Book of the Heart

The word record (re cord ) is from the Latin cor/Cordis , a direct reference to the heart, linking it with memory, which is, itself, a record. We thus speak of learning by heart or committing to memory.

Before the shape and design of a book as we now know it, scribes re cord ed on scrolls of parchment or on tablets consisting of thin strips of wood coated with wax. The subsequent manuscript codex or simply the codex (200 to 400 AD) consisted of leaves of paper or parchment bound in book form. Books are easier to handle than scrolls or tablets, and both sides of each page can be used. By the early second century, all Scripture was in codex or book form.

In the Middle Ages, the heart as a book was a prominent form of symbolism that contained thoughts, feelings, and memories. The Last Judgment , a celebrated fresco at the Cathedral of Albi in southern France (painted in the 1490s), shows resurrected souls presenting their hearts as open books for the final reckoning. St. Augustine was often depicted at his desk with an open book, a pen in one hand and his heart in the other.

The subsequent book of the heart was developed by monks and scholars, who allegorized the manuscript codex. Daily readings were regarded as heartfelt devotions.

In the Medieval Church, the book of the heart was identified with God, but a very different secularized book of the heart filled with amorous and erotic feelings was identified with Cupid. Cupid and his arrows became popular signs of love, often depicted as 2 hearts joined by a pierced arrow, an apt remedy when “I broke my heart in two,” as voiced in popular lyrics and by the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats.

In the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh , Enkidu, was tamed not by means of arms, but by the power of heart over mind. Gilgamesh was a symbol of the restless heart, anticipating St. Augustine’s cor inquietum and Yeat’s trembling heart. After killing the Bull of the Sky , an event accompanied by bolts of thunder, Gilgamesh and Enkidu cut out the bull’s heart and sacrificed it to the sun god.

In the competition for priority among heart, liver, and brain, Aristotle’s belief that the soul resided within the heart was largely responsible for the heart’s singular hierarchical position. For the Jews, however, the sign of life was not the beating heart, but the breath. And the Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul . In Babylonian culture, the liver, the blood-filled source of the life force, was the essential organ. For ancient Greeks, the essential organs were the lungs and liver.

Egyptians believed that we thought with our heart—the center of judgment and of the intellect, man’s inner core. The properties of the heart determined whether the deceased would rise from the dead and enter paradise. The heart was placed on a scale opposite the feather of Maat, goddess of Justice and symbol of truth. If the heart balanced the feather, the deceased would live in harmonious balance in the netherworld.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary are traditional Roman Catholic devotional images. Less clear is the origin of the stylized heart-shaped valentine colored in the red of blood and passion. St. Valentine was the patron saint of lovers, hence the name. In the seventh-century BC Greek city of Cyrene, the seedpod of a herb used as a contraceptive was shaped like the valentine. The valentine heart shape is also believed to represent the back and wings of a dove as seen by Aphrodite from her golden chariot as it was drawn through the sky by a team of doves.

Epithets abound—light hearted, heavy hearted, broken hearted, an aching heart, cold hearted, sick at heart, and down hearted are parts of our vocabulary. The heart can be in its correct (normal) location (situs solitus) , or worn on the sleeve, or felt in the throat or mouth. One can lose one’s heart, search one’s heart, and be kind-hearted, big-hearted, good-hearted, soft-hearted, or hard-hearted. Wherefore then did ye harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh ? (Samuel 6-6). Wordsworth’s famous lines, My heart leaps up when I behold/A rainbow in the sky are a counter to the phrase “down hearted.” “Cold hearted” is in dramatic contrast to Hearts of wind-blown flame (Yeats). “Soft hearted” is the converse of a heart of stone , which the Hebrew Testament God could replace with a warm heart of flesh. However, oddly and inexplicably, a heart of gold was not considered “hard hearted.” Also, in The Tower , another poem, Yeats spoke of O heart , O troubled heart , and in To his Heart , the poet addressed the heart directly— Be still, be still, my trembling heart . Can a troubled or trembling heart cause the person so afflicted to tumble off balance, prefiguring symptomatic disturbances in cardiac rhythm that cause light headedness or syncope? An aching heart literally translates into angina pectoris, a classic symptom of oxygen-deprived (ischemic) heart muscle.

St. Augustine’s restless heart— cor inquietum —is the center of his Confessions . In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness , heart means center, yet another example of centrality. The 3,000-mile-long Congo River reaches the heart—the center—of dark Africa.

If the soul resides in the heart, are the heartless without a soul? If the heart is transplanted, is the soul transplanted? Does the transplant recipient have 2 souls during one lifetime—an original soul, followed by a transplanted soul?