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THE ICONOGRAPHY OF THE ADAGIORUM CHILIADES

At the very core of this study there lives a paradox. All of its research pivots around the hypothesis that the Adagiorum chiliades, the corpus of classical proverbs collected by Erasmus, gave birth to a world of images, in spite of the fact that the book itself was not illustrated. Those images, though born as mental, literary images, migrated to the visible media of book illustrations, of emblem picturae, paintings, drawings and engravings, of sculptural decorations and shop signs, to communicate their messages.

This is not a new insight. That adages inspired emblems and devices has been known almost from the moment the first edition of the Adages was produced. Commentators of emblem books sometimes listed the adages they identifed in the book, eventually culminating in the long entry “Proverbia, quae in toto opere undique obvia sunt “¹ which Johannes Thuilius included in his massive index to Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum libellus.

Still, as far as I know, no attempt has been made to systematically fathom the extent to which the mental images called forth by the adages and Erasmus’s comments penetrated European artistic imagination. And yet, the importance of this aspect of the reception of Erasmus’s writings can hardly be overestimated. Although we have only started to assemble a corpus of adagium-inspired images in a more systematic manner, we can safely argue that without such a corpus we are missing a cornerstone in our information about European mentality and morality.

Of course, works of visual art that used an adagium as a motto were not necessarily based on the Erasmian text. The Adagiorum chiliades is an enormous storehouse of classical wit and wisdom, and it gathered proverbs and sayings from the texts of a small army of Greek and Roman authors. Those writings survived in many other forms and formats, and the Adages were not the only means of preservation and transportation for all of their proverbs and pithy phrases. Still, the sheer depth and width of the collection, the way Erasmus often supports the interpretation of an adage with additional proverbs and sayings, and the established role of the Adages in education, convincingly suggest that it played a crucial role in early modern visual culture.

The connection between a work of visual art and the Adages is often undocumented. Artists do rarely accommodate modern researchers by explicitly informing them that they took their inspiration from Erasmus. By definition then, the researcher must gather circumstantial evidence. This is not made easier by the fact that the relationship between a work of art and an adage can take on many guises. An adage listed by Erasmus can reappear unchanged as the motto of a device or an emblem. A mental image evoked by Erasmus in his explanation of an adage might also be the subject of an emblem or a painting, but be connected in a much less obvious way. For these reasons I propose to describe firstly, more or less systematically, the types of connections and associations that to my mind justify inclusion in this corpus. So, emblematic images to be included in our corpus will be those that consist of a picture, usually accompanied by text, which:

1. use an adage as a motto, as part of a subscriptio or as the source of a pictura

2. use a proverb or saying quoted in the comment of an adage, as a motto, as part of a subscriptio or as the source of a pictura

3. are explained (by early modern commentators) with reference to an adage

4. are explained with reference to a proverb quoted in the explanation of an adage

5. use a translation or a paraphrase of an adage as their motto or as part of a subscriptio

6. use imagery analoguous to imagery evoked by the adage, i.e. share the subject matter of an adage

I. Documents using an adage as their motto

Adagium I iv 2 Satis quercus (Acorns have had their day) is an example of an adage that was used as a motto, here for a printer’s device. The first woodcut was used a few times in books produced by Jan Ewoutzoon, a printer active in Amsterdam between 1535 and 1561². The same device, of a man pointing upwards at the acorns in an oak tree, had been used between 1536 and 1553 by Joos Lambrecht in Gent³. Lambrecht also used the second device shown here, with a crucifixion and a snake added to the image. The message of the adage – ‘give up your old ways, since there are better ways’ – is made explicit in the second line of text on the first device: ‘Cessent solita, dum meliora’

Lambrecht was a protestant and may have aimed his message of change at the ‘Roman ways’, a use of the adage that was probably not foreseen by Erasmus. Whether this twist was actually intended by Lambrecht or Ewoutzoon is irrelevant at this point. What is relevant is the fact that the second variant uses the Greek source of the adage - Ἅλις δρύος – as its motto. As the Greek phrase opens the adage’s short explanatory essay, it seems likely that Lambrecht did actually derive both mottoes from the Adagiorum chiliades⁴, where the two variants would be printed in close proximity.

II. Documents using a secondary proverb as their motto

In a sense the previous device already shows this practice, as demonstrated by the Greek motto. In fact, quite a few of the short essays which elucidate the meaning of a proverb start with a repetition of the adage, often in Greek or in a slightly longer version of the adage that is the actual ‘header’.

In the explanation of adagium I ii 15 Suum cuique pulchrum (What is one’s own is beautiful) Erasmus quotes Horace’s Caecus amor sui (Self-love is blind). Florentius Schoonhovius uses this Horatian phrase as the motto of his Emblema XLIII⁵. In the same explanation Erasmus also uses the Greek word for self-love Φιλαυτία, which is the motto of Andrea Alciato’s Emblem LXIX.⁶

Obviously I am not concluding that Schoonhovius or Alciato necessarily borrowed their mottoes from the Adagiorum chiliades. They did not need to. Schoonhovius knew his Horace, and Alciato did not need Erasmus to find the Greek word for self-love. My hypothesis, however, is that at some point the frequency with which we encounter these parallel occurrences will cease to appear coincidental and will start to demonstrate a pattern.

Another example to illustrate this second type of connection to the adages is provided by this emblem by Rollenhagen⁷. Its motto Manus manum lavat is found in the explanation of adagium I vii 99 Fricantem refrica (You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours). Rollenhagen’s application to marriage is only one of many possible ways to use the concept, in addition to the ones suggested by Erasmus.

III. Documents interpreted with reference to an adage

The Index Rerum et Verborum of Alciato’s Emblemata, in the edition published by Tozzi in Padua in 1621, fills close to a hundred pages. The longest lemma in the Index is the one that lists the many hundreds of proverbs that various commentators of Alciato have used in the explanation of his emblems. Most of those proverbs can be found in the Adagiorum chiliades. Looking at just one of them suffices to illustrate the third principle for inclusion. Adage I v 40 Unus vir, nullus vir (One man, no man) is referred to in the interpretation of two rather similar emblems: Unum nihil, duos plurimum posse (One can do nothing, two can do much)⁸ and Mutuum auxilium (Mutual help).⁹

It is not difficult to see why the commentaries, edited by Joannes Thuilius, mention the adage. The first emblem is about the cooperation of Diomedes and Ulysses; the second one, shown here, deals with the help the halt and the blind offer to each other. The message in both cases is that a man alone cannot accomplish anything. By working together, however, two men can become ‘one man’.

IV. Documents explained with reference to proverbs quoted in a commentary

Again, one example should suffice to illustrate the fourth basis for inclusion of documents in our corpus. In his long comment on adage II 1 1 Festina lente (Make haste slowly), Erasmus first of all gives the original Greek for the adage: Σπεῦδε βραδέως. In the Tozzi edition of Alciato’s Emblemata this Greek saying is used in the commentary to emblem XX Maturandum (All in good time), of which the pictura shows a remora¹⁰ wrapped around an arrow, visualizing the paradox of Slow Haste. Obviously this type of usage differs only marginally from the previous one. An important function of Erasmus’s commentaries was to demonstrate additional facets of a proverb. Sometimes Erasmus looks at an adage almost as if he is holding up a piece of cut glass to a light to see how it can function in different settings and contexts. So, whether the primary adage would be referenced, or one of the proverbs quoted in a commentary, could well depend on the emphasis or the angle chosen by an author, an artist or a commentator. Still, it is useful to shed a light on this type of usage as it helps us to build a picture of the influence of the Adagiorum chiliades.

V. Documents that use a translated or paraphrased adage as their motto

Quite a few examples of paraphrased or translated adages are provided by the prolific Dutch author of emblems Jacob Cats. In his ‘Proteus ofte Minnebeelden verandert in Sinnebeelden’, we find emblem XXXII, with the Latin motto Inter manum et mentum (Between hand and chin), which refers to adage I v 1 Multa cadunt inter calicem supremaque labra. The English equivalent of this adage - ‘There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip’ - is paraphrased by Cats while he also provides a Dutch translation: ‘Tusschen hant en tant, raect veel te schand’.

In the same volume¹¹ we also find one of the many variations on the Festina lente (Slow Haste) theme. In emblem XVII the speaker compares the peach tree – which blossoms very early, risking frostbite - with the mulberry tree, which takes its time to produce leaves and fruits. The Dutch motto of the emblem ‘Yl, met wyl’ (a translation of Festina lente)¹² contains an obvious moralizing warning to the young woman.

VI. Documents that use imagery analogous to imagery evoked by the adage or represent ideas that belong to the same category as those expressed in an adage

The fundamental hypothesis of this study is that the material gathered in the Adagiorum chiliades surfaced again and again - hundreds if not thousands of times - in products of the visual arts. The relation between adages and those products can take on many different forms. Some are fairly self-evident, some require extensive elucidation. Sometimes we shall find evidence that the Adages were the actual source of a work of art; at other times the evidence for a connection will be primarily contextual, and a picture will first of all be analogous to a mental image called forth by an adage’s text.

A few examples to clarify my point. In his Symbolorum et emblematum ex re herbaria desumtorum centuria una collecta, Joachim Camerarius included an emblematic warning to leave the anagyris alone (Emblem XVIII Ne moveas) because of the horrible smell its fruits exude. The emblem’s pictura shows a man turning away from the anagyris shrub, holding his nose. Among the authorities referred to by Camerarius are Dioscourides, Plinius, Aristophanes and a Stephanus who speaks about a certain place in Attica, where this fruit is found in abundance. All of these are also mentioned by Erasmus in his commentary to adagium I i 65 Anagyrum commoves — You are moving Anagyrus. Whether Camerarius used the Adages as his source I shall leave to the philologists. For my purpose, at least for now, it suffices that the mental image of the stinking shrub described by Erasmus and Camerarius materialized in this picture.

A more straightforward illustration is provided by Juan de Boria’s Empresas Morales, since he explicitly quotes adagium I i 86 Faber compedes quas fecit, ipse gestet (Let the smith who made the fetters wear them) while the pictura to his emblem simply shows a pair of fetters.¹³

A third and final example of a mental image materializing in a ‘physical’ picture, is the one used for emblem 23 in Jakob Bornitz’s Emblematum sacrorum et civilium miscellaneorum, with the motto Talio (Retaliation). In this case the mental image called forth by the text – I i 52 Indicit in foveam quam fecit (He fell into the pit which he had made) - is not classical but biblical. The Book of Proverbs (26:27), Ecclesiastes (10:8) and the book of Psalms (7:16-17) all contain a warning against digging a pit to trap someone else, because the harm will be on yourself.

These three examples allow us to catch a glimpse of how the themes and stories, ideas and concepts that we find in the Adages, appear in the world of the visual arts. Having their contents resurface in the visual arts is not the only feature connecting these three adages. They are connected on a different level as well, as they all express the concept of “self-inflicted harm”¹⁴. By moving a stinking tree, by forging fetters and by digging a pit, people harm themselves. Again, not a new observation. Far from it. The edition I am using – printed by Froben in 1559 – contains an Index of 24 pages, 4 columns to a page, that organizes the whole of the Adages according to the shared concepts they express, their loci communes or commonplaces. The question, permeating this whole investigation, is whether the connection between adage and commonplace and by implication, the analogy between the adages, made explicit in the Index of Commonplaces, survived the transportation into the world of pictures (and texts).

While there can be little doubt that Camerarius associated his emblem with the concept 'malum accersitum'", could he expect his readers to make the same connection when contemplating the emblem? Did he himself think of the analogy between the adagium he associated with his emblem and the adagium immediately preceding it, i.e. adagium I i 64 Movere Camarinam¹⁵, which was also filed under the locus "self-inflicted harm"? And could he expect his readers to think of the same analogy?

Chapter 1. Chains of analogies and associations

Some thirty years ago I had to rush to catch a train. I left my house in a hurry, and when I reached the small station in my home town, I saw that my train was already arriving. I quickly paid for my ticket, ripped it from the machine and dashed down the stairs, ready to sprint to the platform. But at the bottom of the stairs I suddenly had to stop. Jumping from the final step I had seriously sprained a calf muscle, and my sprint turned into a limping hobble. Of course I missed my train. Nothing special. Similar accidents happen to legions of commuters every day, and when they do, no one mumbles ‘festina lente!!’. Neither did I at the precise moment I hurt my leg. But as the injury bothered me for several weeks, and I had started studying the Adages for my work on printer’s devices, I had ample opportunity to make the connection, realizing how the concept of ‘slow haste’ fitted my own situation.

Some years later I worked for a university library, and like many academic libraries mine had to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. The use of printed books and journals was declining rather dramatically, and more and more students were using the limited space of the library building for other purposes than reading books. This problem was and still is almost omnipresent, although some librarians face it with a greater sense of urgency than others. One of the strategies to solve it, is called deselection. Deselection is an interesting euphemism for the process of selecting and removing printed volumes from the library and replace them by digital copies and tables and chairs for students. This process is taking place in libraries across the globe. As you can well imagine, it is executed with varying degrees of diligence and respect for the cultural and intellectual heritage represented by the books. However, if an Executive Board wants to show off its efficient style of management and has the executive power to ignore or overrule the reservations of faculty and library staff, rash deselection is identical to throwing away books in a hurry, and it can have disastrous effects.

Again, festina lente is not literally the first phrase that springs to mind when observing the process, but you only need a slight sense of irony to appreciate the applicability of the adage to this situation. Especially when reading more of the explanation offered by Erasmus:

“If you consider the vigour and wealth of meaning embodied in these few brief words <festina lente>, … it should, in a word, be brought before the eye on all public buildings everywhere and become widespread and familiar, as something which ought ideally to be always present in every man's mind and never very far from men's eyes. For there is no mortal creature who would not greatly profit by it, and especially princes and those to whom, if I may borrow Homer's words, 'peoples are given in trust, and many the cares that beset them.' For men of humble station, if they are idle and fail to do something, or headstrong and make a mistake, do far less damage and any unfortunate results are more easily set right. But one fit of idleness in a prince, one rash decision - just think what storms it sometimes raises and what ruin it can bring with it into the affairs of men!

…

Conversely, it happens sometimes that the inborn vigour natural to a prince, and his lion-like spirit, if I may so express it, increased by ample resources, stimulated by success in great enterprises, fired perhaps by anger or ambition or other such desires and sharpened by bloodthirsty counsellors - all this sometimes sweeps them off their course and carries princes themselves and the whole mass of their dominions to the edge of the abyss. Though if one must make a mistake in one direction or the other, it will be much better for a king to be too slow than to be over-hasty.”

In his A choice of emblemes and other devises, published in Leiden in 1586, Geoffrey Whitney dedicated an emblem with the motto Festina lente to Francis Windham and Edward Flowerdew, two judges ‘of the utmost integrity’. For its pictura he used the image of a crab holding a butterfly by its wings. In the explanatory poem Whitney says that all judges should always have this image in their mind’s eye, as it reminds them to balance haste and slowness when deciding about someone’s fate.

In 1727 Laurentius Wolfgang Woytt published Emblematischer Parnassus, a compendium of 1,500 emblems, one of which has Festina lente as its Latin motto. Its pictura shows a pilgrim carefully walking alongside a deep ravine. The explanatory text succinctly tells us that if he were to walk too hastily, it would be the end of him. So, here we have four examples of situations associated with the adagium festina lente. Although few people would fail to spot the applicability of the ancient saying to these situations, it is useful to analyse exactly why that is, since the situations are quite divergent. Two situations, for example, occurred quite recently and were part of this author’s personal experience. The other two belong to the domain of the literary and visual arts, and were created several centuries ago with the intention to convey moral or practical lessons to a wider audience. We can also group them differently: in the first and the fourth case, the adagium is applied to quite concrete, relatively simple situations, of the “be careful, don’t run” category. In the second and third case it is used to label a much more sophisticated, abstract category, that could be described as: “avoid disasters in complex situations by using careful consideration instead of rash judgements”. And finally, we can divide them in two groups on the basis of the data we need to understand how the situations actually were associated with the adagium. In the first two cases the data we need are part of this author’s personal psychology. They are elements of the process that made my brain associate the adagium with the situations I found myself in. Many details of that process, particularly the deeper neurological ones, are inaccessible even for me, let alone for historical analysis. Fortunately, the historian’s assignment is not to establish exactly how concepts and images are connected neurologically in an individual brain, but which concepts and images were available for association at a certain time and place. In other words, to understand what possibly went on in the minds of Whitney and Woytt, and the readers of their emblems, we need historical data. With this, to repeat, I do not mean data about the deep neurological process that would have led Whitney to associate the image of a crab and butterfly with two well-respected judges. This will obviously elude us forever. What I do mean is that Whitney had the adagium and the imagery at his disposal to begin with, and he will have expected his audience to understand and appreciate how he adapted them.

Whitney probably added the adagium and the image to his cultural bagage as a student at Oxford, Cambridge or Leiden. In any case his A choice of emblemes provides ample evidence that he was widely read in the Adagiorum chiliades and familiar with the existing emblem and devices literature. Due to its highly composite nature¹⁶, Whitney’s book is eminently suitable as it offers many points of entry into the labyrinth of analogies, associations, allusions, translations and cross references that are so characteristic of the early modern emblematic game.

Of all the emblems in Whitney’s collection probably none can serve this purpose better than the Festina lente emblem. Let us therefore continue to follow a few of the trails of allusions and associations triggered by the concept and its imagery.

First of all, combining Festina lente with the image of a crab holding a butterfly was not Whitney's invention¹⁷. The combination of motto and image is also found in older collections of devices like Gabriele Simeoni’s Le imprese heroiche et morali and Claude Paradin's Devises heroïques.¹⁸ Simeoni, Paradin and Whitney all explain how the Slow Haste concept aptly fits the duty of a prince to act swiftly but only after careful deliberation. Thus they are repeating Erasmus's explanation, while extending the application of the concept to judges. Interesting though the precise relationship between the treatment of the device by Paradin, Simeoni and Whitney may be, in our context it is of secondary importance. Much more important for us is the question whether all three devices can indeed be considered as warp threads of a cultural fabric for which the Erasmian adage provided the weft thread. If so, can we find more threads and reconstruct a more complete pattern?

The most obvious next step is simply to follow the lead of Erasmus, Paradin and Simeoni because they discuss a second image, linked to the concept of Slow Haste: the well-known image of the dolphin and anchor, found on a Roman coin.

This is how Erasmus described its design:

“Altera ex parte faciem Titi Vespasiani cum inscriptione praefert, ex altera anchoram, cuis medium ceu temonem delphin obvolutus complectitur. (One side showed the head of Vespasian with an inscription, the other an anchor, the central shaft of which had a dolphin coiled around it¹⁹.)”

Erasmus tells us that Pietro Bembo gave this coin to his friend Aldo Manuzio, who used the image for his printer’s device. About the meaning of the device there can be no doubt:

“Id autem symboli nihil aliud sibi velle, quam illud Augusti Caesaris dictum, Σπεῦδε βραδέως, indicio sunt monimenta literarum hieroglyphicarum. (Now the only meaning conveyed by this symbol is that favourite maxim of the emperor Augustus 'Make haste slowly;' and this we learn from the ancient texts relating to hieroglyphics.)”

So, the concept of Festina lente served 'two of the most excellent Roman emperors'. Augustus used it as his adagium, while Titus had it visualized as an insignium. This ‘royal image’, so Erasmus argues, is a perfect fit for Manuzio, the ‘prince of printers’ and the ‘third heir’ to the adage. In both Paradin's and Simeoni's collection the image of the dolphin and anchor immediately follows that of the crab and butterfly, but this image seems to have been unknown to Erasmus, as it is unlikely that he would have failed to mentioned it, had he known about its appearance on the reverse of an Augustan coin²⁰. Around 1540, however, about a decade before Paradin and Simeoni published their collections of devices, the crab and butterfly image was indeed available and it was used as a printer's device. The brothers Jean and François Frellon combined it with the motto 'Matura', a term that actually was discussed by Erasmus in the Festina lente adage. Matura can be considered synonymous to Festina lente, as he explains with reference to Aulus Gellius, for Matura means ‘ripe’.

“Nam Maturari, quod neque praeproper fiat, neque serius, quam oporteat, sed ipso in tempore’. (Since we call things 'ripe' that happen neither prematurely nor later than the proper time, but just when they should).”

Maturare can be used in the sense of festinare (to hasten), but its meaning is slightly different, since, unlike festinata, maturata cannot be used to indicate ‘things done prematurely.’ The Frellon device then, would fall in our second category, where a saying,

found in the explanation of an adage, is used as a motto.

The same holds for this emblem by Gabriel Rollenhagen. Here too, the motto is MATVRA, and the iconography is very similar to the Frellon device, except that the butterfly has not been caught. On closer inspection, however, the place of the crab has been taken over by a spider. This replacement went unnoticed by Henkel and Schöne, who described the animal on the tree trunk as a crab.²¹ Perhaps this is due to the fact that Rollenhagen does not explicitly identify the animal. Rollenhagen, moreover, also uses matura in the sense of festina, as he addresses the butterfly:

“Matura. mora longa nocet; spes omnis in alis;

Instat qui te vult prendere Papilio

(Make haste; a long delay will harm you; all hope is in your wings. The one that wants to grab you, is approaching, Butterfly.)”

The identification by Henkel and Schöne is remarkable since threads are attached to the spider's body, and, more importantly, George Wither, who re-used Rollenhagen's emblems²², leaves no room for doubt.

Wither first repeats the warning to the butterfly:

"From thence, where Nets and Snares are layd

Make-hast; lest els you be betray'd."

but his explanation adds more layers. He starts by identifying the animal as a spider with the help of the web-producing threads:

"The nimble Spider from his Entrailes drawes

A suttle Thread, and curious art doth show

In weaving Nets ..."

and then elaborates on the familiar analogy between a spider’s web and the Law:

"... not much unlike those Lawes

Which catch Small-Thieves, and let the Great-ones goe.

For, as the Cob-web takes the lesser Flyes,

When those of larger size breake through their Snares

So, Poore men smart for little Injuries

When Rich-men scape, whose Guilt is more then theirs."

The same comparison between the law and a spider's web is recorded by Erasmus in his discussion of the adage I iv 47 Aranearum telas texere (To spin spiders’ webs):

Et alius quispiam leges cum aranearum textis comparabat, quae cum à magnis avibus facile discinderentur, muscas duntaxat irretirent. (Someone else compared the laws to webs spun by spiders, which are easily torn apart by big birds and only trap flies).

This analogy inspired many pictures of spiders, webs and insects of various sizes, and usually they are easier to identify as illustrations of the analogy than in Wither’s case.

Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the emblem falls into the “Slow Haste (and Perfect Timing...)” as well as in the “Spider's Web Symbolizing the Law” category. Wither paraphrases two additional elements of the adage's explanation. This:

“The Spider, also representeth such

Who very curious are in Trifling things,

And neither Cost, nor Time, nor Labour grutch,

In that which neither Gaine nor Pleasure brings.”

is how Wither disqualifies the work spent on weaving a web, which echoes the adage’s commentary:

Est in re frivola, nulliusque frugis, infinitum atque anxium capere laborem (To spin spiders' webs. This means to spend infinite and anxious efforts on some futile thing that is worth nothing.)

and this how he says that creatures comparable to the spider are those

"who under cunning shewes

Of simple-Meanings (or of Curtesie)

Doe silly Men unwarily abuse"

and here he seems to have the adage in mind as well. Simple-Meanings and Curtesies may well be the "dialectical reasoning" which Diogenes Laertius compared to spiders' webs because they "look like something constructed with care and accuracy, but are really trifling and fragile".

A much more emphatic visualization of the spider's web legal allusion is provided by Christoff Murer’s XL Emblemata miscella nova (Zurich, 1622). Under the motto Leges Politica (Weltliche Gesetz), we see Caritas and Justitia holding a banderole with a straight line, and Invidia and Avaritia holding a banderole with a crooked line. Between the banderoles a spider has woven a web, which has caught several small insects, but is pierced by a few much larger ones. ‘Leges Politicae (Worldly Laws)’ is the emblem’s motto, and the explanatory poem, just like Wither’s, draws the parallel between the law and a spider’s web: small flies are caught; big flies are not.²³

Murer’s and Wither’s emblems and the adage To spin spiders’ webs are members of a common category. They all express the same moral sentiment. Many will recognize this sentiment as an early modern variant of the one that was widespread in the aftermath of the recent ‘banking crisis’: “the law only catches small criminals”.

But, like I have said, the adage and emblem belong to other categories as well. We have just seen Erasmus explain that a spider spinning a web can also symbolize spending a lot of effort on a worthless cause. In many editions of the Adagiorum chiliades, therefore, the adage is assigned to the commonplace ‘inanis opera’ (vain efforts). We also saw him link it to 'dialectical reasoning'. The imagery of the spider’s web, in other words, can be used to express the concepts ‘Injustice’, ‘Useless efforts’, and ‘Dubious reasoning’.

To these concepts George Wither, moreover, adds the ‘Deceitfulness’ with which ‘greedy cormorants’ enrich themselves with the few possessions of the poor and the wasteful ‘Idling-painted-Butterflies’. ‘Envy’ and ‘Greed’ also play their part in Murer’s emblem, both in the picture (the personifications of Invidia and Avaritia) and in the German text: ‘Verbunst und Geitz’. So Injustice, Uselessness, Nonsense, Deceitfulness, Envy, and Greed are all concepts that have connections to the image of a spider’s web. As we shall see, a spider’s web may be used to visualize other concepts as well, while at the same time these concepts may be expressed by other imagery.

Before we explore some samples, however, we should pause and realize what we are actually undertaking, from a more methodological point of view. To investigate the kind of broad moral ideas that characterize the mentalities of early modern society, we need to take stock of the details of the texts and pictures that communicate those ideas. So we need to collect data before we can draw conclusions - hardly a revolutionary insight. And if we want to investigate very broad questions, we need to gather a large quantity of data… maybe even ‘big data’. That idea too seems to be bordering on the trivial, until we ask ourselves what would constitute ‘data’, and, more importantly, what ‘gathering’ means in our context.

As our context is that of the cataloguing and the detailed, historical analysis of the subject matter of visual and textual sources, gathering data means observing source documents. By recording our ‘raw’ observations of the themes, motifs, stories, situations, events, ideas, concepts, etcetera, that (we think) are represented in our sources, we transform these observations from raw data into information. Organization is a crucial factor in this transformation process. As formulated by R.W. Lucky in ‘Silicon Dreams. Information, Man, and Machine. (New York, 1989)’ p. 20:

"Perhaps information itself is best described in terms of organization, implying that organization per se is the intellectual effort that manufactures information out of such raw material as observation. The more the organization, the higher the level of information. In contrast, where there is total disorder, there is no information."

In our context “the intellectual effort that manufactures information out of such raw material as observation” essentially means the intellectual effort of describing the subject matter of source documents. As the purpose of our research is to establish and interpret connections between the contents of source documents, we are best served by an instrument that efficiently helps us to record connections, or, even better, actively helps us to discover them. Of course language is the fabric of our instrument, and syntax its natural form of organization, but the instrument of natural language is too rich and flexible to be particularly useful for discovering the type of connections that interests us. We need to add at least two levels of ‘artificial’ organization. Firstly, identifying (potential) connections in a large corpus of data will become easier if we deliberately reduce the variation of the vocabulary we use for the descriptive metadata. In other words: if we use a standardized, controlled vocabulary. Secondly, common features may be described with terms that are semantically related but represent various levels of abstraction. It therefore makes sense to ensure that the organization of our vocabulary reflects this (hierarchical) subordination.

Let us return to the spider’s web of adagium I iv 47:

“Τὰ ἀράχνια ὑφαίνειν, id est, Aranearum telas texere. […] Et alius quispiam leges cum aranearum textis comparabat, quae cum à magnis avibus facile discinderentur, muscas duntaxat irretirent.” (Τὰ ἀράχνια ὑφαίνειν, To spin spiders' webs. […] Someone else compared the laws to webs spun by spiders, which are easily torn apart by big birds and only trap flies)

The same analogy can be expressed with a wide variety of visual and textual means. In Murer’s XL Emblemata, for example, we find the following explanatory poem:

Man hat wol vil der güten Gsetz /

Macht doch oft drauss ein Spinnen Netz /

Das grosser Fliegen keine nöt /

Der kleinen Mücklin vil ertödt:

Verbunst vnd Geitz rich sömlichs an /

Dass d'Grächtigkeit wird gsetzt hindan.

Key elements of this text are the words: Gsetz, Spinnen Netz, grosser Fliegen, kleinen Mücklin,Verbunst und Geitz, and Grächtigkeit. It tells us that we have many good laws that together form a spider’s web. This web, however, does not bother big flies but kills many small ones. Thus envy and greed are a threat to justice. This is illustrated by the personifications of the abstract concepts Charitas, Iustitia, Invidia and Avaritia, divided into two pairs, each pair holding the end of an unfolded scroll. On the scrolls a simple line is drawn: a straight one on the scroll held by Love and Justice, a curved one on the scroll held by Envy and Greed. The web is spun between the scrolls.

Guillaume la Perrière, Pierre Coustau, Guillaume Gueroult and Claude Paradin provide us with sixteenth century French emblems and devices which also use the spider-law analogy²⁴, and which we can juxtapose with Murer’s emblem. Emblem XLIX of la Perrière’s Le théatre des bons engins²⁵ opposes the picture of a room with a large chair or throne, next to a big chest and below a large web hanging from the ceiling, to the following text:

L’Araigne ha belle & propre invention,
Quand sur sa toile elle attrape les mousches:
Mais elle est foible, & n’a protection,
Pour resister aux grosses, & farouches.
Au temps qui court, gros ne craignent les touches

La loy n’ha lieu que sur pauvre indigence,
Les riches ont de mal faire licence,
Pauvreté n’ha jamais le vent à voile.
Qu’ainsi ne soit, on void par evidence,
Que grosse mousche abbat legiere toile.

Guillaume Gueroult’s Le premier livre des emblemes (Lyons, 1550), emblem 9 starts with:

Les riches s’exemptent des loix, mais 
les poures y demeurent

and on the opposing page the picture is followed by these verses:

La loy est enfraincte 
Par l’homme opulent, 
L’homme foible & lent:

Ha d’icelle crainte.

Claude Paradin’s Devises héroïques et emblemes (Lyons, 1557) simply shows a spider in the centre of a web and starts the explanation thus:

Loy sans loy.

Anacharse Filosofe acomparoit les Loix, aus Toiles des Araignées, lesquelles prennent & retiennent les petites Mouches, Papillons, & autres bestions, & laissent passer les gros & fors: ce que de mesmes font aussi les Loix, qui par mauuaise interpretation ne lient les riches, & puissans, mais sont rigoureuses & contreingnent seulement les poures, imbecilles, foibles, & petits…

Pierre Coustau, in his Le pegme (Lyons, 1560), opens the emblem with a reference to Anacharsis and dishonest judges:

Sur l’Araignée selon Anacharsis

Contre les iuges fauorables.

and has the pictura followed by these explanatory verses:

Petite mouche au corps subtil & mince
Volant fut prise aux rais d’une araignée:
Mais le bourdon d’autres mousches le prince,
Passa tout outre & rompit la trainée.

Un seigneur grand en avoir & lignée
Franc les files de noz juges traverse:
Mais cil qui a la fortune indignée,
Dedans leurs neuz & detours souvent verse.

Gueroult, Paradin and Coustau all provide additional elaborations of the theme, but these repeat the basic message of the analogy:

1. Laws are like spider’s webs: la loy, les loix, araign(é)e, la toile foible, legiere toile, rais, files de noz juges

2. they catch the poor, the feeble (and the slow): petite mouche, papillons, pauvre indigence, pauvreté, poures, imbecilles, foibles, & petits, l’homme foible & lent, fut prise

3. but succumb to the rich and powerful: le bourdon, les riches, le prince, un seigneur grand, les iuges fauorables, puissans, faire licence, grosse mousche, grosses & farouches, l’homme opulent, passa, rompit

Like Coustau, Florentius Schoonhovius in his Emblemata, partim moralia partim etiam civilia (Gouda, 1618), targets corrupt judges in his his emblem LVIII, simply using:

In corruptos Iudices.

as its motto, before he repeats the web-laws analogy in its epigram:

Aranearum tela magnis rumpitur

Muscis, minores strangulat;

Rei potentes judicum sententiam

Odore ducunt munerum;

Qui nil habet quo torqueat Leges, miser

In pelle pauper plectitur.²⁶

He starts his commentary with a reference to Anacharsis, taken from Erasmus’s commentary to adagium III v 73 Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas (The laws absolve ravens and harass doves):

Apophtegmata est Anacharsidis, quo elusit studium Solonis in conscribendis legibus. Dicebat enim Leges aranearum telis adsimiles esse, propterea quod in illas quid levius, aut imbecillum incurreret, haereat, sin majus aliquid, dissecet, ac fugiat.²⁷

The picture does not only show a ruin with a large spider’s web, but has Mercury touching a magistrate’s eye with his staff, while making a gesture of speech with the connotation of admonishment.

To conclude this short survey, let us look at how Joachim Camerarius uses the analogy in his Symbolorum & Emblematum Centuriae (Nürnberg, 1596), under the motto:

Violentior exit²⁸

after which he adds this epigram to the picture of a damaged spider’s web:

Innodat culicem, sed vespae pervia tela est

Sic rumpit leges vis, quibus haeret inops.²⁹

and, finally, the pertinent part of Wither’s explanatory poem, from which I already quoted a few phrases:

The nimble Spider from his Entrailes drawes

A suttle Thread, and curious art doth show

In weaving Nets, not much unlike those Lawes

Which catch Small-Thieves, and let the Great-ones goe.

For, as the Cob-web takes the lesser Flyes,

When those of larger size breake through their Snares;

So, Poore men smart for little Injuries,

When Rich-men scape, whose Guilt is more then theirs.

So, to our list of German and French keywords we can now also add a few Latin ones: aranearum tela, leges, magnis rumpitur muscis, potentes, miser, pauper, culicem, vespae, innodat, rumpit, violentior, and a few English words as well: Spider, thread, nets, lawes, small-thieves, great-ones, cob-web, lesser flyes, poore men, rich-men, little injuries, guilt, smart, scape.

Against this backdrop of multilingual richness it is easy to see the benefits, or, more accurately, the necessity of standardizing the vocabulary we use for our descriptive metadata. Again: a very basic idea, as it is easy to see that our raw data present us with a confusing range of words, even for a concept as straightforward and concrete as a spider’s web. We found, for example, nets, cob-web, la toile, Netz, tela, rais, files, thread. A comparable variety is found in the visual representations.

The first step in transforming these verbal and visual data into information – the half-product our colleague-researchers need to work with – is to identify the concept they are examples of, and name that concept. The second step is to decide whether to borrow those concept names from an existing classification³⁰. This is by far the more important step, since it implies conforming to the classification’s conceptual organization. Needless to say that a classification’s organization is a very artificial way of looking at the world. My main reason for adhering to the Iconclass system³¹ is that its particular form of artificiality is based on the many thousands of hours the editors/researchers spent looking at works of art and other historical documents. As a result the system’s contents and the way the concepts are arranged in hierarchies, match much of the historical source material we encounter with surprising frequency³².

Instead of discussing the conceptual organization of Iconclass in a general or abstract sense, however, I propose to further demonstrate some of the consequences of the application of the system to adages and emblems. With well over 4,000 proverbs and almost 35,000 emblems to work with,³³ it makes sense to work our way outward from these examples of the Slow Haste and Corrupt Judges categories.

Several of the emblems I quoted above, draw the conclusion that if justice is unfairly distributed over the rich and the poor, there must be something wrong with the ethics of the judges. Schoonhovius and Coustau, for example, explicitly label their emblems ‘In corruptos iudices’ and ‘Contre les iuges fauorables’, while Paradin talks about the ‘mauuaise interpretation’ of the laws. In the Iconclass system this historical theme is a readymade, standard concept ‘44G69 bad, corrupt judges’³⁴. Its meaning is further defined by its subordination to the more abstract concept of ‘44G6 juridical examples; exemplary judges; Gerechtigkeitsbilder'³⁵,

which, in its turn, is included in the more general category of ‘44G law and jurisprudence’.

The adagium I’ve been discussing above – I iv 47 Aranearum telas texere – is one of five adagia to which I have assigned the concept ‘44G69 bad, corrupt judges’ on earlier occasions³⁶. Three of these more or less speak for themselves:

- III ix 8 Corrupta iudicia (Corrupt judgments)

- IV viii 29 Pecuniosus damnari non potest (A rich man cannot be found guilty)

- III v 73 Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas (The laws absolve ravens and harass doves).

The fifth - III v 74 Sutorium atramentum (Cobbler's blacking) – needs a little more elaboration. Erasmus explains that Cicero used the phrase to describe a case where a man was acquitted by bribing judges. Cobbler’s blacking is the metaphor for the stain such an action leaves behind on the hands that receive the bribe.

Stains is what Guillaume la Perrière in this emblem, also taken from Le théatre des bons engins, suggests to be left on the hands of the magistrate as he accepts a bribe from an apparently wealthy man. The man in the background, wringing his hands, is most likely a poor man who will ‘smart for little Injuries, When Rich-men scape, whose Guilt is more then theirs’. The stains on the lawyer’s hands are actually eyes, allowing him to see clearly where benefits are coming from. He also has no ears, so he will not hear complaints. In present times, according to la Perrière, many attorneys and judges do not ‘hear anything, but they take everything they can see’³⁷.

This moment where bribery takes place was also chosen to represent the imminent death of a judge in the Totentanz series of which there exist many editions. This one is found in Jean de Vauzelles’ Imagines mortis (Cologne, 1555).

By contrast, the Adagia also contain examples of proverbs that praise the integrity of outstanding judges, such as III vi 9 Prienensis iustitia (Prienian justice) which refers to the judge Bias of Priene, and II vii 65 Bocchyris, which is the name of a judge of such integrity that it became proverbial. To these adages the parent concept of “44G6 juridical examples; exemplary judges; 'Gerechtigkeitsbilder'” was assigned.

A rather striking image connects a famous adage with a few emblems, and with another readymade Iconclass concept. The Iconclass concept is “44G61 judge with hands chopped off”, which is subordinated to the same concept of the ‘Gerechtigkeitsbilder’ I have just mentioned. The adage is III vii 1 Scarabaeus aquilam quaerit (A dung-beetle hunting an eagle). This adage may be used ‘when a weaker and less powerful person seeks to do harm to a far more powerful enemy’. In the long explanation Erasmus gives of the proverb, he refers to Plutarch’s essay ‘On Isis and Osiris’, in which he (i.e. Plutarch)

“says that at Thebes there were preserved images without hands representing judges, who must distance themselves as far as possible from all bribery by gifts; among these images there was one without eyes also, which signified the president of the court because he must be entirely without preference, and consider only the case itself without thought of the person.”

In the illustration shown here, taken from the edition of Alciato’s Emblematum libellus published by Christian Wechel in 1534, we are looking at those Theban statues: a blind king presides over a court of amputated magistrates. The emblem’s motto ‘In senatum boni principis’ and Alciato's subscriptio clarify that we are looking at a Senatus, a gathering of lawgivers, physically unable to accept bribes. The king’s impartiality is guaranteed because he cannot see but only hear them.

It is noteworthy that Alciato uses the adagium about the dung-beetle and the eagle for another emblem A minimis quoque timendum³⁸, thus connecting it to another category to which many adages belong: the Weak resisting the Strong. In general, the density of associations and allusions can be quite staggering. This also holds for the Adagiorum chiliades itself. In the thirteen pages³⁹ devoted to the adage Scarabaeus aquilam quaerit, for example, Erasmus cites some fifty other adages, in addition to quoting from Homerus, Plutarchus, Ovidius, and a series of other authors.⁴⁰

To help readers find their way through this maze of connections, editions of the Adagiorum chiliades can have very rich indexing systems. The edition I have most often consulted, published in Basel by Froben in 1559, is a good example with its 98 folio pages of indices. One of the indices it provides to its readers is a very elaborate index on loci communes. Among these loci we find Munerum corruptela (bribery with gifts), which encompasses 21 adages. Among the adages assigned to this locus we find Corrupta iudicia and Pecuniosus damnari non potest (A rich man cannot be found guilty). The locus itself is also included as an adage (adagium III ix 83), and its explanation focusses on the flawed ethics of judges. It is not unreasonable to assume that the association between the concept of bribery and the corruption of judges came naturally to Erasmus. The details of his explanation are particularly relevant here because they again illustrate a connection between the imagery described in an adage and the pictura of an emblem. As I have already mentioned, Schoonhovius’s emblem ‘In corruptos iudices’ shows Mercury touching the eye of a magistrate, who leans on a walking stick and rests his hand on his hip in a gesture of authority. Mercury’s gesture is described by Erasmus, who quotes from the fifth book of the Odyssey:

“For someone who approaches a business with money and gifts, you might quite humorously adapt from the same book what is said of Mercury as he takes up his caduceus: 'He seized the staff with which he lulls to sleep the eyes / Of whom he will, and awakens others too.'⁴¹ What is said of Mercury's staff is admirably appropriate for the gifts with which, for example, judges who were dozing before are woken up, and on the other hand the hostile ones are placated so that during the case they go to sleep, as it were, and close their eyes. Aristophanes, in the Women in Parliament says the gods too are won over by gifts and that is why they stand with a hand out palm up: For when we pray to them to send us good things, They stand holding out a hand palm up, As if they will give nothing, but rather will accept. The scholiast informs us that in olden times the statues of the gods were almost always carved with hands held out 'supine,' and by 'supine' he means 'cupped,' 'positioned so as to receive.'”

So, Mercury’s caduceus, which the god can use to open or close the eyes, is compared to the bribes that may cause judges to either wake up or close an eye, dependent on what would benefit the party that pays. Erasmus’s quote from Aristophanes, about the ‘supine’ gesture of the gods, links nicely with the gesture of the magistrates in the emblems from la Perrière’s Théatre and de Vauzelles’ Imagines mortis.

The adagium II v 45 Dorica musa – The Dorian muse, is also assigned to the commonplace munerum corruptela. In its explanation Erasmus quotes Pythagoras who used the expression ‘eating beans’ for ‘corruptly accepting bribes in return for giving someone your vote’. Erasmus does not explicitly link the adage to the corruption of judges, but alludes to politicians and princes. Pierre Coustau, however, does connect it to the legal profession, as is evident from the ‘dedication’ of his 34th emblem: ‘In iudices δωροφάγους, quibus plus placent libelli ferentarii quàm supplices’⁴²

The dish on the table of the magistrate is filled with beans. Yet another adage about bribery and corruption - V i 26 Faba nummus – Bean-currency – refers to this imagery. In his comment Erasmus repeats the reference to Pythagoras and adds a quote from Cicero: Ubi faba nummus est, ibi redemptum est suffragium (Where beans become money, there votes have been bought).

Tiny mosquitoes in a spider’s web and small beans on a judge’s table demonstrate that the indignation about bribery and corruption can be expressed through a variety of images. Even a very small survey of material, linkable to the adages, illustrates the iconographic richness. We have also seen that the literary descriptions of the ethical flaws of lawyers demonstrate a comparable linguistic richness. Thirdly, the data we aim to transform into information span broad abstract categories and tiny details. Both can be easily overlooked during a first confrontation with a source document. This is true on an individual level, and if we realize this – usually because at a later stage we come across a new source that sheds light on an earlier one - we go back and expand or correct the older information. It is also true, in a broader sense, on the level of the community of humanities researchers as a whole. Looking at sources with fresh eyes, from different points of view, or with different research questions in mind, leads to the accumulation of information.

Or so it should. But does it?

If we consider the Adagiorum chiliades – as I do – as an inexhaustible tour guide across the field of early modern ‘moral archaeology’, it is crucial to find ways to connect it to the millions of texts and images that testify to ethical sentiments and moral convictions. This is not a task for a single researcher, nor is it an enterprise to be undertaken in a single ‘project’, no matter how well-funded it is, or how neatly it fits an existing research or subsidy program. The reason is rather simple: the description of our source documents is continuously informed by the details we observe later on. Awareness of the reference to the verses from the Odyssey, as quoted by Erasmus, may – or perhaps should - have serious effects on the description of Mercury’s gesture in Schoonhovius’ emblem. It is only after we have learned from the text what is going on that we can adequately describe the pictura. And adequacy is always temporary and context-sensitive - never exhaustive, never 'complete'.

If we accept that description is research, not a phase that precedes research, it stands to reason that we share our descriptions with our peers, allowing them to assess the process “that manufactures information out of such raw material as observation.” Modern technological developments allow us to do so in a much more systematic and uniform way, and on a much more massive scale than ever before. Exactly where this is done – whether we collaborate in Wikipedia, or Europeana, or a database like Arkyves - is for now of secondary importance. Of more importance is that we strive for a common denominator in our vocabularies to ensure that the information we create can actually be shared across a common network. What is essential for the future of the humanities, however, is that we realize – with Erasmus - fronte capillata, post haec Occasio calva⁴³.

2. Amicorum communia omnia

This, the opening proverb of the Adagiorum chiliades, asserts that between friends all is common. Erasmus considered it the perfect start of his collection of adages because“nothing is more wholesome or more generally accepted than this proverb”. Erasmus, however, would not have been Erasmus if he had not also looked upon the actual human practice of sharing with some irony: “If only it were so fixed in men's minds as it is frequent on everybody's lips, most of the evils of our lives would promptly be removed.”

When applied to the domain of modern humanities research, the saying probably describes more than any other the ideals of information sharing of the early days of the World Wide Web. At the same time, Erasmus's sobering note just as aptly describes the present situation on the web, where scholarly information sharing is more often talked about than efficiently practised. Information sharing is indeed studied from many angles. There is a rich literature about its social, psychological, philosophical, technical, legal, and financial aspects. While most of those aspects are only remotely relevant to our investigation, there is one aspect I consider as crucial, not just to my enterprise, but probably to all research in the field of digital humanities. The aspect I am referring to is a practical one: how to organize efficient collaboration in a digital world, and, in the wake of that, how to ensure that information actually accumulates when researchers collaborate. Even though this is a practical issue, it is not a merely technical one. If it had been, it would have been solved by the transition to the world of digitized information.

A first facet of the issue is that the dictum 'every picture tells a story'⁴⁴ is only partially true. Our problem is that every picture tells much more than just one story. As we have seen, the story told by the crab and butterfly - don't act too hastily - is also the story of how the ‘good government’ propaganda of Roman imperial coins was picked up again in the Renaissance. In addition, it is the story of how this lesson was applied to the domains of Administration and Law. Moreover, it is the story of how the crab-and-butterfly iconography was borrowed for the picture of a spider and a butterfly with which it is associatively linked. And those are merely the stories I have touched upon in my introduction.

Now imagine filing this modest woodcut under these various 'stories' in a pictorial documentation system, to facilitate its retrieval from various angles. Assigning it to those subject categories would allow for searches at various levels of abstraction. We would find 'crab' and 'butterfly' at one end of the spectre and 'perfect timing' and 'good government' at the other end. Such a system, documenting both the abstract ideas going round in a society, and the specific images used to express them, would be cumbersome to maintain in an analogue, paper environment. Assigning an image to multiple subject categories would require either storing a separate printed copy for every category, or the creation of an elaborate system of cross-reference cards.

Without a doubt computerization makes life easier. As database entries take the place of reference cards and digital pictures replace printed copies, the technical problems of multiplication, storage and retrieval are all but solved. A single digital image can be easily linked to a series of database records, and a single database record can easily contain a series of subject terms to be mobilized for retrieval. These technical advances, however, do not automatically lead to efficient collaboration and fruitful accumulation of information.