Vadas József (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 13. (Budapest, 1993)

KOVÁCS Éva: Művesség és tudomány a középkorban. A magyar koronázási palást készítésének egy aspektusa

outside towards the inside, consisting of hexameters and, at the end, pentameters that begin and end in the letter S, except for the first, which is A - of course, the letters of the adjoining lines is altered accordingly. Eight semicircular figures, turned inside, are place on the circle; two between the two squarely diameters, or rather, (as suggested by the meaning of the poems) between the four radii. The radii define the proportions and the relation between the big square written in the circle and the half-sized, turned central square it contains. At the end of the poem (the sides of the small square) we learn that the scriptor opens was a certain Uffingus, a well-known hagiograph, a monk of the St. Liudger monastery of Werden in the second half of the 10th century. Both picture poems were taken under close scientific scrutiny about twenty-five years ago in Germany, yet there are still some problems to be solved.

15 Except for himself, the author of the circular poem names only his ruler, Emperor Otto in the poem, who is devoted eight lines in the semicircles (a crown?), mixed with laudatio and good whishes. Otto, who is referred to as "Aurea spes orbis" must be a young man, yet German researchers were unable to decide which of the three emperors of the same name is mentioned in the poem. The proper identification of the person of the emperor is essential if we want to identify the other persons, the "presul" (archbishop) of Cologne and the abbot of Werden. It is also badly needed for the exact dating of the poem and for the identification of a supposed occasion that was commemorated, together with the participants, in this peculiar work of art. According to Eickcrmann, one of the authorities, the work of the Werden poet is rather average, compared to other contemporary masterpieces, for example the "epistle" of Abbo, the Abbot of Eleury, addressed to Emperor Otto III. Eickermann also thinks that the emperors mentioned in the two peoms are the same; Uffingus wrote his one in the eighties, together with his other pieces.

16 Unfortunatelly I am not familiar enough with the Antique roots of picture poems to know whether attempts had been made to examine picture poems, which certainly required some geometrical knowledge, from this point of view.

17 However, beside the use of a compass and a ruler, the Werden picture poem proves that the relation between circles and squares was used as the main principle of composition, although the circles - except for the bigges - were left out. One of the keys to the construction was the radius of the circle written inside the inner square, which is identical, for example, with the radius of the eight semicircles of the coronet. All these have a certain resemblance to Euclidean traditions, though it was not as well known those days as it is today. The mathematical knowledge of Ancient Greece were passed as a subterranean stream, a part vanishing, details coming up again, resting at partings. The efforts of several intermediators from the Late Antique Times to 1000 A.D., including Martianus Capella, Bocthius, Isidor of Sevilla and a number of other great medieval cleres, were summarized in the works of Gerbert of Aurillac, Pope Sylvester II, who around 1000 sent the crown to Stephen I, King of Hungary.

18 Gerbert was teaching trivium and quadrivium, that is, both parts of the septem artes liberales, but he reserved the more complicated branches of natural sciences to those students whom he considered suitable (dispositi).

19 It is not known whether Uffingus was among the "dispositi". Had he any scientific basis for his play with the figures with which he constructed his