Murmurs from a thousand streams:Water symbolism and the fluid epistemology of the Middle Ages, 1000-1400

James SmithMedieval and Early Modern Studies

BackgroundI completed a Bachelor of Arts with majors in

MEMS and Political Science from 2004-2007In 2008, I completed Honours in MEMS with a

dissertation entitled “This Whole Created World is a Book”: Interpreting the East in the 11th-14th centuries

My Honours research brought me into contact with a series of texts containing repeated and symbolically charged descriptions of water, including three of my most frequently used primary sources (The Letter of Prester John, The Relatio of Odoric of Pordenone, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville) .

Initial QuestionsWhat is symbolic function of the water

depicted in these texts?How does this symbolism fit into the wider

intellectual world of the Middle Ages?How would studying any understanding the

symbolism of water enhance an understanding of medieval thought as a whole?

This lead to some research, and eventually to a topic...

Therefore down a longish road I my way was wending,Guidance I had pleaded for Holy Spirit lending;Thirst began to grow in me, strength in labor spendingOn the road, and by the heat of the sun ascending.

Pain of thirst that grew still worse with each of my pacesLent enchantment to my view of some distant placesWhere the heights seemed marvellous - kind as friendly facesLovely as is Paradise, burgeoning with graces.

I was then on fire to see, and I ran more quickly,For signs promised ease from pain - thirst had made me sickly ;Signs? Sweet sounds had struck my ears, hope had made them prickly,Murmurs from a thousand streams (I’m not counting strictly).

Fons Philosophiae – Hugh of St Victor (12th c.), translated by E.A. Synan.

Introducing my Research Topic

A Definition of Terms

Epistemology

Knowledge

Water

The Psalter Mappamundi (12th c.)

Disciplinary ApproachMy thesis ideas come from a combination of

disciplines:

History (primarily intellectual history)

English (literary theory, textual analysis)

Philosophy (theology, morality, metaphysics, cosmology)

Chapter Structure

Chapter 1: Introducing a Fluid Epistemology

Chapter 2: The Flow of Divinity

Chapter 3: Weathering the Tempest

Chapter 4: Contaminating the Imagination

Chapter 5: Reflected Mysteries

Methodology

Each chapter will seek to construct and de-construct, providing an analysis of primary source material while placing it in context.

Source will not be analysed based on an internal textual logic, but as a part of a wider system of thought.

By making use of the ‘anchors’ of history and philosophy, the thesis will remain in context.

GoalsThrough a study of intersection of water symbolism and

epistemology, the structure underpinning the medieval thought will be explored.

What will this tell us about the fundamental symbolic role of water in the human imagination? More specifically, what will this tell us about the role of water in the medieval imagination?

One of the outcomes of this project will be to explore the Christian epistemology of the 11th-14th centuries, allowing new insight and enquiry into other areas of medieval thought.

As a final outcome for this thesis, something new about both medieval thought and the symbolism of water will be revealed.

Source MaterialThe combination of disciplines allows for a wide range

of 11th to 14th century primary source material:

Chronicles and MemoirsTravel NarrativesTheological TreatisesScriptural ExegesesNatural HistoriesMapsArtPoetryRomances

And Now:Some show and tell

Fluid Epistemology

"To you, whom God has given a knowledge of literature, and into whose hands this book has fallen as reading material, I make a solemn appeal that you not cast aside the discourses in this book on account of their ill-framed and rustic style. I beg you rather to imitate him who, with sparkling water, washed a gem that he had found in the dungheap for so long that it was restored to its pristine splendour. Therefore I ask you, moreover, to wash away the filth of my ignorance with the water of your wisdom".

Berengaud (9th c.).

"For you know that the words of Sacred Scripture, when they have been gleaned for a first and second vintage, can be squeezed so as to yield a rich and intoxicating liquid, as if it were usual for them, laden with sacred meanings as they are, to flow again even as if they had never been touched in the first place."

Gilbert of Hoyland (12th c.)

“The fountain of saving doctrine gushes out abundantly, and it brings forth three crystal-clear streams, as it were, in order to irrigate the fields of our minds. It divides the spiritual understanding of the sacred page into three parts, rendering it historically, allegorically and morally.“

Guy of Bazoches (12th c.).

“The river...is the Gospel preaching which proceeds from the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the fountain of life, in whose light we shall see light, from whom all true pleasure emanates in a general way...This water has flowed down at such length and breadth as to have filled the whole world...It irrigates paradise, it fecundates the church...”

Pope Innocent III (12th-13th c.).

“...since compassion of the mother of generosity, they who possess knowledge always give liberally of their great riches to the truly poor and are like a living fountain by whose waters the natural thirst [for enlightenment] is quenched.”

Dante Alighieri (13th-14th c.).

"After the cursed hunger of gold pierces mortal breasts, the starved mind of man knows not rest. It dissolves friendships, begets hate, incites anger, sows strife, nourishes dissension, lets loose war breaks established bonds, stirs up sons against fathers, mothers against their own bowels, brings it to pass that brothers know not the togas of their brothers, and all those whom union of blood unites one madness wickedly divides. While the passion for having makes the stomach of the mind dropsical, the mind thirsts as it drinks, and, like another, burns in the very water, and the abundance of wealth gives intensity to the thirst. So the satiated man hungers, the drunken thirsts, the one with plenty longs, the individual covets everything, and by that very covetousness is made poor, and stays wealthy without, but needy within.”

Alan of Lille The Complaint of Nature (12th c.).

“...waters so sweet, so flavourful, so honeyed that there is no man that drinks of it who does not drink more than he should; the drink is so sweet and so dear that he cannot satisfy his thirst with it, for those who go on drinking it burn with thirst more than before. No one drinks of with without getting drunk, but no one is freed from his thirst; the overpowering sweetness so deceives men that there is no one who swallows so much that he doesn’t want to swallow more; that is how well the sweetness knows how to deceive them. Lechery so stimulates them that they become hydroptic.”

Guillaume De Lorris Jean De Meun, The Romance of the Rose (13th c.), lines 5981-5998.

“And there I saw a soul shaped like a lute, if only he'd been cut off from his legs below the belly, where they divide in two.The bloating dropsy, disproportioning the body's parts with unconverted humors, so that the face, matched with the paunch, was puny,forced him to keep his parched lips wide apart, as a man who suffers thirst from a raging fever has one lip curling up, the other sagging.

“O you who bear no punishment at all (I can't think why) within this world of sorrow,” he said to us, “pause here and look upon the misery of one Master Adamo: in life I had all that I could desire, and now, alas, I crave a drop of water.

The little streams that flow from the green hills of Casentino, descending to the Arno, keeping their banks so cool and soft with moisture, forever flow before me, haunting me; and the image of the leaves me far more parched than the sickness that has dried my shrivelled face.”

Dante’s Inferno (14th c.) - Canto XXX, lines 49-69.

The Earthly Paradise and the four rivers

(Psalter Map)

The waters of the Holy Land(Psalter Map)

The British Isles (Hereford Map)

Christ, Paradise and the Four Rivers (Ebstorf Map)

“Leinus, a spring of Arcadia, does not allow a miscarriage. In Sicily are two springs, one makes a sterile woman fecund, the other a fecund woman sterile.”

“In Epirus is a spring which extinguishes lit torches and lights extinct torches.”

The Etymologies of St Isidore of Seville (7th- 8th c.).

Image from a late 15th c. wood block print of Konrad Von Megenburg’s 14th c. Das Buch Der Natur.

Noah and the Flood in The Holkham Bible (14th c.)

Noah’s Ark and the Ship of the Church

“As an illustration of this spiritual building I shall give you Noe's ark, which your eye shall see outwardly that your soul may be fashioned to its likeness inwardly. You shall see colours, shapes and figures which please the eye; but know that they are set there to teach you wisdom, understanding and virtue, to adorn your soul. The ark signifies the Church, and the Church is Christ's body; so I have drawn the whole person of Christ, head and members, in visible shape, to picture it for you clearly, that when you see the whole you may better be able to follow what is said of the parts.“

Hugh of St. Victor (12th c.) – De Arca Noe Morali

The inscription on a mysterious ship:

GIVE EAR, O MAN WHO WOULDST SET FOOT IN ME: WHOSOEVER THOU ART, TAKE HEED THAT THOU BE FULL OF FAITH, FOR I AM FAITH ITSELF. THEREFORE LOOK TO IT, ERE THOU ENTEREST HERE, THAT THOU BE WITHOUT SPOT, FOR I AM NAUGHT BUT FAITH AND TRUE BELIEF, AND AS SOON AS THOU DOST LAPSE FROM FAITH, MYSELF SHALL CAST THEE DOWN IN SUCH A WAY THAT THOU SHALT FIND IN ME NOR HELP NOR FOOTING, BUT I SHALL FAIL THEE WHOLLY, WHERESOEVER THOU ART CONVICTED OF UNBELIEF, AND HOWEVER SLIGHT THE MEASURE OF THY DEFAULT.

The Quest for the Holy Grail (13th c.).

St Peter and the Ship of the Church

Thankyou for your attention