“Some Certain Significance Lurks in All Things”

The four classical elements in medieval symbolism

Poetry possesses this marvellous faculty of turning all things into something else.
—Mindele Anne Treip

Our discussion of symbolism in medieval life, and in our lives, continues. We began with the role of symbols in literature and in the human experience more generally: “There Is No Feast without Symbol.” The two guiding principles that I proposed in that essay are as follows:

1. Symbols don’t belong only, or even primarily, in books. The truest realm and richest treasury of symbols is the place where you are right now: the material world.

2. Symbolism is not something that makes a fictional story less “real.” Rather, symbolism makes the factual world more real.

Next, we explored an especially thought-provoking and mysterious domain within the symbolic world of the Middle Ages: “When Numbers Were Poetry.”

Our focus this week will be symbolism in nature; today we’ll study fundamental symbolic relationships that united medieval communities to material Creation, and on Tuesday, we will explore the meanings of flowers in medieval culture.

First, though, let’s reflect briefly on the word “symbol.” It derives from Greek sumbolon, which had for its basic meaning something rather prosaic. When two parties entered into a contract of some kind, they would break an object into two pieces, and each party would take a sumbolon, i.e., one of the halves. These corresponding halves could later be presented as proof of identity, and thus they acquired special value when they were brought together, which is more or less what the verb sunballein means: “to place or throw together.” From there, the word branches out into other identifying objects and even into the generic notion of signs as signals, indications, and omens.

Bird, different type of bird, mole, and fish representing air, fire, earth, and water.

If your understanding of symbolism began, as mine did, with high school English classes, try to reimagine symbols with Greek sumbolon in mind: Those identity tokens were visible, tangible, purposeful objects integrated naturally into daily life. They signified the presence of something. They were, furthermore, proof of that presence. This is how we should think of symbolism: a symbol is an object—understood broadly as something we perceive with our senses—that “says” to us, in the poetic language spoken natively by the human soul, something else is here. And as we know from books and paintings, and from the Greek identity tokens, this “something else” is usually more meaningful or consequential, more profound or spiritual or transcendent, than the object itself—which may even be so commonplace as to escape our notice.

And “something else” cannot really be the end of the symbolic story, for what is there in the mind of man that has not some deep and resonant relation with a living, thinking being, whether human or divine? If a symbol declares something else, and something greater, is here, it also declares, or at least implies, someone else, and someone greater, is here—rather like that time when a Poet both human and divine said behold a greater than Solomon here.

The men and women of the Middle Ages were more attuned than we are to the symbolic potentialities of the material universe. They learned this instinctively and continuously from the spirituality and liturgical practices of their religion, from the thoroughly agrarian and handcrafted nature of their societies, and from the animistic tales or faerie lore that they inherited from pagan ancestors—what we might call “superstitions,” in the Chestertonian sense:

If we ever get the English back on to the English land they will become again a religious people, if all goes well, a superstitious people. The absence from modern life of both the higher and lower forms of faith is largely due to a divorce from nature and the trees and clouds.

Let that statement sink in: the absence of “higher forms of faith”—i.e., religious faith—in modern life is “largely due to a divorce from nature and the trees and clouds.” Those are bold words. And since Chesterton wrote them, we know they are carefully chosen words. I see so much interest in Chestertonian thought these days, and much less interest in forsaking or denouncing or even substantially modifying lifestyles that grievously deepen our estrangement from “nature and the trees and clouds.”

We must be realistic about this, however. Living “in harmony with nature” does not, in itself, make a society religious. A great many rogues and villains and murderous brutes have emerged from the fields and forests of history. However, certain features of the small-town, rural, or eremitical life are highly conducive to sincere religious observance and wholesome spirituality. One of these features is symbolism.

Abraham meets Melchizedek, with personifications of fire (top left) and air (top right).

Earth, air, fire, water: four fundamental elements of the natural world, four fundamental elements of medieval symbolism.

“The Creator is here”
Earth—that which is solid and dry, that upon which we stand and build our homes, that from which the crops and trees have grown—spoke of the Creator. Medieval “science,” a word that once meant “knowledge,” offered no other explanation for the existence of the vast and immoveable earth. It was, quite simply, weorc Wuldor-Fæder, as we read in Caedmon’s hymn—“the work of the Glory-Father.”

“The spirit is here”
In medieval culture, air—as I discussed at length in a previous essay—was the foundational symbol of spiritual existence: “The human spirit, like a mighty wind, cannot be seen, and cannot be held in the hand, but it is real, and it is powerful. Like breath, it animates the deepest essence of our being, flowing inward and outward in a perpetual rhythm that echoes the myriad rhythms of the earth and the heavens.”

“Home and family are here”
Symbols are often multivalent, even paradoxical, and this is very much the case with fire. Fire symbolized the punitive agonies of Hell, or the purifying agonies of Purgatory, but we ought not make too much of this. As one spends more and more time learning from the historical documents and literary works of the Middle Ages, it becomes increasingly clear that the members of “mainstream” medieval society—peasants and craftsmen, housewives and seamstresses, students and warriors—didn’t spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about Hell. If the topic arises with notable frequency in devotional works or homiletic literature, I might interpret the situation as a clerical response to this very fact—that is, as an attempt to admonish and correct a populace that, in the author’s view, was not sufficiently mindful, and certainly not sufficiently fearful, of Hell.

I believe that when ordinary medieval folks saw fire, they also saw the home and the family. Fire was the hearth, where light was made, food was cooked, bodies were warmed, tales were told, and loved ones were gathered. As confirmation of this, Spanish and French words for “home”—hogar and foyer—derive from a Latin word meaning “fireplace.”

“Life is here”
Water meant life, in the fullest sense of the word, because in medieval culture, water was not only a remedy for thirst (ideally in the form of ale), a defense against heat, the vital principle of farm crops, and a means of cleansing the body—it was also eternal salvation, which was the ultimate negation of death, and was made possible by the waters of Baptism.

One of my favorite non-Shakespearean literary quotes is from Melville’s Moby-Dick: “Some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher.” Medieval life was often hard, but it was never empty; it was a life filled and enriched and spiritualized by symbols. People knew how to look out into the world and, seeing one object or another, discern “some certain significance”—something else, something greater, someone greater, whose presence and enduring importance resonated in their souls.