Dear Graham,
I am afraid that there was no such thing as a "formalised 'mystic language
of colours'", but rather a great variety of frequently contradicting and
partly unstable conventions. The most common form of interpreting a given
colour was by associating it a) with an object of the same colour and b)
deriving it's meaning from other properties/qualities of this object. The
best sources for studying medieval colour symbolism seem to be biblical
commentaries explaining colours (or coloured objects, e.g. gems, plants,
textiles) in the Bible, exegetical handbooks or encyclopedias compiling the
traditionals meanings of the properties of biblical or other things (De
proprietatibus rerum), and liturgical handbooks explaining the meaning of
colours in liturgy. Some time ago Christel Meier and others were preparing
a _Lexikon der mittelalterlichen Farbenbedeutungen_ (as a follow-up to
Heinz Meyer and R. Suntrup's now indispensable _Lexikon der
mittelalterlichen Zahlenbedeutungen_), but it seems not that they ever
published more than a preliminary version of the article on 'red' (in
_Fru"hmittelalterliche Studien_) and I believe that the project has been
abbandoned.
"Perse", by the way, is a Gallicism in Italian, and the meaning is
(originally) "Persian blue" > "dark blue", by extension > "dark". As I
recall it (without currently having access to my books or other resources),
in Old French it was often associated with expensive (dark blue) textiles,
hence -- maybe -- its appropriateness for being associated in a more
general sense with nobility.
Best,
Otfried
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|