Hello, my name is Bi Yun.

I am a professor in the Department of Political Science Diplomacy, Sungkyunkwan University,

Seoul, South Korea.

I am currently serving as a visiting fellow of International Consortium for Research in

Humanities, Faith, Freedom, and Prognostication at Erlangen Nuremberg University.

Today I will speak about some medieval murals in the vaulted Great Chamber in Longsorfer

Tower in Peterborough, England.

They are parts of a 14th century fresco cycle, which is believed to have been created around

Its commissioner is most probably the knight Robert the Thorpe, who was steward of the

liberty of Peterborough Abbey.

The frescoes went lost later, as the room was painted anew and most probably not once.

They saw daylight again as a tenant discovered them while preparing to redecorate the room

in 1945.

Because the frescoes remained on the layers limed for long, many of their details losed

together with the Latin inscriptions.

These images make a proper understanding of the meaning and message of some parts of the

murals very difficult and controversial.

I came across the murals in the course of my research on the medieval symbolism of fortune

and fate.

Since 2005, I have endeavored to decipher those images and I have illuminated several fascinating

aspects of these murals in my publication and studies.

I have been especially interested in their connection to an organic conception of the

state of the high and later Middle Ages, which conceived the state in the image of the King's

second and artificial body and the Arabian contribution to its development which is discernible

there.

I will briefly introduce these images now, summarizing the result of my research so far.

The first mural we are concerned with here depicts a large wheel with five creatures

around the outer side of the rim.

A male figure stands behind the wheel, a crown on his head.

The creatures are an ape, a vulture, a spider on its web, a boar, and a cockroach.

Those some identify the leather as a basilisk.

It is agreed in the literature that the five creatures on the wheel are symbols of the

five senses.

The ape represents taste.

The vulture, smell.

The spider, touch.

The wild boar, hearing.

And finally, the cockerel, sight.

Scholars seeking to decipher the message of the mural have often linked it to the wheel

of fortune.

Fortune's wheel symbolizes the fatalistic idea in the Middle Ages that human life is

in the hands of an unknowable power.

Turning incessantly and bringing the top to the bottom, the bottom to the top, fortune's

wheel implies that all human achievements are precarious and ephemeral.

Locating the symbols of five senses around the wheel would signify, if we follow this

hypothesis, mistrust in the human senses.

This interpretation ignores, however, that throughout the Middle Ages, a wheel was also

a symbol of perfect order and eternal stability.

The concept of such circles dominated the medieval view of the world.