The four winds
Even with an astrolabe in hand as an aid to navigation, early seafaring and wayfaring was a hazardous business where one was often at the mercy of the prevailing meteorological conditions. The medieval mind sought significance from such fluctuations. Manuscript 428/428, the Tractatus de quaternario, a twelfth-century manuscript originating, it is believed, from northern France, takes as its theme an interpretation of the Hippocratic notion of four humours, extrapolated here principally within the context of the four stages of life, according to Western physiological tradition. This physiological theory was an extrapolation of the system of the four climatic seasons and was based on the juxtapositioning of fundamental elements: humid and hot for infancy; hot and dry for youth; dry and cold for decline; cold and humid for old age. Accordingly, infancy takes as its seasonal symbol the Spring; old age is Winter. The elements are not overlooked. Air represents Spring and innocence; fire is youthful Summer ambition; earth is middle-age Autumnal wisdom; water the sign of Winter when life trickles away from one鈥檚 grasp.
On folio 36 verso (see gallery below) we see an illustration of the tides, a number of fish, a crocodile and a coiled sea-snake. To represent the direction of the current the depiction is inverted so, at the top, is Meridies, the South Wind and Septentrio, the North Wind, is found at the bottom. The tides are susceptible to the caprices of the Four Winds and here the prevailing current driving these creatures eastwards is Occidens, the West Wind. This suggests the curiosity of the Occidental world and its appetite for voyage and discovery.
The theme of four continues on folio 47 (see gallery below). Here we see an illustration of a globe with female figures representing, in tropical astrology, the four signs of the zodiac indicating a shift in the season (e.g. the Tropic of Cancer for Summer, and so on):
Quatuor in signis agitur conuersio solis, que solidum magni quasi corpus conficit anni. (The sun's orbit takes place over four seasons, which comprise the totality, as it were the body, of the year.)
Manuscript 428/428 came to the College in 1659 as part of the bequest of William Moore, sometime Fellow and latterly University Librarian. Moore was compelled to resign his Fellowship during the English Civil War but appears to have borne the College no ill-will; his bequest of a substantial number of manuscripts remains the largest single gift to our Library of non-printed books by an individual. The manuscript is no stranger to travel; in 2000 it was taken to the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian at Lisbon for an exhibition with the theme of the four ages of time.
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