were coming; the apocalypse was near. Deemed insane by the Christian church, Rupescissa had spent more than a decade confined to prisons—in one case wrapped in chains and locked under a staircase—yet ill treatment could not silence the friar's apocalyptic message. Religious figures who preached the end times were hardly rare in the late Middle Ages, but Rupescissa's teachings were unique. He claimed that knowledge of the natural world, and alchemy in particular, could act as a defense against the plagues and wars of the last days. His melding of apocalyptic prophecy and quasi-scientific inquiry gave rise to a new genre of alchemical writing and a novel cosmology of heaven and earth. Most important, the friar's research represented a remarkable convergence between science and religion. In order to understand scientific knowledge today, Leah DeVun asks that we revisit Rupescissa's life and the critical events of his age—the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, the Avignon Papacy—through his eyes. Rupescissa treated alchemy as medicine (his work was the conceptual forerunner of pharmacology) and represented the emerging technologies and views that sought to combat famine, plague, religious persecution, and war. The advances he pioneered, along with the exciting strides made by his contemporaries, shed critical light on later developments in medicine, pharmacology, and chemistry.Of course, I don't think that the VMs is a direct inheritance of Rupescissa's work, it seems to gather ideas of Rupescissa, Sacrobosco (De sphaera mundi), Dati (La sfera), Grosseteste (De luce) and someone else, conjoined with personal autor's knowledge about herbs. On my view, cosmological part is absolutely not least in this manuscript.
Searcher > 26-06-2021, 08:39 PM
(24-06-2021, 10:35 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The sun was believed to rise from and set in the ocean, so water and light would be more than appropriate for both the sun's first rays and its last. If the pattern is the Ocean's waves, then your rising sun is about to plunge face first into the water. I find these patterns difficult to interpret though, also because of the fading around the edges. But if they represent water and light, then I don't see any problem. I don't think the rising sun facing one of the cliffs is a problem: we can imagine it moving and climbing towards top right (my south) so it will rise above the cliffs and appear on the horizon. Again though, I would not include these faded and unclear items into the core of my interpretation, but rising over the horizon vs moving towards the waves seems appropriate behavior for the rising and setting sun respectively.On my view, the bunch of water and light goes from the sun, not the sun - from the ocean, but I see that we won't agree with each other. Maybe we need professional interpretation of it from the angle of explanation of such stylistic devices in the images of the late Middle Ages.
Quote:Regarding the T-O map, I am inclined to stick with what Rene wrote in another thread and see it as a symbol of the world - it might just be that. Maybe its orientation matters, but I don't know enough about T-O maps (and the way the VM uses them) to say if we can confidently use its orientation in any way. Isn't the big part on top supposed to be Asia, i.e. Orient, which would be okay with my interpretation?If depicting a symbolically geographical division, it would be okay. I just bother that this kind of division usually was depicted as usual TO map, not inverted. I don't assert that there is no inverted TO map that means "mappa mundi", but on my observations, inverted TO map usually means division in agreement with the mythological conception: heaven - earth - underworld (as the three spheres) or sky - earth - ocean.
Koen G > 26-06-2021, 11:18 PM
Searcher > 27-06-2021, 09:09 AM
(26-06-2021, 11:18 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.About the T-O map, believe it or not but I think you may be right. Does that mean the top right rosette represents the physical world since it has sky, earth and water present?This is a hard question, indeed. I consider a few possibilities :
Searcher > 27-06-2021, 09:20 AM
(26-06-2021, 11:18 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm not sure if I understand what you mean about the sun, but this is the kind of stuff that needs to be discussed with images. Maybe something for a separate thread about their possible meanings?As for the sun:
Koen G > 27-06-2021, 10:22 AM
Searcher > 27-06-2021, 11:32 AM
(27-06-2021, 10:22 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Ah, I see. It is because you think the castle rosette represents North, so necessary the sun must move away from it. So you see the sun facing the horizon as going under, while I see it as rising above. I think both suns are simply facing the direction of movement.Not really. They were separate observations for the later judgement about them together. I just see the left top sun as heading a precipice, but the right bottom sun - as moving from a precipice, since a precipice is behind the sun (to the left and above), the sun in this case reverts the eyes from a wall, and emanates the light on its way.
Mark Knowles > 27-06-2021, 02:43 PM
(27-06-2021, 10:22 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Ah, I see. It is because you think the castle rosette represents North, so necessary the sun must move away from it. So you see the sun facing the horizon as going under, while I see it as rising above. I think both suns are simply facing the direction of movement.
Koen G > 27-06-2021, 03:52 PM
Searcher > 27-06-2021, 07:33 PM
(27-06-2021, 02:43 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If you haven't already mentioned it, there is a train of thought that argues that the bottom left "clock" is actually a compass pointing north, which is consistent with the top left sun representing east and the bottom right sun representing west.I read here about some "clock" as a compass not the first time, but I never saw an example. Maybe, I just missed this. Could you provide an image of any ones?