medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear Erik,
At 08:26 PM 7/1/2003 +0200, you wrote:
>I'm afraid the term Ophiuchus falls outside my competance!
>Which text is it based on?
As I said, Ophiuchus is a constellation. The names of anciently identified
constellations (and yes, O. is one of these) are transmitted in numerous
texts. For name+description I'd check out Aratos' _Phainomena_ or
Manilius' _Astronomica_ or perhaps some encyclopedic texts. "Ophiuchus" is
a latinisation of his Greek name, Ophiouchos, meaning "snake-holder"; in
Latin this constellation is also called Anguitenens or Serpentarius.
I had associated O. with December as that is where he occurs in modern
descriptions of the Zodiac. But, as I have since learned, he is a
relatively recent addition to that august company. You would have to find
out for yourself if, and if so then where, O. appears in ancient and
medieval calendrical schemes.
On a very different line of thought, March is both the end of winter and,
in some systems, the beginning of the new year. A common western symbol
for the arrival of the new year is that of a snake glistening in its new
skin, having just shed the old one. Whereas that seems iconographically
remote from your figure, there may be an underlying natural-world
connection between them.
If your figure is, as you indicate, derived from one in which a human
points to some other creature to indicate his/her occupation, then perhaps
your human is a snake-catcher. These are, at least in Mediterranean
countries, very active in spring when snakes have emerged from their winter
dens in numbers large enough to attract attention and are at the same time
often still sluggish from lack of nourishment during the preceding
months. March might be rather too soon for such emergence in the Danish
Kingdom but in Greece and Italy meteorological spring does often begin in
March. So if your illustration either were created in a southern clime or
depended on an ancient or early medieval model from those regions, then
March might have been a good place for its artist to depict someone who
catches snakes.
Best again,
John Dillon
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