3. For medieval Christian thought everything in the
world was a symbol. Things, persons, and events actual
and historical, were considered as symbols of other
things, persons, and events, or as symbols of concepts
and ideas. The doctrine of “universal symbolism” orig-
inated in Saint Augustine (De Trinitate) and first of all
in the Neo-Platonic philosophy of Pseudo-Dionysius
the Areopagite, for whom “visible things are images
of invisible beauty.” Thanks to John Scotus Erigena's
translation, the ideas of Pseudo-Dionysius spread
widely and it was Hugh of St. Victor who presented
the complete theory of universal symbolism: “all nature
expresses God” (Omnis natura Deum loquitur). For
Hugh the universe is “a book written by the hand of
God.” Alain de Lille has given a popular, compact,
poetic formula of universal symbolism:
Omnis mundi creatura
quasi liber et pictura
nobis est et speculum
(“Every creature of the world is for us like a book and
a picture of the world, and it is like a mirror”). Saint
Bonaventure finds that created beauty, being a sign of
the eternal, leads men to God. Theologians discerned
mainly two kinds of symbolism under different names
but signifying two more or less basically similar divi-
sions: (1) existing things endowed with meaning (res
et signa) and (2) conventional signs (Chydenius, 1960).
In the practical use of symbolism in art one can discern
another diversity: an Aristotelian, rational trend and
a Neo-Platonic, irrational, and mystical one (Gombrich,
1948; 1965). In the first case, the images were not
considered as including any more content than their
verbal equivalents; they constituted a code, a conven-
tional language of signs used to communicate religious
messages. In the second case, experience of symbolical
images was believed to give the observer another,
higher knowledge than that transmitted by words; it
was meant to give a direct ecstatic, and enthusiastic
contact with abstract ideas incorporated, as it were,
in images. Medieval art used generally symbolic images
conceived as a code transmitting its messages to every-
body, also to those who were not able to read. The
other attitude to symbols appeared in the Middle Ages
in the mystical trends. The image which can be grasped
in a sensual way was a means of transgressing the limits
of the corporeal world, and of reaching the spiritual
one. Such a function of images was formulated by
various theologians. Jean Gerson, in the fifteenth cen-
tury, put it in the following words: “And we ought
thus to learn to transcend with our minds from these
visible things to the invisible, from the corporeal to
the spiritual. For this is the purpose of the image”
(Ringbom [1969], p. 165).
The didactic doctrine had been formulated already
in the early period of the Church; according to that
doctrine, images were considered as a form of writing
accessible to those unable to read (Paulinus of Nola,
Gregory the Great; also Thomas Aquinas considered
images to be useful, ad instructionem rudium). This
attitude lasted until the very end of the Middle Ages
(later it was revived in the period of the Counter-
Reformation), and it found expression as late as the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the early graphic
imagery of such typological compendia as Biblia
pauperum and Speculum humanae salvationis. The
didactic aims encompassed not only the direct moral
lessons which were transmitted through the imagery
of “prohibition” and “dissuasion,” of the Last Judgment
and of the Virtues and Vices, but also the visual repre-
sentation of sometimes complicated links among the
events of sacred history, considered as prefigurations
and fulfillments which were established between the
figures and events of the Old and the New Dispen-
sation. Thus typological thinking connected images
into symbolic relations. Visual unity was established
in the religious imagery through the large encyclopedic
compendia, e.g.,
Glossa ordinaria (the large body of
Commentaries to the Bible, until recently held to be
a compilation by Walafrid Strabo), and Gulielmus
Durandus' system of liturgy
Rationale divinorum offi-
ciorum, or Vincent of Beauvais's
Speculum maius, an
image of the world seen in the symbolistic mirror.
These books contributed to the realization of the tre-
mendous iconographical programs of the great cathe-
drals of the high Middle Ages, where God, nature, and
man were united into an exceptionally elaborated sys-
tem of symbolic images, mirroring the model of the
world current in the period of Gothic art. Art at that
time followed the symbolistic way of thinking which
prevailed in theology as well as in liturgy, in profane
ceremonials, and in the other fields of life. Art gave
artistic form to the abstract structure of the cosmos
as seen by medieval theologians and brought it close
to the understanding or to the imagination of every
man. This does not at all mean that medieval symbol-
ism was always understandable to everybody and
everywhere. Very specific theological problems and
controversies found their way into iconography, and
when deciphered by modern iconographers they dis-
close often complicated religious and/or political situ-
ations (for example, the imagery of the Ruthwell Cross,
which reflects the conflicting ideologies of Northern
versus Roman Christianity in England, as revealed in
an analysis by Meyer Schapiro, 1944).
Neo-Platonic symbolism was developed especially
under the impact of writings by Pseudo-Dionysius the
Areopagite. His influence promoted to a great extent
medieval ideas about the symbolism of light. The sym-
bolism of light found its highest achievement in the
creation of Gothic architecture, dominated by the
mysticism of light (von Simson, 1956). Abbot Suger,
the auctor intellectualis of Gothic architecture, pre-
sented in his writings an excellent record of that atti-
tude toward symbolism. In his De rebus in adminis-
tratione sua gestis (XVII) he writes about the doors
with gilt bronze reliefs: “Bright is the noble work; but
being nobly bright, the work / should brighten the
minds, so that they may travel through the true lights,
/ to the true light where Christ is the true door /.
... The dull mind rises to truth through that which
is material...” (Panofsky [1946], pp. 46-49). Con-
templating precious stones transports Suger's mind to
a contemplation of the supernatural:
When—out of my delight in the beauty of the house of
God—the loveliness of the many-colored stones has called
me away from external cares, and worthy meditation has
induced me to reflect, transferring that which is material
to that which is immaterial, on the diversity of the sacred
virtues: then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as
it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither
exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the
purity of Heaven; and that, by the Grace of God, I can
be transported from this inferior to that higher world in
an anagogical manner”
(ibid., pp. 63-65).
To a similar sphere of mystical symbols the specific
symbolism of numbers also belongs. Numbers in the
Bible and those referring to quantitative relations in
architecture were considered as having a mystical
meaning: “the Divine Wisdom is reflected in the num-
bers impressed on all things” (Saint Augustine, De
libero arbitrio II, XVI). The belief in the mystical signi-
ficance of numbers, which originated in Pythagorean-
ism and was revived by Neo-Platonism, was transmitted
to the Middle Ages by the Fathers of the Church (Mâle
[1898]; English ed. [1958], p. 10). Complicated ramifi-
cations of this numerical symbolism in the field of
medieval architectural iconography are studied by J.
Sauer (1924) as well as by E. Mâle (ibid., p. 10). The
number eight, for example, connected with the idea
of new life by the Fathers (since it comes after seven,
the terminal number of human life and of the world),
expresses the concept of resurrection and therefore that
of the Baptism; because of that early belief baptisteries
and baptismal fonts are octagonal (Mâle, ibid., p. 14).
One may trace in such use of numerical symbolism
a mystical rather than a didactic attitude.
The general adoption of a symbolic attitude does
not mean that in the Middle Ages no actual events
were represented in art. However, since medieval art
was very much traditional and remained faithful to
exempla or compositional visual patterns, the actual
events, when they were sometimes taken as subjects
of representation, used to be transformed to fit precon-
ceived traditional patterns. The written lives of the
saints have been composed according to literary and
mythical topoi. The same may be observed in art.
When a new subject had to be represented it used to
be molded according to existing patterns. As an exam-
ple we may adduce the story of Saint Adalbert repre-
sented on the bronze doors of the twelfth century at
Gniezno, Poland. The formerly executed European
bronze church doors represented Christological narra-
tive or allegorical figures or ornaments. The fairly
recent hagiographic story had to be given visual shape.
It is not surprising that the representations in most
cases follow the patterns of Christological iconography
(Kalinowski, 1959). Secular subjects, as for example,
the conquest of England by William the Conqueror
and its circumstances, represented on the so-called
Bayeux Tapestry, followed in the general idea the
classical tradition. It seems that perhaps more of a
direct experience of the actual medieval life found its
way into art than is usually admitted, but the relative
share of symbolism and realism, of system and freedom
is still a matter of discussion among medievalists
(Berliner, 1945; 1956).
In the late Middle Ages the general system of icon-
ography persisted, but new subjects, especially the
representations of the most human episodes and rela-
tionships in Christ's life, namely of His infancy and
His emotional connections (with the Virgin and Saint
John) as well as His Passion and the episodes of Our
Lady's life come to the fore. Although symbolical and
didactic thinking maintained its importance, the means
to communicate with the faithful changed: most sub-
jects popular in the late Middle Ages appeal to the
beholder's emotions rather than to his reason. Scholars
have selected a group of so-called devotional pictures
as opposed to dogmatic and to historical repre-
sentations, but the precise delimitation of such a group
is still a matter of discussion, as is also the question
of how much this art was influenced by literature and
especially by pious poetry. With the development of
the graphic arts new cheap pictures spread widely the
typological imagery systematized in the Biblia pau-
perum, and in the Speculum humanae salvationis.
Great collections of religious meditations, compiled in
monasteries, like Meditations on the Life of Christ by
Pseudo-Bonaventure (ed. I. Ragusa and R. B. Green,
1961), spread widely a new emotional approach to
iconography. Also the religious theater had some influ-
ence on the way stories in art were told.
