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Link to an image of this page  Link to an image of this page  [D1r p49]

SINE IUSTTIA [=IUSTITIA] ,
CONFUSIO.

WITHOUT JUSTICE, CONFUSION

Si terrae Coelum se misceat: & mare coelo.
Sol Erebo.[1] Tenebris lumina, Terra Polo.
Quattuor & Mundi mixtim primordia pugnent.
Arida cum siccis, algida cum calidis.[2]
In Chaos antiquum omnia denique confundantur:
Ut cųm ignotus adhuc mens Deus orbis erat.
Est Mundanarum talis confusio rerum.
Quo Regina latet Tempore Iustitia.

If the sky should mingle with the earth and the sea with the sky, the Sun and Erebus, light and shade, earth and heaven, then the four constituent elements of the universe would fight - hot and dry, cold and wet. All things would be finally confounded into the Chaos of old, when the world did not yet know the mind of God. When Queen Justice is absent in hiding, a similar confusion reigns in earthly things.

Notes:

1.  The pitch-black darkness of Hell: son of Chaos and brother and husband of Night: see Hesiod’s Theogony, 123.

2.  Another take on the famous Ovidian lines from the beginning of the Metamorphoses: see the emblem ‘DIVORTIUM EX IMPARI CONNUBIO ([FANa025]).



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