35. The four seasons, elements and humours
THE RECKONING OF TIME
35. THE FOUR SEASONS, ELEMENTS AND HUMOURS
There are four seasons in the year, in which the Sun, by taking its course through the di¡erent regions of the sky, tempers the globe which lies beneath it, according to the universal solicitude of Divine Wisdom, so that by not always remaining in the same place, it does not devastate
Earth's lovely vesture by its devouring heat. Rather, travelling through diverse regions by gradual stages, it preserves temperate conditions for sprouting and ripening the fruits of the Earth.312
The seasons [tempora] take their name from this temperateness;313 or else they are rightly called tempora because they turn one into the other, being tempered one to another by some qualitative likeness. For winter is cold and wet, inasmuch as the Sun is quite far o¡;314 spring, when [the Sun] comes back above the Earth,315 is wet and warm; summer, when it waxes very hot, is warm and dry; autumn, when it falls to the lower regions, dry and cold. And so it happens that with each one embracing what is on either side of it, through the moderating mean, the whole is linked up to itself like a sphere.316 /392/ It is also said that the very elements of the universe are distinguished by these divergent qualities, and that they are knit into a company with each other, but each to each.
For earth is dry and cold, water cold and wet, air wet and warm, ¢re warm and dry, and therefore the ¢rst is likened to autumn, the next to winter, the next to spring, and the last to summer.317 And man himself, who is called ''microcosm'' by the wise, that is, ''a smaller universe'', has
312 Bede is revisiting a theme discussed in The Nature of Things 4 and On Times 8.
There, as here, his main source is Isidore, DNR 7 (199^205) and Etym. 5.35.
313 Cf. ch. 2 above.
314 I.e. in the south.
315 I.e. it is higher in the sky for people in the northern hemisphere.
316 Bede seems to have in mind a circular diagram of the type called syzygia elementorum, showing the seasons ''holding hands'' so to speak through shared qualities; cf.
Isidore, DNR 7 (202 bis). For a more elaborate version, showing the seasons, elements, and humours, see ibid. 11 (216 bis). This schema was very widely di¡used, and appears in a number of contexts: see Peter Vo« ssen, ''U« ber die Elementen-Syzygien'', in Liber Floridus.
Mittelalterliche Studien Paul Lehmann . . . gewidmet (St Ottilien: Eos-Verlag, 1950):33^46;
Ernest Wickersheimer, ''Figures me¤ dico-astrologiques des IXe, Xe et XIe sie' cles'', Janus 19
(1914):157^177; and L. Pressouyre, ''Le cosmos platonicienne de la cathe¤ drale d'Anagni'',
Me¤ langes d'arche¤ ologie et d'histoire de l'E¤ cole franc aise de Rome 78 (1966):551^593.
317 Cf. Isidore, DNR 11.2^3 (215.14^217.37); Ambrose, Hexaemeron 3.4.18
(71.16^72.14).
TRANSLATION
his body tempered in every respect by these same qualities; indeed each of its constituent humours imitates the manner of the season in which it prevails.318 For blood, which increases in the spring, is moist and warm; red bile, which [increases in] the summer, is hot and dry; black bile, which [increases in] the autumn, is dry and cold; and phlegmatic humours, which [increase in] the winter, are cold and moist. Indeed, blood is at its most active in children, red bile in young people, melancholia (that is, gall mingled with the dregs of black blood) in the middleaged, and phlegmatic humours dominate in the elderly. Moreover, blood makes those in whom its potency is greatest cheerful, joyous, tenderhearted, much given to laughter and speech; red bile makes people lean, even though they eat a lot, swift, bold, irritable and agile; black bile makes them stolid, solemn, set in their ways and gloomy; phlegmatic humours produce people who are slow, /393/ sleepy and forgetful.319
However, di¡erent people place the beginnings of the seasons at di¡erent times. Bishop Isidore the Spaniard said that winter begins on the 9th kalends of December [23 November], spring on the 8th kalends of March [22 February], summer on the 9th kalends of June [24 May], and autumn on the 10th kalends of September [23 August].320 But the Greeks and Romans, whose authority on these matters, rather than that of the Spaniards, it is generally preferable to follow, deem that winter begins on the7thidesofNovember[7November],springonthe7thidesofFebruary
[7 February], summer on the 7th ides of May [9 May], and autumn on the 7th ides of August [7 August]. Noting that summer and winter begin with the evening or morning rising and setting of the Pleiades, they place the commencement of spring and autumn when the Pleiades rise and set around the middle of the night.321 Then again, in the ¢nest and most authoritative books of the cosmographers, we ¢nd the same seasons clearly distinguished, with the rising of the Pleiades observed at the 7th ides of May [9 May] and their setting at the 7th ides of November [7
November]. And Pliny the Elder in the second book of his Natural History judges that they are to be divided in the same manner.322
But that man of the Church St Anatolius, in his work about Easter, 318 Cf. Isidore, Etym. 4.5.3.
319 Cf. Vindicianus, Epistola ad Pentadium, ed. V. Rose, Theodori Prisciani Euporiston libri III (Leipzig: Teubner, 1894):487.5^489.2.
320 Isidore, DNR 7.5 (203.46^51).
321 Vindicianus, Epistola (487.2^9).
322 Pliny, HN 2.47.122^125 (1.262^266).
THE RECKONING OF TIME
when he argues with great subtlety about the solstices and equinoxes, and about the increments of hours and momenta, ends his disputation, and at the same time, his book, in this wise: /394/ But you ought not to be unaware of the fact that although these four aforementioned frontiers of the seasons are close to the kalends of the following months, nevertheless each one contains within itself the mid-point of the seasons, that is, spring, summer, autumn and winter, and the beginnings of the seasons do not occur where the kalends of the months begin. But each season is to begin at such a point that the equinox divides the spring season [in half, beginning] from the ¢rst day; summer is similarly divided at the 8th kalends of July [24 June], autumn at the 8th kalends of October [24
September], and winter at the 8th kalends of January [25 December].323
Scripture bears witness to where the people of God placed these beginnings of the seasons in the law, which it commands in these words:
Observe the month of the new fruits, and the ¢rst of the spring season, and make the Passover unto the Lord your God.324 From what their most learned Bishop Proterius says, the Egyptians appear to have followed this: One should take note that they make a great mistake who place the beginning of the ¢rst month of the lunar course on the 25th day of the month of Phamenoth, which is the 12th kalends of April [21 March], because then it appears that the beginning of spring is advanced by those who wish, with all diligence, to ¢nd it here.325
Spring [ver] is so called because /395/ everything is verdant then, that is, it £ourishes [virescant]. Summer [aestas] [takes its name] from heat [aestu] which in [summer] is bestowed for the ripening of crops; autumn, from the increasing [autumnatione] of the crops which are gathered then, while ''winter'' is translated by learned men as ''cold''326 and ''sterility''. And indeed, these names for the seasons agree with our climate. They say that the Indies, where the heavens show another face, and the stars have other points of rising, has two summers and two harvests each year, with winter in between them, because of the blowing of the trade winds, and they relate that while we have winter, there there are gentle breezes and the seas are navigable.327 Egypt is said
323 Ps.-Anatolius 14 (327).
324 Deuteronomy 16.1.
325 Proterius, Ep. ad Leonem 8 (276).
326 Isidore, Etym. 5.35.
327 Pliny, HN 6.21.58 (2.380).