Inaugural lecture: Professor Marilina Cesario

Bloody rain, wells of blood and skies ablaze appear across early medieval chronicles, letters, biblical commentaries and poetry. Central to these accounts is the symbolic interplay of Water and Fire, opposed yet interconnected forces in medieval cosmology. Descriptions such as blod weallan of eorþan, bloody snow and hail blur the boundaries of water’s states, fusing life-sustaining and destructive properties. This lecture examines what these phenomena may have been, aurorae, atmospheric optics or environmental disturbances and explores how early medieval thinkers construed nature as a divinely ordered system of signs, using elemental displays to communicate moral, political and eschatological truths.

In 793, Alcuin wrote to the monks of Lindisfarne reporting a pluvia sanguinis, a rain of blood, likely an aurora borealis. Over three centuries later, the Peterborough Chronicle describes a pool bubbling with blood beneath a sky 'burning nearly all night'. Such accounts, found across chronicles, letters, biblical commentaries and poetry in continental, Eastern and Old English traditions, reveal a persistent fascination with certain natural phenomena. Central to these reports is the interplay of Water and Fire, opposed yet intimately connected elements in medieval cosmology. Drawing on Aristotle’s Meteorologica, Arabic scientific texts and the writings of Seneca, Pliny and Isidore, early medieval observers interpreted rain, wells and snow tinged with blood, or skies ablaze with flame, as signs of divine judgement. This lecture examines both what these phenomena may have been, aurorae, atmospheric effects or environmental events and how they were read as a divinely ordered system of signs, where Water and Fire conveyed moral, political and eschatological meaning.

Marilina Cesario is Professor of Early Medieval Literature at Queen's University Belfast. She has published extensively in the fields of medieval prognostication, meteorology and transmission of astronomical knowledge. Her current monograph focuses on 'The Elements and the Environment in the Early Middle Ages' for which she has been awarded a Mid-Career British Academy Fellowship. On this topic, she has co-edited four volumes on the Elements in the medieval period: The Elements in the Medieval World: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. WATER, vol. 1 (Brill, 2024) and The Elements in the Medieval World: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. EARTH, vol. 2 (Brill, 2024); The Elements in the Medieval World: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. AIR (Brill, 2026), vol. 3 and The Elements in the Medieval World: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. FIRE, vol. 4 (Brill, 2016). She is the managing editor of the Book Series 'Elements, Nature, Environment Multidisciplinary Perspectives from the Ancient to the Early Modern World' (Brill).

The lecture will be recorded and available to view online shortly after the event.

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