Fortuna : Middle Ages: Wikipedia
The traumatic humiliation of Emperor Valerian by king Shapur I of Persia (260)
passed into European cultural memory as an instance of the reversals of Fortuna.
In Hans Holbein's pen-and-ink drawing (1521), the universal lesson is brought
home by its contemporary setting. Fortuna did not disappear
from the popular imagination with the triumph of Christianity by any means
(illustration, left). In the 6th century, the Consolation of Philosophy, by
statesman and philosopher Boethius, written while he faced execution, reflected
the Christian theology of casus, that the apparently random and often ruinous
turns of Fortune's Wheel are in fact both inevitable and providential, that even
the most coincidental events are part of God's hidden plan which one should not
resist or try to change. Events, individual decisions, the influence of the
stars were all merely vehicles of Divine Will. However, perhaps because
scripture could not explain all of the questions of life, Fortune crept back in
to popular acceptance. In succeeding generations Consolation was required
reading for scholars and students.
Albrecht Dürer's engraving of Fortuna, ca
1502The ubiquitous image of Wheel of Fortune found throughout the Middle Ages
and beyond was a direct legacy of the second book of Boethius's Consolation. The
Wheel appears in many renditions from tiny miniatures in manuscripts to huge
stained glass windows in cathedrals, such as at Amiens. Lady Fortune is usually
represented as larger than life to underscore her importance. The wheel
characteristically has four shelves, or stages of life, with four human figures,
usually labeled on the left regnabo (I shall reign), on the top regno (I reign)
and is usually crowned, descending on the right regnavi (I have reigned) and the
lowly figure on the bottom is marked sum sine regno (I have no kingdom).
Medieval representations of Fortune emphasize her duality and instability, such
as two faces side by side like Janus; one face smiling the other frowning; half
the face white the other black; she may be blindfolded but without scales, blind
to justice. Occasionally her vivid clothing and bold demeanor suggest the
prostitute. She was associated with the cornucopia, ship's rudder, the ball and
the wheel.
Fortune would have many influences in
cultural works throughout the Middle Ages. In Le Roman de la Rose, Fortune
frustrates the hopes of a lover who has been helped by a personified character
"Reason". In Dante's Inferno, in the seventh canto, Virgil explains the nature
of Fortune. Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium ("The Fortunes of Famous
Men"), used by John Lydgate to compose his Fall of Princes, tells of many where
the turn of Fortune's wheel brought those most high to disaster. Fortune makes
her appearance in Carmina Burana (see image). Lady Fortune appears in chapter 25
of Machiavelli's The Prince, in which he says Fortune only rules one half of
men's fate, the other half being of their own will. Machiavelli reminds the
reader that Fortune is a woman, that she favours a strong, or even violent hand,
and the she favours the more aggressive and bold young man than a timid elder.
Even Shakespeare was no stranger to Lady Fortune:
When in disgrace
with Fortune and men's eyes
I all alone
beweep my outcast state ... — Sonnet 29
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