Lady Philosophy and the Ladder of the Liberal Arts
Source
Boethius, Consolatio Philosophiae — Leipzig University Library, MS Lat. 1253, fol. 3r (c. 1230)
The trail
Reading Boethius → Philosophy's robe described with letters and a ladder → searched Wikimedia Commons for the manuscript illuminations → found this c. 1230 painting where the ladder of the seven liberal arts is sewn directly onto her robe.
The passage
Her garments were of an imperishable fabric, wrought with the finest threads and of the most delicate workmanship; and these, as her own lips afterwards assured me, she had herself woven with her own hands.
Lady Philosophy with the seven liberal arts as rungs on a ladder sewn into her robe. Grammar at the bottom. Astronomy at the top. The body of Philosophy IS the curriculum. You do not study philosophy by standing next to her. You climb her. The ladder is the robe is the woman is the discipline. The men who tore pieces from her robe — the Stoics, Epicureans, and the rest — thought they had captured her. They had threads. She was still whole.