Illuminating the Middle Ages Tributes to Prof. John Lowden from his Students, Friends and Colleagues (Library of the Written Word) [Illustrated] 9789004422322, 9789004422339, 9004422323

Table of contents :
Illuminating the Middle Ages: Tributes to Prof. John Lowden from his Students, Friends and Colleagues
Copyright
Contents
Abbreviations
List of Illustrations
Contributors
Introduction
1 Were Early Medieval Picture Cycles Recycled from Late Antiquity? New Evidence for a Lost Archetype of the Apollonius Pictus-An Illustrated Classic
2 Milanese Early Medieval Psalters: Models and Influences from West and East
3 Noli me tangere in the Codex Egberti (Reichenau, c. 977-93) and in the Gospel Book of Otto iii (Reichenau, 998-1000): Visual Exegesis in Context
4 The Green Tinted Souls of Dives and Lazarus in the Codex Aureus of Echternach
5 Portraits of Terence, the African
6 Manuscripts Face to Face: León and the Holy Roman Empire in the Mid-eleventh Century
7 The Two Pictures Cycles in Early Manuscripts of St Anselm's Prayers
8 Early Cistercian Manuscripts from Clairvaux
9 The Imagery of Noah's Ark in the Mosaic Decoration of Monreale Cathedral
10 Some Observations on the Artists of the Leiden Psalter (Leiden, University Library MS B.P.L. 76A) and Their Working Practices
11 A Portrait of Abraham Ibn Ezra (Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal MS 1186)
12 The Virgin and Child in the Map Psalter (London, British Library Additional MS 28681)
13 Seeing and Reading the Matthew Paris Saints' Lives
14 Extended Shelf-life: Manuscript Consolidation in an English Monastic Library
15 Domesday in Disguise
16 From Warwickshire to New York via Canterbury: The Travels and Tribulations of the Bible of Richard of Sholdon
17 Virgin, Devil, Bishop, King: Nicola Pisano's Pulpit in Siena and Alfonso x's Cantigas de Santa Maria
18 Of Venerable Teachers and Boisterous Students: Maistre Brunetto and the Arabic Aristotle
19 Lost and Found in the Meditationes Vitae Christi, Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410
20 Ivory Booklets, Devotion in Cologne
21 Gothic Ivories Unhinged
22 Monks and Ants in the Presence of Death: A Re-reading of Pliny the Elder in Quattrocento Illumination
23 The Ridware Cartulary and the Great Seal of England
24 Sin and Salvation in the Hours of Jean de Dunois
25 Harreteau and His Unfinished Book of Hours
26 Looking Beneath the Surface: Subterranean Space in the Kutná Hora Cantional
27 A Manuscript of Giovanni Boccaccio's De Mulieribus Claris from the Library of the Benedictine Convent of San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore in Milan?
28 Bloodlines: Medicine and Cosmology in France, China, and Mexico
Index of manuscripts
General Index

Citation preview

Illuminating the Middle Ages

Library of the Written Word volume 79

The Manuscript World Editor-in-Chief Richard Gameson, Durham University

Editorial Board Martin Kauffmann (Bodleian Library, Oxford) Erik Kwakkel (Leiden University) Kathryn Rudy (University of St Andrews) Roger S. Wieck (The Morgan Library & Museum, New York)

volume 12

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/lww

Illuminating the Middle Ages Tributes to Prof. John Lowden from his Students, Friends and Colleagues

Edited by

Laura Cleaver Alixe Bovey Lucy Donkin

leiden | boston

This publication has been made possible thanks to a subvention from the University of Bristol. Cover illustration: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS 11560, f. 8. © Bibliothèque nationale de France. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lowden, John, honouree. | Cleaver, Laura, editor. | Bovey, Alixe, editor. | Donkin, Lucy, editor. Title: Illuminating the Middle Ages : tributes to Prof. John Lowden from his students, friends and colleagues / edited by Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, Lucy Donkin. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2020. | Series: The manuscript world ; volume 12 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020003886 (print) | LCCN 2020003887 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004422322 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004422339 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Illumination of books and manuscripts, Medieval. | Manuscripts, Medieval. Classification: LCC ND2920 .I43 2020 (print) | LCC ND2920 (ebook) | DDC 745.6/700902--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020003886 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020003887

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1874-4834 ISBN 978-90-04-42232-2 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-42233-9 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Abbreviations  IX List of Illustrations  X List of Contributors  XVIII Introduction  1 1

Were Early Medieval Picture Cycles Recycled from Late Antiquity? New Evidence for a Lost Archetype of the Apollonius Pictus—An Illustrated Classic  4 Michelle P. Brown

2

Milanese Early Medieval Psalters: Models and Influences from West and East  19 Francesca Demarchi

3

Noli me tangere in the Codex Egberti (Reichenau, c. 977–93) and in the Gospel Book of Otto III (Reichenau, 998–1000): Visual Exegesis in Context  36 Barbara Baert

4

The Green Tinted Souls of Dives and Lazarus in the Codex Aureus of Echternach  52 Maria R. Grasso

5

Portraits of Terence, the African  68 Beatrice Radden Keefe

6

Manuscripts Face to Face: León and the Holy Roman Empire in the Mid-Eleventh Century  77 Rose Walker

7

The Two Pictures Cycles in Early Manuscripts of St Anselm’s Prayers  97 T.A. Heslop

8

Early Cistercian Manuscripts from Clairvaux  109 Kathleen Doyle

vi

Contents

9

The Imagery of Noah’s Ark in the Mosaic Decoration of Monreale Cathedral  125 Mika Takiguchi

10

Some Observations on the Artists of the Leiden Psalter (Leiden, University Library MS B.P.L. 76A) and Their Working Practices  139 Emma Luker

11

A Portrait of Abraham Ibn Ezra (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal MS 1186)  157 Patricia Stirnemann and Judith Kogel

12

The Virgin and Child in the Map Psalter (London, British Library Additional MS 28681)  164 Sally Dormer

13

Seeing and Reading the Matthew Paris Saints’ Lives  182 Martin Kauffmann

14

Extended Shelf-life: Manuscript Consolidation in an English Monastic Library  207 Kathryn Gerry

15

Domesday in Disguise  224 Jessica Berenbeim

16

From Warwickshire to New York via Canterbury: The Travels and Tribulations of the Bible of Richard of Sholdon  241 Frederica Law-Turner

17

Virgin, Devil, Bishop, King: Nicola Pisano’s Pulpit in Siena and Alfonso X’s Cantigas de Santa Maria  259 Deirdre Jackson

18

Of Venerable Teachers and Boisterous Students: Maistre Brunetto and the Arabic Aristotle  276 Hanna Wimmer

19

Lost and Found in the Meditationes Vitae Christi, Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410  291 Renana Bartal

Contents

20 Ivory Booklets, Devotion in Cologne  309 Sarah M. Guérin 21

Gothic Ivories Unhinged  326 Catherine Yvard

22

Monks and Ants in the Presence of Death: A Re-reading of Pliny the Elder in Quattrocento Illumination  341 Christian Heck

23

The Ridware Cartulary and the Great Seal of England  352 Julian Luxford

24 Sin and Salvation in the Hours of Jean de Dunois  369 Richard Gameson 25

Harreteau and His Unfinished Book of Hours  395 Rowan Watson

26 Looking Beneath the Surface: Subterranean Space in the Kuntá Hora Cantional  414 Lucy Donkin 27

A Manuscript of Giovanni Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris from the Library of the Benedictine Convent of San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore in Milan?  435 Anne-Marie Eze

28 Bloodlines: Medicine and Cosmology in France, China, and Mexico  446 Jack Hartnell Index of Manuscripts  469 General Index  476

vii

Abbreviations B AV

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana BL British Library BM Bibliothèque municipale BnF Bibliothèque nationale de France BSB Bayerische Staatsbibliothek CCCM Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina CSCO Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium CSM Cantigas de Santa Maria JWCI Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica MVC Meditationes Vitae Christi ÖNB Österreichische Nationalbibliothek PL Patrologia Latina SC Sources Chrétiennes TNA Kew, The National Archives V&A Victoria and Albert Museum

Illustrations 1.1 The Apollonius Pictus manuscript, Hungary, National Széchényi Library, Budapest, COD. Lat. 4, f 3v Image courtesy of the National Library of Hungary and the Hungarian Digital Image Library.  5 1.2 The Holy Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai, Arabic NF 8, f. 15r. Image courtesy of The Community of the Holy Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai, and of the Sinai Palimpsest Project.  7 1.3 Drawing of Apollonius and his daughter, Tarsia, the Holy Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai, Arabic NF 8, f. 15v. Image courtesy of The Community of the Holy Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai, and of the Sinai Palimpsest Project.  8 1.4 The Milan Annunciation ivory, Milan, Castle Sforzesco, Avori 14. Image courtesy of the Sforzesco Castle Museum, Milan.  9 1.5 The Holy Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai, Arabic NF 8, f. 15v. Image courtesy of The Community of the Holy Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai, and of the Sinai Palimpsest Project.  11 2.1 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Vat. Lat. 83, f. 76v. © Vatican Library.  21 2.2 Munich, Bayeriche Staatsbibliothek Clm 343, f. 88v. © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München.  24 2.3 Munich, Bayeriche Staatsbibliothek Clm 343, f. 181v. © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München.  29 2.4 Munich, Bayeriche Staatsbibliothek Clm 343, f. 12v. © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München.  30 2.5 Berlin, Kunstgewerbemuseum, inv. 1927,21. © Foto: Kunstgewerbemuseum der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Fotograf/in: Arne Psille.  32 3.1 Noli me tangere, Codex Egberti, Trier, Stadtbibliothek MS 24, f. 91r. © Trier, Stadtbibliothek.  40 3.2 Chairete, detail from a now lost sarcophagus. Source: Antonio Bosio, Roma sotterranea novissima (Rome, 1651).  42 3.3 Noli me tangere, miniature from the Gospel Book of Otto III, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 4453, f. 251r. © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München.  45 3.4 Noli me tangere, detail from the doors of Bernward of Hildesheim for the Church of St Michael in Hildesheim. © Bildarchiv Foto Marburg.  50 4.1 The rich man and Lazarus, Codex Aureus of Echternach c. 1030–45. Nüremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum Hs. 156 142/KG1138, f. 78r. © Germanisches Nationalmuseum, photo: Monika Runge.  53

Illustrations

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4.2 The rich man and Lazarus, Aachen Gospels of Otto III 990–1002, Aachen, Cathedral Treasury MS 1, f. 164v. © Domkapitel Aachen, photo: Ann Münchow.  56 4.3 Transfiguration of Christ, Gospel Book of Otto III c. 1000., Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 4453, f. 113r. © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München.  61 4.4 Aeneas and the Sibyl enter the underworld, Vatican Virgil, c. 400. Vatican City, BAV Cod. Vat. Lat. 3225, f. 47v © Vatican Library.  62 5.1 Portrait of Terence, Vatican City, BAV Cod. Vat. Lat. 3868, f. 2r © Vatican Library.  71 5.2 Portrait of Terence, Vatican City, BAV Cod. Vat. Lat. 6728, f. 8r © Vatican Library.  75 6.1 Alpha with Christ/David, Diurnal, Santiago de Compostela, Biblioteca Xeral Universitaria 609, Reserv. 1, f. 1v. © Universidade de Santiago de Compostela.  80 6.2 Presentation Scene, Diurnal, Santiago de Compostela, Biblioteca Xeral Universitaria 609, Reserv. 1, f. 3r (previously 6v). © Universidade de Santiago de Compostela.  84 6.3 Incipit of Psalter, Diurnal, Santiago de Compostela, Biblioteca Xeral Universitaria 609, Reserv. 1, f. 7r. © Universidade de Santiago de Compostela.  85 6.4 Echternach Pericopes Book, Bremen, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek MS b.21), f. 3v. ©SuUB.  90 6.5 Chronicle of Ekkehard von Aura, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Cod. Lat. 295, f. 81v. © bpk-bildagentur.  92 7.1 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. D.2.6., f. 189v. © The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford.  95 7.2 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. D.2.6., f. 170v. © The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford.  98 7.3 Admont, Monastery Library MS 289, f. 56r. © Benediktinerstift Admont.  98 7.4 Admont, Monastery Library MS 289, f. 80v. © Benediktinerstift Admont.  101 7.5 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. D.2.6., f. 169r. © The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford.  102 8.1 Troyes, Médiatheque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40–1, ff. 1v-2r. © Photo Médiathèque Jacques Chirac, Troyes Champagne Métropole.  112 8.2 Troyes, Médiatheque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 115, ff. 1v-2r. © Photo Médiathèque Jacques Chirac, Troyes Champagne Métropole.  115 8.3 Troyes, Médiatheque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40–4, f. 1r. © Photo Médiathèque Jacques Chirac, Troyes Champagne Métropole.  116 8.4 Troyes, Médiatheque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 27–1, f. iv –1r. © Photo Médiathèque Jacques Chirac, Troyes Champagne Métropole.  119

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9.1 Noah’s Ark, The Palatine Chapel, Palermo. Photo: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra.  129 9.2 Noah’s Ark, Monreale Cathedral. Photo: Rabe!  130 9.3 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 270b, f. 9v. © The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford.  132 9.4 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 270b, f. 10r. © The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford.  133 9.5 Paris, Bibliothèque de la Arsenal MS 1186, f. 13v. © Bibliothèque nationale de France.  136 9.6 Marble inlaid tombstone, Soprintendenza di Palermo. Photo: G. Dallorto.  137 10.1 Quire diagram of the prefatory cycle of the Leiden Psalter.  141 10.2 The Leiden Psalter, Leiden University Library MS B.P.L. 76a, f. 8v (artist A). By permission of Leiden University Libraries.  142 10.3 The Leiden Psalter, Leiden University Library MS B.P.L. 76a, f. 13r (artist B). By permission of Leiden University Libraries.  143 10.4 The Leiden Psalter, Leiden University Library MS B.P.L. 76a, details of heads by artist A (left, ff. 27r, 8v, 26v, 16v) and artist B (right, ff. 9r, 17r, 20v, 10v). By permission of Leiden University Libraries.  144 10.5 Details of the Leiden Psalter, Leiden University Library, MS B. P. L. 76a, by permission of Leiden University Libraries; St John’s College Psalter, Cambridge, St John's College MS K.30 by permission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s.  151 10.6 Animals from the Leiden Psalter. Leiden University Library, MS B. P. L. 76a, by permission of Leiden University Libraries; St John’s College Psalter, Cambridge, St John's College MS K.30, by permission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s; Gough Psalter, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Gough liturg. 2 © The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford; the Aberdeen Bestiary, Aberdeen University Library MS 24 © University of Aberdeen.  154 10.7 Details from the Gough Psalter, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Gough liturg. 2 © The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford; and the Aberdeen Bestiary, Aberdeen University Library MS 24 © University of Aberdeen.  155 11.1 Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenale MS 1186, f. 1v. © Bibliothèque nationale de France.  158 12.1 Virgin and Child, The Map Psalter, London, British Library Add. MS 28681, f. 190v © The British Library Board.  165 12.2 Icon of the Virgin and Child with Old and New Testament figures. By permission of Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, Egypt. Photograph courtesy of Michigan-Princeton-Alexandria Expeditions to Mount Sinai.  172 12.3 Icon of the Virgin and Child. By permission of Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, Egypt. Photograph courtesy of Michigan-Princeton-Alexandria Expeditions to Mount Sinai.  173

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12.4 Virgin and Child, attributed to Meliore Toscano. Formerly in the Spiridon Collection, Rome. Current whereabouts unknown. This photographic reproduction was provided by the Photo Library of the Federico Zeri Foundation, Bologna. The property rights of the author have been met.  175 12.5 Shield of Simon de Montfort, sixth earl of Leicester, c. 1260, north choir aisle, Westminster Abbey. © Dean and Chapter of Westminster.  176 13.1 Trinity College Dublin MS 177, f. 31r. Reproduced by kind permission of The Board of Trinity College Dublin.  189 13.2 Trinity College Dublin MS 177, f. 55r. Reproduced by kind permission of The Board of Trinity College Dublin.  191 13.3 Life of St Thomas Becket, Wormsley Library, f. 1r. Reproduced by kind permission of The Wormsley Library.  194 13.4 Life of St Thomas Becket, Wormsley Library, f. 2r. Reproduced by kind permission of The Wormsley Library.  196 13.5 Cambridge, University Library MS Ee. 3. 59, f. 4r. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.  199 13.6 Cambridge, University Library MS Ee. 3. 59, f. 4v. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.  201 13.7 Cambridge, University Library MS Ee. 3. 59, f. 32v. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.  203 15.1 Kew, The National Archives E 36/284, f. 1v. The National Archives, reproduced with permission.  232 15.2 Kew, The National Archives E 36/284, f. 2r. The National Archives, reproduced with permission.  233 15.3 Kew, The National Archives E 36/284, f. 2v. The National Archives, reproduced with permission.  235 15.4 Kew, The National Archives E 36/284, f. 3r. The National Archives, reproduced with permission.  238 15.5 Kew, The National Archives E/31/2/1, f. 1r. Photo: J.J.N. Palmer and George Slater.  239 16.1 New York, The Morgan Library & Museum MS G.18, f. 75v. Morgan Library & Museum, gift of the Trustees of the William S. Glazier Collection, 1984.  244 16.2 New York, The Morgan Library & Museum MS G.18, f. 84v. Morgan Library & Museum, gift of the Trustees of the William S. Glazier Collection, 1984.  245 16.3 New York, The Morgan Library & Museum MS G.18, f. 276r. Morgan Library & Museum, gift of the Trustees of the William S. Glazier Collection, 1984.  246 16.4 New York, The Morgan Library & Museum MS G.18, f. 279v. Morgan Library & Museum, gift of the Trustees of the William S. Glazier Collection, 1984.  247 17.1 Alfonso X as the Virgin Mary’s Troubadour, El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo MS T.I.1, f. 5r. © PATRIMONIO NACIONAL.  261

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17.2 Pulpit by Nicola Pisano, Duomo, Siena, marble, 1265–8. The Warburg Institute, Photographic Collection.  264 17.3 The Devil thrusts a sinner into the Mouth of Hell, detail of Last Judgement, Nicola Pisano’s pulpit, Duomo, Siena. The Warburg Institute, Photographic Collection.  265 17.4 Miracle of the Pulpit in Siena, Cantiga 219, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Banco Rari 20, ff. 92v-93r. Su concessione del Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali/Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.  266 17.5 Miracle of the Pulpit in Siena, Cantiga 219, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Banco Rari 20, f. 93r (detail). Su concessione del Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali/Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.  267 17.6 Unfinished miniature of pulpit, Cantiga 219, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Banco Rari 20, f. 93r (detail). Su concessione del Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali/Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.  268 17.7 Painter applying colours to a damaged statue, Cantiga 136, El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo MS T.I.1, f. 192r (detail). ©  PATRIMONIO NACIONAL.  269 18.1 Aristotle as an Arabic scholar at the beginning of the second book of Brunetto Latini’s Li livres dou trésor. London, British Library Add. MS 30025, f. 73v. © British Library Board.  279 18.2 Aristotle and Phyllis at the beginning of the second book of Brunetto Latini’s Li livres dou trésor. Carpentras, bibliothèque-musée Inguimbertine MS 269, folio 108r. © IRHT.  281 18.3 Mamluk brass bowl with gold and silver inlays depicting personifications of the planets and of the signs of the Zodiac. Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, inv. no. 364 c. © Gabinetto Fotografico delle Gallerie degli Uffizi.  283 18.4 Aristotle as a master teaching students at the beginning of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 3458, f. 243r. © Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris.  285 18.5 Brunetto Latini at the beginning of the first book of his Li livres dou trésor. London, British Library Add. MS 30025, f. 6r. © British Library Board.  287 19.1 Mary and Joseph searching for the Lost Child. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 30r. By permission of The President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.  292 19.2 Nativity. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 15v. By permission of The President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.  298 19.3 Christ before his Parents. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 31v. By perm­ission of The President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.  302 19.4 Christ before his Parents. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 45r. By permission of The President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.  303

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xv

19.5 The Virgin in Prayer. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 128v. By permission of The President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.  306 19.6 Christ appears first to his Mother. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f.154v. By permission of The President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.  307 19.7 Ascension. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 169v. By permission of The President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.  308 20.1 Triptych with Scenes from the Life and Death of the Virgin. Lisbon, Gulbenkian Museum, Inv. 422. Image courtesy of the Gulbenkian Museum.  310 20.2 Devotional picture booklet (front cover), London, V&A 11–1872. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.  315 20.3 Wing of an altarpiece from Toresund (Strängnäs). Stockholm, Historisches Museum. Image courtesy of the Historisches Museum.  316 20.4 Devotional picture booklet (3v-4r). London, V&A 11–1872. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.  317 20.5 Tabernacle with ivory appliqué plaques. Halberstadt, Cathedral Domschatz, inv. 15. © Photograph Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie SachsenAnhalt, Juraj Lipták.  318 20.6 Three pieces of a devotional booklet. Ravenna, Museo Nazionale (Inv. 1038). Image courtesy of the Sopraintendenza Beni Culturali, Ravenna.  320 20.7 Devotional wax tablet booklet. Linsky collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1982.60.399). Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  321 20.8 Passion diptych. Brussels, Museum of Art and History, Inv. 854. Image courtesy of the Art & History Museum.  325 21.1 Reverse of the left and right wings of a diptych. London, V&A, Inv. A.2–1937 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.  329 21.2 Writing tablets reused as book covers. Gotha, Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein, Elfenbein Nr. 6. © Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha.  330 21.3 Cross-section of a set of ivory writing tablets at hinges height. Illustration © Matilde Grimaldi 2018.  332 21.4 Reverse view of ivory writing tablet London, V&A, Inv. Circ.495–1923. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.  334 21.5 View of the inner edge of Fig. 21.4 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.  334 21.6 Devotional booklet. Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Inv. MA2033. © Bayerisches Nationalmuseum München.  337 22.1 Girolamo da Cremona, The Death of St Martin c. 1460–2. Chantilly, Library of the Musée Condé, inv. DE-343 (Divers IV-343). © RMN — Domaine de Chantilly.  343

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22.2 Girolamo da Cremona, The Death of St Martin c. 1460–2, detail, the ants. Chantilly, Library of the Musée Condé, inv. DE-343 (Divers IV-343), detail. © RMN — Domaine de Chantilly.  344 23.1 London, British Library Egerton MS 3041, f. 8v. © British Library Board.  353 23.2 London, British Library Egerton MS 3041, f. 8v (detail). © British Library Board.  354 23.3 Front of the Great Seal of England as modified and used by Edward II. After Alfred and Alan Wyon, The Great Seals of England (London, 1887).  355 23.4 London, British Library Egerton MS 3041, f. 5r. © British Library Board.  361 23.5 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 96, f. 164r. Reproduced by permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.  365 23.6 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 329, f. 43r. Reproduced by permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.  366 24.1 Calendar, January, British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (Dunois Hours), f. 1r. © British Library Board.  375 24.2 Obsecro te, British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (Dunois Hours), f. 22v. © British Library Board.  376 24.3 Psalm 6 (first Penitential Psalm), British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (Dunois Hours), f. 157r. © British Library Board.  378 24.4 Psalm 129 (sixth Penitential Psalm), British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (Dunois Hours), f. 172v. © British Library Board.  383 24.5 Office of the Dead, British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (Dunois Hours), f. 201v. © British Library Board.  384 24.6 Deus propitius esto michi peccatori, British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (Dunois Hours), f. 32v. © British Library Board.  386 25.1 Folio with completed border and completed integrated miniature of St Mark. London, V&A MSL/1993/2, f. 16v. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.  401 25.2 Suffrage for St Barbara. London, V&A MSL/1993/2, f. 41v. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.  406 25.3 Adoration of the Magi. London, V&A MSL/1993/2, f. 53v. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.  407 25.4 The Annunciation. London, V&A MSL/1993/2, f. 18v. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.  408 25.5 Death figure greeting three horsemen. London, V&A MSL/1993/2, f. 80v. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.  409 26.1 Mining, processing and sale of ore, Kutná Hora Cantional, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Mus. Hs. 15501, f. 1v. © ÖNB, Vienna.  415 26.2 Miners at work, Sebastian Münster, Cosmographia (1552), p. 431. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library (L*.9.8(B)).  419

Illustrations

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26.3 St Helena and the Invention of the True Cross, Kutná Hora Cantional, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Mus. Hs. 15501, f. 165v. © ÖNB, Vienna.  429 26.4 Resurrection of the Dead, Smíškovský Gradual, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Mus. Hs. 15492, f. 335v. © ÖNB, Vienna.  431 26.5 Martyrdom of Hussite laypeople and clergy at Kutná Hora, Smíškovský Gradual, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Mus. Hs. 15492, f. 285r. © ÖNB, Vienna.  432 27.1 A teacher listening to her pupil read (Minerva). MS Richardson 41, f. 2r (detail). Houghton Library, Harvard University.  438 27.2 The penitent Mary Magdalene (Europa). MS Richardson 41, f. 3v (detail). Houghton Library, Harvard University.  439 27.3 A nun praying (Iole). MS Richardson 41, f. 6r (detail). Houghton Library, Harvard University.  440 27.4 A nun reading (Marpesia and Lampedo). MS Richardson 41, f. 4r (detail). Houghton Library, Harvard University.  441 27.5 Marginalia: description of Sempronia excerpted from Sallust’s The War with Catiline. MS Richardson 41, f. 3v (detail). Houghton Library, Harvard University.  442 28.1 ‘Panel B’ of Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, 1928–9. Photograph © The Warburg Institute.  447 28.2 Zodiac Man from a Hebrew medical miscellany, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Hébreu 1181, f. 266r. © Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2018.  450 28.3 Zodiac Man from John de Foxton’s Liber cosmographiae, 1408, Cambridge, Trinity College Library MS R.15.21, f. 28v. Reproduction permission kindly granted by the Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge.  453 28.4 Three figures outlining moxibustion points, early Tang Dynasty (c. 618), discovered in Cave 16 of the Dunhuang complex, China. London, British Library Or.8210/S.6168. © British Library Board.  457 28.5 Bloodletting figure from the Fasciculus medicinae (Venice: Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, 1491). Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rar. 749. © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00052856-8.  460 28.6 Figure displaying the days of the week, from the so-called Codex Ríos (also known as Codex Vaticanus A), mid-sixteenth century, Mexico or Italy. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Vat. Lat. 3738, f. 54r. © Vatican Library.  463 28.7 European-style Zodiac Man, from the so-called Codex Mexicanus, c. 1590, Mexico. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Mexicain 23–24, page 12 © Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2018.  466

Contributors Barbara Baert is Professor Ordinaries at the department of Art History at KU Leuven, Belgium. For two decades she was part of the Lille-Leuven-London network of which John Lowden was the initiator and beating heart. Renana Bartal is a senior lecturer in the Department of Art History at Tel Aviv University. She completed a PhD on fourteenth-century English Apocalypse manuscripts under the supervision of John Lowden and Bianca Kühnel (Hebrew University) in 2009. Jessica Berenbeim is University Lecturer in Literature and Visual Culture at the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Jesus College. She was a Kress Institutional Fellow at The Courtauld Institute of Art, under John Lowden’s supervision. Alixe Bovey is Head of Research at The Courtauld Institute of Art. She completed a PhD under John Lowden’s supervision in 2000. This book was largely her idea. Michelle P. Brown is Professor Emerita of Medieval Manuscript Studies at SAS, University of London and former Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts, British Library. She was made an Honorary Senior Research Fellow of The Courtauld Institute of Art under John Lowden’s sponsorship, going on to join him as co-founder of the Research Centre for Illuminated Manuscript Studies. Laura Cleaver is Ussher Lecturer in Medieval Art at Trinity College Dublin. She completed a PhD under John Lowden’s supervision in 2008. Francesca Demarchi completed a PhD on Milanese book illumination in 2014 under John Lowden’s supervision.

Contributors

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Lucy Donkin is a lecturer in History and History of Art at the University of Bristol. She completed her PhD under John Lowden’s supervision in 2005. Sally Dormer is a Year Course Director and Tutor at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and Dean of European Studies, a study-abroad semester for the University of the South, Sewanee, and Rhodes College, Tennessee, USA. She completed a PhD on drawings in English manuscripts under John Lowden’s supervision in 1991. Kathleen Doyle is the Lead Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library. She completed a PhD on Cistercian manuscripts under John Lowden’s supervision in 2005. Anne-Marie Eze is Director of Scholarly & Public Programs at Houghton Library, Harvard University. She completed a PhD on Abbé Luigi Celotti (1759–1843): Connoisseur, Dealer and Collector of Illuminated Miniatures co-supervised by John Lowden and Scot McKendrick in 2010. Richard Gameson is Professor of the History of the Book at Durham University. It was as a British Academy Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at The Courtauld Institute of Art that he first met John Lowden, and he has benefitted from his academic example, support and friendship ever since. Kathryn Gerry has held positions at the Walters Art Museum, the University of Kansas, the Memphis College of Art, and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History at Bowdoin College. She worked closely with John Lowden when she was a Kress Pre-Doctoral Fellow at The Courtauld Institute of Art, from 2005 to 2007. Maria R. Grasso is an independent scholar. John Lowden supervised her PhD on the depiction of the soul in the Middle Ages which was completed in 2014.

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Contributors

Sarah M. Guérin is Assistant Professor of Medieval Art in the History of Art Department at the University of Pennsylvania. From 2011 to 2013 she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Courtauld, under the generous guidance of John Lowden. Jack Hartnell is Lecturer in Art History at the University of East Anglia’s Department of Art History and World Art Studies. He completed his PhD under the co-supervision of John Lowden in 2014. Christian Heck is Emeritus Professor of the History of Medieval Art, Lille University. For many years he was associated with John Lowden in the LLL (Lille-Leuven-London) Seminar for Illuminated Manuscripts. T.A. (Sandy) Heslop is Professor of Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, an admirer of John’s contribution to the history of art and a long-time friend. Deirdre Jackson is Assistant Curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York. John Lowden supervised her PhD on Alfonso X’s Cantigas de Santa Maria (2002), and she worked with him on the British Library’s lead exhibition for 2011–12: Royal Manuscripts: the Genius of Illumination. Martin Kauffmann is Head of Early and Rare Collections at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. He completed his PhD at The Courtauld Institute under John Lowden’s supervision. Beatrice Radden Keefe is writing a book on the illustrated manuscripts of Terence’s comedies and currently teaches at the University of Zurich. She completed a PhD under John Lowden’s supervision in 2008. Judith Kogel is Director of Research at the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes (CNRS) in Paris. She is a specialist of the intellectual history of medieval Jewish communities.

Contributors

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Frederica Law-Turner completed her PhD with John in 1999 and recently published a book based on it, The Ormesby Psalter, Artists and Patrons in Medieval East Anglia (Oxford, 2017). She is currently working for the National Gallery and preparing a study of the Met Cloisters’ Unicorn Tapestries. Emma Luker took John Lowden’s MA course: Making and Meaning in the Middle Ages (2003). She then worked as an assistant curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum before returning to the Courtauld to take up a Bob McCarthy scholarship for her PhD, supervised by John, entitled The Leiden Psalter (Leiden, University Library MS B.P.L. 76A): Patronage, Production and Ownership (completed 2016). Julian Luxford is Professor of Art History at the University of St Andrews. He got to know John while serving as an external examiner at The Courtauld Institute of Art, and has profited by the connection more greatly than his contribution to this volume can show. Patricia Stirnemann continues in retirement as a researcher at the Institut de recherche et d’histoire de textes (CNRS) in Paris. She is a long-time friend and admirer of John Lowden and Joanna Cannon. Mika Takiguchi is Associate Professor at Meiji University in Tokyo. She completed her PhD under John Lowden’s supervision in 2003. Rose Walker holds a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship for her current project. She completed a PhD on Spanish liturgical manuscripts and the management of change under the supervision of John Lowden in 1994. Rowan Watson is Senior Curator Emeritus of the National Art Library. He is grateful to John Lowden for many years of productive conversations. Hanna Wimmer is a Junior Professor at the Department of Art History at the University of Hamburg. She completed her Masters degree under John Lowden’s supervision in 2004.

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Contributors

Catherine Yvard is Special Collections Curator at the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. From 2008 to 2015, she managed the Gothic Ivories Project at The Courtauld Institute of Art.

Introduction In his reworked doctoral research, published in 1992 as The Octateuchs: a Study in Byzantine Manuscript Illustration, John Lowden observed; “students are a wonderful amalgam of skepticism, enthusiasm, fresh ideas, cunning, and obtuseness: no teacher can fail to respond to the challenge they represent.”1 This volume pays tribute to John’s immense contribution to the study of medieval art, and to manuscripts in particular, as a scholar, teacher, friend, and colleague. It demonstrates the scepticism, enthusiasm, fresh ideas and cunning that John’s teaching has helped to cultivate and refine, and the importance of John’s approach to the study of medieval art, which has done much to overcome obtuseness and shape a generation of scholarship. After a brief period at the University of St Andrews, John joined the academic staff of the Courtauld Institute in 1982, where he remained until his retirement in 2017. In his inaugural professorial lecture at the Courtauld Institute in 2006, he described himself as “a neo-aristotelian, for whom God is in the detail,” and the papers in this collection demonstrate the value of close scrutiny of manuscripts, critical engagement, and careful thought, using the evidence of particular details to engage with larger questions. Many of the authors included here have benefitted from the chance to look at manuscripts (and other medieval objects) with John, whether in classes, on field trips, in the course of exhibition preparations, or as part of other forms of scholarly collaboration. The collection is therefore testament to his generosity and encouragement to scholars at all stages of their careers. John’s teaching and research are extremely wide-ranging, both chronologically and geographically. He has published on manuscripts of every century since the emergence of the codex. His initial work on Byzantine Octateuchs was followed by a major study of the Bibles moralisées, research into lateantique bookcovers, and ground-breaking work on manuscripts in the Royal collection at the British Library. In addition, he has published widely on works in other media, ranging from the Sutton Hoo burials to Gothic ivories. This volume is not so wide-ranging, but the contributions span the major period of manuscript production, from late antiquity to the fifteenth century, and they are organised chronologically. The decision to focus on western manuscripts in this volume was a pragmatic one, designed to make it possible to lift the resulting book. Although they focus on Europe, many of the contributions here 1 J. Lowden, The Octateuchs: a Study in Byzantine Manuscript Illustration (University Park, 1992), xviii.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_002

2

Introduction

a­ ddress the movement of people, books and ideas. In addition, Hanna Wimmer explores contact with the Arabic world, and Jack Hartnell’s paper looks further afield to explore parallels in representations of medicine and cosmology in France, China and Mexico. Similarly, some of the essays engage with the relationships between manuscripts and works in other media: Mika Takiguchi examines the mosaic decoration of Monreale Cathedral, Deirdre Jackson explores parallels between Nicola Pisano’s Siena pulpit and the Cantigas de Santa Maria, Julian Luxford considers representations of seals, and Sarah Guérin and Catherine Yvard both address relationships between manuscripts and ivories. The essays collected here tackle subjects to which John’s work has made a major contribution. These include the importance of late antiquity as a source of iconography, together with the circumstances of its reception, issues addressed by Michelle Brown, Francesca Demarchi, Maria Grasso, and Beatrice Radden Keefe, among others. The question of meaning, and how we might reconstruct what iconography meant to its creators and earliest readers, is also a recurring theme, explored by Barbara Baert, Sandy Heslop, Sally Dormer, Jessica Berenbeim, Christian Heck, Lucy Donkin, and Patricia Stirnemann and Judith Kogel. Questions of patronage and the significance of the book as an object potentially rich in symbolism, albeit of very different kinds, underlie the essays by Rose Walker, Kathleen Doyle, Frederica Law-Turner, Richard Gameson, and Anne-Marie Eze. Other essays, including those by Emma Luker, Kathryn Gerry, and Rowan Watson concentrate on the processes involved in the creation of manuscripts, including the collaboration of artists, structuring and restructuring of books, and the materials used. One of the fundamental topics in the creation of illuminated manuscripts, the relationships between text and imagery, is the focus of essays by Martin Kauffmann and Renana Bartal. Most of the essays collected here take as their starting point a single manuscript. However, they demonstrate the ways in which the study of the details of the visual and textual evidence can be used to shed light on issues including production, patronage, belief, identity, and the transmission of ideas. The work follows John’s lead in seeking to understand manuscripts as products of their time, coupled with the (sometimes devastatingly posed) question “so what?” that prompts reflection on the significance of these books today. In addition to the quality of his scholarship, John is renowned among his students for his aphorisms (or Lowdenisms). Some of these are quoted in the contributions here, but it is worth recording some of the general principles that John has shared with his students and colleagues, and which have been evident in the creation of this volume. Amongst these are the instructions always to follow the line of most interest, which has led to the richness of the material gathered here, and that “the point of starting a PhD is to finish it” a

Introduction

3

reminder that all work must have an end. Finally, John’s declaration that “art history is fun” and his sense of humour, have found parallels in the enthusiasm with which the authors agreed to participate in this project, and the goodhumour with which they have borne with the delays and frustrations of bringing the book to fruition. His career is an important reminder that it is possible to combine serious, rigorous, thought-provoking work with immense fun.

Chapter 1

Were Early Medieval Picture Cycles Recycled from Late Antiquity? New Evidence for a Lost Archetype of the Apollonius Pictus—An Illustrated Classic Michelle P. Brown 2011 saw the facsimile publication of a notable find in the National Széchényi Library, Budapest, cod. Lat. 4—an illustrated Ottonian copy made around 1000 of a classical text, the History of Apollonius of Tyre (Historia Apollonii regis Tyri), an anonymous fifth- or sixth-century ce Latin version of an originally Greek text. The Latin version is first mentioned by Venantius Fortunatus in the late sixth century (Carmina, Book vi.8, 11.5–6) and unillustrated Latin versions of the ninth and tenth century survive. The Budapest manuscript, which contains some thirty-eight line drawings in somewhat crude style, was greeted as the first illustrated copy to survive and is now known as the Apollonius Pictus (Fig. 1.1).1 In the facsimile commentary one of the contributors, distinguished art historian Herbert Kessler, questioned whether this might conceivably preserve the recollection of a lost text-image cycle from late antiquity, or whether the picture cycle was an Ottonian artistic invention made as an addition to a previously unillustrated textual tradition. In the absence of other evidence, the answer had, perforce, to remain open. In 2018 I published the answer to this conundrum as part of my recent work on previously unknown Latin manuscripts from the Holy Monastery of St Catherine’s Sinai.2 This includes a discovery, made possible with the aid of digital

1 For an online textual edition of the History of Apollonius of Tyre text, see Corpus Corporum www.mlat.uzh.ch (accessed 29.3.2018); S. Ammirati, Sul Libro Latino Antico (Pisa/Rome, 2015); E. Archibald, Apollonius of Tyre. Medieval and Renaissance Themes and Variations, Including the Text of the Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri with an English Translation (Cambridge, 1991). On the Apollonius Pictus manuscript in Budapest, see A. Boreczky and A. Németh, ed., Apollonius Pictus: an illustrated late antique romance around 1000; facsimile edition of the Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri (Budapest, 2011); A. Boreczky, “The Illustrated Life of Apollonius and Tarsia: a ‘Papyrus-style’ Narrative in Ottonian Art,” Convivium 1 (2016): 76–91. 2 This is the first discussion of the Apollonius fragment in the context of late Antique and early Chrisian manuscript production and of its relationship to the Apollonius Pictus Ottonian copy. I published a preliminary notice of the Apollonius fragment in the broader context of the corpus of Latin manuscripts that I have identified at St Catherine’s in M.P. Brown, “The Bridge in the Desert: towards establishing an historical context for the newly discovered © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_003

New Evidence for a Lost Archetype of the Apollonius Pictus

5

Figure 1.1 The Apollonius Pictus manuscript, Hungary, National Széchényi Library, Budapest, cod. Lat. 4, f.3v. The upper drawing on the right resembles the scene in the Sinai fragment, but is not from the same model. Image courtesy of the National Library of Hungary and the Hungarian Digital Image Library Latin manuscripts of St Catherine’s Sinai,” in Palaeography Between East and West, ed. A.  d’Ottone Rambach, Rivista degli Studi Orientali (Supplement, 2018): 73–98. I am deeply indebted to the Archbishop and the Monastic Community of the Holy Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai, for kindly granting me permission to examine, identify and to publish the Latin

6

Brown

images generated by the Sinai Palimpsest Project, which enabled the identification of fragments from the History of Apollonius of Tyre.3 It was copied by one of the Latin hands responsible for one of the several layers of palimpsested texts in Sinai, Arabic NF 8 (Fig. 1.2), and which is one of two that I have associated with Rome from around the time of (or preceding, sometime earlier in the century) Pope Gregory the Great’s relations with St Catherine’s, Sinai, at the close of the sixth century. Probably dating to c. 600 or earlier, this copy predates the other known Latin versions of the Apollonius of Tyre text by some way. It is of very fine quality, and probably hails from Rome itself, and the fragmentary illustration that survives (Fig. 1.3) provides evidence for the sort of late antique illustrated cycle that the earliest medieval illustrated version, now in Budapest, copied around the year 1000.4 The latter was made in Werden and contains a cycle of narrative line drawings which, in view of the Sinai fragment, were probably based on similar if finer late antique outline drawings. The Sinai fragment preserves the heads of a young woman and a man set beneath an architectural entablature with Corinthian column capitals, resembling a stage, drawn in a ferrous ink. The line-drawing style is loose but adept and naturalistic and the format is large and, given the lightness of the drawing style, monumental. The composition, with a distinctively sloping angle to the architectural pediment surmounting the two figures, is reminiscent of the Milan Annunciation ivory (Fig. 1.4), thought to have been made either in a manuscripts in their collection. I am also particularly grateful to the Librarian of the collection, Archimandrate Justin Sinaites, for his manifold kindnesses and assistance in this work. Permission for all images in the collection resides with the monastery. I should also like to extend my thanks to the Sinai Palimpsest Project team for kindly granting me access to their high-level digitized and articulated images of the palimpsested materials in the collection, particularly Arabic NF 8, as part of my work on the Sinai Palimpsest Project and for my other publications arising. The online catalogue of the palimpsests was subsequently released in 2018, and I summarily describe the Apollonius fragments and related material therein, alongside digital images, see http://sinaipalimpsests.org/ (accessed 29.3.2018). For other material that I have already published on the subject of early East-West contacts and on the Sinai manuscripts, see M.P. Brown, ed., In the Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000 (Washington DC, 2006); M.P. Brown, “The Eastwardness of Things: Relationships between the Christian Cultures of the Middle East and the Insular World,” in The Genesis of Books: Studies in the Interactions of Words, Text, and Print in Honor of A. Doane, ed. M. Hussey and J.D. Niles (Turnhout, 2012), 1–35; M.P. Brown, “Imagining, Imaging and Experiencing the East in Insular and Anglo-Saxon Cultures: New Evidence for Contact,” in Anglo-Saxon England and the Visual Imagination, ed. J.D. Niles et al. (Tempe, AZ, 2016), 49–84. 3 Within the Sinai Palimpsests Project, I am responsible for the Latin text identifications along with David Ganz, who first identified the text of the Historia Apollonii, and additional assistance from Daniela Mairhofer. 4 Boreczky and Németh, Apollonius Pictus.

New Evidence for a Lost Archetype of the Apollonius Pictus

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Figure 1.2 The Holy Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai, Arabic NF 8, f. 15r. Palimpsested sixth-century Latin uncial script (enhanced in red) beneath the hand which reused this and other fragments to write a copy of the Gospels in Arabic at Sinai c. 800. Image courtesy of The Community of the Holy Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai, and of the Sinai Palimpsest Project

S­ yro-Palestinian or Alexandrian workshop (the work from which is variously dated to the sixth to eighth centuries) which made this and the panels of the Grado throne, presented to the partriarchate there by Emperor Heraclius in the early seventh century. This raises the interesting possibility that the Sinai Apollonius manuscript may have been available as a stylistic model in the Near East by this time. Alternatively (if an early dating is accepted for the ivory and the possibility is allowed, in view of my demonstration of westerners working at the monastery in Sinai, of an adept Roman artist-scribe producing highquality books in the region around 600) the image in the book may have been influenced by contemporaneous iconographies already available in Egypt.5 5 Anna Boreczky, pers. comm., has commented that the architectural setting reminds her of the background of a Syro-Palestinian ivory now in Milan (Castle Sforzesco, Avori 14), see K. Weitzmann, ed., Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh

8

Brown

Figure 1.3 Drawing of Apollonius and his daughter, Tarsia, the Holy Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai, Arabic NF 8, f. 15v Image courtesy of The Community of the Holy Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai, and of the Sinai Palimpsest Project

­Century (New York, 1979), 498, no. 448. Indeed, the pediment of the building in which the Annunciation is set on this late seventh- to eighth-century Syro-Palestinian ivory slopes downwards at an unusually steep angle, as does that in the Apollonius fragment, and is supported upon two columns with composite capitals. In fact, if the composition is reversed it resembles that of the Apollonius fragment even more closely, with the bowed head of the Virgin resembling that of Tarsia and that of the angel Gabriel, Apollonius. This ivory has been discussed by Weitzmann and others as representing the earliest and one of the most classically indebted works from this Palestinian workshop. Weitzmann also compared the narrative cycle of which it formed part to the early Christian doors at S. Ambrogio, Milan, and Sta Sabina in Rome (one of Pope Gregory’s favourite basilicas). In view of the similarities to the Apollonius manuscript and the reversal of the composition—a feature often associated with tracing/copying of an exemplar, it is tempting to suggest that the presence of an important sixth-century Roman illustrated book in the region may have influenced this near eastern workshop. Interestingly, Graeven, in 1899, associated the group of ivories of which this forms part with a cathedra (bishop’s throne) of St Mark, which he considered to have been made in Alexandria c. 600 and presented by Emperor Heraclius (610–41) to the cathedral at Grado, which stands in north-east Italy at the head of the Adriatic, close to Aquileia. This throne was later taken to St Mark’s in Venice. During the Schism of the Three Chapters the eastern and western-facing Patriarchate of Aquileia, which had fallen to the Arian Lombards, was split and an alternative seat was established at Grado, which from 606 entered into the proRoman and pro-Byzantine Orthodoxy of Chalcedon. Aquileia was also later reunited into

New Evidence for a Lost Archetype of the Apollonius Pictus

Figure 1.4 The Milan Annunciation ivory, Milan, Castle Sforzesco, Avori 14 Image courtesy of the Sforzesco Castle Museum, Milan

9

10

Brown

The subject (by comparison with the Werden manuscript, which has a similar scene of a man and woman standing together in an architectural surround, although the composition and style vary) is likely Apollonius and his daughter, Tarsia, at the house of the innkeeper, Strangulio, probably introducing ch. 28, the middle section of which is on f. 15v of Arabic NF 8. The text continues on what is now the recto, indicating that the piece of membrane has been turned around the wrong way during reuse. Both script and text are confident and expert. The illustration was palimpsested and overwritten in a seventh- or eighth-century half-uncial hand of western or local Sinaite Latin origin, written upside down in relation to the illustration. The Apollonius manuscript was therefore certainly at Sinai by this time and had been broken up. This already-palimpsested Apollonius fragment is part of a composite multilayered palimpsested page consisting of several fragments sewn together and further palimpsested by a Christian Arabic hand from the Sinaite community in the late ninth (?) century. Further fragments by the same scribal hand, probably also from the Apollonius manuscript, occur on Arabic NF 8 ff. 18r and 18v (lower right-hand fragments, as viewed from f. 18r). These fragments were also all palimpsested in the eighth century by an Insular cursive minuscule hand, writing passages from the Gospels (Fig. 1.5) and, finally, were reused and palimpsested again by the Sinaite Arabic-writing monk who made the book around 900 (see the upper level of script on Figs 1.2 and 1.3). There may also be further passages of the Apollonius on f. 20v. The legibility problems entailed by damaged multiple palimpsested leaves make the identification of the textual passages extremely difficult, even with the aid of advanced digital imaging techniques. There do not appear to be any further extant drawings in this manuscript. That is not to say that further fragments may not emerge amongst the materials at St Catherine’s monastery. Insufficient remains to determine the original layout of the Apollonius ­fragment, but it was probably arranged in single columns (number of lines ­uncertain), by analogy with other late antique de-luxe illustrated books of this communion under Patriarch Serenus (715–30), after intervention from Pope Gregory the Great, Irish St Columbanus in the early seventh century, and the Synod of Aquileia in 698. The contested territory of the northern Adriatic, and the Venetian lagoon, with Rome and Byzantium maintaining bridgeheads on either shore through the Byzantine exarchate of Ravenna and centres such as Grado, made it an important area for East-West relations during the sixth to eighth centuries. For some other interesting implications of this episode for western art, see M.P. Brown, “Reading the Lindisfarne Gospels: Text, Image, Context,” in The Lindisfarne Gospels: new perspectives, ed. R. Gameson (Leiden, 2017), 79–90. Such links, forged during the ecclesiastical and political struggles of the age, may help to explain some of the spiritual, cultural and artistic connections between East and West, see for example Brown, “Imagining, Imaging and Experiencing” and “The Bridge in the Desert.”

New Evidence for a Lost Archetype of the Apollonius Pictus

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Figure 1.5 The Holy Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai, Arabic NF 8, f. 15v. An eighth-century Insular hand can be seen in the gutter (running vertically), with a red zoomorphic initial E to the right. Image courtesy of The Community of the Holy Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai, and of the Sinai Palimpsest Project

this apparent scale (such as the Vatican Virgil, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Cod. Vat. Lat. 3225) with images in outline drawing, arranged as column pictures and some perhaps as full-page miniatures. Only the heads of what would probably have been full-length standing figures remain, indicating the very large scale of the original page. The Ottonian Werden copy has two columns, but is written in smaller caroline minuscule script and with smaller scale drawings, and the layout was probably reconfigured accordingly from whatever ­exemplar it copied. The discovery of the Sinai Apollonius fragment and my assessment of its significance therefore indicates that Kessler’s suspicions were correct and that there was indeed an earlier illustrated Apollonius tradition in Italy by around 600.6 The manuscript that the Sinai fragment came from would have been large, formally penned in Latin uncial script and illustrated with ink line 6 I am extremely grateful to Professor David Ganz for kindly discussing his identification of the text with me as part of our work on the Sinai palimpsests.

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d­ rawings. There is not enough surviving to determine whether there was one column or two, but the scale of the drawing is large and brings to mind the scale of the images, set above single columns, in the Vatican Virgil (which is coloured, but the aesthetic of which is drawing-based). The Ottonian version is written in caroline minuscule and also contains a picture cycle executed in outline drawing, this time with some colour by the use of red and text ink. It contains a scene to which the Sinai fragment may be compared in general terms. This, and the provenance circumstances which mean that the manuscript of which fragments survive in Sinai—which were there by at least 900 and probably when they were palimpsested earlier and were therefore unavailable as an exemplar to the Werden scriptorium around 1000—indicate that there must have been other early Latin illustrated copies of the History of Apollonius of Tyre circulating, from one of which the manuscript in Hungary was descended. . The script of the Apollonius is a high-quality Latin uncial script, consistent stylistically with production perhaps in Rome itself during the sixth century. The first layer of overtext written on top of the palimpsested illustration is by a seventh- to eighth-century Latin half-uncial hand with uncial G and long, straight ascenders and descenders. It was then repalimpsested by what would appear, palaeographically, to be by a scribe trained in the West and of Insular background, although the presence of Latin writers in the monastery in the early Middle Ages indicates that these scribes could have been working there.7 Overall, this pattern of interaction points to much of the membrane used in this part of Arabic NF 8 having been present in Sinai throughout the process of multiple palimpsesting, indicating that the western hands were being written there, probably by incoming pilgrims or monks, as part of a latinate ‘scriptorium’ in the monastery that functioned alongside those of other linguistic groups during the early Middle Ages.8 My work in identifying both palimpsest and 7 Also of great importance, and of utmost significance for our present purpose, is my discovery that other of the palimpsested fragments of which this book was made bear the hands of two eighth-century Insular scribes writing Insular minuscule On f. 26v these hands occur together, indicating that these two scribes were working alongside one another. The work of one of them, who wrote a formal set minuscule, includes part of a service book including a lection from St Mark’s Gospel, in the Vulgate (f. 15v). This was subsequently palimpsested by our Sinaite Christian Arabic-writing scribe around 900. Two of the fragments bearing this Insular hand also carry half-uncial script by one of the Italian hands of c. 600 on the verso, and on f. 19 the Insular hand also occurs on the front of a fragment bearing early Sinaite Greek uncials on its verso. On f. 20v one of the Italian half-uncial hands that had palimpsested the early Greek uncials has in turn been palimpsested by an in-house Sinaite Latin cursive hand before being re-palimpsested by the Arabic hand. See Brown, “The Bridge in the Desert.” 8 Brown, “Imagining, Imaging and Experiencing” and “The Bridge in the Desert.”

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non-palimpsest pre-Crusader period Latin materials in the monastery of St Catherine’s points to the existence of a curious and distinctive in-house latinate style, in which palaeographical, decorative and codicological influences and components from the Insular sphere, Italy, Iberia, Gaul, Germany and the Syro-Greek sphere were blended together or selected from in a manner not encountered in any western scriptoria. The first of the English scribes wrote a compact, rounded Insular ‘Phase ii’ set minuscule (Fig. 1.5) recalling that of the Moore Bede,9 copied during the 740s at Wearmouth-Jarrow as part of a publication campaign to disseminate the works of Bede, and that of London, British Library Egerton MS 1046 (Old Testament Wisdom and Canticles, Northumbria, first half of the eighth century). These parallels suggest a mid-eighth-century English scribal background.10 The Insular script on f. 15v (the same composite folio, made up of several different palimpsested fragments, that includes the illustrated Apollonius) incorporates a zoomorphic initial (Fig. 1.5) composed of an exotic senmurv (a beast of Persian origin, conflating animal, bird and fish components, symbolising the union of the elements of earth, air and water), akin to that found in the early ninth-century Mercian Royal Prayer Book and forming an example of the Middle Eastern exoticism fashionable in Mercian art at this period.11 It also features an angular Insular display script with multi-coloured infills in a palette of slate-blue, orange, and yellow reminiscent of display script found in other Mercian manuscripts c. 760–830.12 Another eighth-century Insular scribe, who wrote an Insular Phase ii minuscule similar to that of the first scribe but more cursive in ductus, is to be found palimpsesting other parts of what now forms Sinai, Arabic NF 8. The more formal hand was writing Mark 14–15 on ff. 15r-v (Mark 14 opens on f. 15v with the red zoomorphic senmurv initial and Insular coloured display script). The same hand appears on ff. 19r (Luke 24?) and 27r and v. The second Insular, cursive minuscule, hand was probably writing a liturgical text (resembling the first Eucharistic prayer from the Roman Missal) and appears on ff. 24–26. There were, therefore, at least two English scribes at work in St Catherine’s during the second half of the eighth century. These scribes were influenced by mid-eighth-century Northumbrian scripts and by artistic features paralleled in Mercia in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. 9 10 11 12

Cambridge, University Library MS Kk.5.16. M.P. Brown, “Writing in the Insular World,” in A History of the Book in Britain, Volume 1: From the Romans to the Normans, ed. R.G. Gameson (Cambridge, 2012), 121–66. London, BL Royal MS 2.A.XX, f. 17r. Such as Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Hatton 93 (a primum in ordine mass text) and Paris, BnF MS Lat. 10861 (a collection of saints’ lives).

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To recap, this ‘palimpsest sandwich,’ as I like to call it, which is part of Sinai, Arabic NF 8 (a codex composed of palimpsested fragments of many works in a variety of languages and styles of script, palimpsested once more and sewn together like a patchwork quilt by the Arabic-writing scribe around the year 900), is highly significant. For the interaction of the various hands suggests the multiple reuse of membrane (which is scarce in the Sinai desert), some of which had already been written upon locally in early Sinaite Greek uncials, then by Italian hands of c. 600, then by at least two eighth-century Anglo-Saxon scribes probably working at Sinai, and finally by a Christian Arabic-speaking member of the St Catherine’s scriptorium who reused all of these earlier leaves to make a religious book in the monastery around 900—it should be remembered that after the Islamic conquests, Arabic would have been the first language of those living under its rule, regardless of their faith. The pattern of interaction between the pieces of membrane and the various hands that wrote or drew upon them, therefore suggests that at least one of the Italian and the two Insular scribes were actually present in Sinai. The hand of the Apollonius fragments, however, would appear to have had a sixth-century Roman background and displays no particularly Sinaite features, although some of the associated pieces of membrane had been written upon in Greek in the region earlier. The original Apollonius manuscript may therefore have been made in Rome and brought to St Catherine’s by the seventh to eighth century, when it began being palimpsested there, or might just conceivably have been made by a Roman artist-scribe working at Sinai, although given the subject matter and the caliber of the work this would seem less likely. My research is showing that Pope Gregory the Great had significant contact with the monastery of St Catherine’s which may, as we shall see below, have played a part in this important late antique/Early Christian work coming to be there. Unlikely as it may seem, given the somewhat racy nature of the text, Apollonius became interpreted as a model of Christian fortitude in the face of adversity. The story revolves around his escape from suitorship to a princess damaged by her father’s inflicted incest to another, potentially happy, marriage and a boating trip gone wrong. King Apollonius of Tyre is on ship when his new wife apparently dies in childbirth and is cast overboard, in a coffin with a letter and jewels requesting her burial.13 She is revived by the clerk/physician who finds the coffin and becomes the chaste priestess of a 13

The letter is re-imagined by John Gower in his late fourteenth-century Middle English version, the ‘Tale of Apollonius of Tyre,’ which he embeds within Book 8 of his Confessio Amantis, see G. Lim, “Constructing the Virtual Family: Socializing Grief in John Gower’s ‘Tale of Apollonius of Tyre’,” Exemplaria 22, no. 4 (2010): 326–48.

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local temple­. Apollonius subsequently entrusts his young daughter, Tarsia, to an unscrupulous innkeeper named Strangulio/Stranguillio (the name is a giveaway), who eventually compels her into prostitution. She is so beautiful, virtuous and cultured, however, that her would-be clients prefer to converse with her. She is subsequently reclaimed by her father—the subject of the surviving illustration in the Sinai fragment—and the whole family is happily reunited after their adventures. Even given its more moral interpretation for a Christian audience, the subject matter makes the text an unlikely choice as a diplomatic gift from Pope Gregory to the monastery of St Catherine’s when he sent a diplomatic mission there in 599; so might it have accompanied another traveller attracted to the monastery at the foot of the holy mountain at the heart of the Sinai desert? Evidence of there being at least two Insular scribes at work in Sinai at this period lends actuality to literary accounts of journeys to the Holy Land which circulated in the Insular environment, related by travellers such as Bishop Arculf (who, according to Bede, toured the Holy Land in the 680s) and Willibald (d. 787).14 Accordingly, the iconographic and stylistic echoes of Near Eastern practices in Insular and later Anglo-Saxon art, some of which I have reviewed previously,15 along with other material evidence reasonably represent not only diffused secondary transmission via areas such as Italy, Gaul, and Spain, but also direct, peaceable and eirenic contact between the peoples of the Near East and far West. The traditional historical narrative has been that there was little direct cultural contact between the West and the Middle East in the period from the fall of Rome to the First Crusade, but I have recently pointed to significant evidence of relations between early medieval Britain and Ireland and the southern and eastern Mediterranean, and to the participation by Pope Gregory the Great and the early western Church in the international orthodoxy of Chalcedon, focused upon Byzantium. This has included highlighting Gregory’s initiative to sponsor fifteen places in what may have been Sinai’s hospital or 14 Adomnán, De locis sanctis, ed. D. Meehan, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 3 (Dublin, 1983); Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica v.15. See also discussion in T. O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places: The Perceptions of an Insular Monk on the Location of the Biblical Drama (London, 2007). There is an English translation by J.R. Macpherson, The Pilgrimage of Arculfus in the Holy Land, about the year ad 670, Palestinian Pilgrims’ Text Society 3 (London, 1895). See also Brown, “Imagining, Imaging and Experiencing” and “The Bridge in the Desert.” 15 M.P. Brown, “The Eastwardness of Things: Relationships between the Christian Cultures of the Middle East and the Insular World,” in The Genesis of Books: Studies in the Interactions of Words, Text, and Print in Honor of A.N. Doane, ed. M. Hussey and J.D. Niles (Turnhout, 2011), 17–49; and “Imagining, Imaging and Experiencing.”

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guesthouse, which may have opened the way to westerners. Might our Insular scribes even have subsequently occupied two of Pope Gregory’s endowed places in the monastery for a time? Gregory’s perception of the didactic and contemplative function of images may accordingly perhaps have owed something to the norms of pre-iconoclastic Byzantium and the Christian Orient, mediated in part by direct contact with what would become one of the main centres of the veneration of icons—St Catherine’s.16 This in turn informed Insular perceptions and opened up visual and literary imaginations to the potential of Christian iconography.17 Gregory opposed the destruction of images on the following grounds: It is one thing to adore a picture, another to learn what is to be adored through the history told by the picture. What Scripture presents to readers, a picture presents to the gaze of the unlearned. For in it even the ignorant see what they ought to follow, in it the illiterate read.18 Gregory’s attitude opened the door to the development of Christian figural art and iconography, in the face of growing debate concerning idolatry and iconoclasm, thereby determining the future course of western art. I have suggested that Gregory’s attention may have been drawn to Sinai by the pilgrimage there, in the early 590s, of one of his correspondents. This was a notable Roman matron named Rusticiana, grand-daughter of the philosopher Boethius, who had defected from embattled Rome to the comforts of Constantinople. From the wealthy patrician Anicia family, she was a major backer of his charitable enterprises in Rome, such as the hospital facilities in the vicinity of Crypta Balbi. Her daughter, Eusebia, had married into the great house of Apion, important administrators in Egypt, and mother and daughter visited St Catherine’s seeking a miracle of healing, for the site had (and retains amongst 16

It is usually assumed that the early encaustic icons now at St Catherine’s, of pre-iconoclast sixth- to eighth-century date, were made elsewhere (including Constantinople) and taken there, but this remains unproven and it might be argued that the best context for such high-quality encaustic (wax) images remains Egypt, with its Hellenistic mummy portraits. For discussion, see A. Paterson, “The Earliest Christian Icons from the Collection of the Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai and their Possible Sources” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 2017). 17 Brown, Latin Manuscripts of St Catherine’s. 18 See D. Ayerst and A.S.T. Fisher, Records of Christianity ii (Oxford, 1977), 101–2; C. Chazelle, “Pictures, Books and the Illiterate: Pope Gregory I’s Letters to Serenus of Marseilles,” Word and Image 6 (1990): 138–53. See also M.P. Brown, “Images to be read and words to be seen: the iconic role of the early medieval book,” in Iconic Books and Texts, ed. J.W. Watts (Sheffield and Bristol, 2013), 86–109.

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the Bedouin) an association with fertility (which may have some bearing upon the efficacy of St Catherine, whose cult was promoted from the ninth century onwards, as a protector of women during childbirth). Rusticiana wrote to Gregory telling him of her experiences at the monastery in Sinai, newly founded by the Emperor Justinian and fortified and regularized from a straggling collection of eremitic sketes in 527, thereby controlling the ancient Nabatean trade-route across the desert as it crossed this crucial fertile wadi. Gregory’s own subsequent correspondence with its abbot reveals that Rusticiana evidently whetted his appetite, although he nonetheless lamented her resistance to the spiritual challenges presented by ravaged Rome and the wilderness of Sinai in favour of the decadence and worldliness of Constantinople in the age of Procopius, writing to her thus: To Rusticiana, Patrician. Gregory to Rusticiana, &c. On receiving your Excellency’s letters I was glad to hear that you had reached Mount Sinai. But believe me, I too should have liked to go with you, but by no means to return with you. And yet I find it very difficult to believe that you have been at the holy places and seen many Fathers. For I believe that, if you had seen them, you would by no means have been able to return so speedily to the city of Constantinople. But now that the love of such a city has in no wise departed from your heart, I suspect that your Excellency did not from the heart devote yourself to the holy things which you saw with the bodily eye. But may Almighty God illuminate your mind by the grace of His loving kindness and give unto you to be wise, and to consider how fugitive are all temporal things, since, while we are thus speaking, both time runs on and the Judge approaches, and lo the moment is even now near when against our will we must give up the world which of our own accord we will not. I beg that the lord Apio and the lady Eusebia, and their daughters, be greeted in my behalf. As to that lady my nurse, whom you commend to me by letter, I have the greatest regard for her, and desire that she should be in no way incommoded. But we are pressed by such great straits that we cannot excuse even ourselves from exactions (angariis) and burdens at this present time.19

19

Gregory the Great, Epistle xlvi, see P. Norberg, ed., Gregorius Magnus, Registrum epistularum, ccsl 140–140A, 2 vols. (Turnhout, 1982), ii: 000; see also The letters of Gregory the

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Rusticiana attempts to justify her actions by implicitly comparing her travels in the Holy Land to those of earlier pious female Christian travellers to the region, such as Paula (the Roman socialite turned anchoress, who assisted St Jerome in preparing his Vulgate edition of the Bible), the fourth-century Spanish pilgrim and probable nun Egeria/Etheria and St Helena herself (emperor Constantine’s mother and amateur archaeologist, who ‘discovered’ the holy sites and the True Cross). Might she, and her daughter Eusebia, have had this finely produced sixth-century Roman copy of an ancient tale of heroic travels and courage, love, faith and family relationships triumphing in the face of adversity in the baggage that they brought with them to the monastery at the foot of the holy mountain in Sinai? We cannot know, but the manuscript is certainly commensurate with wealthy patronage coming from such a background in what is increasingly emerging as the interwoven cultural, political and spiritual orbits of late sixth-century Rome, western Europe, Byzantium, Sinai and the Near East—a subject that has featured in the work of John Lowden, which likewise bridges the cultures of East and West. Great, translated, with introduction and notes, by John R.C. Martyn, (Toronto, 2004) and http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Nicene_and_Post-Nicene_Fathers_Series_II/Volume_XIII/ Gregorythe_Great/Book_XI Chapter 31 (accessed 15.2.2019).

Chapter 2

Milanese Early Medieval Psalters: Models and Influences from West and East Francesca Demarchi During the early Middle Ages Milan was an important and active centre of artistic production, among which was the making of illuminated manuscripts.1 These were produced possibly in two scriptoria, located respectively in the archiepiscopal centre and in the monastery attached to Sant’Ambrogio basilica.2 What has been preserved attests to the development of a unique style, with artists capable of absorbing and adapting idiosyncratic decorative motifs from other schools of illumination throughout the entire tenth century.3 Each of these Milanese manuscripts is unique, but the recurrence of some decorative patterns allows us to connect them to one another. From the ninth century, for example, work was being undertaken in the Milanese scriptoria to create a new version of the book of Psalms. Only three illuminated Psalters survive from the  tenth century; these are mss Vat. Lat. 82 and Vat. Lat. 83 now in Rome at the Vatican Library,4 while the third manuscript is in Munich (Bayerische

1 I would like to express my gratitude to Fabrizio Crivello and Richard Gameson for their comments on various drafts of this text; I also thank Maria Grasso for her guidance in mastering the subtleties of the English language. 2 C. Segre Montel, I manoscritti miniati della Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino, vol. i, I manoscritti latini dal vii alla metà del xii secolo (Turin, 1980), 65–7, no. 63; M. Rossi, Milano e le origini della pittura romanica lombarda (Milan, 2011), 23–5. 3 On Milanese attitudes towards artistic influences from other centers see F. Demarchi, “Book Illumination in Milan around the Year 1000: the Prayerbook of Arnulph ii (London, British Library MS Egerton 3763) and some related manuscripts” (unpublished PhD dissertation, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 2014). 4 On MS Vat. Lat. 82 see La città e la sua memoria. Milano e la tradizione di sant’Ambrogio, exhibition catalogue, Milan 3 April–8 June 1997, ed. M. Rizzi (Milan, 1997), 268, no. 43 (Giordano Monzio Compagnoni). On MS Vat. Lat. 83 see Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Liturgie und Andacht im Mittelalter, exhibition catalogue, Cologne 9 October 1992–10 January 1993, (Stuttgart, 1992), 84–5, no. 9 (Valentino Pace); La città e la sua memoria, 268–9, no. 44 (Giordano Monzio Compagnoni); Il futuro dei Longobardi. L’Italia e la costruzione dell’Europa di Carlo Magno, exhibition catalogue, Brescia, 18 June–19 November 2000, ed. C. Bertelli and G.P. Brogiolo (Milan, 2000), 389, no. 376 (Carlo Bertelli).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_004

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S­ taatsbibliothek Clm 343).5 Of the three examples, MS Vat. Lat. 82 is the least decorated—with only a single miniature consisting of a full-page framed initial ‘B’ which marks the beginning of the first Psalm. Therefore the focus of this paper will be on the other two Psalters which will be referred to as the Vatican Psalter (Vat. Lat. 83) and the Munich Psalter. These manuscripts are embellished by rich and developed decoration consisting of full-page illuminations, title-pages, and decorated initials (Fig. 2.1). Their visual richness together with the variety of their decoration makes them of great interest, particularly for the various sources and their adaptation. While some consideration will be given to the iconographic choices made in the two manuscripts, emphasis will be placed on the Munich Psalter, the most complex among these manuscripts and supposedly dependent on Byzantine models. The dating of these Psalters is still a matter of controversy, with some scholars dating them as early as the end of the ninth century.6 The first of the three manuscripts, MS Vat. Lat. 83, shows a profound influence of pre-Carolingian illumination and strong connections with other late ninth and early tenthcentury Milanese manuscripts, yet with futher development, which therefore suggests a date in the middle of the tenth century.7 The Munich Psalter, in which some of these aspects are incorporated and rearranged, should be dated after MS Vat. Lat. 83 and, in consideration of its connection with later Milanese production, should be positioned in the second half of the tenth century,

5 U. Bauer-Eberhardt, Die illuminierten Handschriften italienischer Herkunft in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, vol. i, Vom 10. bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden, 2011), 10–12, no. 2. 6 K. Gamber, Codices liturgici latini antiquiores (Freiburg, 1968), 284–6, nn. 590–2; Angelo Paredi, “Nota storica sui Salteri milanesi del ix secolo,” in L. Santucci and A. Paredi, Miniature altomedievali lombarde (Milan, 1978), 149–78, at 166–7; N. Ghiglione, “Il libro nel territorio ambrosiano dal vi al ix secolo,” in Il millennio ambrosiano, vol. i, Milano, una capitale da Ambrogio ai Carolingi, ed. C. Bertelli (Milan, 1987), 130–61 (137–47). Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 84–5, no. 9 (V. Pace); S. Lomartire, “La pittura medievale in Lombardia,” in La pittura in Italia. L’altomedioevo, ed. C. Bertelli et al. (Milan, 1994), 47–89; G.Z. Zanichelli, “La sapienza degli angeli: Nonantola e gli Scriptoria collegati fra vi e xii secolo,” in La sapienza degli angeli. Nonantola e gli Scriptoria padani nel Medioevo, exhibition catalogue, Nonantola 5 April–30 June 2003, ed. G.Z. Zanichelli and M.P. Branchi (Modena, 2003), 32; B. Bischoff, Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts, vol. ii, Laon-Paderborn (Wiesbaden, 2004), 221, no. 2925. 7 For a recent discussion about their dating see F. Crivello, “Per la datazione dei salteri diacritici milanesi: il contributo della decorazione,” in Ansperto da Biassono, ed. M.B. Weatherill, M. Beretta, M.R. Tessera (Milan, forthcoming).

Milanese Early Medieval Psalters

Figure 2.1 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Vat. Lat. 83, f. 76v © Vatican Library

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a ­dating which is also suggested by the palaeographic analysis conducted by Mirella Ferrari.8 The decorated initials in both manuscripts mark the beginning of each group of ten Psalms, while the Vatican manuscript adds a tripartite division every fifty Psalms signalled by two framed facing pages. Both manuscripts attest to excellent production methods, with texts written in long lines and with wide margins on thin and smooth parchment. The Vatican manuscript displays gold rubrics in addition to red ones, plus the use of purple within the miniatures and some of the decorated letters. A wide range of colours has been used in both manuscripts in contrast to coeval and later manuscripts produced at the same centre. All these aspects establish the skill of the Milanese scriptoria and the prestige of the patron who commissioned them or of the community for whom these manuscripts were intended. The two manuscripts do not employ the exact same set of texts. This is true not only for the accompanying texts—those hymns and canticles which often complement the text of Psalms—but also for the Psalms themselves. The Psalms can be assigned to the Ambrosian tradition,9 but nonetheless those used in the Munich manuscript differ slightly in the selection of words from those of the Vatican manuscript. Considering the limited presence of corrections and the accuracy of the script, the scribes of both manuscripts must have drawn their texts from complete sources; if these were less decorated that might explain the eclectic nature of the decoration that characterizes the Vatican and Munich Psalters. 1

From Insular to Franco-Saxon style

As mentioned, both manuscripts have decorated letters marking the beginning of each group of ten Psalms and, since they both use the Ambrosian version of the text, albeit with some minor differences, the decoration of the initials of each group involves the same letters, though the result is distinctly different. The illuminator of the Vatican manuscript employs mainly birds and fills the initials with geometrical patterns. The illuminator of the Munich manuscript acts in two different ways. In some initials he reinterprets the ­miniatures 8 F. Crivello, “Die Buchmalerei in Oberitalien unter den letzen Karolingern und den Ottonen,” Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 58 (2004): 171–90 (183). 9 Paredi, Nota storica, 167–71; B. Fischer, Zur Überlieferung altlateinischer Bibeltexte im Mittel­ alter, in B. Fischer, Lateinische Bibelhandschriften im frühen Mittelalter (Freiburg, 1985), 404– 21 (411–12). On the tituli Psalmorum used in the Vatican Psalter see P. Salmon, Les “tituli Psalmorum” des manuscrits latins (Rome, 1959), esp. 151–86.

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of his colleague in the Vatican manuscript, using the same basic elements—as in the initial of Psalm 32 (31), where both illuminators shape the letter as a bird. On other occasions, he completely changes the miniature’s components, such as in Psalm 62 (61) where a standing Christ slaying a dragon replaces a complicated composition of interlaced animals (Fig. 2.2). The artists of both manuscripts drew upon diverse models. The shape of the birds, with their plumage made of coloured discs, as well as the dog-like animals which fill the frames of the Vatican Psalter (Fig. 2.1) closely resemble patterns employed in Insular manuscripts such as those found in the Lindisfarne Gospels (London, British Library MS Cotton Nero D iv).10 These idiosyncratic decorative patterns are replaced in the Munich Psalter by interlaced birds of a generic Insular style used only on the frame of f. 17v. Setting aside the Insular influence, the illuminator of the Munich Psalter turned instead to the FrancoSaxon style of illumination which affects the entire corpus of decorated initials of the manuscript, particularly the interlaced ribbons forming heart shapes (Fig. 2.2), and embellished the four corners of the main frames. There is, however, no specific pattern that allows identification with any particular centre among those that were developing the Franco-Saxon style.11 This adaptation of the Franco-Saxon style is not an isolated case, but instead features abundantly in other Milanese manuscripts more or less coeval to the Munich Psalter and is still used into the eleventh century.12 2

Middle Byzantine Book Illumination

Apart from the differences in style, the main change in the Munich manuscript is in the use of human figures, which populate many of its initials.13 This has 10

11 12 13

J.J.G. Alexander, Insular Manuscripts: 6th to the 9th Century. A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 1 (London, 1978), no. 9. On the influence of Insular manuscripts on these Psalters see also Crivello, “Per la datazione”; G.L. Micheli, L’Enluminure du haut moyen âge et les influences irlandaises (Bruxelles, 1939), 165. Crivello, “Die Buchmalerei,” 182. See for instance some of the decorated initials of the Lodrino Sacramentary (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS A 24 inf.), but also some of the early eleventh-century Sacramentary of San Satiro (Milan, Biblioteca del Capitolo Metropolitano MS ii.D.3.2). In the Vatican manuscript, human figures only occur in the opening depiction with the figure of King David and the four scribes, in the crucifixion scene at the opening of the Te Deum and a human head in the initial on f. 98r. In the depiction of King David, however, initials are not involved and the figures are part of a scene, while the crucifixion is thought to be the work of a second illuminator. On the manuscript see Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 84–5, no. 9 (V. Pace).

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Figure 2.2 Munich, Bayeriche Staatsbibliothek Clm 343, f. 88v © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München

Demarchi

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been generally seen as coming from Byzantine artistic production. Albert Boeckler was the first to suggest the influence of Byzantine illumination on the decorated initials of the Munich manuscript. According to him the distinctive layout, which involves the combination of figures and initials, was derived from Byzantine models, as were the drapery and the colours used to create the complexion of the figures.14 The assertion that there was a dependence on Byzantine models has been repeated by successive scholars without further reconsideration. In the middle Byzantine period (roughly from the ninth to the beginning of the thirteenth century) the production of Psalters was quite widespread, and a significant number of copies survive.15 These can be divided into two main categories according to the layout of their decoration, although the limits of such a classification have been repeatedly pointed out.16 The ‘aristocratic Psalters’ are mainly characterized by full-page illuminations, and the ‘monastic Psalters’ by marginal illustrations, although they may have full-page miniatures, as in the case of the Chludov Psalter (Moscow, Historic Museum cod. gr. 129). Psalters with marginal illustrations have mainly narrative scenes from the Old and New Testaments, with figures interacting with each other or with elements from the background. The layout of these manuscripts at least during the ninth and tenth centuries, however, did not emphasize initials,17 and therefore decorated initials are quite rare, though they are not unknown to Byzantine book production of the middle-Byzantine period especially in manuscripts of homiletic content. These rare initials occasionally included elements such as dismembered human limbs, a phenomenon that has been traced back to earlier centuries.18 The most common feature is a blessing hand as the central bar of the letter epsilon; other letters, such as iota or tau may be formed using legs, feet, hands or a combination of these. Among the first examples of manuscripts with this type of decoration is the Paris Gregory Nazianzus (Paris, ­Bibliothèque Nationale de France MS Gr. 510) produced between 879 and 883 in Constantinople. Here the 14 15 16 17

18

A. Boeckler, Abendländische Miniaturen bis zum Ausgang der romanischen Zeit (Berlin, 1930), 66; A. Boeckler, Kunst des frühen Mittelalters (Bern, 1949), 69, no. 162. For an overview on middle-Byzantine book production see A. Dzurova, La miniatura ­bizantina. I manoscritti miniati e la loro diffusione (Milan, 2001), 61–164. J. Lowden, “Observations on Illustrated Byzantine Psalters,” The Art Bulletin 70, no. 2 (1988), 242–60 with previous bibliography. On the development of ninth-century Byzantine initials see L. Brubaker, “Greek Manuscript Decoration in the ninth and tenth centuries: Rethinking Centre and Periphery,” in I manoscritti greci tra riflessione e dibattito, Atti del V Colloquio Internazionale di Paleografia Greca (Cremona, 4–10 ottobre 1998), ed. G. Prato, 3 vols. (Florence, 2000), ii: 513–33. E. Maayan-Fanar, “The Fragmentary Body: the Place of the Human Limbs in Byzantine Illuminated Initials,” Byzantion 76 (2006): 241–63 (241).

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epsilon with hand occurs more frequently than any other type of decorated initial.19 According to Leslie Brubaker, the hand-hasta epsilon, as it is known, was possibly a motif that originated in western manuscripts. The earliest example was identified by Carl Nordenfalk in a seventh-century palimpsest in St Gall (Stiftsbibliothek MS 908), but used also in later manuscripts such as the Gellone Sacramentary (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 12048, f. 30v). The motif would have eventually passed to manuscripts produced in Greek scriptoria located in southern Italy, though neither the provenance nor the date of some of the relevant manuscripts has been established.20 As noted by Emma Mayaan-Fanar, however, early Byzantine manuscripts with initials containing human limbs were not influenced by contemporary Carolingian manuscripts but by those made earlier in the West. In addition, dismembered limbs had been represented on household objects and votive images since late antiquity and were widespread in the Byzantine Empire. This author therefore concludes that a common model between West and East may have existed, which was subsequently developed in the West.21 As discussed above, initials with human figures do appear in some Byzantine manuscripts as early as the first half of the tenth century and mainly on those of homiletic content. Among the earliest examples are those in a manuscript with homilies on Psalms attributed to Chrysostom (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Gr. 654).22 On f. 96v, for example, a standing man in a profile view wearing a short robe is pulling what has been referred to as a tall basket with fruit, a visual representation of the beginning of the homily which deals with wine and wine making.23 Human limbs, such as heads or hands, are abundantly used as well (for example, on f. 89v or 71v respectively). MS Gr. 654 has been associated on palaeographic and decorative grounds with two others (Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Ott. gr. 14 and Venice, Biblioteca Marciana MS gr. ii, 179), whose initials are all attributed to the so-called Chrysostom Initialer.24 If the localisation of the three manuscripts to 19

L. Brubaker, “The Introduction of painted initials in Byzantium,” Scriptorium 45, no. 1 (1991): 22–46 (36). 20 Brubaker, “The Introduction,” 37. 21 Maayan-Fanar, “The Fragmentary Body,” 255. 22 S.P. Madigan, “Three Manuscripts by the ‘Chrysostom Initialer’: the Scribe as Artist in Tenth-Century Costantinople,” Scriptorium 42, no. 2 (1987): 205–20. 23 A short description of some of the initials in K. Krause, Die illustrierten Homilien des Johannes Chrysostomos in Byzanz (Wiesbaden, 2004), 158–9. 24 Krause, Die illustrierten Homilien, 155–61; I. Furlan, Codici greci illustrati della marciana, 6 vols. (Milan, 1979), ii: 35–40; Madigan, “Three Manuscripts.” For a recent reconsideration of the three manuscripts see E. Maayan-Fanar, “The Scribe as Artist in the Chrysostom Manuscript in Venice: Reconsideration,” Scriptorium 59 (2005): 119–31.

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Byzantium around the second quarter or the middle of the tenth century is correct,25 this may testify to a similar and parallel development of historiated initials both in the centre and in the Italian periphery of the Byzantine Empire. John Osborne favours a different view, that Greek-language scriptoria in Italy, and particularly those in Rome, were the intermediaries between West and East in the transmission of elaborated painted initials, as previously proposed by André Grabar and Carl Nordenfalk.26 In these Greek-language scriptoria, artists may have had a variety of sources at their disposal, from the Latin West to Byzantium, enriched for those located in southern Italy by Arabic motifs. All these influences, together with the artistic language which was developed locally, make it difficult to locate specific models, and to determine the initial source.27 Among the most famous and richly decorated manuscripts from southern Italy is Patmos gr. 33 (The Holy Monastery of St John) whose colophon provides rare and significant information, including that it was produced in Reggio in 941.28 The manuscript has the homilies of Gregory of Nazianzus plus a patristic commentary on four of them. It has decorated initials (attributed to two scribes mentioned in the colophon), increasing in number in the second part, many employing anthropomorphic details or figures which, however, are not always connected to the text they precede. The motifs used include those from the Latin West, such as zoomorphic protomes ending the letter, which can be frequently found in Carolingian manuscripts and were still used in the Ottonian period. Despite the array of differences which obviously derive from different periods and places of production, the human figures depicted in the initials of

25 26 27 28

A. Grabar, Les Manuscrits grecs enluminés de provenance italienne (Paris, 1972), 46–51, suggests a south-Italian provenance for the manuscripts. J. Osborne, “The Use of Painted Initials by Greek and Latin Scriptoria in Carolingian Rome,” Gesta 29 (1990): 76–85; Grabar, Les Manuscrits grecs; C. Nordenfalk, Die spätantiken Zierbuchstaben, 2 vols. (Stockholm, 1970), i: esp. 208–10. G. Cavallo, Between Byzantium and Rome: Manuscripts from Southern Italy, in Perceptions of Byzantium and its Neighbors (843–1261), ed. O.Z. Pevny (New York, 2000), 136–53 (136–8). G. Prato, “Attività scrittoria in Calabria tra ix e x secolo. Qualche riflessione,” Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 36 (1986): 219–28 (220–1); G. Ostuni, “L’iniziale italogreca: il caso del Patmiaco 33,” in Scritture, libri e testi nelle aree provinciali di Bisanzio. Atti del seminario di Erice (18–25 September 1988), ed. G. Cavallo, G. de Gregorio, and M. Maniaci, 2 vols. (Spoleto 1991), ii: 637–43; I. Hutter, “Patmos 33 im Kontext,” Rivista di studi bizantini e neoellenici 46 (2009): 73–126.

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middle-Byzantine manuscripts may be grouped in two main categories: omicron letters may have figures within their lobes, while in all the other cases the figures replace some components of the letter or the entire structure, adjusting the posture or gestures to the letter they stand for. This attitude to historiated initials is followed in the Munich Psalter only in two cases. The first is the letter ‘M’ on f. 181v where King David and an angel replace entirely the initial ‘M’, with wings and cloak adjusted to simulate the letter (Fig. 2.3); the second on f. 88v where the letter ‘N’ is almost entirely substituted by a human figure and a dragon (Fig. 2.2). In all the other cases there is a combination of replacement and confinement of the human figure within the letter. On f. 154v, for example, Christ is confined within the vertical shaft of the letter, while a bishop possibly offering a book replaces the inferior lobe of the letter ‘B’. The contribution of the Byzantine style to the historiated initials of the Munich Psalter, therefore, does not concern the layout or the structure of the initials, apart from the ‘N’ and ‘M’ mentioned above. The latter, with the depiction of King David flanked by an angel, both standing on pedestals, may have nonetheless derived its iconography from Byzantine art and possibly a middle-Byzantine manuscript. It appears, for instance, in a catena Psalter of the second half of the tenth century (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Gr. 139, f. 7v) where a standing King David is flanked on both sides by the personifications of Wisdom and Prophecy. Moreover the complexion of the figures of the Munich Psalter, with red circles on their cheeks, can be found in Byzantine manuscripts, although it is not as widespread. This characteristic found particular favor in Milanese mural paintings from the end of the tenth century, as in the nave of the church of San Vincenzo in Galliano (near Como) whose inscription with the date 1007 makes it the only dated example.29 3

The Possible Contribution of Middle-Byzantine Enamels

Some of the figures depicted in the Munich Psalter have also been compared with Byzantine art and middle-Byzantine enamels, particularly those in the miniature of King David (Fig. 2.4) and in the initials on ff. 52v and 137v, respectively.30 The colourful decorative patterns of the garments of the figures with 29

30

M. Beretta, “Il programma spirituale delle pitture murali di San Vincenzo a Galliano. Tracce di un percorso iconografico,” in Ariberto da Intimiano. Fede, potere e cultura a Milano nel secolo xi, ed. E. Bianchi, M.B. Weatherill, M.R. Tessera and M. Beretta (Cinisello Balsamo, 2007), 101–22. Y. Hackenbroch, Italienisches Email des frühen Mittelalters (Basel, 1938), 31, 33.

Milanese Early Medieval Psalters

Figure 2.3 Munich, Bayeriche Staatsbibliothek Clm 343, f. 181v © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München

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30

Figure 2.4 Munich, Bayeriche Staatsbibliothek Clm 343, f. 12v © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München

Demarchi

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King David are considered to be derived from cloisonné enamels; a parallel is found in the dancers depicted on the plaques of the crown of Constantine ix (Budapest, Magyar Nemzeti Muzeum) possibly made in Byzantium around the first half of the eleventh century.31 This suggestion, however, merits some further consideration. In the Munich Psalter the patterns on the garments of the figures are inverted hearts, roundels with and without dots, lozenges, and flowers also with and without dots. Extant middle-Byzantine enamels display a small number of decorative patterns, at least for the period of the Munich Psalter or slightly later. Inverted hearts feature abundantly, for example, on the figures depicted on the plaques of the crown of Constantine ix, not only on the garments of the dancers as suggested by Yvonne Hackenbroch, but also on all the figures depicted—the imperial couple, Theodora, Constantine’s sister-in-law, and the personifications of Modesty and Truth. The same motif also appears in an enkolpion with St Demetrios and St Nestor (Halberstadt, Domschatz) of c. 1000, which might be one of the earliest representations of this pattern which is thought to originate from textiles.32 It also features in an enamel now in Berlin, Kunstgewerbemuseum, inv. 1927,21, asrcibed to the first half of the eleventh century (Fig. 2.5).33 This latter icon is also of interest because of the decoration of the footstool, with round clusters of various colours, placed side by side with no spaces. This pattern is the closest comparison that can be found to a decorative device used in the garments of the scribe on f. 12v, featuring multicoloured flowers with the same concept of filling the entire surface with decoration. Lozenges and dots are variously found not only in enamels, but also in mosaics and ivories, mainly when featuring lay people. While some patterns may certainly derive from middle-Byzantine enamels or other techniques, the more striking one, that of flower patches has no precise comparison in extant works of art and may therefore be ascribed to the invention of Milanese artists.34 An extremely similar pattern is used again in the manuscript to fill the shaft of the initial ‘D’ on f. 137v, in which a nimbed martyr tramples on the head of a snake, and in the vertical bands of the frame 31 32 33 34

See reflections on the authenticity of the plaques in D. Buckton, “Byzantine enamels in the twentieth century,” in Byzantine Style, Religion and Civilization. Studies in honour of Sir Steven Runciman, ed. E. Jeffreys (New York, 2006), 25–37. The Glory of Byzantium, exhibition catalogue, New York 11 March–6 July 1997, ed. H.C. Evans and W.D. Wixom (New York, 1997), 161–2, no. 108 (W.D. Wixom). The Glory of Byzantium, 160–1, no. 107 (W.D. Wixom). A similar inspiration was used for the making of the cloisonné plaques of the book cover of the Evangeliary of Bishop Aribert, made in Milan between 1018 and 1045 (Milan, Tesoro del Duomo).

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Figure 2.5 Berlin, Kunstgewerbemuseum, inv. 1927,21. © Foto: Kunstgewerbemuseum der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Fotograf/in: Arne Psille.

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on f. 18r. The use of bright colours, much brighter than in previous and later manuscripts produced in Milan, and most of all their diversified use in the spaces defined by the intricacies of the ribbons also recall the technique of cloisonné enamel. The focus is almost reversed: the structure of the letters are created by encasing lines, so that the ribbons are the parchment itself, while colours are applied in the spaces created where they overlap— in effect applying the technique of cloisonné enamels, as the thin gold fillets dividing the space are filled with coloured enamel. The application of colours between the ribbons is certainly not an unusual procedure and is used, for example, in the Vatican Psalter, but what differs here is the value given to colours and their use. The technique of cloisonné enamels may therefore have inspired Milanese illuminators not only with regard to some of their patterns, but also in relation to the use of colours and their visual effect. Early medieval Milanese artists were aware of the technique employed to create cloisonné enameled plaques, as Milan may have been an important centre of production for such items during the ninth century.35 The enamels used to embellish the golden altar in Sant’Ambrogio include decorative patterns which may have been inspired by Sassanid-oriental forms, such as those found on the ewer of St Maurice d’Agaune.36 The direction of such influences, however, is unclear since doubt has been cast on the origin of the cloisonné technique, but it testifies to yet another example of transmission between East and West. 4

Other Byzantine Sources

One final connection has been made between these Psalters and Byzantine sources. As mentioned above, both Milanese Psalters open with a full-page miniature depicting King David and four scribes, a subject which was rare at that time (Fig. 2.4). Both manuscripts use a very similar composition, with an arch supported by columns as a background, under which the figures are positioned and which are arranged in an identical way. The origin of this iconography, however, has been identified as deriving from a late-antique model, subsequently re-used in Costantinopolitan Psalters of the sixth century, which were copied later, for example, in the Chludov Psalter (f. 1v).37 Echoes of this model 35 36 37

G. Haseloff, Email in frühen Mittelalter: frühchristliche Kunst von der Spätantike bis zu den Karolingern (Marburg, 1990), 77–9. Le trésor de l’abbaye de Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, exhibition catalogue, Paris 14 March–16 June 2014, ed. É. Antoine-König and P.A. Mariaux, (Paris, 2014), 60–3, no. 11. Crivello, “Per la datazione,” 365.

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may have been used in the Vespasian Psalter (London, British Library Cotton MS Vespasian A I)—one of the earliest examples belonging to the so-called Tiberius or Canterbury group—with a combination of other sources from various periods and the model for these depictions may have been again a middleByzantine manuscript. The manuscripts of the Tiberius or Canterbury group were made during the eighth and ninth centuries in a Southumbrian context and mix Insular patterns with late-antique and Byzantine elements. While one of these manuscripts may explain the combination of Insular and late-antique styles which is used in the Vatican manuscript, it is hard to believe that these manuscripts were also the source for those Insular patterns which can be found in the Vatican manuscript as the Insular motifs used in the manuscripts of the Tiberius or Canterbury group are combined with new ideas. Yet, none of these novelties is evident in the Milanese Psalters. 5

The Munich Psalter’s Iconography as the Reflection of Changing Needs

Apart from utilizing sources other than those used by the illuminator of the Vatican manuscript, something must have occurred to prompt the illuminator of the Munich manuscript to make such a shift. If we focus on the human figures that populate the initials of the Munich manuscript, we see quite a variety of subjects, but one which is repeated as many as four times, is that of the figure of Christ. He is depicted as a standing figure raising his right arm while holding a roll with his left hand. The roll becomes the shaft of the letter and within the lobe is an angel kneeling slightly to Christ. On f. 116v the half bust of Christ is depicted within a medallion; he blesses with one hand and holds a book with the other. I would suggest that the standing figure slaying a dragon on f. 88v is also Christ; this miniature has also been read as the depiction of a saint, but comparison with the figures of Michael and David, the two saints often associated with the depiction of a defeated dragon, is important. If the figure on f. 88v was intended to be St Michael he lacks wings, which is generally one of his attributes, and can be found in the Prayer Book of Arnulph ii (London, British Library Egerton MS 3763),38 a Milanese manuscript from the beginning of the eleventh century. David is repeated twice in the Munich Psalter, but always portrayed as a king. It is therefore reasonable to assume that this is

38

On the Prayer Book of Arnulph ii see Demarchi, “Book Illumination in Milan around the Year 1000.”

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a depiction of Christ, even though he does not have the crossed nimbus which characterizes the other three miniatures of the manuscript. There is one more initial bearing a depiction of Christ, located on f. 154v, which scholars have interpreted as a depiction of gift-giving. An archbishop is offering a book with a jeweled cover, while Christ blesses it.39 Although no specific names have been suggested regarding the identification of the archbishop—and possibly it was not intended to represent an individual bishop but the more general category to which a bishop owner could identify—this miniature may explain the shift that the decoration of the Munich manuscript has taken. The patron himself may have commissioned this book and possibly asked for the insertion of such a depiction. The decorated letter which opens Psalm 112 (111) is entirely focused on the devotee and the good practices required to achieve salvation among which is donating to the poor. A decorated manuscript with a jeweled cover is certainly not what the Psalmist was referring to, but a gift-giving depiction broadly belongs to this category. Moreover, the inclusion of King David and other saints can be read as intended to provide a decoration that was felt to be more suitable. Many of the initials are a visual explanation of the content of the Psalm that follows and the array of human figures depicted may have been seen as a more appropriate mediator between man and God. Different patrons and diverse models, both from West and East, have resulted in two very distinct products. Birds and fantastic creatures depicted in the Vatican Psalter have been replaced by saints, and, above all, Christ himself in the Munich Psalter. The various models used by the Milanese illuminators have often been absorbed and elaborated further, while the contribution of Byzantine manuscript production to the historiated initials of the Munich Psalter, as demonstrated, does not concern the layout or the structure of the initials. Byzantine art, however, does play an important role in inspiring the Milanese artists through both iconography and the imitation of other techniques. Through these manuscripts and the composite nature of the sources that were used we have a glimpse of the wonderful array of models that Milanese scriptoria may have possessed, the movement of books and the extraordinary expertise and inventiveness of these artists. 39

Saverio Lomartire cautiously suggests a reversed order, with Christ who gives the book to the archbishop with veiled hands. La pittura medievale in Lombardia, in La pittura in Italia. L’altomedioevo, ed. C. Bertelli (Milan, 1994), 47–89 (84–5, n. 70).

Chapter 3

Noli me tangere in the Codex Egberti (Reichenau, c. 977–93) and in the Gospel Book of Otto iii (Reichenau, 998–1000): Visual Exegesis in Context Barbara Baert Last night I begged the wise One to tell me the secret of the world. Gently, gently he whispered, “Be quiet, the secret cannot be spoken, it is wrapped in silence.”

mewlana jalaluddin rumi (1207–73)

∵ Noli me tangere is a multifaceted motif that drew increasing attention in the visual arts from the Ottonian period onward.1 Sculptors, miniaturists and painters created compelling responses to the account of the fascinating encounter between Mary Magdalene and Christ as described in John 20:11–18. A study of the origins of this iconography has long been needed. In addition, it is logical to ask whether there is a discernible integration of the motif in contemporary literary commentaries? Do stylistic and chronological shifts correspond to the exegetical and spiritual development of the figure of Mary Magdalene in general and the Noli me tangere motif in particular? This essay attempts to answer the questions about the genesis of the Noli me tangere motif in the Codex Egberti (Reichenau, c. 977–93) and the Gospel Book of Otto iii (Reichenau, 998–1000). It is divided into three sections: Visual exegesis in context; the Codex Egberti, Noli me tangere and the senses; the Gospel Book of Otto iii; and concludes with a consideration of the iconic turn. 1 With gratitude to Laura Cleaver, Dr. Sophia Rochmes and Stephanie Heremans for editing this text.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_005

(‘Noli me tangere’) in the Codex Egberti (Reichenau, c. 977–93)

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In John 20:17 the original Greek text reads: Mē mou haptou.2 The Greek verb haptein is the most general verb for touching, also meaning to approach, to be in contact with something or someone or to touch emotionally (both in a friendly and in an inimical way). The connotations to grasp, to cling or to clutch are not found in the biblical occurrences of this verb. Comparative research into the frequency and the contextual meaning of the verb haptein has shown a cultic meaning (Exodus 29:37) or a taboo of touch (Leviticus and Numbers) between people, things and dead bodies.3 The Vulgate rendered Me mou haptou as Noli me tangere. Even though the Latin verb tangere also has a broad spectrum of meanings (including to enter or reach a place), Noli me tangere has definitely been understood in the West as a problem related to tactility. The ‘prohibition of touching’ has been the starting point of a long visual tradition that is characterised by that fascinating, condensed, almost frozen energy wherein the senses play an important role. The reason for the prohibition against touching is, historically, the crux of interpreting the Noli me tangere episode.4 In John 20:17 Jesus himself offers a possible explanation: “because I am not yet ascended to my Father.” Medieval and early modern exegesis, on the authority of Augustine (354–430), accepts that Noli me tangere refers to the transformation of the belief in Christ as a human being into the belief in Christ as God.5 According to this interpretation, the paired concepts of touching/not-touching correspond to the double nature of Christ. The risen and therefore divine body is out of bounds.6 The statement 2 For an overview of different exegetical interpretations of this phrase, see: R. Bieringer, B. Baert and K. Demasure, ed., ‘Noli me tangere’ in interdisciplinary perspective: Textual, iconographic and contemporary interpretations (Leuven, 2016). 3 R. Bieringer, “Nader Mij niet: De betekenis van mê mou haptou in Johannes 20:17,” Hervormde Teologiese Studies 61 (2005): 19–43. 4 For historical-critical studies of John 20:17, see: A. Dupont and W. Depril, “Marie-Madeleine et Jean 20, 17 dans la literature patristique latine,” Augustiniana 56 (2006): 159–82; R. Atwood, Mary Magdalene in the New Testament Gospels and Early Tradition (Bern, 1993), 147–218; R. Nürnberg, “Apostolae Apostolorum: Die Frauen am Grab als erste Zeuginnen der Auferstehung in der Väterexegese,” in Stimuli. Exegese und ihre Hermeneutik in Antike und Christentum. Festschrift für Ernst Dassmann, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, Ergänzungsband 23, ed. C. Scholten and G. Schöllgen (Munich, 1996), 228–42; H.W. Attridge, “‘Don’t be touching me’: Recent feminist scholarship on Mary Magdalene,” in A Feminist Companion to John, ed. A-J. Levine (London and New York, 2003), 140–66. 5 Sermo 246 and his Epistola 120; R. Boniface and R.J. Teske, Letters 100–155 (Hyde Park, 2003), 129–40, esp. 137. This line of reasoning was followed in Epistula 50 by Paulinus of Nola (355–431); M. Skeb, ed., Epistulae. Paulinus von Nola, Fontes Christiani 25, 3 (Freiburg, 1998), 1042–75, esp. 1067. 6 Of course, this point of view contrasts with the passage of John 20:24–31, where Thomas does touch the body of the risen Christ. When Thomas touches the wound, he feels and believes

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Noli me tangere expresses the final chord of the arrival and return of God. Thus, Noli me tangere positions the body of Christ within an anthropology of the incarnation, the cycle of salvation, and the divine aura.7 The first exegetes also recognised a gender issue in the paired concepts of touching/not-touching.8 According to Ambrose of Milan (d. 397), Mary Magdalene was prohibited from touching Christ because, at that moment, she lacked the capacity to grasp Christ in his risen and divine form.9 He compares the Mary of John 20 with Eve: if the first sin was committed by a woman, the first person to see the risen Christ is also a woman. Furthermore, the point suggests an ellipsis of the other prohibition of touch that God issues with regard to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 3:3): “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.” As we know, this was the command that Eve broke. The passage allows us to deduce that the sense of touch, at least in this archetypal context, can lead to higher knowledge—forbidden knowledge—of the mystery of God himself: prohibition against touch in Genesis has to do with the acquisition of knowledge that belongs to God. Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235) proposed a more woman-friendly meaning of the Noli me tangere episode. He connected John 20:17 with the Song of Songs 3:1–4.10 Just like Martha, Mary is the apostola apostolorum, sent by Christ himself to redeem Eve’s sin. Mary

7 8 9 10

on the basis of a touch that satisfies him. The story of Thomas relies on the verification principle of the tactile sense and the testis argument, of which there are variations. The men of Emmaus do not recognise Christ by his voice, nor by touch, but by the dramatic action of the breaking of the bread Mary Magdalene already believed (why would she need to touch?), but she still had to integrate the insight into the cycle of the Resurrection by renouncing an overly narrow physical concept: the human body of Christ. Noli me tangere is therefore more than the story of Thomas, because the first passage also explicates the meaning of the incarnation. For a further elaboration, see S.M. Schneiders, “Touching the Risen Jesus: Mary Magdalene and Thomas the Twin in John 20,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America (2006): 13–35; L.M. Rafanelli, “Seeking Truth and Bearing Witness: The Noli me tangere and Incredulity of Thomas on Tino di Camaiano’s Petroni Tomb (1313–1317),” Comitatus. A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies (2006): 32–64. These reflections are continued by J-L. Nancy, Noli me tangere. Essai sur la levée du corps (Paris, 2003), 28 n. 2: “Ce qui ne doit pas être touché, c’est le corps ressuscité.” Attridge, “Don’t be touching me.” Ambrose of Milan, Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam, ccsl 14 (Turnhout, 1957), 345–400. In canticum canticorum 25, 2, 45; G. Garitte, Traités d’Hippolyte sur David et Goliath, sur le cantique des cantiques et sur l’antéchrist—version Géorgienne, csco 264 (Louvain, 1965), 45–9; see also V. Saxer, “Marie Madeleine dans le commentaire d’Hippolyte sur le cantique des cantiques,” Revue bénédictine 101 (1991): 219–39.

(‘Noli me tangere’) in the Codex Egberti (Reichenau, c. 977–93)

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Magdalene is Ecclesia, the proclaimer of salvation, or the New Eve. She seeks her bridegroom, as the Church seeks her faithful. In what follows I will test these intertwinings between the Gospels and their patristic comments with the case of the Codex Egberti. My ‘visual exegesis’ will contribute to the complexity of translating the textual tradition into the early-medieval visual grammar. 1

Visual Exegesis in Context: The Codex Egberti

The illustration of the text of John 20:11–18 in the Codex Egberti (Reichenau, c. 977–93) is considered one of the earliest certain representations of the Noli me tangere motif (Fig. 3.1).11 Indeed, during the Ottonian period (the tenth and eleventh centuries) the Noli me tangere motif gradually emerged from the shadows, was thoroughly renewed and acquired a lasting identity; the Codex Egberti bears witness to this renewal and its staying power.12 Egbert (d. 993) was chancellor to Otto I and Otto ii and had a great deal of political and artistic influence in Lorraine. The manuscript is important in the history of western art on account of its immense wealth of miniatures. The miniature depicting the encounter between Christ and Mary Magdalene illustrates the text of John 11

Trier, Stadtbibliothek MS 24, f. 91r; H. Schiel, Codex Egberti der Stadtbibliothek Trier (Basel, 1960); F.J. Ronig, “Erläuterungen zu den Miniaturen des Egbert Codex,” in Der Egbert Codex. Das Leben Jesu. Ein Höhepunkt der Buchmalerei vor 1000 Jahren (Stuttgart, 2005), 78–188. For the iconographic corpus see: B. Baert and L. Kusters, “The Twilight Zone of the Noli me tangere: Contributions to the History of the Motif in Western Europe (ca. 400–ca. 1000),” Louvain Studies 32, no. 3 (2007): 255–303, a study of the complicated genesis of Noli me tangere in iconography. In B. Baert, “Noli me tangere or the Untouchable Body: Five Exercises in the Prohibition on Touching,” Annual of the Antwerp Royal Museum (2007): 8–21, the notion of the gaze in the Noli me tangere motif is explored from the perspective of image theory. The following dissertations on the topic have not been published: A. Trotzig, “Christus Resurgens Apparet Mariae Magdalenae. En ikonografisk studie med tonvikt pa motivets framställning in den tidiga medeltidens konst” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Stockholm University, 1973); L.M. Rafanelli, “The Ambiguity of Touch. Saint Mary Magdalene and the ‘Noli me Tangere’ in Early Modern Italy” (unpublished PhD dissertation, New York University, 2004). On the interplay of the senses, see B. Baert, “An Odour, a Taste, a Touch. Impossible to Describe. Noli me tangere and the Senses,” in Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe, ed. W. de Boer and C. Goettler (Leiden, 2013), 111–51; B. Baert, K. Demasure and R. Bieringer, ed., To Touch or Not to Touch? Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Noli me tangere (Leuven, 2013). 12 Schiel, Codex Egberti; Ronig, “Erläuterungen zu den Miniaturen des Egbert Codex”; B. Baert, “The pact between space and gaze,” in Fiction Sacrée. Spiritualité et esthétique durant le premier âge moderne, ed. A. Guiderdoni and R. Dekoninck (Leuven, 2012), 243–70.

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Figure 3.1

Noli me tangere, Codex Egberti, Trier, Stadtbibliothek MS 24, f. 91r © Trier, Stadtbibliothek

20:11–18 that appears on the facing folio (ff. 90v text–91r image). We may therefore speak of a direct text-image relationship and for the first time unmistakably identify this iconography as Noli me tangere. Moreover, in accordance with the name mentioned in John 20, the inscription above the woman reads MARIA (and Christ bears the inscription ihc xpc). The composition is divided in the middle by a slender tree. On the left is a simple representation of the tomb: angels holding staffs flank an empty sarcophagus. The tomb is green, referring to new life and resurrection; it is, in other words, fertile.13 Mary Magdalene kneels near the tree trunk, her arms 13

P.A. Underwood, “The Fountain of Life in Manuscripts of the Gospels,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 5 (1950): 41–138 at 88, Figs 25–6.

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extended in the direction of Christ’s feet. Christ inclines toward Mary Magdalene and gestures to her. In his left hand he holds a book. The function of the white slender tree is multivalent. It divides the composition into the twofold structure of the biblical text: before recognizing and after recognizing Christ. The tree is white as Christ’s and the angels’ clothes. It is in fact not a common tree: it is the tree of paradise and the tree of the cross.14 Nowhere in the Gospel of John is it stated that Mary Magdalene was kneeling, or that she threw herself tragically at Christ’s feet. Nor does the gospel state that the two persons involved were standing opposite one another. However, the text does indicate Mary turning to the Lord twice (I will come back to her act of turning).15 Mary Magdalene’s bowing pose derives from another prototype in early Christian and Carolingian art, namely the Chairete, wherein the women at the sepulchre take hold of Jesus’s feet (Matt. 28:9, “And they came to Him, took hold of his feet, and worshipped Him”), as in a now lost palaeoChristian sarcophagus (Fig. 3.2).16 The palaeo-Christian modelled pose, when transposed to the context of Noli me tangere, assumes a different meaning: we see her bowing now in response to the prohibition of touch.17 The art historian and specialist in the history of gestures Moshe Barasch describes the creation of Noli me tangere as a particular example of energetic inversion.18 Energetic inversion is the power of a gesture to become a formal-artistic recipient of various emotions with shifting interpretations across the history of art. In the history of gesture, Noli me tangere constitutes such a ‘force field.’ In the next 14

B. Baert and L. Kusters, “The tree as narrative, formal and allegorical index in Noli me tangere,” in The Tree. Symbol, Allegory and Mnemonic Device in Medieval Thought and Art, ed. A. Worm (Turnhout, 2014), 59–86, discusses the Noli me tangere tree as a compositional, allegorical and exegetical device. 15 On this dynamic and its effect on Noli me tangere iconography from the fifteenth century onward, see: M. Pardo, “The Subject of Savoldo’s Magdalene,” The Art Bulletin 71, no. 1 (1989): 67–91; K. Krüger, Das Bild als Schleier des Unsichtbaren. Ästhetische Illusion in der Kunst der frühen Neuzeit in Italien (Munich, 2001), 104. 16 Matthew 28:8–10. The encounter between Christ and a single Mary (Magdalene) does not occur before 850. Before the middle of the ninth century, the story of the Resurrection was depicted by showing the myrrhophores near the tomb, on the one hand, and/or Christ’s appearance to two myrrhophores, the Chairete, on the other hand. The essential question is thus whether or not the particular passage in John was initially suppressed, and why. L.M. Rafanelli holds the opinion that the passage was deliberately neglected in the visual arts; Rafanelli, “The Ambiguity of Touch.” The myrrhophores and the Chairete would ultimately provide the basic characteristics of later Noli me tangere iconography. An exception would be a disputable Noli me tangere on the so-called Brivio capsella (a silver reliquary) from the early Christian period, and preserved in Paris, Musée du Louvre; see G. Noga-Banai, The Trophies of the Martyrs: An Art Historical Study of Early Christian Silver Reliquaries (Oxford, 2008), 38–61, Fig. 3. 17 M. Barasch, Giotto and the Language of Gesture (Cambridge, 1987), 170. 18 Ibid.

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Figure 3.2

Chairete, detail from a now lost sarcophagus SOURCE: Antonio Bosio, Roma sotterranea novissima (Rome, 1651)

section, I will analyse this emotional ‘force field’ in the miniature for Otto iii. I will show how the Ottonian dynasties integrated a subtle theological epistemology of the senses in their iconographic interpretation of the Noli me tangere. 2

Noli me tangere and the Senses: The Gospel Book of Otto iii

The visual medium has its own conventions, transferring the literary source into the realm of sight. The visual medium develops its own tradition, its own models, disconnecting itself to some extent from the literary prototype. These differences and this transformation process between word and image also relate to the spatial perceptions of the Noli me tangere scene. Below I will try to define this spatial perception in text on the one hand, and in image on the other by focusing on the concepts of gaze, movement and time. In his recent exegetical study, “‘They have taken away my Lord’: Text-­ Immanent Repetitions and Variations in John 20:1–18,” Reimund Bieringer ­analysed the linguistic frequency and intensity of the use of Greek words

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e­ xpressing different nuances for seeing.19 The verb parakyptō, or inclinasset (“inspect, bend over” 20:5, 11) forms a Klammer, a link between verbs of movement and verbs of seeing. Verbs of seeing proper are: blepō, noticing the empty tomb (20:1, 5); theōreō, “to observe something with continuity and attention, often with the implication that what is observed is something unusual,” used for looking carefully at the gardener (20:6, 12, 14); and horaō (esp. perfect: heōraka), seeing the risen Christ with the eyes of faith (20:8, 18). “This latter form expresses a seeing that transcends the mere physical seeing to a seeing with the eyes of faith and thus forms the climax of the pericope.”20 Unfortunately, in the Vulgate—the main version for medieval artists and their patrons—these three terms of sight were all translated with the verb videre, resulting in a significant loss of the nuances in John’s original Greek text. Nevertheless it remains clear that the verb of seeing, in view of its frequency, is very significant. If we look at the iconography of Noli me tangere, we notice how the importance of seeing is recognized but transformed according to the possibilities and limits of visual language. In contrast to everyday life, eye contact in the world of the image is never a matter of coincidence. In iconography, glances do not meet accidentally but rather are governed by the semantics of the transmission of knowledge and love.21 The Noli me tangere miniature of the Gospel Book of Otto iii (Reichenau, 998–1000) involves these aspects of eye contact between Mary Magdalene and Christ (Fig. 3.3).22 The element of opposition, the architectural tomb with two angels, the winding sheet and the bowing, humble Mary Magdalene return as a pattern.23 The involvement of the angels 19

R. Bieringer, “‘They have taken away my Lord’: Text-Immanent Repetitions and Variations in John 20:1–18,” in Repetitions and Variations in the Fourth Gospel: Style, Text, Interpretation, ed. G. Van Belle (Leuven, 2009), 609–30. 20 See for this exegetical interpretation: J. Smit Sibinga, “Towards Understanding the Composition of John 20,” in The Four Gospels 1992, Festschrift Frans Neirynck, ed. F. Van Segbroeck et al., 3 vols. (Leuven, 1992), iii: 2139–52 (2139). On the intensity of seeing and its relationship to believing, see G.L. Phillips, “Faith and Vision in the Fourth Gospel,” in Studies in the Fourth Gospel, ed. F.L. Cross (London, 1957), 83–96 (91–2). 21 J. Bremmer, “Walking, Standing, and Sitting in Ancient Greek Culture,” in A Cultural History of Gesture, ed. J. Bremmer and H. Roodenburg (New York, 1993), 15–35; R. Baldwin, “‘Gates Pure and Shining and Serene’. Mutual Gazing as an Amatory Motif in Western Literature and Art,” Renaissance and Reformation 10, 1 (1986): 23–49. 22 Munich, bsb Clm 4453, f. 251r; F. Dressler, F. Mütherich and H. Beumann, ed., Das Evangeliar Otto iii Clm 4453 der bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München, (Frankfurt, 1978); K. Schulmeyer, “Evangeliar Otto’s iii,” in Europas Mitte um 1000, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 2000), i: 456–7. 23 In this instance, the winding sheet appears as a wheel with three intertwining segments. This shape is graphically connected to an intercultural archetype in the history of form—namely, that of the sun. “Die Andeutung einer Rotation, einer Bewegung, wahrscheinlich im Zusammenhang mit dem Ablauf auf der Sonnenbahn […] Die Strahlung ist

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is also striking with respect to eye contact and gesture. Their hands point to the particular moment of engagement between Christ and Mary Magdalene. The angel on the left looks to Mary, the one on the right to Christ. In this miniature, the psychological reverberation of the exchange of glances is underscored by the play of hands. The left hand of Mary Magdalene and the right hand of Christ reflect one another. Her hand moves upwards, his downwards; as such they almost form a closed bowl. The injunction against touch is subtly entwined in these fingers and pointed at by the angels as the moment of all moments. The twin motifs of love and knowledge have been associated with Mary Magdalene since the very earliest exegeses. The relationship of bride and bridegroom was already recognized in the patristic period by Hippolytus of Rome, among others. But the problems of insight tended to be negative during this period. The Mary Magdalene of Noli me tangere was a woman of imperfect insight and flawed faith in the divine nature of Christ, which was immediately offered as an explanation for the injunction against touch. The mutual glance in this Ottonian manuscript demonstrates precisely the opposite. Are we therefore seeing a change in this period in the spiritual perception of Mary Magdalene and Noli me tangere, which in turn exerted its influence on visual tradition? At the beginning of the tenth century, an anonymous author—formerly and erroneously believed to be Abbot Odo—added the final touches to a sermon for one of the most powerful Benedictine cloisters of the time, Cluny. The Sermo in Veneratione Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae is considered one of the most influential apocryphal texts dealing with Mary Magdalene.24 The sermon was

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sowohl innerhalb wie ausserhalb der Kreise gezeichnet […] In den meisten SonnenSymbolen kommt eine deutliche Betonung des Begriffs ‘Mitte’ zum Ausdruck, als Bestätigung eines sehr früh erwachten Gefühls für die zentrale Bedeutung der Sonne für alles Leben.” A. Frutiger, “Zeichen, Symbole, Signete, Signale,” in A. Frutiger, Der Mensch und seine Zeichen, 3 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1978–81), iii: 72–4, Fig. 6, p. 73. The wheel also implies the Trinity. By using this universal, symbolic form for the winding sheet, the miniaturist sought to add greater cosmic force to his depiction of the Son of Man’s resurrection. This kind of pneumatic ‘wind-ness’ as indexical presence for the invisible and bodiless Divine was developed in depth in: B. Baert, “Wind und Sublimierung in der christlichen Kunst des Mittelalters: die Verkündigung,” Das Münster: Zeitschrift für Christliche Kunst und Kunstwisschenschaft 66/2 (2013): 109–17; and in Part I of B. Baert, Pneuma and the Visual Arts in the Middle Ages and Early Modernity (Leuven, 2016). “Sermo in Veneratione Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae,” PL 133, cols 713–21; V. Saxer, “Un manuscrit démembré du sermon d’Etudes de Cluny sur Ste. Marie-Madeleine,” Scriptorium 8 (1954): 119–23; D. Iogna-Prat, “La Madeleine du ‘Sermo in veneratione sanctae Mariae Magdalenae’ attribué à Odon de Cluny,” Mélanges de l’école française de Rome. Moyen Âge 104, 1, 1 (1992): 37–79; D. Iogna-Prat, “‘Bienheureuse polysémie’. La Madeleine du Sermo in

(‘Noli me tangere’) in the Codex Egberti (Reichenau, c. 977–93)

Figure 3.3

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Noli me tangere, miniature from the Gospel Book of Otto iii, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 4453, f. 251r © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München

veneratione Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae attribué à Odon de Cluny (Xe siècle),” in Marie Madeleine dans la mystique, les arts et les letters, ed. E. Duperray and G. Duby (Paris, 1989), 21–31.

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read on 22 July, the feast day of Mary Magdalene, and influenced hymns,25 lauds and dramaturgical rites, as with the phrase Quem queritis in sepulchro, o Christicole (“Whom do you seek in the grave, O followers of Christ”), known from a Limoges manuscript dating to c. 923–34.26 The Sermo, also known as the Vita evangelica, was a critical text in the new ‘personality formation’ of Mary Magdalene. The central theme of the In veneratione sermon is the transformation of sin into perfection. The connection between the sinner and the witness to the Resurrection, which arose with Gregory the Great (560–604), was now elaborated in all its implications.27 The Gospel Book of Otto iii was written at Reichenau, one of the most im­ portant Benedictine cloisters on the Bodensee (founded in 724), with a major scriptorium. It is well known that the Ottonian family maintained close ties to Cluny and supported its Christianisation of Europe.28 This Gospel Book was meant for Emperor Otto iii himself, and must have been made under the

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J. Szövérffy, “Peccatrix Quondam Femina. A Survey of the Mary Magdalen Hymns,” Traditio 19 (1963): 79–146, 86: the earliest hymns arose in the tenth and eleventh centuries in Burgundy, Bourges and southern Germany (where our Ottonian manuscripts were also created); 92: the most important keywords in the hymn are peccatrix, collega apostolorum, soror apostolorum, meretrix impudica, Maria poenitens, spona, amica Dei and fons. K. Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church (Oxford, 1933). The text in question is a dialogue (p. 202): Iesum Nazarenum crucifixum, o caelicolae (“Jesus, the Nazarene, the crucified, O angels”); Non est hic, surrexit sicut praedixerat; ite, nuntiate quia surrexit de sepulchre (“He is not here, He is risen, as He predicted; go and announce that He has risen from the grave”). The content is derived from Matthew 28:5–10, Mark 16:5–7 and Luke 24:4–6. The dialogue form is inspired by choir songs from contemporary liturgy (pp. 203–4). The version in its original form is the text described above, which occurs in a manuscript in Sankt Gallen and dates to the middle of the tenth century (pp. 204–5). With thanks to Isabelle Vanden Hove. In his sermon of September 21, 591, in the church of San Clemente in Rome, Gregory the Great (560–604) identified Mary (Magdalene) for the first time as the sinner in Luke 7:36– 50. The Venerable Bede (672–735) adds the sister of Lazarus to this cluster. Bede calls the sinner in Luke meretrix (and she is now also understood as the woman in Noli me tangere). Following in the footsteps of Ambrose and Augustine, the author contrasts the Noli me tangere with the Haemorrhoissa. With the Noli me tangere, Christ sought to show that only those who believed in the truth of the Father may touch Him. Bede emphasizes that in spite of her evident lack of faith, Mary Magdalene nevertheless nurtured an extraordinary love for Christ; Gregorius Magnus, Homiliae in Evangelia, ccsl 141 (Turnhout, 1999), hom. 33; Beda Venerabilis, In Marci Evangelium expositio in Bedae Venerabilis Opera, ii: 3, ccsl 120 (Turnhout, 1960), 606, and at 413: Maria Magdalene ipsa est soror Lazari. H. Paulhart, “Die Lebensbeschreibung der Kaiserin Adelheid von Abt Odilo von Cluny,” in Festschrift zur Jahrtausendfeier der Kaiserkrönung Ottos der Grossen, ed. H. Paulhart (Graz, 1962).

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auspices of Abbots Witigowo (985–97) and Alawich ii (997–1000).29 In the unique context of an intellectual and artistic elite familiar with the Benedictine reform concerning Mary Magdalene, a new iconographic interpretation of the Noli me tangere account according to contemporary sermons is not surprising.30 Another important contribution of Bieringer’s article “Text-Immanent Repetitions and Variations in John 20:1–18” is his attention to the rupture in the narrative at verse 11 concerning action and movement. Before verse 11, the tomb is the point of reference to which and from which all the movement occurs. The noun to mnēmeion or “the tomb” (in the Vulgate translated as monumentum) occurs for the last time in 20:11. The tomb progressively recedes into the background and Jesus comes to the fore. Verbs of extended movement are found almost exclusively in 20:1–10. It is here that big distances have to be covered. Verbs expressing limited movement and verbs expressing virtually no movement (also called stances) are concentrated in 20:11–18. The spell that hangs over the movement in this pericope (20:11–18) is only broken after it has reached its climax in Jesus prohibiting even the small movement that Mary seems to make in coming close to him (mē mou haptou or Noli me tangere in 20:17). The dynamism of movement is regained when Jesus announces his movement up to the Father (anabainō or ascendi in 20:17) and sends Mary back to his brothers. When the movement toward Jesus—which is the driving force of the pericope since 20:1 (first covering long distances and moving with speed in 20:1–10 and then being focused on one place and progressing very slowly in 20:11–18)—is about to reach its fulfilment, it is abruptly called to a halt and the protagonists are seen moving in opposite directions. To summarise, the narrative layers show us decreasing movements, the shift from tomb to Christ, and the increasing intensity of the gaze. If we return to the transformations of spatial movement in the visual medium, we notice that these decreasing movements and the shift from the tomb to Christ are marked by the iconographic convention of the twofold composition with the sepulchre on the left and the Noli me tangere event on the right. The left and right positions suggest the temporal and narrative reading direction, so 29 30

W. Berschin, Die Taten des Abtes Witigowo von der Reichenau (985–997). Eine zeitgenössische Biographie von Purchart von der Reichenau (Sigmaringen, 1992). For more on the particular artistic context of the Ottonian empire, see: A. Effenberger, “Spätantike, karolingische und byzantinische Kostbarkeiten in den Schatzkammern ottonischer Hausklöster,” in Otto der Grosse. Magdeburg und Europa, ed. M. Puhla, 2 vols. (Mainz am Rhein, 2001), i: 149–66.

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often endorsed by a dividing tree at the centre of the composition as in the Codex Egberti.31 This textual and iconographic rupture in localization is emphasized by another feature that is marked in the text as well as in the image. Verse 14 says that Mary Magdalene turns her back when she answers the angels just before seeing Christ for the first time. As such, she does not recognize him yet: conversa et retrorsum et videt Iesum. The Latin phrase literally means “to turn around or even flee in a backwards way,” which means that the phrase is doubly stressed. In verse 16, Mary Magdalene turns a second time. This is the moment when she recognizes her master.32 The position of Mary Magdalene, now turned away from the sepulchre, strengthens the polarity in the composition, but marks the sepulchre as an element to forget, negate and turn your back on in favour of the next element: the phase of the gaze and, finally, recognition.33 Mary Magdalene’s tears of remorse form the necessary tabula rasa for what she achieves in the Noli me tangere episode. In the injunction against touch, she recognizes and acknowledges the assimilation of Father and Son and becomes the first proclaimer of the Church, a church fragrant with the scent of her balsam. Mary Magdalene’s remorse is the necessary precondition for an important moment of insight in the history of salvation. Indeed, according to the influential Sermo already mentioned, Noli me tangere is the ultimate goal of the revelation, of the insight—the salutifera doctrina—attained by means

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There are some examples of inversions. On this topic, see: B. Baert, “The Gaze in the Garden. Body and Embodiment in Noli me tangere,” in Body and Embodiment in Netherlandish Art, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 58 (Leiden, 2007), 15–39; Baert and Kusters, “The Twilight Zone of the Noli me tangere.” Rafanelli, “The Ambiguity of Touch,” 205, briefly interprets the inversion as a deliberate move to shift the visual emphasis: the viewer now concentrates on Mary Magdalene’s perspective, on the empathy with Mary Magdalene, seeing her Rabbouni. I am currently developing an article on the impact of reading direction and inversions in Noli me tangere. U. Tranow, “‘Noli me tangere’: zur Problematik eines visuellen Topos und seiner Transformationen im Cinquecento,” in Topik und Tradition: Prozesse der Neuordnung von Wissensüberlieferungen des 13. bis zum 17. Jahrhunderts, ed. T. Frank (Göttingen, 2007), 209–25 (213) also interprets the double ‘conversion’ as a sign of the Magdalene’s inner conversions. “Über Wiederholung […] wird die Notwendigkeit einer inneren, hier jedoch auch als konkret äusserlich zu vollziehende Wendung vom falschen zum richtigen Objekt betont.” The idea of the backwards position is explained by Ruth Mellinkoff as a sign of outcast. I do not think this idea is relevant for the Noli me tangere; R. Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Berkeley, 1993), i: 220–2. Alternatively, Tarnow connects the position of Mary Magdalene to contorsio, an aesthetic concept that (at least during the Renaissance) embodies inner conversion.

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of penitence and internal remorse.34 This fundamental dimension of insight brings me to a final hermeneutical point of view: the early Noli me tangere miniatures as ‘the iconic turn.’ 3

By Way of Conclusion: The Iconic Turn

Noli me tangere is, as it were, an iconic turn. In the shift from the sepulchre to the body of Christ, in the conversa et retrorsum indeed, a new pact is made: the pact between place and gaze. This new pact leaves behind the importance of the spot, the emptiness, in favour of the untouchable yet visible body. The new paradigm of untouchable visibility glorifies sight into insight and generates a transformation from the historical and objectified locus, the sepulchre, the garden (the narrative) to Noli me tangere as a locus beyond (the iconic). On the visual level, this locus pulsates in energy zones between the hands and with eye contact. Moreover in the Codex Egberti, the miniaturist painted the hand of Christ touching the epigraphy MARIA above her head. Christ, the vox, who is calling Mary, ‘touches’ her in her very name. Thus the miniaturist expresses touch as speech and enriches the visual regime of gaze and image with a sonoric potential.35 In Noli me tangere Christ is stepping out of the visual world in order to make space for the visible invisibility. Consequently, this new paradigm also involves our concept of movement, taking into consideration the second phrase of verse 17, “I am not yet ascended to the Father.” In iconography, not only is Christ depicted in contrasting dynamics—going away, going up—expressed in his twisted body and/or opposed feet, but also the final ‘destination’ of the ascending Christ is evoked in the representation or symbols of the heavenly Jerusalem, as for example on the bronze doors at Hildesheim (1008–15) (Fig. 3.4).36 34 35

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Iogna-Prat, “La Madeleine,” 56; in the mass of 22 July, one prays to be able to ‘see’ the majesty of Christ-Sol. The internal pain is necessary for achieving and disseminating personal salvation. I developed this complex interplay of the senses as a ‘synaesthetic paradigm’ in: B. Baert, “Pentecost in the Codex Egberti and the Benedictional of Robert of Jumièges. The visual medium and the senses,” Convivium 2 (2015): 82–97 (translated into French: “La Pentecôte dans le Codex Egberti (v. 980) et le Bénédictional de Robert de Jumièges (fin du 10ème siècle). Le médium visuel et les sens,” in Les cinq sens au moyen âge, ed. E. Palazzo, (Paris, 2016), 521–44). H. Schrade, “Zu dem Noli me tangere der Hildesheimer Bronzetür,” Westfalen: Hefte für Geschichte, Kunst und Volkskunde 39, 3 (1961): 211–14; U. Storm, “Die Bronzetüren Bernwards zu Hildesheim” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Freie Universität Berlin, 1966); U. Mende, Die Bronzetüren des Mittelalters, 800–1200 (Munich, 1983), 28–33 and 135–6.

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Figure 3.4

Noli me tangere, detail from the doors of Bernward of Hildesheim for the Church of St Michael in Hildesheim © Bildarchiv Foto Marburg

An important connotation of going up to the heavenly Jerusalem lies in the ascending (anabainō).37 Moreover, the phrase is to be understood as an action in progress. In a theological sense, this final movement in Noli me tangere is the undertaking of a heavenly pilgrimage that will finally open God’s house, where Christ will become the already mentioned visible invisibility. The disappearance in order to open access contrasts with the ‘mission of movement’ of Mary Magdalene in verse 18: she should turn away from Christ to bring the message. In other words, Christ deflects the attention from himself.38 Noli me tangere is an iconography of direct speech. The visualisation of these three words depicts a given moment in time, a fraction. At the same time, this fraction affirms a transformation. Exactly at the borders of Noli me tangere,

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“I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17); R. Bieringer, “Resurrection and Ascension in the Gospel of John,” in The Resurrection of Jesus in the Gospel of John, ed. C.R. Koester and R. Bieringer (Tübingen, 2008), 209–35, passim. This deflection is supported by the Greek word order mē mou haptou; ibid. Mē mou haptou means “not coming close to the Holy of Holies.” This would underline an interpretation that Christ cannot be approached because his body is—in a theological sense—the temple.

(‘Noli me tangere’) in the Codex Egberti (Reichenau, c. 977–93)

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the transforming body reveals itself: it is Christ’s body but also Christ’s altering body which is not yet ascended to the Father. This transformation also lies on the level of temporal perception, for the Noli me tangere narrative stands at the gate of Christ’s departure, of his eternal fusion with God. Philosopher and Derrida expert Zsuzsa Baross writes the following: “The impossible, gloriously mad scenario that unfolds in John’s gospel as stage takes place right on the limit, on the threshold—of the empty tomb, but also of time, of death […]. Who would dare to speak of the event’s time? Who would say of it, for how long? By what measure of time could we measure time, this time?”39 On the visual level, I would recognize this standstill both in the mysterious zone between the hands and in the mutual gazing, which both belong to another temporal order than the natural order. Baross’s reflection makes it clear that time in Noli me tangere is not a chronology, but rather a ‘beyond-time,’ parallel to the way that the spatial aspect of Noli me tangere is beyond real space.40 These hermeneutics of the visual as an opening beyond time and space, as synesthetic epistemology between seeing and hearing and touching, hence as desire and hope, articulate the essence of Noli me tangere as well as the limits and possibilities of what the visual arts can achieve. 39 40

Z. Baross, “Noli me tangere for Jacques Derrida,” Angelaki. Journal of the theoretical humanities 6, 2 (2001): 149–64 (154). Emphasis in the original. Bieringer, “Nader Mij niet,” 20, also defends the position that the four exegetes and biblical theologians’ puzzling combination of the Noli me tangere and the not-yet-ascending in verse 17 is to be interpreted literary-theologically rather than chronologically. In accordance with John’s style, Christ has to open the door to God for the believers, and God becomes their Father and their God.

Chapter 4

The Green Tinted Souls of Dives and Lazarus in the Codex Aureus of Echternach Maria R. Grasso The Codex Aureus of Echternach, c. 1030–45 (Nüremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Hs. 156142/KG1138, hereafter, Codex Aureus) includes a detailed pictorial cycle of the parable of Dives and Lazarus, showing them at the moment of their death with their souls exiting from their mouths (Fig. 4.1).1 The souls are depicted as homunculi (small human forms) separated from their bodies and are entities in their own right, distinct from corporeal souls portrayed in many Last Judgement depictions, where they are shown re-joined with their physical bodies in accordance with Church doctrine.2 The distinction between the two types of soul, separated or corporeal, is vital since it inevitably bears on the interpretation of other depictions of the soul. The separated soul is rarely encountered in miniatures prior to Codex Aureus, and this manuscript has possibly the earliest surviving example associated with the parable. The homunculus soul also merits consideration precisely because there is no description in the Gospels of the nature of the soul, except obliquely in the parable of Dives and Lazarus. However, there is sufficient evidence from Patristic and medieval theologians and scholars to suggest that it is their 1 Luke 16:19–25. Codex Aureus, f. 78r. My thanks to the editors and readers for their helpful comments. See: H. Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination: An Historical Study, 2 vols. (London, 1999), ii: 187–8; I.F. Walther and N. Wolf, Codices Illustres: The World’s Most Famous Illuminated Manuscripts, 400 to 1600 (Cologne, London, 2005), 128; A. Grebe, Codex Aureus: Das Goldene Evangelienbuch von Echternach (Darmstadt, 2008), 130; P. Metz, trans., I. Schrier and P. Gorge, The Golden Gospels of Echternach: Codex Aureus Epternacensis (London, 1957); C. Nordenfalk, Codex Caesareus Upsaliensis: An Echternach Gospel-Book of the Eleventh Century, facsimile and commentary (Stockholm, 1971), 26–41; full facsimile: Das Goldene Evangelienbuch von Echternach: Codex Aureus Epternacensis, Hs 156142 aus dem Germanischen Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, comm. R. Kahsnitz, E. Rücker, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart, 1982); R. Kahsnitz, U. Mende and E. Rücker, Das Goldene Evangelienbuch von Echternach: Eine Prunkhandschrift des 11. Jarhunderts (Frankfurt am Main, 1982); D. Oltrogge, R. Fuchs, Die Maltechnik des Codex Aureus aus Echternach: Ein Meisterwerk im Wandel (Nuremberg, 2009). 2 The Nicene Creed formulated in 325 was enlarged in 381 at the second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople with the following: “we look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come,” J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (New York, Toronto, 1972), 298.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_006

Green Tinted Souls of Dives and Lazarus in the Codex Aureus

Figure 4.1

The rich man and Lazarus, Codex Aureus of Echternach, c. 1030–45. Nüremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum Hs. 156 142/KG1138, f. 78r © Germanisches Nationalmuseum, photo: Monika Runge

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thought and exegesis that drove the creation of this image.3 It therefore must represent the combined effort of artists and theologians to create an image that incorporates Christian understanding of the nature of the soul. Two other details in the depiction of the souls of Dives and Lazarus in Codex Aureus merit particular attention. One is the use of the mouth as exit point for the soul; the other is its change of colour. The mouth as exit for the soul has no precedent either in classical antiquity or Byzantium, and the Codex Aureus provides an early example of this topos in the parable. This innovative depiction also appears to be underpinned by scholarly exegesis.4 However, these souls immediately leaving their deceased bodies are also tinted green, while those in their final places of reward, Lazarus in Abraham’s Bosom and Dives in Hell, are painted in healthy flesh tones.5 Unlike use of the homunculus as a paradigm for the soul, this change of colour appears not to be supported by theological exegesis and therefore is probably a product of the artists and patrons themselves. A green tint is also employed for the skin-tone of the mourners surrounding the rich man. By the use of this colour, the artists create a pallid, passive setting that contrasts sharply with the vibrant appearance of the souls in their afterlife locations. Depictions of the souls of Dives and Lazarus are not treated in this manner in any other iteration.6 Even those manuscripts produced concurrently or shortly thereafter at Echternach, the Pericopes of Henry iii, 1039–43, and the Golden Gospels of Henry iii, 1045–6, whose depictions of the parable of Dives and Lazarus closely resemble those in Codex Aureus, elect not to show any colour change in the souls.7 Discussion of this unusual rendering of the souls of Dives and Lazarus includes the topos of the separated soul as homunculus, the mouth as exit for the soul, the use of colour

3 M.R. Grasso, “Imaging the Souls of the Blessed: Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale MS 500, Saint Amand, and the Parable of Dives and Lazarus, c. 835–1275” (unpublished PhD dissertation, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 2014), 62–7. 4 See ibid. 5 Oltrogge and Fuchs, Die Maltechnik, 119–23: a technical study of colours and overpainting in the parable depiction; the green tinting is not mentioned as an addition or alteration. 6 Depictions of the parable are listed in M.R. Grasso, Illuminating Sanctity: The Body, Soul and Glorification of Saint Amand in the Miniature Cycle in Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale MS 500, The Library of the Written Word, Appx. I (Leiden and Boston, 2019). 7 Bremen, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek MS b.21, f. 76v. Das Evangelistar Kaiser Heinrichs iii: faksimilie-Augabe des Codex Ms.b.21 der Universitätsbibliothek, ed. G. Knoll (Wiesbaden, 1993); El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo Cod. Vit. 17, f. 117v; Das Goldene Evangelienbuch Heinrichs iii: A facsimile of Codex Vitrinas 17 in the Escorial, intro. A. Boeckler (Berlin, 1933); Grebe, Codex Aureus, 143, redates the Codex Aureus to 1045, considering it to have been made between, or concurrently with the two other manuscripts.

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to express different states of being, and possible sources for transmission of these concepts to Codex Aureus. 1

Codex Aureus and the Parable

Codex Aureus was made at the abbey of Echternach, a prestigious and wealthy monastery that enjoyed the patronage of the Emperors Conrad ii (1024–39) and Henry iii (1039–56).8 The covers of this large book measure 446 mm by 310 mm with 136 slightly smaller folios.9 The entire text of the four Gospels is written in gold and, given the expense associated with the materials used, the large number of miniatures, decorated initials and decorated pages show that it was manifestly an item of great luxury.10 It would appear that the book was made for the abbey itself, but the absence of any readings connected with the Mass suggests that it was not used for liturgical purposes and may have been primarily for display.11 The creators of Codex Aureus were systematic in their organization of the Gospels into four distinct sections, one for each evangelist, with each section preceded by decorative pages emulating Eastern textiles and four pages of miniatures depicting scenes from that Gospel.12 Luke’s Gospel is the only one preceded by depictions of his parables. The depiction of the parable of Dives and Lazarus is paired with that of the Great Banquet on the opposite folio.13 The parable of Dives and Lazarus contains the only reference in the New Testament to reward in the afterlife, and the artists of Codex Aureus faithfully depict the details of its narrative. For example, Luke describes these souls as sentient beings, noting the rich man suffering the fires of hell, begging for water to satisfy his thirst and lifting his eyes to see Lazarus, all elements that were captured by the artists of the Codex Aureus. 8 Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination, ii: 187; M.C. Ferrari, J. Schroeder and H. Trauffler, ed., Die Abtei Echternach, 698–1998 (Luxembourg, 1999); Analecta Epternacensia: Beiträge zur Bibliotheksgeschichte der Abtei Echternach, Bibliothèque nationale de Luxembourg, Stadtbibliothek Trier (Luxembourg, 2000). 9 Walther and Wolf, Codices Illustres, 128. 10 Walther and Wolf, Codices Illustres, 128, lists the contents as: over 60 decorative pages, 16 full-page miniatures, 5 evangelist portraits, 10 canon tables, 9 full-page and 16 half-page initials, 503 smaller initials. 11 Walther and Wolf, Codices Illustres, 128. 12 It should be noted that the depictions do not necessarily illustrate topics from the Gospel that they precede, for example the depiction of one of Luke’s Gospels, Luke 17:11–19, precedes Mark’s. See Metz, Golden Gospels, 74, and pl. 52. 13 Luke 14:16–24.

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Figure 4.2

The rich man and Lazarus, Aachen Gospels of Otto iii, 990–1002. Aachen, Cathedral Treasury MS 1, f. 164v © Domkapitel Aachen, photo: Ann Münchow

The earliest depiction of the parable in the West is found in the Aachen Gospels of Otto iii, 990–1002, created only some three decades before Codex Aureus (Fig. 4.2).14 Evidence suggests that manuscripts from Reichenau were available 14

Aachen, Cathedral Treasury MS 1.

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to Echternach artists, a subject to be discussed later.15 However, substantial differences between the parable depictions in the two manuscripts suggest little transmission, if any, to Codex Aureus from this source. Either those Reichenau works available may not have included depictions of the parable, or the Echternach artists simply relied on inspiration from other sources. Clearly, the Codex Aureus cycle is more detailed and includes key points not depicted in the Aachen Gospels of Otto iii, for example, the moment of death of the two protagonists. Given the extensive cycle and the significant iconographic differences in comparison with the Aachen Gospels of Otto iii, it is worth considering the possibility of a lost precedent for Codex Aureus’ parable depiction, a subject which will also be considered later.16 2

The Soul as homunculus

Depicting the separated souls of Dives and Lazarus in human form may not be an innovative conceit attributable to the artists of the Codex Aureus. It is possible that the use of the human form was employed to facilitate the portrayal of the narrative; or it may have followed precedents from classical antiquity. But since Luke’s parable identifies certain human features with Dives and Lazarus in the afterlife (e.g. Dives’s eyes), the artists may simply have elected to depict their souls in an easily recognisable way.17 However, there are also compelling theological reasons for its use. The details of the afterlife as described by Luke were of great interest to theologians, including Origen, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory the Great and Thomas Aquinas, and it is clear that many Patristic and medieval scholars believed that the soul took human form.18 For example, Irenaeus, writing in the second century, stated clearly that the soul mirrored its earthly body, relying on the parable as the basis of his argument.19 He explained that souls “possess the form of a man, so that they may be recognised [at the Last Judgement].”20 Augustine expanded this conceptualisation: 15 Metz, Golden Gospels, 132. Walther and Wolf, Codices Illustres, 128, 132. 16 F. Wormald, “Some Illustrated Manuscripts of the Lives of Saints,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 35 (1952–3), 253, discusses other sources for libelli. 17 D. Markow, “The Iconography of the Soul in Medieval Art” (unpublished PhD dissertation, New York University, 1983); M. Barasch, “The Departing Soul. The Long Life of a Medieval Creation,” Artibus et Historiae 26, no. 52 (2005): 13–28. 18 Grasso, “Imaging the Souls of the Blessed,” 62–7. 19 Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, SC, 293 (Paris, 1982), 2:34.1, 354–7. 20 Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 2:34.1, 356, et habere hominis figuram ut etiam cognoscantur et meminerint eorum quae sint hic; Irenaeus, The Writings of Irenaeus, trans. A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, 5 vols. (Edinburgh, 1868), v: 34.1, 250–1.

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For the soul has a likeness of its body when the body lies senseless though not yet really dead […]. Why, then, should it not have a likeness of the body when death really overtakes it and it finally departs from the body?21 Later, Thomas Aquinas stated that not only did the soul take its shape from that of the individual, but it also resembled the individual.22 Thus, there is substantial evidence to indicate that depictions of the soul in human form represented a deliberate effort to embrace a generally accepted contemporary Christian conception, the basis for which is found in Luke’s parable. Yet the naked soul of Lazarus in Abraham’s Bosom in Codex Aureus is innovative for other reasons that require elaboration. It is clear that Luke describes the souls in the parable at their final reward, Lazarus in Abraham’s Bosom and the rich man in Hell. But were they corporeal souls after the Last Judgement or separated souls before it? Because the clear implication in the narrative is that both men received their reward immediately after death, an ineluctable corollary is that their souls must necessarily be separated rather than corporeal since the Last Judgement had yet to take place. And it is here that the creators of Codex Aureus appear to have introduced an important visual distinction to illuminate this point. Whilst the naked, separated soul was an artistic device employed in some Christian contexts from around 1000, when viewed together with the deceased, its denotation as a ‘separated’ soul is undeniable and avoids confusion with corporeal souls, which, in line with John’s Revelations, were clothed at the Last Judgement.23 Thus, the naked soul

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Augustine, “De Genesis ad Litteram,” PL 34, 12:32, 480, Neque enim video cur habeat anima similitudinem corporis sui, cum, jacente sine sensu ipso corpore nondum tamen penitus mortuo, videt talia, qualia multi ex illa subductione vivis redditi narraverunt et non habeat, cum perfecta morte penitus de corpore exierit; Augustine, St Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, trans. J.H. Taylor, 2 vols. (New York, Ramsey NJ, 1982), ii: 7–12, 223. Thomas Aquinas, S. Thomae Aquinatis, Scriptum Super Libros Sententiarum, Magistri Petri Lombardi Episcopi Parisiensis, R.P. Mandonnet (Paris, 1929), 232; J.M. Brady ed. and trans., An Aquinas Treasury: Religious Imagery: Selections Taken from the Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, (Arlington TX, 1988), 30–1. An early example, the martyrdom of Buddho, Vita Sancti Liudgeri, Werden, St Liudger, c. 1000, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Theol. Lat. f. 323, ff. 13v, 20r. Full facsimile, Die Vita Sancti Liudgeri: Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe der Handschrift Ms. theol. Lat. f. 323 der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, ed. E. Freise, M. Black, 2 vols. (Graz, Bielefeld, 1999). Rev. 6:9–11; Grasso, “Imaging the Souls of the Blessed,” 92–103.

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of Lazarus underlines the immediate post mortem reward that Luke’s text clearly implies and denotes a separated soul.24 3

Exit from the Mouth

Both Dives and Lazarus’s homunculus souls are shown leaving their bodies via the mouth, an innovative image that occurs only in Christian depictions in the West with early examples c. 1000. The Warmund Sacramentary, created at the end of the tenth century in Ivrea, includes as part of an illustrated Agenda Mortuorum a depiction of a monk on his death-bed with his soul leaving the mouth.25 Another early example is the martyrdom of Buddho in the Vita Sancti Liudgeri, created at Werden, c. 1000.26 An early written reference to the mouth as an exit point for the soul occurs in The Iliad, capturing concisely the essence of the process. In the course of battle, Sarpedon lay dying; his comrades believed “he had breathed forth his spirit.”27 Augustine, who was familiar with Homeric works, also associated breath with the soul, arguing that the breath of God was the creator of souls: “so that that breath which God made by breathing (for what else is ‘to breathe’ than to make breath?), is the soul.”28 In the sixth century Gregory the Great specifically referred to the mouth in his description of the death of Abbot Hope.29 Gregory recounted how the assembled company witnessed the departure of Abbot Hope’s soul from his body: “at which very time all the monks saw a dove coming out of his mouth.”30 The image of a dove to represent the soul is never employed for Lazarus, but is sometimes associated with saints and appears to have Gregory the Great’s 24 25

List of parable depictions, Grasso, Illuminating Sanctity, Appx i. Ivrea, Biblioteca Capitolare MS 31, lxxxvi, f. 195v; full facsimile, Sacramentario del Vescovo Warmondo di Ivrea: Fine Secolo x, Ivrea, Biblioteca capitolare MS 31 lxxxvi, ed. L. Magnani (Ivrea, 1990). 26 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Theol. Lat. f. 323, f. 13v; full facsimile, Die Vita Sancti Liudgeri. 27 Homer, Iliad, trans. A.T. Murray, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA, London, 1924), i: 5.696. 28 Et cum uirum terreno formasset ex puluere eique animam qualem dixi siue quam iam fecerat sufflando indidisset siue potius sufflando fecisset eumque flatum, quem sufflando fecit (nam quid est aluid sufflare quam flatum facere?) animam hominis esse uoluisset. Augustine, De Civitate Dei Contra Paganos, ed. J.E.C. Welldon (London, New York, Toronto, 1924), bk. 12, chap. 24 (23), 36; Augustine, City of God, trans. and ed., M. Dods, 2 vols. (New York, 1948), i: 515. 29 Gregory the Great, Dialogues, trans. P.W. (London, 1911), 190–1. 30 Gregory the Great, Dialogues, 4:10, 190–1. Omnes vero fratres, qui aderant, ex ore eius exisse columbam viderunt. Gregorii Magni, Dialogi, ed. U. Moricca (Rome, 1924), 4:11, 242.

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Dialogues to underpin its use. It is nonetheless significant that Gregory identifies the mouth as the soul’s exit point. Whilst this topos cannot be said to be an innovation of Codex Aureus since earlier usage exists, written descriptions both in Homeric writings and Christian exegesis may have led to the creation of the topos in Christian works. 4 Colouration Codex Aureus is the only extant depiction of the parable in the West to use colour to convey a difference in the state of the soul. The depiction employs a greenish tint for the separated souls of Dives and Lazarus as they leave their respective bodies. The skin-tones of the rich man’s mourners are also green, as are those of Abraham. In contrast, the souls in the afterlife are coloured in vibrant flesh tones, both in the paradisiacal setting of Abraham’s Bosom and in Hell. This has the effect of making them appear more real; it also necessarily focuses attention on them. In addition, the conceit of dual colouration serves to emphasise two different states of the soul. In transit, separated from but in close proximity to its mortal remains, it is tinted green, like the mourners, perhaps so that the viewer might understand it is still associated with the earth and not in its final destination. But at its final location, it is flesh coloured, perhaps to indicate the reality, or finality, of post mortem reward both in Abraham’s Bosom and in Hell. But why Abraham’s face is also tinted green is unclear.31 It surely connotes a different state of being between the souls in the afterlife and that of Abraham himself, although the exact nature of this difference is ambiguous. It may be meant to reflect theological uncertainty associated with Abraham’s Bosom, named only in Luke’s Gospel; or perhaps it is designed to show the certainty that Abraham’s Bosom is not Heaven.32 The use of colour to indicate differing states of being is not without precedent. The Transfiguration miniature in the Munich Gospel Book of Otto iii, a manuscript made at Reichenau c. 1000, employs a similar green colour for the face and hands of Christ, whose appearance is ‘transfigured’ during the event. It is also employed for Moses and Elijah, who appear in spirit form to the apostles Peter, John and James (Fig. 4.3).33 It seems likely that such use of colour was 31 32 33

Oltrogge and Fuchs, Die Maltechnik, 121, notes overpainting only on the extreme left of Abraham’s beard. M.R. Grasso, “The Ambiguity in Medieval Depictions of Abraham’s Bosom in the Areas and Spaces of the Christian Afterlife,” in Place and Space in the Medieval World, ed. M. Boulton, J. Hawkes and H. Stoner (New York, London, 2018), 103–13. Matthew 17:1–9; Mark 9:1–8; Luke 9:28–36; Munich, bsb Clm 4453, f. 113r. Full facsimile, Das Evangeliar Ottos iii: Clm 4453 der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek Münich, F. Dressler, F. Mütherich and H. Beumann, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1978).

Green Tinted Souls of Dives and Lazarus in the Codex Aureus

Figure 4.3

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Transfiguration of Christ, Gospel Book of Otto iii, c. 1000. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 4453, f. 113r © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München

intended to portray both Christ with his shining countenance and Moses and Elijah as other-worldly beings. It thus seems clear that colours were used to emphasise different natures of the figures in the scene. It may well be that this conceit was transmitted to the parable depiction in Codex Aureus.

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Figure 4.4

Aeneas and the Sibyl enter the underworld, Vatican Virgil, c. 400. Vatican City, bav Cod. Vat. Lat. 3225, f. 47v © Vatican Library

There also exists a much earlier, non-Christian example of colour employed to denote different states of being. The fifth-century Vatican Virgil depicts Aeneas and the Sibyl entering the Underworld (bottom left), with souls awaiting entry to the Underworld as small human figures in the upper area of the miniature (Fig. 4.4).34 Aeneas, “amazed” at the crowds he sees, asks: “What do these souls want?”35 Clearly identified in the text as souls, but also identified as “Mothers and men […] boys and unmarried girls,” they are portrayed by the artist of Vatican Virgil in human form and, importantly, with a change in colour to distinguish between those souls in transit and those at their destination.36 The souls standing on a hill awaiting entry to the Underworld are painted white, while those already in the Underworld are flesh-coloured. The Vatican Virgil was created in Rome and appears to have been at Tours during the second quarter of the ninth century.37 It is therefore possible that some of its creative 34 35 36 37

Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Cod. Vat. Lat. 3225, f. 47v. Full facsimile, Vergilius Vaticanus: Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe im Originalformat von Codex Vaticanus Latinus 3225 der Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, comm. D.H. Wright (Graz, 1980–4). Vergil, The Aeneid, trans. B.B. Powell (New York, 2016), 6.275, 185. Quidve petunt animae? Virgil, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, 2 vols. (London, New York, 1920), i: 6.319, 528. Vergil, Powell, 185. D.H. Wright, “When the Vatican Vergil was in Tours,” in Studien zur Mittelalterlichen Kunst, 800–1250, Festschrift für Florentine Mütherich zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. K. Bierbrauer, P.K. Klein and W. Sauerländer (Münich, 1985), 53.

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concepts were transmitted via subsequent manuscripts to the artists of the Codex Aureus. 5 Transmission As noted above, there exists the possibility of earlier precedents for the depiction of souls in the parable. For example, transmission of the topos of the soul exiting from the mouth, evident in the Agenda Mortuorum from Ivrea and the Vita Sancti Liudgeri from Werden, both created c. 1000, may have been the result of the movement of books and artists.38 Many books from what is now Italy were brought north through the political efforts of Otto i, which were then continued by Otto ii and iii, to establish and consolidate links between Italy and northern Europe.39 The exact route of putative transmission cannot be known, but it may have been from Ivrea into Werden and thence to Echternach.40 Nonetheless, this suggests the possibility that models, now lost, informed the depiction under discussion. Book painting at the scriptoria of Reichenau and Echternach is linked through the artist known as the Gregory Master.41 This artist, so designated for his work on the Registrum Gregorii, was active in Trier in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries.42 Also attributed to him are some of the miniatures in the Christ-cycle in the Codex Egberti, made at either Trier or Reichenau, possibly at the instigation of Archbishop Egbert of Trier (977–93) and dated to the period of his tenure.43 Archbishop Egbert maintained ties with Reichenau, and ongoing links between the two sites no doubt contributed to the transmission of stylistic elements between manuscripts made at the two centres. The evangelist portraits in Codex Aureus derive from the Gregory Master.44

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Ivrea, Biblioteca Capitolare MS 31, lxxxvi, f. 195v. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Theol. Lat. f. 323, f. 13v. 39 Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination, i: 77–9. 40 G. Mackie, “Warmundus of Ivrea and Episcopal Attitudes to Death, Martyrdom and the Millennium,” Papers of the British School at Rome 78 (2010): 242–3, suggests that the direction of transmission of scenes of martyrdom was from Richenau into Ivrea although the examples discussed do not include the homunculus soul. 41 Metz, Golden Gospels, 132; Walther and Wolf, Codices Illustres, 128, 132. On the Gregory Master: C. Nordenfalk, “The Chronology of the Registrum Master,” in Kunsthistorische Forschungen, Otto Pächt zu Ehren, zu seinem 70. Geburtstag, ed. A. Rosenauer and G. Weber (Salzburg, 1972), 62–76. 42 Trier, Stadtbibliothek Hs. 171/1626. Walther and Wolf, Codices Illustres, 128, 132. 43 Trier, Stadtbibliothek MS 24. Full facsimile, Codex Egberti der Stadtbibliothek Trier: VollFaksimile-Ausgabe unter dem Patronat der Stadt Trier, ed. H. Schiel, 2 vols. (Basel, 1960). 44 Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination, i: 194; Walther and Wolf, Codices Illustres, 130.

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The Codex Egberti, which does not have a depiction of the parable, portrays Christ casting out demons with the mouth as the exit point (f. 26v). Demons also exit the mouth of the possessed in the slightly later Gospel Book of Otto iii from Reichenau (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 4453), previously referenced in respect of the green colouration of Christ, Moses and Elijah in the depiction of the Transfiguration (Fig. 4.3).45 The Codex Aureus also features demons exiting the mouth (f. 53r), with distinct similarities in techniques to the Codex Egberti, further demonstrating transmission between the two centres. Thus, this use of the mouth for other purposes may have provided a model for artists to adapt for the exit of the separated soul. Analysis of certain features in Codex Aureus suggests other possible sources. Albert Boekler contends that the manuscript has links to Eastern models although Rainer Kahsnitz and Henry Mayr-Harting are not wholly convinced.46 Whether or not this assertion has foundation, Byzantine depictions of the parable do not include separated souls in transit, and the soul of Lazarus in Abraham’s Bosom is never naked, whilst both artistic details feature in Codex Aureus.47 Boekler also argues that the extensive Christ-cycle in Codex Aureus with a total of fifty-six scenes implies that the depictions were copied from some earlier model.48 In this regard Wormald notes that the sixth-century Italian St Augustine Gospels might well have had an extended cycle with at least seventy-two scenes from the Gospels, one of which might have been of the parable, although only two miniatures are now extant.49 One is divided into twelve scenes of Christ’s life (f. 125r); the other is a portrait of Luke (f. 129v). The former includes the miracle where Christ raises Lazarus of Bethany from the dead.50 Although the miniature suffers from aging, it is possible to discern the greenish pallor of the deceased (i.e. Lazarus being raised from the dead) compared to the other figures painted with rosy flesh skin tones. This manuscript may well have served as another source, directly or indirectly, along with Boekler’s putative model, or perhaps some other contemporary Gospel book no longer extant, for using colouration to distinguish different states of being. 45 Munich, bsb Clm 4453, the Transfiguration f. 113r, demons exiting the mouth, f. 149v. 46 Das Goldene Evangelienbuch Heinrichs iii, 52; Kahsnitz, Das Goldene Evangelienbuch von Echternach, 90–1; Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination, ii: 194–5, 247 n. 52. 47 Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzus, Constantinople, 879–83, Paris, BnF MS Gr. 510, f. 149r. 48 Das Goldene Evangelienbuch Heinrichs iii, 55; Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination, ii: 194. 49 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 286; F. Wormald, The Miniatures in the Gospels of St. Augustine: Corpus Christi College MS 286 (Cambridge, 1954), 17, bases this hypothesis on the quire structuring; Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination, i: 79. 50 John 11:1–45. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 286, f. 125r, second register, left.

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Finally, Boeckler and Carl Nordenfalk have demonstrated that there must have been a Turonian Bible, c. 845, now lost, to which the Echternach painters and the Gregory Master referred.51 Since the Vatican Virgil was known to have been in Tours in the second quarter of the ninth century, the Turonian Bible may have contained depictions deriving from it, the creative concepts of which, including possibly the use of colouration to show differing states of the soul, were later transmitted to Codex Aureus. Thus, there exists the possibility of various sources for Codex Aureus including books from Italy, Reichenau, Trier and Tours, although no single extant item includes all elements of the topos under discussion: that is, the homunculus separated soul, exit from the mouth and colour differentiation. Of course, other centres and books, now lost, may also have contributed to the iconography of the parable in Codex Aureus. Depictions of the parable do not occur in extant Gospel books earlier than the Codex Aureus, or indeed in other earlier media in the West, with the exception of the Aachen Gospels of Otto iii, which contains the earliest surviving depiction of the parable, and the Golden Gospels of Henry iii (Fig. 4.2).52 This may indicate that depictions of the parable were not of interest to patrons or artists prior to the later tenth century. Conversely, the possibility cannot be excluded that an innovative artist working directly on the Codex Aureus created the combination of conceits for the souls of the protagonists. 6 Conclusion While the conceptions of the soul as homunculus and the soul exiting the mouth, both underpinned by the writings of Patristic scholars, are found in earlier depictions, those in Codex Aureus represent one of the earliest surviving examples in the context of Luke’s parable. Of the surviving manuscripts that depict the parable, Codex Aureus is unique in employing different colours to distinguish souls exiting their earthly bodies from those in the afterlife. This particular conceit emphasises the state of the separated souls of the protagonists as in transit, or not yet at their final destinations, and was not without precedent. The fifth-century Vatican Virgil employs colour differentiation to 51 52

Das Goldene Evangelienbuch Heinrichs iii, 61–3; C. Nordenfalk, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Turonischen Buchmalerei,” Acta Archaeologica 7 (Copenhagen,1936): 281–304; MayrHarting, Ottonian Book Illumination, ii: 198. Aachen, Cathedral Treasury MS 1; Grebe, Codex Aureus, 143, ascribes a later date for Codex Aureus placing El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monastario de San Lorenzo Cod. Vit. 17 slightly earlier, see n. 6 above.

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distinguish between those souls awaiting entry to, and those in, the Underworld. The sixth-century St Augustine Gospels distinguishes between the deceased body of Lazarus of Bethany and Christ in a similar manner.53 The Gospel Book of Otto iii, c. 1000, which does not depict the parable, also employs this conceit to demonstrate the otherworldliness of Christ, Moses and Elijah in the Transfiguration (Fig. 4.3).54 The possibility of earlier depictions of the parable, now lost, which might have included these aspects of the topos is supported by the close relationship between the cultural centres at Reichenau, Echternach and Trier. Evidence of the Gregory Master’s involvement in manuscripts at these centres confirms the transmission of techniques.55 The Aachen Gospels of Otto iii includes the depiction of the parable; another Reichenau manuscript, the Munich Gospel Book of Otto iii, employs colour differentiation for the Transfiguration; but neither employs the topoi of the homunculous soul or use of the mouth as exit. However, the three closely related Echternach books, Codex Aureus, the Pericopes Book of Henry III and the Golden Gospel Book of Henry iii all include the parable depiction, all are similar in style, and all include the homunculous soul and the mouth as exit.56 Nonetheless, Codex Aureus is unique in distinguishing the locations of the separated soul by colour. The strong probability of a lost Touronian Bible to which both the Gregory Master and Echternach artists might have referred and which may have employed some version of this topos, may also have provided a model for the Echternach artists. However, for whatever reason, while the homunculous soul and exit from the mouth proliferated in subsequent depictions throughout the West, a change in colouration to denote different states of the soul was never again employed in any surviving parable depiction. Use of colour differentiation for separated souls may simply have been too nuanced for the viewers of subsequent manuscripts although this seems unlikely since manuscripts were generally made by and for those familiar with Christian exegesis. It may also be that for the post-Apocalyptic period this nuance was not considered appropriate since it highlighted but did not resolve the question of the exact nature of Abraham’s Bosom, its relationship to Heaven and of the soul immediately after death.57 Debate about the nature of 53 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 286, f. 125r. 54 Munich, bsb Clm 4453, f. 113r. 55 These include Codex Egberti and Codex Aureus. 56 Bremen, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek MS b.21, f. 76v; El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo Cod. Vit. 17, f. 117v. 57 The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950–1050, ed. R. Landes, A. Gow, D.C. van Meter (Oxford, 2003).

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the afterlife accelerated in the thirteenth century and was not concluded until Purgatory was made doctrine in 1274.58 While the use of colour differentiation may have continued in other topoi, its connection with the Christian afterlife, the soul and Abraham’s Bosom, all key elements of the parable, may have seemed inappropriate because of the on-going debate. Nonetheless it must be emphasized that the singular use of colour in the Codex Aureus denotes an imaginative effort to develop and depict an understanding of the nature and complexity of the afterlife. 58

J. Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. A. Goldhammer (London, 1984); Grasso, “The Ambiguity.”

Chapter 5

Portraits of Terence, the African Beatrice Radden Keefe This essay deals with portraits of Publius Terentius Afer, or Terence, in a few of the 741 manuscripts of his plays that survive.1 Many of these works contain little biographical information about the second-century bce dramatist. But all include the prologues he wrote to accompany his six comedies, which had their first performances at public festivals in Rome in the 160s bce.2 In these prologues, Terence portrays himself as under attack: adversaries including a malevolent old poet have accused him of misusing his Greek models, of plagiarism, and of relying too much on the help of aristocratic friends. We cannot know the extent to which these accusations were real or contrived by Terence simply to heighten the drama at the beginning of a performance.3 Still, Terence’s second-century ce biographer Suetonius and the fourth-century ce commentator Donatus believed in their veracity. Anyone with access to Donatus’ commentary on Terence could learn the identity of Terence’s main critic—apparently the dramatist Luscius Lanuvinus—as well as further biographical details, which Donatus takes directly from Suetonius’ life of Terence.4 Using earlier, conflicting sources, Suetonius records that Terence was born in Carthage, but that from a young age, he lived as a slave in Rome. Terence’s Roman master, a senator named Terentius Lucanus, gave him an education and then his freedom. 1 For these manuscripts, see C. Villa, La “Lectura Terentii”: Da Ildemaro a Francesco Petrarca (Padua, 1984), 295–455; and C. Villa, “Terence’s Audience and Readership in the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries,” in Terence between Late Antiquity and the Age of Printing: Illustration, Commentary and Performance, ed. A.J. Turner and G. Torello-Hill (Leiden, 2015), 239–50. For the illustrated manuscripts, see B. Radden Keefe, “Illustrating the Manuscripts of Terence,” in Terence between Late Antiquity and the Age of Printing, ed. A.J. Turner and G. Torello-Hill (Leiden, 2015), 36–66. 2 A huge amount has been written on the prologues of Terence; for a good introduction and further bibliography, see: S.M. Goldberg, Understanding Terence (Princeton, 1986), 31–60. 3 On how these prologues may have been performed, see D. Gilula, “The First Realistic Roles in  European Theatre: Terence's Prologues,” Quaderni urbinati di cultura classica 33 (1989): 95–106. 4 For Donatus’ commentary with Suetonius’ life of Terence, see P. Wessner, Aeli Donati quod fertur commentum Terenti: accedunt Eugraphi commentum et scholia Bembina (Leipzig, 1902–8), 3–10.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_007

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As a freedman, Terence went on to compose six plays. These comedies were performed at public festivals with varying degrees of success: while his comedy Eunuchus was sold to producers for a large sum and was performed twice in a single day, his comedy Hecyra appears to have been something of a flop, and two performances were interrupted when the audience became distracted by tight-rope walkers, boxers, and gladiators.5 While still a young man—not more than twenty-five, according to Suetonius—Terence left for Greece, and he seems never to have returned to Rome. Suetonius does not know whether Terence died in a shipwreck, or out of grief at having lost his bags. Terence’s good looks are mentioned several times by Suetonius. Indeed, they seem to be the reason for his education and freedom, and for his intimate friendships with Scipio and Laelius. Suetonius also provides a brief physical description of Terence: he was of medium height, slender, and had a dark complexion. The words used by Suetonius to describe Terence’s complexion are colore and fusco, a relative term with ambiguous meaning. For instance, the same words are used in a first-century ce poem known as the Moretum, long but spuriously attributed to Virgil. In this poem, a woman named Scybale is described as being from Africa, “her hair curly, her lips swollen, her complexion dark” (torta comam labroque tumens et fusca colore).6 However, Virgil himself uses the word fuscus in Eclogue x, to describe Amyntas, a woman from Syria: “and what if Amyntas be dark (fuscus)? Violets, too, are black (niger) and black are hyacinths.”7 As these examples suggest, Suetonius’ phrase colore fusco is open to interpretation, and indeed it has been variously interpreted.8 Donatus’ commentary containing Suetonius’ life of Terence was certainly known and read in the Middle Ages—in the mid-ninth century, for instance, Lupus of Ferrières wrote to the pope asking for a copy to be sent to him; and scholia in the ninth-century illustrated Paris Terence (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 7899) show that at least some medieval readers had 5 On the failed performaces of Hecyra, see D. Gilula, “Who’s Afraid of Rope-Walkers and Gladiators (Ter. Hec. I-57),” Athenaeum 59 (1981): 29–37; and F.H. Sandbach, “How Terence’s Hecyra Failed,” Classical Quarterly 32 (1982): 134–5. 6 H. Rushton Fairclough and G.P. Goold trans., Aeneid, 7–12. Appendix Vergiliana (Cambridge, MA, 2001), 520–1. 7 H. Rushton Fairclough and G.P. Goold, trans., Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid, 1–6 (Cambridge MA, 1999), 91–3. 8 On the matter of Terence’s origins and ethnic identity, see T. Frank, “On Suetonius’ life of Terence,” The American Journal of Philology 3 (1933): 269–73; and the discussion of Phillis Wheatley’s view of Terence in E.A. Hairston, “The Trojan Horse: Classics, Memory, Transformation, and Afric Ambition in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral,” in New Essays on Phillis Wheatley, ed. J.C. Shields and E.D. Lamore (Knoxville, 2011), 57–94.

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access to Donatus.9 But most readers would have had to make do with the so-called Epitaphium Terentii.10 This short poem of unknown date and authorship is found in many manuscripts of the comedies (including the Paris Terence, where it has been added by an eleventh-century hand to the title page). From the Epitaphium Terentii, written in the first person, the reader learns only that Terence was from a noble family in Carthage (Natus in excelsis tectis Karthaginis altae), and that he was brought to Rome in the spoils of war (Romanis ducibus bellica praeda fui). No mention is made of Terence having been a slave, and nothing is said about his appearance. Alas, no portrait of Terence survives from his own day, or even from Suetonius’ time. His earliest known portrait is found on a contorniate medallion that has been attributed to fourth-century Rome (Copenhagen, Nationalmuseet, inv. no. RP 998.1).11 On one side of this contorniate is the bust of a man in profile facing right. This man, with a rather doughy face and thick neck, seemingly wearing only a himation, can be identified by the label TERENTIUS around his head. Here, Terence looks decidedly middle-aged, rather unlike the handsome youth described by Suetonius, and also bearing no resemblance to the earliest surviving medieval portrait of Terence, found in the Vatican Terence (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Vat. Lat. 3868; Fig. 5.1). This manuscript of the comedies was made, it is widely held, around the year 825, at the court of Louis the Pious.12 It is often described as a near-facsimile copy 9

10 11

12

For Lupus’ letter, see E. Dümmler, Lupi abbatis Ferrariensis epistolae, mgh, Epistolae 6 (Berlin, 1925), 90–91. For the transmission of Donatus’ commentary, see M.D. Reeve and R.H. Rouse, “New Light on the Transmission of Donatus’ Commentum Terentii,” Viator 9 (1978): 235–49; M.D. Reeve, “The Textual Tradition of Donatus’ Commentary on Terence,” Classical Philology 74 (1979): 310–26. For the scholiasts of the Vatican Terence, see G. Jachmann, Codex Vaticanus latinus 3868 picturis insignis (Leipzig, 1929), 8–11; on scholia in the Paris Terence, see: A.J. Turner, “Problems with the Terence Commentary Traditions: The Oedipus Scholion in BnF, Lat. 7899,” in Terence between Late Antiquity and the Age of Printing, ed. A.J. Turner and G. Torello-Hill (Leiden, 2015), 138–80. A. Riese, Anthologia Latina sive poesis Latinae supplementum 1 (Leipzig, 1906), 40. There is a reproduction of this contorniate in A. Alföldi and E. Alföldi, Die KontorniatMedaillons (Berlin, 1976), plate 33 (9–10): and for a description, see A. Alföldi and E. Alföldi, Die Kontorniat-Medaillons (Berlin, 1990), 101 (no. 105). There is also a description and reproduction in K. Schefold, Die Bildnisse der antiken Dichter, Redner und Denker (Basel, 1997), plate 311. Hafner’s identification of two busts in Copenhagen as portraits of Terence can be dismissed: G. Hafner, “Bildnisse römischer Dichter: Plautus und Terentius,” Antike Kunst 10 (1967): 105–11; and G. Hafner, Prominente der Antike: 337 Portraits in Wort und Bild (Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1981), 314–15. On the Vatican Terence as a product of this court school, see W. Köhler and F. Mütherich, Die Hofschule Kaiser Lothars: Einzelhandschriften aus Lotharingien, Die karoligischen Miniaturen 4, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1971), 73–7, 85–100; and F. Mütherich, “Book Illumination at the Court of Louis the Pious,” in Charlemagne’s Heir, New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814–840), ed. P. Godman and R. Collins (Oxford, 1990), 593–604.

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Figure 5.1

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Portrait of Terence, Vatican City, bav Cod. Vat. Lat. 3868, f. 2r © Vatican Library

of a late antique illustrated manuscript, now lost.13 Facing the title page, which includes Terence’s full name above a list of the comedies, is a portrait of the dramatist. A full-page miniature represents Terence within an imago clipeata

13

Studies of the Vatican Terence include: Jachmann, Codex Vaticanus latinus 3868 picturis insignis; L.W. Jones and C.R. Morey, The Miniatures of the Manuscripts of Terence prior to the thirteenth century (Princeton, 1930–1), 27–45; D.H. Wright, The Lost Late Antique Illustrated Terence (Vatican City, 2006).

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painted on a square panel enclosed by an eight-end frame. The eight-end frame seems to be of a similar construction to the first-century ce wooden frame around a quite badly damaged frontal bust portrait found at Hawara (London, British Museum, reg. no. 1889,1018.1).14 But this framed panel, made of sycamore fig wood and measuring 45.5 by 41 centimetres overall, is quite a bit smaller than the portrait of Terence looks to be.15 In the Vatican Terence, the framed panel bearing Terence’s portrait rests on a base, seemingly made of stone, and it is propped up by two actors wearing the slave costumes found in later miniatures in this manuscript, including their reddish-brown masks with bulging eyes and gaping mouths. The illustrator seems to have imagined this presentation of a large portrait of Terence as part of the performance of his plays. As for the portrait itself, Terence appears to be a relatively young man (though perhaps not under twenty-five). The dramatist has a short hairstyle, a trimmed beard, and wears a tunic with a brown clavus as well as a toga. Here as on the contorniate, no specific attribute marks Terence’s status as a freedman or indicates his African origin. It is only his beard that perhaps reflects his particular interest in Greek culture, an interest also suggested by the himation he wears in the contorniate portrait.16 The Vatican Terence portrait is clearly related to those we find in later manuscripts, including the Paris Terence (thought to have been made at Rheims in the ninth century); a tenth-century manuscript with disputed origins now kept in the Vatican Library (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Archivio di San Pietro, H. 19); and the manuscript known as the Oxford Terence (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. F. 2. 13), made at the abbey of St Albans in the mid-twelfth century.17 In all three of these related works, the portrait of Terence is shown in a large square frame held by two figures wearing masks. 14

15 16 17

For a discussion of this portrait, see P. Cannon-Brookes, “A Framed Portrait of the Roman Empire,” Museum Management and Curatorship 16 (1997): 312–14; and W.M. Flinders Petrie, Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoe (London, 1889), 10. On these frames more generally, see W. Ehlich, Bild und Rahmen im Altertum: die Geschichte des Bilderrahmens (Leipzig, 1953), 80–90. D.M. Gaunt argues that this panel is a siparium: D.M. Gaunt, “Siparium in Quintilian and the Frontispiece of the Vatican Terence,” Classical Review 14 (1964): 133–5. For such bearded portraits, see P. Zanker, The Mask of Socrates. The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity (Berkeley, 1995), 198–266. For the Paris Terence, see the description in Wright, The Lost Late Antique Illustrated Terence, 192–7, and the description on the BnF’s Gallica website (http://gallica.bnf.fr, accessed 29.3.2018). For the eleventh-century manuscript, S. Pietro H. 19, see V. von Büren, “Note sur le ms. Vaticano Arch. S. Pietro H 19 et son modèle Vaticano lat. 3868: les Térence de Cluny?,” Scriptorium 48 (1994): 287–93; and D.H. Wright, “An Abandoned Early Humanist Plan to Illustrate Terence,” in Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae vii (Vatican City, 2000), 481–500. A recent study of the Oxford Terence is on the dvd-rom:

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From within this frame, Terence looks out at the viewer with a stern expression. This is also how we find Terence in various modern editions of his comedies, including the 1691 translation of his works by Madame Dacier.18 And yet in the late Middle Ages, particularly in fifteenth-century Italy, some rather different portraits of Terence were being made. One such portrait is in an Italian manuscript of Terence’s comedies now kept in the British Library (London, British Library Egerton MS 2909). This manuscript has two inhabited initials on a single page, f. 6r.19 From a colophon at the very end of the book, we know that it was copied by the scribe Edoardo di Giacomo Bergognini in Viconovo, near Ferrara, in the year 1419.20 The text on f. 6r begins with the Epitaphium Terentii, which as mentioned above simply describes him as born in Carthage. There is a slightly longer vita on f. 5r of this manuscript, beginning Terentius Afer genere extitit; and Petrarch’s vita, which was added to the end of the manuscript by the glossing hand, goes into greater detail, describing Terence’s capture as a boy in Carthage and his time in Rome. As in the Epitaphium Terentii, no mention is made of his appearance in either text.21

18 19

20

21

B.J. Muir and A.J. Turner, A Facsimile Edition of Terence’s Comedies: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Auct. F. 2. 13 (Oxford, 2011). For a list of reproductions of this portrait, see Jones and Morey, The Illustrated Manuscripts, 222–4. For descriptions of Egerton MS 2909, see N. Mann, Petrarch Manuscripts in the British Isles (Padua, 1975), 263–4, and P.O. Kristeller, Iter Italicum: Accedunt Alia Itinera: a Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries (London, 1989), 145. See also the description and images of Egerton MS 2909 in the British Library’s Online Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts (http://www.bl.uk, accessed 29.30.2018). Villa suggests this scribe may be the recipient of a letter written by Giacomo Bracelli in 1448: Villa, La “Lectura Terentii,” 218. The colophon on f. 111v reads: Terentii Afri explicit Hechyra. Via videlicet et ultima comedia per me Odoardum natum Jacobi Bergognine civis Astenses die nono Septembris. M. ccccxviiii. In Viconovo dyocensis Ferrariensis. For manuscripts containing the Epitaphium Terentii see B. Munk Olsen, L’étude des auteurs classiques latins aux xie et xiie siècles (Paris, 1985), 582–653; for this first vita (known as the Vita Terentii Monacensis) see F. Schorsch, Das commentum Monacense zu den Komödien des Terenz: eine Erstedition des Kommentars zu “Andria”, “Heautontimorumenos” und “Phormio” (Tübingen, 2011); for Petrarch’s life of Terence, see Villa, La “Lectura Terentii,” 191–216; also see C. Villa, “Petrarca e Terenzio,” Studi Petrarcheschi 6 (1989): 1–22; C. Villa, “Successi e sfortune della Vita Terrentii nell’Umanesimo,” Quaderni Petrarcheschi 9–10 (1992–93): 554–69; C. Villa, “La Vita Terentii di Francesco Petrarca,” in Estravaganti, disperse, apocrifi petrarcheschi, ed. C. Derra and P. Vecchi Galli (Milan, 2007), 573–82; and I.R. Arzálluz, Francesco Petrarca. La Vita Terrentii de Petrarca (Padua, 2010).

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On the page with the inhabited initials, the Epitaphium Terentii is followed by a summary of the comedy Andria (known as the argumentum), and this begins with an inhabited initial ‘S’ in which a woman holds a distaff and a book. It seems clear that this woman, with blonde hair and wearing relatively simple clothing, represents the character Glycerium, the foreign woman from Andros after whom the comedy is named. Below the argumentum is the prologue to Andria composed by Terence. As this is the first text actually by Terence in the manuscript, it is entirely fitting that we find him within the initial ‘P’ beginning the prologue. Like Glycerium above, Terence is shown in right-facing profile. He looks to be a relatively young man with a serious expression. Notably, a cloth, knotted at the back, is tied around Terence’s head. This is, I believe, a significant detail, as similar headbands—or tortils, as they are known—can be found on a variety of medieval figures meant to be identified as non-Christian and foreign.22 Similar headbands are worn by tormentors of Christ in manuscripts including the Winchester Psalter, by ‘Saracens’ in manuscripts such as the Holkham Bible Picture Book, and can often be found around ‘Moor’s heads’ in a variety of media from the late Middle Ages.23 Whether the artist of this portrait read the description of Terence as from Carthage on this very page, or knew of Terence’s African origins simply from his cognomen, he chose to represent the dramatist as recognisably different and exotic.24 Let us turn finally to another fifteenth-century northern Italian manuscript of Terence. This work, now kept in the Vatican Library (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Vat. Lat. 6728), contains all six comedies but only a single inhabited initial, which comes after the Epitaphium Terentii, and begins 22 23

24

These headbands or tortils are discussed in D. Higgs Strickland, “The Exotic in the Later Middle Ages: Recent Critical Approaches,” Literature Compass 5 (2008), 58–72. The tormentor wearing a headband and described by Debra Higgs Strickland as representing an Ethiopian is on f. 21r of the Winchester Psalter (London, BL Cotton MS Nero C iv); the figure wearing a headband is on f. 27v of the Holkham Bible (London, BL Add. MS 47682); further ‘Saracens’ wearing these headbands can be found in the manuscript: Paris, BnF MS Fr. 22495. On the medieval representation of Saracens, see D. Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton, 2003), 157–210. ‘Moor’s heads’ can also be found in another fifteenth-century Italian Terence manuscript (London, BL Burney MS 266), but these seem to be purely decorative. For this imagery, see J. Devisse and M. Mollat, “The Shield and the Crown,” The Image of the Black in Western Art: from the early Christian era to the “age of discovery,” ed. D. Bindman and H.L. Gates Jr. (Cambridge MA, 2010), 31–82; and see also Anne-Marie Eze’s essay “Africans in Medieval & Renaissance Art: The Moor’s Head” on the V&A website (http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/ articles/a/africans-in-medieval-and-renaissance-art-moors-head/, accessed 29.3.2018). On representing difference and otherness, see R. Mellinkoff, Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1993).

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Figure 5.2 Portrait of Terence, Vatican City, bav Cod. Vat. Lat. 6728, f. 8r © Vatican Library

the argumentum for Andria (Fig. 5.2).25 Here, in this little-known bust portrait, beneath a rubric beginning Terrentii afri comici poete, Terence is shown in threequarter view, holding a book. He is dressed in sumptuous fifteenth-century 25

For the most detailed description of Vat. Lat. 6728 to be published, see E. Pellegrin et al., Les Manuscrits classiques latins de la Bibliotheque Vaticane (Paris, 2010), 616–18.

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f­ashions, much as we find him in other author portraits in Italian manuscripts.26 But in this image, Terence seems to be depicted as a black African; the illuminator has used a blue colour to represent Terence’s skin colour. This portrait of Terence seems to be singular; I have not come across any more like it. Other miniatures in Italian manuscripts of the comedies may nonetheless provide us with some context: in a Florentine manuscript of the 1470s (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Cod. 309), a portrait of Terence wearing a laurel wreath can be found within the initial ‘N’ beginning the Epitaphium Terentii, and the busts of a woman and man facing each other in profile (presumably Glycerium and Pamphilus, the lovers in Andria) inhabit the initial ‘S’ beginning the prologue to Andria. But in the white vine-stem border on this page, full of putti and animals, is a medallion in which a young boy stands in a landscape with three soldiers; the foremost soldier grasps the boy by his arm. This medallion appears to show Terence’s capture in Carthage, as does a scene in an initial from another manuscript of the comedies made in northern Italy in 1441 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 8191).27 As Suetonius’ life of Terence was increasingly copied in the fifteenth century, and as other lives of Terence, including Petrarch’s, circulated more widely, it would appear that artists began to include more details of his biography in their illustrations. The portrait of Terence in Vat. Lat. 6728 may thus reflect the illustrator’s knowledge of Suetonius and his description of Terence. But in my view there is a simpler explanation: it seems more likely that, guided by Terence’s cognomen, the illuminator drew on his own notions of African-ness to create this unique portrait.28 26 27

28

Terence wears similar garments in a portrait in the manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Canon Class Lat. 100, for instance. These are on f. 1r of each manuscript. For a description of önb 309, see H.J. Hermann, Die Handschriften und Inkunabeln der Italienischen Renaissance (Leipzig, 1932), 72.73 (no. 64); plate xix/1. For a description of BnF MS Lat. 8191, see C. Samaran and R. Marichal, Catalogue des manuscrits en écriture latine portant des indications de date, de lieu ou de copiste: Bibliothèque nationale, fonds latin (supplément), Nouvelles acquisitions latines, petits fonds divers (Paris, 1960), 617. On black Africans living in Rennaisance Europe, see T.F. Earle and K.J.P. Lowe, Black Africans in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge, 2005); for the representation of black Africans in the Renaissance, see J. Spicer et al., Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe (Baltimore, 2012).

Chapter 6

Manuscripts Face to Face: León and the Holy Roman Empire in the Mid-eleventh Century Rose Walker The tenet that the kingdom of León, during the lifetime of King Fernando i (r. 1037–65), aspired to the status enjoyed by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry iii is contentious, especially because Cluny and its abbot, Hugh, have been proposed as mediators.1 Concrete textual evidence for formal association between Fernando i and Cluny, or indeed other international connections, is notoriously lacking, even though that absence cannot be conclusive. Visual evidence has played an important role in this debate, and not least the subject of this essay, the Libro de horas, or Diurnal, of King Fernando i and Queen Sancha (Santiago de Compostela, Biblioteca Xeral Universitaria 609 Reserv. 1). Although this manuscript has received much recent attention as an object of female patronage, here I shall return to the question of its international context and to the image of the recipient, King Fernando i. The Diurnal is a Psalterium and liber canticorum, with a libellus precum on two appended quires (ff. 209–224). The size of the book is commensurate with other surviving Spanish monastic Psalter-canticle codices, so larger than many personal books but small for a display volume.2 It is illuminated in a distinctive palette of gold, purple-red, and dark blue, as well as a paler red and blue, not greatly dissimilar from the colours used for Charlemagne’s Dagulf Psalter (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Cod. 1861).3 The script is consistently 1 J. Williams, “León and the beginnings of the Spanish Romanesque,” in Art of Medieval Spain, a.d. 500–1200 (New York, 1993) 168–70; L.K. Pick, “Liturgical Renewal in Two Eleventh-century Royal Spanish Prayerbooks,” Traditio 66 (2011): 27–66; P. Henriet, “Cluny and Spain before Alfonso vi: remarks and propositions,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 9/2 (2017): 206–19. 2 M.C. Díaz y Díaz, “El códice de Compostela. Tradición y modernidad,” in Libro de horas de Fernando I de León, ed. M.C. Díaz y Díaz and S. Moralejo (Santiago de Compostela, 1995), 16–18: Diurnal: 315 × 195 mm (originally probably 320 × 200 mm), 226 folios. For comparison, Old Hispanic Psalters: London, BL Add. MS 30851: 390 × 300 mm, 202 folios (incomplete) and Paris, BnF Smith-Lesouëf MS 2, part ii: 287 × 206 mm, 122 folios (incomplete); Prayer Book of Otto iii, Munich, bsb Clm 30111: 120 × 150 mm, 44 folios; Echternach Pericopes Book of Henry iii, Bremen, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek MS b.21: 210 × 178 mm, 206 folios. 3 Der goldene Psalter “Dagulf-Psalter.” Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe im Originalformat von Codex 1861 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, ed. K. Holter (Graz, 1980).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_008

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Visigothic with some Caroline influence, and the core texts belong essentially to the Old Hispanic monastic liturgy. Textual analysis and the style of the illuminated initials has led to comparisons with other Old Hispanic Psalters, notably from the scriptorium of San Millán de la Cogolla in La Rioja, including Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional, cod. 1006B and Real Academia de la Historia, cod. 64ter.4 Despite this, some unexpected saints are included in the Diurnal’s litany and four cantici romenses are added to the already exceptional number of canticles.5 The libellus precum contains only four night offices, whereas a wider range of offices appears in other Old Hispanic Psalters, for example London, British Library Add. MS 30851, also of the mid-eleventh century. This selection is one of the features that mark the careful compilation and crafting of this manuscript. Fernando i and Sancha had already appropriated two other genres previously known only from monastic contexts. In 1047 the couple commissioned the Facundus Beatus (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional MS Vitrina 14–2), and in the same year Queen Sancha and her eldest son, Sancho, were the patrons of a volume of Isidore’s Etymologies (El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo MS &.i.3). In neither case were substantial alterations made to the contents of the book, texts or illumination, but the choice of style for the Beatus, with marked proto-Romanesque aspects, sets it apart from its tenth-century predecessors. In the Diurnal the compilers and designers went further and reconceived the Old Hispanic Psalter through the addition of distinctive full-page miniatures, display panels, prefatory texts and night offices. Their choices make it at once a progressive and a conservative book. It is well established that the set of prefatory texts (ff. 4v–5v) demonstrate a clear interest in the Carolingian Psalter tradition.6 The prime place is given to a poem (David citharista puer liricis concentibus ymnos/Edidit in laudes, o bone Christe, tuas) by the ninth-century scholar Florus of Lyon, who is known otherwise for his efforts to emend the Psalter. There are some errors, or perhaps adaptations, in the copying towards the beginning of the poem.7 The scribes have 4 S. de Silva y Verástegui, La miniatura en el monasterio de San Millán de la Cogolla, Logroño. Una contribución al estudio de los códices miniados en los siglos xi al xiii (Logroño, 1999), 25–33; Díaz y Díaz, “El códice de Compostela,” 36; S. Moralejo, “Notas a la ilustración del Libro de Horas de Fernando i,” in Díaz y Díaz and Moralejo, Libro de horas, 58–9. 5 Díaz y Díaz, “El códice de Compostela,” 37–42; J. Mearns, The canticles of the Christian Church, Eastern and Western in early and medieval times (Cambridge, 1914), 70–5. 6 L.K. Pick, “Liturgical Renewal,” 27–66. 7 “[Carmen xxii] Eldrado abbati Florus supplex,” ed. E. Dümmler, mgh Poetae latini aevi carolini 2 (Berlin, 1883), 549–50; D.G. Morin, “Le psautier visigothique de Compostelle,” Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes 62/1 (1901), 712–14; Díaz y Díaz, Libro de horas, 35–6; the titulus

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changed the first word to read “David” and illuminated it in gold capitals outlined in red; below, the word inclitus (renowned) is replaced by the name of Christ. The overall effect is to merge the identities of David and Christ. The poem goes on to praise the apotropaic power of the Psalmic melodies over enemies, death and sickness. The selection of a poem as the opening text nods to Carolingian precedents such as the First Bible of Charles the Bald, also known as the Vivian Bible (Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 1), which is prefaced by the extended verses of Audradus. After the poem in the Diurnal comes the text of Jerome’s letter to Paula regarding his corrected version of the Psalter, often included in the prefatory material of Carolingian Psalters to emphasise their orthodoxy.8 This is followed by an extract from the Pseudo-Alcuin De Psalmorum usu. Part of the Carolingian tradition of private devotional prayer established for Charlemagne, this text was used in the Prayer Book of Charles the Bald (Munich, Residenz, Schatzkammer).9 Its declared purpose is to draw attention to the function of the Psalms, for gaining illumination, giving praise, seeking help in affliction and above all for doing penance. The Psalms that follow are in the biblical order, with both Old Hispanic and Carolingian divisions marked.10 The miniature that opens the book appears to be conceived with Florus’s poem in mind (f. 1r). A large Alpha occupies a rectangle of dark red ground within which stands a youthful male (puer) with a gold nimbus (Fig. 6.1). The third line of Florus’s poem that talks of a “shining face with its delightful appearance […]” (vultus forma speciosus amena) is a fair description of the face of this young figure. The youth points towards a closed book held in his left hand, which bears three gold crosses on its cover, probably a representation of the Diurnal. As an image of David often introduces a Psalter, this figure has been identified as both the young David and as a prefiguration of Christ, a duality found not only in Florus’s poem but also in the Vivian Bible. Thus the opening of the Diurnal asserts a visual and textual interest in a Carolingian tradition, and a particular interest in the typological possibilities of King David. Although the preoccupations of the compilers of the Diurnal are clear, the resources that they used are not so obvious. The combination of a human figure and an Alpha

8 9 10

presents the poem as “Florus to Abbot Isidore,” but this is an adaptation, as the poem was written originally for Abbot Eldradus of Novalesa (Piedmont); M. Férotin, “Deux manuscrits wisigothiques de la bibliothèque de Ferdinand 1er, roi de Castille et de León,” Bibliotheque de l’école des chartes 62/1 (1901), 374–87, esp. 377–9. Pick, “Liturgical Renewal,” 35. PL 101, cols 465–508; Pick, “Liturgical Renewal,” 33–5; M. Castiñeiras, “Universidad de Santiago,” in Enciclopedia del Románico en Galicia (Aguilar de Campo, 2013), 1143–8. Moralejo, “Notas a la ilustración,” 57–8.

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Figure 6.1

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Alpha with Christ/David, Diurnal, Santiago de Compostela, Biblioteca Xeral Universitaria 609, Reserv. 1, f. 1v © Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

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is likewise found in the Girona Beatus of 975 (Girona, Museu de la Catedral Num. Inv. 7 (11), f. 19r) thought to have been copied in León, and in the Facundus Beatus (f. 6r), even if in the Diurnal the nimbus is not cruciform as it is in the Beatus examples, and the face of the figure looks younger and more compassionate. Other visual aspects of the Girona Beatus, notably a Christ in Majesty miniature, have long been linked to a possible Touronian source, perhaps a Bible.11 It is possible that such a Bible had been part of the kingdom’s patrimony since the ninth or tenth century, as they were often used as gifts.12 However, no Touronian Bible has survived at León, and only certain, mostly decorative, aspects of Touronian illumination feature in Hispanic manuscripts. The folios of the Diurnal have been re-ordered, and originally the Alpha miniature introduced the liturgical calendar of the Old Hispanic liturgy, delicately illuminated and clearly laid out over ff. 1v to 4r. After the prefatory texts, an ex libris, f. 6r (now f. 3r), states the ownership of the book four times: Fredinandi regis sum liber/Fredinandi regis necnon et Sancia regina sum liber.13 These words are written along interweaving geometric shapes, a lozenge, triangles, a cross and a circle. Such geometric interweaving is also found in the Christ in Majesty miniature in the Girona Beatus (f. 2r), which in turn recalls the miniature on f. 329v of the Vivian Bible.14 The ex libris in the Diurnal preceded the Presentation miniature and incipit, f. 6v (now 3v) and f. 7r. This opening is central to this essay, as it is to many studies of the Diurnal, and I shall return to it shortly. Up to this point it is possible to argue that the compilers of the Diurnal looked mostly to material available in Leonese libraries, as well as employing Carolingian features, which had already been absorbed into the Iberian repertoire of illumination. However, the decision to prioritise Carolingian texts, and the creative ways in which the genre of the Old Hispanic Psalter was reinvented, suggest that those who devised this manuscript understood the contemporary international context in which Fernando i was operating.

11 12 13 14

J. Williams, “Tours and the Medieval Art of Spain,” in Florilegium in honorem Carl Nordenfalk Octogenarii Contextum (Stockholm, 1987), 197–207; J. Williams, The Illustrated Beatus, 5 vols. (London, 1994), ii: 52. L. Nees, “Problems of Form and Function in Early Medieval Illustrated Bibles from Northwest Europe,” in Imaging the early medieval Bible, ed. J. Williams (University Park PA, 1999), 121–77. “I am the book of King Fernando and also Queen Sancha.” For more contemporary interest in such designs, see the Saint-Sever Beatus (Paris, BnF MS Lat. 8878) or the Liber comitis of Saint-Père of Chartres (Chartres, Bibliothèque municipale MS 24 (32) f. 2r); for an illustration, see Dutton and Kessler, Poetry and Painting, Fig. 22.

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After the Psalms, canticles, litany and other prayers, two display panels mark the end of the main section of the manuscript; both suggest that the compilers either had new access to manuscripts from the Holy Roman Empire, or had a renewed engagement with such books. Contemporary interest in Carolingian manuscripts, and Psalters in particular, may have been generated if, as James Mearns has suggested, Pope Gregory vi gave Charlemagne’s highly symbolic Dagulf Psalter to Emperor Henry iii on his visit to Rome in 1046, only eight years before the production of the Diurnal.15 That book was certainly in the possession of Henry iii’s son by 1065. The first display panel in the Diurnal (f. 207v), on the verso of an inserted folio, has gold letters written on a redpurple ground, framed by a loose vine-scroll and zigzags in red and pale blue.16 It presents four chronicle entries for rulers of León: obits for Vermudo ii and his wife Elvira, for Alfonso v and his wife Elvira, and for Vermudo iii; and a record of the installation (ordinatio) of Fernando i as king of León (1037). Lucy Pick has compared the textual contents to more extensive Carolingian and Ottonian libri memoriales.17 Visual comparisons for the gold lettering on the redpurple ground, including the irregular line lengths, can be found in Ottonian manuscripts, specifically in the Prayer Book of Otto iii (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 30111) from the end of the tenth century.18 The loose blue vine scroll may instead find its inspiration in the reinvention of classical foliate scrolls, for example in the Touronian Marmoutier Sacramentary (Autun, Bibliothèque municipale MS 19bis (S19)). The treatment of text in the panel ­displaying the Diurnal’s colophon on f. 208v also looks to ultra-Pyrenean manuscripts, but the background features ornament already absorbed into Iberian scribal practice.19 Thus the purple ground is covered almost entirely with bands of interlace outlined in red. These are not paralleled in the rest of the manuscript, but the use of Touronian interlace had been taken up by the tenthcentury Castilian scribe Florentius, who perfected an Iberian version, for example, in his Moralia in Job (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional Cod. 80). The 15 Mearns, Canticles, 62; R. McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge, 2008), 333–4. 16 Díaz y Díaz, “El códice de Compostela,” 45–6; Moralejo, “Notas a la ilustración,” 56. 17 Pick, “Liturgical Renewal,” 38; Castiñeiras, “Universidad,” 1144. 18 K. Görich and E. Klemm, Das Gebetbuch Ottos iii (Lucerne, 2008); Hamilton, Practice of Penance, 230–1; S. Hamilton, “‘Most illustrious king of kings’. Evidence for Ottonian Kingship in the Otto iii Prayerbook (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 30111),” Journal of Medieval History 27/3 (2001): 257–88; H. Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination. An Historical Study, 2 vols. (London, 1991), i: 173. 19 The text reads: “Sancia ceu uoluit/quod sum regina peregit/era millena nouies/dena quoque terna./Petrus erat scriptor/Fructuosus denique pictor.”

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F­ acundus Beatus provides close comparisons, especially in the acrostic on f. 7r, which even employs a similar colour scheme to enhance legibility.20 Between the interlace are set six blocks of gold letters on a red ground: the first two record the patronage of Queen Sancha throughout the process (peregit); the middle two give the date of the manuscript either side of a gold cross, which immediately recalls the three gold crosses on the Alpha page (f. 1r); the last two name the scribe Petrus and the illuminator Fructuosus. Ultimately this method of displaying text derived from late antique practice, but it was still employed, for example, on the dedication page (f. 2v) of the Echternach Pericopes Book (Bremen, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek MS b.21) of c. 1040. Aspects of the Presentation scene constitute important evidence for León’s awareness of the role played by illuminated manuscripts in crafting the image of the imperial ruler. In its original position (f. 6v) the Presentation folio was part of an opening where it faced the incipit page (f. 7r) which explicitly introduces the Psalms as David’s ([…] incipit liber Psalmorum Davidis); a full-page Beatus initial was illuminated on the verso (Figs 6.2 and 6.3). The illuminator employed the same basic palette of deep blues and reds across the opening, although gold and a lighter blue are also used on the Presentation folio. On that folio, King Fernando i stands to the left wearing a gold crown and long flowing robes; he holds a thin gold sceptre, almost the length of his body with a sharp tip and a lion’s head as a terminal. Queen Sancha stands opposite him, dressed in a long red robe and a light blue mantle that covers her head. She gestures openly towards Fernando and the smaller central figure who is holding out a gold rectangle, probably representing the Diurnal. The standing pose of the recipient, King Fernando, is exceptional. The norm was for such figures to be seated, and in the Echternach Pericopes Book (f. 125r), for example, King Henry iii is shown enthroned as he accepts the book from Abbot Humbert.21 The Diurnal scene, with its three standing figures, consequently evokes meanings beyond the presentation of a book. Associations between King Fernando i and King David in this scene have long been recognised, and Joaquín Yarza Luaces, Serafín Moralejo Álvarez, Francisco Prado Vilar, and John Williams have all discussed the identities embodied in the kingly figure. Prado and Williams have argued for a dual David-Fernando identity, and the king’s flowing robes, together with the lack of a sword, certainly suggest a prophet more than 20 Williams, Illustrated Beatus, ii: 52. 21 C. Nordenfalk, Codex Caesareus Upsaliensis: an Echternach gospel-book of the eleventh century (Stockholm, 1971), 113; See F. Prado Vilar, “Lacrimae rerum: San Isidoro de León y la memoria del padre,” Goya: Revista de arte 328 (1995): 195–221: Prado Vilar sees two intercessory types in the figure of Queen Sancha, Bathsheba and the Virgin, and the type of Solomon in the central figure, whom he identifies as the future Alfonso vi.

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Figure 6.2

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Presentation Scene, Diurnal, Santiago de Compostela, Biblioteca Xeral Universitaria 609, Reserv. 1, f. 3r (previously 6v) © Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

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Incipit of Psalter, Diurnal, Santiago de Compostela, Biblioteca Xeral Universitaria 609, Reserv. 1, f. 7r © Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

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a contemporary king.22 Yarza relates the figure to the imperial portraits of the Carolingians and Ottonians in manuscripts where they depicted the emperors as God’s elect and as successors of King David.23 Both may be accurate: the former for the body of the king, and the latter for the head of the king. The identification of medieval emperors with King David had been established explicitly under Charlemagne and Charles the Bald, to the extent of giving David the features of the emperor.24 The identification was perpetuated not only by the Ottonians but also under the Salians into the reign of Henry iii (r. 1039–56), when Abbot Bern of Reichenau likened him to “the strong King David” in a letter of 1044.25 A further King David has been identified in the Diurnal in the crowned and barefoot figure initial that opens penitential Psalm 30 (f. 29v).26 The Godchosen King David was a popular type for medieval rulers because he combined military prowess, uprightness and largesse, with human flaws and penitence. David had sinned as Bathsheba’s adulterous lover and as the slayer of her husband, but through penance he managed to augment his status. This aspect of King David was employed by emperors Charlemagne, Otto iii, Henry ii and Henry iii, as well as kings, such as Robert the Pious and Aethelred of England.27 Indeed its use was so widespread that it became part of the language of kingship.28 Rulers used it to distance themselves from earlier misdemeanours and to enhance their reputation as pious godly monarchs. Sometimes this preoccupation with sin and penitential action may have been personal, as enshrined in the Prayer Book of the young Otto iii, but the ‘humiliate to elevate’ approach was often strategic.29 It could be employed to resolve specific political

22

J. Williams, “Fernando I and Alfonso vi as Patrons of the Arts,” Anales del Historia del Arte 7, 11, Volumen Extraordinario: Alfonso vi y el arte de su época, ed. J. Martínez de Aguirre and M. Poza Yagüe (2) (2011): 413–35. 23 J. Yarza Luaces, Arte y arquitectura en España, 500–1250 (Madrid, 1990), 167–8: Yarza also suggests that the central figure may depict David. 24 J.L. Nelson, Charles the Bald (London, 1992), 15, 85, 158–9; Corrigan, “Early Medieval Psalter Illustration,” 87–93; Dutton and Kessler, Poetry and Paintings, 43, 105–10; Nees, “Problems of Form and Function,” 143–4. 25 Die Briefe des Abtes Bern von Reichenau, ed. F.J. Schmale (Stuttgart, 1961), 58, Briefe 27. 26 S. de Silva y Verástegui, Iconografía del siglo x en el Reino de Pamplona-Nájera (Pamplona, 1984), 1979; Moralejo, “Notas a la ilustración,” 61; Williams, “Fernando i,” 418–24. 27 C. Cubitt, “The politics of remorse: penance and royal piety in the reign of Aethelred the Unready,” Historical Research 85/228 (2012): 179–92, esp. 186–7, 191–2. 28 S. Hamilton, The Practice of Penance c. 900–c. 1050 (Woodbridge, 2011), 174–82. 29 Hamilton, “Most illustrious king of kings,” 257–88; Garrison, “Henry ii’s renovatio,” 60; Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination, i: 157–78.

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situations: Otto iii did penance for his suppression of the Roman rebellion 997–8; Henry iii performed penance twice in the years before he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor, most importantly after he defeated the Hungarians at Ménfö in 1044, when their ruler Samuel Aba was captured and killed.30 Nothing has been recorded of Fernando i’s penitential activity before he lay on his deathbed, for all that the Diurnal provided him with the necessary texts, but he found himself more than once in a position that demanded penance. On f. 207v the Diurnal mentions one such episode: Fernando i’s defeat of Sancha’s brother, Vermudo iii, at the battle of Tamarón in 1037: Vermudo died on the battlefield and Fernando replaced him as ruler of León. Given the manuscript’s focus on León and the obit’s description of Vermudo iii as “a strong fighter in war,” this political and deeply personal transgression could be seen as the rationale behind the Diurnal and its emphasis on penance.31 But as the manuscript was executed some seventeen years and five grown children later, in 1055, it is difficult to see that as the main impetus. More pertinently, as Moralejo notes, 1055 was only one year after Fernando i’s victory at Atapuerca over his elder brother, King García iii of Navarre (r. 1035–54), who also died on the battlefield.32 Fernando accepted the allegiance of the young heir, Sancho iv, but annexed much of La Rioja to his already extensive realm. Although there is no explicit reference to Atapuerca in the Diurnal, its repercussions pervade the manuscript, and not only through the inclusion of penitential texts. Most tellingly, the book embraces what had once been King Garcia iii’s patronage, both through its choice of liturgical texts from La Rioja and its use of stylistic connections across the Pyrenees into Aquitaine.33 Fernando i and Sancha had already employed elements of proto-Romanesque style in the Facundus Beatus, but the form of the figures in the Presentation scene, and the gestural dynamic between them, has been convincingly linked to the illumination of the dedication charter of Santa Maria de Nájera, founded by King García iii of Navarre shortly before his death.34 Further afield, the form and detailing of the curtains

30 Hamilton, Practice of Penance, 175–80. 31 Pick, “Liturgical Renewal,” 38. 32 S. Moralejo Álvarez, “Artistas, patronos y público en el arte del camino de Santiago,” Compostellanum 30 (1985): 395–430, esp. 410. 33 Prado Vilar, “Lacrimae rerum,” 207. 34 F. Galván Freile, “Documento de la fundación del monasterio de Santa María de Nájera,” in La Edad de un Reyno. Las encrucijadas de la corona y la diócesis de Pamplona, vol. i: Sancho el Mayor y sus herederos. El linaje que europeizó los reinos hispanos, ed. I.G. Bango Torviso (Pamplona, 2006), 287–90; Prado Vilar, “Lacrimae rerum,” 206–7: the date is disputed, but the charter is accepted as a close copy if not the original.

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that hang behind the Presentation scene have close links with those depicted in the Aquitanian Saint-Sever Beatus behind Nebuchadnezzar’s bed (f. 219v).35 Imperial precedents existed for the re-imagining of a liturgical genre, for the careful selection of styles and content as a way of managing political change, and for drawing on the court art of Charles the Bald. Perhaps the most explicit and relevant examples come from the reign of Emperor Henry ii (1014–24) around the time when he was consolidating his rule over the southeastern Frankish polities.36 However the Diurnal may have looked to more recent events at the court of Henry iii. Fernando i was founding a new Leonese dynasty, encompassing its legacy through Queen Sancha; Henry iii was only the second member of the Salian dynasty, and his father Conrad ii had married Gisela of Swabia partly for her Carolingian descent.37 Moreover Fernando and Henry had both won battles where the opposing king had died on the battlefield. Only Henry’s penance is known: it was carried out barefoot in woollen clothing and involved processing around the churches of Regensburg and fasting.38 For Fernando, the Diurnal provides the most powerful evidence of his penance, although another figure, thought to portray Fernando i, on the reliquary of St Isidore, usually dated to c. 1063, helps to confirm both his penitential activity and direct contact with the Salian milieu.39 This bareheaded male figure, dressed simply in a short tunic, cloak and laced garters, may be in penitential guise. Although the panels of the reliquary have been moved from their original order, the Fernando figure once gestured towards the scenes of Adam and Eve’s fall and exile from paradise, an established type of penitence. The figure’s hair, beard, tunic and cloak were gilded, and his head protrudes from the surface of the panel. To achieve this the goldsmith used a technique that has long been compared to the c. 1019 bronze doors of Hildesheim (see Fig. 3.4). Although the same technique is used elsewhere on the reliquary, Fernando i’s hunched shoulders, together with his lack of regalia, suggest a penitential state, as well as calling to mind the humble stance of Emperor Henry iii in the

35 Williams, Illustrated Beatus, iv, 52–4; in Carolingian miniatures of King David/Charles the Bald the figure is often depicted under a canopy but not against hanging curtains. 36 E. Garrison, “Henry ii’s Renovatio in the Pericope Book and Regensburg Sacramentary,” in The White Mantle of Churches. Architecture, Liturgy, and Art around the Millennium, ed. N. Hiscock (Turnhout, 2003), 57–79, esp. 64–74: the Pericope Book of Emperor Henry ii (Munich, bsb Clm 4452) and the Regensburg Sacramentary (Munich, bsb Clm 4456). 37 I.S. Robinson, Henry iv of Germany, 1056–1106 (Cambridge, 1999), 19. 38 Hamilton, Practice of Penance, 179. 39 Art of Medieval Spain, 239–44, cat. no. 110.

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presentation miniature in the Goslar Gospels (f. 4r), copied at Echternach between 1047 and 1056.40 One small but prominent feature of the Presentation frontispiece may strengthen this suggestive association: the attention paid to the head of Fernando i. Unlike the more generic features of the other figures, Fernando i’s red hair and beard and his wide-open piercing eyes create a distinct sense of personality. This has led to the depiction being celebrated as the first portrait of a Spanish king.41 Since much of the art associated with Fernando i and his family bears his image as well as his name, it has been perceived as particularly personal and, as Moralejo says, as embodying Fernando’s “personality and turbulent existence.”42 There is no documentary evidence, however, to confirm that Fernando i had red hair. A seventeenth-century report found a body with red hair in the Pantheon at San Isidoro, and the report says it is the body of King Fernando i, but there is no mention of any inscription.43 No other painted images of Fernando i’s features have survived at León. The head of the figure labelled fredenando rex on the wall painting in the Pantheon has been defaced and, in any case, the wall painting was executed at least fifty years after the Diurnal. Likewise the twelfth-century portrayal in Tumbo A (Santiago de Compostela, Archivo-Biblioteca de la Catedral acs CF 34) cannot help, as that manuscript depicts an aging Fernando with grey hair and beard. In short there is no eleventh- or twelfth-century analogue for this portrait in Spain. In contrast, the use of a red pigment for the hair and beard, and the three-quarter angle of the head, can be compared to an almost contemporary image of King Henry iii in the Echternach Pericopes Book (1039–43) (Fig. 6.4).44 The portrait of Henry iii in that manuscript (f. 3v) depicts a recent event: the king in his gold-embroidered regalia, wearing the crown and carrying a short sceptre and orb, is being greeted at the church of Echternach; a rubric praises the young king as “shining with the flower of youth.” This image contrasts with that of his mother, Gisela, on the recto, who wears more sombre garments, including a 40 Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Illumination, ii: pl. 131. 41 Yarza Luaces, Arte y Arquitectura, 167–8. 42 Moralejo, “Notas a la ilustración,” 56: de su persona y de su agitada existencia. 43 M. Encina Prada Marcos and J.M. Vidal Encinas, “Arqueo-Antropología del Panteón Real de San Isidoro de León,” in Monarquía y sociedad en el reino de León: de Alfonso iii a Alfonso vii, ed. J.M. Fernández Catón, 2 vols. (León, 2007), ii: 599–688, esp. 677; R. Sánchez Ameijeiras, “The eventful life of the royal tombs of San Isidoro in León,” in Church, State, Vellum, and Stone. Essays on Medieval Spain in Honor of John W. Williams, ed. T. Martin and J.A. Harris (Leiden, 2005), 479–520. 44 G. Knoll, ed., Evangelistar Kaiser Heinrich iii. Faksimile-Ausgabe des Codex Ms b. 21 der Universitätsbibliothek Bremen, facs. (Wiesbaden, 1981).

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Echternach Pericopes Book, Bremen, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek MS b.21, f. 3v ©SuUB

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blue mantle that covers her head. A similar distinction is found between Fernando i and Queen Sancha in the Presentation scene. The decision to depict Conrad ii, Emperor Henry iii’s father, with red hair in the Goslar Gospels (Uppsala, University Library MS 93, f. 3v), where Christ crowns him and Gisela, may suggest that the hair colour was a family characteristic. Yet Henry iii is not always shown with red hair, and the pigment employed can vary from portrait to portrait and from light to dark brown. Thus the decision may have been determined by the artist’s overall choice of palette and not necessarily an attempt at verisimilitude. What, if any, is the significance of the similarity between the ‘portraits’ of Fernando i and Henry iii? The resemblance between the depiction of the two kings may be no more than a coincidence. Alternatively both Fernando i and Henry iii may have had red hair, and the illuminators of both the Diurnal and of the Echternach Pericopes Book could have decided independently against the more usual medieval approach to portraiture and chosen to highlight a real feature.45 A third possibility is deliberate emulation on the part of the compilers of the Diurnal: that the figure in the Presentation scene is at once Fernando i, King David, and an archetypal emperor as represented by the reigning Holy Roman Emperor Henry iii. As the monarchs never met, any hypothesis regarding the shared facial likeness must look for a portable means of transmission. Neither seals nor coins can explain the similarity, as they do not use the same three-quarter angle of the head, or give any indication of hair and beard colour. Instead it would be necessary to envisage a communication from the court of Henry iii to that of Fernando i that bore a painted medallion portrait of the emperor, or a very detailed description. A communication via the papacy is another possibility, as Henry iii was a valued supporter of the reform papacy, or via the abbey of Cluny.46 Cluny was known to have portraits of its founders and benefactors in the refectory, but these have not survived and cannot be dated with any certainty.47 This suggestion might be entirely speculative were it not for a genealogy preserved in a copy of the Chronicle of Ekkehard von Aura of c. 1130 (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Cod. Lat. 295) (Fig. 6.5). On f. 81v an enthroned Conrad ii holds a series of individualised medallion portraits of his dynasty, including one of imperator Henry iii shown with his head at the same three-quarter angle and with a full dark-red beard. It is not possible 45 46 47

T. Dale, “Romanesque Sculpted Portraits: Convention, Vision, and Real Presence,” Gesta 46/2 (2007): 102–19. H.E.J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory vii 1073–1085 (Oxford, 1995), 619. M. Marrier, ed., Biblioteca Cluniacensis, in qua S.S. Patrum Abb. Clun. vitae, miracula, scripta, statuta, privilegia, chronologicaque duplex (Paris, 1614), col. 1639.

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Chronicle of Ekkehard von Aura, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Cod. Lat. 295, f. 81v © bpk-bildagentur

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to be sure that such an image circulated in the mid-eleventh century, but, given the similarities between the images, diffusion seems feasible. Fernando i was to emulate Emperor Henry iii in death by receiving the same level of liturgical intercession at Cluny.48 Certain aspects of the Diurnal suggest that he may also have employed such emulation from c. 1055. The manuscript shows that the court of Fernando i was well aware of the strategic value of penance, and of the ways in which earlier rulers and Henry iii had deployed it. Through its eclectic creativity, the Diurnal suggests that the compilers had a wider knowledge of Carolingian and Ottonian material than that demonstrated by earlier Hispanic scribes. It further demonstrates a nascent but sophisticated handling of textual and visual messages that were embodied in royal liturgical manuscripts in the Holy Roman Empire. Finally it contains a small piece of specific visual evidence in favour of close imperial connections with León during the reign of Fernando i. 48

J. Williams, “Cluny and Spain,” Gesta 27 1/2 (1988): 93–101.

Chapter 7

The Two Pictures Cycles in Early Manuscripts of St Anselm’s Prayers T.A. Heslop The aim of this offering is to analyse some of the pictures accompanying St Anselm’s Prayers and Meditations in two twelfth-century manuscripts, especially those images prefacing the prayers to individual saints: Peter, Paul, John the Evangelist and Benedict. The subject matter for these images differs markedly in the two books and suggests that they were to be understood in quite different ways by their respective recipients. Probably the earlier of the two cycles is represented by Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. D.2.6, as it stands a work of the mid-twelfth century but demonstrably reflecting an earlier model available in England.1 The second set almost certainly stems from a manuscript sent by Anselm himself to his friend and erstwhile protector Countess Matilda of Tuscany in 1104. It too survives only in a later derivative, made for a community of nuns, perhaps in Salzburg. It is now MS 289 in the monastic library at Admont.2 The Prayers and Meditations were begun when Anselm was a monk at Bec. He continued composing them in subsequent decades, by which time he was writing important theological treatises, such as the Proslogion and Cur Deus Homo. His promotion as abbot of Bec in 1078 was succeeded by sixteen years as archbishop of Canterbury, from 1093 to 1109; his commitment to writing continued to the end of his life.3 But before taking the discussion further, it will be helpful briefly to characterise the innovative devotional tenor of the Prayers and one of the genres of imagery that accompanies them. 1 O. Pächt, “The Illustrations of St Anselm’s Prayers and Meditations,” jwci 19 (1956): 68–83; C.M. Kauffmann, Romanesque Manuscripts 1066–1190, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 3 (London, 1975), no. 75. 2 Pächt, “The Illustrations”; D.M. Shepard, “Conventual Use of St Anselm’s Prayers and Meditations,” Rutgers Art Review 9 (1988): 1–16; R. Fulton, “Praying with Anselm at Admont: A Meditation on Practice,” Speculum 81 (2006): 700–33 at n. 26 for the attribution. 3 R.W. Southern, St Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge, 1990); idem, St Anselm and His Biographer (Cambridge, 1966); F.S. Schmitt, Sancti Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, 5 vols. (Edinburgh 1946–51); B. Davies and G.R. Evans, Anselm of Canterbury, The Major Works, (Oxford, 1998), provides convenient translations of his most significant writings, the Prayers and Letter aside (for which see notes 4 and 7 below).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_009

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“My life appals me, for when I look upon it what I see is all sinful or point­ less.”4 Thus began one of Anselm’s three ‘meditations’ which lays bare the imperfections of the individual before God, the author of the human soul. The picture which accompanies this confession in the Oxford manuscript (Fig. 7.1) shows, with aching poignancy, the desolation of a man and a woman, especially the woman, seeking to approach God in the knowledge of their failure to live up to the divine likeness that they were given at the Creation. The presence of a tree in the illumination calls to mind the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden: “man’s first disobedience” as Milton put it. A few lines into the meditation Anselm quotes Christ: “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire” (a reference to eternal damnation). But the crucial point here is that the extraordinarily eloquent expressions and poses of the man and the woman in the picture represent their perturbed and confused behaviour when approaching the Lord their God and convey very well the recurrent tenor of Anselm’s Prayers: “here I am, the poorest and weakest of men […] I need the

Figure 7.1

Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. D.2.6., f. 189v © The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford

4 Schmitt, Anselmi Opera, iii: 76; B. Ward, The Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm (Harmondsworth, 1973), 221, who however translates Terret me vita mea as “I am afraid of my life.”

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help of your power and kindness,” “I am not able to break out of the shadows […] because of the filth of my sins”: these quotes from his Prayer of St Peter are typical of the supplicant’s abjection.5 This image is so well tuned to the text that it is either the work of an artist with a quite extraordinary ability to empathise with the substance of Anselm’s writing or it is based on an archetype made following his instructions about what was needed to enhance the message of the text, which is the hope of redemption even though it is undeserved. It has been argued in the past that the pictures in the Oxford manuscript go back to an Anselmian original, and the case is very attractive for a number of reasons, not least Anselm’s active role in disseminating his own works.6 As regards the Prayers and Meditations in particular, there are three letters from him to people who are receiving copies. The earliest instances are the three prayers to the Virgin that Anselm sent to his friend the monk Gundulf and the six prayers and one meditation sent to Adelaide, eldest daughter of William of Normandy.7 Finally, and most significantly, he promised the full corpus to Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, in 1104 in a letter thanking her for delivering him “not once but many times from my enemies just when they expected me to fall into their hands.”8 This protection was afforded to Anselm on his journeys to and from Rome in 1103 and perhaps also 1098. The original manuscript sent to Matilda does not survive, but fortunately a derivative of it does in the libray at Admont in Austria. It has a preface addressed to Matilda, and a full-page frontispiece showing her receiving the gift from the archbishop. The next image shows the pair of them together at prayer before a vision of God, with Anselm gazing directly toward him whereas Matilda does not: perhaps this indicates that her experience is mediated by Anselm’s prayer, his words are the conduit. This level of connectivity between an author and donor with the recipient of the gift is unusual. Taken as depicted, it might suggest that Anselm and Matilda actually prayed together and shared common values. There was indeed a personal friendship between them as well as a similar pro-papal approach to contemporary politics. Anselm’s introduction to Matilda was effected, it has been plausibly argued, by her step-sister and erstwhile sister-in-law, Ida of Boulogne, whose own friendship with Anselm went back at least two decades.9 5 Schmitt, Anselmi Opera, iii: 30; Ward, The Prayers, 135–40. 6 R. Sharpe, “Anselm as Author: Publishing in the late eleventh century,” Journal of Medieval Latin 19 (2009): 1–87, for circulation of the Prayers 11–15 and 56–7. 7 Letters 28 and 10: Schmitt, Anselmi Opera, iii: 135–6, 113–14; W. Fröhlich, The Letters of Anselm of Canterbury, 3 vols. (Kalamazoo, 1990–4), i: 121–2 and 92–4. See also, D. Bates, William the Conqueror (New Haven and London, 2016), 331. 8 Letter 325: Schmitt, Anselmi Opera, v, 256–7; Fröhlich, Letters of Anselm, iii: 38–41. 9 Letter 82: Schmitt, Anselmi Opera, iii: 206–7; Fröhlich, Letters of Anselm, i: 216–17; S. Vaughn, St Anselm and the Handmaidens of God (Turnhout, 2002), 130, 149.

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Matilda’s commitment to Anselm is well captured in the letter she wrote in 1105 to Pope Pascal pleading on his behalf: May you as a pious father and lord faithfully take heed of the tribulations and wretchedness which that holy and revered father bears for the catholic faith and the Holy Roman church. […] We grieve therefore, that his ministry, whose guidance we know to be necessary to the Church for everything and everybody, has, for the most part, been taken away from the body of the Church.10 A friendship like that exemplified in this intervention presumably licensed the artist to acknowledge the degree of devotional intimacy implied by the picture. It would have been presumptuous and impertinent to represent Anselm and Matilda together in this way had it not been acceptable to them both. It seems, then, that the original book made for Matilda had such pictures and that they are faithfully reproduced in the extant version. The images in the Admont manuscript are in some respects similar to compositions in the Oxford manuscript and these connections persuaded Otto Pächt that the two books shared a common archetype.11 However, the connections are purely formal; the Oxford illuminations do not include any image of Anselm at prayer with the book’s owner, any more than Admont’s shows the recipient’s abject repentance. Yet more problematically, other images in the book correspond very poorly. These depict the saints who are the focus of particular prayers. Thus for example, the Prayer to St Paul in the Admont manuscript shows him being lifted to the third heaven—a reference to 2 Corinthians 12 where Paul himself reports that he was “caught up into Paradise and heard words said that cannot and may not be spoken by any human being.” The choice of subject perhaps has a resonance with Anselm’s belief that as a child he was taken up to the court of God and fed with the bread of heaven.12 The picture in the Oxford manuscript shows instead Saul’s blinding on the road to Damascus, from Acts chapter 9 (Fig. 7.2). The differences between the two cycles are equally apparent in the pictures preceding the Prayers to St John the Evangelist in the two books. Oxford shows the raising of Drusiana, whereas Admont depicts St John leaving his wife or betrothed (coniunx) in order to follow Christ and becoming the beloved apostle—indicated here as at the Last Supper, with John resting his head on Christ’s breast (Fig. 7.3).

10 Letter 350: Schmitt, Anselmi Opera, v, 289–90; Fröhlich, Letters of Anselm, iii: 83–4. 11 Pächt, “The Illustrations,” 70–6. 12 Eadmer, The Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. R.W. Southern (London, 1962), 4–5.

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Figure 7.2

Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. D.2.6., f. 170v © The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford

Figure 7.3

Admont, Monastery Library MS 289, f. 56r © Benediktinerstift Admont

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Supposing that both the Oxford and Admont recensions go back to Anselmian originals, the question arises ‘why would there have been two different cycles of illustration?’ In seeking possible answers to this conundrum, it is first necessary to characterise the cycles, and the John the Evangelist images are as good a place to start as any. The implications of John resurrecting Drusiana are clear enough, that God gave the power over death to Christ’s favourite apostle. The illustration is thus a reminder to the supplicant of the devolution of divine authority to the Saint, he is an intermediary, but potent in his own right. The texts of the two prayers to John written by Anselm make no reference to this event. By contrast they do mention “John, who reclined familiarly on the glorious breast of the Most High” and “if that glorious breast was a place for you to lean upon, I ask that through you it may become to me a place of salvation.”13 The inscription above the picture in the Admont manuscript states that John repudiated the soft breast of his wife for the breast of Christ.14 The point here is intimacy with Christ, the message explicit in the depiction of John leaving his betrothed, exchanging earthly love for union with the deity. By comparison John’s power to raise the dead woman implies divine sanction but is more ‘institutional’ than personal. A possible explanation for the characteristics of the Admont cycle can be found in the lives of Archbishop Anselm and Countess Matilda. Anselm’s early meditation on the loss of virginity is taken to reflect his own decision to reject physical love in favour of spiritual: “He [Christ] is not now the kind spouse of my virginity, but the terrible judge of my impurity. Alas, why does the memory of lost rejoicing thus make worse the weight of my present unhappiness?” “O fornication, by which my mind is defiled and my soul betrayed, whence have you crept upon me in my misery?”15 Matilda’s two marriages were political, the first to Godfrey the Hunchback, duke of Lorraine, “whom she despised,” the second when she was 43 to the teenage Welf v, duke of Bavaria.16 They separated within a few years. Her energies were increasingly focused on the Church, through support of the Papacy against the German emperors and by benefactions to monastic and other foundations in her charge. The subject of the Admont picture, the abandonment of marriage for devotion to a God, could thus be biographical in the cases of both the donor and the recipient. In order to sustain a reading of this kind there is need for potentially corroborative evidence. The two illustrations for the Prayer to St Benedict perhaps 13 Schmitt, Anselmi Opera, iii 42–9; Ward, The Prayers of Anselm, 157, 160. 14 For John’s betrothal see D.R. Cartlidge, “An Illustration in the Admont ‘Anselm’ and its Relevance to a Reconstruction of the Acts of John,” in The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles in Intertextual Perspective, ed. R.F. Stoops, Semeia 80 (1997): 277–90. 15 Schmitt, Anselmi Opera, iii: 80–4; Ward, The Prayers of Anselm, 225. 16 Vaughn, St Anselm and the Handmaidens of God, 128, 145.

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offer it. In the Oxford manuscript, the prayer has been adapted for St Augustine, but Benedict’s name is also written in and he is shown holding out the Benedictine Rule to two monks in the lower bowl of the letter ‘S’ which begins the prayer. In the Admont picture Benedict is shown in the cave on Mont Subiaco where he retired for prayer and contemplation (Fig. 7.4). Above is Romanus, the monk who brought him food, lowering it down to the cave beneath. Opposite is a demon, and below a bird flying away with bread in its mouth. The picture conflates two unrelated episodes in the saint’s life: the first is the succour he received while in the wilderness, the second is altogether darker. Benedict had befriended a bird with which he used to share his food, but one day an evil priest called Florentius sought to kill the saint by poisoning it. At Benedict’s behest the bird intervened, taking the bread away before returning to share more wholesome fare.17 So, whereas the Oxford picture simply notes Benedict as author of the Rule by which monks live, the Admont picture is about the saint’s salvation rather than his institutional authority. The personal element is again possibly significant for both Anselm and Matilda. As noted above, Anselm was beholden to the Countess for her protection when passing through northern Italy on his way to and from Rome. It was dangerous territory because of the conflict between forces loyal to the emperor and those who supported the Papacy, such as Matilda and Anselm. So, in understanding the two sides to the Benedict picture in the Admont manuscript, it is possible to draw a parallel with Anselm’s own experience in which Matilda is also implicated. She had provided him with succour and his enemies has been confounded, just as in the two episodes in Benedict’s Life. Before taking this reading of the Admont pictures further, it helps to establish their import if the Oxford cycle is analysed in similar terms. As already noted, the audience for the book seem to be characterised as penitents, as contrite individuals in need of aid. To judge from the imagery and the reattribution to St Augustine of the prayer to St Benedict, the recipients of the Oxford book were Augustinian, and the picture prefacing Anselm’s prayer to the dedicatory saint shows St Peter. Two communities have been proposed: the canons at Dorchester (Oxon) and the canonesses of Harrold (Beds).18 While the illustration showing the ladies and their priest at Mass may be specific to such an audience, others, including those prefacing the prayers to individual saints, are not. A good indication of this is the picture the Prayer to 17 Gregory, Gregorii Magni Dialogi libri iv, ed. U. Moricca (Rome, 1924), 76–7 and 91–2. 18 C.M. Kauffmann in English Romanesque Art 1066–1200, ed. G. Zarnecki, J. Holt and T. Holland (London 1984), 118, no. 59; cf. Pächt, “The Illustrations,” 69–70; Shepard, “Conventual Use,” 2.

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Figure 7.4

Admont, Monastery Library MS 289, f. 80v © Benediktinerstift Admont

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102

Figure 7.5

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Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. D.2.6., f. 169r © The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford

St Peter, which shows him holding the keys given to him by Christ (Matthew 16) and being enjoined to “Feed my Sheep” (John 21) (Fig. 7.5). The subject and to a significant extent the composition are close to the only surviving miniature in another copy of Anselm’s Prayers, now badly mutilated, Verdun Bibliothèque municipale MS 70, written and illuminated at St Albans c. 1130, for an unidentified recipient.19 Like the Oxford picture it conflates the two episodes which in the gospels are separated by a year in time and the intervention of Christ’s death and resurrection. It seems very likely they go back to a single archetype. That model cannot have been like the Admont Anselm since that shows Peter’s liberation from prison. So what could be the source of the picture of St Peter with keys and sheep? Undoubtedly the most famous example of the subject is a tapestry made for the Sistine Chapel after the cartoon by Raphael painted in 1515–16.20 A location 19 Kauffmann, Romanesque Manuscripts, no. 33; R.M. Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey (Woodbridge, 1982), 26 and no. 79. 20 J. Shearman, Raphael’s Cartoons in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen and the Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (Oxford, 1972).

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in the papal chapel in Rome is entirely appropriate because the donation of the keys and the injunction “Feed my sheep” were the cornerstones of the claims of the papacy to authority on earth—the so-called primatus petri, the primacy of Peter. In discussing Raphael’s work, John Shearman asserted “It is in the context of the primatus petri—and, so far as I know, only in that context— that the two texts from Matthew xvi and John xxi are not only juxtaposed on innumerable occasions, but also frequently conflated.”21 Papal authority was never more hotly contested than during the so-called Investiture Controversy of the late eleventh century, when both emperors and popes claimed the right to appoint bishops as pastors, able to lead Christians inside the ultimate fold, the walls of heavenly Jerusalem at the end of time. From the mid-1090s up to 1103, Anselm was one of the staunchest supporters of the papal position and it would not be surprising if he had promoted imagery that helped the cause. The likeliest time for this to have occurred would have been during the summer of 1098, when Anselm was in Rome, shortly before completing his work Cur Deus Homo which he dedicated to Pope Urban ii. That autumn Anselm appeared in effect as the pope’s champion at the Council of Bari to debate the nature of the Holy Spirit with Orthodox theologians. An appeal to a papal prototype may seem like a heavy weight to be hanging on the scales of little pictures of St Peter in two provincial English manuscripts. However, there is other evidence that might support the proposition that a papal programme lies behind some of the Oxford illuminations. In that manuscript the Prayer to St Paul is introduced by a picture of his Blinding on the Road to Damascus (Fig. 7.2). In the reconstruction of the hanging of Raphael’s Sistine tapestries this is the subject directly opposite “Feed my Sheep” and, it has been argued, was meant as a direct parallel. It registered the moment at which Saul was transformed: “from a wolf he was suddenly turned into a shepherd.”22 As these two subjects augmented one another, so did the succeeding two pairs of tapestries in the Chapel. Peter and Paul were always of fundamental importance to the authority of the Church of Rome, but it is worth noting that it was in the 1090s that they began to appear together on the most public expression of papal authority, the lead bull attached to papal letters and pronouncements of all kinds circulated throughout Christendom and beyond.23 The Sistine Chapel was created and furnished with paintings and tapestries in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, long after the images were devised 21 22 23

Ibid., 65. Ibid., 61–3. The quotation is taken from a sermon by Beatus Maximus, as in PL, 57, col. 394. F. Grisar and F. de Lasala, Aspetti della sigillografia: tipologia, storia, materia e valore giuridico dei sigilli (Rome, 1997), 34–5.

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that are reflected in the Oxford recension of Anselm’s Prayers. But there had long been places in Rome that served as settings for assemblies of the papal court, the cardinals and other officials of the Church, and for the reception of important guests such as visiting Church dignitaries, secular rulers and ambassadors. Their primary focus was the palace and church of the Lateran, where Anselm was the guest of Pope Urban ii in 1098. Furthermore, the claims to papal authority in Raphael’s compositions are quite likely to have had precursors in the period around 1100. One substantial fragment of c. 1100 survives from the Lateran: a wall painting representing the sin of Ananias and Sapphira, who sought to withhold some of the money that was due to the Church.24 As recounted in Acts chapter 5 they both died in front of St Peter when they tried to conceal their fraud. This episode explains the ‘earthly’ key held by St Peter, representing his power of judgement over the living—the other of course representing his role as the gate-keeper of Heaven. Given its significance, it is no surprise that this subject is also found among the cartoons which Raphael prepared for the Sistine Chapel tapestries. While there were very probably other depictions of the subject in Rome, the Lateran fresco fragment of c. 1100 indicates its significance at the centre of papal authority at the time. Anselm’s strongly pro-papal position in the period 1095–1103 would explain his support for the ideology and the means of propagating it through art. It thus provides a plausible context for the creation of the Oxford recension of pictures to accompany his prayers and meditations. But by 1104, when the archetype of the Admont manuscript was sent to Matilda of Tuscany, Anselm’s position had suffered a serious setback. In 1103 he made a second visit to Rome to appeal to the new pope, Pascal ii, for support in upholding the authority of the Church against the new king of England, Henry i. He was to be disappointed. The papal court was reluctant to hear his case, let alone support it, and the archbishop must have felt betrayed by the very interests he believed he was serving. In those circumstances reusing or even adapting the set of pictures devised between 1095 and 1103 would have rankled, not least because Matilda of Tuscany was only too well aware of and in sympathy with Anselm’s situation as her letter to Pascal, cited above, makes very clear. Hence the recourse to a new cycle emphasising not Church authority but the individual’s relationship with God. Two things are worth noting about both sets of pictures accompanying Anselm’s Prayers. One is that they do not always serve to illustrate aspects of the texts they preface. The Prayer to Peter contains no reference to his liberation from prison, whereas it does refer to the donation of the keys and “Feed 24

S. Romano, Forma e tradizione, 1050–1198. La pittura medievale a Roma 312–1431, vol. 4 (Rome, 2006), 188–9.

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my Sheep.” So, in the process of devising a new image for the Admont recension the artist moves away from direct textual illustration. The inverse is true of the Prayer to Paul; it is Admont that picks up an aspect of the text, being lifted to the third heaven, whereas there is no allusion in the prayer to the Damascene conversion depicted in the Oxford manuscript. The second point follows from these observations: that the picture cycles in both manuscripts are formed by priorities that are to a degree independent of the words they accompany. Thus it seems that by c. 1100 Anselm was conceiving of pictures as having a status of their own; they could be used as a quasi-independent resource for conveying ideas. They could also be deployed in cycles to reinforce particular messages both theological and political, from the official to the personal. Those points are echoed in the programme of stained glass windows at aisle level in the great eastern arm of Canterbury cathedral. The building itself was Anselm’s project, begun in 1096 to celebrate the fifth centenary of the Gregorian Mission sent from Rome to Kent (in 596).25 The Roman-ness of the work is indicated by its scale—Canterbury was to be the same length as Old St Peter’s in Rome—and in its embellishment, for example it was given a marble pavement. But the most strikingly Roman and papal aspect of the work was the long sequence of biblical subjects loosely recalling the lengthy Old and New Testament cycles in Roman basilicas, again such as St Peter’s. Anselm’s original glass has all gone, but we are fortunate in having lists of the subject matter for about ninety percent of the lost windows and the Latin verses that accompanied them, and we have about ten percent of the recreation of his cycle as it was made anew after the fire of 1174 which ravaged the eastern half of the cathedral. So the scheme as a whole can be substantially reconstructed.26 The material was carefully organised to complement the architecture. To the west, the three windows on either side of the choir comprised the early life of Christ to the north and his Passion to the south. Each of these scenes, probably thirty originally, was accompanied by two Old Testament parallels or types, arranged so that each New Testament subject had flanking pair of images to elucidate its meaning. To the east of the choir proper was the presbytery at the intersection of the main axis of the church and an eastern transept. In the northern arm of the transept were scenes from Christ’s ministry, including miracles and parables, and focusing on the institution of the Church. In the

25 26

T.A. Heslop, “St Anselm and the Visual Arts at Canterbury Cathedral, 1093–1109,” in Medieval Art and Architecture at Canterbury, ed. A. Bovey, British Archaeological Association Transactions 35 (Leeds, 2013), 59–81. M. Caviness, The Windows of Christ Church Cathedral Canterbury, Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi: Great Britain 2 (London, 1981).

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first of these ministry windows the central subjects include the Miraculous Draught of Fishes and the Sermon on the Mount. The lateral scenes either side of the Draught are St Paul with the Gentiles and St Peter preaching to the Jews. In other words Old Testament parallels are replaced by prophetic ones relating to the future roles of Peter and Paul. Further down the same window were Pope Gregory the Great ordaining readers, the four doctors of the Church, and St Paul baptising, again from the standpoint of Christ’s life on earth all prospective events. In the seven windows beyond the choir (conventionally numbered iv–x) there were fifteen panels out of 140 showing Peter and Paul either together or separately. In total Peter appeared eleven times and Paul nine. Some of the subjects were directly dependent on biblical texts, others were not. One of them in Window viii was the death of Ananias and Sapphira in the presence of Peter from Acts. Window vii had a verse indicating a subject quite independent of the Bible: kings ‘inclining’ to Peter and Paul: SIC INCURVATI PUERO SUNT ASSIMILATI, REGES CUM GENTE PAULO PETROQUE DOCENTE (Thus, with Peter and Paul teaching, kings and people bow down as though to the child). This last element is explained by the adjacent central subject, which depicted Christ placing a child in the midst of the apostles and saying “Anyone who welcomes the little child welcomes me; and anyone who welcomes me—welcomes not me but the one who sent me” (Mark 9:36–7). As I have argued before, this is intelligible in the context of submission to papal authority in the context of crusading when kings (or at least princes) and people followed the pope’s lead.27 In this reading the papacy is the ‘child’, being welcomed in the persons of Peter and Paul as Christ’s vicars. The strategies in play in the Canterbury cycle offer a version of the authority of the Church through the papacy which builds on scripturally grounded foundations in the New Testament but elaborates them to new heights. The cycle of pictures in the Oxford recension of Anselm’s Prayers is still relatively grounded, even though a subject such as the raising of Drusiana is not biblical; but in the Admont version even that relative caution has been abandoned. The juxtaposition of John leaving his betrothed and resting his head on Christ’s bosom is a remarkable confection, and Benedict receiving bread in the wilderness and the attempt to poison him brings together two quite distinct episodes from his life in order for Anselm to make a broadly autobiographical rather than an institutional point. The perspectives outlined in the preceding paragraph may make Anselm seem unduly self-focused, but there is other evidence that he was alert to 27

T.A. Heslop, “St Anselm, Church Reform and the Politics of Art,” in Anglo-Norman Studies 33, ed. C.P. Lewis (Woodbridge, 2011), 103–26.

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indications from heaven about his personal situation. Aisle window viii at Canterbury is a turning point in the cycle. Up to this window all the central subjects had been given two parallels, but with the marriage of the king’s son we are quite unexpectedly offered four, and this is expressed in the iron armatures as much as the record of the imagery. The marriage feast is loaded with baggage: who will be saved, who will be damned. Crucially, this was the subject of the sortes biblicae at Anselm’s installation as archbishop.28 This peculiar ceremony depended on the chance of divine revelation during the episcopal consecration. As the bishop knelt before the assembled company a gospel book was placed on his back and opened at random. In Anselm’s case the words at the top of the page were from Luke 14:16–18: “he bade many: and sent his servants at supper time to say to them that were bidden, ‘Come, for all things are now ready.’ And all alike started to make excuses.”29 The implication of Anselm’s prognostication was clear: he was one of the servants who would bid people to come to God, but they would reject the invitation he gave them. By the time this window was installed, probably in the early years of the twelfth century, the relevance of the passage from Luke was crystal clear to contemporaries, successive kings and bishops, even the pope, had rejected Anselm’s extremism; the sense of those who should have known better paying no attention to the archbishop is palpable. In the end Anselm depended on God alone. He would be saved by Christ, the Good Samaritan, who would take him to the inn where he would be prepared for salvation. All this is inherent in window ix at Canterbury.30 But if Anselm cast himself in the role of the wounded traveller, the message also has a general relevance to all believers. They too depend on God’s understanding of what it means to be human, premised on the fact that God became man in Jesus of Nazareth in order to experience the predicament of humanity. Anselm’s capacity to rely on God’s guidance alone is evident in his first major composition, the Monologion. He sent it to his mentor Lanfranc who criticised the lack of reference to higher authorities, such as the Church Fathers.31 Anselm made no adjustments. Some forty years later, on his deathbed, as his biographer relates, he was concerned about dying before writing a treatise on the origins of the soul: “For I do not know whether anyone will solve it when 28 29 30 31

G. Henderson, “Sortes Biblicae in Twelfth-Century England: the List of Episcopal Prognostics in Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.7.5.,” in England in the Twelfth Century, Proceedings of the 1988 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. D. Williams (Woodbridge, 1990), 113–36 (115). T.A. Heslop, “St Anselm and the Good Samaritan Window at Canterbury Cathedral,” jwci 77 (2014): 1–26. Ibid., 16–20. Letter 77: Schmitt, Anselmi Opera, iii: 199–200; Fröhlich, Letters of Anselm, i: 205–7.

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I am dead.”32 Neither at the beginning nor at the end of his career was Anselm a modest or humble man. From his walk as a child up to the court of God in the mountains to his being taken away before clarifying, as only he could, the connectedness and separation of body and soul, he was licensed to explain his and our predicament and it was as clear in the visual imagery he devised or sanctioned as in the words he wrote. Anselm was not, of course, unique among great Christian thinkers in using personal experience to work through his theology. His most obvious model here was St Augustine, whose Confessions are a prime example. His City of God, too, was prompted by the politics of the day and the devastation he witnessed around him. A copy of this text now in Florence was illuminated by a Canterbury artist around 1100, I believe at Anselm’s bidding.33 The experience of Christian teachers was from Anselm’s perspective both universal and particular, but unlike St Augustine or the Evangelists, Anselm chose to express himself in pictorial images as well as words. He clearly thought that both could convey the same truths. It is sixty years since Otto Pächt argued that Anselm was the first high medieval author to approve of narrative illustrations to accompany his own writings. In the decades following Anselm’s work others: Lambert of St Omer in his Liber Floridus, Honorius Augustodunensis for his Commentary of the Song of Songs, Hildegard of Bingen for the Scivias also integrated text and image, though these compositions tend towards the diagrammatic, allegorical or visionary.34 Anselm was altogether more empathetic in his outlook, employing momentous events in people’s lives or combinations of material that encouraged a psychological engagement with the heroes of Salvation: Christ and his saints, and the institutions of the Church that they initiated and nurtured. 32 Eadmer, Life of St Anselm, 142. 33 Florence, Bibl. Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 12.17: in Umanesimo e Padri della Chiesa, ed. Sebastiano Gentile (Rome, 1997), cat. 82. For a date c. 1100, with which I agree, see Pächt, “The Illustrations,” 80. 34 As noted by Pächt, “The Illustrations,” 68.

Chapter 8

Early Cistercian Manuscripts from Clairvaux Kathleen Doyle As we celebrate John Lowden’s inspirational teaching and formidable contributions to manuscript studies, I thought it appropriate to revisit a paper he encouraged me to present while I was finishing my thesis, in partial acknowledgement of the great debt I owe to his encouragement of my work. At a conference, Between Ideal and Reality. Reassessing Cistercian Art and Architecture, held at the Courtauld in May 2004, I examined some of the early manuscripts produced or used at the Cistercian abbey of Clairvaux in Burgundy. Recently, in honour of the Abbey’s 900th anniversary, an ambitious project was completed that reunited the surviving monastic library virtually.1 This website now facilitates the examination of the manuscripts produced at Clairvaux, and the consideration of the scholarly and artistic achievements of the Abbey in the decades of Bernard of Clairvaux’s leadership (abbot from its founding in 1115 to his death in 1153) and thereafter. The theme of the conference was particularly appropriate for the study of early Cistercian illuminated manuscripts, because for the first half of the twelfth century neither the ideal, nor the reality, is defined easily. A rather unusual and, as far as it appears, unprecedented ideal of a formal and specific limitation on the decoration of manuscripts was adopted by the Cistercian general chapter at a date uncertain, most commonly now placed in the late 1140s.2 This instituta stated that letters are to be of one colour, and non depictae (Litterae unius colouris fiant, et non depictae), presumably meaning without pictures, or

1 Bibliothèque virtuelle de Clairvaux, https://www.bibliotheque-virtuelle-clairvaux.com/manuscrits/ (accessed 9.7.2016). 2 On the innovation of this legislation, see generally K. Doyle, “Re-reading Saint Bernard: Text Context, and the Art-Historical Interpretation of the Apologia” (unpublished doctoral thesis, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 2005), esp. chap. 6; C. Rudolph, “The ‘Principal Founders’ and the Early Artistic Legislation of Cîteaux,” in Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture 3, ed. M.P. Lillich (Kalamazoo, 1987), 1–45; and C. Holdsworth, “The chronology and character of early Cistercian legislation on art and architecture,” in Cistercian Art and Architecture in the British Isles, ed. C. Norton and D. Park (Cambridge, 1986), 40–55. On the date see Twelfth Century Statutes from the Cistercian General Chapter, ed. C. Waddell (Brecht, 2002), 71 (for a date of 1147); Rudolph, “Principal Founders” (1149); and Holdsworth, “Chronology” (around 1150).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_010

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historiation.3 That this concept was apparently a new development and not adopted or observed in the very early period of the Order, as David Park and Christopher Norton have observed, is demonstrated by the multi-coloured and figurative illumination in two justly famous dated manuscripts produced at Cîteaux in 1109 and 1111, the Bible of Stephen Harding, and a copy of Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job.4 Usually, the source of this ideal is traced to one of the other texts that reveals something of the early Cistercian attitude towards art, St Bernard’s Apologia ad Guillelmum.5 But this is not a particularly straightforward process, because Bernard did not mention manuscript decoration in the text, nor is it clear that he intended his critique to be understood as applying to it. Indeed, as Dominique Stutzmann has noted recently, it is “une extrapolation hardie” to characterise the Apologia as a commentary on art.6 In this article I would like to explore the possible meaning and impact of the ideals of the statute and the Apologia by examining the practice of manuscript production and acceptance at Clairvaux in the first half of the century. Because dated manuscripts are relatively rare, it can be challenging to attempt to chart a clear chronological path, tracing any development or change.7 As Diane Reilly has characterised the issue regarding manuscripts made at the mother house of Cîteaux, the timeframe of their production is “unfortunately, quite elastic.”8 There are no dated manuscripts from this period surviving from Clairvaux, and indeed only a handful of manuscripts from other Cistercian houses, so the assessment necessarily involves analysing other, textual sources together with palaeographical and artistic evidence. For Clairvaux, there are a number of clues in three letters that may permit a group of surviving manuscripts to be dated to the period 3 Institutum 82, in Narrative and Legislative Texts from Early Cîteaux, ed. C. Waddell (Brecht, 1999), 491; for a discussion of the meaning of depictae see most recently D. Stutzmann, “L’écriture, réalité esthétique? Ordre et régularité chez les Cisterciens de Fontenay,” in Storia della scrittura e altre storie, ed. D. Bianconi, Bollettino dei Classici, Supp. 29 (Rome, 2014), 201–24, discussing the position set out in Y. Załuska, L’enluminure et le Scriptorium de Cîteaux au xiie siècle, Cîteaux: Commentarii cistercienses, Studia et Documenta 4 (Brecht, 1989), 149–52. 4 C. Norton and D. Park, “Introduction,” in Cistercian Art, 1–10; Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale mss 12–15, and mss 167–170 and 173. 5 See, for example, Rudolph, “Principal Founders,” and for a review of the literature, Doyle, “Rereading Saint Bernard,” chap. 6. 6 D. Stutzmann, “La sobriété ostentatoire: L’esthétique cistercienne d’après les manuscrits de Fontenay,” in Culture et patrimoine cisterciens, Colloque du vendredi 12 Juin 2009 (Paris, 2009), 45–87 (47 n. 5). 7 See discussion Stutzmann, “La sobriété ostentatoire,” 67. 8 D. J. Reilly, “Bernard of Clairvaux and Christian Art,” in A Companion to Bernard of Clairvaux, ed. B.P. McGuire, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 25 (Leiden, 2011), 279–304 (283).

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from its foundation in 1115, or more probably, from the second quarter of the twelfth century during Bernard’s abbacy. The first is a letter from the prior of Clairvaux, Philip (prior until 1153) to the abbot of Liessies, probably Wedric, abbot from 1124 until 1147. Wedric had apparently requested certain works of Augustine: the Adnotationes in Iob, Contra Felicem manicheum, Contra Pelagium et Celestinum, and Contra duas epistoles Pelagi[anorum] to be loaned to his Abbey for copying. Philip responded that the requested works could not be separated out or sent, because they were part of a collection of large format volumes (sed et hec volumina de quibus scribo magnorum voluminum corporibus inserta sunt. ita ut disiungi non possint nec vobis mitti).9 Six very large manuscripts (all over 480 mm in height) of a collection of St Augustine’s works survive, including those listed in Philip’s letter.10 These volumes appear to have been written as a set, for they are in the order given in the Retractationes, which Augustine completed near the end of his life. Moreover, apart from the first volume, they begin with an indication of their order and contents in the form incipit [secunda] pars opusculorum sancti Augustini.11 The requested texts appear in the second, third and sixth volumes.12 The first volume has a multi-coloured geometric border around a list of contents; its facing folio has a large decorated initial (Fig. 8.1).13 That these manuscripts were made at Clairvaux seems likely, for the ownership inscription is 9

10

11 12

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Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 444, f. 111v, column 2, cited in J. Leclercq, “Les manuscrits de l’abbaye de Liessies,” Scriptorium: Revue internationale des études relatives aux manuscrits 6 (1952): 51–62 (51–2). See also discussion by Załuska, L’enluminure, 151; and B. Munk Olsen and P. Petitmengin, “Les bibliothèque et la transmission des textes,” in Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, i: Les bibliothèques médiévales: du vie siècle à 1530, ed. A. Vernet (Paris, 1989), 415–36 (422). Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole mss 40-1, 40-2, 40-3, 40-6, 40-9, and 40-10, except for the fourth volume, which begins imperfectly, and fifth volume, which is lacking; see generally J-F. Genest, “Le siècle de saint Bernard,” in “Les manuscrits de Clairvaux de saint Bernard à nos jours,” La vie en Champagne 46 (April-June 2006): 2–19 (11 and the Appendix). Descriptions of the manuscripts in the online catalogue, and see A. Vernet, J-F. Genest and J-P. Bouhot, La Bibliothèque de l’abbaye de Clairvaux du xiie au xviiie siècle (Paris, 1979-), i: A. Vernet and J-F. Genest, Catalogues et repertoires, 14–15; ii: J-P. Bouhot and J-F. Genest, Les manuscrits conservés, première partie: manuscrits bibliques, patristiques et théologiques, ed. A. Vernet (1997), esp. 379; see also Leclercq, “Liessies,” 52. See the Appendix. Adnotationes in Job, Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40-3, f. 24r; Contra Felicem Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40-2, f. 190r; Contra Pelagium is lacking, and would have appeared in the Retractationes order in volume 5; Contra duas epostoles Pelagianorum, Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40-9, f. 78v (volume 6). Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40-1, ff. 1v–2r.

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Figure 8.1

Troyes, Médiatheque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40–1, ff. 1v–2r © Photo Médiathèque Jacques Chirac, Troyes Champagne métropole

incorporated into the title page immediately after the listing of the contents.14 The size and integration of the set, together with its script and inscription, suggest that it is likely to be the one referred to by Philip in his letter, and therefore, that it was produced prior to 1147, or 1153, at the latest. The second letter is from Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny from 1122–56, to one of Bernard’s secretaries, Nicholas de Montiéramey (at Clairvaux from 1146–52, when he was expelled), probably written around 1150. This letter may also refer to another of these large scale works of Augustine: Peter asked for Cluny’s copy of Augustine’s Contra Julianum to be returned, if the corrections to Clairvaux’s copy had been completed (Augustinum nostrum contra Iulianum, si tamen iam vester ex illo correctus est, et si qua alia bona habueris, tecum 14

Cf. P. Stirnemann, “Gilbert de la Porrée, the man and his manuscripts,” in Beyond Words. Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections, Proceedings of the International Conference, November 3–5, 2016, ed. L. Fagin Davis and others (forthcoming), where she comments that there are “many, many books made at Clairvaux in the twelfth century that have a contemporary ex-libris.” I thank Patricia for sending me her article prior to its publication.

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defer).15 A corrected copy of this text, also with a Clairvaux ownership inscription (Lib[er] s[anc]te Marie Clarevall[is]) incorporated into its frontispiece survives, of the same scale and format as the group of his other works (460 x 320 mm), and with a similar multi-colour patterned geometric border surrounding the contents of the volume.16 Like the opening initial in the first volume of the Retractationes, its first initial is also executed with flourishing in a second colour. The third letter that may also contain a reference to a surviving manuscript is from Nicholas to Peter of Celle, abbot of Montier-la-Celle (1145–62) and later Saint-Remi, Reims (1162–81), and bishop of Chartres (1181–3). Nicholas refers to a work of Claudius that he “has with him” (Habeo mecum plenam subtilitatis et sanctitatis animam, et quae fronte non nomine solo praemineat, quam in auctoritatis arcem, tam scholasticorum quam ecclesiasticorum chorus evexit. Claudianus hic est […]).17 The manuscript is perhaps now Troyes, La médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 256, which includes Claudius Mamertus’s De statu animae, and like the other volumes, has a multi-coloured geometric frontispiece, although the book is of slightly smaller dimensions (345 x 250 mm) than the volumes of Augustine. Its facing folio features an initial flourished lightly in a second colour.18 Perhaps, therefore, there was a co-ordinated and ambitious project at Clairvaux to create large format, accurate copies of works of Church Fathers and other important or essential texts, undertaken prior to the middle of the century— for these three letters all suggest a terminus ante quem of the 1140s to early 1150s.19 The size of these volumes implies that they were made for communal purposes and, given the legibility and elegance of the script, possibly for reading aloud, rather than for individual study. There are around twenty other surviving volumes of patristic or reference works of similar large scale (that is, mostly over 400 millimetres in height), many with full-page frontispieces with 15 16 17 18 19

Peter the Venerable, letter 176, in Peter the Venerable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. G. Constable, 2 vols. (Harvard, 1967), i: 417 (who dates it to c. 1150). Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40-7, f. 1v; see Genest, “Le siècle de saint Bernard,” 12–13; on the scribe see La Bibliothèque de l’abbaye de Clairvaux, ii: 411 (f. 220r). PL 202, col. 499; on Peter, see Peter of Celle, The Letters of Peter of Celle, ed. J. Haseldine (Oxford, 2001). Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 256, ff. i [verso]-1r, beginning with Fulgentius Ruspensis’s Ad Monimum. Cf. Stirnemann, “Gilbert de la Porrée,” who speculates that Nicholas may have arranged for the production of copies of Gilbert of Poitiers’ commentaries for Prince Henry while the prince was at Clairvaux between 1146 and 1149.

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multi-coloured borders and original bindings.20 Some of these manuscripts may have been part of this initiative, although these other volumes are not datable by any external references. Further, many of them have an initial letter executed with monochrome penwork decoration. Thus, for these manuscripts, it is tempting to speculate that either the statute itself or its principles may have been in place as an ideal: for if the term litterae is taken literally to mean only letters, excluding other types of decoration, these books would fit squarely within a technical reading of its terms, despite the decorative and colourful borders of the frontispieces. However, a few of the volumes within this group have initials in different styles, some of which do seem not to be within the spirit of the statute, or the penumbras of the Apologia either. In a large-scale copy of Augustine’s Commentaries on the Psalms, in three volumes, the opening red and blue initial is further decorated by a patterned border like those surrounding the table of contents on the opposite verso (Fig. 8.2).21 The initials of the third volume, containing the commentaries on the last fifty Psalms, are executed in elaborate and delicate multi-coloured foliate patterns, usually in two colours, and the first explicit is surrounded by a patterned border as for the Beatus initial in the first volume.22 In the second volume, moreover, the opening initial is historiated, and fully painted.23 This initial includes a portrait of Augustine with foliage and a blowing or spitting head at end of the descender of the letter (Fig. 8.3). Yet despite such differences from the other patristic texts, these three volumes are very similar to them in scale, layout, and script. They too have Clairvaux ownership inscriptions, and include the punctus flextus punctuation mark to indicate minor medial pauses, a characteristic of Cistercian production.24 Other initials in the second volume of the Commentaries are also more elaborate. There are two other fully painted initials in the first two gatherings: a bust of Christ with a cruciform halo in the centre of the letter Q[uid] at the

20 21 22 23 24

I thank Dominique Stutzmann for drawing many of these to my attention. See Appendix, with dimensions and a description of the type of initials. See also Genest, “Le siècle de saint Bernard,” 10, who dates these to the 1140s. Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 115, ff. 1v–2r, see also La Bibliothèque de l’abbaye de Clairvaux, ii, no. F86–8, 390–1. Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40-5, f. 2v (for the border). Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40-4, f. 1r. On the use of the punctus flextus by Cistercians see generally P. Stirnemann, “Le témoignage des manuscrits: scribes et enlumineurs (1140–1220),” in M. Peyrafort-Huin, with P. Stirnemann and J-L. Benoit, La bibliothèque médiévale de l’abbaye de Pontigny (xiie–xixe siècles): histoires, inventaires anciens, manuscrits (Paris, 2001), 55–78.

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Troyes, Médiatheque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 115, ff. 1v–2r © Photo Médiathèque Jacques Chirac, Troyes Champagne métropole

beginning of Psalm 51, with a dragon with an elongated neck and head forming the tail of the letter; and a historiated initial, probably of David, with what Leclercq called “a kind of winged crocodile,” in the bow of the D[eu]s, at the beginning of Psalm 53.25 Other decorated initials in this manuscript are more calligraphic, but executed in multi-colour combinations of red, green, blue and yellow, as are those in the third volume of the text. As noted above, the Apologia itself is silent on the point of manuscript illumination. In the famous section criticising ornament in the cloister, Bernard fulminates against the distraction of: mira diversarum formarum apparet ubique varietas, ut magis legere libeat in marmoribus, quam in codicibus, totumque diem occupare singula ista mirando, quam in lege Dei meditando. 25

Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40-4, ff. 2v, 9v; see J. Leclercq, “Les peintures de la bible de Morimondo,” Scriptorium 10 (1956): 22–6 (25); but see J-B. Auberger, L’unanimité cistercienne primative: mythe ou réalité? (Achel, Belgium, 1986), 221, where he identifies the king as Solomon.

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Troyes, Médiatheque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40–4, f. 1r © Photo Médiathèque Jacques Chirac, Troyes Champagne métropole

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everywhere so plentiful and astonishing a variety of contradictory forms is seen that one would rather read in the marble than in books, and spend the whole day wondering at every single one of them than in meditating on the law of God.26 Conrad Rudolph and others have suggested that Bernard intended to include manuscripts obliquely in his critique; indeed, to criticise covertly those such as the Bible of Stephen Harding and the Moralia in Job produced at Cîteaux.27 However, this seems unlikely for textual reasons, such as the structure and style of the Apologia itself, the content of then-existing artistic statutes, and Bernard’s own statements about the purpose of the tract in contemporary letters.28 Instead, it seems more probable that the text is what its common title implies—literally, an apology, or defence, of certain new and different Cistercian ideals and practices. Yet in constructing his defence, probably of the ban on sculpture and virtually all painting and the use of gold and precious materials, Bernard sets out a sophisticated philosophical justification for these new positions, based primarily on the arguments that material imagery is unnecessary for spiritual monks, and that the funds expended on such ornamentation could be spent more usefully. Logically, these arguments could be applied or extended to other media, including manuscript illumination. This extraordinary group of large-scale volumes from Clairvaux, probably datable to the decades following the composition of the Apologia or perhaps even contemporaneous with it, do seem to indicate an attempt to apply or extend to manuscript illumination these principles of the elimination of imagery and the avoidance of gold and silver. For the most part, the manuscripts are without figurative imagery, and there is no use of gold or silver. Indeed, a further step in the reduction in the number of colours used, especially in that typically most elaborate first initial, is also apparent. Nevertheless, the presence of other styles, in particular the historiation and perhaps the decorative animals or monsters in Augustine’s Commentaries on the Psalms (if a contemporaneous 26 Apologia xii.29, in Bernard of Clairvaux, Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq, H. Rochais et al. (Rome, 1957-), iii: 106; trans. C. Rudolph, The “Things of Greater Importance”: Bernard of Clairvaux’s Apologia and the Medieval Attitude Toward Art (Philadelphia, 1990), 282. 27 Rudolph, Things of Greater Importance, 159–91; see also J. France, “The Heritage of Saint Bernard in Medieval Art,” in A Companion to Bernard of Clairvaux, ed. B.P. McGuire, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 25 (Leiden, 2011), 305–46 (307–8). 28 See K. Doyle, “Bernard of Clairvaux’s Apologia as a Work of Medieval Rhetoric,” in Image, Memory and Devotion: Liber Amicorum Paul Crossley, ed. Z. Opačić and A. Timmermann (Turnhout, 2011), 95–101, and Doyle, “Re-reading Saint Bernard,” chapters 3 and 6; Reilly, “Bernard of Clairvaux,” 289–90.

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product, as seems likely) raises questions about the process of illumination and the interpretation of the Order’s ideals. One explanation for the varied styles and approaches would be that there was a systematic chronological development for the decoration, placing the figurative imagery relatively early, and progressing from multiple or two colours in initials to monochrome decoration. But given the similarity of the script in these volumes, it is unlikely that palaeographic analysis will allow any further narrowing of the likely production period. Thus, unless further textual evidence is uncovered, this hypothesis would rest on a priori assumptions derived from a knowledge of the requirements of the statute, rather than from the manuscripts themselves.29 Moreover, any attempt at a tracing of stylistic development is further complicated by what is probably the most famous manuscript produced at Clairvaux, normally also placed in this period, namely, the Clairvaux Bible, surviving in five of a possible seven volumes. Its format, script, punctuation, and size are similar to those of the other large-scale manuscripts, although it is even larger, at nearly 500 mm in height (see Appendix).30 Further, three of the volumes have full-page frontispieces, although they take a different form from the geometric patterns of the other large volumes. Two have a simple rectangle drawn around the contents with some elaboration around the edges, while that of the second volume is like a modified canon table, with some micro-architectural details, including carved foliate capitals and a church dome with flanking towers. The initials of the Bible are also somewhat different from most of those in the other large volumes, being executed in the en camaїeu technique, meaning the use of different shades of the same colour. This style is typically taken as the quintessential Cistercian or Clairvallian monochrome style, or, as Jean Porcher put it, “Type le plus pur de l’art du livre cistercien tel qu’il a été défini sous l’inspiration de saint Bernard à l’article 82 des statuts de Cîteaux.”31 Yet this ‘monochrome style’ extends to the use of black, white, and sometimes ­yellow to define and highlight, in addition to shades of the same colour (see Fig. 8.4). In terms of production, these highlights would have required additional time and effort, as the paint would have to be applied in stages.32 As a result, as Cahn commented, “the sumptuous effect of this abstract decoration, 29 30 31 32

See generally Auberger, L’unanimité cistercienne, 219, who comments that there is no change in script during the relevant period; see also Załuska, L’enluminure, who applies this approach to manuscripts from Cîteaux. Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole mss 27-1–27-5. Cited in La bibliotheque, 72. See also R. Gameson, “The Image of the Illuminator,” in Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts, ed. S. Panayotova (London, 2016), 75–82 (80).

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Figure 8.4

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Troyes, Médiatheque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 27–1, f. iv-1r © Photo Médiathèque Jacques Chirac, Troyes Champagne métropole

however, stops well short of the more stringent stipulations enacted by the Cistercians and codified in the Instituta […].”33 In discussing the initials of the Clairvaux Bible, Reilly noted that “no one could deny the time and expense lavished on them.”34 Or, as Stutzmann has articulated it, with these initials “il ne s’agit pas réellement d’une lettre d’une seule couleur, mais d’un jeu de lumière créant un camaїeu’ as expression of an aesthetic of ‘sobriété ostentatoire.”35 Thus, these volumes, usually dated to around the middle of the twelfth century, often by reference to the requirements of the statute (either before, or afterward, depending on the assumptions made),36 complicate any attempt to 33 34 35 36

W. Cahn, Romanesque Bible Illumination (Ithaca, 1982), no. 111, 282. Reilly, “Bernard of Clairvaux,” 297. Stutzmann, “La sobriété ostentatoire,” 69, 86; Stutzmann, “L’écriture,” 207. La bibliothèque, ii: nos A20-2 and A24-5, 72-6; W. Cahn, Romanesque Manuscripts: The Twelfth Century, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in France, 2 vols. (London, 1996), ii: no. 70 (middle of the twelfth century); P. Stirnemann, “Biblia sacra, dite Grande Bible de Clairvaux,” in “Splendeurs de la Cour de Champagne au temps de Chrétien de Troyes,” La Vie en Champagne (June 1999), no. 13 (“un chef-d’oeuvre réalisé dans le style prescrit par l’Order cistercien en 1152,” and therefore dated to 1155–65, after the death of Bernard in 1153); as on Initiale, http://initiale.irht.cnrs.fr/ (accessed 16.8.2018); Genest, “Le siècle de

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develop a clear linear model of stylistic development from these volumes to (or from) those with more colourful frontispieces, but generally with rather less elaborate initials. As a result, these large-format manuscripts, taken as a group, raise questions about the consistency with which a new ideal of a change in content and colour was being implemented—whether different artists or scribes were allowed their own way in respect of the planning and execution of illustration, and whether lay artists might have been present, at least from time to time. Another explanation for the varied styles and content of initials may be that work was not conducted in one centralised room, but in smaller individual areas that allowed different styles to flourish. Father Waddell commented that “the scriptorium was not a common room” for reading and writing, but “rather a room or series of cells strictly reserved for the copyists or scribes.”37 And, as Giles Constable noted, Nicholas’s letter showed that he had his own study or scriptoriolum, where he copied and collated books, identifying it as located between the cell of the novices, the cloister, and the infirmary.38 If so, perhaps the presence of fully painted and en camaїeu initials can be explained as individual choices of scribes or artists working independently on the decoration, or alternatively perhaps principles had not yet been crystallised or formalised. Indeed Jean-François Genest concludes that the similarity of the style of the painted initials in volume 2 of the Enarrationes to other manuscripts from the area indicates that their artist was a layman,39 raising questions of whether he was invited into the Abbey to complete this decoration. The tracing of the application of the ideals of the Apologia is also complicated by another collection of manuscripts that can be placed at Clairvaux before the mid-century. This is a group of nine or ten elaborately decorated glossed books that were apparently made in Chartres and given to Clairvaux by Prince Henry of France, probably sometime between 1146 when he entered saint Bernard,” 10 (1140s, where he observed that this style was created at Clairvaux); “vers 1134” (Saint Bernard et l’art des cisterciens (Dijon, 1953), nos 60–1; Images de la foi: la Bible et les Pères de l’Église dans les manuscrits de Clairvaux et du Mont-Saint-Michel, 27 juillet–27 octobre ([Paris], 2002), 69 (“avant le milieu du xiie siecle”). 37 Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 492; see also A. Lawrence, “Cistercian Decoration: Twelfth-Century Legislation on Illumination and its Interpretation in England,” Reading Medieval Studies, 21 (1995): 31–52 (32), who comments that the institutum suggests that monasteries were expected to have places for writing, separate from the cloister. 38 The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ii: 320–1. 39 Genest, “Le siècle de saint Bernard,” 10; cf. Stirnemann, “Gilbert de la Porrée,” where she posits that a Dijon artist may have worked at Clairvaux, although concluding that Chartres is a more probable location.

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Clairvaux and 1149, when he became bishop of Beauvais.40 Most have a Clairvaux ownership inscription, and are also marked Henricus regis filius.41 They are richly illuminated with gold, and illustrated with various multi-coloured painted figures, leading Neil Stratford to conclude that they could be used “to discard once and for all the hypothesis of a Bernardine iconoclasm,” in noting that they “seem to have been put to general use by the monks.”42 A similar case is presented by another apparent gift to the Abbey, possibly from the count of Champagne, the so-called Bible of Bernard of Clairvaux, because it includes a late twelfth-century notation that it had belonged to him.43 Each book of the Bible has a historiated or decorated initial on a gold ground. Again, although its decoration is clearly outside of the provisions of the statute, as well as any likely extension of the principles of the Apologia, it also seems to have been used by the community (as Cahn noted, the subdivision of the text of the Major Prophets were divided in the sets of readings required for the night Office).44 Thus, the use of these gifted manuscripts, as well as the occasional, but prominent, production of multi-coloured and/or figurative imagery and borders in manuscripts datable at least by a terminus ante quem to the period of Bernard’s abbacy, provide some additional support to the textual evidence that his condemnation of monastic art was not intended to apply to manuscripts. Further, the relatively late terminus provided by the three letters and Prince Henry’s gifts means that the date at which a new approach commenced remains unclear. Therefore, it seems unwise to use the Apologia as any sort of diagnostic tool for the dating of Cistercian manuscripts in this period. As a result, 40 41

On these books and their origins see most recently Stirnemann, “Gilbert de la Porrée.” See generally Genest, “Le siècle de saint Bernard,” 13–14; Stirnemann, “Splendeurs de la Cour de Champagne,” no. 3, La Bibliothèque de l’abbaye de Clairvaux, i: 14-1; e.g., Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 511, f. I verso. This is an autograph signature according to A. Wilmart, “L’Ancienne bibliothèque de Clairvaux,” Mémoires de la Société académique d’agriculture, des sciences, arts et belle-lettres du Département de l’Aube (1917), 127–90 (B32, 131). 42 N. Stratford, “A Romanesque marble altar-frontal in Beaune and some Cîteaux manuscripts,” in N. Stratford, Studies in Burgundian Romanesque Sculpture, 2 vols. (London, 1998), i: 297–313 (308) (first publ. in The Vanishing Past: Studies of Medieval Art, Liturgy and Metrology presented to Christopher Hohler, ed. A. Borg and A. Martindale (1981), 223–9). 43 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole mss 458-1 and 458-2; described in Cahn, Romanesque Manuscripts, ii: no. 71, who speculates that the manuscript may have been made in Troyes and constitute a gift from the count of Champagne to Bernard; see also Genest, “Le siècle de saint Bernard,” 17; Stirnemann, https://www.bibliotheque-virtuelle-clairvaux.com/savoirplus/bible-de-saint-bernard/ (accessed 29.3.2018). 44 Cahn, Romanesque Manuscripts, ii: 89.

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these extraordinary large-scale manuscripts from Clairvaux perhaps illuminate the difficulties of working out or distilling what form the philosophical ideal so persuasively and elegantly articulated by Bernard might take in practice, in application to a different medium.45 For art historians, they may also illustrate the limitations of interpreting image by text, or, at least, by proscriptive texts such as the statute. Arguably the manuscripts produced and used at Clairvaux themselves mirror the beauty of Bernard’s prose in their elegant script, scale and presentation. 45

For a discussion of Bernard’s attitutes to art and in application to other media see Reilly, “Bernard of Clairvaux.”

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Appendix  Large-format manuscripts

MS

Author

Title

Dimensions Opening initial in mm

Multicoloured Frontispiece

4

Cassian and others Prosper of Aquitaine and others

Various works

505 × 380

Monochrome: blue

No

Various works

490 × 340

En camaїeu: red with white and black

No

Bible, vol. 1 Bible, vol. 2 Bible, vol. 3 Bible, vol. 5 Bible, vol. 6 Commentary on the Pentateuch Commentary on Isaiah Commentary on Isaiah Various tracts Works, vol. 1

494 × 340 494 × 340 494 × 340 495 × 340 530 × 360 465 × 228

En camaїeu: blue En camaїeu: red En camaїeu: purple En camaїeu: red En camaїeu: red Monochrome: green

Yes Yes No Yes No Yes

456 × 332

En camaїeu: blue

No

490 × 340

No

480 × 335 480 × 335 485 × 340

En camaїeu: blue with black Monochrome: blue Two-colour: blue with red Monochrome: blue Monochrome: red Historiated: portrait of Augustine, in colours Three colour: red with yellow and green Two colour: yellow with some red Two colour: red with blue Monochrome: green Two colour: yellow with some red Monochrome: red Monochrome: blue (green perhaps added later)

No

5

27-1 27-2 27-3 27-4 27-5 31

35

Strabo and Raban Maur Hervé of Bourg-Dieu Jerome

39 40-1

Ambrose Augustine

40-2 40-3 40-4

Augustine Augustine Augustine

40-5

Augustine

40-6

Augustine

Works, vol 2 Works, vol. 3 Commentary on the Psalms, vol 2 Commentary on the Psalms, vol 3 Works, vol. 4

40-7

Augustine

Contra Julian

460 × 320

40-8 40-9

Augustine Augustine

Letters Works, vol. 6

498 × 342 480 × 320

34

40-10 Augustine and Works, vol. 7 others 42 Haimo of Commentaries Auxerre; Raban Maur

450 × 283 485 × 340

485 × 332 480 × 340

460 × 315 447 × 304

No Yes No No Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No

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Appendix  Large-format manuscripts—(cont.)

MS

Author

Title

Dimensions Opening initial in mm

Multicoloured Frontispiece

43-1

Gregory the Great Gregory the Great Eugippius

Moralia in Job, vol. 3 Moralia in Job, vol. 4 Anthology of the works of Augustine Moralia in Job, vol. 1 Moralia in Job, vol. 2 Gospel Harmony

440 × 315

Monochrome: blue

Yes

440 × 312

Monochrome: blue

Yes

405 × 280

Monochrome: red or blue No

410 × 300

Monochrome: blue

Yes

415 × 305

Two colour: green and yellow Monochrome: blue, multi-coloured canon tables Monochrome: blue

No

Two colour: blue with red, with a multicoloured border around the initial Two-colour: blue with red

Yes

43-2 71

76-1 76-2 84

Gregory the Great Gregory the Great Zachary of Besançon

88

Ps.-Jerome

115

Augustine

256

441

Claudius Mamertus and others Alcuin

646

Augustine

405 × 283

Breviarum in 430 × 300 Psalmos Commentary on 410 × 298 the Psalms, vol. 1

No

No

De statu animae

345 × 250

Commentary on John Various texts

340 × 235

Monochrome: green

Yes

300 × 200

Monochrome: green

Black outlines only

Yes

Dimensions and textual information from the online catalogue, https://por tail.mediatheque.grand-troyes.fr (accessed 31.8.2018). Some of these manuscripts have been dated to the second half of the twelfth century but are included here for reference. Manuscripts in bold indicate that they may be datable by external references.

Chapter 9

The Imagery of Noah’s Ark in the Mosaic Decoration of Monreale Cathedral Mika Takiguchi Monreale Cathedral is a basilica situated on a hill, 310 meters above sea level, overlooking Palermo in Sicily. It was founded by King William ii of Sicily (1154– 89) and building work had begun by 1174.1 The church is decorated with 7500 square meters of mosaic, the largest surviving such ensemble in Italy. William intended the cathedral to become a royal mausoleum, and the scale of construction surpassed the churches of other Norman kings, even competing with the great power of the archbishop of Palermo.2 The mosaics at Monreale expanded upon a comparable cycle in the Cappella Palatina in Palermo, but some aspects of the decoration in Monreale were unique to the cathedral and may thus be read as intended to convey messages specific to this site. The purpose of this essay is to examine the potential messages of one part of the mosaic cycle: the scenes of Noah’s ark. To achieve this, first a brief survey of the social situation around the time of the cathedral’s construction is given, focusing on the relation between the popes, archbishops and Norman kings. Secondly, previous studies on the mosaic decoration are examined. Thirdly, comparisons with late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century manuscripts are used to help to explain the remarkable iconography. Monreale Cathedral was first founded as a Benedictine monastery. A papal bull in 1174 refers to the monastery as being under construction, and states that it is exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, and only subordinate to the papacy. However, the king retained the right to approve the choice of the abbot. After its foundation, the pope constituted the monastery as a metropolitan see and it became a cathedral in 1183. Thus the abbot of the monastery was simultaneously an archbishop. Scholars generally agree that the intention of the king 1 M. Kauffmann and C.D. Sheppard, “Monreale Cathedral,” Grove Art Online https://doi .org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T059193 (accessed 21.2.19). 2 Ibid.; T. Dittelbach, Rex Imago Christi. Der Dom von Monreale. Bildsprachen und Zeremoniell in Mosaikkunst und Architektur (Wiesbaden, 2003). This is a massive and painstaking work, accompanied by a bibliography that contains more than 300 books and articles. This book will be the basis of any future studies of the cathedral.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_011

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was to make a new bishopric in Monreale, so as to gain independence from Palermo cathedral.3 The basilica is 102 meters long and 40 meters wide. The main apse and the side apses are vaulted, while the nave and the aisles are covered by a timber roof. The mosaic program begins in the nave with a Genesis cycle. The story commences in the upper register of the east end on the southern wall and proceeds towards the west, then continues from the west to the east of the northern wall. The narrative then resumes on the lower register of the same walls, again reading from the east to the west and back again. Another cycle that depicts the life of Christ unfolds in the aisles, the crossing and the transepts. In the two side apses and chapels the lives of Peter and Paul are represented, including their martyrdom. On the piers of the crossing are two scenes: Christ crowning King William ii, and William offering the church to its patron, the Virgin. The Normans settled in southern Italy at the beginning of the eleventh century. Their rulers sometimes allied with the popes and sometimes rebelled against them, and the papal attitude towards them changed accordingly.4 Having first tried to suppress the Normans, they then made alliances with them when they needed to utilize their military power. In times of conflict, the papacy raised objections to the legitimacy of the Norman kings. Thus when King Roger ii, the grandfather of William ii, endeavored to found a new bishopric in Cefalù, intending to construct a cathedral that would serve as a royal mausoleum, the plan was opposed by the pope. On Roger’s death in 1154, his body was buried in Palermo cathedral, because Cefalù had not yet been consecrated by the pope. The death of William ii’s brother in 1172 reopened the question of where the royal family should be buried. The king tried to settle the long dispute over the royal burial by constructing a new cathedral in Monreale.5 Eve Borsook scrutinized the relationship between William ii and the archbishop of Palermo.6 William succeeded to the throne in 1166, although he was then a small child. Two advisers were appointed for the young king, Matthew of Ajello and Walter Ophamil. The latter was deacon of Agrigento and became archbishop of Palermo in 1168 despite the objection of the king’s mother,

3 Kauffmann and Sheppard, “Monreale Cathedral.” 4 J. Huré, Histoire de la Sicile (Paris, 1957); D. Matthew, The Norman Kingdom of Sicily (Cambridge, 1992), 197–206. 5 Matthew, The Norman Kingdom, 203. 6 E. Borsook, Messages in Mosaic: the Royal Programmes of Norman Sicily (1130–1187) (Oxford, 1990), 51–2.

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whereafter the two advisers were often in conflict.7 Walter exercised power as the archbishop for over twenty years, until his death in 1191. However, it was Matthew, the other royal adviser, who planned the foundation of Monreale Cathedral. Scheming against Walter, his intention was to check the archbishop’s power and establish the dominance of Monreale over Palermo. After its construction, Monreale was duly approved as a new bishopric by the pope, as Matthew intended. Thus the two bishoprics, Monreale and Palermo, were closely inter-linked, and in competition with each other. The iconography of the mosaics at Monreale relates closely to that of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo.8 Since Monreale Cathedral was far larger than the Cappella Palatina, the palatine program was modified so that it would fit the cathedral. In Monreale, the style of the mosaics, which were probably substantially completed in the 1180s, as well as the program as a whole, display unity and consistency, so we can assume that the project was executed in a relatively short period of time as a single campaign, without being interrupted.9 The result was a spectacular golden display that presented stories from biblical history and celebrated William ii. Let us now turn to the cycle of Noah in the nave of Monreale. This consists of five scenes on the lower register of the south wall: the construction of the Ark, getting the animals on board, the flood, coming to rest on the mountain 7 See L.J.A. Leowenthal, “For the biography of Walter Ophamil, archbishop of Palermo,” The English Historical Review 87 (1972): 75–82. 8 E. Kitzinger, “The Mosaics of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo. An Essay on the Choice and Arrangement of Subjects,” The Art Bulletin 31 (1949): 269–92; O. Demus, The Mosaics of Norman Sicily (London, 1949); F. Di Pietro, La Cappella Palatina di Palermo. I Mosaici (Milan, 1954); I. Beck, “The First Mosaics of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo,” Byzantion 40 (1970): 119–64; N. Nercessian, “The Cappella Palatina of Roger ii: The Relationship of Its Imagery to Its Political Function” (unpublished PhD dissertation, ucla, 1981), 22–45; S. Ćurčić, “Some Palatine Aspects of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987): 125–44; Borsook, Messages in Mosaic; G. Schiro, Die Palatinische Kapelle (Palermo, 1992); E. Kitzinger, I Mosaici del Periodo Normanno in Scilia. La Cappella Palatina di Palermo. I Mosaici delle Navate (Palermo, 1993); W. Tronzo, The Cultures of His Kingdom. Roger ii and the Cappella Palatina in Palermo (Princeton, 1997); B. Brenk, ed., La Cappella Palatina a Palermo (Modena, 2010). 9 Kauffmann and Sheppard, “Monreale Cathedral”; Dittelbach, Rex Imago Christi, 38–9. There was no written record giving evidence about the date of the completion of the cathedral. Demus proposed that the construction started in 1185 after the Normans captured Thessaloniki. He thought that mosaicists were brought from Thessaloniki, and the decoration was executed by them. Kitzinger proposed an earlier date for construction from 1170 to 1180. William ii married an English princess in 1177. Kitzinger thought that the inclusion of an English saint, Thomas Becket, in the mosaic decoration suggested a certain link between England and Norman Sicily.

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top, and the rainbow of the covenant. In the central scene, the architecture of the arcade echoes the form of the waves, and emphasizes the roaring waters below the Ark. Borsook highlighted differences between the Old Testament narrative cycles in Monreale and those in the Cappella Palatina in Palermo.10 Both start and end with the same scenes, the creation and Jacob wrestling with the angel respectively, but while the cycle in the Palatine chapel consists of thirty-two scenes in total, that at Monreale has forty-two. The number of scenes increased in Monreale, not because new themes were introduced, but because some of the selected subjects were expanded upon and depicted in more detail. For example, whereas Monreale’s Noah cycle consists of five scenes, as noted above, that at Palermo has only three: the construction of the Ark, the flood, and the descent from the Ark with the rainbow of the covenant. Moreover, as James d’Emilio has observed, although the scenes on the north wall at Monreale lead the viewer’s eye toward the east and the apse, those on the south wall adopt symmetrical compositions so that they encourage the viewer to stop.11 Why, then, did the producer try to hold viewer’s eye on a specific point, and place so much emphasis on Noah’s Ark? Borsook explained the emphasis on Noah’s story at Monreale on the grounds that, since the Church Fathers regarded the Ark as a prefiguration of the Virgin, enhancing the cycle of Noah stressed the role of the Virgin to whom the ­cathedral was dedicated.12 The Virgin’s image appeared repeatedly along the cathedral’s main axis; in the lunette above the western door, on the triumphal arch, and in the apse. In such a reading, the Virgin was the Ark containing the New Testament, that is Christ, and by extension, the church dedicated to her might become an ark containing the Eucharist. I think it is possible to develop this reading further. When we compare the two cycles in Palermo and Monreale, we realize that the form of their Arks is strikingly different. In Palermo, the Ark is floating on the water, and moving towards the west, because the people on board are all facing to the west (Fig. 9.1). That at Monreale, on the other hand, floats on the water, but does not seem to be moving in a particular direction (Fig. 9.2). Moreover, whilst the lower part of the Ark is similar to that in Palermo, showing a side view and a vessel made of wood, the upper part is jarringly different. Instead of the three-dimensional shelter suggested at Palermo, only one side of the Monreale vessel is shown, and the relationship between the upper 10 Borsook, Messages in Mosaic, 61–3. 11 J. D’Emilio, “Looking Eastward: The Story of Noe at Monreale Cathedral,” in Image and Belief, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 1999), 135–50. 12 Borsook, Messages in Mosaic, 57, 62.

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Figure 9.1 Noah’s Ark, The Palatine Chapel, Palermo Photo: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra

and lower sections is extremely awkward, making it implausible as a real ship. In addition, the colour suggests that the hull is made of wood, but its body seems to be made of stone panels. A ship made of stone is, of course, impossible because it cannot float. We should ask, then, why the designer devised such a peculiar form of the Ark, departing from the existing model in Palermo. Contemporary images of Noah’s Ark in manuscripts provide some parallels for the unusual treatment of the Ark at Monreale, together with insights into interpretations of the biblical story.13 The regular geometric shape of the Monreale Ark finds a precursor in Beatus manuscripts, where the Ark is subdivided into sections for different types of animals.14 In addition, working in Paris before his death in 1141, Hugh of Saint Victor described a complex diagram of Noah’s Ark in which the Ark was conceived as a series of geometric shapes that provided a framework for a huge amount of information, including a ­genealogy 13

14

I am very grateful to Dr Laura Cleaver who drew my attention to these manuscripts. The study by Flatman compares evidence for medieval ships The and shipbuilding from archaeological sources with contemporary depictions in manuscripts. J. Flatman, The illuminated ark: interrogating evidence from manuscript illuminations and archaeological remains for medieval vessels (Oxford, 2007). For example, London, BL Add. MS 11695, f. 79v.

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Figure 9.2 Noah’s Ark, Monreale Cathedral Photo: Rabe!

of Christ.15 In the process, Hugh equated the Ark with the church, although by this he meant the followers of Christ, rather than the physical buildings constructed for worship.16 Almost exactly contemporary with the foundation of Monreale, Peter Comestor’s interpretation of the Ark in Historia Scholastica developed the biblical instruction that the Ark should contain little rooms (mansiunculae), explaining that Noah made five chambers, for dung, stores, savage animals, gentle creatures (presumably derived from the biblical distinction between clean and unclean animals), and men and birds.17 Peter Comestor’s account was adapted by Peter of Poitiers for his Compendium historiae in Genealogia Christi and in some (though not all) copies of both texts ­diagrams rendered the Ark as a regular geometric shape, with possible arrangements of the chambers described in Comestor’s text.18 15

16 17 18

Hugh of St Victor, “A Little Book About Constructing Noah’s Ark,” trans. J. Weiss in The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, ed. M. Carruthers and J.M. Ziolkowski (Philadelphia, 2002), 32–40; C. Rudolph, First, I Find the Center Point: Reading the text of Hugh of Saint Victor’s The Mystic Ark (Philadelphia, 2004). Hugh of St Victor, “A Little Book,” 49. See Petrus Comestor, Scholastica historia. Liber Genesis, cccm (Turnhout, 2007), 63; M.J. Clark, The Making of the Historia scholastica, 1150–1200 (Toronto, 2015), esp. 145–51. See L. Cleaver, “From Codex to Roll: Illustrating History in the Anglo-Norman World in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” Anglo-Norman Studies 36 (2013), 74–5.

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Whilst most visual treatments of the Ark did not include this level of interpretative detail, other manuscripts provide parallels of Arks that evoke buildings, and this became increasingly popular in the thirteenth century. In the mid-thirteenth century the Bibles moralisées offered a lavish visual interpretation of scripture for a royal audience. In the Bible moralisée in the Bodleian Library (MS Bodley 270b, f. 9v), the Ark is juxtaposed with a church-like architecture in which Christ, the Virgin and the apostles reside (the first and the second roundels on the right) (Fig. 9.3).19 The text explains that Noah signifies Christ, Noah’s wife represents the Virgin Mary, and Noah’s family stand for the apostles, through whom the church is liberated from the waves of its time.20 The architectural frame seems to represent the Heavenly City, enclosing the holy figures. The construction of the Ark is explicitly equated with the eternal church on the lower left, whilst on the lower right the birds sent out by Noah are associated with access to the earthly church. The raven’s failure to return to the Ark is likened to those who persist in sin and do not return to the church through penitence.21 After the flood, the Ark came aground on the top of a mountain, providing a potential parallel for the cathedral built on the mountain at Monreale. In the Oxford Bible moralisée the image of the Ark at this point (f. 10r) resembles a building on a hill (Fig. 9.4). The timber roof of the cathedral at Monreale has been replaced, however the original roof would have been reminiscent of the wooden body of a ship. Naos is a Greek word which means the nave of a church, but its original meaning was a ship and therefore it is natural to regard the nave as a ship. In other words, the basilica itself symbolically represents the Ark 19

20 21

A. de Laborde, La Bible moralisée illustrée, conservée à Oxford, Paris, et Londres, 5 vols. (Paris, 1911–27); J. Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, 2 vols. (University Park, PA, 2000), ii; A. Rudloff Stanton, The Queen Mary Psalter: A Study of Affect and Audience (Philadelphia, 2001), passim; A. Bennett, “Mary Magdalen’s Seven Deadly Sins in a Thirteenthcentury Liège Psalter-hours,” in Insights and Interpretations: Studies in Celebrations of the Eighty-Fifth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2002), 26; G.B. Guest, “Picturing Women in the First Bible moralisée,” in Insights and Interpretations, 106; G. Croenen, Patrons, Authors and Workshops: Books and Book Production in Paris Around 1400 (Louvain, 2006), 209; B. Hellemans, “Tangible Words. Some Reflections on the Notion of Presence in Gothic Art,” in Iconoclasm and Iconoclash: Struggle for Religious Identity, ed. W.J. van Asselt et al. (Leiden, 2007), 236; J. Folda, “The Use of Çintamani as Ornament: A Case Study in the Afterlife of Forms,” in Byzantine Images and their Afterlives: Essays in Honor of Annemarie Weyl Carr, ed. L. Jones (Farnham, 2014), 197; R. Mills, Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages (Chicago, 2014), passim; “MS 270b,” Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, LUNA Web. (accessed 19.8.2016). Noe significat Christum, uxor eius beatam Mariam, familia Noe apostolos Christi per sanctam ecclesiam a fluctibus huius seculi liberatos. Non revertitur ad archam quin persistens in peccato non redit per penitenciam.

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Figure 9.3 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 270b, f. 9v © The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford

which survived the flood and drifted ashore on the mountain. When we stand on the hill and look down from there, we overlook the town of Palermo. The Mediterranean sea is far away. Even if a huge tidal wave from the sea washed

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Figure 9.4 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 270b, f. 10r © The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford

away the town of Palermo, and the whole town sank under the water, Monreale Cathedral would remain on the mountain. It would survive the flood just as Noah’s Ark did. As the rainbow of God blessed Noah’s family, the king’s family would be blessed as well. As the Bible moralisée would later record: that God preserved Noah signified all the good Christians who persevere in faith and are saved by God from all danger.22 That such a reading might have had particular resonance in Monreale, is suggested by evidence of floods in Sicily in the twelfth century.23 A Roman archaeological site inland at Piazza Armerina has floor mosaics that once decorated the villa of the Roman emperor.24 They are in an excellent state of preservation despite the long lapse of time. The reason is said to be that heaps of mud brought by a twelfth-century flood thickly covered and protected them 22 23 24

Noe quem Deus eripuit de tanto periculo significat omnes bonos Christianos qui firma fide perseverant quos Deus ab omnibus periculis liberat propter fidei sue firmitatem. G. Delmonaco et al., “Slope Dynamics Acting on Villa del Casale (Piazza Armerina, Sicily),” in Landslides: Evaluation and Stabilization, ed. W.A. Lacerda et al. (London, 2004), 357. A. Carandini et al., The villa of Piazza Armerina. The Image of a Roman Aristocrat at the Time of Constantine (Palermo, 1982); R.J.A. Wilson, Piazza Armerina (London, 1983).

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from natural disasters such as rain and storms as well as man-made disasters such as burglary or war. Massive floods in the island would have threatened the people in Sicily, and we could infer the advantage of the location of Monreale. Even if the seaside town of Palermo was swallowed by water, the cathedral on the mountain would survive. In addition to its association with the church, the Ark could carry additional associations for medieval viewers. Returning to Hugh of St Victor’s text, amongst the complex imagery in the diagram of Noah’s Ark was a genealogy from Adam to Christ, and in some copies of Peter of Poitiers’ diagram Noah was represented as one of the major divisions of history. In the earliest copies of Peter of Poitiers’ diagram Noah was usually shown cultivating vines, but over time, the Ark became more popular. In some of these cases, the imagery in the diagrams resonated with Hugh of St Victor’s claim that the column raised up in the middle of the Ark signified the Tree of Life of paradise.25 For example, a thirteenth-century copy London, British Library Cotton Ch. Roll xiv.12, begins with the roundel of Adam and Eve in front of God and a tree in paradise. The chain of roundels connected with lines continue further down to form the genealogy.26 It seems as if the Tree of Life in paradise grows taller and taller to form the family tree of Christ. This is interpreted to mean that the Ark made by the Tree of Life would save the lives of Noah and his family and the genealogical tree would grow further, without being interrupted until the advent of Christ. According to Hugh’s description, twelve ladders ascend from the four corners of the Ark. The letters written on one of the ladders read as follows: “Here ascend those who fled from the heat of vice to the Tree of Life.”27 The depiction can be read as a promise that the Ark is destined to go back to its origin, to paradise. Hugh describes the Ark as enclosed by the circle which represents the orbit of the earth, and the arc of the circle that expands to the east bow of the Ark is paradise.28 It is thus reasonable to assume that the Ark would travel to paradise and would be transformed to “the city above” as Hugh put it.29 In addition to the writings of theologians, the Ark also appeared in cycles of Old Testament imagery in Psalters made for members of the English and French royal families from the late twelfth century, where the Ark is again 25 26 27 28 29

Hugh of St Victor, “A Little Book,” 47. Cleaver, “From Codex to Roll,” 70, Fig. 1; L. Cleaver, “Past, Present and Future for Thirteenth-Century Wales: Two Diagrams in British Library, Cotton Roll xiv.12,” Electronic British Library Journal (2013). Hugh of St Victor, “A Little Book,” 59. Hugh of St Victor, “A Little Book,” 67. Hugh of St Victor, “A Little Book,” 70.

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r­ epresented as a stone building divided into compartments on a wooden hull. These included the Leiden Psalter, made for Geoffrey Plantagenet (Leiden, University Library, b.p.l. 76A), the Great Canterbury Psalter (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 8846), and the Psalter of Blanche of Castile (Paris, Bibliothèque de la Arsenal MS 1186) where on f. 13v two roundels represent Noah’s Ark above and the sacrifice of Isaac below (Fig. 9.5).30 How can we read the connection between Noah and Isaac? What message does the Ark combined with Abraham connote? Again the description of the Ark by Hugh provides us with a key to read the illumination, as he claims the Ark is comparable to the lap of Abraham.31 The arc of the Ark’s bottom resembles a little the cloth which Abraham gently holds on his lap, carrying the souls of the dead. Meanwhile, the sacrifice of Isaac manifests solid faith in God, comparable to that of Christian martyrs who gave their lives because of their faith. Their souls are received on the lap of Abraham in paradise. We could thus infer that the specific combination may be intended to superimpose the two parallel scenes (Noah’s Ark and Abraham) and an image of paradise where Abraham is seated with the souls of the good. Finally, let us turn back to the Bible moralisée in the Bodleian Library. During the flood, Noah sent out the raven and the dove one after another to find dry land. The text next to the roundel compares the raven with a sinful man who is expelled from the Ark. On the other hand, the dove is interpreted to represent a man without sin who remains on board. Noah’s Ark is thus comparable with the Last Judgement when all mankind are sifted: sinners are damned and only those who, without sin, pass through the Judgement and remain on board will be brought to paradise. We have observed several manuscripts in which diverse meanings are overlaid on the depiction of the Ark: the church, the Heavenly City, the Tree of Life, Abraham’s bosom and the Judgement. In this context, another possible parallel for the form of the Ark in the mosaic at Monreale is indicated somewhere 30

31

R. Mellinkoff, The Horned Moses in Medieval Art and Thought (Berkeley, 1970), 68; Anthony Cutler, “The Disputa Plate in the J. Paul Getty Museum and Its Cinquecento Context,” The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 18 (1990): 22; M.H. Caviness, “Anchoress, Abbess and Queen: Women Patrons of the Arts in the Twelfth Century,” in The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. J. Hall McCash (Georgia, 1996), 136; J. Higgitt, The Murthly Hours: Devotion, Literacy and Luxury in Paris, England and the Gaelic West (London, 2000), 270; J. Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, i: 52; D. Pearsall, Gothic Europe 1200–1450 (London, 2001), 141; T. Chapman Hamilton, “Queenship and Kinship in the French Bible Moralisée: The Example of Blanche of Castile and Vienna önb 2554,” in Capetian Women, ed. K. Nolan (New York, 2003), 181; A. Sand, Vision, Devotion, and Self-Representation in Late Medieval Art (Cambridge, 2014), 142–3. Hugh of St Victor, “A Little Book,” 67.

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Figure 9.5 Paris, Bibliothèque de la Arsenal MS 1186, f. 13v © Bibliothèque nationale de France

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Figure 9.6 Marble inlaid tombstone, Soprintendenza di Palermo Photo: G. Dallorto

rather unexpected: a tombstone in the state Museum in Palermo (Fig. 9.6).32 It was made in 1148, as is found in the inscription. The construction of Monreale Cathedral started some thirty years later and it may be possible that the mosaic producer in Monreale actually saw this tombstone. It contains the cross in the center and four panels with Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic inscriptions. The tombstone combines a trapezium and rectangles, dividing the surface into several sections. The similarity with the shape of the Ark in Monreale is quite obvious. However, it is rather odd to refer to something totally unrelated to the Ark. Why then does the tombstone resemble the Ark? William II buried his mother in Monreale and brought the sarcophagi of his father and grandfather to the cathedral as well. From this fact we may infer an additional reason for the peculiar depiction of the Ark. From the beginning, the king may have intended to build a new royal mausoleum here and his 32

N. Bucaria et al., ed., Ebrei e Sicilia, (Palermo, 2002), 169; R. La Duca, ed., L’Età Normanna e Sveva in Sicilia (Palermo, 1994), 146–7; U. Scerrato, “Arte Islamica in Italia,” in Gli Arabi in Italia: cultura, contatti e tradizioni, ed. F. Gabrieli et al. (Milan, 1979), 302, Fig. 173; N.G. Leone et al., Siculo-Norman Art: Islamic Culture in Medieval Sicily (Vienna, 2004), 78, 97; D. Booms and P. Higgs, Sicily: Culture and Conquest (London, 2016), 220–6, Fig. 180.

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i­ntention was to bring the sarcophagi of his family from their former burial site, once the cathedral was completed. Noah’s family who survived the flood in the tomb-like Ark may allude to the royal family in sarcophagi. The royal family resting in peace in their tombs would eventually be brought to the cathedral on the mountain. The odd representation of the Ark which imitates the tombstone may thus reflect the king’s intention. Finally, let us go back to the cloister of Monreale Cathedral. The columns of the cloister which is situated next to the basilica are inlaid with colourful tesserae in red, turquoise blue, black and gold. The black tesserae seem too strong at first glance, but when the gold is set next to the black, the gold stands out brightly and vividly in the Sicilian sunlight. When one looks at those inlaid columns from a distance, it seems as if the column is not made of a mass of stone, but is created from an accumulation of floating particles of bright light. The turquoise blue is also effective because it seems as if the blue sky behind the columns is visible through the spaces between the particles. Obviously the column does not have any holes or cracks and what we see is not the sky through the holes but the blue tesserae inlaid on the surface of the column. The inlaid columns and plain columns are placed alternately to support the roof of the cloister. Both of them are made of stone, but the inlaid ones seem to represent heavenly columns. They may be comparable to the rainbow that blessed Noah’s family after the flood. God told Noah and his sons, “be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth.” This covenant of God may be regarded as a promise for the prosperity of William’s dynasty.

Chapter 10

Some Observations on the Artists of the Leiden Psalter (Leiden, University Library MS b.p.l. 76A) and Their Working Practices Emma Luker In view of how few lavishly decorated twelfth-century English Psalters survive, it is surprising that the images of the Leiden Psalter have not been the subject of greater scholarly attention.1 Most references to the manuscript are primarily concerned with an inscription added to the Beatus page (f. 30v) claiming it was the Psalter King Louis ix of France (b. 1214, d. 1270, canonised 1297) learned from in his infancy.2 That the extensive illumination has been overlooked may in part be owing to the style of its images being dismissed by Thomas Boase as “coarse and undistinguished” and by Margaret Rickert as “not very good;” however, as Nigel Morgan rightly states, “any examination of the original manuscript soon dispels” such judgements.3 This paper seeks to move beyond issues of quality to define the hands at work in the Leiden Psalter and consider what their contribution to the Leiden Psalter and other manuscripts reveals about working practices in manuscript illumination in England at the turn of the twelfth to the thirteenth century. The Leiden Psalter was probably made for Geoffrey Plantagenet (b. 1151/2, d. 1212), an illegitimate son of Henry ii (b. 1133, d. 1189), in the mid to late 1180s.4 It comprises 185 folios, each measuring approximately 242 × 175 mm. It is made up of twenty-three quires of varying length, followed by a single folio probably added in the late twelfth century: 16, 28, 312, 44, 5–198, 20-110, 228, 236, +1. The manuscript begins with a calendar (ff. 1–6v) containing painted and gilded 1 For detailed discussion of the Leiden Psalter’s patronage and place of production see E. Luker, “The Leiden Psalter (Leiden, University Library MS B.P.L. 76A): Patronage, Production and Ownership” (unpublished PhD dissertation, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 2016). 2 This inscription is repeated with slightly different wording at the end of the manuscript on f. 185r. 3 T.S.R. Boase, English Art, 1100–1216 (Oxford, 1953), 280–1; M. Rickert, Painting in Britain: The Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1965), 232; N.J. Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts 1190–1250, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 4, 2 vols. (London, 1982–8), i: no. 14. 4 For detailed discussion of the Leiden Psalter’s patronage and date of production see Luker, “The Leiden Psalter.”

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_012

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i­mages of the labours of the months and the signs of the zodiac. This is followed by a prefatory cycle (ff. 7r–29r) of painted and gilded miniatures depicting Old and New Testament subjects. The miniatures occur on only one side of the parchment, resulting in their appearing as a series of double-page openings alternating with double-page blank openings. The Psalm text (ff. 30v–167r) opens with a full-page painted and gilded initial ‘B’ (f. 30v) and contains 173 painted and gilded smaller decorated initials. Nine of these are significantly larger than the rest and appear at the Psalter’s main liturgical divisions: Psalms 26, 38, 51, 52, 68, 80, 97, 101, and 109. A further twenty-three painted and gilded decorated initials are found amongst the canticles (ff. 167r–179r), litany of saints (ff. 179v–181r), petitions (ff. 181r–182r), prayers (ff. 182r and 182v), and collects (ff. 182v–184r) that follow the Psalm text. The manuscript ends with instructions for dividing the Psalms into groups of twenty-five for six days of the week (excluding Sunday), with accompanying collects to be said after each group (ff. 184r–185r). Morgan describes the Leiden Psalter’s style as “painterly,” citing the faces as being “heavily modelled using brown shading rather than the more Byzantine technique involving grey and green” and the figure poses as “in some cases lively, a feature enhanced by the fluid drapery systems of sweeping troughed folds, but in some compositions elements of stiffness appear.”5 These are all fair observations, and there is little doubt that the style of the Leiden Psalter falls somewhere between the stylised, pattern-rich forms so often described as typifying the work of the Romanesque period in the twelfth century, and the more natural, flowing expressiveness of the Gothic period that followed in the thirteenth. However, in order to understand how the Leiden Psalter’s images might have been made it is necessary to probe deeper and consider more closely the hands at work in the manuscript. 1

The Hands

The Leiden Psalter is the work of two different artists, whom I shall call artist A and artist B. Since my study of hands began with considering the images in the prefatory cycle, I have termed the artist whose work appears first in this section of the manuscript artist A, and the one whose work appears second, artist B. However, the hand of artist B actually appears first in the manuscript, since it is responsible for the images in the calendar, and it is also the more prolific in the book as a whole. The hand of artist A is evident in the prefatory cycle (ff. 7r, 5 Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, i: no. 14.

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8v, 15r, 16v, 25r, 26v, 27r, 28v and 29r), and the Beatus page (f. 30v). The hand of artist B is found in the calendar (ff. 1r–6v), the prefatory cycle (ff. 9r, 10v, 11r, 12v, 13r, 14v, 17r, 18v, 19r, 20v, 21r, 22v, 23r and 24v), and the decorated initials (Fig. 10.1). My differentiation of the two hands in the Leiden Psalter is based principally on the treatment of human faces. I have not undertaken a detailed study of animal, grotesque and foliage forms. Very few human faces survive in the calendar images, the labours of the months having been cut down at some stage when the manuscript was rebound. Therefore the attribution of the images in the calendar to artist B is based on a frustratingly small sample of heads and an assumption that the same person was responsible for all the images in this part of the manuscript. Similarly, although there are far more human faces present in the decorated initials, my attribution of all the initials to artist B is based on the belief that, excepting the Beatus initial, they are the work of one hand. Given the seamless appearance of initials that feature human faces alongside various combinations of animals, grotesques and foliage, and the fact that the animals, grotesques and foliage present in such initials appear to be by the same hand responsible for like elements in initials where no human is present, my assumption seems tenable, but without further examination cannot be guaranteed. The general approach of both artists to full-page miniatures is remarkably close (Figs 10.2–10.3). Each balances the composition across registers of the image in a similar way, while also achieving a comparable harmony between the upper and lower registers on the same page. The images are to the same scale and their renderings of the human form are nearly identical. It is likely that these similarities arise from a desire to create a homogenous image cycle and from a close working relationship, in which one artist might have trained

Figure 10.1

Quire diagram of the prefatory cycle of the Leiden Psalter

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Figure 10.2

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The Leiden Psalter, Leiden University Library MS B.P.L. 76a, f. 8v (artist A) By permission of Leiden University Libraries

the other. However, the possibility that one or other artist may have had sole responsibility for the prefatory cycle’s underdrawings merits further deliberation. In view of the following discussion, this is most likely to be artist A.

Some Observations on the Artists of the Leiden Psalter

Figure 10.3

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The Leiden Psalter, Leiden University Library MS B.P.L. 76a, f. 13r (artist B) By permission of Leiden University Libraries

Despite clear similarities, the two hands can be distinguished by differences in their treatment of human faces (Fig. 10.4). The physiognomies of artist A are characterised by straight, often quite long, noses with a wide bridge, although

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Figure 10.4

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The Leiden Psalter, Leiden University Library MS B.P.L. 76a, details of heads by artist A (left, ff. 27r, 8v, 26v, 16v) and artist B (right, ff. 9r, 17r, 20v, 10v) By permission of Leiden University Libraries

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some appear straighter than others. In some cases the vertical line of the nasal bridge of faces shown in three-quarter profile—the most common form in the manuscript—falls so steeply as to create a virtual right-angle with the brow line. This is seen, for example, in the face of God in the image of his reprimand of Adam and Eve (f. 8v; Fig. 10.4c) and in the faces of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea in the image of Christ’s Entombment (f. 25r). This sometimes gives the impression of the nose being flattened into the face. Noses by artist A also delineate with a black line the curve of the nasal alae (the flaring cartilaginous expansions forming the outer sides of the nostrils). By contrast the noses of figures by artist B are slightly smaller. They have a comparatively slender bridge and protrude further from the face because the vertical line of the bridge follows a less steep gradient. The tip of the nose is often sharp and appears to point downwards owing to the inverted ‘v’ characteristically forming the nose’s baseline. See, for example, the nose of the Virgin in the Adoration of the Magi (f. 17r; Fig. 10.4d), or the monk in the initial to Psalm 118 verse 145 (f. 148v). Moreover, noses by artist B rarely use a black line to define the alae, but rely instead on facial modelling, usually employing a dab of white of varying intensity to suggest them. The treatment of mouths is also different between the two hands. Artist A employs a short horizontal black line, usually straight but sometimes curving downward at either end, which in many cases has a dab of red pigment applied to the centre and white highlights above and below. This is seen, for example, in the face of Adam in the image of the Fall (f. 8v) and the stooping figure of Mary in the centre of the image of the Three Marys at the Tomb (f. 26v; Fig.  10.4e). Artist B similarly uses a short horizontal black line, also either straight or curving down at each end, but the white highlight on the upper lip is more distinct, frequently taking a form resembling a sharp-peaked letter ‘m’, any red pigment present appearing under each of its arches. This is seen, for example, in the face of John the Baptist in the image of the Baptism of Christ (f. 20v; Fig. 10.4f) and in the face of the crowned figure in the initial to Psalm 5 (f. 33r). Another notable feature of the work of artist B is the handling of the area beneath the mouth. In most cases it consists of a small upward-curving black line directly above a small downward-curving black line, the two meeting in the middle at their respective apexes. This configuration creates four separate spaces, in each of which is frequently found a dab of white, the space at the top tending to have a dash of white and the other three sections a dot. This is witnessed, for example, in the face of Noah when he is instructed to build the ark (f. 10v; Fig. 10.4h) and the woman in the initial to Psalm 89 (f. 114v). Artist A usually uses only one black line, generally much straighter, to mark the ­division

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between the base of the mouth and the chin, and although he also often applies white highlights to the area, they are not so uniform in appearance and do not create the same distinct diamond pattern. Consider, for example, the angel in the Annunciation to the Shepherds (f. 16v; Fig. 10.4g). Artist B also has a tendency to include a white dot above a red dot on his figures’ cheeks. Examples of this are seen in the face of the angel in the Expulsion (f. 9r) and the face of Christ in the initial to Psalm 8 (f. 35v). This characteristic is not observed in the work of artist A. Not all of these peculiarities are necessarily observed with uniform precision in every face attributable to either artist, but the presence of one or more of them usually enables clear differentiation.6 In addition to their varying treatment of certain facial features, the hands of artists A and B can sometimes be distinguished by their different use of colour. For example, the miniatures across the double-page opening comprising images of Adam and Eve (ff. 8v and 9r), the page on the left by artist A and that on the right by artist B, exhibit a subtle difference in the tone of skin. The bodies of Adam and Eve by artist A are pinker than those by artist B. Artist B’s figures have a browner appearance and exhibit a more pronounced contrast between the light and dark areas of the skin by way of stronger white highlights and a darker ochre/brown pigment for shading. However, such differences in skin tone are less discernible in the naked figures of Christ represented across the double-page opening depicting Christ before Pilate, the Flagellation, and the Way of the Cross (f. 24v) by artist B, and the Deposition and Entombment (f. 25r) by artist A. Similarly, artist A makes extensive use of a deep, rich blue on ff. 25r, 26v, 27r, 28v, 29r, and 30v, whose vibrancy dominates the pages in question. This blue is less evident in the work of artist B but it is also largely absent from other miniatures attributable to artist A. Since the miniatures with this striking blue occur predominantly in quire 4, it seems more likely that it is somehow indicative of the way, or order, in which the prefatory cycle images were produced, rather than being a particular characteristic of artist A’s work. In this regard it is worth noting that a bright red appears as the background colour to some of 6 The most consistent difference between the two hands is their treatment of noses, especially whether or not the alae are delineated in black. However even this is not without exception. The initials to Psalms 4 (f. 32v), 62 (f. 85r), 65 (f. 87r), 68 (f. 90v), 105 (f. 129r), 122 (f. 151r), and 138 (f. 158r) are almost certainly the work of artist B, despite each containing human or ­human-like faces where the outline of the nasal alae is defined in black. Almost all these anomalous faces are amongst the few in the manuscript that are angled upwards and/or have an open mouth, stretching the features in a way not encountered in other faces. Therefore the uncharacteristic definition of the alae on these occasions might be explained by a desire for clarity of form.

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the initials in quires 18, 19, and 23. This is seen, for example, in Psalms 110 (f. 136v) and 118 verse 89 (f. 145v). It is not found in the same capacity anywhere else. 2

Working Practices

The nature of the collaboration between artists A and B is intriguing.7 The work of artist A, with the exception of the Beatus page, is confined to the prefatory cycle, suggesting he was brought in specifically to work on this part of the manuscript. However, the number of prefatory miniatures by artist B (fourteen of twenty-three) and, more significantly, the distribution of the two artists’ work in this section of the manuscript, suggest that it was never intended that artist A would work alone on the prefatory cycle. This is most apparent in the division of labour in quire two (Fig. 10.1). Quire 2 (ff. 7–14), the first in the prefatory cycle, is a standard quaternion containing eight full-page miniatures depicting scenes from the Old Testament, each painted on one side of the parchment only. The first two miniatures (ff. 7r and 8v) are by artist A and the remaining six (ff. 9r, 10v, 11r, 12v, 13r, and 14v) by artist B. Although the two miniatures by artist A appear consecutively at the start of the quire, they are located on separate bifolia where they are each paired with a miniature by artist B—ff. 7 and 14 form one bifolio, and ff. 8 and 13 another (Fig. 10.1). The two central bifolia in the gathering feature only the work of artist B. Following common practice, the sheets will have been painted as loose bifolia. Therefore the presence of both artists’ hands on two different bifolia seems an unnecessarily complicated way of dividing up the work, unless perhaps one was meant to be following the lead of the other. Given the distribution of work in the prefatory cycle, it seems most likely that, if there were a lead artist, it was artist A. His miniatures appear first, not only in the prefatory cycle as a whole but in each of its constituent gatherings and in both the Old and the New Testament sequences of images. The desire for artist A’s work to appear at these particular points in the cycle might even explain why quires three and four deviate in length from the standard eight 7 For more on collaboration between artists on individual works see L. Ayres, “Collaborative Enterprise in Romanesque Manuscript Illumination and the Artists of the Winchester Bible,” in Medieval Art and Architecture at Winchester Cathedral, The British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions for the year 1980 6 (1983), 20–7; and P. Kidd and N.K. Turner, “Materiality and Collaborative Enterprise in the Making of the St Albans Psalter,” in K. Collins, P. Kidd and N.K. Turner, The St Albans Psalter, Painting and Prayer in Medieval England (Los Angeles, 2013), 65–95.

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folios. Quire 3 (ff. 15r–26v) consists of twelve folios featuring four miniatures by artist A, two at the beginning (ff. 15r and 16v) and two at the end (ff. 25r and 26v), with eight miniatures by artist B in between (ff. 17r, 18v, 19r, 20v, 21r, 22v, 23r, and 24v). Quire four (ff. 27r–30v) contains only four folios and each carries a miniature by artist A. Since the two quires combined have sixteen folios and artists A and B contribute eight miniatures each to the total, it seems significant that their work is not simply divided into two runs of eight, each occupying their own quire. One explanation might be that the length of time in which the cycle was to be finished dictated that each artist took an equal number of miniatures; but there was evidently a desire to have artist A work on the start of the New Testament cycle (as he had done in the Old Testament cycle) and perhaps also the Beatus page that begins the Psalm text. A simple way to achieve this, while enabling the artists to work independently of one another, would be to allocate artist B a continuous run of eight miniatures and to split those done by artist A into two bifolia to be wrapped around the images by artist B, and two that would form a gathering in their own right. Certainly the fact that the only two bifolia to exhibit the hands of both artists also contain the opening two miniatures of the prefatory cycle, both by artist A, suggests that artist A’s work was intended to set the tone for the cycle, and, given what follows, implies that artist B was expected to mimic it as closely as possible. The hypothesis that artist A worked on the two shared bifolia before artist B is supported by a small detail concerning the way in which each artist frames his miniatures. Throughout the prefatory cycle artist A applies a green border outside the space ruled for the miniature on the page. This green border never has a black outline. Artist B, with two exceptions (ff. 13r and 14v), rarely uses a green outer border, and, when he does, it occurs within the ruled space for the miniature and always has a sharp black outline—as seen on f. 9r. The two exceptions in artist B’s work are found on the two bifolia shared with artist A, suggesting that the images by artist A may have been in front of artist B as he worked. That the green outline in question does not appear around other miniatures in the quire by artist B, despite their sometimes forming a double-page opening in the sewn gathering with miniatures by either artist that do have the outline—as in ff. 8v and 9r, and ff. 12v and 13r—supports this theory. If artist A were indeed the lead artist of the Leiden Psalter’s prefatory cycle it may indicate the relationship between A and B was that of master and apprentice. However, if this were the case, artist B seems to have been thought sufficiently capable to be entrusted with completing more than half the prefatory cycle images, all the calendar images, and all the manuscript’s decorated initials. Moreover, there does not seem to be a marked difference in the quality

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of the two hands, a circumstance supported by all previous literature on the style of the manuscript failing to identify it as the work of two different people. Artist A’s apparent lead in the prefatory cycle might then simply reflect his having had greater experience than artist B in composing full-page narrative images at the time the Leiden Psalter was made. Regardless of the precise relationship between the two artists, it is clear that they attempted to create a homogenous style within the Leiden Psalter’s prefatory cycle, and it is probable that they worked on their respective contributions at a similar time. If the involvement of both was not planned from an early stage, it is unlikely that discrete examples of their work would be found side by side on individual bifolia. Moreover, the other prefatory miniatures done by each artist are not confined to the beginning or the end of the cycle but appear as a series of alternating runs. If one artist had unexpectedly taken over from the other, it is unlikely that their work would be divided in this way. Whether the two artists actually worked side by side is less certain. It is probable that artists A and B worked on the Leiden Psalter in roughly the same location at least. Irrespective of whether they worked concurrently, it seems illogical to suggest that the two bifolia containing the work of both hands travelled a long distance for each artist’s contribution. Such a scenario would have incurred expense and delay that would surely have been unwelcome to the manuscript’s patron. However, even accepting the existence of the shared bifolia and allowing the possibility that one or other artist could have done all the underdrawings for the prefatory cycle, the work of both artists is sufficiently self-contained for each to have laboured in isolation from the other. A degree of physical separation between the two artists, both in time and space, is perhaps suggested by some of the differences in colour observed in their work. For example, the aforementioned anomalous green borders surrounding the miniatures by artist B on ff. 13r and 14v are a darker green than those surrounding the miniatures on the same bifolio by artist A. The darker green also appears elsewhere on ff. 13r and 14v but it is not found in artist A’s work on ff. 7r or 8v, perhaps suggesting the two artists did not have the same pigments or batches of pigments before them as they worked on these miniatures. However, the two greens are not so different that the darker one might not be a more concentrated version of the lighter one, which artist B seems to use himself elsewhere in the prefatory cycle. Notwithstanding the idiosyncrasy noted above, the two artists’ palettes are remarkably similar. This suggests they did have access to the same pigments and knowledge of how to make them up. However, given the occasional variation in the intensity with which each applies them, it is possible they were

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working with them at slightly different times or were not sharing the exact same mixtures. Scientific analysis would undoubtedly shed further light on the extent to which palette connects or disassociates the two artists’ work, but is beyond the scope of the present study.8 Another small detail that may indicate the artists were working at slightly different times or in different environments is a series of faintly impressed horizontal ruling lines visible on ff. 9–12. The lines are approximately 6.5 mm apart and extend beyond the allocated image space into the outer and lower margins. They appear to have been ruled in preparation for text, although seemingly not for use in the Leiden Psalter itself, whose text pages have horizontal lines ruled approximately 8.5 mm apart. The four folios the lines appear on constitute the two central bifolia of quire two, which only have images by artist B. This could imply artist B had access to a different stock of parchment from artist A, but it could just as easily be the case that both artists drew parchment from the same source and chance allocated these leaves to artist B rather than artist A. Either way, the lines appear to carry with them the ghost of another project. 3

The Artists’ Sources

Determining the sources artists A and B might have used to compile the images in the Leiden Psalter benefits from considering work probably attributable to them in another late twelfth-century English Psalter: Cambridge, St John’s College MS K. 30.9 Like the Leiden Psalter the St John’s College Psalter has a calendar containing images depicting the labours of the months and the signs of the zodiac, and decorative initials preceding each of the Psalms and subsequent end-matter. It does not have a prefatory cycle, but it may have had one originally. The similarities between the hand responsible for the images in the calendar and the decorative initials from quire nine onwards and the images by artist B in the Leiden Psalter are such that I believe they are the work of the same person (Fig. 10.5a–b). The decorative initials in quires two to eight are

8 Consider the recent advances that have been made in illuminated manuscript studies by employing a variety of scientific approaches as demonstrated in S. Panayotova, ed., Colour, The Art & Science of Illuminated Manuscripts (London/Turnhout, 2016) and Manuscripts in the Making, Art and Science, ed. S. Panayotova and P. Ricciardi 2 vols. (London/Turnhout, 2017–18). 9 See Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, i: no. 15 and Panayotova ed., Colour, no. 44. For a detailed comparison of the Leiden Psalter and the St John’s College Psalter see Luker, “The Leiden Psalter,” 229–54.

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Figure 10.5

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Details from the Leiden Psalter. Leiden University Library MS b.p.l. 76a (left, ff. 23r, 28v, 3r, 4r), by permission of Leiden University Libraries; St John’s College Psalter, Cambridge, St John's College MS K.30 (right, ff. 91v, 63v, 3r, 54v) by permission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s

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by a different hand that I suggest, albeit more cautiously, might be artist A (Fig. 10.5c-d). The layout, size, palette and iconography of the images in the calendar of both manuscripts are extraordinarily close. This could be because they are the work of the same artist, but at the same time there are small differences between the two sets of images that indicate common source material, rather than individual memory, may account for their closeness. Consider, for example, the image representing the sign of the zodiac Gemini (Fig. 10.5e-f). In the St John’s College Psalter two young men stand on either side of a sharp triangular shield. The one on the right points with his right hand upwards into the page, while the one on the left raises his right hand into a seemingly awkward position. In the same image in the Leiden Psalter neither figure points. Each appears as the mirror image of the other, holding a spear in their respective outer hands. In gripping his spear, the figure on the left holds his right hand in exactly the same position as his counterpart in the St John’s College Psalter. Practical considerations make it unlikely that one was copied from the other— in order to be side by side the calendars would either need to have been made at almost exactly the same time or one or other of their owners would have to have taken the doubtful step of allowing their private Psalter to be consulted by the artist at a later date. It seems reasonable to suggest, therefore, that the St John’s College Psalter image could have been adapted from the same or a similar archetype to that used for the Leiden Psalter. The greater likelihood of common source material rather than a shared artist and/or direct copying being responsible for the similarities and differences between the calendar images is supported by a close comparison of the two Psalters’ initials. While only a handful of the initials depict the same subject at the same point in the Psalm text, numerous recognisable motifs are present in both manuscripts. Crucially a number of the initials in the two manuscripts where the contents are exceptionally close are the work of different artists. Consider, for example, the distinct, full-figure, human-animal hybrid inhabiting the initial to Psalm 61 in the Leiden Psalter (f. 84r, Fig. 10.5g) by artist B and the near-identical figure in the initial to Psalm 61 in the St John’s College Psalter (f. 54v, Fig. 10.5h) found in the run of quires by another artist, possibly artist A. If artists A and B are indeed the two hands involved, such similarities might be explained by one artist remembering an image done by the other and reproducing it, but the uncanny degree of likeness makes it more likely to be the result of their respective artists consulting a common source. The form this source material may have taken is open to conjecture. In the case of the calendar images, the clear dissimilarity between the text parts of the two manuscripts’ calendars—including the Latin verses relating the

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­ gyptian days, which were less prone to variation than the saints feast days E chosen for inclusion—suggests that their model might reasonably be conceived of as comprising a small group of relevant pictures devoid of text. Establishing the likely form of the model for the initials is more difficult. A few motifs, such as the human-animal hybrid found in the initial to Psalm 61, appear in both Psalters framed by the same letter, in this case a letter ‘n’. Since the creature in question appears nowhere else in either manuscript, has no obvious illustrative function to the Psalm it precedes, and in each manuscript the letter ‘n’ occurs as a decorated initial only four times, its association with that letter in both manuscripts seems more than coincidence. As such, we might hypothesise that the model used in the production of the two Psalters’ initials featured a variety of motifs each framed by a letter. A third late twelfth-century manuscript, the Gough Psalter (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Gough liturg. 2), supports the likelihood of this.10 It contains a run of initials (f. 105v onwards) that closely resemble those of the Leiden and St John’s College Psalters both in style and sometimes content.11 Consider, for example, the image of a squirrel eating a nut with its tail up its back. In the Leiden Psalter (Fig. 10.6a, Psalm 118:57) and on one occasion in the Gough Psalter (Fig. 10.6b, Psalm 56:8) the motif is found within a letter ‘p’, which, like the letter ‘n’, appears only rarely as a decorated initial, in this case three times. Once again it seems likely that common source material accounts for the similarities between the images and once again it seems more than coincidence that the same motif occurs within the same rare letter in two different manuscripts. However, the same motif also appears framed by a letter ‘d’ in the St John’s College Psalter (Fig. 10.6d) and a letter ‘c’ in the Gough Psalter (Fig. 10.6c). As such, we might consider that the three manuscripts used the same or related source material which either included multiple variations for each letter of the alphabet or that the motifs were subject to transposition, or a combination of the two. Relevant to this line of discussion is the striking motif of a cat licking its bottom found within a letter ‘d’ as the initial to Psalm 96 in the Leiden Psalter (f. 120r, Fig. 10.6e), and unframed in the image of ‘the naming of the animals’ in 10

11

For the Gough Psalter see C.M. Kauffmann, Romanesque Manuscripts 1066–1190, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 3 (London, 1975), no. 97; and M. Kauffmann, “Praying with Pictures in the Gough Psalter,” in St Albans and the Markyate Psalter, Seeing and Reading in Twelfth-Century England, ed. K. Collins and M. Fisher (Kalamazoo, 2017), 279–306. There is one exception to this—the larger initial to Psalm 109, one of the major Psalm divisions, is by the same hand responsible for the other initials in the manuscript and the majority of its prefatory cycle.

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Animals from the Leiden Psalter, Leiden University Library, MS b.p.l. 76a (a, f. 144r; e, f. 120r), by permission of Leiden University Libraries; St John’s College Psalter, Cambridge, St John's College MS K.30 (d, f. 73v) by permission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s; Gough Psalter, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Gough liturg. 2 © The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford; The Aberdeen Bestiary, Aberdeen, University Library MS 24 (f, f. 23v) © University of Aberdeen

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Figure 10.7

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Details from the Gough Psalter, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Gough liturg. 2, (a, f. 32r, figure rotated by 90 degrees), and the Aberdeen Bestiary, Aberdeen, University Library MS 24 (b, f. 5r) © The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford; © University of Aberdeen

a Bestiary (St Petersburg, State Public Library Saltykow-Chshedrin MS Lat. Q. v. V. I, f. 5r), probably made in the early 1180s, and the image illustrating ‘the cat’ in the Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen, University Library MS 24, f. 23v, Fig. 10.6f) made around the year 1200.12 Like the Gough Psalter, the Bestiary in St Petersburg and, to a slightly lesser extent, the Aberdeen Bestiary have strong stylistic links with the Leiden Psalter, most notably to artist A (compare Fig. 10.4c, 10.4g and Fig. 10.7). Whether or not artist A worked directly on these manuscripts, the consistency of the representation of the repeated motifs makes it likely they were compiled using the same or related source material. The different contexts in which the motifs appear and the large number that appear in only one or two of the manuscripts leads me to suggest that the artists drew from a variety of models and adapted and added to them freely to suit their purpose.13 Some of the motifs may have been represented in the source material framed by a particular letter while others may not, perhaps in a manner akin to the leaves of an alphabet pattern book (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 83.1972) made in Tuscany in the mid-twelfth century that shows drawings of 12 13

For the best bibliography on both bestiaries see https://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/bibliography.php (accessed 16.2.19). Xenia Muratova comes to the same conclusion with regard to some of the bestiaries. See X. Muratova, “Workshop Methods in English Late Twelfth-Century Illumination and the Production of Luxury Bestiaries,” in Birds and Beasts of the Middle Ages—The Bestiary and its Legacy, ed. W.B. Clark and M.T. McMunn (Philadelphia, 1989), 53–63; and X. Muratova, “Bestiaries: an Aspect of Medieval Patronage,” in Art and Patronage in the English Romanesque, ed. S. Macready and F.H. Thompson, Occasional Papers of the Society of Antiquaries of London 8 (London, 1986), 118–44.

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fully decorated initials alongside unframed designs.14 Others still may have been the product of patron preference or invention on the part of the artist for one particular commission. The relationship between the Leiden Psalter and the other manuscripts cited above is complex and in need of further detailed investigation.15 Whether their use of common source material arose from a connection with a specific artist or a particular workshop or both remains to be seen. Equally there is still work to be done in ascertaining whether such an artist or workshop can unequivocally be connected with a particular location. The saints venerated in the calendar and litany of the Leiden Psalter and the St John’s College Psalter and the litany of the Gough Psalter suggest a bias for the north of England.16 The Leningrad and Aberdeen Bestiaries are likewise part of a larger group of bestiaries that have been suggested as products of Lincoln or maybe York—two places with which the Leiden Psalter’s probable patron, Geoffrey Plantagenet, was strongly connected.17 The accumulative evidence of a northern association for all these manuscripts is great but it is an area of research that would benefit from further study. Wherever the Leiden Psalter was made it is clear that the work of its artists should continue to be examined if we are to broaden our understanding of illuminated manuscript production in England at the turn of the twelfth to the thirteenth century. 14 15

See Panayotova ed., Colour, 96 and no. 19, which has an accompanying bibliography. Such an investigation should also include a series of fifty-one full-page miniatures depicting scenes from the life of Christ (Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum MS 101). It comprises Romanesque images interspersed with later fifteenth-century images. The earlier images are in a style similar, but seemingly cruder, to the Leiden Psalter, in particular to the work of artist B. For more on this image cycle see Western Manuscripts and Miniatures, Sotheby’s sale catalogue (London, 4 December 2007), lot 45 and K. Collins, “Madness and Innocence: Reading the Infancy Cycle of a Romanesque Vita Christi,” in St. Albans and the Markyate Psalter, Seeing and Reading in Twelfth-Century England, ed. K. Collins and M. Fisher (Kalamazoo, 2017), 307–48. 16 Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, i: nos. 14 and 15; Kauffmann, “Praying with Pictures,” 279. 17 Geoffrey Plantagenet was bishop-elect of Lincoln from 1173 until 1181/2 and, following a spell as royal chancellor, archbishop elect then archbishop of York from 1189 until his death in 1212. For the bestiaries and their links with Lincoln and York see Muratova, “Bestiaries: an Aspect of Medieval Patronage,” 118–44.

Chapter 11

A Portrait of Abraham Ibn Ezra (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal MS 1186) Patricia Stirnemann and Judith Kogel The Psalter in the Arsenal Library known as the Psalter of Blanche de Castile has been attributed to the French queen by many scholars since the nineteenth century for three reasons: a fourteenth-century inscription, the woman in the initial to Psalm 101, and a prayer with the supplicant in the feminine.1 Leopold Delisle was the first to accord the manuscript a full description.2 Victor Leroquais gave a lengthy résumé of Delisle’s description, noting proofs of its use in Paris and suggesting a date in the 1220s.3 Nonetheless, he attributed it to Blanche with a touch of circumspection, and others have maintained caution. We recently took a new, long look at it and found a host of personal references in the texts and illumination of the book which confirm Blanche’s ownership and reveal her pride in her dynastic origins, as well as her ambitions and intellectual sophistication. We will present a few of these before turning to the core subject of this paper, which is a portrait not of Blanche, but of Abraham Ibn Ezra (Fig. 11.1). Blanche was the grand-daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry ii, and it was her grand-mother Eleanor who went to Spain in 1199 to choose Blanche from among her grand-daughters as consort for Louis viii. Blanche’s English roots are remembered in the calendar and litanies, where there are a number of English saints, including three kings (Edward, Oswald, and Edmund), two bishops (Cuthbert and Augustine), an archbishop (Thomas Becket) and St Alban, the first English martyr and patron saint of the premier abbey in England. Her Spanish ancestry is honored by the inclusion of St Honestus at the end of 1 This paper was originally given at small colloquium devoted to Abraham Ibn Ezra, organized by Shlomo Sela in Paris on 22 June 2016. Although Patricia Stirnemann wrote the paper, it was Judith Kogel who identified Ibn Ezra, provided all the bibliography concerning him, and made many very pertinent observations which enriched our mutual contemplation and the paper. The paper is published as, P. Stirnemann, “A Family Affair: The Psalters of Ingeborg of Denmank and Blanche de Castille and the Noyon Psalter,” Revue Mabillon 29 (2018), 101–30. 2 L. Delisle, Notice de douze livres royaux du xiiie et du xive siècle (Paris, 1902), 27–35, 101–4. 3 V. Leroquais, Les Psautiers manuscrits latins des bibliothèques publiques de France, 3 vols. (Macon, 1940–1), ii: 13–17. The manuscript is on-line on Gallica.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_013

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Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenale MS 1186, f. 1v © Bibliothèque nationale de France

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the litany of confessors. Honestus was a disciple of St Saturnin in Toulouse, and he converted northern Spain, where he was known as the ‘apostle of Navarre.’ He was martyred in Pamplona during the persecutions of Emperor Aurelian (270–5). Arnulf of Metz is in gold in the calendar and signals the most glorious dynastic benchmark. At the beginning of the seventh century, Arnulf, before being elected bishop of Metz, was married to Doda, and founded the dynasty of the Arnulfians in Austrasia, where Metz was the capital. His descendants were the Frankish kings Ansgisus, Pepin and Charlemagne, and all their descendants, including a large number of royal families in Spain and Italy. This genealogy, this lineage issuing from Charlemagne, is illustrated in a universal chronicle written in Germany in the second quarter of the twelfth century.4 At the head of the genealogical table on f. 194r, the titulus speaks of the Iberian Peninsula: Haec stirps francigenum regi dum struxit Haberiam. (“This is the genealogy of the monarchy born of the Franks, then it embraces Iberia”). The woman with a halo, below the titulus, is St Ode, the mother of Arnulf. The overt display of dynastic unity and continuity through the marriage of Louis viii and Blanche de Castile is also expressed in the cycle of miniatures that precedes the text of the Psalms, where the Tree of Jesse acts as a bridge between stories from the Old and New Testaments. The tree is inserted between two crenelated walls, evoking the castle of Castile, and the fleur-de-lys of France are tucked into the spandrels between the lunettes containing the prophets who announce the coming of Christ. This is the earliest example of royal heraldry that we know of in a French manuscript. Furthermore, there is a recurrent evocation of England and the armorial bearings of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry ii. In the initials and line-endings, a lion or leopard passant reappears every three or four folios. A final detail to add to this thumbnail sketch of a manuscript that is highly personalized both in its texts and illumination is that it was written by the same English scribe as the Ingeborg Psalter. These findings are fully presented in the article mentioned in note 1. Let us now turn to the calendar of the Psalter of Blanche de Castile and the image that introduces it. A Jewish astrologer wearing a kippa holds an astrolabe and a ruler and translates his manual from Hebrew to Latin5 with the aid 4 Paris, BnF MS Lat. 4889. F. Avril and C. Rabel, Manuscrits d’origine germanique, volume i, xe– xive siècle (Paris, 1995), no. 106: Frutolfus et Ekkehardus Uraugiensis, Chronicon universale usque ad a. 1125, c. 1150, western Germany (?), pl. cix. 5 The translation was made directly into Latin; the French language, in the twelfth century, was missing technical terms to render the scientific descriptions included in Ibn Ezra’s works. However, French translations of astrological writings by Ibn Ezra were made by Hagin le Juif during the second half of the thirteenth century. These are extant in two manuscripts

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of two tonsured clerics (Fig. 11.1). The astrolabe and ruler betoken a man who is both an astronomer and mathematician. He is identified as the eldest and most important by his central position and height. The form of his woven head cover (kippa in Hebrew) is found repeatedly in French manuscripts around 1215–25, including the Ingeborg Psalter,6 and the earliest Moralized Bible, Vienna, Önb, Cod. 2554. The cleric seated next to him and on the same bench, to the right, is a mature man, wearing the long tunic of a master, a canon, or a scholar, who extends toward us a book on which there is Hebrew script. Hebrew characters recur on the book of Psalms transcribed for David in the Beatus initial of Blanche’s Psalter, f. 30v. The cleric’s role was undoubtedly to correct the Latin translation. The cleric on the left who transcribes the translation in Latin is young, beardless, and wears a tunic that falls mid-calf and exposes his stockings, indicating that he is a secular clerk. This highly unusual image, which is not totally without precedent, tells a true story that once again unites Spain, France and England.7 As is well known, in the Middle Ages very few Jews read Latin, and we take as our authority Gilbert Dahan.8 They read and wrote Hebrew and spoke the vernacular language of the country where they resided. One impressive exception in the twelfth century was Abraham Ibn Ezra, grammarian, translator,

d­ iscovered by Raphael Levy. See R. Levy, The Astrological Works of Abraham Ibn Ezra: A Literary and Linguistic Study with Special Reference to the Old French Translation of Hagin (Baltimore, 1927). 6 In the image on f. 17r of the Ingeborg Psalter, where the wise men visit Herod, the Arab King Herod is advised by a Jewish nobleman seated on a bench with a foot-stool in the center of the image, wearing a fur-lined mantle and woven head cover. The Ingeborg Psalter and Blanche Psalter are written by the same English scribe. The Ingeborg Psalter was made first, probably between 1216 and 1218, in Soissons, and the Blanche Psalter was made either in Paris or Soissons after 1218, the year of the death of her eldest son Philippe, who is alluded to in the mournful image of the mounted falconer in the month of May (next to the feast of Philip and James, 1 May, f. 4r). Philippe is also portrayed as the young beardless king being escorted to heaven on folio 170. See Stirnemann, “A Family Affair.” 7 L. Delisle, Notice, 104–5, drew attention to manuscript BnF MS Lat. 15170 where a miniature depicting an astronomer, who holds a T-O map of the world, a computist counting on his fingers, and two scribes, one holding a stylus and wax tablet, the other a book, precedes a calendar for Ely Cathedral. This part of the manuscript is datable around 1136 (last date mentioned in the historical notes on ff. 137v and 138). The calendar is followed by computistical tables and treatises by Gerlandus and Helpricus. The manuscript is on-line in Gallica. The image is also reproduced in by F. Avril and P. Stirnemann, Manuscrits enluminés d’origine insulaire viie–xxe siècle (Paris, 1987), no. 34, pl. X. Yet another image of the astronomer occurs in the initial at the beginning of the book of Ecclesiastes in the so-called Capucians Bible, probably made for the palatine chapel of Henry the Liberal in the 1180s (Paris, BnF MS Lat. 16745, f. 108). The manuscript is on-line on Gallica. 8 Discussed in conversation.

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poet, exegete, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer.9 He is considered one of the most eminent medieval rabbinic authorities. He was born around 1089 in Tudela, near Pamplona, capital of Navarra in the north of Spain. He was educated in Cordoba in the south, then around 1140 he began to wander. He went first to Rome, then to northern Italy, to Provence in southern France, and on to Normandy, finally arriving in England in 1158, where he is known to have lectured in London. The date of his death is unknown, but it is generally assumed to be c. 1161, about a year after his translation of Ibn al-Muthannâ’s Commentary on the Astronomical Tables.10 The place is not sure, but he is last known in England. Several internal clues in his treatise on the astrolabe, which is known in Hebrew and Latin, show that it is Ibn Ezra himself who attests that he translated his treatise (probably directly into Latin) by dictating it to a disciple who had it set down on parchment: ut ait philosophorum sibi contemporaneorum Abraham magister noster egregius quo dictante et hanc dispositionem astrolabii conscripsimus […].11 The captivating miniature that precedes the calendar in the Psalter of Blanche represents without a doubt the incomparable pundit Abraham Ibn Ezra in his roles as astronomer and mathematician, the man who made known in the West the ‘doctrine of nativities’ and the ‘system of the continuous horoscopy of nativities’ developed in Greece and Persia.12 The doctrine of nativities makes predictions covering the entire life of the individual, beginning with the horoscope of his birth, compared with horoscopes drawn up on each of his birthday anniversaries. It is thus very interesting to note that the only two known Latin copies of his translation are both from the last quarter of the twelfth century, and that British Library Arundel MS 377 is of certain English origin (from Ely) and the Cotton manuscript, Vespasian A ii, is of probable English origin.13 If we are dumbfounded by the intellectual and 9 10 11 12

13

S. Sela, Abraham Ibn Ezra and the Rise of Medieval Hebrew Science (Leiden, 2003), 31–6. Judith Kogel led me to the publications of Shlomo Sela. See also S. Sela, Abraham Ibn Ezra on Nativities and Continuous Horoscopy (Leiden, 2014). In the introduction, Ibn Ezra proclaims his identity, “Abraham the Spaniard,” and indicates the year of composition, 1160. See Sela, Abraham Ibn Ezra, 77. London, BL Cotton MS Vespasian A. ii, f. 40 and Arundel MS 377, f. 68; Sela, Rise of Medieval Hebrew Science, 31. Al-Andarzaghar, author of Kitab al-Mawalid, and Dorotheus of Sidon, author of the Pentabiblos. See R. Smithhuis, “Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Astrological Works in Hebrew and Latin: New Discoveries and Exhaustive Listing,” Aleph 6 (2006): 265–6, and S. Sela, Abraham Ibn Ezra on Elections, Interrogations, and Medical Astrology: A Parallel Hebrew-English Critical Edition of the Book of Elections (3 Versions), the Book of Interrogations (3 Versions), and the Book of Luminaries (Leiden, 2012), 303; Sela, Nativities and Continuous Horoscopy. C. Burnett, The Introduction of Arabic Learning into England (London, 1997), Figs 22-4. Images from the Arundel manuscript are available on-line on the website of illuminated manuscripts in the British Library.

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trans-European sophistication of this image, it also proclaims once again the intense personal quality of the Psalter of Blanche of Castile. Ibn Ezra was obviously famous in Spain, France and England, but how is it that we find him introducing the calendar in the Psalter of the queen of France, Eleanor of Aquitaine’s grand-daughter? Several explanations are possible. His fame may have followed him within the Castilian court, but this would imply an extraordinary tradition that lingered long after his death. What is striking about the miniature is its specific reference to translation from Hebrew into Latin, which, with regard to the manuscript tradition, places the event in an Anglo-Norman context, Normandy or England in the 1150s. Ibn Ezra may even have come to England from Normandy with the royal court, Henry ii having been instructed in astrology by Adelard of Bath.14 Thus, another possibility is that the renown was transmitted to her grand-daughter by Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose horoscope may have been cast by Roger of Hereford in 1185, shortly after the death of her eldest surviving son in 1183, when her husband Henry ii released her from prison.15 The manuscript Arundel 377 contains both the treatise of Ibn Ezra, translated into Latin, followed by Roger’s notes, on ff. 86v87. It is also possible that Roger, who flourished between 1176 and 1198, cast the horoscope in the 1190s for the aging queen before she went to Sicily to take Berengaria of Navarre to wed Richard I in 1191, or when she went to Speyer in 1194 with the ransom to free Richard from captivity, or when she left for Spain the second time in 1199. The most probable explanation, however, for the appearance of this portrait some fifteen years after the death of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and on French soil, is the presence at the French court of the celebrated Amienois scholar Roger de Fournival (d. c. 1240) who was physician to Philip-Augustus.16 Roger is a likely candidate for someone who would have explained to the young, very intelligent consort of the future king Louis viii, the importance of Spain in the transmission of astronomical and mathematical knowledge, and in particular 14 15

16

Ibid., 46 sqq. Burnett discusses the possible connections of Ibn Ezra with Henry ii and the English court in the 1150s and on English astronomy. See N. Whyte, “Roger of Hereford’s Liber de Astronomice iudicandi: a twelfth-century astrologers manual,” (unpublished master’s essay, Cambridge, Clare College, 1991, http:// nicholaswhyte.info/roger.htm accessed 16.2.19), 4, 12, 43–4. The horoscope is in the second part of the book, in the section on cogitatione vel meditatione. The date and place of Eleanor’s birth in 1122 in Bordeaux, or nearby, concurs with the horoscope made for a woman who is making a journey and hopes to meet a king, a woman who is born on December 14, 1122, at the latitude of 44°+/-6° (which, as was pointed out at the colloquium on 22 June 2016, is rather a wide margin). P. Paris, “Notice sur la vie et les œuvres de Richard de Fournival,” Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes, 2 (1842): 32–56.

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the presence of an extremely erudite wandering Spanish Jew whose presence in northern France and England was not without consequence. Roger was the father of one of the most inquisitive scholars of the thirteenth century, Richard de Fournival, chancellor of Amiens Cathedral, who built an extensive library larded with Arabic scientific, medical and philosophical works found in Spain in the twelfth century and recently translated into Latin.17 Richard originally intended his collection to become a public library in Amiens, but it ended up becoming a cornerstone of the library of the Sorbonne. Several scientific manuscripts of great interest in the library of Richard may well have belonged to his father.18 The link with Amiens is particularly fascinating, because the artist of the Blanche Psalter also appears to come from this city, and although the penwork in the manuscript is by a Parisian artist, the scribe is English, the illuminator is Amienois, and some of the iconography is inspired by the Noyon Psalter (Los Angeles, Getty Museum MS 66), suggesting that the book may have been made outside Paris, in an ad hoc royal atelier in the early 1220s. 17

18

See Burnett, The Introduction of Arabic Learning. In a 1922 publication, Aleksander Birkemajer identified the manuscripts in the library of Fournival in the Sorbonne library by comparing the detailed entries made by Fournival in his Biblionomia (Paris, Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne MS 636) and the medieval inventories of the Sorbonne, both published by L. Delisle in the Cabinet des manuscrits. Richard Rouse made further identifications in “Manuscripts belonging to Richard de Fournival,”Revue d’histoire des textes 3 (1973): 253– 69. P. Stirnemann, “Private Libraries Privately Made,” in Medieval Manuscripts, their Makers and Users. A special issue of Viator in Honor of Richard and Mary Rouse (Turnhout, 2011), 185–98 (a study of the scribes and illuminators of a small number of books that were written, dismembered, and rebound, according to new textual alignments). For example, Paris, BnF MS Lat. 16208, an early thirteenth-century north Italian manuscript with the writings of Raymond de Marseille (Burnett, “Introduction,” 51) that belonged to Gérard d’Abbeville, who inherited Richard de Fournival’s library and donated it with his own books to the Sorbonne.

Chapter 12

The Virgin and Child in the Map Psalter (London, British Library Additional MS 28681) Sally Dormer The Map Psalter is linked inextricably, for me, with John Lowden’s inspirational teaching. He proposed this manuscript for my MA Report, and it proved a fitting conclusion to a year spent exploring the intricacies of illustrated medieval Psalters under his tuition.1 The Virgin and Child frontispiece in this book (Fig. 12.1) inspired, in part, my doctoral thesis topic,2 which led, in turn, to a career spent teaching medieval art history. John’s infectious enthusiasm for medieval manuscripts, his meticulous attention to detail, and his unwillingness to accept simple answers to perplexing questions have shaped my research and teaching; he is an incomparable art historical lodestar. The Map Psalter includes illustrations routinely present in mid-thirteenthcentury English Psalters,3 but two are unparalleled. The world map (ff. 9r-v), has justifiably received considerable scholarly scrutiny;4 in contrast, the Virgin 1 S.E. Dormer, “A Psalter in the BL Add. MS 28681” (unpublished MA Report, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 1985). 2 S.E. Dormer, “Drawing in English Manuscripts: Technique and Purpose c. 980–1380” (unpublished PhD dissertation, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 1991). 3 The contents are: prefatory cycle of full-page, fully painted and gilded miniatures of the Life of Christ (ff. 3v-8r), added in the late thirteenth century and perhaps destined originally for another Psalter (now bound incorrectly); world map (f. 9r-v); calendrical table (f. 10v); Calendar (ff. 11r-16v); prayers for a masculine supplicant ([…] ego miser & peccator […]) (f. 17r-v); Gallican version of the Psalms with historiated initials for the ten-fold division (missing for Psalm 109) (ff. 18r-168v); Canticles (ff. 168v-181v); Quicumque vult (f. 181v); Litany, including Peter with a double invocation (ff. 181v-187r); petitions and fifteen collects (ff. 187v-189v); fullpage drawing of the Virgin and Child (f. 190v); Psalter of the Virgin, preceded by a prologue (ff. 191r-212v); prayers to the Cross, in French rhymed verse (ff. 213r-216r); further French prayers (ff. 216r-217r); Office of the Dead (ff. 217v-221v); Prayers in Latin (ff. 221v-222v); unfinished hymn to the Virgin added in the sixteenth century (ff. 223r-224r). 4 Most recently, P. Barber and T. Harper, Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art (London, 2010), 78 and M. La Porte, “A Tale of Two Mappai Mundi: The Map Psalter and its Mixed Media Maps” (Unpublished MA thesis, University of Guelph, Ontario, 2012), available online. See also N. Vincent, “The Great Lost Library of England’s Medieval Kings,” in 1000 Years of Royal Books and Manuscripts, ed. K. Doyle and S. McKendrick (London, 2013), 73–112, esp. 94–5.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_014

The Virgin and Child in the Map Psalter

Figure 12.1

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Virgin and Child, The Map Psalter, London, British Library Add. MS 28681, f. 190v © The British Library Board

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and Child (f. 190v), is relatively unknown; its iconography deserves further attention.5 The Calendar indicates that the original Psalter was produced c. 1262–80. Entries are written in two hands, the first responsible for the original entries, the second for additions, probably made to achieve the standardised Sarum usage, which was adopted by England’s southern provinces from the mid-thirteenth century onwards.6 The terminus ante quem is provided by the feast of the Canonisation of Richard de Wych, bishop of Chichester, which is written on 3 April, in blue among the original entries; he died on this day in 1253, and was canonised in 1262. His Translation has been inserted by the second hand, in brown ink, on 16 June; this occurred in 1276, and provides a terminus post quem for the manuscript if the additions to the calendar were made while the book was being made, or just after its completion, which seems likely. The book is unlikely to post-date 1280: the first Translation of St Hugh of Lincoln is included on 16 November, the date of his canonisation, on the first anniversary of his death in 1220, but his second Translation in 1280, on 6 October, is omitted.7 The textual content of the book fails to pin-point a specific place of ­production, but the illustrations indicate enough links with London to imply strongly that it was made there. The world map suggests knowledge of midthirteenth-century royal projects at Westminster.8 Its style, together with that of the Virgin and Child (discussed below), implies links with artists who worked on the Morgan Apocalypse (New York, Morgan Library MS M.524), 1255–60, and related books, a number of which have been convincingly connected to Westminster or royal patronage.9 The style of the historiated Psalm division initials may suggest that the artist trained in the milieu of the Sarum Master, active in the Salisbury area 1245–55,10 but unusual subject matter for Psalms 38 and 80 indicates connections with Psalters associated with London.11 5

N.J. Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, 1190–1250, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 4, 2 vols. (London, 1982–8), ii: no. 114, p. 83. “The iconography of the Virgin and Child group is very unusual and unparalleled in English art of the period.” 6 Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, i: 35–6, n. 31. 7 The script of the manuscript supports this dating. See Dormer, “A Psalter in the BL,” 8. 8 It has been suggested that the world map may echo a now-lost wall map commissioned by Henry iii at Westminster Palace. See Vincent, “Great Lost Library”; and Daniel Birkholz, The King’s Two Maps: cartography and culture in thirteenth-century England (New York and London, 2004), 4, 32–5, 38–42, 50–1. 9 Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, ii: 12. 10 Ibid., 21. 11 Ibid., 83.

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Internal evidence suggests that the Map Psalter was made for an ecclesiastic, possibly the Benedictine monk who kneels in the initial for Psalm 101 (often used to depict the donor or patron), tonsured, and wearing a black habit with a long, pointed hood.12 Although the Calendar is not that of a Benedictine house, St Benedict heads the list of Confessors in the Litany (f. 185r), suggesting at the very least that the model for the Litany was Benedictine.13 The relatively small size of the volume,14 together with the inclusion of personalised prayers in Latin and French, plus a Psalter of the Virgin, an abbreviated Psalter typically used for private devotion,15 and the Office of the Dead, indicates personal use by a patron of modest means. The 226 folios of parchment range in quality, in a haphazard arrangement, from fine and smooth (ff. 18r-53r) to thick and rough (ff. 99r-101r). Occasional imperfections, oval holes, have been carefully positioned in the lower margins. The pages are grubby, particularly at their bottom edges, indicating regular, protracted use. The texts in the Map Psalter seem to be the work of one scribe;16 the illustrations are supplied by four artists. A late thirteenth-century hand executed the prefatory miniatures, while three artists, working c. 1260–80, contributed the world map, the historiated Psalm division initials, and the Virgin and Child, respectively. The last image, the focus of this essay, is an integral part of the book,17 and functions as a frontispiece, facing the prologue of a Psalter of the Virgin where the opening verse of each Psalm, written in red, precedes a rhyming quatrain that extols the Virgin’s virtues. Four quatrains occupy each page. Psalters of the Virgin, or Ave Psalters, circulated in various versions from the e­ leventh to  ­thirteenth century. None is precisely dated; some are anonymous, o­ thers 12 Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, ii, cites a number of Psalters made for private use by ecclesiastical patrons in thirteenth-century England; see nos 99, 101, 106, 120, 111, 174 and 181. 13 Ibid., 83. 14 It measures 169 x 126 mm. The volume is relatively small in comparison with other contemporary English Psalters. 15 For a discussion of Psalters of the Virgin see, P. Salmon, “Psautiers abrégés du moyen âge,” Analecta Liturgica, Studi e Testi 273 (Vatican City, 1974): 67–120. 16 I am grateful to the late Professor Julian Brown, Professor of Palaeography, University of London 1961–84, for this information. 17 Folio 190r is blank, and the two folios prior to f. 190 are unfoliated and blank on recto and verso. These latter folios are co-joined to ff. 179 and 180, and f. 190 is part of a bifolia with f. 177. There seems no reason to view the Virgin and Child as an addition; the blue and red used to colour it is visually comparable with the flourishing in the Psalter of the Virgin that follows. The two blank, unfoliated folios might suggest a time lag, albeit a short one, or a change of plan between the completion of the main part of the Psalter and the decision to include the Psalter of the Virgin.

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a­ ttributed to specific authors.18 They occur, often associated with other Marian devotional material, from the early thirteenth century, in Psalters made for Benedictine and Augustinian patrons.19 From 1250 onwards, when the recitation of such texts had become entrenched in the secular liturgy, they proliferate, predominantly in lay Psalters.20 Their occurrence wanes post 1300, presumably in response to the increased popularity of Books of Hours, replete with alternative Marian texts. Ten thirteenth-century English Psalters, other than the Map Psalter, contain Psalters of the Virgin,21 the majority of which open with the incipit Ave porta paradise, Lignum vite quod amisi.22 The Map Psalter’s version is unique amongst Psalters. It begins Ave Virgo Virginum Parens absque pari.23 No author is specified. The earliest example of this text seems to occur in Laon, Bibliothèque Publique MS 263,24 where Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury (r. 1207–28), and author of numerous sermons, and commentaries, is cited as

18

Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), is the earliest ascribed author; others are St Edmund of Canterbury (1175–1240), and St Bonaventura (1221–74). See C. Blume and G.M. Dreves, Analecta Hymnica xxxv, Psalteria Rhythmica (2nd edn, London, 1961), for these texts. 19 Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, ii: 89. 20 Ibid., 89 and N.J. Morgan, “Texts and Images of Marian Devotion in thirteenth-century England,” in Harlaxton English Medieval Studies I, ed. W.M. Ormrod (Stamford, 1991), 69– 103, esp. 74 and note 14. 21 London, BL Royal MS 1.D.X; Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS 10000 (c. 1210–20); London, BL Arundel MS 157 (added c. 1240 to a Psalter of c. 1200–10); Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett MS 78.A.8 (c. 1210–20); New York, Morgan Library MS M.103, c. 1250, Oxford region (ff. 138–57); the Carrow Psalter and Hours, Baltimore, Walters Art Museum MS W.34, c. 1250–60, East Anglia (ff. 298-); the collected works of Anselm, and others, originally appended to the Psalter in the Preston, Harris Museum, London, BL MS Add. 15749, c. 1250–5, (?) Oxford (ff. 42–46v); London, BL Add. MS 40675, c. 1250–75; the Oscott Psalter, London, BL Add. MS 50000, c. 1260–70, (?) Oxford (ff. 242–256v); Cambridge, University Library MS Mm.5.36, possibly added (c. 1290–1300). The text also occurs in thirteenth-century collections of Marian texts: London, BL Cotton MS Titus A xxi and BL Add. MS 11037. 22 For a full transcription of this text see Blume and Dreves, Analecta Hymnica, 189–99. 23 For a full transcription see Blume and Dreves, Analecta Hymnica, 153–71, where the text is described as Psalterius beatae Mariae V. auctore Stephano Cantuariensi. See ibid., 166–7 for a list of manuscripts containing this version of the text; most are found in fourteenth and fifteenth century manuscripts. Only two occur in English thirteenth-century books other than the Map Psalter: London, BL Add. MS 15749 and London, BL Add. MS 11037 (ff. 1r-21v), where the text is arranged in exactly the same way as in the Map Psalter, but lacking the prologue. 24 Blume and Dreves, Analecta Hymnica, 166–7, assign the manuscript to the twelfth century. The Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques des départments (Paris, 1849), i: 155, proposes a thirteenth-century dating, which, given the reference to Stephen Langton in the text would seem more compelling.

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compiler and editor.25 Assuming this manuscript is thirteenth-century in date, the attribution to Stephen Langton is plausible. Of the eleven known surviving thirteenth-century English Psalters of the Virgin, seven lack illustration. Marian themes predominate in the quartet that are illustrated, but without standardisation of subject matter or type of illustration. Only the Map Psalter has a full-page frontispiece; the others utilise historiated initials. In London, British Library Add. MS 15749 a lay man kneels before the Virgin and Child (f. 42r); in the Carrow Psalter and Hours the Virgin and Child with a kneeling lay male patron, occupies the opening initial (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum MS W.34, f. 298); in the Oscott Psalter the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple occurs at the beginning of the text (British Library Add. MS 50000, f. 242), and a solitary, seated Virgin at the end (f. 256v). Together with the rest of the Map Psalter, f. 190 has been cut down, perhaps when the current nineteenth-century binding was supplied, with a consequent partial loss of the architectural canopy at the top of the page. The Virgin and Child occupy a stool-throne beneath a pointed cinquefoil arch supported on slender colonettes, with stylised foliate capitals and simple volute bases. Five turret-bearing towers topped with small orbs surmount the arch; the outermost pair, and central tower, is crenellated. The nimbed Virgin sits frontally on a diapered cloth, her head inclined to her left. Her right hand rests on her right thigh and grasps a foliate sceptre. She holds the Child aloft in the crook of her left arm. Her feet rest upon a passant male lion with curled mane which strides to the right, with his left forepaw, raised. His head is in profile. The Child lacks a halo. He twists awkwardly in his mother’s arms, his back pressed against her left breast. His head is dramatically flung back so that his hair falls off his face, and his left cheek and that of his mother are fused together; they gaze directly in to one another’s eyes. The Child’s left hand stretches up to caress his mother’s hair, while his right arm is thrown back to lie diagonally across her chest and he clutches a small sphere, possibly a fruit. His right leg, bent at the knee, rests upon his mother’s left forearm and his foot (sole turned away from the viewer), dangles in mid-air; only the knee of his left leg is visible, tucked into the angle of his mother’s left elbow. A nimbed angel stands in three-quarters view, on either side of the Virgin and Child; each swings aloft a globe-shaped censer, which hangs, frozen in mid-air, at shoulder height of the mother and child.

25

a compilatum per Magistrum Stephanum Parisiensem and editae a venerabili in Christo patre magistro Stephano Cantuariensi archiepiscopo in honorem beatae Mariae semper virginis venerandae.

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Stylistically the illustration is related, in a general sense, to a group of contemporary manuscripts linked with Westminster, such as the Morgan Apocalypse and La Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei (Cambridge, University Library MS Ee.3.59, c. 1255–60, Westminster, Figs 13.5–13.7). It shares similar architectural backgrounds that erupt beyond frames, draperies with no evidence of the flat French drapery fold systems introduced to England later in the thirteenth century, beaded haloes, and cheeks accentuated by small, circular, red patches. There are technical similarities too: like the Map Psalter Virgin and Child, the Morgan Apocalypse and Estoire de Seint Aedward illustrations are partially tinted drawings, rather than fully painted miniatures.26 Some affinities exist between the Virgin and Child, and the world map in the Map Psalter; the heads of the angels in the latter are particularly close to those of the angels and Child in the former. Yet the draughtsmanship of the Virgin and Child lacks finesse. The Virgin’s head is disproportionally small in relation to her body, and her torso and legs are unreasonably etiolated. Her legs reveal anatomical misunderstanding: her knees are level with one another even though her left foot is raised above her right. Such evidence supports the suggestion that this composition was executed by an artist junior to the craftsman responsible for the world map.27 The choice of a drawing technique for the Virgin and Child frontispiece demonstrates the continuation of a well-established English tradition.28 In contrast the iconography indicates the availability of foreign models in thirteenth-century London and the innovative nature of contemporary English work. Full page illustrations of the Virgin and Child enthroned abound in thirteenth-century English manuscripts, reflecting the general increase in private lay devotion after the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. They occur occasionally in Apocalypses (for example, the Lambeth Apocalypse, London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 209, f. 48), Missals (for example, the Missal of Henry of 26

See Dormer, “Drawing in English Manuscripts,” for a discussion of the revived popularity of the drawing technique in England during the thirteenth century and definition of partial tinting. 27 Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, ii: 84 suggests “an older artist and a younger assistant.” 28 See Dormer, “Drawing in English Manuscripts,” Chapter 2 for the development of the drawing technique in medieval England, and Chapter 4 for the various factors that dictated the adoption of a drawing technique in a manuscript. In this instance a hierarchy of technique has been employed to establish visually the relative importance of the texts with which illustrations are associated; full paint for the historiated Psalm Division initials, which were deemed more significant, since they are connected to a biblical text, than the Psalter of the Virgin, where the frontispiece is executed in a partially tinted drawing technique.

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­ hichester, Manchester, John Rylands Library MS Lat. 24, f. 150), and Breviaries C (for example, the Coldingham Breviary, London, British Library Harley MS 4664, f. 125v), but predominantly in Psalters accompanying various texts.29 The association of New Testament figures with an Old Testament text was justified by the frequent Messianic references in the Psalter, and the generally accepted belief that King David, author of many Psalms, was an ancestor of Mary and Christ. Such images vary in terms of pose and the inclusion, or omission, of attributes, patrons, and censing angels.30 The Map Psalter Virgin and Child are unparalleled amongst contemporary English examples in three respects: the Child’s pose, the Virgin’s leonine foot-rest, and her bare head. No extant prototype replicates precisely the position of the Child, which has been described as a variant of the Vzygranye, or ‘Virgin with the playing child’ type, from the Russian for ‘starting to play.’31 It has been seen by some as a Byzantine type, introduced to Italy via the Balkans, in the thirteenth century;32 others have cited western European origins.33 The closest comparisons are found in two Byzantine types of the Virgin and Child. The Child’s bent right leg and twisted right arm are paralleled in a twelfth-century icon from St Catherine’s Sinai, Enthroned Virgin and Child surrounded by Prophets and Saints (Fig. 12.2) (an early example of the type later known as the Kykkotissa).34 But in contrast with the Map Psalter image, the Child’s left leg kicks out to reveal the 29 30

31 32

33 34

Of the eleven Virgin and Child illustrations in manuscripts catalogued in Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, ii, seven occur in Psalters. The inclusion of a donor figure in the Map Psalter Virgin and Child may have been deemed unnecessary since one had been already included in the division initial for Psalm 101. See Morgan, “Texts and Images,” for a full consideration of thirteenth-century English Virgin and Child images. V. Lazarev, “Studies in the Iconography of the Virgin,” Art Bulletin 20 (1938): 26–65, esp. 42–6. N.P. Kondakov, The Iconography of the Virgin (1911), 182–7; D.C. Shorr, The Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italy during the 14th Century (New York, 1954), 49–50, where the type is defined as “Type 7, the Child pressing his cheek to the Virgin’s chin,” and A. Grabar, “Deux images de la Vierge dans un manuscript serbe,” in L’art byzantin chez les Slaves, les Balkans: Recueil dédié à la mémoire de Théodore Uspenskij, 2 vols. (Paris, 1930), ii: 264–76. P. Sweinfurth, Geschichte der Russischen Malerei (The Hague, 1930), 444. I am indebted to John Lowden for pointing out this example to me. See Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. M. Vassilaki (Milan, 2000), no. 28, 314–16 where the icon is dated to the mid-twelfth century and the informality of the Child is linked to developments in eleventh-century Byzantine literature. In The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, a.d. 843–1261, ed. H.C. Evans and W.D. Wixom (New York, 1997), no. 244, 372–3, it is dated c. 1080–1130 and identified as a type replicated throughout the Orthodox world, including the Balkans, and well-known in Italy by 1300.

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Figure 12.2

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Icon of the Virgin and Child with Old and New Testament figures. By permission of Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, Egypt. Photograph courtesy of Michigan-Princeton-Alexandria Expeditions to Mount Sinai

sole of his foot; his right hand clasps a furled scroll held by his mother, and he tugs at her maphorion with his left. His head reclines on his right shoulder; the Virgin rests her cheek on the top of his head.

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Figure 12.3 Icon of the Virgin and Child. By permission of Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, Egypt. Photograph courtesy of Michigan-PrincetonAlexandria Expeditions to Mount Sinai

The dramatically upturned head and outstretched arms of the Child in the Map Psalter compare strikingly with icons of the Pelagonitissa type, i.e. from the region of Pelagonia, Macedonia, which survive from the late thirteenth century onwards, with roots in twelfth-century Comnenian art.35 An icon at St Catherine’s Sinai (variously assigned to the thirteenth or fifteenth centuries) (Fig. 12.3), and a wall painting from the iconostasis in the church of St George at Staro Nagoričane, the Republic of North Macedonia (dated 1317–18) illustrate the type.36 The Child presents his back to the viewer, but his head is flung back with such energy that the entirety of his face is visible, tipped upside down, and his hair falls back under gravitational force. He bears no halo; this would have obscured his mother’s face. His cheek presses against his mother’s chin. They do not look directly at one another; she gazes solemnly out from the image. His arms are outstretched; the left lifted at an angle to caress his mother’s cheek, the right hangs down limply to touch her hand. His legs dangle 35 36

See L. Hadermann-Misguich, “Pelagonitissa et Kardiotissa: Variantes extrêmes du type Vierge de Tendresse,” Byzantion 53/1 (1983): 9–16, esp. 12. Reproduced in B.V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power. The Mother of God in Byzantium (Pennsylvania, 2006), Figs 67 and 69.

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v­ ertically. The tense, unrestrained movement of the Child is remarkable, in comparison with earlier, more hieratic poses and contrasts dramatically with the sorrowful serenity of the Virgin.37 His outstretched arms are imbued with the premonition of sacrifice.38 The Map Psalter Child implies knowledge of a similar model. The Child’s right shoulder is depicted as if viewed from behind, and the artist has struggled to reconcile this with the rest of the body, which is viewed frontally. Any prototype has been modified to emphasise the bond of tender maternal and filial affection that characterised western thirteenth-century Marian images. To this end the Child presses the entirety of his cheek against the side of his mother’s face, stares directly in to her eyes and touches her hair. Such features are typically absent from Byzantine Virgin and Child images, even those such as the Eleousa and Gykkotraphousa types, which express fondness. The proleptic aspect of the original pose is maintained by the retention of outstretched arms (amplified by the addition of the clutched symbolic fruit, rarely featured in Byzantine images), and enhanced by the intensity of emotion. If the Map Psalter image was inspired by a Byzantine prototype or prototypes, where might the artist or patron have encountered such models? It is possible that Byzantine icons were available in London in the second half of the thirteenth century, a period when portable items travelled west after the 1204 Sack of Constantinople, and again after 1261 when the Frankish Byzantine Emperors withdrew. Alternatively, Italian intermediaries may have transmitted the type to London. The earliest comparable western models for the Child’s pose occur in late thirteenth-century Italian panels, the earliest from Tuscany, attributed to Meliore Toscano (whereabouts currently unknown; formerly in the Spiridon Collection, Rome and before that in the Gualino Collection, Turin), variously dated 1270–90 (Fig. 12.4).39 Italians and Italian products were no strangers to late thirteenth-century Westminster. King Henry iii’s cosmati pavements at Westminster Abbey, c. 1268, were made by Italian craftsmen using, in part, materials brought from Italy, and Italian churchmen such as Ottobuoni d’Fieschi, papal legate 1265–8, may well have brought devotional ­artefacts to London. Further evidence of trading links between England and

37 38 39

Lazarev, “Studies in the Iconography,” 44. This aspect of the type is stressed in Pentcheva, Icons and Power, chapter 3, “The Context of War,” 61–103. See Shorr, The Christ Child, 51, top left hand illustration. Lazarev, “Studies in the Iconography,” 44 proposes a 1290 date; L. Venturi, “Alcuni Acquisti della Collezione Gualino,” L’Arte 31 (1928): 69–79, esp. 70–3 and Fig. 3, dates the icon to 1270.

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Figure 12.4 Virgin and Child, attributed to Meliore Toscano. Formerly in the Spiridon Collection, Rome. Current whereabouts unknown. This photographic reproduction was provided by the Photo Library of the Federico Zeri Foundation, Bologna. The property rights of the author have been met

Italy is provided by the Opus Anglicanum vestments embroidered in London and sent to Rome as gifts for various popes from the 1260s onwards.40 The presence of lions in English41 and Continental European thirteenthcentury Virgin and Child images is well documented.42 While the close ­proximity of a feral beast to a young woman and her infant son may seem paradoxical (even though the Bestiary assures the reader that lions attack men rather than women, and only kill children if they are ravenous),43 the pairing emphasised the Virgin and Child’s role in the suppression of evil and the promise of resurrection, underpinned by various textual sources.44 Unlike other lions in English thirteenth-century images, the Map Psalter example is solitary 40 See English Medieval Embroidery: Opus Anglicanum, ed C. Browne, G. Davies and M.A. Michael (London, 2016) for the most recent consideration of this topic. 41 The lack of surviving three dimensional images from thirteenth-century England limits discussion to two-dimensional examples of this type. 42 P. Bloch, “Die Muttergottes auf dem Löwen,” Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 12 (1970): 253– 94. Also see Morgan, “Text and Image,” 89–92. 43 R. Barber, Bestiary (Woodbridge, 1993), 25. 44 P. Bloch, “Representations of the Madonna around 1200,” in The Year 1200: Symposium, ed. J. Hoffeld (New York, 1975), 497–508, esp. 500–2; Morgan, “Text and Image,” 92; C. Oakes,

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Figure 12.5

Shield of Simon de Montfort, sixth earl of Leicester, c. 1260, north choir aisle, Westminster Abbey © Dean and Chapter of Westminster

and confident. The Virgin’s feet rest lightly upon him: one on his head, the other on his haunch. He strides forwards, alert, purposeful, and benign. The tip of his tail brushes the ground behind him; it is neither raised triumphantly, nor meekly curled between his hind legs. His open jaws reveal teeth, but he does not snarl or roar. The version of the Psalter of the Virgin in the Map Psalter does not mention a lion; how, then, should this creature be interpreted? Should he be understood as a heraldic beast, linked to a specific coat of arms? The lion bears a general resemblance, in terms of design of head, mane and musculature, to that on the arms of Simon de Montfort, sixth earl of Leicester (d. 1265) as carved and painted, c. 1260, on a shield in the north choir aisle of Westminster Abbey (Fig. 12.5).45 But, the Map Psalter lion is passant rather than rampant and he faces right, to sinister in heraldic language, which is highly unusual in a coat of arms. Further, his tail is neither erect, nor forked, making it unlikely that the lion references de Montfort, tantalising though such a connection

45

Ora Pro Nobis: The Virgin as Intercessor in Medieval Art and Devotion (Turnhout, 2008), 51 and n. 34, and 173–7. I am grateful to Dr Sally Dixon-Smith who brought this example to my attention.

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might be.46 The messages conveyed by the Map Psalter lion seem to be symbolic, rather than heraldic, akin to those suggested by the trio of diminutive lions on the steps of the Virgin’s throne in the Missal of Henry of Chichester.47 Understood in relation to the surmounting architectural canopy, which may allude to the Temple of Solomon,48 the lion appears to be an early reference to the Throne of Solomon, described in 1 Kings 10:18–20 and 2 Chronicles 9:17–29 as including twelve lions, arranged in pairs on the six steps leading up to the throne, with two further lions beneath the arm rests. Representations of Solomon’s throne typically feature multiple lions,49 but French and German twelfth-century examples employ single lions to signify this royal seat.50 The Map Psalter illustration stands alone as an English example of this approach, and establishes a compositionally ingenious, and unique, visual link with Solomon’s throne by substituting a living leonine footstool for the more typical box-shaped foot-rest or steps at the throne’s base. By extension, the Virgin herself signifies Solomon’s throne, as the sedes sapientiae, an idea developed in the twelfth century by authors who interpreted the Old Testament passages cited above, in conjunction with Luke 1:32–3, where Mary learns that her son will receive the throne of his forefather, David. Read in an ascending direction, the illustration indicates how Solomon’s earthly wisdom flows through the Virgin, Solomon’s descendant and Christ’s mother, to reach completion in the heavenly wisdom of the infant Christ, positioned purposefully on the same vertical axis as the lion’s head. Henry iii and Edward I were interested in glorifying their kingship by creating visual associations with Solomon’s throne, as seen on Henry’s seal and Edward’s wooden throne, St Edward’s Chair (which had an image of a king painted on its back, resting his feet on a lion, now-lost). 46

The hairs of the brush appear parted, but close inspection contradicts this impression, since the base-line of the throne is not visible through the brush. 47 Oakes, Ora Pro Nobis, 51 interprets the lions as a reference to the Throne of Solomon; Morgan, “Text and Image,” 92 also associates them with the Bestiary story where lion cubs are raised to life by their father after three days. 48 L. Hodne, The Virginity of the Virgin: A Study in Marian Iconography (Rome, 2012), 59. 49 See, for example, Paris, BnF MS Fr. 9220, f. 2r. Reproduced in De Artibus Opuscula xl: Essays in Honour of Erwin Panofsky ii, ed. M. Meiss (New York, 1961), 175, Fig. 1. 50 See two early twelfth-century French capitals of the Adoration of the Magi, from St Etienne, Toulouse (Toulouse, Musée des Augustins), and Sainte Marie de Lombez, Gers (London, V&A). I am grateful to the late Cathy Oakes for alerting me to the latter example. The single, submissive lion crouched beneath the enthroned Virgin and Child from the west gable of Santa Maria im Kapitol, Cologne, (now displayed in the nave of the church), dated variously to c. 1150–60 and the mid-thirteenth century, may reference a similar message. The single emblematic lion mask below the Virgin and Child’s throne, f. 46v, in the St Blasien Psalter, c. 1230–5 has been convincingly interpreted in this context. See H. Bober, The St. Blasien Psalter (New York, 1963), 45 and Plate XIII. i.

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Such images, possibly reinforced by a knowledge of the three lions in the royal menagerie at the Tower of London (originally presented to Henry iii by Frederick ii in 1235), which were viewed as living expressions of the Royal Arms of England (introduced in the late twelfth century), may have informed the invention of the Map Psalter’s animated footstool, thereby referencing the link between King Solomon, and England’s thirteenth-century monarchs.51 The Map Psalter lion serves also as an early, and in England, apparently unique, representation of the Lion of Judah, the animal Jacob used to characterise the tribe of his son, Judah, in Genesis 49:9, “Judah is a lion’s whelp: from the prey my son hast gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion who shall raise him up?” This Messianic prophecy, which confirmed Christ’s royal lineage and future kingdom, is explicitly stated in Revelation 5:5, “Behold the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the root of David hath prevailed to open the book.” By placing the lion’s head directly beneath Christ’s head, a visual link is established between the Old Testament ancestor and the incarnate Messiah, as well as ensuring that the Virgin is appropriately positioned to Christ’s right. The Genesis text emphasises the paradoxical nature of the Lion of Judah: youthful, and yet controlled. The Map Psalter lion combines these qualities, perhaps derived from a direct reading of the Old Testament text or, given two specific features of the illustration, sourced directly from the Bestiary. Numerous lavishly illustrated copies of this text were produced in thirteenth-century England. The Bestiary states that old lions lack teeth; the Map Psalter lion’s open mouth reveals two teeth and thereby confirms his youth.52 Another passage describes how the lion, when pursued by hunters, erases his tracks with his tail; behaviour analogous with Christ remaining hidden in Heaven until he assumed human form.53 Unlike lions in thirteenth-century Bestiary illustrations, or coats of arms, who typically display their tails above their backs or tuck them between their hind legs, the Map Psalter lion drags his tail behind him, as if its tip brushes the ground.54 The tradition of physical association between the Lion of Judah and the Virgin is generally accepted as a type invented in Germany in the mid to late thirteenth century which remained prevalent in Germany into the fifteenth

51

Described in W.R. Lethaby, Westminster Abbey and the King’s Craftsmen (London, 1906), 266, Fig. 84; F. Wormald, “The Throne of Solomon and St Edward’s Chair,” in Essays in Honour of E. Panofsky, ed. M. Meiss (New York, 1961), 532–9. 52 Barber, Bestiary, 25. 53 Ibid., 24. 54 The three small lions in the Missal of Henry of Chichester hold their tails in the same position.

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­century.55 An eccentric metalwork statuette, c. 1280–1310 (with later additions and re-workings), from the Upper Rhineland, now in Basel Cathedral Treasury, provides one of the earliest examples.56 A diminutive standing gold Virgin holds her son, balanced upon a mid-twelfth-century cameo of a standing lion, in front of a larger half-length figure of King David, who holds an inscribed scroll claiming Christ as his descendant.57 The Map Psalter demonstrates a precocious, and apparently unique, English example of this convention, possibly informed by portable artefacts brought to London from the Holy Roman Empire via high-level thirteenth-century connections: Emperor Frederick ii married Henry iii’s sister, Isabelle, in 1235, and Henry iii’s younger brother, Richard of Cornwall, was king of Germany from 1257 until 1272. In stark contrast with all Byzantine images of the Virgin, and the vast majority of western Marian images made before 1400, whether painted, carved, cast, or embroidered, the Map Psalter Virgin’s head is bare.58 Her hair falls from a centre parting and frames her face with soft waves; she wears neither veil, nor crown. Evidence of repainting around the top of her head indicates reshaping rather than suggesting a veil or crown was ever intended. Why declare the Virgin’s royal lineage by including a sceptre and lion, and yet omit a crown? Why omit a veil that emphasised the Virgin’s modesty? It is hard to believe that such omissions arose from carelessness, or a lack of familiarity with well-established conventions. The sceptre may help to explain the omissions. Its stem, punctuated by five roundels, suggests a carefully observed object fashioned from metal, with a trefoil tip flanked by delicate foliate sprays. This implies a flowering sceptre with associated allusions to Aaron’s flourishing rod (Numbers 17:8–10), and the well-known prophecy in Isaiah 11:1 “There shall come forth a rod, (virga), from the stem of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots,” interpreted as a punning reference to the Virgin (virgo) and confirmation of her royal

55 56 57 58

See Bloch, “Die Muttergottes.” See T. Husband, The Treasury of Basel Cathedral (New Haven and London, 2001), no. 35, 100–1. “King David, of strong hands, and fortuitous vision [declares] ‘Behold my descendant. The Saviour of the world, whom, with divine inspiration I have prophesised’,” from Husband, Treasury, 100. In all other English thirteenth-century images the Virgin wears either a veil or a crown, or sometimes both, as in the Lambeth Apocalypse, f. 48. It is unusual for her to be shown with no head-covering until c. 1400, see, for example the Goldenes Rössl (Bavaria, Alttöting Collegiate Church), c. 1400. There are a few isolated instances of earlier bare-­ headed Virgins, for example in the Tree of Jesse in the Lambeth Bible, London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 3, c. 1150, f. 198.

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s­ tatus and virginity.59 The Virgin’s loose locks and uncovered head may intentionally emphasise her physical and spiritual purity. In addition, they enhance her humanity and thereby reinforce the affectionate, intimate bond she shares with her son. The image is reminiscent of contemporary Italian examples where the Child reaches up to touch his mother’s veil, for example, Duccio’s Virgin and Child panel (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art (Accession number 2004.442), c. 1290–1300) and chimes with, but is arguably more radical than, other fond Virgin and Child images made in England 1250–1300, such as The Lambeth Apocalypse, where the Child embraces his mother; the Amesbury Psalter (Oxford, All Souls College Library MS 6), f. 4, where the Virgin suckles her son; or Matthew Paris’ Historia Anglorum (London, BL Royal MS 14.C.vii), f. 6, where the Child embraces his mother, touches her hair, and presses his entire profile against her cheek. The smudges of blue pigment around the Map Psalter Virgin’s mouth, chin and cheeks, may indicate that the image was touched, or kissed, during veneration of the image, and/or recitation of the text. The Map Psalter Virgin and Child functions as a visual preface to the Psalter of the Virgin reinforcing the text’s devotional reverence for the Virgin. Many, although not all, aspects of the Virgin alluded to by the frontispiece, are included in the rhyming quatrains of the text. For example, line two, Psalm 19 (f. 194r), Virgo prudens, humilis, sine sordis nota, highlights her humility; line two, Psalm 13 (f. 193v), Templum sancti spiritus, thronus maiestatis and line one, Psalm 85 (f. 202v), Ave, vitae speculum virginum regina, reference her royal status; and line two, Psalm 25 (f. 195r), Et maternum filiis exhibens affectum, emphasises her maternal affection. It is difficult to confirm whether, or not, the frontispiece was devised by direct consultation of the Psalter of the Virgin text since many of the abundant Marian devotional images produced in England during the second half of the thirteenth century illustrate similar sentiments, but the general message of the image undoubtedly harmonises with the spirit of the text. The trio of idiosyncratic iconographic elements in the frontispiece, unparalleled in contemporary English work, seem to stem from a variety of more specific visual and textual models, combined with invention. During negotiations to acquire the Map Psalter from Henry D. Jones of 22 Albin Street, Hyde Park, London, a British Museum librarian remarked, in a letter to the Trustees on 16 March 1871, that the manuscript’s interest lay in “its connecting certain

59 Hodne, Virginity, Part 2, “Mary and the Royal Lineage,” 37–66, and “The Family Tree of Jesus,” 57–66.

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c­ haracters of work with England.”60 The Virgin and Child frontispiece certainly demonstrates that English patrons relished innovative Marian images and that artists employed ingenuity in satisfying their enthusiasm, but it ­provides equal material proof of how receptive English patrons and artists were to the wide range of foreign influences available in cosmopolitan thirteenth-century Westminster. 60

See British Library Department of Manuscripts, Papers relating to the purchase and acquisition of manuscripts 1871–1873, for a series of letters concerning the British Museum’s purchase of this Psalter. The book was eventually purchased in 1872 for £65.

Chapter 13

Seeing and Reading the Matthew Paris Saints’ Lives Martin Kauffmann The thirteenth century saw the development of new ways of providing captions for pictures in illustrated books. No-one has done more to highlight this than John Lowden, whose work on the Bible moralisée has explored the richness of a unique pictorial narrative in which the text might be said to consist entirely of a series of captions.1 If nothing was produced in England which could match this Parisian innovation, still an interesting degree of experiment can be observed. Of course it is true that a rich variety of tituli and legends existed already in Romanesque manuscripts, saints’ lives included.2 These tituli were usually in Latin, and often went beyond mere description; they were clearly aimed at a learned, as well as an unlettered, audience. In the twelfth century the most familiar scenes are usually described as consistently as the more obscure; but in the thirteenth, when the prefatory cycles of Psalters were growing in length and complexity and creating long series of self-contained pictures separate from any text, not all scenes were considered in need of the same level of identification. Perhaps this is an indication that identification, as opposed to exegesis, was becoming the main purpose. In the Munich Psalter, the Old Testament scenes were provided with narrative captions and biblical references, whilst the New Testament scenes, which were presumably considered better-known, were mostly not.3 On the same principle, the biblical scenes in the Carrow Psalter have no captions, but the saints, who might be

1 J. Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, 2 vols. (University Park, PA, 2000). It was John who first encouraged me to look hard at the manuscripts which are the subject of this essay. Will Noel also gave advice and set an example: it is so long ago that he could be forgiven for not remembering, but I remain deeply grateful. 2 C. Denoël, “Texte et Image dans les Vies de Saints à l’Époque Romane: le Rôle des Tituli et des Légendes Descriptives,” in Qu’est-ce que Nommer? L’Image Légendée entre Monde Monastique et Pensée Scolastique, ed. C. Heck (Turnhout, 2010), 111–23; more generally, see A. Arnulf, Versus ad Picturas. Studien zur Titulusdichtung als Quellengattung der Kunstgeschichte von der Antike bis zum Hochmittelalter (Munich and Berlin, 1997). 3 Munich, bsb Clm 835: N.J. Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, 1190–1250, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 4, 2 vols. (London, 1982–8), i: no. 23; facsimile ed. N.J. Morgan, The Munich Golden Psalter (Luzern, 2011).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_015

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harder to distinguish, were identified; in fact the writer of the captions himself encountered difficulties, mistaking St Agatha for St Cecilia.4 Very occasionally we can be confident that some of the captions in a manuscript have been written by the artist himself. Matthew Paris is not the only instance: William de Brailes provides another rare example, though there is no reason to believe that he also composed the texts. The vernacular captions which accompany a series of leaves illuminated by de Brailes and his associates (which may have formed the prefatory cycle to a Psalter) vary in length.5 At their most detailed these captions can give a very full account of the scene depicted, expanding the individual event into a whole episode and representing an attempt to overcome the narrative limitations of the single tableau. In another de Brailes product, an early Book of Hours, the French captions which accompany almost all the miniatures and historiated initials go beyond identification, amplifying meanings and helping to transform the pictures into part of the structured devotional exercise.6 In these cases the captions were in Latin, and the captioning seems to have formed part of the original plan. In other cases, however, the need for captions was obviously felt some time after the initial production, when the manuscript was already in use. In the case of the Huntingfield Psalter, the captions were added probably around 1300 to a manuscript originally produced c. 1210–20—and they are in French.7 The prefatory cycle contains some quite obscure scenes, such as Abraham fighting the Four Kings and Jephthah killing his daughter, so it is not surprising that the Huntingfield family felt in need of guidance—though the campaign of providing the captions was never completed. Most such captions accompany the illustrations to Latin religious texts. But a manuscript of the Anglo-Norman Roman de toute chevalerie by Thomas of Kent, recounting the life and travels of Alexander the Great, a rare example at this period in England of an illustrated secular romance, also has captions.8 The pictures are inserted into the columns of text at the beginning of each chapter. At first the captions appear above and below each picture, sometimes corresponding to the left- and right-hand scenes. Later in the manuscript, however, the double rubrics were replaced by single ones placed above the picture, and they tend to act as general chapter headings rather than captions. Perhaps 4 Baltimore, Walters Art Museum MS W. 34: Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, ii: no. 118. 5 Baltimore, Walters Art Museum MS W. 106/Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet: facsimile ed. W. Noel, The Oxford Bible Pictures (Luzern, 2004). 6 London, BL Add. MS 49999: C. Donovan, The de Brailes Hours. Shaping the Book of Hours in Thirteenth-Century Oxford (London, 1991). 7 New York, Morgan Library MS M. 43: Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, i: no. 30. 8 Cambridge, Trinity College MS O. 9. 34: Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, i: no. 81.

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it was felt after all that there was no need for captions when the text was already in the vernacular. Not that the vernacular was always more accessible: in the twelfth century the Anglo-Saxon illustrated Hexateuch had Latin commentaries added to its pictures, perhaps reflecting the diminishing accessibility of its original Old English text.9 The saints’ lives associated with Matthew Paris provide an outstanding example of innovation in the relations between texts, pictures, rubrics, and captions. Though their systems are unparalleled, they can be seen as part of this general development by which a variety of types of caption was employed in order to bridge the gap between texts and pictures, or to make up for the intrinsic differences between the two. Their inventiveness is an aspect of their format, with a picture occupying the top half of almost every page, above a continuous text. One other kind of book, the illustrated Apocalypses of the middle and later thirteenth century, also used this layout to create the effect of a continuous pictorial narrative; but the Apocalypses do not exhibit anything similar in the way of rubrics and captions. They mostly divided the biblical text into discrete sections, in order to match the pictures, which were often quite closely copied (in their sequence, and even in their contents) from one manuscript to another. If the text (which sometimes also included a relevant section of commentary) could not all be accommodated, it could be brusquely abbreviated with an “etcetera.”10 1

The Matthew Paris Saints’ Lives

The three manuscripts are a Life of St Alban, a third-century soldier who became the first English martyr, whose story is combined with that of St Amphibalus, the name acquired by the missionary who converted him to Christianity (Dublin, Trinity College MS 177, hereafter Alban);11 the four surviving

9 10 11

London, BL Cotton MS Claudius B iv: C.R. Dodwell and P. Clemoes, ed., The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch (Copenhagen, 1974). S. Lewis, Reading Images. Narrative Discourse and Reception in the Thirteenth-Century Illuminated Apocalypse (Cambridge, 1995). A.R. Harden, ed., La Vie de Seint Auban. An Anglo-Norman Poem of the Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1968), from which French quotations and line numbers are taken; Harden does not include the Latin texts, which are taken from the manuscript; translated by J. WoganBrowne and T.S. Fenster, The Life of Saint Alban by Matthew Paris (Tempe, AZ, 2010); reproduced by M.R. James, Illustrations to the Life of St. Alban in Trin. Coll. Dublin MS. E. i. 40 (Oxford, 1924).

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leaves of the Life of St Thomas Becket (Wormsley Library, hereafter Thomas);12 and the Life of St Edward the Confessor, king of England 1042–66 (Cambridge, University Library MS Ee. 3. 59, hereafter Edward).13 All three Lives are written in Anglo-Norman French verse; all three have twelfth-century Latin prose originals as their main source. Each is the sole witness to its text and picture cycle. The Life of Alban is combined with a corpus of hagiographical material, all of it directly related to the monastic cult. By contrast, the Life of Edward stands alone. We do not know if any other texts were appended to the Becket fragment. Thomas and Edward are written in the octo-syllabic couplets popular in contemporary romance literature, in three columns to the page; but Alban is written in the older-fashioned alexandrine form, whose longer lines determine its two-column format. The dimensions of Thomas and Edward are close but not identical; Alban is slightly smaller. Most pages in Alban, and every page in Thomas and Edward, have a framed and tinted drawing which occupies roughly its top half; in many ways they resemble each other more than they resemble anything else.14 It is not possible, in the space of a short essay, to recount in detail the scholarly discussions of the circumstances surrounding the production and reception of these books: this very abbreviated summary aims merely to represent the state of the question.15 Thomas Walsingham, a monk at St Albans around 1400, wrote that his predecessor Matthew Paris (who became a monk at St Albans in 1217, and died in 1259) had written and illustrated Lives of Saints Alban, Thomas, and Edmund. The Life of Edmund survives, unillustrated, in Latin and Anglo-Norman versions; the Anglo-Norman at least was dedicated to Isabel de 12

13

14

15

Edited by P. Meyer, Fragments d’une Vie de Saint Thomas de Cantorbéry (Paris, 1885), from which quotations and line numbers (preceded in each case by a folio number, since the lines are not numbered in one continuous sequence) are taken; Meyer includes both the French rubrics and the Latin captions, but does not give them line numbers; new edition by C. Rossi, Matteo di Parigi, La Vie Saint Thomas le Martyr (Alessandria, 2008); reproduced by J. Backhouse and C. de Hamel, The Becket Leaves (London, 1988). Edited by K. Young Wallace, La Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei attributed to Matthew Paris (London, 1983), from which French quotations and line numbers are taken; Wallace does not include the Latin texts, which are taken from the manuscript; translated by T.S. Fenster and J. Wogan-Browne, The History of Saint Edward the King by Matthew Paris (Tempe, AZ, 2008); reproduced by M.R. James, La Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei (The Life of St. Edward the Confessor) (Oxford, 1920). Matthew Paris employed a similar layout for his Lives of the Offas (London, BL Cotton MS Nero D I, ff. 22v–27v): Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, i: no. 87a. But the picture cycle was left unfinished, and the inscriptions are not comparable to the system of rubrics and captions employed in the saints’ lives. For the life and works of Matthew Paris, see R. Vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge, 1958), and S. Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora (Aldershot, 1987).

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Warenne, countess of Arundel.16 The Life of Alban is evidently Alban, generally agreed to have been written and illustrated in Matthew’s own hand, perhaps in the 1230s or 1240s. A note by Matthew on a fly-leaf in Alban (f. 2r) refers to the sending of a book containing the Lives of Thomas and Edward (which he had translated and illustrated) to the same Isabel, and then to the countess of Cornwall, probably Sanchia, the sister of Eleanor of Provence, queen of England, wife of King Henry iii, to whom Edward is dedicated within the text.17 But neither Thomas nor Edward is written or illustrated in Matthew’s own hand, and they are not compatible with each other stylistically, though both are probably products of lay professional artists in London.18 Thomas seems to belong to the same period as Alban, whilst the style and some of the compositional elements of Edward place it in the company of the illustrated Apocalypse manuscripts which began to be produced in the 1250s. It is possible that Matthew was the author of the texts of Thomas and Edward, but commissioned other artists to illustrate them; alternatively these manuscripts may be versions of originals by Matthew, made as presentation copies (and, in the case of Edward, as a version produced a generation later). The original production of the Life of Edward must have been connected to the marriage of Eleanor of Provence to Henry iii in 1236, and the period leading up to the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey, which began in earnest in 1245. It is just possible that the surviving manuscript could be connected to another foreign queen, Eleanor of Castile, who married Prince Edward (the son of Henry and Eleanor, later Edward I) in 1254 and is later recorded as owning books containing the Lives of Thomas and Edward.19 Despite the differences between the surviving manuscripts, their drawings do share elements of a pictorial vocabulary and narrative technique, especially in the similarity of their systems of rubrics and captions which are the subject of this essay. The attention paid in recent years to the ideology of these books has not been quite matched by the same intensity of interest in the mechanics 16

17

18 19

C.H. Lawrence, St. Edmund of Abingdon. A Study in Hagiography and History (Oxford, 1960), 70–100, 222–89; translation ed. C.H. Lawrence, The Life of St Edmund by Matthew Paris (Far Thrupp, 1996); A.T. Baker, “La vie de Saint Edmond, Archevêque de Cantorbéry,” Romania 55 (1929): 332–81. The same flyleaf contains instructions by Matthew for a set of paired illustrations of saints with French captions in a book for the countess of Winchester—further evidence of Matthew’s involvement in the composition of such descriptive texts: James, Illustrations to the Life of St. Alban, 20–4. N.J. Morgan, “Matthew Paris, St Albans, London, and the leaves of the ‘Life of St Thomas Becket’,” Burlington Magazine 130 (1988): 85–96. P. Binski, “Abbot Berkyng’s Tapestries and Matthew Paris’s Life of St Edward the Confessor,” Archaeologia 109 (1991): 85–100.

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of their presentation.20 In any attempt to understand the range of meanings that these manuscripts may have had for their original audience, it is fundamental to try to establish how the books were designed to be read. How do the different elements in each manuscript—text, pictures, captions—fit together? Do they duplicate, complement, or disagree with each other? Can we say that any one element takes precedence over the others? Is this precedence consistent, or does it vary from page to page? How coherent is the narrative which results? Is there a progression from one manuscript to the next? These questions apply whether or not all the elements in these manuscripts were composed and designed by Matthew. Of course the modern reader’s experience of looking at these books can never be that of the thirteenth-century reader.21 But it is arguable that these manuscripts provide a better opportunity than almost any other medieval book for the modern viewer to reconstruct the ways in which contemporary viewing of a set of pictures was directed. By piecing together these elements we are thus using the tools provided for us by those who originally determined the particular layout of these books. We are allowing our reading to be guided, as far as possible, by the books’ own strategies, as a first step in the attempt to understand how they communicated with their original audience. 1.1 Alban Alban is written in irregular alexandrine laisses (each maintaining a single rhyme), in long lines (mostly of twelve syllables), presented in two columns to a page. Most pages have (or originally had) a framed and tinted drawing occupying the top half;22 four have a drawing at the head of one column only, with a full column of text beside it; seven have no drawing at all. Though it is easy enough to explain the absence of pictures in these cases—for instance, the 20

21

22

For the ideology of Edward, see P. Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets. Kingship and the Representation of Power 1200–1400 (New Haven and London, 1995), 52–89; for its presentation, see V.B. Jordan, “The multiple narratives of Matthew Paris’ Estoire de seint Aedward le rei: Cambridge, University Library MS Ee. iii. 59,” Parergon NS 13, no. 2 (Jan. 1996): 77–92. Nevertheless, I am regularly made aware of the problem of co-ordinating text, picture, and caption by my newspaper, witness the caption next to a picture of the head of Deutsche Bank: “Some type to go in here relating to the element opposite. Could be quote or caption” (The Guardian, 17 September 2016, 35). In the next issue, a letter was printed from Mr Bob Caldwell of Daventry, Northamptonshire: “Some text to go in here relating to a reader’s letter concerning the number of times some text to go in here appears alongside Guardian photos.” The drawings have been lost from ff. 40v, 42v, 43r, 45v, 48v, 49v, 50v, and 51v: these had all been executed on separate pieces of parchment.

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lengthy passages of text in which Amphibalus instructs Alban in the fundamentals of Christian doctrine explains the absence of pictures on ff. 29r, 30r, and 32v—this gives Alban a less regular, more experimental feel than Thomas or Edward. Each drawing is described by a French caption or rubric in octosyllabic couplets written in red above it: they vary in length from four to sixteen lines, but eight is the norm. They are either divided, or run in a single line across the top, depending whether the pictures themselves are divided into separate scenes. They are written on lines ruled for the purpose; but the space allocated was sometimes not sufficient, and the rubrics sometimes spread into the margins. All the written elements appear to be in the same hand. The rubrics were inserted after the drawings.23 Notes in the lower margins, probably in Matthew’s hand, have been severely trimmed in rebinding, but apparently refer to the subjects of the drawings, and may be classed as directions, even though scribe and artist are here one and the same.24 Let us now look in detail at a single page in Alban. On f. 31r there is a tinted drawing framed on three sides above two columns of text with two sets of rubric above the drawing (Fig. 13.1). The drawing shows Alban in one room watching through a window his mentor Amphibalus in an adjacent room; Amphibalus is kneeling before a cross placed on an altar.25 The first thing to note is that the text on this page is not describing what we see in the picture: instead, it is giving an account of Alban’s dream of the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ, which was depicted on the previous page. So the parallelism between the text and its illustration is looser than a cursory glance might lead one to assume. In fact the scene is nowhere described in the text quite as it is presented here. The text does not say that Alban actually sees Amphibalus before the cross, though we do read that Amphibalus, after recounting the Life of Christ and explicating the fundamentals of Christian doctrine to Alban, spends the night in prayer before his cross. The pictorial idea of spying on holiness harks back to the tradition of the secretary to Pope Gregory the Great witnessing Gregory’s inspiration by the Holy Spirit;26 it is linked to the exegesis of the 23 24 25

26

Further details of the order of working in the manuscript are given by C. Baswell, “The Manuscript Context,” in Wogan-Browne and Fenster, Life of Saint Alban, 169–94. P. Quinn, “Alban Disbound: Codicological Remarks on Matthew Paris’s Life of St. Alban,” in Wogan-Browne and Fenster, Life of Saint Alban, 195–212 (202–3). The shape of the cross and its prominence in the narrative has been associated with a relic of the saint which had been acquired by St Albans: F. McCulloch, “Saints Alban and Amphibalus in the Works of Matthew Paris: Dublin, Trinity College MS 177,” Speculum 56 (1981): 761–85. As illustrated in the famous tenth-century miniature which probably belonged to a manuscript of the Registrum Gregorii (Trier, Stadtbibliothek MS 171/1626): H. Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination. An Historical Study, 2 vols. (London, 1991), i: Fig. 13.

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Figure 13.1

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Trinity College Dublin MS 177, f. 31r Reproduced by kind permission of The Board of Trinity College Dublin

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Song of Songs, 2:9, “My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice,” taken as a metaphor for enlightenment by Scripture through the senses.27 For the miniature in Alban, it is the rubric and not the text which gives a verbal account of what is happening in the drawing. Two of these octosyllabic rhyming couplets describe each side of the picture, though the face of Amphibalus shows no sign of the sighing and weeping described. On the left: Ci veit Auban par la fenestre / De Amphibal trestut sun estre. / Mustrer li veut en bone fei / De sun sunge tut le segrei. And on the right: Amphibal la croiz aure / A genoilluns, suspire e plure; / Ne tresublie, ne dort, ne summe / Ke il ne face sa custume (rubrics ll. 9–16). At the bottom of the right-hand column is another set of rubrics, perhaps a slightly later insertion: there is no ruling for them. They are again in rhyming couplets, but this time in Latin: Laus tibi Christe datur; vigili prece crux veneratur; / omnia miratur Albanus quae speculatur. Whereas the French rubrics accompany each picture, these Latin leonine couplets appear in a little over half the pages with pictures, and in one case (f. 30r) where there is none. They are neither translations of the French captions, nor derived from the Latin source of Matthew’s poem. They consist rather of a poetic response to the picture, though the character is that of a school exercise.28 At the end of the Passion of Alban and Amphibalus, a change takes place in the relation between text and pictures. The picture cycle is continued with a series of drawings, in the same style as the first cycle, illustrating the fifth-­ century visit of Saints Germanus and Lupus to Britain to combat the Pelagian heresy (ff. 50v-55r). But the texts underneath these pictures, written in ­different hands from that of Alban’s life, are only indirectly related: they are Latin lessons and tracts on the invention and translation of Alban. The basic form of the previous layout has been maintained, but the text and the picture cycle are no longer running in parallel. It is not inconceivable that Matthew originally intended to compose a continuation to his poem to accompany these pictures: the pages are ruled for verse rather than for the prose which eventually filled them. Taking the last scene of this section as an example (f. 55r), we see the two bishops, having vanquished the Pelagians, ride away, carrying with them a reliquary containing dust from the ground stained red with the blood of Alban at his martyrdom (Fig. 13.2). The Latin rubrics at the bottom of the page were not 27

28

Cynthia Hahn gives a rich account of narrative, sign, and Christian witness in Alban: “Absent no Longer. The Sign and the Saint in Late Medieval Pictorial Hagiography,” in Hagiographie und Kunst. Der Heiligenkult in Schrift, Bild und Architektur, ed. G. Kerscher (Berlin, 1993), 152–75. The texts are transcribed by R. Atkinson, La Vie de Seint Auban: a Poem in Norman-French, Ascribed to Matthew Paris (London, 1876), 55–60.

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Figure 13.2

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Trinity College Dublin MS 177, f. 55r Reproduced by kind permission of The Board of Trinity College Dublin

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continued in this section, but the French ones at the top are present, still written in Matthew’s own hand. Indeed they are now the only text directly concerned with the illustrations. The bishops have restored order in the Church, and no-one believes in the strange doctrine anymore; glory is rendered to God for their victory when they return to their country. There is nothing about the relic they carry home. Previously this might not have mattered: the detail would have been in the text. Now the solution adopted is to insert the information into the picture itself: in the same hand, and also in red, a Latin inscription labels the reliquary. In the first section there had been almost no inscriptions within the pictures, except for people’s names, given in French. Here both the names and the identification of the reliquary are in Latin: we shall return to the question of the relationship between languages. The final section of sixteen pages (ff. 55v–63r) tells the story of the discovery of Alban’s body by King Offa and his building of the abbey at St Albans to house it. As in the second section, only the superficial layout of the original section is preserved, and again the rubrics carry the whole burden of relating the events in words, together with a few speech inscriptions within the pictures.29 It is no surprise that four out of the five sets of rubrics in the manuscript as a whole which exceed the standard length of eight lines are found in this section. 1.2 Thomas Four leaves of this manuscript survive, describing the middle part of Becket’s life. It has been suggested that they are the first, second, fourth, and fifth leaves from an original gathering of eight, a reconstruction to which we shall return.30 The fragment contains 506 lines of rhyming couplets, written in three columns to a page, except on f. 2 (recto and verso) which has only two. Each page has a drawing occupying roughly its top half, except on f. 3v where the drawing takes up the space at the head of two columns only and a full column of text rises up next to it. Each drawing is described by a Latin prose caption above it and by a French rubric of six or eight lines inserted into the head of a column of text and written in the same verse form as the text. There is usually one of these for each scene, so that a drawing divided into two parts will have two Latin captions and two French rubrics. Both the captions and the rubrics are in red, with blue initials. There are also Latin inscriptions within the drawings, usually 29 30

C. Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart. Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the Tenth through the Thirteenth Century (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2001), 310–12. The auction catalogue entry contained a more detailed codicological description than was included in Backhouse and de Hamel, The Becket Leaves: Sotheby’s, Western Manuscripts and Miniatures, 24 June 1986, lot 40.

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e­ ither sentences within scrolls or just the names of characters depicted. It is immediately apparent that this system is more complex than that of Alban. One scribe was responsible for all the writing. Most of it is complete, but some of the inscriptions and captions lack their initials, and in these cases miniature red guide letters are clearly visible. The drawings were executed before the Latin captions, which are written around any elements extending beyond the frame; there is also some evidence that the drawings were executed before the main text. On f. 1r the drawing shows King Henry ii sending Becket’s relatives into exile, and the archbishop himself already at the abbey of Pontigny, lying ill from excessive fasting (Fig. 13.3). The story is already well advanced. The scenes have separate rubrics and captions. The Latin inscription in the scroll held by the king, and the caption, merely describe the act of sending into exile, but the more expansive French rubric describes the sufferings of the relatives in terms which connect with the illustration: the woman on the ground holding her swaddled baby is probably the artist’s rendering of the remark in the rubric that not even the woman who holds her child to her breast is spared, although that is not exactly what he has shown her doing. The discrepancy may be explained by the derivation of the composition from the type of the Massacre of the Innocents. Not only does this cast Henry ii, the grandfather of the king in whose reign this book was produced, as an archetypal tyrant: it does so unnecessarily, since Henry does not order the massacre of Becket’s relatives, only their expulsion.31 On the right of the same page there are again two Latin texts, one within and one above the picture. Both of them, and the French beneath, describe Becket’s self-inflicted sufferings. The only difference between the two Latin sentences is that the one within the picture adds that the news of the illtreatment of his relations at home serves to increase his sufferings—and indeed his head is just a dividing colonette away from them. The French rubric makes a slightly different point, and tells us the outcome of the episode, that Becket is ordered to put a stop to his abstinence. So it is the rubric which expands the individual scene into an episode. The Latin inscriptions in this drawing are more extensive than in any other of the four leaves. The scroll held by the king more or less repeats the information about the exile given in the caption, and it is not phrased as direct speech but in the third person. Each time a scroll appears in these pictures it performs a slightly different function. Here, 31

It was not inevitable that the artist should have used this model. Others were available, such as the comparable scene of Pharaoh sending the Israelites into exile, as found in the stained glass window at Canterbury Cathedral: M.H. Caviness, The Windows of Christ Church Cathedral Canterbury (London, 1981), colour pl. vii.

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Figure 13.3

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Life of St Thomas Becket, Wormsley Library, f. 1r Reproduced by kind permission of The Wormsley Library

although we do not strictly speaking need the information it gives us, the way in which it overhangs the violent expulsion serves to reinforce the king’s commanding role. The Latin inscription on the right is the only one which is not

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either contained within a scroll or simply a name. If it was an experiment, it was one which came in the middle of the manuscript. Meanwhile the text itself is not quite in step with the pictures on this page: it is slightly ahead. At the beginning of the page it is already describing Becket’s fast, and does not mention the expulsion of the relatives, which must have been described on the (now missing) previous leaf. Any correspondence between the organization of the columns of text and the composition of the elements within the picture is purely visual: the content of the text is not organized to have the relevant portions beneath the picture which illustrates them. Later in the sequence the reader encounters narrative difficulties for which more than one explanation is possible. On f. 2r we see Becket pronouncing the sentence of excommunication on those who have attacked his followers or taken the rightful possessions of Canterbury, and then arguing his case before Henry ii of England and Louis vii of France (Fig. 13.4). But the text on this page makes no mention of the excommunication: at the beginning it is already describing the papal negotiations which led to the involvement of King Louis. The presentation of the text in two columns rather than three presumably indicates the wish of the designer to slow down the text and to bring text and pictures back into closer correspondence. The logical explanation would be that the relevant text was on the previous page, running slightly ahead. But according to the suggested reconstruction, the previous page was the f. 1v which we still possess—and the episode has not yet happened there. So either there is a picture here of a scene which did not occur in the text, or the reconstruction has led us astray and there was another leaf in between ff. 1 and 2. Two things make it unlikely that the picture had no textual counterpart. The first is that the text is generally more expansive than its illustrations, which cannot follow all the twists and turns of the plot. It would be surprising if an episode important enough to be illustrated could find no place in the text. The second is that this scene is described not only by a Latin caption but also by a French rubric. In general the French rubrics are constructed out of edited extracts of the text, but in this case it would have had to be invented independently. It is in fact not only the narrative of the excommunications which is missing. The text on f. 1v ends with Henry’s threat against the Cistercians that he will confiscate their English possessions if they carry on granting asylum to his enemy on the Continent; but the consequence of this, Becket’s departure from the Cistercian house at Pontigny, is never mentioned. If one did not want to accept the idea of a missing leaf, there are three other possible explanations: either a column’s worth of text has been lost here in the copying of the material onto this page, despite the fact that the layout of each page was carefully prepared beforehand; or there was a fuller version of this text from which this was e­ xtracted

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Figure 13.4

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Life of St Thomas Becket, Wormsley Library, f. 2r Reproduced by kind permission of The Wormsley Library

in a careless way, throwing out the relationship between text and pictures; or the compositions of the drawings were in fact first conceived not for the French text at all but as a cycle of illustrations to the twelfth-century Latin source, the

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compilation known as the Quadrilogus.32 None of these possibilities appears attractive. It is perhaps worth noting that the section of the Quadrilogus which is ‘missing’ between ff. 1 and 2 is longer than that which is omitted between ff. 2 and 3, where the reconstruction does allow for a missing leaf. So it seems possible that there was another leaf between ff. 1 and 2. It might have been illustrated by scenes of Becket’s departure from Pontigny and his coming u ­ nder the protection of the King of France or his meeting with the cardinal arbitrators appointed by the pope. The text on f. 3v ends with the support of the king of France for action to avenge the injury done to the archbishop by the coronation of the young Henry by Archbishop Roger of York, in flagrant usurpation of the rights of Canterbury. It ends with the incomplete sentence, Willame, li prelat de Sanz, / Des maus seint Thomas doillanz […]. At the top of f. 4r, the text continues, or rather does not, Quant li prodem le vout garnir, the warning in question being the one illustrated, delivered by Milo on behalf of the count of Boulogne to Becket of the plot to murder him if he returns to England. From the midst of the dispute, the textual narrative has jumped to the point where Becket is about to embark on a ship for England. His decision to return does not feature; nor does his pronouncement of anathema against the bishops who performed the coronation in his absence, so that the conversation with the king’s knights on f. 4v about the rights and wrongs of his action is rendered meaningless. Without rehearsing all the possibilities again, the simplest solution to this problem is the original existence of another leaf between ff. 3 and 4 which would have contained, amongst other episodes such as the threat of an interdict and the temporary reconciliation at Fréteval, Becket’s decision to return and the pronouncement of the anathemas against the bishops. The previously suggested relationship between these leaves depended largely on the belief that ff. 3 and 4 once formed a bifolium. Closer observation reveals that this cannot have been the case, since the profiles of their inner edges do not quite match. No pair of the surviving leaves seems to fit together as a bifolium. Any attempt to estimate the original length of Thomas is largely guesswork. The leaves cover the story of the Quadrilogus from 2:15 to 3:4, about one fifth of the whole. If we suppose that the poem was a version of the whole Quadrilogus and maintained a roughly constant relation to its source, the total length of the book might have been about thirty-five leaves—almost exactly that of Edward, to which we must now turn.

32

J.C. Robertson, ed., Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, vol. 4: Anonymous Lives, Quadrilogus (London, 1879).

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1.3 Edward At first sight Edward looks very similar to Thomas, with its three columns of text in rhyming couplets, a drawing on every page except the first, and French rubrics (four, six, or eight lines long, written in red ink by the same scribe as the main text, and in the same verse form) at the head of the central column beneath the drawing; in the latter half of the manuscript there are sometimes rubrics at the head of more than one column. Once again, there is occasional evidence that the drawings were executed before the main text. No picture appears without a rubric, but a small number of rubrics have no corresponding drawing. If anything, a page of Edward looks simpler than one from either of the other two manuscripts, because the Latin captions above the pictures have disappeared. But in fact Edward’s techniques of story-telling are somewhat more sophisticated and make greater demands on the reader. On f. 4r we see the oppression of the English people in the lands of St Edmund by the Danish King Sweyn, and the flight of Queen Emma, wife of King Ethelred, and her two sons Edward and Alfred (Fig. 13.5). The rubric describes the ravages of Sweyn in terms borrowed from the text, mentioning the burning of houses and the rooting-up of woods and gardens, whilst the picture concentrates on the imprisonment and despoiling of the people. The rubric here does not mention the flight—it is described in the rubric on the following page— but within the picture there are Latin inscriptions, one of which does describe Emma’s departure. These inscriptions are in red, with blue initials (sometimes not inserted), sometimes enclosed by blue lines. They are in the same script as the other elements. The depiction of Emma’s flight carries echoes of the Flight into Egypt.33 Ethelred does not accompany his family. The male figure behind Emma and her sons may be an unnamed attendant; but he may be intended to represent Ethelred sending his wife and children away, which would explain the bringing of his hand to his cheek as the conventional gesture of sadness, and would reinforce the analogy with the Flight into Egypt. The reader of the main text might have been confused by the fact that mention is made of Ethelred’s own flight to Normandy sometime before he is shown sending his family away; the reader who was only looking at the pictures would not have experienced this problem, since Ethelred is never shown departing in the picture cycle. The rubric catches up on the following page by describing how the king sends his family to Normandy for their protection. Turning the page, and noticing the money-bag being wrenched away from the man being clubbed on the ground, the reader sees Emma presenting her 33

J. Hamilton Clements, “The Construction of Queenship in the Illustrated Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei,” Gesta 52 (2013): 21–42 (28).

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Figure 13.5

Cambridge, University Library MS Ee. 3. 59, f. 4r Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

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children to Duke Richard of Normandy on their arrival, and the vengeance taken by St Edmund on King Sweyn (Fig. 13.6). The scene on the right is described only by the Latin inscription: Suein censum querit. Rex ferit atque gerit. The money-bag is reclaimed in a scene derived from the twelfth-century Life of St Edmund.34 In the Life of Edmund the money-bag was the tribute imposed on the monks of Bury St Edmunds by the Danish conqueror; but when the composition reappears, the vengeance is no longer that of the patron saint of the monastic community against royal interference: it is the punishment of the oppressive king by the good king who protects his people. The insertion of the money-bag into the picture of Sweyn’s oppression, a visual translation of the text’s general description of Sweyn robbing the people, can now be appreciated as a device which, by linking that scene with this one across the space of Emma’s flight, explained the reason for this killing. The provision of this continuity had been necessitated by the fact that the pictorial story is here told in a different order from that of the text, where Sweyn’s death comes immediately after the description of his invasion and before the flight of Emma and her sons, who actually flee not from Sweyn but from his successor Cnut. The separation of the oppression from its punishment allowed both to take up twothirds of a drawing, but it also provided an element of suspense. The Latin inscriptions disappear after f. 5r. It is not difficult to see why they were abandoned: there was simply not enough room for them in the pictures. And since there were no captions above the picture to begin with, we are now left without any Latin at all. The general problem with illustrating Edward is the episodic nature of the narrative. Unlike Alban and Thomas, which tell single tales of confrontation and martyrdom, the story of Edward’s reign consists mostly of individual separate events strung together. Narrative continuity is maintained partly by the use of whole series of scenes to illustrate individual episodes: the story of the papal commutation of Edward’s vow to go on pilgrimage takes up eight drawings (ff. 13r-16v), providing the reader with a pictorial narrative of a process universally acknowledged to be long and arduous. Many drawings contain several scenes, articulated either formally by a column or by the use of landscape and architectural settings. Of the sixty-four drawings in the book, roughly two-thirds stretch across all three columns, whilst the remainder are only two columns wide. The existence of two-column pictures which have the effect of splitting up the picture cycle, isolating pictures from each other by the intervention of a full column of text, could be used as a tool 34

New York, Morgan Library MS M. 736, f. 21v: Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart, 231. It is not clear how the composition travelled: there are no other obvious borrowings from the same manuscript.

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Figure 13.6

Cambridge, University Library MS Ee. 3. 59, f. 4v Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

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to provide visual punctuation, dividing the narrative at appropriate points. As one reads ff. 20 to 30, this seems to be done quite consistently to separate the many different miracle stories. But there are other occasions when this opportunity was not taken, such as at the opening of ff. 16v-17r, where the first half of the story of Edward healing the cripple Ghillie Michael is paired with the last scene of the episode of the pilgrimage vow and is separated from the second half of the healing. The scenes which belong together are separated, even though the absolution of the vow takes up one column and the cure two, so that they could comfortably have been combined. Usually it is clear which pictures belong to each other, but not always, as on ff. 23v-24r, where the story of three blind men led by a one-eyed man, all of whom are healed by the water in which Edward has washed his hands, is apparently (and very unusually) depicted from right to left, but where the left-hand side of the picture on f. 23v seems to show the final scene of the previous episode, the healing of the carpenter blinded during the construction of a royal palace.35 Towards the end, the system seems to break down. As well as illustrating Edward’s appearances to Harold and the abbot of Ramsey on f. 31, and the abbot’s subsequent visit to Harold and Harold’s recovery on f. 32r, there seems also to have been a desire to devote a whole drawing to the landing of Tostig and Harold Haardrada and their defeat of the earl of Northumberland, and another to the Battle of Stamford Bridge. The result is that the battle is illustrated on f. 32v, two pages away from its place in the text. This is largely corrected by the omission of any picture to illustrate the events recounted in the text on f. 32v, notably the cure of a blind sacristan, so that by f. 33r text and pictures are once again synchronized. At this point, however, the relation of rubrics to pictures also seems to break down. On f. 32r, where the pictures are of the abbot of Ramsey going to see Harold, and Harold’s address to his courtiers on the threat from Tostig and Haardrada, the rubrics describe the Battle of Stamford Bridge, which is shown over the page on f. 32v (Fig. 13.7). The rubric on that page not only describes an entirely unrelated event (the cure of the blind sacristan), but it is also clearly a six-line rubric failing to occupy an eightline space. The rubric for the battle on the previous page is indeed eight lines long. Possibly a rubric appropriate to the events on f. 32r was missed out and the space wrongly filled with that for the battle. But this still leaves us with a six-line rubric, describing the cure of the sacristan, with nowhere to go. The page after the battle has its own two sets of rubric, both eight lines long, and no picture of the sacristan. It would of course be tempting to posit the existence, or at least the planned existence, of a missing leaf, but there is no obvious 35 Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart, 393 n. 25.

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Figure 13.7

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Cambridge, University Library MS Ee. 3. 59, f. 32v. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

physical or textual break to justify the idea. Nevertheless to suppose that the rubrics were deliberately designed not to fit would be implausible. In many places in Edward it is hard to know whether the awkwardness and

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inconsistencies are the results of mistakes in the copying process or of a degree of experimentation which goes beyond that of either Alban or Thomas.36 2

Language, Literacy, and the Caption

In exploring (even in the small sample which is all that has been possible here) the variety of relationships between texts, pictures, and captions in these manuscripts, it is difficult to draw general conclusions. It has not proved possible to distinguish a clear division of labour between captions and rubrics as mediators: the rubrics do not always summarize the text, the captions do not always describe the drawings. One constant theme has been the relationship between Anglo-Norman French and Latin rubrics. Thomas stands out as having its Latin better integrated into the overall scheme than the other two manuscripts. The French captions had greater possibilities for the borrowing of language from the main text, but there is no clear division of function in the sense (for example) that the Latin was more closely aligned with the pictures and the French with the text. In some ways the whole relationship between the languages is unexpected. The presence of vernacular captions to illustrations in Latin texts can easily be understood as part of the process by which the contents were made accessible to the lay reader. But here we have the opposite. There can hardly have been anyone reading these books who knew Latin but not French; the Latin was not, therefore, a means to allow the book to reach more than one kind of audience. We might think of Latin as the language of the written word and the vernacular as the language of the spoken word; but in the drawings in Thomas, Latin is spoken. At the conference on f. 2r, Becket says Oblatis adquiesco salvo honore Dei, in his famous paradoxical formulation. He says the same thing in the text, but in French. Indeed, the characters in the pictures not only speak Latin; their very names consistently keep their Latin forms. This was already true in the twelfth-century Winchester Psalter, where the captions (positioned within the frames) are in French, but the speech scrolls within the pictures are in Latin.37 The characters in the pictures speak the language of Scripture: they are part of the play. The pictures could be subtitled, but they could not be dubbed.

36 37

Edward also contains a higher number of scribal errors in its text than the other two manuscripts: Wallace, Estoire, xiv-xvii. London, BL Cotton MS Nero C iv: K. Edmondson Haney, The Winchester Psalter. An Iconographic Study (Leicester, 1986); F. Wormald, The Winchester Psalter (London, 1973).

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One might ask, why have any Latin at all? In none of these manuscripts does the Latin consist of extracts from the original Latin text: it has always been specially composed. But maybe it does represent a leftover in a more general sense. Vernacular saints’ lives were not new at this date; indeed, saints’ lives were in the vanguard of Anglo-Norman religious writing.38 But Latin was still the sacred language of Scripture, and the language of divinity and lordship as manifested in Church ritual and legal transactions. Its presence had authenticating connotations because it carried the authority of truth, an attribute at a premium when the pseudo-reality of fiction was creating a controversial new category between truth and falsehood. Both Edward and Alban lay great stress on the Latin origins of their texts, and the affinity of truth to Latinity is made in the first few lines of Edward (ll. 40–8). Once the main text was in French, the only place where Latin could appear in order to contribute this validation was in the context of the pictures. The eventual disappearance of Latin in Edward might be taken as a sign that French was coming of age. Alongside the idea of Latin functioning as a badge of legitimacy, we should also recognize the potential enjoyment of interplay between languages and genres amongst the members of a sophisticated audience. Edward has been justly described as “an apparently loose though in fact self-conscious assemblage of genres that include genealogy, chronicle, courtly romance, hagiography, and prophecy.”39 In the Anglo-Norman Life of Edmund which Matthew Paris dedicated to the Countess Isabel, the choice of the vernacular is explained not in relation to the patron’s own lack of Latin literacy but in recognition of the public dimension of Isabel’s patronage of the cult of Edmund: the vernacular is more widely understood, both by clerks and by laypeople, so the saint’s virtues and grace will be made known to a wider public.40 In Edward the author imagines the hearing of a text read aloud, as opposed to the seeing of a text read silently, and refers to the purpose of images: “E pur lais ki de lettrure / Ne sevent, en purtraiture / Figuree apertement / L’ai en cest livret ­present, / Pur ço ke desir e voil / Ke oraille ot, voient li oil” (ll. 3955–66).41 Individual silent 38 39 40 41

M.D. Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford, 1963), 243–75; F. Laurent, Plaire et Édifier. Les Récits Hagiographiques Composés en Angleterre aux xiie et xiiie Siècles (Paris, 1998). C. Baswell, “King Edward and the Cripple,” in Chaucer and the Challenges of Medievalism. Studies in honor of H.A. Kelly, ed. D. Minkova and T. Tinkle (Frankfurt, 2003), 15–29 (21). Baker, “La Vie de Saint Edmond,” ll. 32–42; for Isabella’s patronage, see J. Wogan-Browne, Saints’ Lives and Women’s Literary Culture c.1150–1300. Virginity and its Authorizations (Oxford, 2001), 151–88. For hearing, reading, and seeing in a European context, see M. Curschmann, “Hören-lesensehen. Buch und Schriftlichkeit im Selbstverständnis der volkssprachlichen literarischen

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reading had not displaced the sociable listening to a text read aloud, perhaps by a ­chaplain—what is sometimes termed audiate literacy. It might be argued that the rubrics, by mediating between text and image, were designed to make it possible to avoid having to read the whole text but still be able to grasp the plot. But the fact that a viewer looks at pictures and their captions does not mean that she is unable to read the full text. The Anglo-Norman nobility provide perhaps the first example of an extensive secular literate culture in the medieval West. New forms of illustration were being developed to accompany, not to substitute for, the burgeoning literary texts of courtly culture. The Matthew Paris saints’ lives could be read on several levels. The rubrics describe, summarize, explain, comment, moralize, poeticize, and occasionally distort; they are engaged in a sophisticated interplay with both texts and pictures. They point to a large measure of collusion between the producer and the reader. Eleanor of Provence, who came from one of the most cultivated of European families, would have been quite at home with a book in which Edith, Edward’s queen, is praised for her literary taste and the tyrant Harold’s fall from grace can be spotted by his loss of interest in history and “ancienne geste” (l. 4498). Kultur Deutschlands um 1200,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 106 (1984): 218–57.

Chapter 14

Extended Shelf-life: Manuscript Consolidation in an English Monastic Library Kathryn Gerry St Albans has long been famous for its manuscripts, at least among modern researchers. A monastic community had been on the site since the early Middle Ages, but after the Norman Conquest the monastery rapidly developed into a large and well-funded pilgrimage site, and the number and quality of books produced in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries attest to the size and organisation of the scriptorium.1 A small book in the collection of the Morgan Library in New York, MS M.926, offers a window onto the production and preservation of books at St Albans. This manuscript is a composite book, created when several small pamphlets were bound together into a single volume. These booklets were made in the late eleventh and/or early twelfth centuries, but we can only be sure they were bound together in their current state by the fourteenth century. Most of the contents of the manuscript are associated with saints’ cults, and include vitae, hymns, sermons, and liturgical materials. K.D. Hartzell has investigated M.926, providing a useful and thorough description of its ­contents, and proposing that these items were brought together to reinforce 1 Preliminary research for this paper was undertaken while I was in residence at the Courtauld Institute of Art (2005–7), working closely with John Lowden. During that time, and since, John has offered invaluable commentary on my work, helping me to clarify ideas and push them further, and to rely first and foremost on the evidence at hand. His comments and guidance have certainly benefited this paper, an earlier version of which was delivered at one of the Leuven-Lille-London meetings that John worked so tirelessly to organise, and at which many of his students had a chance to meet new colleagues and get a little practice speaking in front of an international audience (20 March 2007 at Art médiéval, manuscrits enluminés: nouvelles recherches et nouvelles méthodes, Equipe Histoire de l’art pour l’Europe du Nord, Centre irhis, Université Lille 3). This paper has been helped along the way by other colleagues and friends: I am indebted to Renana Bartal, Laura Cleaver, Daniel Hadas, Herbert Kessler, Richard Leson, Lisa Mahoney, Will Noel, Rodney Thomson, and Roger Wieck for their comments and assistance at various stages; this research was made possible by the assistance and generosity of the members of staff at the Morgan Library, the British Library, and the Bodleian Library, and the financial support of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For a catalogue of the manuscripts produced at St Albans and a discussion of the scriptorium, see R. Thompson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey 1066–1235, 2 vols. (Woodbridge, 1982; rev. ed. 1985), all references below are to vol. 1.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_016

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the historical legacy of the monastery in the aftermath of the Norman invasion.2 The main focus of Hartzell’s investigation was the musical apparatus of the manuscript, although he provided a number of insights into the texts themselves. I wish to revisit Hartzell’s hypothesis in light of recent scholarship, and to reconsider the motivation for the preservation of these texts. It has long been acknowledged that the layout and design of medieval manuscripts can convey a great deal of information about how the texts in question were used, and the importance of recognising and understanding the structure of composite manuscripts has been brought to light by several researchers.3 Pamela Robinson’s work on this topic uncovered a number of composite manuscripts in English collections and offered provocative insights into what could be gleaned about how such books were used by individual owners.4 Much recent research has focused on the identification, classification and description of composite books, with specific reference to examples from the later Middle Ages.5 Individual examples of composite manuscripts are sometimes identified and explored, but a large number of such manuscripts still await study, and those that have been discussed are often treated as anomalies, or their composite nature is largely ignored in favour of the study of one component.6 2 K.D. Hartzell, “A St Albans Miscellany in New York,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 10 (1975): 20–61. 3 L. Nix, “Early Medieval Book Design in England: The Influence of Manuscript Design on the Transmission of Texts,” in A Millennium of the Book: Production, Design and Illustration in Manuscript and Print, 900–1900, ed. R. Myers and M. Harris (Winchester and Delaware, 1994), 1–21; P. Robinson, “Self-contained units in composite manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon period,” Anglo-Saxon England 7 (1978): 231–8; P. Robinson, “The ‘Booklet’—a self-contained unit in composite manuscripts,” Codicologica 3 (1980): 46–69; R. Hanna iii, “Booklets in Medieval Manuscripts: Further Considerations,” Studies in Bibliography 39 (1986): 101–12; J.P. Gumbert, “Codicological Units: Towards a Terminology for the Stratigraphy of the Non-Homogenous Codex,” Segno e testo 2 (2004): 17–42. 4 Robinson, “Self-contained units,” 237–8; Robinson, “The ‘Booklet’,” 56–61. 5 See especially Gumbert, “Codicological Units.” 6 See, for example, the extensive discussion on the assembled state of the St Albans Psalter (Hildesheim, Dombibliothek MS St Godehard 1), a manuscript that has often been characterised as exceptional because of its composite structure: U. Nilgen, “Psalter Der Christina Von Markyate (Sogenannter Albani-Psalter),” in Der Schatz Von St. Godehard, ed. M. Brandt (Hildesheim, 1988), 152–65; K. Haney, “The St Albans Psalter: A Reconsideration,” jwci 58 (1995): 1–28; J. Geddes, The St Albans Psalter, a Book for Christina of Markyate (London, 2005); M. Powell, “Making the Psalter of Christina of Markyate (the St. Albans Psalter),” Viator 36 (2005): 293–335; K. Gerry, “Cult and Codex: Alexis, Christina, and the St Albans Psalter,” in Der Albani-Psalter: Stand und Perspektiven de Forschung / The St. Albans Psalter: Current Research and Perspectives, ed. J. Bepler and C. Heitzmann (Hildesheim, 2013), 61–87. For a brief discussion of some of the reasons that the process of creating composite manuscripts is ignored, see W. Cahn, “The Pictorial Epitaph of Lambert of Saint-Bertin,” in Tributes to Lucy Freeman Sandler, ed. K. Smith and C. Krinsky (Turnhout, 2007), 37–50 (38).

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Art historians are perhaps especially guilty of this lack of attention to the larger phenomenon since many of the known examples of composite books, including M.926, do not preserve much highly skilled artistic material.7 Composite books were made throughout the Middle Ages, but it remains to be seen if the practice was more or less popular in particular periods or locations. In many cases, such fundamental questions as why composite manuscripts were made, how they were used, and how they affected later understanding of the texts and pictures they incorporated remain to be answered. An examination of the extent of this practice in medieval manuscript production and its ramifications for our understanding of how books were used and valued by people throughout the Middle Ages is long overdue.8 This brief study of a small composite manuscript and several companion works from St Albans will offer insight into how the reception of certain textual works could change over time within a single community, and the organisational and preservation practices used within a monastic library.9 Furthermore, understanding the common practices and habits of a scriptorium such as St Albans will help to place its more deluxe productions in context. New York, Morgan Library MS M.926 currently consists of 78 folios, measuring 210 × 130 mm.10 The manuscript comprises five discrete booklets: the first contains a Life of St John the Almoner (ff. 1–41), the second material related to St Alban (ff. 42–52), the third material related to St Dunstan (ff. 53–68), the fourth a letter from Anselm to Lanfranc and a copy of the Life of St Alexis (ff. 69–73), and the fifth material related to the feast of St Birinus, a sermon of Odo of Cluny on the feast of St Benedict, and a fragment of a sermon including parts of Augustine’s De ordine (ff. 74–77; f. 78 blank). Tracing the binding history of composite manuscripts is complicated by the fact that many, including M.926, are in post-medieval bindings, and some of the usual signs of earlier bindings, such as sewing stations, might not be applicable because medieval manuscript pamphlets may first have existed as folded quires, unstitched and 7 8

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A recent exception to this is K. Rudy, Postcards on Parchment: The Social Lives of Medieval Books (New Haven, 2015). But see S. Corbellini, G. Murano, G. Signore, ed., Collecting, Organizing and Transmitting Knowledge: Miscellanies in Late Medieval Europe (Turnhout, 2018), which came to my attention when the present article was in the final stages of publication and so has not been considered here. For a study examining similar questions in relation to private libraries in the Middle Ages, see P. Stirnemann, “Private Libraries Privately Made,” in Medieval Manuscripts, Their Makers and Users; a Special Issue of Viator in Honor of Richard and Mary Rouse (Turnhout, 2011), 185–98. For description: Thomson, Manuscripts, 115, 116, and Hartzell, “A St Albans Miscellany,” 20–61; I will here describe only those features pertinent to my discussion.

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unbound.11 In the case of M.926, differences in script, ruling and parchment quality, blank leaves, and imperfect endings all indicate that the five sections outlined above were independent from each other at some point. A fourteenthcentury inscription on a flyleaf lists the current contents, showing that all of them were bound together by that point, but there are indications that some of the texts were joined together before others, and the list of contents includes one text, Cicero’s De Amicitia, that is no longer part of this codex. The first forty folios, containing a Life of St John the Almoner, are consistent in terms of their format and the quality of the parchment, meaning that no significant codicological alterations have been made, although the second quire appears to have been irregular from the start and a leaf is now missing from the third quire.12 Folio 41 is usually cited as part of this Life, as it contains an explicit to the text, but this leaf, much darker and thinner than the preceding ones, is not conjoint with the previous quire, and has been pasted in.13 The dimensions of the ruled area are similar on ff. 40v and 41r and both have been ruled for 29 lines, but the ruling on 41r is much more clearly pressed into the page.14 This copy of the Life is missing some material from the middle, but is otherwise intact, with the conclusion of the text at the bottom of f. 40v and the explicit on f. 41r. This raises the possibility that this explicit was either added to a text that did not have one, or that the final leaf of the quire originally contained material that was at some point no longer considered desirable. Perhaps this text was originally part of a larger book and when the decision was made to separate it from whatever other material was contained in that book (or perhaps because the rest of the material had been damaged), the fragmentary text on the final leaf of the quire was removed and the new one added so that the Life of St John the Almoner would have an explicit. The following section consists of several texts all relating to St Alban: three hymns (the first on f. 42v; the second and third on ff. 43r and v); Alban’s Passion 11

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J. Vezin, “‘Quaderni Simul Ligati’: Recherches sur les manuscrits en cahiers,” in Of the Making of Medieval Books; Medieval Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers; Essays Presented to M.B. Parkes, ed. P.R. Robinson and R. Zim (Aldershot, 1997), 64–70. See also the discussion of the medieval state of Richard of Fournival’s books: Stirnemann, “Private Libraries,” 187. For quire diagrams, see Thomson, Manuscripts, 115. The text is Anastasius’ translation of the Vita Sancti Iohannis Elemosinarii, for which see Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina, ed. Bollandists, 2 vols. (Brussels, 1898–1901, supplement 1911, new supplement 1986), no. 4338. The pasting is clearly visible, the leaf having been added to a stub at the end of the previous quire, and the edges of the folio are not in line with the preceding leaves; f. 40v is marked in the bottom margin with a small red x, consistent with the quire signature system found throughout this section of the manuscript. f. 40v: 210 × 131 (154 × 96) mm; f. 41r: 205 × 128 (153 × 98) mm.

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(ff. 44r-51v); and a Mass for the saint (ff. 52r, 52v). The first hymn, on f. 42v, opens with a pen-drawn animal initial, and has titles, small initials and linefillers in a distinctive orange colour. This folio is conjoint with f. 52 but when this bifolium is compared with the intervening leaves in the gathering, it is clear that they were not produced as part of a single campaign. The quality of parchment is noticeably different, with f. 42 and f. 52 being much thinner and having a more paper-like feel than the intervening leaves, and these two folios have also been ruled differently.15 The hymns on both sides of f. 43 are written by a different hand than f. 42.16 The scribe, or scribes, of these second and third hymns used an orange colour and the small initials of these two hymns have a similar shape to the initials used on f. 42, but the orange is not the same shade as was used on f. 42 and the second and third hymns lack any line-fillers or ornamental initials. This suggests that the hymns on f. 43 were copied slightly later than the text on f. 42, but were intended to be joined to it—the scribe made some attempt to harmonise the later additions with the first hymn, but did not produce an exact match. Although not conclusive, these details suggest that this quire was first created from two disparate sets of leaves, or that material was added to a bifolium (now ff. 42 and 52) in order to create a larger booklet of material related to Alban. This booklet might well have existed as a discrete entity before eventually being bound with the rest of the material in the present volume. The third section of the manuscript, ff. 53–68, contains a hymn and Life of St Dunstan attributed to Adelardus/Ethelhard.17 The Life begins on the same folio as the hymn and both were copied by the same scribe, indicating that this quire was created in one campaign and is not the product of accretive stages. However, some material has been erased from f. 68v, the final leaf of the gathering, suggesting that this single quire might originally have been part of a larger volume, or that it contained some material that was, for whatever reason, not considered desirable or appropriate when the quire was eventually bound with the other components of M.926.

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The two were originally a much larger leaf that had been ruled with a set of horizontal lines, but the parchment was turned on its side, folded in half, and re-ruled so that the new bifolium would have a set of horizontal lines on each folio; the writing follows this second set of lines, but the ruling clearly shows a grid pattern created by this change; see Thomson, Manuscripts, 115–16. Thomson notes the different hands and dates both to the late eleventh century: Manuscripts, 115. bhl 2343, and W. Stubbs, Memorials of St Dunstan (London, 1894), 53–68.

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The fourth booklet contains a fragment of a letter from Anselm to Lanfranc, usually prefatory to the Monologion, followed by a Life of St Alexis.18 The letter, written in a hand similar to contemporary Canterbury manuscripts, is incomplete and, as Thomson noted, the opening initial has not been filled in.19 The Life that follows is complete, but the ending on f. 72 was erased and replaced with the same text on f. 73. Both Thomson and Wormald date the main hand of this Life to c. 1100, but Thomson described the replacement text as copied by several different “unprofessional” hands, all roughly contemporary, while Wormald identified it as one hand which can be found in several St Albans manuscripts from the middle of the twelfth century.20 The Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, the main surviving record from St Albans, states that Lanfranc supplied Abbot Paul (r. 1077–93) with exemplars which were copied in the newly established scriptorium.21 Is it possible that this portion was sent from Canterbury as one of the exemplars which Lanfranc sent to Abbot Paul with which to equip the library at St Albans, and that St Albans monks training as scribes were using the replacement of the final leaf as an opportunity to practice? The final section of M.926 contains portions of an office for St Birinus, Odo of Cluny’s sermon for the feast of St Benedict, and a fragment of a sermon containing parts of Augustine’s De ordine; the last leaf of this quire is blank.22 Hartzell argued that some of the texts in M.926 might have been included in order to preserve the pre-Conquest liturgical heritage of St Albans, and ultimately to serve as a kind of historical compendium.23 His arguments rely on two assumptions: the first is that the pre-Conquest history of St Albans as presented in the surviving documents, most notably the Gesta, can be taken as fact, and the second, as it seems to me, is a belief that Anglo-Saxon cult activity needed some defending and preservation in the aftermath of the Conquest. Since the publication of Hartzell’s article, a number of scholars have called both of these 18

For Anselm’s letter: F.S. Schmitt, ed., Sancti Anselmi Cantuariensis archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, 6 vols. (Edinburgh, 1938–61), i: 5–6; for the Life of Alexis, bhl, 286. 19 Thomson, Manuscripts, 115. 20 Ibid., 115; Wormald’s unpublished notes, see Hartzell, “St. Albans Miscellany,” 22; Richard Gameson identifies it as 1100–20: The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c. 1066–1130) (Oxford, 1999), 125. 21 Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. H.T. Riley, 3 vols. (London, 1867), i: 58 (all subsequent citations from i). 22 The versicles, antiphons and responds for the feast of Birinus begin imperfectly, ff. 74–76, and this material is discussed at some length in Hartzell, “St. Albans Miscellany,” 38–42; for Odo’s sermon, ff. 76v-77v, see PL 173, col. 721; the material from Augustine’s De ordine is chapters 7–9, on f. 77v. 23 Hartzell, “St Albans Miscellany,” 41–2, 47–8.

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assumptions into question. The early history of the monastery is recorded largely by internal documents, and certain claims regarding the abbey’s history before the arrival of Paul in 1077 have been characterised by Julia Crick as later revisions intended to establish a venerable, but unverifiable, history for the monastery.24 As for the presumed vulnerability of Anglo-Saxon saints’ cults, the long-held belief that the Normans purged the Anglo-Saxon calendars of many of their local saints has been modified by a number of studies in recent years, leading to a more complex picture of Norman attitudes toward AngloSaxon cults.25 The St Albans community in particular seems to have had a large Norman population and, while some monasteries did have difficulties adjusting to Norman control, there is little to indicate that St Albans had much trouble after the end of the eleventh century.26 For a monastery founded before the Conquest, St Albans had an unusually high number of aristocratic Norman patrons, and a significant portion of the funding for the scriptorium was donated by a certain Norman knight.27 Although many of the saints represented in M.926 had a long past in England, Alexis was a new arrival. Hartzell makes a convincing argument for an early interest in Alexis at St Albans related to the web of relationships between St Albans and Canterbury, and ultimately Bec, but it is difficult to see how Alexis could have been understood as a part of the abbey’s heritage. Alexis was a Roman saint popular in Normandy, but with little local cult activity outside

24

J. Crick, “Offa, Aelfric, and the Refoundation of St Albans,” in Alban and St Albans: Roman and Medieval Architecture, Art and Archaeology, ed. M. Henig and P. Lindley (Leeds, 2001), 78–84; J. Crick, “St Albans, Westminster and Some Twelfth-Century Views of the AngloSaxon Past,” Anglo-Norman Studies 25 (2002): 65–84; and see also R. Vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge, 1958), 203; but for an alternative argument see P. Taylor, “The Early St Albans Endowment and Its Chroniclers,” Historical Research 68 (1995): 119–42. 25 D. Dumville, “Anglo-Saxon books: treasure in Norman hands?,” Anglo-Norman Studies 16 (1993): 84–99; T.A. Heslop, “The Canterbury calendars and the Norman Conquest,” in Canterbury and the Norman Conquest: Churches, Saints, and Scholars, 1066–1109, ed. R. Eales and R. Sharpe (London, 1995), 53–85; R.W. Pfaff, “Lanfranc’s supposed purge of the AngloSaxon calendar,” in Warriors and Churchmen in the High Middle Ages; essays presented to Karl Leyser, ed. T. Reuter (London, 1992), 95–108; S.J. Ridyard, “Condigna veneratio: postConquest attitudes to the saints of the Anglo-Saxons,” Anglo-Norman Studies 9 (1987): 179–206. 26 The Gesta implies a certain amount of conflict between the English and the Norman monks, but after the election of Abbot Richard in 1097, relations at the monastery seem quite stable: Gesta, 66. 27 B. Golding, “Wealth and Artistic Patronage at Twelfth-Century St. Albans,” in Art and Patronage in the English Romanesque, ed. S. Macready and F.H. Thompson (London, 1986), 107–17; Gesta, 57.

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St Albans and almost certainly no pre-Conquest English history.28 It is not difficult to see why a Life of Alexis would have been copied at St Albans, but it is not immediately clear why it would have been bound with the other material in M.926 if Hartzell’s conception of the book is correct. It is certainly the case that this volume consists of material that is thematically related: with the exception of the Cicero text now lost from the end and the dedicatory letter from Anselm, all of it is hagiographical, and, as Hartzell has shown, the saints in question can all be firmly or at least plausibly tied to cult activity to St Albans.29 But the saints in question are disparate in their regional associations and do not share any obvious liturgical connections, such as common or close feast days, and the selection of texts includes both liturgical material, such as the Office of St Birinus, and what we might think of as literary or historical material, such as the Lives of St John the Almoner and St Alexis. Such a mix of material is often found in libelli dedicated to a single saint, as in the case of New York, Morgan Library MS M.736, which contains a copy of the Life and Miracles of St Edmund, the Passion of St Edmund, and the Office of St Edmund.30 It is possible that the sections of M.926 with material 28

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For Alexis’s cult in England and at St Albans: Gerry, “Cult and Codex”; for the cult of Alexis in Europe: U. Mölk, “Die älteste lateinische Alexiusvita (9./10. Jahrhundert),” Romanistisches Jahrbuch 27 (1976): 293–315; U. Mölk, “‘La Chanson de Saint Alexis’ et le culte de saint en France aux Xie et Xiie siècles,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 21 (1978): 339–55; U. Mölk, “La Diffusion du Culte de Saint Alexis en France aux 11e et 12e siècles et le probleme de la genese dans la Chanson de Saint Alexis,” in Litterature Et Societe Au Moyen Age, ed. D. Buschinger (Amiens and Paris, 1979), 231–8; although most of the surviving documents related to a cult of Alexis in England in the twelfth century are associated with St Albans, there is a copy of his Life in a c. 1120–30 Passionale attributed to Canterbury Christ Church, now in three parts: London, BL Cotton MS Nero C vii, ff. 29v-78r; BL Harley MS 315 ff. 1r-39v, and BL Harley MS 624; the Alexis material is in Harley MS 624, ff. 134v-136v; see C.M. Kauffmann, , Romanesque Manuscripts 1066–1190, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 3 (London, 1975), 64. The Cicero text is entirely lost from the manuscript so its codicological relationship with the rest of the manuscript cannot be determined; however, the final full text in the manuscript is a sermon on St Benedict by Odo of Cluny, ending on f. 77v, there is then a fragment of a sermon of Augustine of Hippo on the same leaf; if the Cicero text were originally part of this final gathering, it is possible that it was later removed, along with the remainder of the Augustine sermon, thereby streamlining the hagiographical nature of the composite manuscript. For hagiographical libelli in general, see F. Wormald, “Some Illustrated Manuscripts of the Lives of the Saints,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 35 (1952): 248–66; and C. Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart; Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of the Saints from the Tenth through the Thirteenth Centuries (Berkeley, 2001); for M.736, see materials available online from the Morgan Library. The term libellus is not consistently used in the Middle Ages to describe such books, but was adopted by Wormald and subsequent authors.

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related to St Alban and St Dunstan were originally libelli of this type, but the present group of materials could not have served the assumed purpose of such manuscripts, that is to provide a reference volume for both liturgical use and study as related to a particular saint. M.926 is also clearly not intended to be a passionale, with an encyclopedic set of texts related to a large group of saints. Hagiography seems to have been the overriding concern in the decision to bind these particular booklets into a single book, but the resulting volume does not fit into any of our expected categories of medieval manuscript, in relation to either function or aesthetics. The dates at which the various texts in M.926 were first copied and subsequently bound together must weigh heavily in our understanding of why these particular texts were chosen. The text of the Gesta relating to the decades around the turn of the century implies that the abbot often played a determining role in which manuscripts were copied. In Abbot Paul’s day, decisions about which texts to add to the abbey’s collection seem to have been made jointly by the abbot and the archbishop.31 Most of the hands found in the manuscript have been dated to either c. 1100, which could put them in the abbacy of either Paul (1077–93) or Richard (1097–1119), or to the late eleventh century, which would make it more likely that they were copied during Paul’s tenure. Paul is described in the Gesta as displaying an antipathy to the Anglo-Saxon heritage of the abbey, destroying the tombs of earlier abbots and losing track of the tomb of the monastery’s supposed Anglo-Saxon founder, King Offa of Mercia (r. 757–96). If Paul was responsible for the selection of all of these texts, then we must modify our understanding of him and credit him with a respect for at least some of the sainted prelates of the Anglo-Saxon period, namely Dunstan and Birinus. Richard on the other hand appears to have been a more reconciling figure at the monastery, and the material related to Birinus and Dunstan might fit more comfortably in the period of his abbacy.32 Whether or not some or all of these individual components were copied under the direction of one abbot or the other, they were not immediately bound together and might not have been grouped together at all until the later Middle Ages. The list of contents on the flyleaf was copied in the fourteenth century, and the flyleaf itself is a reused piece of parchment containing an apparently unrelated fourteenth-century document.33 This does not provide a clear date for the 31 Gesta, 58; Crick, “Offa, Aelfric,” 82. 32 See Gesta, 66; K. Gerry, “Artistic Patronage and the Early Anglo-Norman Abbots of St Albans” in Historiography in the Anglo-Norman World c. 1066-c. 1250: Manuscripts, Makers and Readers, ed. L. Cleaver and A. Worm (Woodbridge, 2018), 167–88. 33 This is part of an agreement between the convent of Southwark and other individuals dateable to after 1316; Thomson, Manuscripts, 115.

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c­ reation of this volume, but it does indicate that in the fourteenth century, the manuscript in its present state (or at least something close to it) was actively maintained and was deemed useful enough to merit the addition of a table of contents. In seeking to understand why this composite volume was created, we should look at the larger question of composite manuscripts more generally. The creation of composite manuscripts, binding together previously disparate e­ lements into a single volume, occurred throughout the Middle Ages, and continued to be a common practice even after the introduction of printing.34 Composite manuscripts were not unusual at St Albans Abbey—indeed, the St Albans Psalter, probably the most famous of the manuscripts associated with the abbey, is itself a composite volume.35 M.926 is a much more modest production, but as such, is more typical of the manuscripts produced at St Albans, and it shares notable material features with a number of the other composite volumes from St Albans. One such example is London, British Library Cotton MS Titus D xvi, which, like M.926, has a list of contents at the start of the manuscript that was penned considerably later than any of the manuscripts bound into it.36 Another example is Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Lat. 67, which contains portions of previously separate books, copied in the twelfth century but bound together later.37 British Library Cotton MS Titus D xvi is a composite manuscript created when four smaller manuscripts were bound together.38 The first of these (ff. 1–35) is an illustrated copy of Prudentius’s Psychomachia. This is the only portion of the manuscript that is illustrated and it has consequently received more scholarly attention than the other parts. The next booklet (ff. 37–69) is a copy of Gilbert Crispin’s Disputatio Iudei cum Christiano.39 This is followed by a copy of Altercatio Ecclesiae contra Synagogam (ff. 70–111) and a metrical Life of St Afra (ff. 113–128).40 The first three sections were copied in the twelfth 34 35

See Hanna, “Booklets in Medieval Manuscripts”; and Gumbert, “Codicological Units.” For recent perspectives on this manuscript and additional bibliography, see St. Albans and the Markyate Psalter: Seeing and Reading in Twelfth-Century England, ed. K. Collins and M. Fisher (Kalamazoo, 2017). 36 Thomson, Manuscripts, 91–2. 37 Ibid., 104–5; R.W. Hunt, “The Library of the Abbey of St Albans,” in Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts & Libraries; Essays presented to N.R. Ker, ed. M.B. Parkes and A.G. Watson (London, 1978), 251–77 (265–6). 38 For full description: Thomson, Manuscripts, 91–2. 39 Gilbert Crispin, The Works of Gilbert Crispin, ed. A.S. Abulafia, G.R. Evans (London and Oxford, 1986), 1–53. 40 The Altercatio aecclesie contra synagogam et synagogae contra aecclesiam found in Cotton Titus D xvi opens with the statement of Ecclesia: Te sinagoga quae magno regi olim electa

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c­ entury, while the last appears to have been copied in the early thirteenth. Although there is evidence of trimming, each of these four booklets was originally small and the present book measures 150 × 110 mm. The booklets now in Cotton Titus D xvi were once free-standing items, rather than being parts of other larger books. Differences in the quality of parchment used, blank folios with no transitional writing between them, and folios that are significantly worn at the beginning and end of each pamphlet indicate that they were planned as single volumes and remained so for some period of time.41 Several inscriptions also support this claim. The first, second, and third texts of the manuscript each have an ex libris inscription across the top of their first folio: Hic est liber Sancti Albani quem qui ei abstulerit uel titulum deleuerit anathema sit.42 Thomson has dated these inscriptions to the mid-thirteenth century or slightly later, meaning that these folios must have served as the openings of separate books until at least c. 1250.43 Such inscriptions, initially intended for the start of a book and now found at the start of interior fascicles, can be found in at least one other composite manuscript from St Albans, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Lat. 67, which will be discussed below. Although created separately, the four booklets of Cotton Titus D XVI had been bound together by the end of the thirteenth century: on f. 1r, a list of contents in a hand dated by Thomson to about 1300 includes all of the texts now in this manuscript. Although we cannot arrive at a specific date for the creation of the volume as it now stands, these inscriptions indicate that it was produced in the second half of the thirteenth century, or the very early fourteenth century. The first three texts in the Cotton manuscript are organized as confrontations between ideologically opposed forces, with Christian ideals winning the day. The Life of Afra is not presented as a conflict between opposing ideas, but one could make the argument that the account of a martyrdom may be considered as a text related to conflict, and certainly one in which the forces of

41 42 43

fueras at dilecta, postmodum vero culpis tuis promerentibus repudiata es et abiecta, as in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Selden 3389, beginning at f. 42r, and not the earlier text in a similar format titled Altercatio ecclesiae et synagogae (for which, see J.N. Hilgarth, ed., ccsl lxix A (Turnhout, 1999), 1–53; I am grateful to Laura Cleaver for transcribing the opening of this text for me as I was not able to be in London. For the Life of Afra: bhl 113.d. Robinson noted similar features as common to many booklets; see “The ‘Booklet’,” 47–52. This formula can be found in many St Albans manuscripts; see Thomson, Manuscripts, for numerous examples. Thomson dates these ex libris inscriptions generally to the mid-thirteenth century, but identifies the inscription on f. 37r as a somewhat later hand, from the second half of the century rather than the middle. It would be worthwhile to compare the hands of these various St Albans ex libris inscriptions more closely.

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­ hristian rectitude prevail. At the end of the third text in the Cotton manuC script, the Altercatio Ecclesiae contra Synagogam, a twelfth-century hand similar to the main hand of the Altercatio has written in the first few words of the Life of Afra. However, the Afra Life does not continue on this page and the words are smudged. The text of the Life instead begins again and continues in a separate quire, copied by a later hand. This arrangement raises the possibility that the Life was intended at an earlier point to follow the Altercatio, but for some reason the endeavour was abandoned, and when the first three booklets were bound together into the present volume, the abortive beginning of the text on the final folio encouraged the attaching of a full copy, whether or not it was made for that purpose.44 Another composite book from St Albans, roughly contemporary with both the Cotton and Morgan manuscripts, also contains texts that are thematically related, but of a more distinctly educational character. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Lat. 67 consists of four booklets: three single quires, and a longer book of nine quires. All of these fascicles were written at about the same time, in the second half of the twelfth century, and all contain texts, or fragments of texts, perhaps intended for the classroom.45 The four sections of the book are distinct in terms of the size of the folios, ruling, and the quality of parchment used.46 Each of them, however, uses a two-column format and each is copied in a similar script. These texts were written by several different hands, none of which is found in other St Albans manuscripts but, in some cases, the same hands can be identified in the different booklets of the volume.47 These factors suggest that they were made at the same location, and for similar purposes, probably as manuscripts for private study or teaching.48 A possible patron for the booklets has been identified as 44

I am grateful to Daniel Hadas and Carlotta Dionisotti for their assistance with the Afra text. 45 The manuscript contains fragments of glosses on Priscian, Hrabanus Maurus, William of Conches, and others; Thomson, Manuscripts, 105; Hunt, “The Library,” 265–6. 46 There is considerable variation between the measurements of different sections, and parts of the book have been significantly trimmed. Quire 1: 205 × 145 (175 × 115) mm, 2 cols of 47 lines; quire 2: the first leaf of this quire, f. 8: 210 × 145 (180 × 125) mm, 2 cols of 50 lines; ff. 9–14: 210 × 145 (200 × 105) mm, 2 cols of 78 lines, from f. 9r on, the text is smaller, in a lighter brown ink, and the script is more consistent and neater than that on f. 8; quire 3: 195 × 140 (165 × 110) mm; 2 cols of 46 lines; quires 4–12: 215 × 145 (165 × 120) mm; 2 cols. of 49 lines. 47 Thomson, Manuscripts, 105; Hunt, “The Library,” 262–8. 48 In addition to the contents, the relative quality of the script and materials and the obvious signs of extended use point to active educational use; on school books generally: G. Wieland, “The glossed manuscript: class book or library book?,” Anglo-Saxon England 14

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Abbot Warin of St Albans (1183–95), who might even have been the author of the glosses.49 Although copied in the twelfth century, there is evidence that the four booklets of Laud Lat. 67 were not joined together until the later thirteenth century. The fourth section, beginning on f. 20r, has a typical St Albans ex libris inscription at the top, dated by Thomson to the later thirteenth century.50 This indicates that before the end of the thirteenth century, the fourth section at least was still on its own. Another inscription is also found on this page: Sancti Spiritus assit nobis gratia que corda nostra sibi. A similar inscription is found at the head of f. 6r, the first folio of the second booklet. Thomson dates both of these hands to the twelfth century, with the inscription on f. 20 slightly later than that on f. 6.51 That the openings of these two booklets were marked with similar inscriptions suggests that the two were not bound together when the inscriptions were made. It is possible that each had other material bound to it at the time but these opening pages of the quires were probably opening pages of booklets, rather than interior pages. So, while it is possible that the second and third quires were already bound together when these inscriptions were made, it seems clear that the first, second and fourth booklets were not. The three composite volumes discussed above share a number of characteristics. All are of a relatively small size, with Cotton Titus D xvi being somewhat smaller than the others. None of them is a deluxe or even high-quality ­manuscript—only in the case of Cotton Titus D xvi is there any significant ­illustration, and, while the drawings are numerous, they are not comparable to the highest quality work from St Albans. All of these books contain texts that have been grouped together thematically and, although none of them forms what we might consider a perfect fit, with all of the texts falling into the same genre (by our present reckoning), it is easy to see why many of these groupings could have appeared logical. In M.926, most of the material is related to the cult of saints, in Cotton Titus D xvi, the first three texts are organized around the idea of dialectical conflict, and in Laud Lat. 67, the four booklets share scholastic content. The themes represented by these three manuscripts are not consistently found across the entire manuscript, but they do apply to the (1985): 153–73 and E.A. Matter, “A Carolingian Schoolbook? The Manuscript Tradition of Alcuin’s De fide and Related Treatises,” in The Whole Book; Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany, ed. S.G. Nichols and S. Wenzel (Ann Arbor, 1996), 145–52. 49 Hunt, “The Library,” 265–6; Hunt refers to L.M. de Rijk, ed., Logica modernorum, 2 vols. (Assen, 1962–7), ii, part 1, p. 80. 50 Thomson, Manuscripts, 105. 51 Ibid.

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­ ajority of material in each volume. In all cases, there is no indication that the m manuscripts were bound together before the middle of the thirteenth century. Reasons for the initial copying of the texts in M.926 have been discussed above, but the reasons for binding the parts together is another question, one that pertains to the thirteenth or early fourteenth century rather than the eleventh or twelfth. The similarities demonstrated above between M.926 and at least two other composite manuscripts from the same library make it clear that the composite structure, thematic groupings, and general state of preservation of M.926 are not unique features and suggest that the decision to bring these particular texts together into this particular volume might relate to larger concerns of the abbey’s library, rather than to the specifics of M.926. It is possible that rather than being motivated by contemporary political or social interests, the monks were simply cleaning up their library. There are i­ ndications that several library-wide ‘house cleaning’ efforts went on in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, evidenced primarily by systematic corrections and additions. Around the middle of the twelfth century, a hand identified by Thomson as Scribe B was responsible not only for copying a number of texts, but for correcting and rubricating several books, adding running titles to a number of contemporary and earlier volumes, and adding tables of contents to two older books in the library.52 In the later twelfth century, Walter the Chanter drew up a catalogue, or indiculus, of the library’s holdings, now known only through a sixteenth-century description of the document.53 Shortly before the middle of the thirteenth century, two or three scribes added ex libris notations of a standard type to at least thirty books then in the St Albans library, including the manuscripts discussed above.54 Such systematic efforts to organise or update the library are not surprising, particularly at such a large monastery with a scriptorium that appears to have been more organised and standardised in its activity than most.55 Perhaps collecting and binding together loose pamphlets was also an effort at house-keeping. In both Cotton Titus D xvi and Laud Lat. 67 examples of the mid-thirteenth-century ex libris inscription are found on interior leaves, indicating that the present books were bound together after the second of the library overhauls identified by Thomson. M.926 does not have any internal ex 52 53

Ibid., 29. Walter the Chanter is not otherwise known; the description and excerpts were made by John Bale: Hunt, “The Library,” 251–4, 269–71. 54 Thomson, Manuscripts, 5. 55 Ibid.

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libris inscriptions, so it might have been bound before the middle of the thirteenth century, but there is no indication that it was a single volume before the table of contents was added in the fourteenth century.56 In both M.926 and Cotton Titus D xvi lists of contents were added to the opening pages around the turn of, or very early in, the fourteenth century, so both of these volumes were together by that point. This all suggests that at some point in the second half of the thirteenth century or the early fourteenth, an attempt (or perhaps several) was made to gather together and organise the smaller booklets held in the library, perhaps coinciding with the addition of the lists of contents. If this were the case, then a thematic similarity of texts might have been enough to group certain booklets together. Although there is no direct evidence to prove this, the simplest explanation for these particular composite volumes is that larger books were easier to keep track of and protect than smaller ones. Once the decision had been made to consolidate the booklets, the thematic similarity of the materials could provide a reason for joining particular texts together.57 I do not intend to suggest that this scenario applies to all or even most composite manuscripts from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There are certainly examples of composite manuscripts from St Albans and from other institutions that do not fit the pattern seen in the manuscripts discussed above, and it should be emphasized that the phenomenon of composite books was not unusual in the Middle Ages and the monks of St Albans would probably not have seen the decision to bind booklets together as radical or even remarkable.58 This small group, however, offers some insight into the production and preservation of books at a single monastery. Individual manuscripts were, of course, produced for specific purposes, but the long shelf-life of parchment books allowed for changes in use over time, along with changes in the value placed on them by their owners. The contents of the four manuscripts above were clearly considered worth saving in the later thirteenth century, but the 56 57

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A trimmed inscription on f. 1r of M.926 is most likely the remnants of an ex libris, and an erasure on the verso of the flyleaf, below the table of contents, might also have been one; Thomson, manuscripts, 115–16. But I think we must not rely too heavily on what makes sense to modern investigators interested in medieval motivations, a particularly relevant caution at a point in time when we are consolidating our own library holdings in new digital formats for storage and transmission. See Robinson, “Self-contained units,” and “The ‘Booklet’,” and A. Taylor, “Manual to Miscellany: Stages in the Commercial Copying of Vernacular Literature in England,” The Yearbook of English Studies 33, Medieval and Early Modern Miscellanies and Anthologies (2003): 1–17.

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decision to bind individual booklets in single, larger volumes indicates a shift in how these books were used and understood by the monks, how often the books were consulted, and possibly where the books were being kept.59 In the case of Laud Lat. 67, the fragmentary nature of the quires suggests that preservation was a priority, rather than maintaining manuscripts that might still be useful for contemporary students. Perhaps the association with Abbot Warin was felt to be enough of a reason to keep these booklets.60 Seen within the context of other organisational efforts at St Albans library in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, we can begin to trace a consistent, or at least periodically resurgent, attitude towards library use and maintenance at this particular institution. M.926 and the other books discussed in this paper shed light on the library at St Albans, and perhaps the model they suggest will prove to be applicable to other medieval libraries. In conclusion, however, I want to draw attention to what these ragged and utilitarian manuscripts might tell us about grander and more sumptuous books. The monks at St Albans clearly valued their lessthan-luxurious books, and sought to preserve and protect them even after long years of use and damage had compromised the materials and time had perhaps made the texts less relevant. Surely they would have gone to even greater lengths to preserve their most prized books. This suggests that we ought to be alert to the degree to which deluxe manuscripts may have been altered over the course of their existence, and that we cannot assume that the present state of any manuscript represents the intention of its original creators or owners. In assessing the relationship between present and earlier states of any manuscript, it is important to distinguish between motivations and outcomes. The creation of the composite volumes discussed above resulted in new collections of texts, but it is unclear if these new arrangements reflected earlier understandings of how these texts were related, or if they led to new ways of studying and associating these works. Faced with these books as they are today, it is difficult to untangle cause and effect, and we must keep in mind that the 59

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This raises questions about what was happening at the monastery around the turn of the century that might relate to such a shift. It is not within the scope of this paper to explore these circumstances, but there is evidence of increased lay usage of the church space in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that might be worth considering in this context; N. Coldstream, “Cui Bono? The Saint, the Clergy and the New Work at St Albans,” in Medieval Architecture and Its Intellectual Context; Studies in Honour of Peter Kidson, ed. E. Fernie and P. Crossley (London, 1990), 143–9; and P. Binksi, “The Murals in the nave of St ­Albans Abbey,” in Church and City 1000–1500; Essays in Honour of Christopher Brooke, ed. D. Abulafia, M. Franklin and M. Rubin (Cambridge, 1992), 249–78. Hunt, “The Library,” 264–7.

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r­esults of changes do not always clarify the motivations for those changes. When looking at medieval manuscripts as they exist today, we are presented with the solutions to a number of problems, but not necessarily much information about what those problems were.

Chapter 15

Domesday in Disguise Jessica Berenbeim This essay concentrates on a particular manuscript—important in its own right, but serving here as both an homage and an example. First, the choice of this manuscript recalls one of my favourite sayings from John Lowden’s treasury of advice: “Research means discovering things; but it also means not discovering things.” My contribution to this volume relates to a fact-finding mission of particularly long-lived fame: the Domesday Inquest.1 Specifically, this essay examines the related thirteenth-century manuscript at The National ­Archives of the United Kingdom with the shelfmark E 36/284—itself an idiosyncratic and mysterious object. Second, in addition to its intrinsic significance, this volume can also stand for all the manuscripts, and books and documents for that matter—all textual objects—that look like something they are not. The meaning they express often seems to be located somewhere between what they ‘are’ and what they appear to be. The manuscript’s text places it alongside two other surviving examples of the Domesday Breviate, an abridged version of Domesday Book.2 This essay will refer to E 36/284 as the Exchequer Breviate, although it has sometimes been called the abbreviatio; the designation here more directly references both its textual connection to the other two Breviates and its distinct provenance. It has the most significant painted decoration in any surviving Domesday-related manuscript, including the original ones, and the only figural decoration: three folios of full-page illumination preface the volume, which also has illuminated initials, pen-flourishing, and marginal imagery (Figs 15.1–15.4). The Exchequer Breviate was for decades an exhibit in the Rolls Chapel of the old Public Record Office on Chancery Lane, and belonged to the Exchequer 1 I would also like to acknowledge the advice of staff at The National Archives, most especially Adrian Ailes, as well as the Friends of tna for supporting a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship there. I presented versions of this paper at the Medieval Studies Seminar at St Andrews and the Medieval English Research Seminar at Oxford, and I am grateful both for the invitations to speak and the comments of those attending, particularly Frances Andrews, John Hudson, and Julian Luxford at St Andrews; and Vincent Gillespie, Helen Gittos, Paul Hyams, Henrike Lähnemann, Eric Stanley, and Dan Wakelin at Oxford. 2 The other two manuscripts are: London, BL Arundel MS 153; Kew, The National Archives E 164/1. I am using the term ‘Domesday Book’ here to refer collectively to both the Great and Little Domesday manuscripts (now split into two and three volumes, respectively). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_017

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Treasury for centuries before that.3 So it has always been a valuable object to protect or display. Nevertheless, the Exchequer Breviate’s original function and particular significance are actually rather perplexing—in Vivian Galbraith’s words, “something of a mystery.”4 Studies of Domesday’s reception, above all those of Galbraith and of Elizabeth Hallam, consider the manuscript in that context; Paul Binski also includes its prefatory images in discussion of the cult of Edward the Confessor, whom they depict.5 Assigned variously to the first half of the thirteenth century, the 1250–60s, the 1250s, and c. 1241, the volume, I think, can be placed with reasonable confidence in the second or third quarter of the thirteenth century.6 The manuscript therefore dates to an era when the reception of Domesday remains somewhat (and somewhat exceptionally) obscure: long after the era of the Inquest itself, but almost certainly before the maturity of Domesday Book from about 1272 as an essential and highly active record of ancient demesne.7 Even if Domesday appears to have had a consistently formidable reputation, the Exchequer Breviate still falls into something of a lacuna in the knowledge of Domesday’s utility. And yet it involves the transmission and 3 H.C. Maxwell Lyte, Catalogue of Manuscripts and Other Objects in the Museum of the Public Record Office, 14th edn (London, 1933), 15; Public Record Office, Museum Catalogue (London, 1974); The National Archives paper catalogue, series code introduction: “Exchequer: Treasury of the Receipt: Miscellaneous Books” (March 1997), 1. 4 V.H. Galbraith, Domesday Book: Its Place in Administrative History (Oxford, 1974), 109. 5 The principal notices are: J.H. Round, “The Breviates of Domesday,” The Athenaeum 3803 (15 Sept. 1900): 346–7; Public Record Office, Domesday Re-bound (London, 1954), 47; Galbraith, Administrative History, 109, 111; N.J. Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, 1190–1250, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 4, 2 vols. (London, 1982–8), ii: no. 121; E. Hallam, Domesday Book through Nine Centuries (London, 1986), 42–7; P. Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets: Kingship and the Representation of Power, 1200–1400 (New Haven, 1995), 62; tna Catalogue at discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk, no. E 36/284 (accessed most recently 28.8.2018). By contrast, the bibliography on Domesday Book itself and on the Domesday Inquest is sufficiently extensive to have generated its own bibliography; see: D. Bates, A Bibliography of Domesday Book (Woodbridge, 1985), which aims to be “comprehensive from 1886 to [1985] and selective before 1886”; E. Hallam, “Some Current Domesday Research Trends and Recent Publications,” in Domesday Book, ed. E. Hallam and D. Bates (Stroud, 2001), 191–8; J. Palmer et al., “Bibliography,” Hull Domesday Project at www.domesdaybook.net/bibliography (accessed most recently 28.8.2018); D. Roffe, “Domesday Now: A View from the Stage,” in Domesday Now: New Approaches to the Inquest and the Book, ed. K.S.B. Keats-Rohan and D. Roffe (Woodbridge, 2016), 7–60, but to be read with S. Baxter, “Review of Domesday: The Inquest and the Book (Review no. 216),” Reviews in History (September 2001), at www.history. ac.uk/reviews/review/216 (accessed most recently 28.8.2018), for outside assessment of Roffe’s own (significant but controversial) contributions. 6 Re-bound, 47; Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, ii: 91; Binski, Westminster Abbey, 62; Hallam, Nine Centuries, 43–4. 7 For Domesday’s later administrative and legal uses, particularly ancient demesne, see: Rebound, 47–9; Galbraith, Administrative History, 123–30; Hallam, Nine Centuries, Chapters ii– iv, see especially 38–42, 52, 56–7, 77, 95–6.

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artistic elaboration of a—perhaps the—record of central government at a critical juncture in the history of one of the principal departments of state. What follows will offer a full description of the manuscript as the basis for an interpretation of its significance. This interpretation has some broader ­implications for the study of Domesday’s afterlife, but also for thirteenthcentury manuscript culture more generally, as well as for what one might call the cultural history of institutional power. The following analysis of the Exchequer Breviate suggests, first, that the manuscript revises fundamentally non-narrative content into a narrative visual form. The Exchequer Breviate’s creators gave their manuscript the look of narrative, because that was a quintessential formal structure for institutional commemoration. Second: this kind of analysis also suggests something broader in terms of method, specifically about where the meaning in a work is located—when work here is understood as the material object, the manuscript, rather than any of its constituent texts or images. It is not necessarily ‘in’ its contents, either individually or even collectively, but rather can be something that, as it were, floats above them: what the work expresses is located in the interstices, in the connections created among its different elements and modes of representation. Essentially, this manuscript—a version of the quintessential archival record—enacts a way in which the atomised archive can move toward the fused narrative. 1

Description of the Manuscript

Kew, The National Archives of the United Kingdom, pro E 36/284 Text: Abridged version of Great Domesday Book (tna E 31/2/1–2) and Little Domesday Book (tna E 31/1/1–3) Binding: 18198 Ruling (measurements taken from f. 5r, to nearest millimetre): 343 x 241 mm; text space 210 x 130 mm (to inner of double verticals). Ruled in drypoint or metalpoint, 27 long lines per page, below top line. Prickings visible in all margins. Foliation: 2 unfoliated modern + 2 unfoliated medieval parchment leaves + 311 numbered parchment folios (but N.B. ff. 155A, 161A, 220A) + 4 unfoliated medieval + 2 unfoliated modern parchment leaves. 8 H. Forde, Domesday Preserved (London, 1986), 28.

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Collation: 14, 2–38, 4–2712, 2812-1 (apparently with one leaf cancelled, but the quire structure is not entirely clear here; this is my best guess, given the ­tightness of the binding), 292 (including unfoliated medieval but not modern leaves). Quire signatures in ink, of roman numerals between two medial points, at center of lower margin on final verso of each gathering; faint leaf signatures in metalpoint periodically visible on versos, at left, above the lowest horizontal ruling. Contents: ff. 1v–2v: Scenes from the life of Edward the Confessor: f. 1v: The servant stumbles; Edward accuses Godwin (Fig. 15.1). f. 2r: Edward’s vision of the death of King Sweyn; Edward’s vision of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus (Fig. 15.2). f. 2v: Edward has a vision at Mass; Edward gives his ring to St John the Evangelist in the guise of a pilgrim (Fig. 15.3). ff. 3r–256v: Abridged Great Domesday: ff. 3r–9v: Kent ff. 10r–18v: Sussex ff. 19r–23v: Surrey ff. 24r–38r: Hampshire ff. 38v–46r: Berkshire ff. 46v–56r: Wiltshire ff. 56v–64v: Dorset ff. 65r–76r: Somerset ff. 76v–88r: Devon ff. 88v–94r: Cornwall ff. 94v–96v: Middlesex ff. 97r–102v: Hertfordshire ff. 103r–109v: Buckinghamshire ff. 110r–115v: Oxfordshire ff. 116r–125v: Gloucestershire ff. 126r–130v: Worcestershire ff. 131r–137v: Herefordshire ff. 138r–145r: Cambridgeshire ff. 145v–149r: Huntingdonshire ff. 149v–156v: Bedfordshire ff. 157r–165r: Northamptonshire ff. 165v–171v: Leicestershire ff. 172r–177r: Warwickshire ff. 177v–181v: Staffordshire

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ff. 182r–188v: Shropshire ff. 189r–195r: Chester ff. 196r–200v: Derby ff. 201r–207v: Nottinghamshire ff. 208r–229v: Yorkshire ff. 230r–248r: Lincolnshire ff. 248v–256v: Yorkshire and Lincolnshire clamores ff. 257r–311r: Abridged Little Domesday: ff. 257r–270v: Essex ff. 271r–290r: Norfolk ff. 291r–311r: Suffolk Script: Essentially textualis semi-quadrata, but with features evoking the distinctive minuscule hand(s) of Great Domesday. At the end of the text for each county, the scribe leaves blank the rest of the page (and occasionally the following verso). Rubrics; running headers in lombardic capitals (red and/or blue on ff. 3–4; red thereafter); important words and phrases, particularly placenames, distinguished by red-lining. Some marginal annotations in textualis and in early modern cursive. Decoration: Full-page miniatures, each in two horizontal registers, of Edward the Confessor (ff. 1v, 2r, 2v; Figs 15.1–15.3). Historiated initial and display script panel (4ll.), in colours and gold, at the beginning of the main text (f. 3r, Fig. 15.4). Illuminated, usually historiated initials for the royal demesne (terra regis) (3–7ll.) at or near the beginning of each county section (and also one for the archbishop of Canterbury in the first county, Kent). Pen-flourished initials for each entry thereafter, often with figurative elements. Marginal medallions in colours and gold, depicting the tenant type referenced in the adjacent text, in the first quire of the Great Domesday abridgement (for Kent and the first folio of Sussex). 2

The Exchequer Breviate’s Simulated Narrative

An important basis for the interpretation here is that, although physically separate, the Exchequer Breviate’s initial illuminated quire in fact relates closely to the rest of the manuscript, which works as a whole to create the impression— but only the impression—of narrative hagiography and chronicle. Connections of style, subject matter, and structure indicate that the illuminated quire belonged to the manuscript from conception (as I would say), or at the least

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represents a very early intervention.9 The miniatures’ distinctive figure style resembles that of the initials and medallions in the abridgement text and, as Nigel Morgan pointed out, this style has no obvious relatives in other surviving illumination (Figs 15.1 and 15.4).10 So the chances that they would end up together by accident seem relatively low. Some other close connections have also previously been noted. First, archaism: structurally, earlier compositions echo in both the illuminated quire and the Breviate text. In one of the earliest modern notices on the manuscript, J.H. Round commented that “Curiously enough, the archaism of these designs proves to be in keeping with the traditions of the volume.”11 As for the text, Galbraith later argued that all three thirteenth-century Breviates in fact ultimately derive from a twelfth-century one.12 Second, cult: Binski’s comments on the manuscript suggest some of the connections between the miniatures’ subject matter and the Breviate, including Edward’s thirteenth-century “institutional association with ancient laws and liberties, as well as with the royal bureaucracy.”13 To these I would add, perhaps above all, genre: the associations between these genres of lives and archives. Thematic connections between the first and subsequent quires more generally follow contemporary patterns in institutional book production—the links between the recording of saints’ lives and the preservation of records. Finally, I would add: the illumination cycle is also an abbreviation. The three painted folios, with two miniatures each, depict six scenes from the life of Edward, a selective choice even if more images were once present or planned. If the design of individual folios resembles other saints’ lives such as the twelfthcentury French Vie de Saint Amand or the thirteenth-century Vie de Saint Denys, the reduced composition of the whole ultimately changes that effect.14 9

Hallam does describe it as a later addition, but her comment appears to be based principally on codicological separation; she also does not say how much later. Hallam, Nine Centuries, 42. 10 Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, ii: 91–2. 11 Round, “Breviates,” 346. 12 Galbraith, Administrative History, 109. For the Breviate’s pattern of abridgement, see Galbraith, Administrative History, 111; and recently see also H.B. Clarke, “Condensing and Abbreviating the Data: Evesham C, Evesham M, and the Breviate,” in Keats-Rohan and Roffe, Domesday Now, 247–75. 13 Binski, Westminster Abbey, 62. 14 Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale MS 500; Paris, BnF MS n.a.f. 1098. For these and other examples, see F. Wormald, “Some Illustrated Manuscripts of the Lives of Saints,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library (1952): 248–66, reprinted in Francis Wormald: Collected Writings, ed. J.J.G. Alexander, T.J. Brown and J. Gibbs, 2 vols. (London, 1984–8), ii: Studies in English and Continental Art of the Later Middle Ages (1988), 43–56. For reproductions of

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The subject and source of the Exchequer Breviate may mirror the French-­ language Life of Edward the Confessor, written and extensively decorated in England in the style of the 1250s—so possibly an exact contemporary—but that manuscript has drawings of 64 separate scenes (see Figs 13.5–13.7).15 The manuscript of Edward’s French life has a very different style and context, but it gives a sense of the repertory of subjects from which the Breviate draws its selection. And in the Breviate, that choice itself has a syncopated rhythm: again, these pages have the look of conventional narrative hagiography, but that’s not exactly how they work. The first page depicts consecutive episodes, in fact consecutive events within the same episode: the first and second parts of Chapter 25 (taking Aelred of Rievaulx’s Life of Edward as an analogue; Fig. 15.1).16 But the episodes on the second and third pages are disparate and re-ordered, depicting Chapters 9, 26, 18, and 27, respectively—the original (re)arrangement, as the scenes from Chapters 26 and then 18 are on the recto and verso of the same leaf (Figs 15.2–15.3). The first set of two miniatures depicts two phases from a dramatic scene of judgement; if not technically a miracle, then at least miraculous, which the story incorporates into a disconcertingly banal domestic incident. One evening, when Edward was dining with the treacherous Earl Godwin—his brother’s murderer—a serving man tripped but managed to catch himself without falling: His other foot […] moved forward and kept him upright, and he suffered no harm. Many talked among themselves of this incident, being pleased

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selected folios from Valenciennes MS 500, see http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/ (­accessed most recently 28.8.2018); for a full digital facsimile of BnF n.a.f. 1098, see http:// gallica.bnf.fr/ (accessed most recently 28.8.2018). Cambridge, University Library MS Ee.3.59. Lives of Edward the Confessor, ed. H.R. Luard (London, 1858), edited 1–24 (image descriptions), 25–157 (main text), translated 161–78 (image descriptions), 179–311 (main text); P. Binski, P. Zutshi and S. Panayotova, Western Illuminated Manuscripts: A Catalogue of the Collection in Cambridge University Library (Cambridge, 2011), no. 110, with bibliography to 2011; full digital facsimile and description on Cambridge University Library’s website; see also M. Kauffmann, “Seeing and Reading the Matthew Paris Saints’ Lives” in this volume. The chapter numbers referenced in this discussion follow those of Aelred of Rievaulx: The Historical Works, ed. M.L. Dutton, trans. J.P. Freeland (Kalamazoo, 2005), provided here to give a sense of the order of the scenes; the texts of the relevant passages can be found on pp. 190–2, 149–51, 192–6, 176–90, 196–200 of that edition. I have also followed this edition for the spellings of proper names. Where I discuss specific wording, quotations are from Vita S. Edwardi regis et confessoris auctore beato Aelredo, PL 195:737B–790B.

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that foot should help foot. The earl said, as if joking (quasi ludendo), “Thus does brother aid brother, and one man help another in his need.” The king said to the earl, “Mine would have done this for me, had Godwin allowed it (Hoc, inquit, meus mihi fecisset).” Godwin then protests his innocence with feigned sadness, and declares: [L]et God, who knows all secrets, be the judge. As my throat makes this morsel (bucella) I am holding in my hand pass through and keeps me unharmed, so am I neither guilty of your betrayal nor complicit in your brother’s death. He then eats the morsel and chokes to death on it, in which Edward perceives “divine vengeance had overtaken him.” In the first illuminated scene, the first vignette of the first verso, the servant slips in the lower right of the scene—he frowns and leans forward, his scarf in disarray—while in the second scene, Edward accuses Godwin as the earl moves the fatal morsel toward his mouth (Fig. 15.1, above and below). These two scenes progress very quickly one to the other, representing in effect two contiguous moments: above, Edward appears to remark on the servant’s adroit recovery, then below, the composition virtually repeats the first vignette to accentuate his more extended arm with pointing finger—this time, not remarking, but emphatically accusing. On the facing recto, the first vignette depicts an earlier episode from Edward’s life, and the second then moves forward to a later one. In the page’s upper register, armed men in boats look on as another armed figure struggles in the water below, while the lower register shows seven figures lying under the covers of a draped bed, with one foot peeking out to the left (Fig. 15.2, above and below). These scenes both depict Edward’s miraculous visions: his vision during mass of the Danish king falling to his death from an attack ship, and his vision at an Easter feast of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus turning from their right sides to their left. Several structural parallels link these two stories: in both, contemporaries are surprised, even a little shocked, when Edward suddenly laughs at a moment of high seriousness. In the first, During the celebration of Holy Mass offered in the church of St Peter […] Suddenly (subito) […] the king’s face brightened, his eyes lifted, and, while preserving the dignity of a king, he dissolved (dissolvitur) into quiet laughter (in risum modicum). The bystanders were amazed (Mirari qui aderant) […].

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Figure 15.1

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Kew, The National Archives E 36/284, f. 1v The National Archives, reproduced with permission

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Figure 15.2

Kew, The National Archives E 36/284, f. 2r The National Archives, reproduced with permission

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In the second, suddenly (subito) his face became brighter than normal, and his inward joy bent his lips into a smile (labia solvebat in risum) […]. Then in each case, he reveals this laughter as marking the visionary moment when contemporaneous but distant events revealed themselves to him, ­subsequently proven in their perfect accuracy. Compare these scenarios to the episode sequence on the verso opposite, when Edward’s judgement follows swiftly on the heels of the earl’s comment quasi ludendo: the scenario is reversed. On the verso, the saint abruptly turns a moment of laughter into one that is deadly serious; on the facing recto, he disorients everyone at moments of gravity with unexpected apparent mirth. No corresponding visual parallel marks the two depicted scenes on the right, however; rather, the full opening seems to work as a formally and conceptually integrated whole. Of course, it is always possible that intervening leaves were lost early in the book’s history. Yet in its current state, the two ‘falls’ echo each other at the right of both scenes above, as do the draperies of table and bed in each below, and above all the full upper register—across both verso and facing recto—has the same structure as its counterpart. On the left, we see Edward himself, while on the right, we see through his eyes, and his gestures of speech appear to double as indications of the scenes opposite, with his gaze passing beyond the servant and Godwin to the events he miraculously perceived across the seas. The final verso moves backward and then further forward again in the story of Edward’s life. In the upper register, he attends mass in Westminster Abbey accompanied by “Earl Leofric of blessed memory […] standing alongside but a little distance away from the king,” and both men see the figure of Christ blessing in the consecrated host (Fig. 15.3, above). In Aelred’s text: The heavenly mystery took place on the altar; the divine sacrament was being hallowed by the hands of the priest. And behold […] Christ Jesus, standing on the altar, appeared visibly to the bodily eyes of both men (oculis utriusque visibiliter corporalibus apparuit). Extending his right hand above the king, he made the sign of the cross, blessing him. The final scene in the sequence, an episode from close to the end of Edward’s life (and Aelred’s Life), shows the king having just given his ring to the disguised Evangelist (Fig. 15.3, below). When two English pilgrims later got lost on the way to Jerusalem, an old man helped them back to the path, and bade them farewell with the words:

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Figure 15.3

Kew, The National Archives E 36/284, f. 2v The National Archives, reproduced with permission

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I am John, apostle and evangelist, the disciple whom Jesus loved. I cherish your king with the greatest love […] And lest he lose faith in the prophecy, return to him this ring, which he gave me at the dedication of my church when I appeared in the garb of a pilgrim. Disclose to him that the day of his death is approaching […]. This prophecy of imminent death then incites Edward to confirm the dedication of Westminster Abbey while he still lives. Like the first two depicted vignettes, both of these miniatures show Edward, although instead of repeating his figure they reverse it: from the left, facing right, above; to the right, facing left, below. The illuminator reinforces this reversal by the chiasmus of the coloured grounds from blue to rose-coloured above, then rose to blue. This composition therefore draws a visual parallel not only between the two rhyming figures of Edward, but also between the figure of Edward, hands clasped, adoring the miraculous host, and the figure of the disguised Evangelist, who clasps his hands around the ring directly below—likewise with hands accentuated by their isolation, just beyond the division of background colour that runs through both figures at the wrist. Rather than a continuing story, this final fully illuminated page offers a static tableau declaring Edward’s saintly vision, action, and persona. If the Exchequer Breviate’s illuminated quire raises expectations of pictorial hagiography that it does not precisely fulfill, the appearance of rest of the manuscript looks very much like something else as well: a monastic cartularychronicle. It resembles particularly closely, for example, the roughly contemporary illuminated cartulary-chronicle of Abingdon Abbey.17 In the decoration of the Exchequer Breviate, the illuminated medallions evoke commemorative images of institutional benefactors, although in fact they depict not those who gave property, but those who held it. The prefatory miniatures are perfectly in keeping with this visual reformulation: the initial quire functions as a prefixed libellus, a genre connected both practically and conceptually to the archive. A picture book dedicated to an abbey’s patron saint sometimes included the abbey’s records as well, and as Wormald wrote in his classic article on the subject, libelli “smack of the Treasury rather than the Library. They were part of 17

London, BL Cotton MS Claudius B vi. See: Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, i: no. 41; Historia ecclesie Abbendonensis: The History of the Church of Abingdon, ed. and trans. J. Hudson (Oxford, 2002); G.R.C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain and Ireland, rev. C. Breay, J. Harrison, and D. Smith (London, 2010), no. 4, with colour image of f. 14r on the front cover; J. Berenbeim, Art of Documentation: Documents and Visual Culture in Medieval England (Toronto, 2015), 45, 64–5, 96, Figs 2.2. and 2.3, reproducing f. 9v.

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the  ­ title-deeds as it were of the monastery.”18 A cartulary-chronicle, of course, is ­itself a narrative reformulation of records—the restructuring of an archive—toward the end of constructing a history.19 This is what, I believe, the creators of the Exchequer Breviate were also trying to do. The Exchequer Breviate necessarily retains Domesday’s topographical arrangement, along with some ambivalent vestiges of administrative practicality: for example, the relationship between textual arrangement and quire structure. The textual divisions between counties have no relation to quire divisions, and yet periodically end with a blank verso, as if in a working copy where the rest of a quire would be left blank for additions—but this is the symbolic version. However in general, the disposition and decoration of the text suppresses functionality in the service of apparent narrative. Compare the first text folio of the Exchequer Breviate to its counterpart in Great Domesday Book (Figs 15.4–15.5, ff. 3r and 1r respectively): it begins, like its predecessor, with the section for Kent, but revises its ordering and presentation of the first line. Domesday opens with a large red initial ‘D’, six lines high, with simple reserved decoration. Then follows the rest of the word Douere (Dover) in red-highlighted display script, one line high; then ‘T’ in the same display script, after which the scribe shifts down to his usual hand to complete the phrase Te(m)pore regis Edwardi. The Exchequer Breviate, by contrast, begins with a four-line historiated initial ‘T’, depicting a king enthroned in majesty against a gold ground. This initial extends into a large 2–3ll. epigraphic panel of display script, gold against a coloured ground, for T(em)p(or)e Regis Edwardi. The panel then includes the letter ‘B’, before commencing with the usual script and brown ink for the rest of the word Burgenses—the text of l. 1 here skips to the details described in l. 6 of Great Domesday’s first folio—before finally inserting the word Douere in the same standard hand. Similar historiated initials continue throughout the Breviate volume, a series of kings enthroned that conjures a kind-of annalistic chronicle. The visual emphasis has shifted from the topographical to the chronological, and from Domesday’s true textual structure to its historical authority.

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Wormald, “Lives of Saints,” 250, 262. See also C. Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart: Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the Tenth through the Thirteenth Century (Berkeley, 2001). I have discussed a range of cartulary manuscripts in Berenbeim, Art of Documentation, Chapter 2, which John Lowden kindly read in its earliest rough draft. See the chapter’s endnotes for further bibliography. For cartularies from the British Isles, the most important resource is Davis, Medieval Cartularies, in the fully revised and updated edition by Breay, Harrison, and Smith.

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Figure 15.4

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Kew, The National Archives E 36/284, f. 3r The National Archives, reproduced with permission

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Figure 15.5

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Kew, The National Archives E/31/2/1, f. 1r Photo: j.j.n. palmer and george slater

The Exchequer Breviate’s resemblance to a monastic commemorative volume is hardly surprising—most obviously, because of the close connection between the Exchequer and Westminster Abbey. From at least the later ­thirteenth century, and very likely in the reign of Henry iii as well, its chapter house

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undercroft and the room now known as the Pyx Chamber stored part of the royal treasury—including government records—and especially those of the Exchequer.20 Monasteries more widely often doubled as government archives, and (to the extent that one may generalise from so few surviving examples) the Breviate text itself has strong monastic associations. The other two Domesday Breviate manuscripts, which also date to the thirteenth century, come from Margam Abbey and probably from Neath Abbey.21 But might the visual expression of the Exchequer Breviate also relate to the development of bureaucratic culture—to the excercise of power through government departments that were increasingly self-conscious about themselves as institutions? The Exchequer experienced several critical phases of reform in the thirteenth century, shortly before, after, or possibly during the years when this manuscript is likely to have been written.22 Interestingly, the Domesday Breviate’s manuscript history is remarkably similar to that of the definitive explication of the Exchequer, the Dialogus de scaccario. Both texts were composed in the twelfth century, and like the Breviate, the Dialogus survives only in copies of the mid- to late thirteenth century. Two of these, like the Exchequer Breviate, are among the department’s most treasured manuscripts, the Red and Black Books of the Exchequer.23 The most treasured, of course, were the Domesday volumes themselves. 20

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J. Ashbee, “The Royal Wardrobe and the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey,” and E. Hallam Smith, “The Chapter House as a Record Office,” both in Westminster Abbey Chapter House: The History, Art, and Architecture of ‘a Chapter House Beyond Compare’, ed. W. Rodwell and R. Mortimer (London, 2010), 112–23 and 124–38. For London, BL Arundel MS 153, from Margam, see: Walter de Gray Birch, A History of Margam Abbey (London, 1897), 176, 278–9; Galbraith, Administrative History, 109–11; Hallam, Nine Centuries, 44; British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts online, reproducing ff. 2r, 23v–24r, 31v, 42r (full folio plus two details), 51v–52r, 57v–58r. For TNA E 164/1, linked plausibly to Neath Abbey, see: Galbraith, Administrative History, 109 (but who localised it to the Abbey of Strata Florida); Hallam, Nine Centuries, 44–7; D. Huws, “The Neath Abbey Breviate of Domesday,” in Wales and the Welsh in the Middle Ages, ed. R.A. Griffiths and P.R. Schofield (Cardiff, 2011), 46–55. For the reforms of the Exchequer under Henry iii, see: N. Barratt, “Another Fine Mess: Evidence for the Resumption of the Exchequer Authority in the Minority of Henry iii,” and A. Jobson, “Royal Government and Administration in Post-Evesham England, 1265–70,” both in The Growth of Royal Government under Henry iii, ed. D. Crook and L.J. Wilkinson (Woodbridge, 2015), 149–65 and 179–95. TNA E 36/266 (Black Book of the Exchequer); TNA E 164/2 (Red Book of the Exchequer); London, BL Cotton MS Cleopatra A xvi; London, BL Hargrave MS 313. See Richard fitzNigel: Dialogus de scaccario: The Dialogue of the Exchequer, edited and translated by Emilie Amt, and Constititutio domus regis: ­Disposition of the King’s Household, ed. and trans. S.D. Church (Oxford, 2007), xviii–xx, xxvii–xxix.

Chapter 16

From Warwickshire to New York via Canterbury: The Travels and Tribulations of the Bible of Richard of Sholdon Frederica Law-Turner It is a truth universally acknowledged that manuscript historians, among whom John Lowden must rank as one of the most eminent, on being shown a spectacular illuminated book, immediately start examining the calendar, Litany and flyleaves rather than admiring the glories of the painted page.1 Why are those of us devoted to old books so intrigued by lists of obscure and long dead saints, by scraps of obsolete manuscripts reused in bindings and by the illegible and incomprehensible scribblings of former owners? The motivation for tracing the provenance of a manuscript can range from the commercial (“You, dear purchaser, can add your name to the list of illustrious owners, from William the Conqueror to Winston Churchill […]”) to the academic. Among the most interesting, however, is the possibility of discovering who commissioned and owned a particular manuscript, why they wanted it and what they did with it. By opening a window on to the concerns of an individual life, we can gain an insight into the broader cultural context of the object and its place in history. A thirteenth-century English Bible now in The Pierpont Morgan Library in New York provides an excellent opportunity for this kind of historical snooping. The Bible of Richard of Sholdon (Glazier MS 18) contains various indications of its medieval provenance, including a Calendar, a Canterbury pressmark and an inscription recording its donation to St Augustine’s, Canterbury, along with other medieval and later inscriptions and bookplates. Once extensively illuminated, it has been sadly mutilated and perhaps because of this has so far received relatively little attention from art historians.2 It is an unusual 1 I am grateful for the opportunity this essay provides to thank John Lowden for his kindness and unflagging support and encouragement over many years since I did first an MA and then a PhD with him at the Courtauld Institute. I would also like to thank amarc for their grant to cover costs of photography, and Roger Wieck and the staff at The Morgan for the unrivalled access to their collection and their invaluable help and support throughout this and other projects. 2 Although it has been noted several times, there has been no detailed examination of the manuscript. It was first mentioned by M.R. James, The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_018

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book in several ways and immediately raises questions about who and what it was for. Some answers can perhaps be suggested by a close examination of the book itself. Physically, the manuscript is a substantial volume, with 399 folios measuring c. 280 x 195 mm, bound in a heavy late-medieval binding. Not as big as a ‘lectern’ Bible—like that perhaps made for Durham Cathedral in the later thirteenth century3—it is much larger and heavier than the miniature Bibles which came to dominate French Bible production from the 1230s.4 It was Dover (Cambridge, 1903), 197, no. 14. It was then included in both John Plummer’s catalogues of the Glazier Collection, Manuscripts from the Collection of William S. Glazier (New York, 1959), 15–16, no. 18; and The Glazier Collection of Illuminated Manuscripts (New York, 1968), 23, no. 26, where it was described as “one of the finest thirteenth-century English Bibles.” C.U. Faye and W.H. Bond, Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United State and Canada (New York, 1962), 394 gave it the somewhat misleading title “The Canterbury Bible.” It was then briefly mentioned in N.J. Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, 1190–1250, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 4, 2 vols. (London, 1982–8), ii: 68, 77 as an example of Worcester manuscript illumination along with the Evesham Psalter. It was described in C. Ryskamp, ed., Twenty-First Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1984–1986 (New York, 1989), 61–2; and J. Stratford and C. Reynolds, “The Foyle Breviary and Hours of John, Duke of Bedford, in the British Library,” in Tributes to Lucy Freeman Sandler, Studies in Manuscript Illumination, ed. K.A. Smith and C.H. Krinsky (London and Turnhout, 2007), 350, n. 30 noted it as part of the collection of Harvey Frost. B. BarkerBenfield in his magisterial study of the manuscripts from St Augustine’s Canterbury, St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 13, 3 vols. (London, 2008), i: lxviii, ci, 67, 1708, 1855 and 2039, but especially the entry at p. 377, no. BA i.14, described it as “a fine mid-13th century Bible with an inappropriate Gloucester/Worcester calendar,” but made no suggestion of an alternative origin. As far as I am aware, it has never been reproduced. 3 R. Gameson, “Durham’s Paris Bible and the Use of Communal Bibles in an English Benedictine Priory in the Later Middle Ages,” in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. E. Poleg and L. Light (Leiden and Boston, 2013), 66–104. 4 For a general introduction to portable Bibles, see C. de Hamel, The Book, A History of the Bible (London, 2001), 114–39. On the development and dominance of the ‘pocket’ Bible especially in France see C. Ruzzier, “The Miniaturisation of Bible Manuscripts in the Thirteenth Century: a Comparative Study,” in Form and Function, ed. Poleg and Light, 105–25; and various articles by Laura Light including, “Versions et revisions du texte biblique,” in Le Moyen Age et la Bible, ed. P. Riché and G. Lobrichon (Paris, 1984), 55–93; “The New Thirteenth-Century Bible and the Challenge of Heresy,” Viator 18 (1987): 275–88; “French Bibles, c.1200–1300: a new look at the origins of the Paris Bible,” in Early Medieval Bible. Its Production, Decoration and Use, ed. R. Gameson (Cambridge, 1994), 155–76; “The Bible and the Individual: the Thirteenth-Century Paris Bible,” in The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages, Production, Reception and Performance in Western Christianity, ed. S. Boynton and D.J. Reilly (New York, 2011), 228–46. For the situation in Italy see R. Miriello, “La bibbia portabile di origine italiana del xiii secolo. Brevi considerazioni e alcuni esempi,” in La Bibbia del xiii Secolo. Storia del testo, storia dell’esegesi, ed. G. Cremascoli and F. Santi (Florence, 2004), 47–80.

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c­ learly not meant, as these initially were, for a friar travelling on foot, although it could well have been carried in a saddle bag.5 Other aspects also give clues to its original function and context. Textually, although it follows the Parisian model in the order of books, the system of chapter divisions, the absence of capitula lists and the inclusion of the Interpretation of Hebrew Names, it retains certain older features, such as St Paul’s Epistle to the Laodiceans which was dropped from the Paris text. Codicologically, the core is made of quires of sixteen leaves of thin parchment, plus medieval flyleaves taken from other manuscripts.6 The parchment lacks the luxurious nap of deluxe liturgical manuscripts, there are a number of flaws, some stitched and some left as holes, and some cockling and staining. Palaeographical and other features suggest a dating in the middle of the thirteenth century. The text was written in a small Gothic bookhand, in dark brown ink in two columns of fifty lines, starting below the top line. It is ruled in plummet with a text block c. 180 x c. 111 mm. There are various aids to help the reader navigate around the text, typical of thirteenth-century Bibles: red incipits and explicits, and running titles and chapter numbers in red and blue. The first line of text in each new book is written in red and blue display capitals, and each chapter is introduced by a five-line red or blue initial. Chapters start on new lines, and both initials and the chapter numbers are inset into the text, a feature not common in English Bibles before about 1240. Prologues and subdivisions receive red and blue puzzle initials with elaborate flourishing, sometimes extending into the margins, or small ‘champie’ initials on blue and pink grounds. In size and general appearance it is similar to mid-thirteenth-century English Bibles presumably destined for personal study, such as that made for Robert de Bello, abbot of St Augustine’s from 1225 to 1253 (London, British Library Burney MS 3).7 5 English single volume Bibles did not always adhere to the generally accepted idea of the diminishing size of Bibles through the thirteenth century, which was notable chiefly in Parisian manuscripts. Of the English illuminated Bibles described in Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts; P. Binski and P. Zutshi with the collaboration of S. Panayotova, Western Illuminated Manuscripts, A Catalogue of the Collection in Cambridge University Library (Cambridge, 2011); and L. Light, “The Thirteenth-Century Pandect and the Liturgy: Bibles with Missals,” in Form and Function, ed. Poleg and Light (Leiden and Boston, 2013), 210–11, only half (twenty-three out of forty-five) conform to Ruzzier’s definition (Ruzzier, “Miniaturisation,” 106) of a portable Bible as having overall dimensions of less than 450 mm, and these are spread evenly through the century. 6 The tightness of the binding together with Morgan Library restrictions on how far manuscripts can be opened prohibited a full collation but there are no obviously missing leaves. The flyleaves will be discussed further below. 7 Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, i: no. 63.

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On one level, this was very much a working book. The text was carefully corrected by the original scribe—accuracy clearly mattered—and there are marginal notes in various hands. These include many ‘nota bene’ hands, and a number of annotations in paler ink by a particularly distinctive hand, of which more below. Like the Bible of Robert de Bello, however, it was more than just a text book, and was once extensively illuminated, with an illuminated initial introducing each biblical book. Many, and presumably the best, have been excised, including that for Genesis which ran much of the length of the page. The eighteen surviving initials are both charming and inventive. They consist of Samson carrying the Gates of Gaza (f. 75v, Judges) (Fig. 16.1), the Israelites slain by the Philistines (f. 84v, I Kings) (Fig. 16.2), the Creation of Adam (f. 122v, Paralipomenon), Tobit and another man entombing a corpse (f. 148v, Tobit) (Fig. 16.3), Judith and Holofernes (f. 151v, Judith), two singing clerics (f. 178v, Psalm 97), David in Prayer (f. 180r Psalm 101), David with the Lord Enthroned (f. 181v, Psalm 109), the Virgin and Child (f. 19v, Song of Songs), a seated prophet (f. 215v, Isaiah), the stoning of Jeremiah (f. 229r, Jeremiah), the vision of Ezechiel (f. 249r, Ezechiel), Daniel in bed (f. 264r, Daniel), the Lord speaking to Hosea

Figure 16.1

New York, The Morgan Library & Museum MS G.18, f. 75v MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM, Gift of the Trustees of the William S. Glazier Collection, 1984

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Figure 16.2 New York, The Morgan Library & Museum MS G.18, f. 84v MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM, Gift of the Trustees of the William S. Glazier Collection, 1984

(f. 270v, Hosea), Amos and his sheep (f. 273v, Amos), and Jonah swallowed by the Whale (f. 276r, Jonah). Zephaniah has a lion fighting a dragon (f. 279v) (Fig. 16.4). The Gospels and Pauline Epistles have large decorated initials, while on f. 371r Paul is in prison for Laodiceans and John writes his Apocalypse.8 Most of the initials are by one artist, who uses a distinctive palette of pink, blue, green and orange. Initial letters are horizontally striped and decorated with rosettes, scallop shells, and geometric designs. They are set against burnished gold grounds with patterns of punch marks, bordered by broad frames of blue or pink. Historiated initials contain stocky figures in animated poses, with flying draperies and rapidly sketched faces. Those that survive are mostly of simple compositions, although the initial for Kings, with the Philistines attacking the Israelites, is more complex (Fig. 16.2). Decorated and zoomorphic initials are filled with tight symmetrical spirals of foliage, or inhabited by distinctive two-legged dragons with striped bodies and fleshy quarters, sometimes 8 Something has also been excised at f. 186r but it is not clear to me what happened here. The lower two-thirds of page is blank and there is some staining as if from an offset of a miniature in a green and gold frame measuring c. 112 x 123 mm, with a small rectangle c. 40 x 45 mm appended to bottom. Plummer, Glazier Collection, 23 suggested that they came from a pastedin Crucifixion miniature similar to that in the Evesham Psalter, with the rectangle containing an image of the donor.

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New York, The Morgan Library & Museum MS G.18, f. 276r MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM, Gift of the Trustees of the William S. Glazier Collection, 1984

fighting other animals. A second hand painted foliage initials in orange and blue at ff. 334v, 345r and 347v. The style of the main illuminator is close to that found in manuscripts probably made in the West Midlands. The same painter decorated a Bible (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 15) which has been linked to artists of the Evesham Psalter (London, British Library Add. MS 44874).9

9 Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, ii: 67–8, no. 105, and 76–8, no. 111. There is no very obvious link between the Morgan and Paris Bibles and early Midlands products, such as Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. D.2.1, a Glossed Psalter of c. 1190–1200 tentatively assigned by Morgan to the West Midlands (Early Gothic Manuscripts, i: 54, no.8), and Oxford, Magdalen College MS 100, an early thirteenth-century Psalter with a Worcester Calendar (Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, i: 96, no. 49). However, the almost complete conflagration of the liturgical manuscripts at Worcester in 1549 has deprived us of much useful comparative material. For what does survive see R.M. Thomson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts in Worcester Cathedral Library (Cambridge, 2001).

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Figure 16.4

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New York, The Morgan Library & Museum MS G.18, f. 279v MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM, Gift of the Trustees of the William S. Glazier Collection, 1984

The calendar of saints’ days at the beginning of G.18 (ff. 5v to 6v) also suggests a West Midlands origin. The fact that there is a calendar at all in a Bible requires some explanation. The vast majority of calendars are in liturgical manuscripts such as Psalters and Books of Hours. Some Bibles, however, in particular those miniature copies made for the friars, have additional liturgical material, such as a missal and/or a calendar.10 This would have served a practical purpose for their mendicant owners, saving them the trouble of carrying more than one book.11 A calendar in a Bible from a non-mendicant context is rarer, and the commissioner must have had a special need for it. 10

11

For Bibles with added Mass material see Light, “Thirteenth-Century Pandect,” 185–216; and her “Non-biblical texts in Thirteenth-Century Bibles,” in Medieval Manuscripts, Their Makers and Users. A Special Issue of Viator in Honor of Richard and Mary Rouse (Turnhout, 2011), 169–83. As for example in a Parisian Bible in the Schoyen Collection (MS 115), which has a calendar containing St Dominic and his translation (http://www.schoyencollection.com/Biblecollection-foreword/latin-Bible-translation/astor-Bible-ms-115 accessed 29.3.2018) or an English Bible in Cambridge (University Library MS Hh.1.3) with an added Calendar with

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The calendar in G.18 has four months to a page, with feasts written alternately in blue and red, the same layout as in other English Bibles with calendars.12 Physically it is distinct from the rest of the manuscript, being on a separate bifolio inserted before main text and it has no illumination like that in the Bible itself. However, the parchment of the calendar bifolio is indistinguishable in colour, thickness and ‘feel’ from that of the rest of the manuscript, the flourishing of the ‘KL’ initials is extremely close to that of some of the decorated initials in the biblical text, and although the script of the calendar is slightly larger and more decorative than that of the main hand of the Bible, it is very close to that of the red incipits. There seems no reason to think that it was not included from the beginning. Medieval calendars can provide useful evidence of when and where the books which contain them were made.13 G.18’s calendar includes the feast of St Francis of Assisi (October 4), so must have been written after 1228 when he was canonised. It was probably written before 1247 as it omits Edmund of Abingdon (November 16), although saints were not always included in all calendars immediately after their canonization. It is surely before 1262, however, the date of the canonization of Richard of Chichester (April 3), a native son of the Worcester diocese and an important West Midlands saint, whose feast is also absent. There is no dedication feast or apparent emphasis on any monastic order and no grading, perhaps suggesting

12

13

Franciscan saints (see P. Binski and P. Zutshi with S. Panayotova, Western Illuminated Manuscripts, a Catalogue of the Collection of the Cambridge University Library (Cambridge, 2002), 115–16, no.123). See Light, “Thirteenth-Century Pandect,” 208–15 for a list of Bibles with calendars. An miniature English Bible with a Missal but no calendar is studied by P. Kidd, “A Franciscan Bible Illuminated in the Style of William de Brailes,” electronic BL Journal (2007), Article 8: 1–20. Another miniature Bible from the de Brailes workshop (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lat.bibl.e.7) contains masses for St Dominic but no calendar (see Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, i: 114–16, no. 69). There are some other examples of English Bibles with calendars. St John’s College, Cambridge (MS N.1) has a calendar with Gilbertine saints at the beginning and Gilbertine masses at the end; another now in Paris, BnF MS Lat. 10431, has a calendar at the beginning and a Cistercian missal after the biblical text; while a Bible from the de Brailes workshop has a calendar with Oxford saints. On Cambridge, St John’s College MS N.1 see Light, “ThirteenthCentury Pandect,” 211 and http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/manuscripts/medieval_manuscripts/medman/N_1.htm (accessed 29.3.2018). On Paris, BnF MS Lat. 10431 see F. Avril and P. Stirnemann, Manuscrits enluminés d’origine insulaire viie–xxe siècle (Paris, 1987), 73–5, no. 117 and Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, i: 21, 112, 113 and 126; also http://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ead.html?id=FRBNFEAD000072152 (accessed 29.3.2018) with a link to digitized black and white photographs. For an excellent recent introduction to medieval calendars see R.S. Wieck, The Medieval Calendar, Locating Time in the Middle Ages, Morgan Museum and Library ex.cat., (New York, 2017).

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the manuscript was intended for personal rather than liturgical use. There are no later additions or emendations such as are often found in calendars, although the erasure of the feasts of Thomas Becket and of the ‘pp’ abbreviation for ‘pape’ suggest that the manuscript was still in use at the Reformation. Nothing in the calendar goes against the premise that the manuscript was written in the middle years of the thirteenth century, for private rather than collective use. Can the calendar tell us anything about where G.18 was made, or at least made for? Although it has been described as a Worcester/Gloucester calendar, a close examination of its contents reveals a more complex picture. It does indeed contain a number of saints characteristic of the diocese of Worcester: Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester (January 19, with his Translation on June 7), Aldate (February 4), Oswald, bishop of Worcester (February 28), Kineburga of Gloucester (June 25) and Egwin, founder of Evesham Abbey and bishop of Worcester (December 30, with his Translation on September 10).14 The Worcestershire/Gloucestershire area was particularly rich in religious houses, with great abbeys at Gloucester, Pershore, Evesham, Tewkesbury and Winchcombe, in addition to the cathedral priory of Worcester.15 All fell within the diocese of Worcester and a number of their liturgical books survive,16 but a comparison 14

15 16

See N. Morgan, “The Introduction of the Sarum Calendar into the Dioceses of England in the Thirteenth Century,” Thirteenth Century England viii, The Proceedings of the Durham Conference, ed. M. Prestwich, R. Britnell and R. Frame (Rochester, 1999), 179–206, for a useful listing of the saints of the various dioceses. On Worcester in particular see N. Morgan, “Psalter Illustration for the Diocese of Worcester in the Thirteenth Century,” in Medieval Art and Architecture at Worcester (1978), 91–104. For the dedications and feasts of Tewkesbury, Pershore and Winchcombe see A. Binns, Dedications of Monastic Houses in England and Wales 1066–1216 (Woodbridge, 1989), 81, 87 and 89; “Houses of Benedictine monks: Abbey of Pershore,” in A History of the County of Worcester: Volume 2, ed. J. W. Willis-Bund and W. Page (London, 1971), 127–36; “Houses of Benedictine monks: The abbey of Tewkesbury,” in A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 2, ed. W. Page (London, 1907), 61–6; “Houses of Benedictine monks: The abbey of Winchcombe,” in A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 2, ed. W. Page (London, 1907), 66–72. The invaluable Ordnance Survey Map of Monastic Britain (Surbiton, 1954), shows the extent of the medieval dioceses and the religious houses within each. See R.W. Pfaff, The Liturgy in Medieval England, A History (Cambridge, 2009), 208–20 and Calendars for Gloucester and Evesham printed in F. Wormald, English Benedictine Kalendars after a.d. 1100, ii, Ely to St Neots (London, 1946), ii: 21–55. Wormald’s two Henry Bradshaw Society volumes remain the essential reference work for English calendars. Nigel Morgan is in the process of concluding Wormald’s enterprise. According to the Henry Bradshaw Society, English Benedictine Kalendars post 1100, vol. 3: Kalendars of Male Houses, Norwich-York, is well advanced, while English Benedictine Kalendars post 1100, vol. 4: Benedictine Nunneries; addenda to vols. 1–2; introduction; and cumulative indexes to vols. 1–4 is in hand.

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shows that G.18’s calendar lacks the distinctive feasts associated with these institutions­. The Worcester antiphonal of 1218–47 (Worcester Cathedral MS 160) has three feasts of St Oswald, two of Wulfstan, two of Egwin and the Veneratio sanctae crucis on February 6, whereas G.18 has only one feast for Oswald, and no feast for the Holy Cross. The very characteristic Worcester feast, that of St Anne (July 26), is also missing. Although it includes the Evesham feast of the translation of Andrew (May 9) others are absent, including the Translation of Aldhelm (May 5), Maximus (May 29) and Canute of Denmark (July 10), and those of the saints whose relics were in Evesham abbey: Wistan (June 1), Odolf (June 12) and Credan (August 19). The two feasts of Egwin also lack their octaves usually found in Evesham calendars. Comparison with the Gloucester calendar is equally inconclusive: G.18 has several Gloucester feasts, but these also occur in Worcester diocese calendars, and vitally it lacks those saints whose relics were in St. Peter’s, Gloucester, or were associated with churches which belonged the abbey. The other monastic candidates from this area are Tewkesbury, Pershore and Winchcombe. The characteristic Tewkesbury feast of Holy Relics (July 2) is not present in the calendar, nor is that of Pershore’s patron saint, St Eadburga, and no particular emphasis is placed on Kenelm of Winchcombe.17 There are some surprising saints, moreover, not usually found in Worcester diocese calendars or associated with any of the great religious houses in that area: Emerentiana (January 23), Chad (March 2), Leo (April 11), Eufemia (April 13), the Translation of Nicholas (May 9), Botulph (June 17), Frideswide (Oct 19) and Hugh of Lincoln (November 17). Some of these—Chad, Botulph and Frideswide—are also found in Hereford diocese calendars, but all of them appear in calendars of the vast diocese of Coventry/Lichfield, the southern boundary of which ran along the northern boundary of the diocese of Worcester. Does our manuscript come from somewhere on the border between the two dioceses? This seems the best way of accounting for the choice of saints in the calendar and the West Midlands style of the illumination. Even if it were made there, G.18 did not remain in the West Midlands. By the fourteenth century it had travelled south to Canterbury. On f. 2r is the conventional Saint Augustine’s Abbey inscription naming the donor, BIBLIA : RICARDI : DE : SHOLDONE : DE : LIBRARIO : SCI : AUGUSTINI : CANTUARIE, and above it the shelf-mark, “distie Ie Gus Io.” In the St Augustine’s system Distinctio signified bookpress and gradus a shelf, so in theory the book was stored on the first shelf of the first case in the library’s three biblical bookcases. The St 17

On the dedications of these houses see Binns, Dedications of Monastic Houses, 81, 87 and 89.

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Augustine’s Abbey library catalogue, compiled between 1375 and 1420 but only surviving in a later copy (Dublin, Trinity College MS 360), records it as: Biblia Ricardi Sholdon, 2o fo. in textu nescio D.I.G.1. In practice, however, Bibles were found scattered in various locations around the monastery. The monastery’s greatest book treasure, the two volume late antique Bible sent by St Gregory from Italy, was kept in the vestry.18 A number of the larger volumes were stored in the cloister as consultation copies or for use in reading in the nearby refectory.19 Most, however, were out on loan to members of the community: G.18 was being used by one H. Burton when the catalogue was made. The impact of the arrival of the new Parisian version of the Bible on the English monasteries must have been considerable, and the pages of G.18 and other St Augustine’s Bibles reveal the monks’ textual concerns. St Augustine’s had early shown an interest in obtaining copies of the new Parisian version of the Bible text. The catalogue includes Biblia Nicholai Abbatis correcta parisius, donated by Nicholas Thorne, abbot from 1273 to 1283.20 Indeed there seems to have been something of a campaign of Bible acquisition from the middle of the thirteenth century. Surviving donations include the large Refectory Bible of c. 1270, donated and perhaps commissioned by Geoffrey of Langley, the Bible made for and donated by Abbot Robert de Bello before 1253, a small Bible now in Oxford (All Souls College MS 1) with annotations probably in the hand of Prior William of Wilmington (d. 1289),21 the Bible possibly made for and annotated by Henry of Cockering (fl. 1272–91),22 and a Parisian Bible given by Nicholas de Bello.23 A number of other donors also gave Bibles, many presumably contemporary, but since the books do not survive it is not possible to date them. By time the catalogue was compiled in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, St. Augustine’s had thirty-eight complete Latin Bibles in forty-one volumes, mainly gifts from members of the community. Aside from the pleasure of building up their library’s collection, there was also a spiritual incentive for donations. St Augustine’s participated in the Benedictine practice of distributing 18 Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s Abbey, 373, nos BA1.1-2 19 Ibid., 373–5, nos BA1.3-8. These included Geoffrey of Langley’s large late thirteenth-century Bible, now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 49 (see Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, ii: 170–1, no. 169) along with another even larger Bible given by the same donor. 20 Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s Abbey, 374, no. BA1.7. 21 Ibid., 376–7, no. BA1.12. 22 Now Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College MS 361/442, see Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s Abbey, 382, no. BA1.25 23 Now New York, Morgan Library MS M.970, see Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s Abbey, 383– 4, no. BA1.29

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books on an annual basis. On the second day of Lent, each monk took part in a procession to return the book or books he had borrowed over the previous year.24 William Thorne’s Chronicle records how in the early fourteenth century, on the prompting of Abbot Findon (1283–1309), the brethren arranged that, when the books were brought annually to the Chapter, “the souls of those living be ‘commended’, and of those deceased be absolved, by whom the library of this church has been in any way improved.” Those living were also to receive a special mass.25 Monks were often generous donors. A number (Henry Cockering among them) gave as many as twenty books, while Abbot Findon gave over eighty. While Richard of Sholdon was not a donor on this scale, his name can be associated with a gift of five volumes. In addition to G.18, the catalogue ascribes to him a volume of Aristotelian logic, two canon law texts and a compilation entitled, Tractatus de professione monachorum.26 None of the others is known to survive and even the precise identity of their donor remains problematic. Two Richards of Sholdon appear in the abbey’s documents.27 The first was ordained a deacon in September 1299, and was a member of the committee who elected Abbot Poucyn in 1334. On 18 July 1345 he obtained the office of papal notary.28 He was perhaps dead by 1349, when one John de Sholdon, rector of Cooling, Kent and a former Fellow of Merton College, was acting as the executor of his brother, ‘Magister’ Richard’s, will.29 Another Richard of Sholdon lived in the second half of the fourteenth century. He was ordained subdeacon in December 1363, took part in the election of abbot Petham in 1375, and was 24

K.M. Setton, “From Medieval to Modern library,” in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 104 no.4 (1960): 376. 25 A.H. Davis trans., William Thorne’s Chronicle of St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury (1934), 392. 26 Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s Abbey, 1314–15, no. BA1.1309; 1579, no. BA1.1752; 1544, no. BA1.1639; 1708–9, no. M1846. 27 A.B. Emden, Donors of Books to S. Augustine’s Abbey Canterbury (Oxford, 1968), 16 and Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s Abbey, 1855–6. Even the spelling of Richard’s name is uncertain. In the inscription in G.18 is it spelt “Ricardi de Sholdone” and in the catalogue the donor of the Bible is “Ricardi Sholdon.” The donor of BA.1.1309 is “Ricardi de Scholdon,” of BA.1.1752 “fratris Ricardi de scholdon,” and of M1846 “Richardi de Scholdon,” while at BA1.1639 he is designated “magistri Richardi Scholdon.” 28 Calendar of Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 3, 1342–62, ed. W.H. Bliss and C. Johnson (1897), 209–17. 29 A.B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford (1959), 1695, lists John de Sholdon, Scholdon, Scholon, Sholdoun as fellow of Merton College in 1324. He was ordained February 1331, was rector of Brightwalton, Berks in 1331 and of Cooling, Kent from 1334–61. I am not convinced that this is the same Richard, however, for the reasons set out below.

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one of the treasurers of the abbey in 1383. He was also Master of St L­ aurence’s Hospital­, Canterbury in July 1397. On the basis that the title ‘Magister’ was used in the catalogue for the donor of one of the volumes of decretals, Emden gave this volume to the late fourteenth-century Richard, and the other four to his earlier namesake, while Barker-Benfield cautiously associates the Bible, the Aristotle and the compilation with the earlier Richard of Sholdon, and both the canon law texts with the later Richard. Given the great interest in Bible texts at St Augustine’s in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, I have chosen to follow Emden and Barker-Benfield in associating the gift of G.18 with the earlier Richard, though the case is by no means certain. Where Richard came from is quite as problematic as what he gave.30 He might have been a local man, from the village of Sholdon, Kent, which had connections with St Augustine’s as far back as the seventh century.31 Given the likely West Midlands provenance of G.18, however, there is another possibility. The Sheldons were ancient and well-to-do West Midlands landowners with extensive holdings in Beoley, a hamlet between Redditch and Tanworth right on the borders of the diocese of Worchester and Coventry/Lichfield.32 These Sheldons were a strongly academic and staunchly Catholic family, with a tradition of education at Oxford, of artistic patronage and an interest in books and libraries.33 30

31 32 33

One of the difficulties of trying to track people down in medieval documents is being sure you are on the trail of the right person. Tracing the origins of the Sheldon family is complicated by the number of places bearing the names Sheldon, and the eccentricities of medieval spelling. There are or were villages of that name in Norfolk, Warwickshire, Bedfordshire, Staffordshire and Nottinghamshire, as well as a Sheldon manor near Chippenham, in Wiltshire, and the variants Sheldon, Schelton, Scelton, Selton, Seledon, Chelton, Sheltone, Schelton/e, Schuldone, Sholdon, Scholdon, Shildene, Suldon, Shilton and Shuldon are all found. I have used the name Richard de Sholdon when referring to the monk named in the inscription in the Bible, and de Scheldon for his contemporary namesake in the documentary sources, though I think it possible they were the same man. I have used Sheldon to refer to the later sixteenth-century family from the same area. E. Hasted, “Parishes: Sholdon,” in The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: Volume 9 (Canterbury, 1800), 605–11. “Parishes: Beoley,” in A History of the County of Worcester: Volume 4, ed. W. Page and J.W. Willis-Bund (London, 1924), 12–19. J. Foster, Alumni Oxoniensis, The Members of the University of Oxford, 1500–1714, vol. iv (1892), 1342 lists over twenty Sheldons with Midlands, mainly Worcestershire origins. One branch were living in Broadway, another in Beoley. They had a particular association with Oriel College, from where many went on to the Inns of Court, presumably because as Catholics this absolved them from taking the oath of allegiance. In the 1580s Ralph Sheldon (d. 1618) commissioned the famous Sheldon tapestries to hang in their great house at Long Compton in Warwickshire, while the magnificent Sheldon effigies in their chantry chapel at Beoley give a taste of the family’s artistic aspirations. Ralph also gave the ser-

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Various members of the de Sheldon or Scheldon family appear in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as holding land at Sheldon and neighbouring Coleshill in Warwickshire, within twenty miles of Beoley. They formed part of a core of gentry with aspirations to nobility, to be achieved by loyal service to the crown.34 A possible candidate for our Richard is one Richard de Scheldon who made a grant of land at Coleshill in c. 1300 to Sir John de Clinton and his wife, Alice, for the rather charming rent of a rose at the Nativity of St John the Baptist and, more practically, 15 quarters of corn, 9 quarters of brewing barley and 9 quarters of good barley.35 This grant was witnessed by Henry de Scheldon, a prominent county knight and a royal official in the last three decades of the thirteenth century.36 Could our Richard have been a relative of Henry’s, perhaps a younger son sent into the Church in the fashion of the English aristocracy until relatively recently?37

34

35 36

37

vices of his smith to manufacture the chains for Sir Thomas Bodley’s new library at ­Oxford. On Ralph’s life, family and connections see H.L. Turner, “Biography & Epitaph of Ralph Sheldon c.1537, d.1613,” first published on http://www.tapestriescalledsheldon.info in 2009, revised 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015. My thanks to Hilary for her fascinating conversation on the intertwined histories of the various branches of the Sheldon families. Ralph’s will has been published by Nina Green on http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com (accessed 29.3.2018). Gilbert Sheldon (d. 1677) was archbishop of Canterbury, a fellow of All Souls and commissioner of the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford. The precise connections between the various members of the Sheldon/Scheldon clan are not always easy to reconstruct. Aunsel/Ansel de Sheldon/Scheldon appears from the 1220s (Curia Regis Rolls of the Reign of Henry iii, 7–9 Henry iii (London, 1955), 142, no.701; voluntary aid for the dowry of Isabel, sister of Henry iii, who married Frederick ii, July 1235: “De Sheldon Ansel’ pr dimidio feodo unius militis ij m,” Liber Feodorum, I (London, 1920), 507). He was dead by Trinity Term 1242, when there was a family dispute re the dower between Alicia “[…] qui fuit uxor Anselinie […]” and his two daughters, Hawysia and Alicia, which mentions Henry, son and heir of aforesaid Ansel, at that time a minor and in the guardianship of Philip de Ascell (Curia Regis Rolls of the Reign of Henry iii, xviii, 27–30 Henry iii (London, 1999), 111, no. 572). Birmingham Archives MS 3888/A96 and A44. Robert de Scheldon witnessed another grant to John Clinton in 1314 (Birmingham Archives MS 3888/A111/1). Henry was a minor on his father’s death in 1242 but became coroner and justice of goal delivery at Warwick from 1279 to 1292, conducted the Hundred Roll Survey in Warwickshire and Leicestershire in 1279–80, and was Keeper of the Peace in Warwickshire in 1287. He was dead by c. 1316. See P. Coss, “Knighthood, Heraldry and Social Exclusion in Edwardian England,” in Heraldry, Pagentry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. P. Coss and M. Keen (Woodbridge, 2002), 62; P. Coss, Origins of the English Gentry, 151–2, 156–7; C. Burt, Edward I and the Governance of England, 1272–1307 (Cambridge, 2013), 159, 298. His elder son, Nicholas, was part of a group of Midlands noblemen knighted at the Feast of the Swan in 1306, but was dead by October 20 1326 (Feudal Aid, 1284–1421, V, Stafford-

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The Sheldon’s loyalty to the crown in the civil strife which raged throughout England for much of the thirteenth century is perhaps reflected in the image of the massacre of the Israelites in the initial to I Kings. The Philistine knight bears on his shield the arms of Simon de Montfort, Henry iii’s brother-in-law and bête noir, who was killed at the Battle of Evesham in 1265. Could G.18 have been given to the younger son of this family when he was sent off to Oxford, and taken by him on to Canterbury? While such a connection remains highly speculative, it would account for how the manuscript found its way from Warwickshire to Kent. Once on the shelves of the library at St Augustine’s, G.18 was put to good use, for comparing different versions of the biblical text. Marginal notes were added in the late fifteenth century, almost certainly by the indefatigable Clement of Canterbury (fl. 1463–95). Clement was a voracious reader (he is named in the Locations-Register as the borrower of some twenty-three books, the largest number of any individual) and was possibly precentor at a period when much work was done on rebinding and annotating the collection.38 He added inscriptions and annotations to almost fifty surviving manuscripts, in several styles of script, ranging from fancy headings to cursive. His note at f. 148v comparing the contents of G.18 with another Bible in the St. Augustine’s library, that of Nicholas de Bello, is in his more formal mode.39 Remarkably, Nicholas’

38

39

Worcester, 180; “Close Rolls, Edward iii: December 1327,” in Calendar of Close Rolls, Edward­ iii: Volume 1, 1327–1330, ed. H.C. Maxwell Lyte (London, 1896), 238–41). He was succeeded by another Henry, who got into debt and became embroiled in a dispute over the land at Sheldon with the Bishop of Ely (“Close Rolls, Edward iii: October 1327,” in Calendar of Close Rolls, Edward iii: Volume 1, 1327–1330, 226–33; “Close Rolls, Edward iii: July 1336,” in Calendar of Close Rolls, Edward iii: Volume 3, 1333–1337, ed. H.C. Maxwell Lyte (London, 1898), 684–92). In the second half of the fourteenth century the manor at Sheldon passed by marriage to the Peyto family, and by the 1380s the two manors of East Hall and West Hall were held respectively by the widows of Henry de Sheldon and John de Peyto, both named Beatrice. The estate eventually passed into the hands of the Digby family in the sixteenth century, who retained it until the mid-twentieth century, when together with Coleshill it was sold to a speculative builder. A large early sixteenth-century manor house, Sheldon Hall, formerly known as East Hall, survives and is now a public house. It was originally surrounded by a moat and is presumably the site of one of the earlier Sheldon seats. On Clement of Canterbury see Barker-Benfield, St. Augustine’s Abbey, 4–5, 70–1, 1839 and passim; and Manuscripts at Oxford: an exhibition in memory of Richard William Hunt (1908–1979), ed. A.C. de la Mare and B. Barker-Benfield (Oxford, 1980), 91, no. 4. His hierarchy of scripts can be seen in the signed example of his tables added to Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Wood empt. 13., ff. ix to xvi. My thanks to Bruce Barker-Benfield for his thoughts on the inscription in G. 18. Personal communication, July 2016.

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Bible also survives and is also in New York. Written and illuminated in Paris in the 1240s-50s, Morgan M.970 is the only survivor of the sixteen books which Nicholas gave to the library. Their respective shelf marks show that it and the Sheldon Bible sat on consecutive shelves in the library at St Augustine’s, and the two books must have lain open together on the desk while Clement compared them, noting the differences between the ‘Parisian’ text and the English one. It is particularly satisfying that after almost 500 years the books now sit together again on the shelves of the Morgan Library. As well as making notes in it, Clement possibly had G.18 put in its present binding. Although somewhat battered and rather unsympathetically rebacked in the nineteenth century, it is in many ways a typical late fifteenth-century binding. Thick oak boards with gently bevelled edges are covered with dark brown calf, blind stamped and incised on both upper and lower covers with a simple design consisting triple fillets intersecting at the corners to form a central panel containing diamond-shaped lozenges. Both lozenges and borders are decorated with a single small square stamp of a quadruped with a long tail floating over its back. It once had two clasps, hinging from the upper cover. The clasps are gone, but traces of their attachments remain. A single small square boss in the form of four petals and a stamen survives on the rear cover. As often with medieval bindings, the binder of G.18 has adopted a ‘wastenot, want-not’ approach to his materials, and recycled material from discarded manuscripts as flyleaves and supports in the spine. The front flyleaf consists of a piece of vellum, perhaps taken from a roll, on which are inscribed two deeds. The first is dated to the reign of Henry vi (1422–61 and 1470–1) and the second refers to a Prior John.40 St Augustine’s had three priors named John in the fifteenth century, but given its juxtaposition with a deed from the very troubled reign of Henry vi, and its use in a late fifteenth-century binding, it seems likely the prior referred to is John Hawkhurst (1427–30). The rear flyleaf is taken from a late twelfth-century copy of Peter Lombard’s Gloss on St Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians (1:12–18), arranged in the characteristic two-column layout with the gloss flowing around blocks of the biblical text. By the late fifteenth century the library possessed seventeen copies of the glossed Pauline Epistles: the manuscript from which this leaf came must have been regarded as surplus to requirements. 40

A previous owner, Harvey Frost, claimed to be able to read the date as September in the 27th year of the reign of Henry vi, i.e. 1448, but all that is now visible is “None die mensis Septembris anno regni regis Henri sexti […].” The date is frustratingly equally illegible in the second deed which begins: “Et nos Johannes permissione divina prior ecc[lesia] xpu Cantuar[…] Dat[ur] Cantuar[…] in domo meo decimo anno […].”

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The same binder also bound a large volume of the works of Anselm of Canterbury (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 271) for Canterbury Cathedral Priory.41 This volume is decorated in an almost identical diaper pattern, although here the binder used both the quadruped stamp and another of a standing hound with its stern curling over its back. The binder could either have been a local binder working on a freelance basis for both Canterbury institutions, or possibly an itinerant craftsman.42 The use of obsolete St Augustine’s documents perhaps suggests that he was working at the monastery itself, rather than in his own establishment. There are a few other clues to the medieval uses of G.18, though not all very clear. On the front flyleaf, upside down, is the name Adrian[us] Cardinalis. This has been understood as referring to the Italian cardinal, Adrianus Castellesi (1450–1522).43 Castellesi was the major representative of English interest in Rome in the early sixteenth century. He spent two years in England from 1489– 91, was appointed bishop of Hereford in 1502 and in 1503 transferred to the more lucrative diocese of Bath and Wells, though he never resided in either. Why his name should be in a St Augustine’s manuscript remains a mystery. Richard’s Bible was presumably still on the shelves at St Augustine’s at the Reformation, when the feasts of St Thomas and of the abbreviation for ‘pape’ were erased in the calendar. The abbey surrendered to the king on 10 July 1538, but nothing seems to have happened to the library immediately. The abbot’s lodgings began to be transformed into a ‘posting house’ for the king in October 1539, and the control of the books seems to have remained with the tenancy of the New Lodgings.44 They escaped in drips and drabs through the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries. In the margin of f. 293v is ‘This is Thomas […] booke’ in a Tudor hand. This is possibly Thomas Wylde, a member of a family of successful Canterbury lawyers, who put together a small but select collection of St Augustine’s books.45 41 Maddan, Summary Catalogue, no. 1938. 42 For a recent discussion of this practice, see A. Gillespie, “Bookbinding,” in The Production of Books in England 1350–1500, ed. A. Gillespie and D. Wakelin (Cambridge, 2011), 160. 43 On Castellesi see W.E. Wilkie, The Cardinal Protectors of England, Rome and the Tudors before the Reformation (Cambridge, 1974), 28–34 and J.F. D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome: Humanists and Churchmen on the Eve of the Renaissance (Baltimore and London, 1933), 16–19. 44 Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s Abbey, cii; M. Sparks, “The Abbey Site 1538–1997,” in English Heritage Book of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, ed. R. Gem (London, 1997), 143–4. 45 Wyld had a “good gentleman’s house” in St. Martin’s Parish just outside the walls of St Augustine’s, and so presumably was on hand to pick up any volumes he particularly fancied. E. Hasted, “Canterbury: Description of the city,” in The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: Volume 11 (Canterbury, 1800), 106–20.

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Over the next few hundred years the book travelled up and down the United Kingdom. By the mid-eighteenth century it had moved north. On f. 3 is the signature W. Gossip, and the date 1744. William Gossip (1706–72) was one of a family of Yorkshire landowners.46 The manuscript seems to have remained in the Gossip family for the next two centuries. In 1825 William’s grandson, Randall Gossip, married one Christiana, heiress of the Hatfield family,47 and assumed the names and arms of Hatfield. His great grand-daughter, Christina Joyce Hatfield (1903–53), later Joyce, Lady Allerton, sold Richard’s Bible at Sotheby’s in July 1948.48 It was bought by Maggs for £250 on behalf of Henry Harvey Frost (1873–1969), whose bookplate is on the inside of the front cover. Frost, who had made his fortune in the burgeoning car industry of the early twentieth century, began to collect manuscripts in the 1940s.49 He was a discerning collector but was forced to sell off his collection due to failing eyesight in the 1950s. The Bible now set off on its first voyage overrseas. In 1952 Maggs offered it for sale again, this time for £500. On 23 May it was sent to New York by Airmail, for the inspection of William Glazier. Glazier, an investment banker and partner in the firm then known as Lehman Brothers, bought his first manuscript in 1940, and gradually set about forming a collection illustrating the whole history of manuscript books. By his death in 1962 had one of the finest private collections in the United States. His seventy-five manuscripts were deposited at the Morgan Library in 1963. They were donated to the library in 1984 at instigation of Mrs Rena Bransten, Mr Glazier’s daughter. After many wanderings, Richard of Sholdon’s Bible has found a permanent home in New York. 46

47 48 49

His will is in the National Archives prob 11/978/233. The Gossip family papers are in the Doncaster Archives (nra 23416); DX./BAX/61317, 64283 (nra 511) and West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds, TA (nra 11200 Hatfield); York Minster Archives Add MS 213 Collection of William Gossip (nra 30444 York Minster); see also Sheffield City Archives GD 1– 448 and SY 670/21–7 Hatfield Gossip Deeds 1790–1925. Bernard Burke’s, A genealogical and heraldic dictionary of the landed gentry of Great Britain and Ireland (1862–3), i: 563. Various nineteenth-century Hatfields are buried in the graveyard of the All Saints, Thorp Arch, Yorkshire. Sotheby’s 27 July 1948 catalogue, lot 358. Stratford and Reynolds, “Foyle Breviary,” 350–1.

Chapter 17

Virgin, Devil, Bishop, King: Nicola Pisano’s Pulpit in Siena and Alfonso x’s Cantigas de Santa Maria Deirdre Jackson In 1260, the celebrated sculptor Nicola Pisano, born in Apulia and thought by some scholars to have trained in the workshops of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick ii, completed an elaborate marble pulpit for the Pisa Baptistery.1 The pulpit established his reputation as one of the most innovative artists working in Italy and gave him a clear lead over rival sculptors for important civic and religious commissions. The following inscription, carved beneath the final relief of the Last Judgement, as if to ensure Nicola’s place among the saved, underscores his sense of achievement and self-worth: “In the year 1260 Nicola Pisano carved this noble work. May so greatly gifted a hand be praised as it deserves.”2 Evidently, Nicola’s work met with acclaim because he was asked to create a similar pulpit for Siena cathedral. A contract was drawn up between the sculptor and Fra Melano, a Cistercian from the abbey of San Galgano, appointed to oversee the work on Siena cathedral, which was rebuilt between 1226 and 1267. It was signed on 29 September 1265 in the Pisa Baptistery, near Nicola’s earlier pulpit, advertising his skill. There was no need for Fra Melano to include in the contract a detailed description of the appearance of the Sienese pulpit—it was to be carved along the same lines as the Pisan one, but on a larger scale.3 Nine documents relating to the pulpit in Siena have survived, including the contract (drawn up in two versions). Collectively these documents show that between 1 I am grateful to John Lowden for sharing my enthusiasm for the Cantigas de Santa Maria, and supervising my thesis: “Saint and Simulacra: Images of the Virgin in the Cantigas de Santa María of Alfonso x of Castile (1252–1284)” (unpublished PhD dissertation, The Courtauld Institute, 2002). John’s passion for manuscripts, curiosity, and trenchant observations are an inspiration. 2 ANNO MILLENO BIS CENTUM BISQUE TRICENO / HOC OPUS INSINGNE SCULPSIT NICOLA PISANUS / LAUDETUR DINGNE TAM BENE DOCTA MANUS: A. Fiderer Moskowitz, Nicola and Giovanni Pisano. The Pulpits, with photographs by D. Finn (London, 2005), 36 n. 11, 57. See also M. Seidel, Father and Son: Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, trans. M. Roberts, 2 vols. (Munich, 2012), i: 78. 3 Seidel, Father and Son, i: 84.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_019

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16 July 1267 and 6 November 1268 money was given to Nicola to pay the salaries of his helpers: his son and equally talented collaborator, Giovanni, his chief assistants (discipuli) Arnolfo di Cambio, Lapo di Ricevuto, and Lapo’s brother, Donato.4 The Sienese pulpit, which may be seen in the cathedral to this day, has attracted the attention of art historians from Vasari to Max Seidel whose latest monograph, based on new archival research and meticulous stylistic analysis, reassesses the relationship between Nicola and Giovanni. As demonstrated by Seidel, although Nicola was the principal artist, Giovanni played a major part in the carving of the Sienese work. Although he received only half the wage paid to his father (four Pisan soldi rather than eight), he earned more money than any other assistant, including the gifted Arnolfo di Cambio.5 All the sculptors involved were exempt from paying taxes and granted free lodgings for the duration of the project, another indication of its importance and the value placed on the artists, who were the first non-native sculptors to work for the commune of Siena. Both Nicola and Giovanni enjoyed high social standing as well as material rewards, and the fact that after the pulpit had been completed, Nicola’s assistants were encouraged to stay in Siena, proves how valuable they were judged to be. As recorded in a protocol of the city’s General Council, dated 23 March 1272, Fra Melano asked the General Council of the city to offer them citizenship and continued exemption from taxes, since in the city of Siena there are no masters capable of making reliefs and subtle works for the Opera della Beata Maria Vergine, and as Donato, Lapo and Goro son of the late Ciuccio Ciuti of Florence are now in Siena and are wise and subtle masters who are good at making reliefs and other works for the said Opera della Beata Vergine, and without them it is impossible to work conveniently at the said Opera.6 Italian sources are, however, otherwise silent on the subject of how Nicola Pisano and his collaborators were perceived by their contemporaries. As Seidel states: It is far from easy to imagine how Nicola was regarded in his own times: the written sources are limited to financial and legal matters, and consequently provide no information on the effect produced by his personality. 4 Die Kirchen von Siena, ed. P.A. Riedl and M. Seidel, iii: 1.1.2: Der Dom S. Maria Assunta, Architektur, Textband, ed. W. Haas and D. von Winterfeld (Munich, 2006), 736–9. 5 Seidel, Father and Son, i: 88. 6 Ibid., i: 89.

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No doubt then as now Nicola caused astonishment by the brilliance of his style, but I like to suppose that the Tuscans of his time also admired Nicola the iconographer.7 Apparently unknown to Seidel, and overlooked by many scholars, is a song commemorating the Sienese pulpit and praising the skill of the sculptors who created it, found in the Cantigas de Santa Maria (henceforth csm), the largest, richest and most complex collection of miracles of the Virgin Mary ever produced. Created by and for King Alfonso x of Castile-León (r. 1252–84), who styled himself the Virgin’s troubadour (Fig. 17.1), the csm contains an introductory poem followed by 419 songs celebrating the beauty, purity and compassion of the Virgin Mary, and recording miracles that she performed. The csm comprises two prologues and two epilogues, 357 Marian miracles (miragres), forty-three songs of praise (loores), and sixteen songs for feast days (festas) written in Galician-Portuguese verse and set to music so they could be performed.8 The songs reflect a wide range of sources. Some are based on traditional tales recounted for centuries throughout Europe, and others are based on contemporary events, including autobiographical narratives concerning

Figure 17.1 Alfonso x as the Virgin Mary’s Troubadour, El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo MS T.I.1, f. 5r. © PATRIMONIO NACIONAL

7 Ibid., i: 272. 8 Alfonso x, The Learned, Cantigas de Santa Maria: An Anthology, ed. S. Parkinson (Cambridge, 2015), 2–3.

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Alfonso x, members of his family, his courtiers and contemporaries.9 All are original compositions, written and set to music by the king and his collaborators.10 This vast corpus of Marian songs is preserved in four thirteenth-century manuscripts, which represent at least three different phases in the collection’s evolution: To: Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España MS 10.069 (formerly in the Library of Toledo Cathedral); E: El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo MS B.I.2; T: El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo MS T.I.1 and F: Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Banco Rari 20. Designed as a two-volume set, manuscripts T and F contain extensive cycles of miniatures illustrating the song’s contents, and include several idealized portraits of Alfonso x, although the volume now in Florence was left unfinished on the king’s death in 1284.11 Recorded in manuscripts E (ff. 200v-201v) and F (ff. 92v-93r), the cantiga set in Siena tells the story of a bishop who commissioned skilled masters to carve a magnificent pulpit out of gleaming white marble. As explained in the song lyrics, the pulpit consisted of several narrative panels and included depictions of the Virgin and the devil. The sculptors completed the pulpit, but it offended the Virgin who objected to her image being next to that of the devil, and could not bear to see him looking so resplendent. To solve the problem, she transformed the devil’s image, turning it black as pitch (come pez) so that he appeared mui feo e mui lixoso (“very ugly and disgusting”).12 The following day, 9

10

11 12

For comprehensive information on each song, and the csm in general, see the Oxford Cantigas de Santa Maria database: http://csm.mml.ox.ac.uk (accessed 29.3.2018); for the autobiographical cantigas, see J.F. O’Callaghan, Alfonso x and the Cantigas de Santa Maria: A Poetic Biography (Leiden, 1998). Stephen Parkinson states that the songs most likely to have been composed by Alfonso x himself are the Prologue, the opening cantiga (1), the Epilogue (Petiçon), several songs of praise (loores), including 10, 40, 60, 70, 160 and 300, cantigas 209 and 279, which record healing miracles experienced by the king, and the May song (406). Alfonso x, The Learned, 11. Manuel Pedro Ferreira observes that, “Alfonso’s signature (first-person direct speech, claiming authority and responsibility for doing such and such, or narrating personal and family experience) is found throughout the collection, such as in csm 284, where he recounts that after finding the story of a miracle in a book, he had had it translated and had then composed the corresponding song; or in csm 64, 188, 293, and 347, where direct responsibility for both text and music is explicitly claimed.” M.P. Ferreira, “The Medieval Fate of the Cantigas de Santa Maria: Iberian Politics Meets Song,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 69/2 (2016): 333. On the provenance of the manuscripts, see L. Fernández Fernández, “Cantigas de Santa María: fortuna de sus manuscritos,” Alcanate: Revista de estudios alfonsíes 6 (2008–9): 323–48. Cantigas de Santa María, ed. W. Mettmann 3 vols. (Madrid, 1986–9), Cantiga 219, ii: 282, lines 33–34. K. Kulp-Hill, Songs of Holy Mary: A Translation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria (Tempe, AZ, 2000), 263.

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when the people gathered for Mass, they were delighted to discover that the devil had been appropriately altered. When the bishop was informed, however, he was not amused. Thinking that his precious pulpit had been vandalised, he ordered one of his acolytes to clean it. Nevertheless, when no amount of scrubbing or scraping could make the devil come clean, the bishop realized that he was dealing with supernatural forces, and that the Virgin Mary had turned the devil black ca de guisa […] que desfazer nono pode (“in such a way that it could not be undone”).13 Weeping and prostrating himself before the altar, he asked the Virgin to forgive him for having had the temerity to place her image next to that of the devil. Furthermore, he promised her that he would record the miracle, saying: E eu aqueste miragre farei põer entr’ os teus miragres, porque ben creo que é mui maravilloso (“I shall have this miracle placed among your other miracles, for I hold it to be most marvellous”).14 Neither the patron nor the artists are mentioned by name in the cantiga, but it undoubtedly refers to the pulpit carved by Nicola Pisano and his assistants during work on the cathedral supervised by Fra Melano.15 The octagonal pulpit, which consists of a series of seven relief panels illustrating events in Christ’s life, begins with the Visitation and ends with the Last Judgement, a subject to which two panels are devoted (Fig. 17.2). Given the pulpit’s subject-matter and the fact that the cathedral was dedicated to the Virgin, it is not surprising that she appears several times among the figures crowded into the detailed carved reliefs. In addition, the pulpit contains two freestanding sculptures of the Virgin. The first, showing the Virgin Annunciate, is positioned to one side of the opening of the pulpit, adjacent to the parapet reached by a flight of stairs. The second sculpture, showing the Virgin standing and holding the infant Christ, is located between the relief of the Adoration of the Magi and the relief of the Presentation and Flight into Egypt, marking the axis on which they meet. The narrator of the cantiga seems to be referring to the standing Virgin and Child when he describes the commissioning of the pulpit by the bishop: E fez y vĩyr maestres sabedores de tallar e eno marmor mui branco mandou-l [l] es y fegurar omagen da Virgen Santa Maria que nos anpar, que tĩya en seus braços o seu Fillo precioso.

13 Mettmann, Cantigas, ii: 282, lines 43–44; Kulp-Hill, Songs, 263. 14 Mettmann, Cantigas, ii: 283, lines 53–54; Kulp-Hill, Songs, 263. 15 G. Milanesi, Documenti per la storia dell’arte senese, 3 vols, (Siena, 1854; rpt. Holland, 1969), i: 145–53, nos 8, 9 and 10.

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Figure 17.2

Pulpit by Nicola Pisano, Duomo, Siena, marble, 1265–8. The Warburg Institute, Photographic Collection

He had masters skilled in carving come there and ordered them to depict in the pure white marble an image of the Holy Virgin Mary who protects us, holding Her Precious Son in Her arms.16 The devil, who plays such an important role in the cantiga, is depicted only once on the actual pulpit. Thrusting a woman into the Mouth of Hell, he supervises the torments of the damned in the seventh and final relief, depicting the Last Judgement (Fig. 17.3). Like many other illustrations in manuscript F, the miniature of this cantiga is unfinished and it is lacking captions, although spaces have been left for them. It is possible, nonetheless, to follow the story as depicted in the six consecutive scenes, reading from left to right and top to bottom (Fig. 17.4). In the first panel, a bishop is shown seated on the steps of an altar with a book (probably a Gospel) in his left hand and his right hand raised in the air. He faces a man who rests his right hand on a pile of stone blocks and raises his left in the air, mirroring the bishop’s pose. The gesture of the raised 16 Mettmann, Cantigas, ii: 282, ll. 16–19; Kulp-Hill, Songs, 263.

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Figure 17.3

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The Devil thrusts a sinner into the Mouth of Hell, detail of Last Judgement, Nicola Pisano’s pulpit, Duomo, Siena. The Warburg Institute, Photographic Collection

hand, which indicates the swearing of vows or the forging of a business agreement, confirms that this scene represents the commissioning of the pulpit (Fig. 17.5). The man with his hand on the stones is most plausibly to be identified as the master sculptor and those standing behind him are surely his assistants, because one of them holds a pannier for carrying mortar.17 The implication is that the artist has been asked to swear an oral agreement on the Gospel held by the bishop. The second panel has only been sketched in faintly, but if completed, would probably have shown the sculptors working on the pulpit or the object in its finished state. From the gestures of the figures, we can conclude that the third panel depicts the discovery of the blackened image of the devil, and the fourth, a young man reporting the prodigy to the bishop who raises his hands in a gesture of horror or astonishment. In the fifth panel, a man holding a water jug attempts to clean the marble, and in the final one, the 17

On this type of container see G. Menéndez Pidal, La España del siglo xiii leída en imágenes (Madrid, 1986), 108–9.

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Figure 17.4

Miracle of the Pulpit in Siena, Cantiga 219, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Banco Rari 20, ff. 92v-93r. Su concessione del Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali/ Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze

bishop prostrates himself in front of the altar, joining the assembled people in giving thanks to the Virgin. Although it is the focus of the cantiga, the pulpit was left unfinished in the miniature.18 Nevertheless, as shown in the underdrawing, it is a rectangular structure with a door shaped like a keyhole, and a staircase running down one side (Fig. 17.6). This structure bears no resemblance whatsoever to the pulpit carved by Nicola Pisano. There are also discrepancies between the pulpit’s present appearance and its description in the song lyrics. In the cantiga, the Virgin objects to the placement of her image next to that of the devil. None of the images of the Virgin on the present pulpit is adjacent to that of the devil. However, the pulpit is not in its original form. On 4 July 1506, during the course of extensive renovations, it was dismantled. After languishing in storage for twenty-six years, it was reassembled, with some major modifications, in 1532. It was not re-erected in its 18

Ana Domínguez Rodríguez, who comments briefly on Cantiga 219, notes this omission. A. Domínguez Rodríguez, “El arte de la construcción y otras técnicas artísticas en la miniatura de Alfonso x el Sabio,” Alcanate: Revista de estudios alfonsíes 1 (1998–9): 59–83, 70.

Virgin, Devil, Bishop, King

Figure 17.5

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Miracle of the Pulpit in Siena, Cantiga 219, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Banco Rari 20, f. 93r (detail). Su concessione del Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali/ Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze

original position in the building, beneath the dome at the southeast of the hexagonal crossing, but in its present location in the northeast.19 At this time several sculptural elements were rearranged. Yet, we can safely conclude that even in the pulpit’s original state, the Virgin and the devil were never placed side by side. Other inconsistencies between the song lyrics and the pulpit are apparent. Although the Virgin is said to have turned the devil black “in such a way that it could not be undone,” the devil, like the rest of the carvings on the pulpit, is now a light brown colour characteristic of white marble that has suffered discolouration over time. Whether or not the devil was black to begin with is an intriguing question. Paint was frequently applied to stone sculptures in the thirteenth century, a practice attested by a miniature in the csm, which shows a painter outdoors, touching up a sculpture of the Virgin and Child while his  assistant grinds pigments (Fig. 17.7). Nicola’s Sienese pulpit was almost 19 Seidel, Father and Son, i: 305 and 316.

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Figure 17.6 Unfinished miniature of pulpit, Cantiga 219, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Banco Rari 20, f. 93r (detail). Su concessione del Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali/ Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze

c­ ertainly enhanced with pigments. A cathedral inventory of 1434 mentions the painting and gilding of the sculptures (mese le figure a colouri e a oro), but only faint traces of colour remain, and it has yet to be determined whether these are original elements or later additions.20 The backgrounds of the reliefs were, however, certainly embellished with painted and gilded pieces of glass (intarsia) by Nicola and his collaborators, and elements of the sculptures were embellished with gold because records show that when the pulpit was being reassembled in 1532, the painter Pastorino di Giovanni Micheli was hired to restore the decorative glass inlays and renew the gilding on the sculptures.21 In the cantiga, the bishop is assigned a key role. Not only does he commission the pulpit, but he also takes responsibility for its offensive iconography, saying: Sennor, errey, porque cabo da omagen aquela fazer mandei (“My Lady, I

20 21

Ibid., 335. Ibid., 316 and 335.

Virgin, Devil, Bishop, King

Figure 17.7

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Painter applying colours to a damaged statue, Cantiga 136, El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo MS T.I.1, f. 192r (detail). © PATRIMONIO NACIONAL

erred, because I had that figure [i.e. the devil] carved next to your image”).22 No one blames the sculptors—the responsibility lies solely with the bishop who is said to have dictated the sculptural programme. When the pulpit was being carved, the bishop of Siena was Tommaso Fusconi, a Dominican who held the office from 1253 to 1273.23 It is conceivable that a preaching friar, like Tommaso, may have had an interest in the iconography of a pulpit from which he would stir the hearts of his congregation. The pulpit Nicola carved for the Pisa Baptistery c. 1260 was commissioned by the archbishop, Federico Visconti (1254–77), and its visual programme is thought by some scholars to have been influenced by theological ideas expressed in his sermons.24 Nevertheless, there is no evidence that Bishop Fusconi played any part in the construction of the Sienese 22 Mettmann, Cantigas, ii: 282, lines 46–7; Kulp-Hill, Songs, 263. 23 D. Waley, Siena and the Sienese in the thirteenth century (Cambridge, 1991), 128. 24 E.M. Angiola, “Nicola Pisano, Federigo Visconti, and the Classical Style in Pisa,” The Art Bulletin 59/1 (1977): 1–27.

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pulpit. Instead, the extant contracts concerning the pulpit in Siena focus on the person of Fra Melano, the Operario or Master of Works of the Cathedral. Although he was a Cistercian, the post he occupied was that of administrator controlled by civic authorities. In Siena, alterations to the physical fabric of the cathedral and its furnishings were decided by the city25—a foreign arrangement with which the writers of the csm were apparently unfamiliar. Despite the creative license taken by Alfonso x and his collaborators, the cantiga is accurate on several counts. Firstly, the material out of which the pulpit is carved is described as marmor mui branco and Carrara marble was, in fact, employed in its manufacture as specified in the contract between Nicola and Fra Melano, which states that the structure is to be carved from lapides de marmore de Carrara.26 Secondly, the narrator informs us that the pulpit is composed of “many stories of various kinds” (ystorias muitas […] de muitas naturas), a reasonable description of Nicola’s historiated pulpit.27 That the sculptors were not native craftsmen is also acknowledged by the writers of the cantiga who state that the bishop “had masters skilled in carving come there” (E fez y vĩyr maestres sabedores de tallar).28 Undoubtedly, the writers of the cantiga had fewer difficulties describing the pulpit than their fellow illuminators, because they were simply repeating what they had heard or read elsewhere. If, in fact, the bishop of Siena had the miracle recorded, as he pledged to do in the final stanza of the cantiga, we have no record of it apart from the csm. Searching for an Italian source would likely be a vain pursuit; almost certainly the miracle tale was created ex nihilo at the Castilian court. Walter Mettmann has posited that the miracles set in Italy in the csm are based on a written source of Italian provenance, but no specific exemplar has been discovered.29 Given the fact that Alfonso x’s csm, composed over the course of three decades, comprises 357 miracle tales of widely varying origins, it seems much more likely that the cantigas set in Italy were inspired by disparate oral accounts and written works.30 Alfonso’s artists, 25 J. Hook, Siena: A City and its History (London, 1979), 57–9. 26 Mettmann, Cantigas, ii: 282, l. 17. Milanesi, Documenti, 145, no. 8. Seidel, i: 84. 27 Mettmann, Cantigas, ii: 282, ll. 21–2. 28 Ibid., ii: 282, l. 16. 29 Walter Mettmann, “A Collection of Miracles from Italy as a Possible Source of the Cantigas de Santa María,” Bulletin of the Cantigueiros de Santa María 1/2 (1988): 75–82. 30 The following cantigas (according to the original numbers assigned to them in MS E, the most comprehensive volume) are set in Italy: csm 17 (Rome); csm 73 (Benedictine Abbey of Sagra di San Michele, province of Turin); csm 87 (Pavia); csm 132 (Pisa); csm 136 (Apulia/Foggia); csm 206 (Rome); csm 219 (Siena); csm 272 (Rome/Lateran); csm 287 (Hermitage of Santa Maria de Scala, near Genoa); csm 293 (Lombardy); csm 294 (Apulia); csm 306 (Rome/Lateran); csm 307 (Sicily/Etna); csm 309 (Rome/Santa Maria Maggiore);

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­ nlike the writers of the lyrics, had to visualize the pulpit without the help of u any models, and in the end they have left us with only the barest sketch of it. The miracle occurs in manuscript E and the incomplete F. Neither manuscript has been securely dated, but they are thought to have been produced sometime between 1279 and the king’s death in 1284. Thus, news of Nicola’s pulpit probably reached Alfonso x’s court within a decade of its completion in 1268. The csm underwent several phases and the extant manuscripts only represent the last configuration before Alfonso x’s death in 1284. It is crucial to acknowledge that each cantiga has an existence and history independent of the manuscripts in which it is preserved. If we accept that the miracles recorded in the extant manuscripts of the csm were first written down on loose sheets of parchment or paper, and stored in a vast archive before they were transformed into verse narratives, set to music and illustrated, we can push this date further back.31 Word of the pulpit probably reached the court of Castile shortly after the structure had been erected in the cathedral at Siena. Nicola Pisano is not identified by name in the cantiga, but it seems safe to surmise that at least some members of Alfonso x’s court circle, au courant with the latest artistic developments, would have heard of the master sculptor thought to have received his training in the workshops of Frederick ii (1194– 1250). Certainly, any artist tangentially connected with the late Holy Roman Emperor Frederick ii would have had an enormous appeal for the Castilian king who aspired to the same office as his illustrious relative (Alfonso x’s mother, Beatriz, was Frederick ii’s cousin). Laura Molina López has argued that Alfonso’s imperial ambitions are reflected in several cantigas set in Italy, including the account of the pulpit in Siena and a miracle alleged to have occurred in the city of Foggia, northern Apulia, chosen in 1235 by Frederick ii as his principal residence.32 Connie L. Scarborough has likewise posited that Alfonso x

31

32

csm 335 (Sicily). Cantigas in which Italian place names were employed solely for sake of rhyme have been excluded. For the various stages, see M.P. Ferreira, “The Stemma of the Marian Cantigas: Philological and Musical Evidence,” Cantigueiros: Bulletin of the Cantigueiros de Santa Maria 6 (1994): 58–98; M. Schaffer, “The ‘Evolution’ of the Cantigas de Santa Maria: The Relationships between Manuscripts T, F, and E,” in Cobras e Son: Papers on the Text, Music and Manuscripts of the ‘Cantigas de Santa Maria,’ ed. S. Parkinson (Oxford, 2000), 186–213; S. Parkinson and D. Jackson, “Collection, Composition, and Compilation in the Cantigas de Santa Maria,” Portuguese Studies 22 (2006): 159–72; and S. Parkinson, “Alfonso x, Miracle Collector,” in Alfonso x El Sabio (1221–1284): Las Cantigas de Santa María: Códice Rico MS. T-I-1, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, ed. L. Fernández Fernández and J.C. Ruiz Souza, 2 vols. (Madrid, 2011), ii: 79–105. L. Molina López, “Viaje a Italia a través de las Cantigas Historiadas de Alfonso x el Sabio,” Anales de Historia del Arte, Volumen Extraordinario (2011): 319–30.

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“saw in his Cantigas a unique vehicle for supporting his ideas about kingship, the waging of war, his quest for the crown of emperor, as well as other facets of his political agenda.”33 As his miracle collection evolved, Alfonso x grew increasingly aware of its potential to express not only his personal attachment to the Virgin Mary, but also her unwavering support for his sustained, yet ultimately futile, attempts to extend his power beyond his kingdoms. Far-flung miracles, as well as prodigies performed at Iberian shrines, were incorporated into the collection, a reflection of Alfonso x’s growing ambition. The political subtexts of the songs can be seen as evidence of a sustained programme of selffashioning, of Alfonso x’s wish to proclaim his personal and spiritual aspirations and political aims. His desire to disseminate the csm was never realised in his lifetime, and on his death, when he was succeeded to the throne by his bitter and rebellious son Sancho iv (r. 1284–95), the csm were more or less consigned to oblivion.34 For centuries, Alfonso x’s personal collection of Marian songs lay dormant. Preserved in no medieval sources apart from the four manuscripts commissioned by the king himself and created in his scriptorium, the csm was finally rediscovered in the late sixteenth century.35 The Italian miracles described in the csm could have reached the Castilian court by any number of channels. After the death of William ii of Holland in January 1256, Alfonso x pressed his claim to the imperial throne, based on his blood ties to the Hohenstaufen dynasty through his mother, Beatriz (Elizabeth of Swabia). His pedigree was impeccable; through Beatriz, Alfonso x could claim descent from both Byzantine and Holy Roman emperors. His imperial ambitions were encouraged by the Pisans who in March 1256 sent him a 33

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C.L. Scarborough, A Holy Alliance: Alfonso x’s Political Use of Marian Poetry (Newark, DE, 2009), 20. On political subtexts, see also G.D. Greenia, “The Politics of Piety: Manuscript Illumination and Narration in the Cantigas de Santa Maria,” Hispanic Review 61/3 (1993): 325–44. Miniatures of very poor quality added to the unfinished manuscript F, reveal a brief resurgence of interest in the csm, c. 1330–45, during the reign of King Alfonso xi (r. 1313–50). R. Sánchez Ameijeiras, “La fortuna sevillana del códice florentino de las Cantigas: tumbas, textos e imagines,” Quintana 1 (2002): 257–73. Castilian prose versions added to the margins of the first twenty-four songs in manuscript T (Cantigas 2–25) likewise reflect fourteenth-century engagement (c. 1330), with the csm; Alberto Montaner Frutos, “Las prosificaciones de las ‘Cantigas de Santa María’ de Alfonso x en el Códice Rico: datación filológica y paleográfica,” Emblemata: Revista aragonesa de emblemática 13 (2007): 179–94. See also J.R. Chatham, “A Paleographic Edition of the Alfonsine Collection of Prose Miracles of the Virgin,” in Oelschläger Festschrift, ed. J. Chatham, Estudios de Hispanófila 36 (1976), 73–111. For the circumstances of these additions, see Fernández Fernández, “Cantigas de Santa María: fortuna de sus manuscritos,” 323–48. M.P. Ferreira, “The Medieval Fate of the Cantigas de Santa Maria: Iberian Politics Meets Song,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 69/2 (2016): 295–353.

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d­ elegation, led by Bandino di Guido Lancia, informing him of their support for his candidature and proclaimed him “King of the Romans and Emperor.”36 Although the Pisans were unable to sustain their support after their defeat by Genoa in 1257, Alfonso x found an alternative ally in the Ghibelline leader of Padua, Ezzelino iii da Romano. More importantly, in the same year, four of the seven German prince-electors voted to appoint Alfonso x Holy Roman Emperor, although the remaining three thwarted his ascent to the throne by lending their support to a rival candidate, Richard of Cornwall.37 By the late 1260s and early 1270s, although the possibility of realizing his imperial ambitions seemed increasingly remote, Alfonso x remained active in Italian politics, forming an alliance with the Lombards in 1271. At the time that Nicola Pisano’s pulpit was being installed in the cathedral in Siena, Alfonso x was sponsoring diplomatic missions to Italy, and to Lombardy and Tuscany in particular.38 Members of Alfonso x’s court circle who spent extended periods of time in Italy would have served as conduits for news. To cite one but one example, Gonzalo Pérez Gudiel, appointed archbishop of Toledo (1280–98) and then cardinal until his death in 1299, spent the late 1260s moving “between Bologna and Murcia, where alongside the Italian jurist Jacopo ‘de las leyes’ he superintended the repartimiento [Christian settlement] of that kingdom.”39 Peter Linehan states that Gonzalo, who “was present at Alfonso’s court during the period of its most intense legal, historical and scientific activity […] was unusually well qualified to participate in any or all of the king’s intellectual undertakings, and as ‘notario mayor de Castilla’ from 1271, he was ideally placed to do so.”40 Over the course of his long career, Gudiel acted “as a prebendary and then canon in the cathedral of Toledo, master in Paris, rector of the university in Padua, dean of Toledo, archdeacon of Toledo, notary for Castile and servant of the court of Alfonso x, elect to the see of Cuenca, and then bishop of Burgos.”41 Links between mendicant friars in Italy and Iberia likewise served as ­channels for the transmission of knowledge. The Franciscan friar, Juan Gil de 36 37 38 39 40 41

H. Salvador Martinez, Alfonso x, the Learned: A Biography, trans. O. Cisneros (Leiden, 2010), 136. Salvador Martinez, Alfonso x, 148–9. J.F. O’Callaghan, The Learned King: The Reign of Alfonso x of Castile (Philadelphia, 1993), 211. P. Linehan, History and the Historians of Medieval Spain (Oxford, 1993), 455. Ibid., 455. See also F.J. Hernández and P. Linehan, The Mozarabic Cardinal: The Life and Times of Gonzalo Pérez Gudiel (Florence, 2004). L.K. Pick, “Review of Hernández and Linehan, The Mozarabic Cardinal,” Speculum 81/1 (2006): 203–4.

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Zamora, a prolific writer and musicologist, who was present at Alfonso x’s court from the 1270s onwards, maintained ties with his fellow Franciscans in Italy, including Fra Filippo da Perugia, bishop of Fiesole (1282–98) to whom he dedicated his Dictaminis Epithalamium.42 At Alfonso x’s request, Juan Gil de Zamora, who had studied in Paris under St Bonaventure, composed an Office in honour of the Virgin, the Officium Almiflue Virginis, and he compiled his own collection of Marian miracles, the Liber Mariae, containing seventy miracles, fifty of which are also recounted in the csm.43 Juan Gil de Zamora whose interests paralleled Alfonso x’s, almost certainly assisted the king in the making of the csm.44 Cultural and economic ties also inspired exchanges of goods, individuals and ideas between the Iberian Peninsula and the Italian republics. A church dedicated to the Virgin in Murcia, whose congregation consists of Pisans, Genoese and Sicilians, is the subject of one cantiga.45 These men were undoubtedly merchants and sea-faring traders who had established a community in that city. As their names suggest, several Italians were employed by Alfonso x in the 1270s to translate scientific treatises, including John of Cremona, John of Messina, Petrus of Regia, and Egidius Tebaldi of Parma.46 Clerics, diplomats, and scholars, as well as troubadours, such as the Genoese, Bonifacio Calvo, who spent thirteen years at Alfonso x’s court, forged bonds between Italy and Iberia.47 Art historians have remarked on the stylistic affinity between the miniatures of the csm and Italian paintings of a similar date, and Ana Domínguez Rodríguez has perceived in certain miniatures an emphasis on Christ’s humanity and the Virgin’s identification with his suffering that is characteristic of Franciscan piety.48 42 43

Salvador Martinez, Alfonso x, 60–1. Ibid., 223; Fidel Fita, “Cincuenta leyendas por Gil de Zamora combinadas con las Cantigas de Alfonso el Sabio,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 7 (1886): 54–144. 44 Salvador Martinez, Alfonso x, 60–1, 223–4, 235; P.V. Loewen, Music in Early Franciscan Thought (Leiden, 2013), 197–232. 45 Cantiga 169; Mettmann, Cantigas, ii: 172, l. 16; Kulp-Hill, Songs, 204–5. 46 O’Callaghan, Learned, 142–4. 47 H.-E. Keller, “Italian Troubadours,” in A Handbook of the Troubadours, ed. F.R.P. Akehurst and J.M. Davis (Berkeley, 1995), 295–304. 48 N. Aita, “Miniature spagnuole in un codice fiorentino,” Rassegna d’Arte Antica e Moderna 6 (1919): 149–155, G. Menéndez Pidal, “Los manuscritos de las Cantigas: Cómo se elaboró la miniatura alfonsí,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 150 (1962): 25–51; A. Domínguez Rodríguez, “Compassio y Co-Redemptio en las Cantigas de Santa María: Crucifixión y juicio final,” Archivo Español de Arte 71/281 (1998): 17–35; R. Sánchez Ameijeiras, “Imaxes e teoría da imaxe nas Cantigas de Santa Maria,” in E. Fidalgo, As Cantigas de Santa María (Vigo, Pontevedra, 2002), 272–6, 292–3.

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Despite its political messages and autobiographical contents, the csm is a literary work, not a historical document. Composing a song that would please Alfonso x and inspire devotion to the Virgin was of primary importance to the writers of the lyrics of the cantiga about the Sienese pulpit who used the binary opposites—white and black—to symbolise the gulf between the Virgin Mary, the Lady of Light and shining star, and the Devil, Prince of Darkness. The theme of the song is articulated in the opening lines, which read: Non conven aa omagen da Madre do grorioso / Rey que cabo dela seja figura do dem’ astroso. / Que assi como tẽevras e luz departidos son, / assi son aquestas duas por dereit’ e por razon; / ca a hũa nos dá vida e a outra perdiçon (“It does not befit the image of the Mother of the Glorious King to place beside Her a figure of the loathsome devil. For just as darkness and light are separate, so are these two by all right and reason, because the One gives us light and the other perdition”).49 The pulpit is incidental to the message, which could have been expressed without reference to it. By taking the pulpit as their central motif, however, and setting the miracle in an identifiable place, the writers of the csm gave the narrative a sense of immediacy, and demonstrated their sophistication and cosmopolitan outlook. Alfonso x not only aspired to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, but, as demonstrated by his cultural patronage, which encompassed the production of major literary, historic, scientific and legal works, he aspired to be the most cultivated monarch in Christendom, a learned king, following in the footsteps of Frederick ii, stupor mundi.50 The miracle celebrating Nicola’s pulpit—a sculptural tour de force—displays Alfonso x and his collaborators’ knowledge of contemporary artistic developments outside the Iberian Peninsula, and their awareness of the primacy assigned to the Virgin by the citizens of Siena who hailed her as their special protector and governor. 49 Mettmann, Cantigas, ii: 281, ll. 4–8; Kulp-Hill, Songs, 263. 50 E. Procter, Alfonso x of Castile: Patron of Literature and Learning (Oxford, 1951); R.I. Burns, ed., Emperor of Culture: Alfonso x the Learned of Castile and His Thirteenth-Century Renaissance (Philadelphia, 1990).

Chapter 18

Of Venerable Teachers and Boisterous Students: Maistre Brunetto and the Arabic Aristotle Hanna Wimmer […] I shall put up with your impudence, as long as this inconvenience is avoided: that no one should think that when I am putting forward unknown ideas, I am doing this out of my own head, but that I am giving the views of the studies of the Arabs. For I know what those who profess the truth suffer at the hands of the vulgar crowd. Therefore, I shall defend the cause of the Arabs, not my own.1 Adelard of Bath (c. 1080–c. 1152), widely travelled scholar, translator of treatises from the Arabic and one of the first to disseminate Arabic scholarship among Latin scholars in England and write about Aristotle’s natural philosophy, gives his Quaestiones naturales the guise of a conversation between himself and his nephew. The latter has just returned from Paris, where he spent seven years studying the Liberal Arts and natural philosophy. Meanwhile, his uncle devoted his time to the translation and study of Arabic authors. When they meet again, the young man, who is eager to show off what he has learned and irked by the condescending manner in which his uncle talks about French scholarship on natural philosophy, challenges his uncle to a philosophic duel: nephew against uncle, Latin against Arabic philosophy. The uncle agrees under the condition that the nephew bears in mind that it is the Arabic authors’ opinions that he puts forth and not his personal views. This avowal, however, appears in a quite different light in Adelard’s letter to Richard, bishop of Bayeux, which precedes the Quaestiones in many manuscripts as a kind of preface.2 In it, Adelard laments that: The present generation suffers from this ingrained fault, that it thinks that nothing should be accepted which is discovered by the “moderns.” Hence it happens that, whenever I wish to publish my own discovery, 1 Adelard of Bath, Conversations with his Nephew: On the Same and the Different, Questions on Natural Science, and On Birds, ed. and trans. C. Burnett, with I. Ronca, P. Mantas España and B. van den Abeele (Cambridge, 1998), 90–1. 2 Ibid., xiv. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_020

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I attribute it to another person saying: “Someone else said this, not I!” Thus, lest I have no audience at all, some teacher came up with all my opinions, not I.3 At the beginning of his treatise, Adelard touches upon several points that would come to be of great importance to future scholars and intellectuals, in defiance of his gloomy expectations of his nephew’s generation. Arabic scholarship was sufficiently little-known in his time to allow him to include his own opinions among those of its authors. Both as a preserver of ancient philosophy and in its own right, it would revolutionize Latin scholarship.4 In addition, his confident self-presentation as a scholar and an author, deliberately subverting the traditional humility topos, points to a heightened interest in and a more differentiated understanding of the foundations of authorship and authority that was soon to flourish among future scholars.5 Bonaventure (d. 1274), for instance, in his commentary on the Sentences, famously distinguishes between four “ways to make books:” as scriptor, compilator, commentator and as auctor, the difference between them being the part that each maker of books contributes to pre-existing texts.6 Vincent of Beauvais (d. 1264), most famous for his work as a compilator of an encyclopedia, the Speculum maius, presents in his prologue an ordo dignitatis auctoribus, an exhaustive and minutely argued hierarchy of the authors that he cites in regard to their status and to the applicability of their teachings.7 This increased interest from the late twelfth century onwards in the various forms of authorship gave rise to a large variety of different types of author images representing not only ancient pre-Christian and Christian auctores, but increasingly also contemporary authors, and in time those writing in the vernacular, reflecting an increased dissemination and a new appreciation of literature among social circles beyond the Latin-literate.8 In her studies of author 3 Ibid., 83. 4 See for example C. Burnett, The Introduction of Arabic Learning into England (London, 1997); C. Burnett, Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages: The Translators and their Intellectual and Social Context (Farnham, 2009). 5 The most comprehensive study on this topic remains A.J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship. Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1988). 6 Commentarium in primo libro Sententiarum, prologue, quaestio iv. Doctoris seraphici S. Bonaventurae Opera omnia, ed. Patres Collegii Sancti Bonaventurae, 10 vols. (Quaracchi, 1882– 1902), i: 14. See also Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 94–5. 7 Vicentius Bellovacensis, Speculum maius, 4 vols. (Douai, 1624/Facs.: Graz, 1964–5), i: Speculum naturale, prologue, chapter xii, cols. 11–12. 8 On medieval author images, see for example: C. Meier, “Ecce auctor. Beiträge zur Ikonographie literarischer Urheberschaft im Mittelalter,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 34 (2000), 338– 92; C. Meier, “Das Autorbild als Kommunikationsmittel zwischen Text und Leser,” in

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images in medieval encyclopedia manuscripts, Christel Meier lists no fewer than fifteen different types.9 These pictorial constructions of different kinds of authorship fulfill important hermeneutic and communicative functions aimed at the readers of a manuscript, sometimes emphasising the manner in which the author chooses to represent his role in his text, at other times amending or even contradicting it.10 Around 1300, in a yet-unidentified workshop perhaps in southwestern France,11 an initial was painted which yet again raises questions regarding the status of Arabic learning and the concept of authorship. In a manuscript of Brunetto Latini’s Li livres dou trésor, British Library Add. MS 30025, produced only a few years after the Florentine scholar’s death in 1294, the beginning of the second book is marked by a historiated initial with a striking representation of an Arabic scholar (Fig. 18.1). Set against a gold-leaf ground, seated crosslegged, he is clad in a voluminous turban and white garments with ornamental borders along the neckline and upper arms. His face with his longish, pointy beard is turned in profile towards the right. In his left hand, he is holding an open scroll while with his right hand pointing at the signs on it which apparently imitate the ductus of Arabic writing. There is little doubt that the image of the Arab scholar is a representation of Aristotle.12 His Nicomachean Ethics is Brunetto Latini’s main source for the second book of the Trésor, which mainly treats topics belonging to practical philosophy, ethics and economics, as well

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12

Comunicare e significare nell’ alto medioevo, ed. Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’ Alto Medioevo (Spoleto, 2005), 499–583; and E.C. Lutz, “Modelle der Kommunikation. Zu einigen Autorbildern des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts,” in Eine Epoche im Umbruch. Volkssprachliche Literalität 1200–1300, ed. C. Bertelsmeier-Kierst and C. Young (Tübingen, 2003), 45–72. One of the first authors depicted in author images even in his lifetime was Peter Lombard. See L. Cleaver, “The Many Faces of Peter Lombard,” in Spiritual Temporalities in Late-Medieval Europe, ed. M. Foster (Cambridge, 2010), 33–56. On images of authors of vernacular texts, see for example J. Bumke, “Autor und Werk. Beobachtungen und Überlegungen zur höfischen Epik (ausgehend von der Donaueschinger Parzivalhandschrift Gδ),” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 116 (1997), 87–114; M. Curschmann, “Pictura laicorum litteratura? Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Bild und volkssprachlicher Schriftlichkeit im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter bis zum Codex Manesse,” in Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit im Mittelalter. Erscheinungsformen und Entwicklungsstufen, ed. H. Keller, K. Grubmüller and N. Staubach (Munich, 1992), 211–29. Meier, “Ecce auctor”; Meier, “Das Autorbild.” See for example: Meier, “Das Autorbild,” 502–3; Lutz, “Modelle der Kommunikation.” On the question of where the manuscripts belonging to the “groupe Aristôte” were produced, see B. Roux, Mondes en miniatures: L’iconographie du Livre du Trésor de Brunetto Latini (Geneva, 2009), 87–90. For short descriptions of the manuscripts and further bibliographical references, see ibid., 336 and 366–7. See ibid., 180; Meier, “Ecce auctor,” 359; Meier, “Das Autorbild,” 504–5.

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Figure 18.1

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Aristotle as an Arabic scholar at the beginning of the second book of Brunetto Latini’s Li livres dou trésor. London, British Library Add. MS 30025, f. 73v © British Library Board

as logic. Translations and paraphrases of passages from the treatise make up the first fifty of 132 chapters, and Aristotle is the only author whom Brunetto Latini mentions in his prologue to the second book. Two other, closely related manuscripts of the Trésor (Carpentras, Bibliothèque Inguimbertine MS 269 and British Library Add. MS 30024) also depict an Arabic scholar in the same

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place, adding elements which unambiguously identify him as the Greek philosopher. It has been proposed that Add. MS 30024 was used as the exemplar for Add. MS 30025,13 although, as will become apparent, the relationship between the manuscripts and other possible models common to both manuscripts may well be more complex. In the manuscript at Carpentras, in a miniature that spans the width of both text columns, three scenes represent an apochryphal episode of Aristotle’s life: the momentous encounter of Aristotle with Phyllis, the woman with whom Aristotle’s pupil, the young Alexander the Great, was in love and who took ­revenge on the old philosopher for warning his young charge against the temptations of female beauty (Fig. 18.2).14 On the left, in a two-storey palatial architecture, the first two scenes unfold: on the upper floor, Aristotle is shown in conversation with his pupil. The philosopher, again dressed with a turban and in a white garment with decorative borders, is seated on a bench behind a ­lectern. The open book on it has his name written across both pages. The young Alexander is standing opposite him, his hand raised in speech. His turning away from Aristotle as if to leave, however, indicates that the subject of the dialogue is not philosophical instruction but an argument, Alexander dismissing Aristotle’s advice. Below this scene, Aristotle again appears seated before his book, which now has what seems to be Arabic writing across its pages. This time, he is approached by Phyllis. Her red dress, her loose hair and the small round mirror in her left hand indicate both her beauty and her determination to use it to her advantage. Phyllis’ triumph is shown on the right side of the miniature: the love-struck Aristotle thoroughly humiliates himself by letting her ride him around the palace gardens, while Alexander looks on from the upper story of his palace and comments on the scene unfolding before his eyes. The long speech scroll in the young man’s hand, reading ARISTOTE FEME VOS A DECEU, curves downwards into the garden, and Aristotle touches its other end, perhaps, in accordance with some versions of the story, in acknowledgement of his error and readiness to turn this into a valuable moral lesson for his pupil. Brunetto mentions this episode in the second book of the

13 Roux, Mondes en miniatures, 366–7. For reproductions from BL Add. MS 30024, see ibid., Figs 25, 75. 14 On the story of Aristotle and Phyllis in its medieval versions, see G. Sarton, “Aristotle and Phyllis,” Isis 14 (1930): 8–11; on Brunetto’s treatment of it in the Trésor, see C. Herrmann, ‘Der gerittene Aristoteles.’ Das Bildmotiv des ‘gerittenen Aristoteles’ und seine Bedeutung für die Aufrechterhaltung der gesellschaftlichen Ordnung vom Beginn des 13. Jahrhunderts bis um 1500 (Pfaffenweiler, 1991), 26–7.

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Figure 18.2

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Aristotle and Phyllis at the beginning of the second book of Brunetto Latini’s Li livres dou trésor. Carpentras, bibliothèque-musée Inguimbertine MS 269, folio 108r © IRHT

Trésor, albeit only in passing.15 In the Carpentras manuscript, a short summary of the story was written in the bas de page below the miniature.16 Both Trésor manuscripts at the British Library offer less elaborate openings to the second book, placing author images in historiated initials. For Add. MS 30024, the scene of Aristotle talking to Alexander was isolated, the image showing the philosopher and the young king seated opposite each other within elaborate architecture. Aristotle, again in the same middle eastern costume, points at an open book that is inscribed with his name.17 It is a teaching scene: rather than being about to storm out of the room, like his teacher, Alexander is seated, his legs crossed, calmly listening to the philosopher’s words. In Add. MS 30025, the most modest of the three manuscripts in both size and decoration,

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“Neis Aristotes li trés grant filosofes et Merlin furent deceu por feme, selonc ce que les estoires nos racontent.” Brunetto Latini, Li livres dou trésor, ed. F.J. Carmody (Berkeley, 1948), ii.106. “Ceste estoire mostre comment aristote fu maistre dou roy alixandre. Et comment aristote chastioit lo roi alixandre quil se gardast de feme croire. Et puis fu aristote deceu par feme si con vos poes veire en ceste estoire. Car lamie dou roy alixandre le desut.” Transcription according to Roux, Mondes en miniatures, 90. For a reproduction of this initial, see Roux, Mondes en miniatures, 171.

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the initial contains an image of the philosopher alone seated and holding his book, his right hand pointing at the script on it and his mouth opened in speech. Even more than in the other two manuscripts, his appearance is strikingly foreign: his ‘otherness’ goes far beyond his costume. It also includes his habit of sitting cross-legged and his book. Its scroll-format departs from that of the much more familiar codex and perhaps harks back to a period that is more usually associated with Aristotle, namely antiquity. Like the codex in the encounter of Aristotle and Phyllis in the Carpentras Trésor, it is inscribed with what seems to be an imitation of the forms of Arabic script. It seems plausible to suppose that the painter of the initial was familiar, directly or indirectly, with an image of a scholar or scribe produced in the Middle East.18 It might have been an author portrait in an Arabic manuscript, such as the miniature on a single leaf from a manuskript of the Kitab al-Hashisch, an Arabic translation of Dioscurides’ De materia medica, now in Copenhagen.19 Written and illuminated in Baghdad in 1224, the represented figures wear garments that, though richly patterned and much more lavish than the ones worn by Aristotle in the Trésor manuscripts, feature very similar borders around the upper arms. Another possible source could have been a cycle of astrological images including the planets among which Mercury, known in Arabic as alkātib, the scribe, would have been represented. Astrological imagery was frequently found not only in manuscripts but also on portable metalwork objects. On a mamluk brass bowl, perhaps roughly contemporary with the Trésor manuscripts (Fig. 18.3), the representation of Mercury bears a striking resemblance, albeit not of costume, to that of Aristotle: both images show a man sitting cross-legged, his bearded face turned towards one side in direct profile, and holding not a codex in his hand, an instrument associated no less closely with an Arabic scholar than with a Latin one, but a single sheet of paper.20 The illuminator of the Trésor manuscript, in adapting such an image, would only have had to omit the reed pen in the scribe's hand and to expand the small sheet of paper into the more dignified format of a scroll to turn the image into that of an author presenting his treatise. While an author image of Aristotle as an Arabic scholar does not do the Greek philosopher’s biography justice, it has been interpreted as a reference to a significant path of transmission by which Aristotelian philosophy, 18 19 20

This has previously been noted by Roux, who suggests that the illuminator must have been “en contact avec le monde arabe.” Ibid., 180. Copenhagen, Davids Samling Inv. no. 4/1997. Published in Saladin und die Kreuzfahrer, ed. A. Wieczorek, M. Fansa and H. Meller (Mainz, 2005), 158; note that the reproduction is reversed. On the bowl, see Ereditá dell’Islam: arte islamica in Italia (Venice, 1993), no. 174, 305–7.

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Mamluk brass bowl with gold and silver inlays depicting personifications of the planets and of the signs of the Zodiac. Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, inv. no. 364 c © Gabinetto Fotografico delle Gallerie degli Uffizi

­including his Ethics, found its way into Latin scholarship.21 Not only were some of A ­ ristotle’s treatises initially translated into Latin from the Arabic but the scholars who studied these translations also relied heavily on Arabic commentaries, in particular those of Averroes (Ibn Rušhd, d. 1192). Averroes remained the most important commentator of Aristotle for most of the thirteenth century and was only then outdone by Thomas Aquinas. Indeed this is not the only group of manuscripts that contains orientalising representations of Aristotle. 21 Roux, Mondes en miniatures, 180. See also Meier, “Das Autorbild,” 504; Meier, “Ecce auctor,” 359. The high esteem in which Arabic scholarship was held by particular disciplines is expressed in another miniature in Add. MS 30024: in the famous depiction of the seven liberal and fourteen further arts, “fisique” (in this context: medicine) is represented by a doctor and patient, both wearing turbans. This is probably a reference to the eminent Arabic authorities in this discipline, first of all Avicenna. See M.W. Evans, “Allegorical Women and Practical Men: The Iconography of the Artes Reconsidered,” in Medieval Women: Dedicated and Presented to Prof. Rosalind M.T. Hill, ed. D. Baker (Oxford, 1978), 320–7.

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From the mid-thirteenth century on, representations of the philosopher are frequently found in historiated initials of manuscripts containing collections of his treatises. While in many instances, Aristotle is depicted as a university master lecturing students, occasionally elements of his costume indicate that he belongs to a different cultural context.22 In two manuscripts illuminated in a French workshop, Aristotle wears a headdress reminiscent of a kufiya that is sometimes found in representations of ‘Saracens,’ a piece of fabric tied around the head and fastened with a knot at the back (Fig. 18.4).23 In these miniatures of Aristotle as an Arabic scholar, however, the impression of otherness is considerably softened: apart from his choice of headdress, he adheres to the conventions of teaching scenes of that time. He is sitting on his master’s chair, and his students are young tonsured clerics, consistent with what one would expect a group of university students to be. His gesture shows him talking to them; their gestures in turn, and the attention with which they look at him, indicate that they understand him. The main focus is not cultural or religious difference, but rather a high degree of identification with the members of the faculty of the Liberal Arts who were striving for influence, autonomy and a collective identity as philosophers, and who saw in Aristotle, the philosopher par excellence, a founder figure and their most important auctor.24 The image

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For an example, in the manuscript of Aristotle’s logical works, Vatican City, bav MS Borgh. 58, partly illuminated by William de Brailes in Oxford, the master in the first historiated initial on f. 1r is wearing an “‘orientalising’ peaked cap.” M. Camille, “A University Textbook Illuminated by William de Brailes,” The Burlington Magazine 137 (1995): 292–9 (293). Another striking example is the author image on f. 1r in a French manuscript of the natural philosophical treatises, now Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum McClean MS 155. Here Aristotle is depicted wearing a pilea cornuta, a hat usually marking out Jews. The Aristotle manuscripts are Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 3458, a collection of his works on natural philosophy, and Salamanca, Biblioteca de la Universidad MS 2705, a collection of his treatises on practical philosophy. See also, for example, the ‘Saracens’ in the miniatures depicting scenes from the life of the Catalan philosopher Ramon Lull in the Breviculum ex artibus Raimundi Lulli electum. The anthology of the works of the Catalan philosopher Ramon Llull was compiled by his friend and pupil, Thomas le Myésier, is usually dated to the early 1320s and was probably produced in Arras. Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek Hs. St. Peter perg. 92, ff. 3v, 9v and 10r (http://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/ blbhs/content/titleinfo/98159 accessed 1.12.2016). In a manuscript of another encyclopedia, Gautier de Metz, Image du monde, the chapter on Arabia is marked by the miniature of an inhabitant of the region on horseback who wears the same headdress: Paris, Bibliothèque de Ste Geneviève MS 2200, f. 77v (http://initiale.irht.cnrs.fr/ouvrages/ouvrages. php?imageInd=102&id=3377 accessed 1.12.2016). See H. Wimmer, Illustrierte Aristotelescodices: Die medialen Konsequenzen universitärer Lehr- und Lernpraxis (Cologne, 2018), 218–9 and 397. On the changes in the reception of Aristotle and his coming to be considered both a founder figure and a role model for the members of the medieval faculties of the Liberal

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Aristotle as a master teaching students at the beginning of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 3458, f. 243r © Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris

Arts, see for example M. Grabmann, “Aristoteles im Werturteil des Mittelalters,” in Mittelalterliches Geistesleben. Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Scholastik und Mystik, 3 vols.

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places Aristotle in the contempary social environment of his readers.25 Any orientalising elements of his appearance are a reference to factors that constitute the philosopher’s auctoritas: his great age and the long and venerable line of the transmission of his treatises. In contrast, in the Trésor manuscript, every attempt has been made to emphasize his otherness. Any audience of his—none is depicted—would have to be able to read and speak Arabic in order to understand him. What function might this unusual, deliberately foreign, literally incomprehensible image of Aristotle have in the Trésor manuscript? Why would the author of one of Brunetto Latini’s most important sources for his encyclopedia be represented in this way? In order to venture an explanation, it is important to take the other author images at the beginnings of books one and three in the manuscript into account, in particular that of Brunetto Latini himself, which opens the first book (Fig. 18.5). Clad in the clothes of a wealthy layman of his time, he is seated on a richly decorated chair and is writing his book. Large Lombard capitals spell out the B R U N on the open pages, thus identifying the scribe as Brunetto, and the book before him as his work. The representation of an author as a scribe has a long, venerable tradition. It is also, as Meier has shown, a popular way of representing the particular type of author that Brunetto professes to being in the prologue of the Trésor—a compilator: I do not say that the book is based on my own wisdom, which is indeed meager, but rather it is like a honeycomb collected from different flowers, for this book is compiled exclusively from the marvellous sayings of the authors who before our time have dealt with philosophy, each one in accordance with his own particular knowledge, for no earthly man can know everything.26

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(Munich, 1926–56), ii: 63–102; C.H. Lohr, “The medieval interpretation of Aristotle,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy. From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, ed. N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny and J. Pinborg, (Cambridge, 1982). On author images in English and French medieval university textbooks of Aristotle’s treatises, see Wimmer, Illustrierte Aristotelescodices, 201–36. See Meier, “Das Autorbild,” 509; Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 11–12. “Et si ne di je pas que le livre soit estraiz de mon povre sens ne de ma menue science; mes il iert aussi come une bresche de mel coillie de diverses flors, car cest livres iert compilez soulement des mervillous diz des actors qui devnt nostre tens ont traitié de philosophye, chascun selonc ce que il en savoit partie.” Transcription in Roux, Mondes en miniatures, 170; translation in Brunetto Latini, The Book of Treasure (Li Livres dou Tresor), trans. P. Barrette and S. Baldwin (New York and London, 1993), 1.

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Brunetto Latini at the beginning of the first book of his Li livres dou trésor. London, British Library Add. MS 30025, f. 6r © British Library Board

At least one of those authors, or “sub-authors” (as Meier calls them), Aristotle, was chosen for the beginning of the second book, and it is likely that another one was intended for the initial of the third. This remained unfinished, the

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underdrawing showing a man with a pair of scales as his main attribute. It is possible that the figure in the initial of the third book, which deals mostly with rhetoric and law and which begins with a long section that draws mainly on Cicero’s De inventione, was meant to represent the Roman orator and lawyer.27 While the initial was never painted, there is nothing in the drawing that indicates that Cicero would have turned out to be as strange and exotic as his fellow sub-author. The key to understanding the function of Aristotle’s radical alterity is, I would argue, to be found in the relationship between him and the compiler Brunetto, and thus disseminated in the relationship between the images of the compiler and his sub-author. Despite the strangeness in attire and attitude of the ancient author and the resolute contemporaneousness of the compiler, each image represents a scholar with his work. In fact, in the other Trésor manuscript at the British Library which has been put forward as the model for Add. MS 30025, this analogy between compiler and sub-author is more obviously expressed in their author portraits, each showing a man, one in western the other in eastern dress, seated at a lectern before a book that is inscribed with his name. In Add. MS 30025, the motif of the author with his work is preserved but, drawing much more heavily than in the other manuscript and the one in Carpentras on what looks like a genuinely middle eastern pictorial model, the details of the representation of Aristotle were systematically ‘othered’ in the process in order to evoke for the contemporary reader an impression of the utmost cultural and linguistic distance, of complete inaccessibility. The image of Aristotle is thus carefully constructed to be a counter-image to that of Brunetto himself with his familiar attire and easily legible codex. In addition, it seems that another difference between the compiler and the sub-author was introduced: unlike in Add. MS 30024 (and the Carpentras 27

Brigitte Roux mentions a Trésor-manuscript from Arras, Paris, BnF MS Fr. 1109, dated 1310, which contains a miniature at the beginning of the third book on f. 57v that also features a man holding a pair of scales, although in that case, it seems to be in the context of a teaching scene, a master (Brunetto himself?) lecturing while the man with the scales seems to represent that which he is lecturing on. Roux, Mondes en miniatures, 83–4 and Fig. 83. Another, though in itself very unusual instance in which a pair of scales is represented as a symbol of rhetoric, is the personification of this liberal art on the twelth-century enameled casket, now at the V&A in London, that features personifications of the liberal arts, philosophia, scientia and natura. There, too, it seems to have been the proximity of rhetoric and law that has given rise to representing rhetoric not only with an a­ ttribute commonly associated with justice, but even to replace the image of a female personification with that of a male practitioner among the female personifications. See M. Modersohn, Natura als Göttin im Mittelalter: Ikonographische Studien zu Darstellungen der personifizierten Natur (Berlin, 1997), 50–1.

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­ anuscript), Brunetto is represented writing, while Aristotle seems to have m been rather unceremoniously deprived of his reed pen which the pictorial model may have had and is left with a half-written scroll. Instead of writing, he seems to be speaking, with his mouth slightly opened, the words written on his scroll. This differentiation between the activities of the two scholars appears to be in keeping with their different roles, one, in the words of Bonaventure, a man who “writes other’s words, putting together passages that are not his own,” the other supplying those words.28 In the emphasized alterity of the one who supplies the words for the compilator, however, a different aspect of Brunetto’s activity is highlighted which Bonaventure omitted from his definition: Brunetto is a translator, the compiler of one of the very first encyclopedias deliberately conceived and composed in a vernacular language. Intended for an audience of urban, educated laypeople, his encyclopedia differs strikingly in its structure and scope from its predecessors, often composed in a monastic context, that are usually structured to mirror the god-given order of the universe.29 Brunetto, a Florentine scholar and lawyer renowned for his rhetorical skills, wrote his Trésor during his political exile in France between 1260 and 1267, compiling in three books everything that a person participating in society and politics needed to know. An extensive knowledge of Latin, however, was not among these things. The achievement that Brunetto explicitly claims for himself in his prologue to the second book, accordingly, is to have made Aristotle’s Ethics accessible in the vernacular.30 In the case of Add. MS 30025, this claim is further highlighted by the rubric directly above the Aristotle initial: […] le quel translata maistre Brunet latin de latin en romans. In making Aristotle the exotic counter-image of Brunetto, this role of translator is further underlined by the Greek philosopher’s author portrait. Brunetto, contemporary, Latin-literate, yet writing in a vernacular that is not his native language, is thus placed in a tradition of transmitters, translators and commentators that harks back across many different linguistic and cultural realms and within which he constitutes the link between the reader and Aristotle, who is temporally, culturally and linguistically remote. With his translation into the vernacular, he does indeed

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See above, n. 6. Translation taken from J.A. Burrow, Medieval Writers and their Work: Middle English Literature 1100–1500 (Oxford and New York, 2008), 31. On the momentous shift from the ordo rerum to the ordo artium in Brunetto’s Trésor, see C. Meier, “Vom homo coelestis zum homo faber. Die Reorganisation der mittelalterlichen Enzyklopädie für neue Gebrauchsformen bei Vinzenz von Beauvais und Brunetto Latini,” in Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit im Mittelalter. Erscheinungsformen und Entwicklungsstufen, ed. H. Keller, K. Grubmüller and N. Staubach (Munich, 1992), 173–4. Brunetto Latini, Li livres dou Tresor, ii.1.

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perform a genuine cultural translation, albeit not from Arabic but from the realm of scholastic learning to that of the educated laity. Arabic scholarship, much of which had been translated and assimilated in scholastic circles since Adelard of Bath’s times may well still have been surrounded by mystery. The deliberate exaggeration of such a cultural and linguistic barrier to be overcome by the compiler-translator is an original rhetorical device. In obvious contradiction to Brunetto’s humility topos, his self-avowed ‘mean wisdom,’ it emphasizes the compiler-translator’s considerable challenge and honours his achievements.

Chapter 19

Lost and Found in the Meditationes Vitae Christi, Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410 Renana Bartal Luke’s Gospel recounts that when Jesus was twelve years old, he went to Jerusalem with Mary and Joseph for the Passover celebrations, which lasted for eight days (Luke 2:41–2). According to the late medieval gospel meditation, the Meditationes Vitae Christi (henceforth mvc), at the end of the long holiday, Mary and Joseph started on their separate journeys back to Nazareth, situated about seventy-four miles from Jerusalem. Reunited that evening, the tired parents discovered their boy was missing: His mother and Joseph, therefore, traveling along different routes, came late in the day to the place where the day’s journey was over, and where they had to stay for the night. Seeing Joseph without the boy, who she believed had returned with him, our Lady asked of him “Where is our boy?” But he said, “I don’t know, because he didn’t return with me. I really thought he had gone back with you.” Then overwhelmed with grief and tears, she said: “He didn’t go back with me […]” And wanting to go as calmly as she could from house to house, she made the rounds late into the night, inquiring of this person and that asking “Have you seen my son?”1 In one of the only fully illuminated manuscripts of the mvc, now Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, the image accompanying this passage shows Joseph and Mary on two sides of a grassy hill that represents the different roads they took on their way back from Jerusalem (f. 30r, Fig. 19.1).2 Mary stands on 1 John of Caulibus, Meditations on the Life of Christ, trans. F. Taney, A. Miller and M. StallingsTaney (Asheville, NC, 2000), 53. 2 Over 220 manuscripts of the mvc are known. Columban Fischer listed 217 in his study, “Die ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi’: ihre handschriftliche Überlieferung und die Verfasserfrage,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 25 (1932): 3–35, 175–209, 305–48, 449–83. A preliminary list of the illuminated copies of the mvc was published by I. Ragusa and R.B. Green, Meditations on the Life of Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century, Paris, BnF MS. Ital. 115 (Princeton, 1961), xxiii, n. 5. Holly Flora updated this list in The Devout Belief of the ­Imagination:

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_021

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Mary and Joseph searching for the Lost Child. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 30r By permission of The President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford

The Paris Meditationes Vitae Christi and Female Franciscan Spirituality in Trecento Italy (Turnhout, 2009), 50, n. 2.

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the lower right-hand side, comforted by female companions. Joseph is seen behind the hill, accompanied by two young men and led by a third whose pointing finger directs the reader-viewer’s gaze towards the upper right-hand corner of the folio, as if encouraging her to turn it and discover Christ in the following image, sitting amongst the elders in the Temple (f. 31r). The mvc, written for a Poor Clare at the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century, instructs its reader to reconstruct the events of Christ’s life as if she herself were present and to imagine them in vivid mental pictures.3 The image of the Lost Child in MS 410, I argue, explicates the purpose of this meditational technique: to seek Christ constantly and strive to remain by his side. MS 410 is a book of modest size, measuring approximately 248 x 158 mm.4 It is written in one column and illustrated with 154 coloured and often gilded framed illuminations. It is attributed to central Italy and dated to the first half of the fourteenth century.5 The images were executed by more than one hand, 3 The dating and authorship of the Meditationes is hotly debated. Sarah McNamer makes the case for a short Italian version, composed by a Poor Clare, as the original; see her edition, Meditations on the Life of Christ: The Short Italian Version (Notre Dame, IN, 2018). Peter Tóth and David Falvay have presented evidence that the long Latin text was composed first by friar Jacobus of San Gimignano, a leader of the Tuscan Spirituals, c. 1300. McNamer summarises these views in “The Debate on the Origins of the Meditationes Vitae Christi: Recent Arguments and Prospects for Future Research,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 111:1–2 (June 2018): 65–112; see also Tóth and Falvay, “New Light on the Date and Authorship of the Meditationes Vitae Christi,” Devotional Culture in England and Beyond, 1300–1560, ed. R. Perry and S. Kelly (Turnhout, 2014), 17–107. 4 The manuscript is described in N. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1983), iii: 612, no. 410; see also J.J.G. Alexander and E. Temple, Illuminated Manuscripts in Oxford College Libraries, the University Archives and the Taylor Institution (Oxford, 1985), 94, no. 908; O. Pächt, “Künstlerische Originalität und ikonographische Erneuerung,” in Stil und Überlieferung in die Kunst des Abendlandes, 3 vols. (Bonn, 1964), 262–71. MS 410 has recently been the focus of renewed interest: H. Flora, Devout Belief, 58–60; idem., “Empathy and Performative Vision in Oxford Corpus Christi College MS 410,” Ikon 3 (2010): 169–76; idem., “Fashioning the Passion: The Poor Clares and the Clothing of Christ,” Art History 40 (2017): 264–95; R. Bartal, “Ducitur et Reducitur: Passion Devotion and Mental Motion in an Illuminated Meditationes Vitae Christi manuscript,” in Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, ed. B. Kühnel, G. Noga-Banai and H. Vorholt (Turnhout, 2014), 369–80; and R. Bartal, “Repetition, Opposition and Invention in an Illustrated Manuscript of the Meditationes Vitae Christi, Corpus Christi College MS 410,” Gesta 53, no. 2 (2014): 155–74. 5 Otto Pächt observed that the first gathering was painted in what he termed “an archaic manner,” which reminded him of Pietro Cavellini’s mosaics in S Maria in Trastevere in Rome; see his “Review of Meditations on the life of Christ,” Medium Ævum 32, no. 3 (1963): 234–5. Pamela Busby suggested that the work of the second illuminator is comparable to that of Pacino de Bonaguida, whose well-known workshop operated in Florence in the first half of the fourteenth century; see “A study of the illustrations in Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410:

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yet they present a well-thought-out programme that emphasises the unceasing attempt to remain close to Christ.6 While seeking intimate knowledge of Christ drives all Christian devotion, here the reader is invited to follow Mary as a role model for keeping Christ by her side. The pattern of mother and son united, parted, and then reunited again runs through the text of the mvc and is also apparent in MS 410’s image programme, which is punctuated by images of Christ’s departure from his mother and their reunion that could function to activate imaginative meditation as a constant search. 1

“Place yourself in the presence of every event”

In the image accompanying the episode of the Lost Child in MS 410, Mary appears at the lower right-hand side, comforted by two standing women (f. 30r, Fig. 19.1). A third woman, dressed in a brown mantle and a white veil, kneels at the bottom centre of the composition. She gently touches the cloak of one of Mary’s attendants and directs her gaze upwards to the pointing finger of Joseph’s companion, as if anticipating the rediscovery of the lost child when the page is turned. Her brown mantle, her position in the scene, and her posture are unusual in the book’s iconography. Only one other figure in the manuscript wears brown, the prophetess Anna, but her halo identifies her as a saint. This central figure is not haloed, just as Mary’s standing attendants are not, but she is the only one in drab garb and veil who kneels on the ground. Who could she be? The brown mantle evokes the garment worn by members of the Franciscan order and may associate her with the book’s putative patron. MS 410’s first folio shows a Poor Clare, or Clare herself, and an obliterated coat of arms, suggesting a female patron with a Franciscan orientation—either a Poor Clare or a woman belonging to Francis’s Third Order.7 This owner was not only wealthy, as the A fourteenth-century copy of the Latin Version of the Meditationes Vitae Christi,” (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Oxford, 1968), 44–50. The pink-chequered backgrounds of some illuminations evoke the work of the San Lorenzo illuminator in fourteenth-century Perugia; see M. Subbioni, La miniatura perugina del Trecento: contributo alla storia della pittura in Umbria nel quattordicesimo secolo (Perugia, 2003), 73–101. I thank Stella Panayatova for this reference. 6 Elsewhere I have argued that by using the rhetorical devices of repetition and opposition, the programme facilitates the practice of meditation prescribed by the mvc. Bartal, “Repetition, Opposition and Invention.” 7 On the image of St Clare, see W.R. Cook, “The Early Images of St. Clare of Assisi,” in Clare of Assisi: A Medieval and Modern Woman, ed. I. Peterson (New York, 1996), 15–29.

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coat of arms and the commission of a lavishly illustrated book suggest, but appears to have been well educated. Rather than commissioning a copy of the contemporary Italian version of the mvc, she chose the long Latin version; MS 410 is the only fully illuminated manuscript of this text. While Poor Clares are often depicted wearing black veils over white wimples,8 they sometimes appear with white head covers, as in the panel made c. 1290 now at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College.9 Novices who had not yet taken their vows wore white veils,10 so this image could suggest the book owner’s young age, but it could also be read metaphorically as the a representation of the patron (or any subsequent reader) ready to embark on her spiritual quest. Placed in the text section describing Christ’s childhood at the beginning of the manuscript—and therefore at the start of the spiritual training offered by the MVC—the kneeling figure in the Lost Child scene embodies the reader as a novice who is prepared to search for Christ. Although the figure’s posture separates her from the others, she remains physically engaged in the scene through her touch on the garment and her lifted gaze.11 Her position as neither fully a witness nor a participant also points to her as a manifestation of the reader-viewer. The mvc often instructs its reader to actively adopt both roles. Following the description of Mary and Joseph’s search for the lost Christ, for example, the reader is told, “Pay careful attention here and make yourself a witness both to everything said and done. It is really devout material and quite helpful to you.”12 Throughout the mvc, she is told to be more than an eyewitness: to “place yourself in the presence of every event,”13 8

On variations in dress of the Poor Clares in northern Italy, see C. Warr, “The Stripped Mantle of the Poor Clares: Image and Text in Italy in the Later Middle Ages,” Arte Cristiana 86 (1998): 415–30; and Dressing for Heaven: Religious Clothing in Italy, 1215–1545 (Manchester, 2010), 134–40. 9 The upper register of the panel shows Christ mounting the Cross, while the lower depicts Clare’s funeral, including a group of mourning Poor Clares with white veils on the left; T. Kennedy, ed., Sanctity Pictured: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy (London, 2014), 119–20, n. 13. 10 Warr, Dressing for Heaven, 135–7. 11 In Paris, BnF MS Ital. 115, for example, figures who may embody its Poor Clare readers appear on several occasions in the picture programme. As Flora argues, their inclusion and integration into the story of the life of Christ creates a bridge from the communal experience of religious devotion lived by postulated readers of the manuscript and the biblical story described by the text. These figures appear in groups and may indicate that the manuscript was to serve a community of Poor Clares. Flora, Devout Belief, 91. The coat of arms in MS 410 and its relatively small size suggest it was produced for the habitual reading of an individual patron. 12 Caulibus, Meditations, 53. 13 Ibid., 60.

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to visualize every episode of Christ’s life in detail, and to re-enact the various scenes as vivid mental representations in which she is to gaze and listen intently as well as touch.14 She is asked to interact with the figures with proper decorum as she mentally enters scenes and leaves them. After the visit of the Holy Family in Egypt, for example, she is given precise instructions before ending the meditation: “Ask permission to leave, and after kneeling to receive a blessing from the child Jesus, then from his mother, and afterwards from Joseph, with compassionate tears, bid them farewell.”15 The central figure on f. 30r seems to embody these directives to the reader-viewer. This type of instruction is common throughout the mvc. Why, then, does such a representative figure only appear in the image of Mary and Joseph searching for their boy? An answer immediately follows in the mvc’s text on the Lost Child: A person living a spiritual life should not be surprised if, while occasionally experiencing dryness of soul, she seems to have been abandoned by God; since this happened even to the mother of God. Let such a one therefore not languish mentally, but let her diligently seek him out through continuous engagement in holy meditations and by persisting in good works; and she will find him once again.16 This particular scene was chosen because it presents an allegory for the use and purpose of the mvc itself: the reader will rediscover Christ and remain at his side only through continuous meditation. While good works are certainly helpful, Christ will become present for her only through the vivacity of the gospel scenes she imagines.17 The kneeling figure in the brown mantle can then be read as an exemplum for the reader as well as her mirror: she is to use imaginative meditation to remain spiritually close to Christ.18 14

For discussions of this well-rooted monastic technique, see M. Villalobos Hennessy, “Passion Devotion, Penitential Reading, and the Manuscript Page: ‘The Hours of the Cross’ in London, BL Additional 37049,” Mediaeval Studies 66 (2004): 213–56; and T.H. Bestul, Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society (Philadelphia, 1996), 36–8. 15 Caulibus, Meditations, 48. 16 Ibid., 55. 17 M. Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago and London, 2011), 171. 18 On illustrated self-portraits and their various meanings, see A. Sand, Vision, Devotion and Self Representation in Late Medieval Art (Cambridge, 2014).

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Christ’s Presence

The mvc presents Mary as the primary role model for the reader-viewer; like Mary, she is to hold on to Christ and not let him out of her sight.19 Indeed MS 410’s pictorial programme ensures that Christ is nearly constantly in sight: he is absent from very few images, and many of those depict times when Mary could not see him, as, for example, in her childhood years and during the three days after his burial and before his resurrection. In addition to presenting Christ to the reader-viewer visually, the programme also explains why and how she can place herself in his presence through imaginative meditation. According to the mvc, it is because Christ appeared in the flesh: You can do this because he came to sinners for their salvation. He humbly conversed with them and finally left himself as food for them. Therefore his loving kindness patiently permits his person to be touched as you wish, and he’ll not attribute it to your presumption but to your love.20 Because Christ became human and remains present in this world through the Eucharist, the reader can visualize him and imagine touching him in her mind’s eye.21 MS 410’s image programme makes this theological argument visually explicit in the Infancy and Passion cycles, which encourage the reader to contemplate the mysteries of the Incarnation by emphasizing Christ’s body and sacrifice. In the third scene of the Nativity sequence, for example, the baby Jesus’s unusually large, nude body is raised by his parents in a gesture that evokes the elevation of the Host (Fig. 19.2). Medieval writers have long conflated the newborn child in Bethlehem with the sacramental victim of the Mass.22 Here the child’s raised and naked body is linked with the figure of the dead Christ of the Lamentation, evoking the child-Host trope. His gesture toward the ox, which does not refer in any way to the mvc’s text, also elicits the idea of sacrifice, and the unusual upward extension of his arm is echoed in the Lamentation scene

19

On Mary as role model for the reader, see H. Flora, “The Charity of the Virgin Mary in the Paris Meditations on the Life of Christ (BnF MS Ital. 115),” Studies in Iconography 29 (2008): 55–98. 20 Caulibus, Meditations, 28. 21 See Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 145–6. 22 L. Sinanoglou, “The Christ Child as Sacrifice: A Medieval Tradition and the Corpus Christi Plays,” Speculum 48 (1973): 491–509.

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Figure 19.2 Nativity. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 15v By permission of The President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford

(f. 144r) by the outstretched arms of the Magdalene, whose hands are raised in a well-known gesture of grief.23 Perhaps the Nativity image was also inspired by the text’s description of Mary’s vigil at the crib: “How frequently and how intently did she gaze upon his countenance and on each and every part of his most sacred body.”24 Indeed, throughout the Infancy cycle, it is Mary who directs the reader-viewer’s gaze towards Christ. In the journey to Egypt, she gestures towards him with the palm of her hand (f. 23r) and on the return, with a palm branch (f. 28r). She elevates him in her arms to show Simeon and Anna (f. 21r), as well as Elizabeth (f. 29r). Three times she is depicted leading the Christ child to the altar, elevating him towards it, placing him on it in the first presentation at the temple (ff. 20v and 21v) and finally leading him towards a draped altar in their second visit to Jerusalem, while a priest with a bishop’s mitre followed by a group of tonsured figures extends his hands to receive him (f. 29v). 23

M. Barasch, Gestures of Despair in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art (New York, 1976), 57–86. I discuss the gesture towards the ox in “Repetition, Opposition and Intention,” 164–5 24 Caulibus, Meditations, 37.

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As Holly Flora recently argued, Mary’s engagement with Christ’s clothing also mediates the reader-viewer’s gaze upon his body and assumes for her a priestly role. She conceals his nudity; she is the first to dress him as a newborn; she provides him with the seamless robe and cloaks him as he ascends the Cross.25 The Passion cycle in MS 410 is unusual in showing Christ being dressed and undressed three times—a repetition that encourages the reader to meditate on the veiling and unveiling of his corporeal presence.26 The most elaborate meditative exercise focusing on Christ’s body and the mystery of his incarnation and sacrifice is provided by the series of meditations on the crucifixion. Following the well-established Franciscan tradition of crucifixion-centred spirituality, the manuscript presents an extended sequence of eight illuminations narrating the hours Christ spent on the cross (ff. 136v141r). The depicted cross on these miniatures extends beyond the frame, suggesting the three-dimensional tangibility of a wooden crucifix, such as the one attributed to Pietro Lorenzetti in the former Gesù church in Cortona.27 Further enhancing the devotional potency of this sequence is the arrangement of six of the eight scenes in pairs of similar size on facing folios. Such an arrangement brings to mind contemporary Italian diptychs where the Crucifixion was sometimes paired with images of the Virgin and Child, and thus could offer an opportunity for sustained meditation.28 While the Infancy and Passion cycles encourage a devout gaze upon Christ’s body to meditate on his appearance in the flesh, two other pictorial cycles in MS 410 advocate the faculty of sight and touch to assert Christ’s earthly presence: his public works and his post-resurrection apparitions, which are unusually described in fourteen scenes in the mvc.29 MS 410 visually links the two 25 26 27 28

29

Flora, “Fashioning the Passion”; on the special connection of Clare and the Host, see I. Delio, “Clare of Assisi and the Mysticism of Motherhood,” in Franciscans at Prayer, ed. T. Johnson (Leiden, 2007), 31–62. Flora, “Fashioning the Passion”; Bartal, “Ducitur et Reducitur.” On this crucifix, see J. Cannon and A. Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti: Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany (University Park, 1998), 90, n. 29, Fig. 70. H. Belting, The Image and its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion, trans. M. Bartusis and R. Meyer (New York, 1990); for a more recent discussion of Italian panel painting, see J. Folda, Byzantine Art and Italian Panel Painting: The Virgin and Child Hodegetria and the Art of Chrysography (Cambridge, 2015). The subject is rarely illustrated. A comparable cycle appears in the frescoes of the church of Santa Maria Donna Regina in Naples, which was built in the early fourteenth century as part of a Franciscan convent. See A.S. Hoch, “The ‘Passion’ Cycle: Images to Contemplate and Imitate amid Clarissan clausura,” in The Church of Santa Maria Donna Regina: Art, Iconography and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Naples, ed. J. Elliot and C. Warr (Aldershot, 2004), 129–54.

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cycles of miracles and apparitions by showing Christ in a limited and repetitious repertoire of poses facing a single figure or a crowd. Figures of women feature prominently in both cycles, affirming Christ’s presence to the female reader of the manuscript. Simon Peter’s mother-in-law (f. 59r), Martha and Mary Magdalene (ff. 53v, 54v, and 76r), the Samaritan (f. 58v), the Canaanite (f. 70v), and the adulterous woman (f. 109r) all witness Christ’s preaching and miracles in the public life, while the apparition sequence opens with Christ appearing to his mother (f. 154v, upper register), the three Marys (f. 154v, lower register), the Magdalene (f. 155r), and then again to the three Marys (ff. 157r and 168r). Both cycles emphasise the efficacy of the senses, particularly touch and sight, in reaffirming Christ’s divinity. Martha touches the hem of Christ’s robe and is cured (f. 53v); her sister, Mary Magdalene, reaches out to touch his garment after his Resurrection (f. 156r), whereas Thomas touches his flesh (f. 161r). Two repetitious scenes focus on healing the blindness of the man from Jericho (f. 102v) and the man blind from birth (John 9), which, although described only briefly, is elaborated in two images (ff. 105v-106r). Both healing miracles depict the newly sighted men vehemently defending Christ’s actions against the Jewish leaders and elders, whose disbelief and unwillingness to see Christ’s divinity is equated with blindness. MS 410’s images then visually manifest Christ’s presence to the reader-viewer and assert her ability to grasp him with her senses. Occasionally this exhortation is given fresh urgency when the text and imagery suggest his departure and prompt the reader-viewer to “diligently seek him out.” 3

“And she will find him once again”

If the mvc presents Mary as the primary role model for the reader, then, like Mary, she is to hold on to Christ and not lose him. Christ, however, does depart from Mary’s side. The pattern of mother and son united, parted, and reunited that runs through the gospel narrative is elaborated with great feeling in the mvc and is central to MS 410’s image programme. The mvc author recommends reading sections of the text on a daily basis so that the entire book may be completed once a week: Divide the meditations as follows: On Monday, start at the beginning (of the Lord’s life), and go as far as the Lord’s flight into Egypt. Then stop at that point. On Tuesday resume there, and meditate as far as his opening

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of the Book in the synagogue. On Wednesday, proceed from there to the ministry of Mary and Martha. On Thursday, go from there to the passion and death. On Friday and Saturday, go as far as the resurrection. Finally, on Sunday, meditate on the resurrection itself up to the end of his earthly life.30 Images of Christ’s departure and reunion from his mother are placed at the end of his childhood years and the beginning of his ministry, the openings of the Passion and Resurrection sections, and at the end of the book, at Christ’s ascension. While these placements do not precisely follow the author’s instructions for daily breaks, they nevertheless frame entire text sections and could well mark occasions to start and to resume reading. Withdrawing from Christ in anguish and joyfully meeting him again can be paralleled with stopping and restarting the reading of the mvc. The practice of devotional meditation aided by the manuscript can thus be conceptualized as a dynamic series of departures and reunions. Two similar images of departure and reunion are placed at the end of Christ’s childhood years and the beginning of his ministry (Figs 19.3–19.4). After Christ is found in Jerusalem, he submissively returns to Nazareth with his parents. The image placed next to the verses describing his return show Christ kneeling before his parents, while his mother, also kneeling, raises her hand in blessing (Fig. 19.3). Unlike the preceding image on folio 30r, which shows Christ as a child among the doctors in the temple, here he is an adult with a smudge of beard on his chin. The abrupt change suggests that the image may simultaneously refer to the following section of text, which is not illustrated, describing how Christ departed from his parents’ home at the age of thirty: When he had completed his twenty-ninth year, during which time, as was said, he had lived in such penury and as an outcast, the Lord Jesus said to his mother, “It is time that I go to glorify and reveal the Father; that I show myself to the world and work out the salvation of souls, for which the father sent me. But take comfort, dearest mother, for I shall return quickly to you.” The master of humility then knelt and asked for her blessing. She also knelt and with a tearful embrace, said most tenderly, “My blessed son, go with the blessing of your father, and with mine, keep me in mind and remember to come back soon.”31 30 Caulibus, Meditations, 332. 31 Ibid., 62.

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Figure 19.3

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Christ before his Parents. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 31v By permission of The President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford

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Figure 19.4

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Christ before his Parents. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 45r By permission of The President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford

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At Mary’s request, the reader-viewer can keep her in mind—at least until she reappears in a similar image a few folios later (Fig. 19.4). On folio 45r, describing an episode mentioned only briefly at the end of the text section, Christ visits his parents in Nazareth after meeting with John the Baptist in the Jordan. He kneels before the Virgin as she moves towards him, her arms extended, while Joseph stands behind with his hands crossed on his chest. Images of separation and reunion with Mary are also placed at the beginning of the passion and resurrection sections (Figs 19.5–19.6). According to the mvc, while Christ was being bound to the column after appearing before the Jewish priests, John the Evangelist visited Mary and her companions to give them the news of Christ’s arrest. Hearing John’s words, Mary draws apart to a separate room to pray: Pater reverentissime, Pater piissime, Pater misericordissime, reco[m]mendo vobis filium meum dulcissimum. Non sitis ei crudelis, qui cunctis estis benignus (Most revered Father, most loving Father, most merciful Father, I commend my most sweet son to you. You who are kind to all, do not be unkind to him).32 These lines of text are accompanied by an unusually emotionally charged image of Mary in prayer, marking her anguish at being parted from Christ (Fig. 19.5). She is depicted in a confined space with her head bowed and her eyes cast downward. This moving image on folio 128v prefigures Mary and Christ’s most poignant reunion after his Resurrection (Fig. 19.6). According to the mvc, Mary prayed alone in her room while her companions went to the tomb to anoint Christ’s body. She begs: Most gentle father, most loving father […] please restore him to good health, and give him back to me. Where is he? Why does he delay for so long his return to me? Please, send him back to me, because my soul finds no rest until I see him.33 In deviation from the events narrated in the Gospels wherein Mary Magdalene is the first to witness Christ’s resurrection, in the mvc it is the Virgin who first beholds the risen Christ.34 Seeing her son, she kneels to adore him before holding him in her arms. The accompanying image shows Mary and Christ, facing each other and kneeling, their hands together, united in a confined chamber evoking his empty tomb depicted below (Fig. 19.6). 32

Iohannis de Caulibus, Meditaciones vite Christi: olim S. Bonaventuro attributae, ed. M. Stallings-Taney, cccm 153 (Turnhout, 1997), 263; Caulibus, Meditations, 245. 33 Caulibus, Meditations, 280. 34 Mark 16:9; John 20:14.

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Mary meets Christ again after his apparitions and before his ascension, when he gathers his disciples for a final communal meal. In a reversal of roles that brings to mind an earlier departure, the Last Supper, here Mary, not John, leans her head on Christ’s breast. The mvc author pays special attention to Mary’s role in this scene: But what am I to say about his mother, eating there next to him, she who loves him so intensely more than all the others? Do you not imagine her as touched by maternal love and deeply moved by tenderness at these words of her son’s departure, so that she would rest her head on her son and recline on his breast? […] With a teary sigh she asked him a favor: “My son, if it is your wish to leave, please take me with you.” “Mother dearest,” the Lord said consolingly, “please do not grieve at my departure, because I am going to my Father (John 14:12). You are needed to remain here now to encourage those who believe in me. Later on I will come for you and take you up to my Glory.”35 The text is accompanied by an ascension scene that places Mary prominently between the disciples as they lift their heads to witness Christ rising towards the sky, only his feet still visible below the upper frame (Fig. 19.7). Four pages ahead, on folio 173v, the last image in MS 410 similarly depicts the disciples with their heads raised to receive the descending Holy Spirit. This time Christ is absent and Mary too is missing. Using a strikingly similar composition but excluding Mary, the last image leaves the reader-viewer to imagine the fulfilment of Christ’s promise and her final reunion with her son. The cycle of separation and reunion that began with the Lost Child image near the start of the book has ended in blissful, eternal glory. By suggesting the meaningful absence of both mother and son, the last image also illustrates the fruit of the reader’s continuous labour. If the devout reader practices her meditations with diligence, her search will allow her to ascend beyond Christ’s corporeal life to grasp the full meaning of his divinity.36 Through her pious use of the manuscript, she, like Mary, can ascend to share Christ’s exultation and reside near him in heaven leaving the physical world behind. 35 36

Ibid., 319. The Poor Clare was to use the vivid accounts of Christ’s life to attain knowledge of his divinity. See L.F. Hundersmarck, “Reforming Life by Conforming it to the Life of Christ: Pseudo-Bonaventure’s Meditationes Vite Christi,” in Reform and Renewal in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Studies in Honor of Louis Pascoe, ed. T.M. Izbicki and C.M. Bellitto (Leiden, 2000), 93–112.

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Figure 19.5

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The Virgin in Prayer. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 128v By permission of The President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford

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Figure 19.6

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Christ appears first to his Mother. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 154v By permission of The President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford

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Figure 19.7

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Ascension. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 169v By permission of The President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Chapter 20

Ivory Booklets, Devotion in Cologne Sarah M. Guérin Late in 2011, I arrived at the Courtauld Institute, not so much to study with John Lowden, but to work in his aura. Having written a dissertation on Gothic ivories, my interests at the time coincided with his fourth love—that is after Byzantine, then Early Christian, then French Gothic manuscripts. And it is clear, if I may say, that even though Professor Lowden spearheaded and launched the Gothic Ivories Project, and penned two eminent catalogues of Gothic ivories—of the Thomson collection (2010) and of the Gambier-Parry collection (2013)—that the new medium had not displaced manuscripts in his heart. In one memorable conversation, chatting about the difficulties of studying Gothic ivories, that is little contextual information, the perennial question of fakes, and uncertain geographic origins, John let his full colours show. He said, more or less: “the problem with Gothic ivories is that they lack text.” One or two ivories furnish exceptions to prove the rule. On the early standing Virgin and Child now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, traces of the angelic salutation, Ave Ma[ria gratia ple]na dominus te[cum], can still be deciphered along the integral base of the statuette, written in gold on an ochre bole.1 On the Death of the Virgin triptych at the Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (Fig. 20.1), not only is a similar Ave legible on the phylactery held by the angel Gabriel on the lower register of the left wing, but moreover two of the apostles gathered for the Dormition of the Virgin on the second register hold open books.2 Gabriel’s still-legible words on the phylactery were originally painted in the hyper-reactive copper-based pigment azurite, which, over time, stains the ivory underneath green, testifying to its presence even after the pigment 1 V&A 209–1867. P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200–1550 (London, 2014), no. 2. All ivories are included and illustrated on the Gothic Ivories Project http://www .gothicivories.courtauld.ac.uk. 2 S.M. Guérin, Gothic Ivories: Calouste Gulbenkian Collection (Lisbon and London, 2015), no. 7; for polychromy, see B. Guineau, “Étude des couleurs dans la polychromie des ivories médiévaux,” Bulletin de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France (1996): 188–210; and J. Levy and A. Cascio, “La polychromie des statuettes en ivoire du xiiie siècle et des premières décennies du xive siècle,” Coré 5 (1998): 6–20. A tabernacle (Louvre OA 2587) from the same workshop, but later, has a similar “Ave Maria G[r]at[ie] […]” on Gabriel’s phylactery written in the same azurite pigment in a remarkably similar hand.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_022

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Triptych with Scenes from the Life and Death of the Virgin. Paris, 1280–1300, ivory with polychromy. 220 mm tall, 261 mm wide when open. Lisbon, ­Gulbenkian Museum, Inv. 422. Image courtesy of the Gulbenkian Museum

has worn off. The writing on the apostles’ books, however, seems to have been originally inscribed in an unidentified red pigment that left a greyish stain in its wake. As a result, the texts on these books are much harder to decipher. Until imaging techniques can be used to make the texts legible, this rare instance cannot offer us more information about either the role text played in the understanding of this particular triptych, nor about how carvers of Gothic ivories in general deployed script in their work. Alas, for a scholar of a palaeographical bent, these are meagre offerings indeed. While Gothic ivories might in general be an aliterate medium, one significant exception comes to mind: the class of objects that were in fact made to bear the written word itself, that is wax tablets.3 Luxury versions of what were 3 A number of synthetic studies of the ivory wax tablets have been useful for this paper, namely D. Gaborit-Chopin, “Les tablettes à écrire d’ivoire au Moyen Âge,” Métiers d’art 54–5 (1994– 5): 17–21; B. Bousmanne, “À propos d’un carnet à écrire en ivoire du XIVe siècle conservé à la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique,” in Als Ich Can. Liber Amicorum in Memory of Prof. Dr. ­Maurits Smeyers (Paris, Leuven, Dudley, MA, 2002), 165–202; and on medieval wax tablets of all media, see É. Lalou, “Les tablettes de cire médiévales,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes

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still in the fourteenth century quotidian objects, as cheap paper was just becoming available in western Europe, wax tablets were the ‘pocket’ notebooks of the day; they were usually inventoried together with luxury belts and items to be hung conveniently from them.4 Wax tablets were a reusable surface on which to scratch down thoughts, reminders, lists, budgets, accounts, calendars, messages and drafts. In fact, the contents of the papal legate Albert von Behaim’s (1180–1260) cotton-paper notebook is a rare witness to the sort of ephemera commonly jotted down: shopping lists, letter drafts, recipes, astrological calculations, and philosophical musings among other tantalizing titbits.5 Although in boxwood and not ivory, a set of miniature (50 x 30 mm) late fourteenth-century tablets in their tooled leather case, found in 1989 during excavations in York, bear testimony to similar types of written endeavours.6 Michelle Brown transcribed and studied the legible portions of the notebook: it contains love poetry in Middle English, and, in Latin, accounts and perhaps a draft of a letter legal in nature. All three texts are in the same hand. The only ivory booklet to retain inscriptions in its wax (as well as its moulded leather case and silver stylus) is now in Namur, adorned with paired carved courtly scenes on its front and back covers. Content follows form, as the red wax preserves traces of amorous verses: Amour me font [lang]uire ne se moe […].7 The fifteenth-century inscription seems to record song lyrics, also found in an early 147 (1989): 123–40; and É. Lalou, “Inventaire des tablettes médiévales et présentation générale,” in Les tablettes à écrire de l’Antiquité à l’Époque moderne, ed. É. Lalou (Turnhout, 1992), 231–88, as well as the whole section on medieval wax tablets herein. 4 For example, Item, une ceinture noire, et unes tables d’yvoire, 100 sous in “Inventaire et vente après décès des biens de la Reine Clémance de Hongrie, Veuve de Louis le Hutin, 1328,” in Nouveau Recueil de Comptes de l’Argenterie des Rois de France, ed. L. Doüet d’Arcq (Paris, 1874), 37–112, no. 425; or Unes Tables d’ivoire, ouvrées, et un Greffe d’argent tout en un fourel de cuir, pendans à une chaine d’argent in the section on ‘Saintures,’ L. Doüet d’Arcq, “Inventaire de Jeanne de Presles, veuve de Raoul de Presles, fondateur du collège de ce nom, 1347,” Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes 39 (1878): 81–109, no. 55. 5 Munich, bsb Clm 2574b. Edited by T. Frenz and P. Herde, Das Brief- und Memorialbuch des Albert Behaim, Monumenta Germaniae historica, Briefe des späteren Mittelalters, 1 (Munich, 2000). 6 M.P. Brown, “The Role of the Wax Tablet in Medieval Literacy: A Reconsideration in Light of a Recent Find from York,” The British Library Journal 20 (1994): 1–16. See also J.M. McComish, “Archaeological excavations at 12–18 Swinegate, 14 Little Stonegate and 18 Back Swinegate,” York Archaeological Trust Web Based Report 2015/44, http://www.yor karchaeology.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Swinegate-Final-text-with-Figures.pdf (accessed 1.1.2017). 7 E. del Marmol, “Tablettes en ivoire avec leur étui de cuir,” Annales de la Société archéologique de Namur 8 (1863–4): 221–5. My transcription differs from that furnished in the literature. Note that the book’s binding was described in the 1860s as: “Toutes les feuilles sont réunies par une bande de parchemin bleu et or collée au dos de celles-ci,” though today it is a reused piece of parchment with writing in brown ink.

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fourteenth-century Chansonnière (Oxford, Bodleian MS Douce 308, ff. 140r250r): Amors me font languir, et se ne puis morir, forment suis malaides. Vrais deus ke ferei, dex ie ni puis dureir. Ceu me font li malz d’aimeir (f. 232r).8 It is enticing enough to note that the carved programme shares thematic links with the written content—one might even imagine the ephemeral nature of word written on wax as advantageous in amatory correspondence—, but furthermore the iconographic programme on the leather case, depicting scenes of collusion and contrition from the tale of Tristan and Isolde, heightens the stakes. Courtly scenes do not necessarily mean secular ownership, however: the Namur booklet was found among the papers of the archives of the Collégiale de Saint-Aubain before being traded with the Société archéologique de Namur in 1859,9 and similarly the ivory booklet with scenes of the Fountain of Youth, now at the Louvre, was described in 1759 as part of the treasury of Liège cathedral.10 The ivory booklet formerly in the treasury of Sainte-Aldegonde of Maubeuge was of a more-appropriate iconography, including the Annunciation pictured in the first illustrated inventory of 1482: Item, vi foellets à manière de taublettes tout d’yvor, auxquelz sont entretaillées pluisurs hystois de la vierge Marie et de la passion.11 Describing the materials allowed in the craft of the tabletier, Étienne de Boileau, in the Parisian Livre des métiers (1267), notes not only the boxwood (buis) from which the York tablets are fashioned, but also other woods (autres manieres de fuz), ivory and horn (toutes manieres de cor) that are allowed by the guild, as long as they follow the regulations. Though ivory is not again mentioned in the text, there is significant attention paid to the quality and kind of wood employed by tabletier. In addition to boxwood, beech is also allowed, and one may only mix woods of higher quality with these: namely cedar, ebony, brasilwood and cypress. A 1333 addition to the Sorbonne manuscript of the Livre des métiers by prévôt Jean de Millon reiterates the injunction against dissimulating lesser materials for more expensive ones: “That all tablets found 8 M. Atchinson, The ‘Chansonnier’ of Oxford Bodleian Ms Douce 308: Essays and Complete Edition of Texts (Aldershot, 2005). 9 A. Bequet, “Tablettes à écrire du xive siècle,” in Orfèverie, dinanderie, ferronnerie, tissus, broderies, miniatures, ivoire, mobilier, et céramique (Bruges, s.d. [1894]), 1–4, pl. xiv. No evidence supports a count of Namur once possessing this booklet. 10 F. Gori, Thesaurus Veterum Diptychorum Consularium et Ecclesiasticorum, 3 vols. (Florence, 1759), i: opp. 85, and for its now lost leather case, see opp. 79; cited in D. GaboritChopin, Ivoires médiévaux, ve–xve siècle (Paris, 2003), no. 222. 11 N. Cartier, Reflets d’un trésor disperse: Le trésor du chapitre de Sainte-Aldegonde de Maubeuge, 1482–1693 (Lille, 2015), no. 30.3. The first illustrated inventory is today in a private collection, the second is Arras, Médiathèque MS 1325.

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having another colour than their wood are to be burned, for by dyeing (tainture) and by painting (painture) people will be deceived.”12 Élisabeth Lalou, in her comprehensive study of writing tablets from the Middle Ages, notes that while writing tablets with carved decorations are seen with some frequency, painted ones are altogether absent from the archaeological corpus.13 Even if we may grant that Jean de Millon was thinking of a very different type of painture, the group of ivory booklets to be here examined are indeed painted, and rather heavily so. In the following, I wish to demonstrate not only that some of these booklets were intended to be painted from their conception, but also that their entire fabrication, both carving and painting, took place in Cologne rather than in Paris. This observation is not entirely new, and builds on the excellent work of others, notably Charles Little and Paul Williamson. Yet the underlying assumption in the literature has been that ivory booklets with painted pages were created first as wax tablets, and then transformed only afterwards into illuminated booklets in a different locale. Yet, given the homogeneity of the style of illumination on three separate objects to be examined here, I suggest they are the result of the work of one atelier, over a generation, based in Cologne. In producing a new devotional object, this atelier was contributing significantly to the ongoing trend towards private prayer aided by images in the first quarter of the fourteenth century. Furthermore, two other works can be seen to emerge from the same innovative milieu, experimenting with images for devotion in Cologne. No one would argue that the most famous example of the ivory devotional booklet is that now found at the Victoria and Albert Museum (Fig. 20.2; 11– 1872), acquired from the dealer John Webb.14 The booklet is composed of two thick ‘covers’ (7.5 mm) carved on their exterior faces with a Coronation of the Virgin with a monastic donor/owner on one and with St Lawrence, a bishop saint and another donor on the other. The insides of the covers are recessed as if to receive wax, as are both sides of the six thin inner leaves (2 mm). Instead of wax, however, the sunken fields are filled with devotional paintings depicting the Passion and Resurrection of Christ and the Instruments of the Passion, including the Veronica. Due to the recesses for accepting wax and the seeming disjuncture between the carved scenes and the Passion scenes, it had been ­argued that the two media were the result of two separate campaigns, perhaps 12

13 14

“Que toutes tables qui seroient trouvees aians autre couleur que de leur fut, qu’i soient ars pour ce que par tainture et painture li mondes seroit deceus.” É. de Boileau, Les métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris. xiiie siècle, ed. R. de Lespinasse and F. Bonnardot (Paris, 1879), Titre lxviii, 140–4. Lalou, “Les tablettes de cire médiévales,” 125–6. Fully illustrated in Williamson and Davies, Medieval Ivory Carving, 1200–1550, no. 121.

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even in two different locales, Paris and Cologne.15 In other words, that a customer had purchased a standard set of ivory wax tablets and at a later moment decided to remove the wax and to adorn the ‘pages’ with miniature paintings. William Wixom was the first, however, to question this logic, rationalizing the raised edges as protective borders for the paintings, and noting that three small holes at the top of every second leaf were likely fittings for a protective curtain for the delicate paintings.16 Given the German origin of the paintings that had been previously posited in the literature, Wixom compared the carved Coronation of the Virgin on the cover of the V&A booklet with the marble Adoration of the Magi from the High Altar at Cologne Cathedral, advancing an attribution to Cologne for the carved ivory. Wixom summarized thus: “an intimate and original unity of purpose for both the paintings and carvings as a single devotional work is possible, if not probable.” Just this line of reasoning was supported by Paul Williamson, and later Glyn Davies, with emphasis placed on Cologne as the origin of both the paintings and the carving.17 However, earlier studies of the painted portion of the booklet had pointed to Lübeck or Westphalia, not Cologne, as the province of origin for the paintings. Williamson invoked a number of panel paintings as evidence in favour of the episcopal city,18 but returning to one of the seminal articles on the V&A booklet offers a surprisingly convincing comparison, though it poses as many problems as it solves. Hans Wentzel’s 1962 article considers the paintings of the V&A booklet in light of Byzantine models for German painting in the early fourteenth century, and ultimately argues for the port-city Lübeck as the place of origin for the painted Passion cycle.19 An altarpiece wing now in 15

16

17 18 19

Earlier literature maintained the separation between the two media. M.H. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carving in Ivory, 2 vols. (London, 1929), ii: 2–25; R. Berliner, “Arma Christi,” Munchener Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst 6 (1955): 35–152; K. Martin, “Zur oberrheinischen Malerei im beginnenden 14 Jahrhundert,” Festschrift für Eberhard Haufstaegnl (Munich, 1961), 11–20; and H. Wentzel, “Ein Elfenbeinbüchlein zur Passionsandacht,” WallrafRichartz-Jahrbuch 24 (1962): 193–212. W. Wixom, “Twelve Additions to the Medieval Treasury,” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 59 (1972): 87–111, at 95–101. For the use of such curtains in manuscript illumination, see C. Sciacca, “Raising the Curtain on the Use of Textiles in Manuscripts,” in Weaving, Veiling, and Dressing: Textiles and their Metaphors in the Late Middle Ages, ed. K. Rudy and B. Baert (Turnhout, 2007), 161–90. P. Barnet, ed., Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age (Princeton, 1997), no. 40, entry by P. Williamson; Williamson and Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200–1550, no. 121, entry by G. Davies. Images in Ivory, no. 40; R. Budde, Köln und seine Maler, 1300–1500 (Cologne, 1986), nos 1–10. H. Wentzel, “Ein Elfenbeinbüchlein zur Passionsandacht,” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch xxiv (1962): 193–212.

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Figure 20.2 Devotional picture booklet (front cover). Cologne, c. 1330–40, ivory with polychromy, 106 mm tall. London, V&A 11–1872 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Stockholm (Staten Historiska Museum, inv. 24002), however, is by far the most convincing comparison advanced by Wentzel’s stylistic analysis, and high resolution colour photographs only deepen the likeness (Fig. 20.3).20 The face of Christ at the carrying of the Cross in the lower register of the interior face of the panel is, except for its size (176 x 109 cm), nearly identical to that on the verso of the third ivory leaf of the V&A booklet (Fig. 20.4; 106 x 60 mm): the shape of the eyes, the arch of the nose, the shading of the eyebrows, and even the strongly vertical strokes of rouge on the cheeks. I would argue that at the very least we are looking at products from the same workshop, with access to the same models, if not the same hand. On the advice of Swedish National Heritage board, the panel was removed from the parish church of Toresund, in the Strängnäs municipality in ­Södermanland, about 50 km due west of Stockholm.21 It has long been 20 21

For the altarpiece wing, see also the Staten Historiska Museum’s online collection catalogue: http://www.historiska.se/data/?foremal=94191 (accessed 10.3.2017). For the church of Toresund, see the Swedish National Heritage Board’s Building Register (Bebyggelseregistret): http://www.bebyggelseregistret.raa.se/bbr2/byggnad/visaHistorik. raa?page=historik&visaHistorik=true&byggnadId=21400000440974 (accessed 10.3.2017). Founded in the twelfth century, the church retained at least one other medieval work, an

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Figure 20.3

Wing of an altarpiece from Toresund (Strängnäs). Cologne, c. 1320, wood panel and oil paint, 176 cm tall. Stockholm, Historisches Museum, Inv. 24002. Image courtesy of the Historisches Museum

r­ ecognized that the Toresund panel was an imported work, though its exact origin floats around northern Germany. Wentzel himself had suggested Lübeck or Soest, and Alfred Stange argued mit gleicher Gewißheit for Soest.22 Given, however, the inherent mobility of artists, the proximity of the Westphalian city of Soest to Cologne, and the lack of a known ivory carving centre in Soest or Lübeck, a Cologne origin should itself be reconsidered for the panel, as it has been for the booklet. The reverse side of the Toresund panel, with a badly damaged depiction of Gabriel from the Annunciation (Fig. 20.3), offers further

22

early thirteenth-century seated Virgin and Child, also today at the State Historical Museum (inv. 14300). Its earlier style and smaller scale (80 cm), however, do not suggest it was part of the same work. A. Strange, “Einige Bemerkungen zur westfälischen Malerei des frühen 14. Jahrunderts,” Westfalen: Hefte für Geschichte, Kunst und Volkskunde 32 (1954): 201–11.

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Figure 20.4

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Devotional picture booklet (3v–4r). Cologne, c. 1330–40, ivory with polychromy, 106 mm. tall. London, V&A 11–1872 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

proof, not only of its affinities with the Cologne milieu, but also of the inter­ mediality of the workshops there. Halberstadt’s Domschatz includes a rare mixed-media tabernacle with a painted wood casing and ivory bas-reliefs, and this object was the linchpin of Paul Williamson’s argument for assigning a group of ivories to Cologne.23 The exterior sides of the polyptych wings are painted with an Annunciation of remarkable quality (Fig. 20.5),24 which seems a slightly older sibling to 23 24

Williamson and Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200–1550, no. 46 by P. Williamson. For the tabernacle, see H. Meller, ed., Der heilige Schatz im Dom zu Halberstadt (Regensburg, 2008), no. 98 (inv. 15). The wings of other similar mixed media tabernacles are painted in a similar style, though with standing figures of Peter and Paul. Aachen, Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum (KK 997) see Glanz und Grösse des Mittelalters, Kölner Meisterwerk aus den grossen Sammlungen der Welt, ed. D. Täube and M.V. Fleck (Munich, 2011), no. 24 by U. Bergmann; and Lisbon, Gulbenkian Museum (inv. 349), see Guérin, Gothic Ivories, no. 6.

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Figure 20.5 Tabernacle with ivory appliqué plaques. Wood, ivory and polychromy, 56 cm tall. Halberstadt, Cathedral Domschatz, inv. 15 © Photograph Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie SachsenAnhalt, Juraj Lipták

the ­Annunication panel at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum (inv. 4–5).25 Both ­compositions offer remarkable comparisons with the damaged Gabriel from Toresund: the carefully modelled robes in the tradition of Jean Pucelle, the heavy black outlines describing the figures, and with the Halberstadt tabernacle in particular the wind-mill-like arrangement of the angel’s wings—a characteristic also observed in the stained glass roundel of the Annunciation from the St Stephen chapel at Cologne cathedral.26 Though compelling, the similarities are not as close as those discerned between the paintings of the V&A booklet and the Toresund panel; furthermore, the ivory carving of the  V&A booklet and the Halberstadt tabernacle are quite far removed. Thus the same workshop ought not be posited, but all works should be attributed to Cologne. 25 Budde, Köln und seine Maler, no. 1. A high-resolution image is available online at: https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:14th-century_unknown_painters_-_The_Annunciation_-_WGA23721.jpg. 26 This window, with its elaborate typological program, was produced in the 1250s. See U. Brinkmann, Das jüngere Bibelfenster, Meisterwerke des Kölner Domes 1 (Cologne, 1984), 11.

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Notwithstanding the differences in style, the example of the Halberstadt tabernacle does suggest an important principle regarding the ivory wax tablet booklets: the idea of a single atelier producing multimedia works—wood carving, ivory carving, sculptural polychromy, and panel painting—media that the scholarly literature has traditionally considered separately. Of course, one may argue that the V&A booklet was an exceptional work, a one-off and, as such, exceptionally brought together artists from different sectors. Yet two other ivory booklets with painted leaves suggest a more permanent arrangement. A complete booklet from the Linsky Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1982.60.399)27 and a fragmentary example in the Ravenna Museo Nazionale (Inv. 1038),28 not only likely hail from the same Cologne milieu as the V&A booklet, though at an earlier date, but were demonstrably painted by the same individual, and likely carved in the same atelier.29 Fragments of a booklet in Ravenna (Fig. 20.6) include one thick cover (4 mm) and two thin leaves (2 mm). The cover is carved on one side with an Annunciation and Crucifixion, while its reverse is completely smooth. The two thin leaves are flat on both sides and one side is painted with scenes from the Life of Christ. A hole at the top-centre of the leaves served as a pivot binding mechanism.30 The Linksy booklet (Fig. 20.7) is much closer to the V&A booklet in form. It has two thick covers (23 mm), carved on both faces, and uniquely also along the vertical outer edge. The exterior of the booklet represents the Passion of Christ. Three thin (2 mm) leaves are bound between the covers via a

27 28 29

30

The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1984), no. 50 by C.T. Little. For additional images see www.metmuseum.org (accessed 10.2.2020). La collezione degli oggetti in avorio e osso. Museo Nazionale di Ravenna, ed. L. Martini (Ravenna, 2004), 34–6, nos 20–2 by L. Martini. The Gothic Ivories Project documents at least three other examples of painted wax tablets. Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum (inv. MA 2033) is of similar construction to the V&A booklet, but the style of its carvings and paintings are closer to the year 1400. See R. Eikelmann et al., ed., Mittelalterliche Elfenbeinarbeiten. Ausgewählte Werke aus den Beständen des Bayerischen Nationalmuseums (Munich, 2010), no. 16. Closer in style to the latter is a single thin (2 mm) ivory leaf with recesses on its obverse and reverse, painted with scenes of the Resurrection and the Ascension in a circa 1400 style, possibly also from Cologne. It is now at the Schnütgen Museum (inv. B 2002). Finally, the British Museum (1978,0701.1 and 1881,0802.12) holds a set of two thin (2–3 mm), carved ivory wax tablets, their reverses having been painted in the seventeenth-century, with a cardinal (on one leaf) venerating the Virgin and Child (on the other). For a discussion of this type of binding, see Williamson and Davies, Medieval ivory carving, 1200–1550, 146–7; and Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux, no. 222 (mrr 429).

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Figure 20.6

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Three pieces of a devotional booklet. Cologne, c. 1310, ivory and polychromy, h: 93 mm. Ravenna, Museo Nazionale (Inv. 1038). Image courtesy of the Sopraintendenza Beni Culturali, Ravenna

leather strip glued along the edge. The first thin leaf is flat on the side facing the carved cover, with the reverse recessed for wax. The second leaf is recessed on both sides, while the third thin leaf mirrors the first (one side for wax, the other flat). The flat surfaces facing the carved interior covers were painted with a micro-architectural frame and scenes of adoring figures complementing the carved iconography: the reverse of the front cover is carved with a standing Virgin and Child flanked by male and female donor portraits, and the scene painted opposite is the three Magi from the Adoration (Fig. 20.7); the back cover is carved with a Coronation of the Virgin and painted opposite is a young woman introduced to the heavenly couple by two angels. Matching quatrefoil roundels in translucent green and red fill the spandrels on the facing pages. Bending his knee in adoration of the carved Virgin and Child opposite, the eldest Magus on the Linsky booklet, depicted in profile, offers a striking comparison with the figures painted on the Ravenna leaves. No fewer than five figures on the Ravenna leaves are shown with nearly identical physiognomies. Joseph at the Nativity and the High Priest at the Presentation furthermore have hair and beards in decidedly similar hues of grey. Except for a less-pointed nose on the Magus, the similarities are remarkable and must indicate the same

Ivory Booklets, Devotion in Cologne

Figure 20.7

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Devotional wax tablet booklet. Cologne, c. 1310, ivory and polychromy, 72 mm. tall, Interior of the front cover. Linsky collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1982.60.399). Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

hand. The painting technique used on the two booklets in general deserves mention: garments are mostly shown in gold-leaf on an ochre-coloured bole, with contrasting green and red translucent glazes used to define and variegate the drapery patterns. Older men are distinguished with grey hair. Heavy outlines in dark-brown to black sketch out the figures, and the faces are painted relatively thickly with built-up flesh-coloured paint in different hues. Thick white highlights achieve a real sense of modelling. There is an absence of blue. What is more, while the painting on the V&A booklet is more refined and accomplished, the technique and palette are practically identical. Additional similarities can be identified between the carved programs on the Ravenna leaves and the outer covers of the Linsky booklet, though these are more on the level of the overall composition—notably the arrangement of the narrative in two plain registers separated by a stepped moulding (polychrome alternating red and gold)—rather than individual style. The lack of a micro-architectural frame is inhabitual, though not unknown, among Gothic ivories. The figures strain against the tight compositional ground. Despite these

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compositional similarities, the carving styles are not particularly close: the heroic muscular crucified Christ on the front cover of the Linksy booklet shares little other than the arrangement of his arms with the emaciated and more elegant version on the Ravenna leaf. Curls frame John and Gabriel’s faces on the Ravenna leaf, while summary and straight hairstyles repeat across figures on the Linksy booklet. A homogenous approach, however, to polychromy goes some way to mitigating the differences in carving. The same gilding technique, red and green translucent glazes, as well as black and dark brown for shoes and the crosses are used on both works.31 Gabriel’s phylactery on the Ravenna leaf is still inscribed with the angelic salutation in red lettering. The summarily carved eyes are picked-out with black pupils, more or less accurately, in both works. This raises the question of whether the similar palette for the sculptural polychromy and the two-dimensional paintings on the leaves indicates the same artisan: I would tend towards the answer yes for the works here under consideration, though would be cautious about applying this as a general rule.32 Thirty-five years, more or less, likely separate these three works, and I would place them roughly in the chronological order of Linksy booklet, Ravenna leaves and the V&A booklet, spanning the first three decades of the fourteenth century. The difference in format and function is worth underscoring as well. The Linksy booklet, if indeed the earliest, is also the most complicated, planned from the beginning with both carved and painted decorations in mind (the lack of recesses for the wax on the first and third leaves), and areas for text.33 The constrained space for writing may give pause as to what ends the wax tablets were put. A simple notebook for jotting down just anything seems unlikely, but were they for a rotating series of prayers prescribed by a spiritual advisor? Unless they have been imperceptibly altered, the Ravenna leaves were never planned as writing tablets, and were conceived from the start as a picture booklet. It is worth noting as well that the Ravenna leaves are the only examples where real continuity is observed between the iconography of the covers and the painted programme inside: on each, the top scenes are a Passion cycle and the lower scenes one of the Infancy. The V&A booklet too seems to have been planned from the beginning for images, though the leaves were recessed 31 32 33

Note the difference with the apparent lack of dark browns and black on statuettes of Parisian ivory sculpture, noted in Levy and Cascio, “La polychromie,” 13. Danielle Gaborit-Chopin posed a similar question regarding the triptych with painted wings in Lyons (mba L 422). D. Gaborit-Chopin, “Polychrome Decoration of Gothic Ivories,” in Images in Ivory, 47–61. The courtly booklet in Namur, though completely without painting, shows the same disposition of recessed and non-recessed pages—in other words the surfaces facing the interior carved decorations are flat.

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here to protect the painted surfaces and not for wax writing surfaces. If the three holes along the top edge on alternating leaves were intended for a protective textile, then the artisans were taking multiple measures to safeguard the paintings—strategies adopted, perhaps, after witnessing a generation of use on their products. Can a sort of evolution, then, be detected? The gradual refinement of a devotional picture book, perfected over a generation? Parallels for this type of image-based devotional object have been explored elsewhere,34 and it is worth noting that the wax tablet was a frequently used metaphor for the cognitive work central to meditation and prayer.35 I would moreover emphasize the experimental and problem-solving aspects evidenced by this group of ivory booklets. It is not incidental, I would argue, that the V&A booklet is also the best preserved of the group, painted by the most accomplished artist. That connections can be discerned with the group of Cologne tabernacles as defined by Williamson, some constructed from ivory, others of wood with inset ivory reliefs, demonstrates a multi-media workshop producing an innovative variety of devotional forms responding to market needs. In addition, two other objects should be brought close to the booklets here discussed. A small diptych in Brussels (Museum of Art and History, Inv. 854) with the Crucifixion, Deposition, Three Marys at the Tomb, along with a Glorification of the Virgin with a kneeling supplicant, is carved in a summary style remarkably similar to the exterior scenes on the Linsky booklet (Fig. 20.8).36 The remains of polychromy use the same palette as the booklets, notably substantial amounts of black, dark brown, and grey, translucent red and green, and thick gold on an ochre bole. Most unusual are the three soldiers asleep at the empty sepulchre: instead of being carved into the ivory as per usual, they are painted on the smooth surface of the tomb, in a palette and technique that matches precisely that used on the ivory booklets examined above. This mixedmedia composition, utterly unique in the corpus of Gothic ivories, shows an  artist with proficiency in two as well as three dimensions, ­innovatively 34

35 36

Berliner, “Arma Christi”; V. Schmidt, “Portable Polyptychs with Narrative Scenes: Fourteenth-Century De luxe objects between Italian Panel Painting and French Arts somptuaires,” in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. V.M. Schmidt (New Haven and Washington, 2002), 394–425; H. van Os, ed., The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in Europe, 1300–1500 (London, 1994); and J.F. Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Medieval Germany (New York, 1998). I would like to thank Philippe Cordez for reminding me of this fact. M. Carrthuers, The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1990), 251–3. J. Destrée, Catalogue des ivoires, des objets en nacre en os gravé et en cire peinte (Brussels, 1902), no. 19.

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c­ ombining them as needed.37 Secondly, a curious quadriptych at the V&A (237–1867) with scenes of the Infancy of Christ has long puzzled scholars.38 Charles Little briefly mentioned the quadriptych in association with the Linsky booklet; and the application of polychromy on both objects is what strikes first, especially the use of the translucent red and green, the quatrefoils in the spandrels, black shoes, black pupils and eyebrows, red lips, and alternating red and green on the crockets. One noteworthy difference, however, is the sparing use of azurite on the quadriptych, totally absent on the other works here examined.39 The style of the carving on the interior of the leaves of the Linsky booklet, the scenes of the standing Virgin and Child and the Coronation of the Virgin, resembles that on the V&A quadriptych. The summary rendering of the Christ Child, for example, on both objects bespeaks a shared economy of gesture at this small scale (Fig. 20.7). The concertina format of the V&A quadriptych is itself quite innovative40—while other later examples are known, the example at the V&A, being from the first decades of the fourteenth century, is  the earliest. These additional examples augment the impression that this ­ivory-working atelier in Cologne, experimenting with cross-media works and new formats, was pushing the boundaries of how images, both painted and carved, and text functioned together within private devotion in Cologne. A closer look at the ivory booklets has not, I am afraid, uncovered a trove of hitherto unremarked inscriptions on Gothic ivories, nor more than one acrostic.41 But careful study of the polychromy and painting on the devotional booklets has demonstrated the creativity of the Cologne ateliers, keeping pace with the growing market for illuminated manuscripts for private devotion in the 37 38

39 40

41

Note that the angels’ wings at the Glorification of the Virgin scene are also painted. Glyn Davies suggested a French origin in the 2014 catalogue, and proposed that the polychromy was reapplied. Upon further examination, I would propose that a great deal of the gilding has been refreshed, but the pigments are representative of the original programme. I already suggested the Cologne attribution in my review of the V&A catalogue: S.M. Guérin, “Review of P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200–1550, London: V&A Publishing, 2014,” Burlington Magazine 156 (November 2014): 757–8. Azurite is, however, present on the Aachen triptych. See Glanz und Grösse des Mittelalters, no. 24. The Nativity and Annunciation to the Shepherds, as well as the Adoration of the Magi and the Presentation in the Temple, were hinged like a normal diptych, to fold inwards. Hinges on the exterior of the Annunciation to the Shepherds and Adoration panels folded in the opposite direction, linking the two diptychs. For folding polyptychs in private devotion more generally, see V. Schmidt, “Portable polyptychs with narrative scenes: fourteenthcentury de luxe objects between Italian panel painting and French arts somptuaires,” in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. V. Schmidt (Washington DC, 2002), 394–425. NB: Collige et seriose lege primam omnis paragraphi litteram.

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Figure 20.8

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Passion diptych, Cologne, c. 1310, ivory and polychromy, 108 mm tall. Brussels, Museum of Art and History, Inv. 854. Image courtesy of the Art & History Museum

exact same period. With the Linsky booklet in particular, the flexibility offered by wax tablets worked in concert with the permanent visual programme, allowed for a versatile devotional tool that could remain relevant to its owner. The V&A booklet evinces not only a highly skilled panel painter at work in an atelier that carves ivory, but moreover the care with which the physical format was planned to protect and preserve those same paintings. This Cologne-based ivory carving atelier was an energetic site of experimentation with a range of forms, trying to create successful tools for individual devotional needs. Furthermore, the recurrent depiction of owners or users on the booklets, monastics on the V&A booklet, a secular couple on the Linsky booklet, and a canon on the Brussels diptych, encourages us to consider how much pious individuals themselves were involved in the commissioning of these innovative forms, merging text and image.

Chapter 21

Gothic Ivories Unhinged Catherine Yvard Anyone who has visited a museum with Prof. Lowden will have crawled, craned or crouched to catch a glimpse of the hidden side of things.1 Peering at the back, the edges, the underside, the entrails of artworks, looking for the rough, the unfinished, the altered, to find out more about their function, and production. It is this typically Lowdenian approach I propose to adopt in the present paper, taking mainly fourteenth-century ivory carvings as the object of my study. Prior to the Gothic Ivories Project, I had mainly been working with books, and hence was curious to find out what the two had in common, both in a material sense, but also on a functional level. Were there instances where ivories could be part of the actual fabric of the book? Does a set of writing tablets qualify as a codex and, if so, what is its codicology? The aim of this paper is to examine the points of intersection between Gothic ivories and the codex format, when ivory panels are integrated into the binding of a book, or when they are arranged in booklets. It is the result of many years spent staring at the edges and the backs of ivories. One of my preconceptions when I began work on the Gothic Ivories Project was that there would be a category of ivory panels originally intended to adorn book covers, as was common in earlier periods.2 However, the practice of using carved ivory plaques as decoration for the binding of books, common in the early Middle Ages, had by the early thirteenth century disappeared in western Europe. Indeed, all bindings with Gothic ivory plaques are later composite constructions, largely nineteenth-century manifestations of a taste for socalled ‘retrospective decoration.’ One thus encounters recycled diptych wings, writing tablets or, more rarely, reliefs later paired with medieval and early 1 I would like to take the opportunity of this paper to thank Prof. John Lowden for leading me from medieval manuscripts to ivory carvings, through my involvement with the Gothic Ivories Project, launched in 2008 at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London (www.gothicivories. courtauld.ac.uk; all images of ivories not reproduced in the present article can be found by searching this online resource). While my commitment to the project translated into an unhealthy obsession with ivory, our close collaboration shaped my way of seeing. Many thanks to Michaela Zöschg for her help and advice and to Matilde Grimaldi for her illustrator skills. 2 See numerous Carolingian and Romanesque examples in D. Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux. ve–xve siècle (Paris, 2003), no. 38, 41–4, 46, 48, 50, 52, passim.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_023

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­Renaissance manuscripts.3 Marie-Pierre Laffitte signalled one such binding made for Jean-Baptiste Joseph Barrois (1784–1855), where fragments of an early fifteenth-century Italian comb with secular scenes form part of the upper cover of a fourteenth-century copy of the Roman d’Aspremont (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS n.a.f. 10039).4 To this binding, another with the same provenance can be added: a fourteenth-century copy of the Chanson of Godfrey of Bouillon (Le Chevalier au Cygne) in the British Library features on its upper cover a fourteenth-century fragment from a casket with romance scenes (Additional MS 36615).5 In very few instances, such repurposing of the carvings took place in the Middle Ages. A late fourteenth-century diptych was soon reused to adorn a slightly later metalwork binding now in the Louvre (Inv. MR 416),6 while a midfourteenth-century diptych leaf in New York has been affixed onto a wooden panel and inserted in a metalwork frame considered to be slightly later, to form the upper cover of a book now lost (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Inv. 17.190.856).7 The most visually striking example of a medieval reuse is found on the so-called Purple Evangeliary rebound in the mid to late fifteenth century, combining a fourteenth-century diptych leaf on the front cover with receptacles for relics in each corner (Épinal, Bibliothèque multimédia intercommunale Épinal-Golbey MS 265 P/R).8 Traces of a later reuse of Gothic ivories as actual binding boards, rather than as one element in the cover decoration, appear on the reverse of a few other panels—mostly diptych wings, presumably because they tended to be thicker than writing tablets. These usually present on the back three or more channels 3 See Appendix for a list of post-medieval bindings with Gothic ivory carvings and a list of post-medieval bindings with nineteenth-century ivories in a Gothic or early sixteenth-century style. 4 M.-P. Laffitte, “Faux ou pastiches: quelques reliures ‘à décor rétrospectif’ de la collection Barrois,” Revue de la BnF 13 (2003): 56–8. For more on this unscrupulous collector, see L. Delisle, Catalogue des manuscrits des fonds Libri et Barrois (Paris, 1888), xxxviii–xlii and H. Collingham, “Joseph Barrois: Portrait of a Bibliophile xxvi,” Book Collector 33 (1984): 431–48. 5 Two more bindings commissioned by Barrois for medieval manuscripts bore carved postmedieval ivories: one in Paris with a sixteenth-century relief of the Entombment was noted by Laffitte (Paris, BnF, n.a.l. 10034) and another is described on the online British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts as “Post-1600. Brown leather with gold tooling. An ivory panel representing the death of Jacob has been removed and is kept in the British Museum” (BL Add. MS 36614). The ivory panel in question is a Middle Byzantine casket fragment (British Museum Inv. 1901,1230.1). 6 Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux, no. 205. 7 The Middle Ages. Treasures from the Cloisters and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Los Angeles, 1970), no. 70. 8 Trésors des bibliothèques de Lorraine, ed. P. Hoch (Paris, 1998), no. 4.

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to attach the cords that issued from the sewing stations of the now missing book whose leaves would have been made of parchment or paper.9 Additional holes are often present along the outer edges; these would have been to attach fabric or leather ties to keep the book closed (see London, V&A Inv. A.2-1937; Fig. 21.1).10 For this group of artefacts, it is difficult to establish when the repurposing of the ivories took place. The writing tablets forming the covers of a small, late fifteenth-century manuscript in Munich (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 23643) are now crudely complemented by an ivory spine and ­articulated with heavy metal hinges, which have caused the ivory to break. They also bear on the reverse the characteristic channels, evidence of the earlier binding system just described.11 In a unique example formerly in Gotha, two ivory ­panels—certainly writing tablets, considering the shallowness of the­ carving—were given a spine of velvet and metal clasps to close with a long pin onto a gathering of six wooden leaves (Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein, Elfenbein Nr. 6; Fig. 21.2). It is likely that the leaves were writing tablets, though they were described as being covered in orange marbled paper in an 1858 inventory; the pin would have conveniently doubled up as a stylus.12 Unfortunately this intriguing mixed-media creation was a casualty of World War ii, but judging from the one known photograph, materials and fittings, this assemblage was

9

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See the useful illustration in M. Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms (London, 1994), 7. Single diptych leaves: Bayonne, Musée BonnatHelleu Inv. 446 (four channels); London, V&A Inv. A.63-1949 (five rough channels); Fondation Gandur pour l’Art Inv. FGA-AD-BA-96 (five channels and two corner channels); Erbach, Deutsches Elfenbeinmuseum Inv. 775 (four channels and two corner channels); Oxford, Ashmolean Museum Inv. AN1685 A.581 (five rough channels). Complete diptychs: London, V&A Inv. A.2-1937 (three channels; Fig. 21.1); Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh mmb. 0441 (three channels, evidence of a time when the left wing formed the upper cover of a binding and the right wing the lower). The authenticity of this piece was called into question by Jaap Leeuwenberg, but it is now believed to date from the second half of the fourteenth century, following Jozef de Coo’s opinion. See J. Leeuwenberg, “Early Nineteenth-Century Gothic Ivories,” Aachener Kunstblätter 39 (1969): 141–2, Fig. 48; J. de Coo, Museum Mayer Van den Bergh, Catalogus 2. Beeldhouwkunst, plaketten, antiek (Antwerp, 1969), no. 2128. The later history of the two leaves of this diptych is nevertheless complex, as we know that they were in different collections in the 1840s (Ambroise Commarmond and Fidel Debruge-Duménil). By the late nineteenth century they were reunited in the collection of Carlo Micheli, and re-hinged. G. Davies and P. Williamson, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200–1550 (London, 2014), i: no. 82. I would like to thank Bettina Wagner at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek for providing me with photographs showing the inside of both covers revealing successive binding arrangements, particularly visible inside the back cover where the pastedown is lost. We are able to assert that they were writing tablets because their back is recessed for wax. See U. Däberitz, I. Bajorat and R. Wilfroth, Verlustdokumentation der Gothaer Kunstsammlungen, i: Die Kunsthandwerklichen Sammlungen (Wechmar, 1997), 61, no. 4.

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­ ost-­medieval. It furthermore seems unlikely for a medieval set of writing tabp lets to have mixed wood and ivory.13 The practice of using ivory tablets as a support for writing, well documented in antiquity through numerous surviving examples, continued throughout the Middle Ages.14 While complete sets of Gothic ivory writing tablets are scarce,15

Figure 21.1

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Reverse of the left and right wings of a diptych, Paris, c. 1320-40, 67 x 46 mm. London, V&A, Inv. A.2-1937 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

When such a combination did occur from the early sixteenth century onwards, ebony was usually chosen as the perfect counterpoint, with the aim to achieve a particular decorative effect. See for instance Cologne, Museum Schnütgen Inv. B 160. For the early period, see for instance the fifth-century diptych of Consul Boethius whose reverse was painted in the seventh or eighth century with the Raising of Lazarus and images of Christian writers, followed by the names to be remembered in the litany during Mass; L. Nees, Early Medieval Art (Oxford and New York, 2002), 72–3. On the topic of medieval writing tablets made of wood or ivory, see É. Lalou, “Les tablettes de cire médiévales,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 147 (1989): 123–40, with further bibliographical references; É. du Méril, “De l’usage non interrompu jusqu’à nos jours des tablettes de cire,” Revue archéologique, new series 2 (1860), esp. pt i: 1–16; L. Serbat, “Tablettes à écrire du xive siècle,” Mémoires de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France 73 (1914): 301–13; R. Büll, “Wachs als Beschreib- und Siegelstoff; Wachsschreibtafeln und ihre Verwendung,” in Vom Wachs. Höchster Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Wachse (Frankfurt, 1968), 785–894; M.P. Brown, “The role of the wax tablet in medieval literacy: a reconsideration in light of a recent find from York,” The British Library Journal 20/1 (Spring 1994): 1–16. For an overview of these, see especially B. Bousmanne, “À propos d’un carnet à écrire en ivoire du xive siècle conservé à la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique,” in Als ich Can. Liber

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single tablets have survived in large numbers. These tablets are easily recognisable as they are recessed at the back with a raised border to accommodate a layer of wax on which their owner would have jotted notes using a stylus.16 These ephemeral lines could be erased by means of the spatula end of the stylus.17 Most surviving ivory writing tablets present one surface carved with figural scenes and the other recessed for wax, which indicates that they were outer, rather than inner tablets that would have been recessed on both sides. The

Figure 21.2

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Writing tablets reused as book covers, France?, late fourteenth century, 98 x 53 mm (each panel). Gotha, Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein, Elfenbein Nr. 6. © Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha

Amicorum in Memory of Professor Dr. Maurits Smeyers, ed. B. Cardon et al. (Paris, Leuven, Dudley, MA, 2002), 165–202. A few of these surviving tablets are recessed with four compartments delineated by raised borders, surrounding a fifth central circular one: see for instance Antwerp, MAS|Collection Vleeshuis Inv. AV.1952.008.019. The function of these compartments is still not fully understood. For a vivid thirteenth-century representation of a Benedictine monk in the process of compiling excerpts from various unbound parchment quires into his set of writing ­tablets, see Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 753, f. 1x. On this miniature, see A. Stones,

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i­conography encountered on these writing tablets, contrary to what has ­hitherto been asserted, was mostly religious.18 Indeed, out of a total of 338 writing tablets currently on the Gothic Ivories Project website, three quarters have a religious iconography and the remaining quarter a secular one.19 The vast majority date from the fourteenth century and have been ascribed to France or Germany. While some surviving wooden booklets have kept their original parchment hinges, all extant Gothic ivory booklets have leaves that are either now loose or were later reattached using parchment or paper hinges, and/or by means of a parchment strip glued to the long inner edge of all the panels and acting as a spine.20 This seems to reflect the way in which they were initially articulated.21 As early as 1860, Louis Serbat observed in relation to a complete booklet whose leaves had come unbound (now Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique MS iv 1278): “In each one [tablet], on one of the longer edges, one notes two traces of wrenching or, at least, two rough areas, whose location

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“­Recueil bernardin,” in Saint Bernard et le monde cistercien, ed. L. Pressouyre and T.N. Kinder (Paris, 1992), no. 86. Serbat, in 1914, asserted: “Quant aux sujets représentés sur les plats, ils sont le plus souvent profanes” (Serbat, “Tablettes à écrire,” 309); this assumption was reflected by Koechlin in his 1924 corpus, as he chose to develop the topic of writing tablets in the section on secular ivories (R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), i: 432–45), while Bernard Bousmanne wrote “À côté des sujets religieux, la plupart de ces feuillets reprennent des thèmes profanes […]” (Bousmanne, “Carnet à écrire,” 175–6). Only Glyn Davies recently went against this preconception (Davies and Williamson, Medieval Ivory Carvings, i: 346). A search conducted on 2.9.2018 yielded 258 examples with religious iconography (76.3%) versus only 80 showing secular subjects (23.7%). The total number is a result of counting each outer tablet individually, even when part of pair or booklet, and excluding blank inner tablets. Parchment hinges and spine: Namur, Musée provincial des Arts anciens du NamuroisTrésor d’Oignies (TreM.a) Inv. 29. Del Marmol noted in 1860: “Toutes les feuilles sont réunies par une bande de parchemin bleu et or collée au dos de celle-ci” (Del Marmol, “Tablettes en ivoire,” 221). The current arrangement, however, seems to be different, as there is no trace of blue and gold parchment: the strip of recycled parchment forming the spine of the booklet has script still visible (see Gothic Ivories website and Bousmanne, “Carnet à écrire,” 191). Paper hinges: London, V&A Inv. 804–1891. Parchment spine: London, V&A Inv. 11–1872. Lalou notes that this is the system adopted for a couple of complete wooden books made of wax tablets containing the accounts of Philip the Fair: Florence, Archivio di Stato Mostra no. 6 and Reims, Bibliothèque municipale mss 1459–1466 (Lalou, “Tablettes de cire médiévales,” Appendix no. 3a and 3d). For more on the various hinging systems found on wooden tablets, see P. Gerlach, “Ein Lüneburger Wachstafelbuch aus dem 14. Jahrhundert,” Lüneburger Blätter 15/16 (1965): 21–70 (esp. 21–31).

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­ erfectly matches on all leaves.”22 He went on to propose that the tablets would p originally have been kept together with a couple of parchment strips secured into place either by the layer of wax melted over them or by a glue strong enough to have created the two eroded areas he had noticed. Bernard Bousmanne took this line of thought further and noticed the presence of thin slits in the inner rim of each of the tablets in sets now in Brussels and the Louvre, slits into which the bands of parchment would have been slid (Bibliothèque royale de Belgique MS iv 1278 and Musée du Louvre, Inv. mrr 429).23 The unprecedented opportunity for viewing and comparing the backs and sides of numerous writing tablets on the Gothic Ivories website confirms that this was indeed the hinging system of choice, in spite of its inherent frailty (see Fig. 21.3).

Figure 21.3 Cross-section of a set of ivory writing tablets at hinges height Illustration © Matilde Grimaldi 2018

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“Dans chacune d’elles, sur l’un des plus longs rebords, on remarque deux traces d’arrachements ou, tout au moins, de rugosités, qui sur tous les feuillets se trouvent placés en parfaite concordance,” Serbat, “Tablettes à écrire,” 309. Bousmanne, “Carnet à écrire,” 190–1. The Louvre set now opens like a fan rotating about a metal pin, but this is a later arrangement.

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The remaining evidence on the inner edges of an ivory booklet at the Victoria and Albert Museum supports this reconstruction (Inv. 804–1891).24 Glue would have been used to prevent the strips from slipping out of the slits, though the latter were so thin that the ivory probably also clamped the parchment into place. The technique bears some resemblance to a system described by Gerlach as “frequently used” in the Middle Ages for wooden tablets of medium and small sizes, in which each hinge was formed by a single strip of parchment weaving in and out of the tablets.25 That ingenious technique, as shown by Gerlach’s reconstruction, resulted in virtually invisible hinges that seldom interfered with the writing surface. It may also have been adopted for ivory booklets, though as it required a number of diagonal slits to bring the parchment strip across the thickness of the tablets, it would probably have caused the ivory to break. The ‘erosion’ that Serbat noted in two places on the inner edge of some of the Brussels tablets is also witnessed on the reverse of a large number of writing tablets: it is in fact the result of the thin ivory layer that closed the slit having snapped, creating a slight recess in the border in two or three places, depending on how many parchment hinges were used to connect the tablets.26 On a tablet at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the upper thin strip has broken off, leaving a shallow recess in the inner border, while the two lower strips are intact (Inv. Circ.495–1923; Fig. 21.4). Examining the inner edge of this tablet, the two incisions in the thickness of the raised border on the right handside are just about visible (Fig. 21.5). On the reverse of a tablet in Antwerp, the two lower thin strips have broken off, leaving two shallow dips in the inner border, while the upper strip is still intact (MAS/Collection Vleeshuis Inv. AV.1952.008.018). On a tablet in Baltimore, the three strips are intact and one can just detect the three long incisions in the thickness of the raised border on the right (Walters Art Museum Inv. 71.279), while in an example in Basel, the two strips have broken off along the left border (Historisches Museum Inv. 1887.19). Significantly, the placement of these incisions provides precious information on the original position of these orphan tablets: the London, Antwerp and Baltimore examples, with the hinging system to the right (when viewed from the back), originally formed the upper cover of a set of writing tablets, while 24 25 26

On the fourth and fifth tablets the evidence has disappeared, as their inner edges have broken off in places and been repaired with added strips of ivory. On this booklet, see Williamson and Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings, i: no. 134. Gerlach, “Ein Lüneburger Wachstafelbuch,” 29–30, Fig. 7. Three were common on the larger examples (85 to 120 mm high) and two on the smaller tablets such as the Brussels booklet (60 mm high), studied by Serbat.

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Figure 21.4 Reverse view of ivory writing tablet, Mosan or Rhenish, c. 1360-80, 99 x 60 mm. London, V&A, Inv. Circ.495–1923 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Figure 21.5

View of the inner edge of Fig. 21.4 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

the Basel panel was a lower cover. I have observed these slits or wrenching marks on all the writing tablets I examined at first hand, with the exception of a few whose reverse was altered (see for instance Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum Inv. Pl 36:102, where the evidence is faint). Systematically recording these hitherto overlooked clues, one could thus determine whether

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certain scenes were most frequently encountered on the front or on the backs of such booklets.27 For instance, judging from the surviving evidence,28 a single Crucifixion scene could be used for the front or for the back of a set, with no obvious preference for one configuration over the other.29 On the other hand, the circular recess, usually part of a five-compartment division whose function remains to be elucidated, occurred more often on the reverse of the front panel than on the inside of the back panel.30 Its presence on the recto of an inner panel now in the Museum of London shows that it could also occur in the middle of a set (Inv. 10890). The poor survival rate of inner tablets, which would have commonly been recessed on both sides is due to the fact that they lacked any aesthetic appeal, and that, when separated from the rest of the set, they were hardly of any use.31 On the other hand, the carved panels could be repurposed in other contexts, for instance as stand-alone devotional images … or as part of bindings, as we just saw. It is not possible, from the fragmented remains of writing tablets, to ascertain how many leaves each set was made of, but it has sometimes been stated that the simplest form consisted of just two.32 And yet, when faced with a perfectly matching diptych of writing tablets in the Thomson Collection, Prof. Lowden did not consider it complete, and designated it as “Covers of a set of writing tablets” (Toronto, The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario Inv. 71331).33 This would have been because he observed on the reverse traces of the hinging system described above. Indeed, why adopt such a complicated 27 28 29 30 31

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In hindsight, it would have been useful to record this information in the Gothic Ivories Project entries. The following figures are based on an examination of the photographs of the tablets’ reverse available on the Gothic Ivories site and therefore does not provide a full picture. I would nevertheless argue that it is representative of general trends. Out of twenty-six examples with clear traces of hinges, fifteen are to the right and eleven to the left. Twenty at the front versus eleven at the back, out of the thirty-one examples viewable online. Very few such isolated inner leaves have entered museum collections, and the ones that did were found in archaeological contexts, e.g. Unité d’Archéologie de la Ville de SaintDenis Inv. 26.420.160; London, Museum of London Inv. 10890. It should be noted that some of these surviving inner tablets will have been missed by the Gothic Ivories Project. Indeed, repository institutions did not always understand them as belonging to its remit, owing to their lack of ornamentation, and therefore did not signal their existence. See M. Tomasi, in Avori Medievali. Collezioni del Museo Civico d’Arte Antica di Torino, ed. S. Castronovo, F. Crivello and M. Tomasi (Savigliano, 2016), 126: “Tali tavolette venivano usualmente assemblate in forma di dittico o di libretto […].” J. Lowden, Medieval Ivories and Works of Art. The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, 2008), 78, no. 26.

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and fragile system rather than the standard metal hinges used on devotional diptychs if only two ivory leaves needed to be articulated? As the backs of all surviving writing tablets, unless later modified, show evidence of this same hinging arrangement, I would argue that none of the surviving carved tablets functioned as diptychs, but rather that they originally enclosed a varying number of plain leaves covered with wax.34 The most lavish examples would have looked like the famous set in Namur; one of the very few ivory notebooks to have reached us complete, it consists of six internal tablets and two outer carved panels and was probably made in France in the mid-fourteenth century (Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois-Trésor d’Oignies (TreM.a) Inv. 29).35 While wood was usually reserved for more modest and unadorned formats, some sets could be as ornate as the ivory ones, as demonstrated by a surviving early fourteenth-century book in Darmstadt made of thirteen double-sided wax tablets and two elaborately sculpted outer tablets enclosed in a decorated boiled leather case (Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt Inv.Nr. Kg 25:1).36 The booklet format of sets of writing tablets inspired some medieval illuminators to paint on the inner ivory leaves, as is the case for a small picture book in the Victoria and Albert Museum containing a series of miniatures charting the Passion, followed by devotional images such as the Holy Face of Christ and the Instruments of the Passion (Inv. 11–1872).37 They are painted directly onto the ivory surface and remarkably preserved. The inner panels are recessed on both sides, suggesting that this ensemble was originally designed as a set of writing tablets. Yet the change in function soon occurred as carving and paintings seem contemporary, possibly pointing to Cologne, and to the second quarter of the fourteenth century.38 Three early fourteenth-century panels now in Ravenna could present a slightly different scenario. They consist of a carved cover and two panels, each with one side painted and the other recessed with a raised border (Ravenna, Museo Nazionale di Ravenna, Inv. n. 1036: Carrying 34

35 36 37 38

This is in sharp contrast with the use of the diptych format for carved ivory tablets in earlier periods. See for instance examples of antique diptychs, which were also of larger dimensions: P. Williamson, Medieval Ivory Carvings. Early Christian to Romanesque (London, 2010), no. 3, 5, 6. On this object, see Bousmanne, “Carnet à écrire.” The carved sides now face inwards, the result of a later re-arrangement. See Büll, “Wachs als Beschreib- und Siegelstoff Wachs,” Fig. 630. Measurements: 145 × 190 × 60 mm. See S. Guérin, “Ivory booklets, devotion in Cologne,” 315–17 in the present volume. See H. Wentzel, “Ein Elfenbeinbüchlein zur Passionandacht,” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 24 (1962): 193–212; Williamson and Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings, no. 121, with full bibliography.

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of the Cross and Nativity; Inv. n. 1037: Noli me Tangere and Presentation in the Temple; Inv. n. 1038: cover carved with Crucifixion and Annunciation).39 The fact that the painted side is not sunken argues for it to have been intended to be painted from the start, which is confirmed by the contemporary style of carving and miniatures. One would be tempted to see a similar situation in a booklet now in New York where the painted surfaces do not present a raised border (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Inv. 1982.60.399). However, the carvings are usually considered to be northern French (c. 1300) and to predate by a few decades the painted scenes seen as Upper Rhenish (c. 1310–20). Another set of writing tablets, now in Munich, was later transformed into a small prayer book (Bayerisches Nationalmuseum Inv. MA2033; Fig. 21.6). While the style of the ivory carving points to the second half of the fourteenth century, possibly Paris, the miniatures painted in a German style on paper glued

Figure 21.6 Devotional booklet, western Germany?, end of the fourteenth century (paintings Nuremberg, c. 1410), 74 x 55m (each panel). Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Inv. MA2033 © Bayerisches Nationalmuseum München 39

The entries for the two former (Inv. n. 1036 and n. 1037) do not currently appear online on the Gothic Ivories Project website, due to a technical fault.

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onto the ivory were certainly added in the early fifteenth century.40 They depict the apostles, in pairs, accompanied by a few lines of the Creed in German, with their names added later on the upper ivory border. The outer tablets are carved with the Nativity and Crucifixion. Few examples of such reuse have survived, but another one is kept at the Schnütgen Museum in Cologne (Inv. B2002).41 This single tablet is covered on both sides with a miniature (presumably parchment, though this requires further investigation): on the recto is the Resurrection, on the verso the Ascension.42 Although they seem to have been overpainted in places, the original miniatures could point to early fifteenthcentury Germany. This plain ivory leaf was probably once in a similar setting to the Munich example, its function also having changed from notepad to devotional booklet. One can easily understand why: the small format of the leaves meant that they could easily be held in one’s hands, like a prayer book, at a time when private devotional practices were spreading.43 Form is never far from function and this discussion, which began with tales of book-meets-ivory and of ivory leaves gathered as books, has gradually led us to consider instances of ivory booklets used as prayer books. One could extend the reflection to the place of ivory diptychs in private devotions.44 Opening one’s diptych required the same gestures, and was motivated by the same intention, as opening one’s Psalter or Book of Hours, and simultaneous use of diptych and book must have been frequent. Such a combination is lavishly materialised by the famous Book-Altar of Philip the Good, pairing a diptych, though not made of ivory, and a prayer book (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 1800; Flanders, c. 1430 and c. 1450).45 As both the book and diptych 40 41 42 43

44 45

Their layout indicates that they were specifically painted for this purpose. See F.M. Kammel, G.U. Grossman, et al., Spiegel der Seligkeit: Privates Bild und Frömmigkeit im Spätmittelalter (Nuremberg, 2000), no. 103. Not currently on the Gothic Ivories website. Two incisions in the inner raised border on both sides, evidence of the type of hinge described above, allow us to determine which side was the recto and which the verso, which also matches the narrative chronology of the scenes. The height of a writing tablet can vary from 44 mm (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum Inv. 10.39) to 137 mm high (formerly Kofler-Truniger collection; H. Schnitzler, F. Volbach and P. Bloch, Skulpturen, Elfenbein, Perlmutter, Stein, Holz Europäisches Mittelalter, Sammlung E. und M. Kofler-Truniger, 2 vols. (Lucerne, 1964), i: no. S.108), but the vast majority are between 80 and 100 mm high. They are the single most represented type of object on the Gothic Ivories website, with over 1,000 diptychs or fragments of diptychs online out of a total of over 5,000 ivory pieces. The bulk of them are dated to the fourteenth century (search conducted on 2.9.2018). See O. Pächt, U. Jenni and D. Thoss, Flämische Schule i (Vienna, 1983), 19–23 and Figs 24–7. Le Livre-autel de Philippe le Bon, duc de Bourgogne. Codex 1800 de la Bibliothèque nationale autrichienne de Vienne, facsimile with commentary by O. Mazal, D. Thoss (Lucerne, 1991).

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are attached to a binding-box, the duke of Burgundy, in one gesture, opened both. The book is modest, with few miniatures, but the diptych compensated for this: the duke could keep the scenes depicted above under his gaze at all times, as he turned its pages and knelt to say his prayers. Appendix

Post-medieval Bindings with Gothic Ivory Carvings46

Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, Inv. W.106: double-sided panel; upper cover of a nineteenth-century binding by Léon Gruel. Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, Inv. 10.39: writing tablet; upper cover of a nineteenthcentury binding by Léon Gruel. Cracow, Czartoryski Museum, Inv. 2387: relief; upper cover of a post-medieval metalwork binding inset with gems and cameos. Gotha, Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein, Elfenbein Nr. 6 (Fig. 21.2): pair of writing tablets; forming the upper and lower covers of the binding, nineteenth-century arrangement. London, British Library Add. MS 10301: pendant of an ivory belt; upper cover of an early sixteenth-century binding attributed to John Reynes [active. c. 1530] by a late nineteenth-century inscription. London, British Library Add. MS 36615: fragment from a casket with romance scenes; upper cover of a nineteenth-century binding decorated with coats of arms. Barrois provenance. London, Christie’s, June 29, 1994, lot 35: certainly a writing tablet; upper cover of the original binding of a late fifteenth-century Breviary. It is very likely that this insertion was made in the post-medieval period. London, Sotheby’s, June 20, 1978, lot 2979 (sale of Major J.R. Abbey): probably a writing tablet; lower cover of a late eighteenth-century binding.47 The upper cover has “an oval miniature of St. Elizabeth of Hungary (with legend in Flemish), surrounded by elaborate border of crystals,” according to the sale catalogue. Manchester, John Rylands University Library MS Lat. 51: diptych; affixed onto the upper and lower covers of a post-medieval binding. An identical Crucifixion panel features on the upper cover of the binding of a Book of Hours that came up for sale

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Fully accessible online as part of the önb website: http://digital.onb.ac.at/RepViewer/ viewer.faces?doc=DTL_5303796&order=1&view=SINGLE (accessed 2.9.2018). This list was obtained thanks to a search on the Gothic Ivories website (accessed 2.9.2018). The ivory measurements currently on the Gothic Ivories website are erroneous and should be corrected to 95 × 58 mm (accessed 2.9.2018).

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at Sotheby’s, London, June 23, 1992, lot 84, and the existence of three other nearlyidentical pairs of panels (not connected to bindings), one formerly in the KoflerTruniger collection,48 one formerly in the collection of Adolf Moritz List, and one from the collection of Maurice Kann,49 casts a heavy shadow over this whole group which would deserve closer examination. New York, Morgan Library and Museum M.542: fragment of diptych; upper cover of a nineteenth-century binding. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS n.a.f. 10039: fragments of a comb; upper and lower cover of a nineteenth-century binding with decoration and inscriptions. Barrois provenance.



Post-medieval Bindings with Nineteenth-century Ivory Carvings in a Gothic or Early Sixteenth-century Style

Hannover, Museum August Kestner Inv. Z 9: two panels (Germanic sixteenth-century style) affixed onto the upper and lower covers of post-medieval binding. London, V&A Inv. 8–1872: two panels (Germanic sixteenth-century style) affixed onto the upper and lower covers of the binding of a small volume printed in 1597. Manchester, John Rylands University Library MS Lat. 52: panel inserted in a postmedieval binding, likely a nineteenth-century creation. 48 49

Schnitzler, Volbach, Bloch, Skulpturen, i: 29, no. S.89. Maurice Kann sale, Paris, December 5, 1910, lot 223.

Chapter 22

Monks and Ants in the Presence of Death: A Re-reading of Pliny the Elder in Quattrocento Illumination Christian Heck The illuminated manuscripts collected by Henri d’Orléans, duke of Aumale, in the middle and second half of the nineteenth century, now in the library of the Musée Condé in Chantilly, are primarily known for some exceptional masterpieces of French painting, from the Ingeborg Psalter to the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, as well as the leaves from the Heures d’Etienne Chevalier.1 But the collection also reveals the duke’s passion for Italian art, as demonstrated by the works that featured in two successive exhibitions, the first in 2000 focusing on illumination,2 the second in 2014 bringing together a rich selection of panel paintings and drawings.3 A large historiated initial (Fig. 22.1)4 was deservedly shown in both these exhibitions. This absolutely superb fragment, which had remained unpublished and unknown to Quattrocento specialists, was identified by Gennaro Toscano, who dated it very specifically to around 1460–2, as a work by Girolamo da Cremona, one of the great Italian illuminators of his time.5 In this first publication of the initial, Toscano was able to show that the composition, contained within the letter ‘O’6 and showing the Death of 1 A medallion illustrating Proverbs 30:24–5 from the Bible moralisée—a subject for which John Lowden’s studies have been fundamental—presents ants as sapientiora sapientibus. I am delighted that this biblical and medieval model of wisdom has given me the opportunity to honour the warm collaboration which John and I shared over several years, with our Belgian colleagues, in the lll (Lille-London-Leuven) seminar series. For the miniature in question, Paris, BnF MS Lat. 11560, f. 56r, see A. de Laborde, La Bible moralisée illustrée conservée à Oxford, Paris et Londres. Reproduction intégrale du manuscrit du xiiie siècle, 5 vols. (Paris, 1911– 27), ii: pl. 280. This essay has been translated from the French by Emma Mandley. 2 T. d’Urso, P.L. Mulas, P. Stirnemann and G. Toscano, ed., Enluminures italiennes. Chefs-d’œuvre du Musée Condé, exhib. cat. (Chantilly, 2000). 3 M. Laclotte and N. Volle, ed., Fra Angelico, Botticelli… : chefs-d’oeuvre retrouvés, exhib. cat. (Chantilly, 2014). 4 Chantilly, Library of the Musée Condé, inv. DE-343 (Divers iv-343); diam. 18 cm. 5 T. d’Urso et al., Enluminures italiennes, no. 8, 32–5. 6 Probably “the incipit of the first antiphon to the Magnificat of Vespers for the feast of Saint Martin on 11 November: O beatus vir cujus anima paradisum possidet…,” see d’Urso et al., Enluminures italiennes, 32.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_024

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St  ­Martin, is linked to two other excised initials, St Justina disputing before ­Maximian, in London,7 and St Prosdocimus baptising Vitalian, in Paris.8 All three come from an antiphonary produced for the Benedictine abbey of Santa Giustina in Padua. The importance of the Chantilly miniature in this antiphonary is reinforced by the fact that one of the chapels in this Paduan monastery was dedicated to St Martin. Born in Mantua, probably around 1440, Girolamo da Cremona was apprenticed in Mantegna’s circles and worked for the Gonzaga as well as for the Este families—between 1458 and 1461 he collaborated on the Bible of Borso d’Este, for the Ferrara court. Toscano has shown that the present miniature demonstrates a knowledge of Mantegna’s monumental style, and in particular of the master’s frescoes in the Ovetari Chapel. Our understanding of this Chantilly initial was advanced in 2006, firstly with an essay by Federica Toniolo on Girolamo da Cremona’s work for the princely court in Mantua;9 and secondly with an article by Federica Toniolo and Gennaro Toscano on the artist’s early career, which reveals even more clearly how, especially in this work, Girolamo understood and reinterpreted Mantegna’s example, including in his skilful organisation of space and the role of light in expressing volume.10 In the 2014 exhibition catalogue, Teresa D’Urso describes how the miniature came to be in London from 1861, prior to the 1862 exhibition at the South Kensington Museum, after which the duke of Aumale bought it along with other items in the Robinson collection.11 The superb letter ‘O’ would be worth a detailed analysis on its own account, because of the impression created by the main body of the initial, curving but fluted like an antique column, and the impact of the heavy gilded metal rings. The eye travels through the O as if through an oculus, revealing the choir of a chapel with a flat east end, almost centrally positioned within the space and raised on a simple step, lit by two rectangular plain crown glass windows. The light comes from the left, and an opening on the right allows a glimpse into a corridor or another room. The altar is dominated by a polyptych depicting a Virgin and Child surrounded by saints in the main part, and a Crucifixion in 7 8 9 10

11

V&A Museum, inv. 817–1894; an original identification as St Catherine was corrected in the 2006 publications cited above. Musée Marmottan, Wildenstein collection, no. 64. F. Toniolo, “Girolamo da Cremona miniatore alla corte dei Gonzaga,” in Andrea Mantegna e i Gonzaga. Rinascimento nel Castello di San Giorgio, ed. F. Trevisani, exhib. cat. (Mantua, 2006), 94–101; for the Santa Giustina antiphonary see 97 and n. 10. F. Toniolo and G. Toscano, “Per l’attivita giovanile di Girolamo da Cremona,” in Tributes to Jonathan J.G. Alexander. The Making and Meaning of Illuminated Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, Art and Architecture, ed. S. L’Engle and G.B. Guest (London and Turnhout, 2006), 111–24; for the present miniature see 117–19. Laclotte and Volle, Fra Angelico, Botticelli…, no. 22, pp. 90–1. An extensive bibliography on Girolamo da Cremona can be found in the publications cited above.

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Figure 22.1

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Girolamo da Cremona, The Death of St Martin c. 1460–2. Chantilly, Library of the Musée Condé, inv. DE-343 (Divers iv-343) © RMN—Domaine de Chantilly

the top panel. Lying at the foot of the altar on a narrow platform, where he has been brought to spend his last moments, a haloed praying saint is surrounded by five kneeling monks. Four of these, between the saint and the altar, are giving vent to their grief. The fifth, in the foreground, seen from the back, seems to be concentrating more calmly on prayer. On the far right, suspended in the air, a devil awaits, his fork leaning against his shoulder. But the divine presence looms above the evil spirit: in the top right-hand corner of the choir, in a radiating mandorla of light, the bust-length figure of God the Father points with his left index finger towards the monks, and with his right towards the sky. In his first article, Toscano plainly identified the scene. The recumbent figure, who has placed his episcopal crozier and mitre on the altar, is St Martin of Tours at the moment of his death. According to the account by Sulpicius

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Figure 22.2

Girolamo da Cremona, The Death of St Martin c. 1460–2, detail, the ants. Chantilly, Library of the Musée Condé, inv. DE-343 (Divers iv-343). © RMN—Domaine de Chantilly

Severus, after gathering his monks together and reminding them of the need for harmony, Martin saw that the devil had arrived but told him that he had come in vain: “Why do you stand there, thou bloody monster? Thou shalt find nothing in me, thou deadly one: Abraham’s bosom is about to receive me.”12 At the very front of the composition, to the left of the kneeling monk, around thirty ants are swarming around the entrance to an ants’ nest in a crack in the paving (Fig. 22.2), just at the level of the step that separates the choir from what we must assume to be a short nave. The architectural setting of the composition is depicted with great restraint, with no recourse to picturesque detail, and these ants, so clearly visible in the foreground, are not there simply as a decorative element; nor, in such a well-kept chapel, are they meant to indicate a partially dilapidated building. They clearly have a meaning within the general iconography of the scene. Not much has been written about them, and the interpretation that has been proposed can be found in one of the 2006 articles, 12

Epistula tertia, 11; Sulpice Sévère, Vie de saint Martin, ed. J. Fontaine SC 133 (Paris, 1967), i: 341. Translator’s note: all English citations of Sulpicius Severus in this text sourced from P. Schaff and H. Wace, ed., A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church (New York, 1894), 22–3.

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where Toniolo and Toscano repeat the suggestion that originally came from Father Pierre Davoust: the ants, symbols of hard work, supposedly allude to the words spoken by St Martin shortly before his death: “I do not shrink from toil.”13 I do not believe that this interpretation can stand. In fact, Martin does not tell God that he wants to busy himself on behalf of his monks. When they beg him not leave them, Martin tells God that if his disciples still need him, he will not shrink from the toil, but that his first wish is to see the Lord’s will done. Moreover, Martin’s work on behalf of his monks was primarily a question of promoting the interior life and prayer among them, rather than being actively busy with physical work. An understanding of this motif in the present miniature is not much furthered by the familiar roles of the ant in medieval iconography,14 or its place in the various medieval textual traditions.15 The fundamental themes are the three properties of the ant according to the Greek Physiologos, which are repeated in the Latin Physiologus and in numerous bestiaries, in particular during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.16 Firstly, each ant carries a grain and those that are without do not beg from the others (conduct that finds a parallel in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins in Matthew 25); secondly, when it lays up its grain, the ant cuts it in two to stop it germinating and to preserve it (just as in Scripture, the Christian should divide the Old Testament in two parts, so as to preserve only the spiritual meaning that gives life); and thirdly, through smell, the ant recognises and chooses wheat rather than barley (just as humans should choose Christ and renounce heretical beliefs). These three properties of ants can be found in many bestiaries and similar works,17 in versions that vary in their completeness, depending on the texts; I will mention only a few examples, such as the Bestiaire of Philippe de Thaon, the Oxford 13 14 15

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Toniolo and Toscano, “Per l’attivita giovanile di Girolamo da Cremona,” 117 and note 25, referring to a written communication from Father Davoust of Le Mans, dated 13 December 2000. E. Kirschbaum and W. Braunfels, ed., Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, 8 vols. (Freiburg, 1968–76), i: 110–11. See the excellent internet site Animaliter. Tiere in der Literatur des Mittelalters, which includes a section on the ant, still in development but already very useful. I am very grateful to Rémy Cordonnier for having drawn my attention to the few references relating to the ant that are present in the bibliographical basis for the Animaliter. Physiologos. Le bestiaire des bestiaires, trans. (into French) A. Zucker (Grenoble, 2004), chap. 12, p. 108; Physiologus latinus. Editions préliminaires, versio B, ed. F.J. Carmody (Paris, 1939), chap. 11, pp. 22–5. A substantial bibliography is in existence. Essential references are supplied by B. Van den Abeele, ed., Bestiaires médiévaux. Nouvelles perspectives sur les manuscrits et les traditions textuelles (Louvain-la-Neuve, 2005), 283–300.

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Bestiary, the Bestiaire divin of Guillaume le Clerc, and Pierre de Beauvais’ Bestiaire, both in the short and long versions.18 Wherever there is an iconography attached to these texts, it illustrates these major themes, and, as in the case of the antlion, such representations are very different from the image in the Chantilly miniature.19 Even when ants are included in a typological iconographic programme, their general meaning is consistent with the prevailing principles contained in the bestiaries. This is true of the ants’ presence in two compositions of the Concordantiae caritatis in the middle of the fourteenth century.20 Meanwhile, the biblical symbolism of the ant is limited to two passages in the Book of Proverbs (6:6–8, and 30:24–5), where the insect is held up as an example of industrious work and wisdom, owing to its foresight in stockpiling provisions during the summer. However, in Pliny the Elder there is a statement, taken up by a few other classical writers and appearing later in a small number of medieval texts, that seems to me to give a very clear meaning to the depiction of the ants in the Death of St Martin. In his Natural History, Pliny writes: “Ants are the only living things, besides man, that bestow burial on the dead.”21 Plutarch, in his treatise On the Intelligence of Animals, describes an episode when the Stoic Cleanthes of Assos, watching some ants, reluctantly has to acknowledge that some animals are not without intelligence: 18

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P. de Thaon, Le Bestiaire, ed. E. Wahlberg (Lünd-Paris, 1900, reprint Geneva, 1970), verses 851–1052, pp. 32–9; Le Bestiaire: texte intégral traduit en français moderne, reproduction en fac-similé des miniatures du Bestiaire Ashmole 1511 de la Bodleian Library d’Oxford, trans. (into French) M.-F. Dupuis and S. Louis, commentary by X. Muratova and D. Poirion (Paris, 1988), 95; Guillaume le Clerc, Le Bestiaire, ed. R. Reinsch, coll. Altfranzösische Bibliothek, 14 (Leipzig, 1890; reprint Geneva, 1970), verses 871–960, pp. 259–64; Pierre de Beauvais, Le Bestiaire, short version, ed. G.R. Mermier (Paris, 1977), 67–8; Pierre de Beauvais, Le Bestiaire, long version, ed. C. Baker (Paris, 2010), 176–7. C. Heck and R. Cordonnier, Le Bestiaire médiéval. L’animal dans les manuscrits enluminés (Paris, 2011), 338–41; M. Pastoureau, Bestiaires du Moyen Age (Paris, 2011), 215–18; Dupuis and Louis, Le Bestiaire: texte intégral, ill. p. 114. Lilienfeld, Stiftsbibliothek MS 151, ff. 25v and 135v. See H. Douteil, Die ‘Concordantiae caritatis’ des Ulrich von Lilienfeld. Edition des Codex Campilienlis 151 (um 1355), ed. R. Suntrup, A. Angenendt and V. Honemann, 2 vols. (Münster, 2010), i: 54–55e, 278–279e, and ii: plates p. 147 and 557. A third composition, f. 187v, shows a very original and slightly convoluted allegorical interpretation, linking the example of the ants to the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul, but this has no connection with the motif in the present miniature; i: 394– 395d, and ii: pl. p. 608. Book 11, 36 (§ 110); Pline l’Ancien, Histoire naturelle, Livre xi, ed. A. Ernout and R. Pépin (Paris, 1947), 63. Translator’s note: English citation sourced from: Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, ed. J. Bostock and H.T. Riley, 6 vols. (London, 1855), iii: 38.

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[…] he witnessed the following spectacle: some ants came to a strange anthill carrying a dead ant. Other ants then emerged from the hill and seemed, as it were, to hold converse with the first party and then went back again. This happened two or three times until at last they brought up a grub to serve as the dead ant’s ransom, whereupon the first party picked up the grub, handed over the corpse, and departed.22 Aelian, in On the Characteristics of Animals, also mentions the Cleanthes episode, developing it still further, and adding that the ants received the body of their companion gladly “as though they were recovering a son or brother.”23 Elsewhere, Aelian briefly describes the care that ants take with the corpses of members of their own species.24 Finally, in a third passage, he writes: I have also heard the following example of their cleverness: their relations bury dead ants in the capsules of wheat, just as men bury their parents or all whom they love in coffins.25 The present miniature very clearly shows the ants scuttling and swarming around the entrance to the ants’ nest. We cannot be sure that the artist set out to depict the episode observed by Cleanthes—despite the unquestionably fine quality of the representation, all that we can detect is lively activity—but the texts by Pliny and Plutarch, as well as Aelian’s passage on ants honouring the corpses of their companions “just as men bury their parents or all whom they love in coffins,” seem to me to be the key to this motif in the Chantilly miniature. The deep concern that the monks are showing for St Martin on his death bed gains a universal resonance because they are sharing their grief with a community of other living creatures, however small and unobtrusive they may be. The three classical writers cited above are not the only potential sources for this motif, and a survey of medieval literature adds weight to the evidence, supplying additional references that are both specific and very brief. There is 22

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De l’intelligence des animaux, 11 (Œuvres morales, 967 E), Plutarque, Œuvres morales. Vol. 14, 1. Traité 63, L’intelligence des animaux, ed. J. Bouffartigue (Paris, 2012), 22–3. Translator’s note: English citation sourced from: Plutarch, “On the Intelligence of Animals,” Moralia, ed. and trans. H. Cherniss and W.C. Helmbold, 15 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1957), xii: 371. Book 6, 50; Elien, La personnalité des animaux, Books 1 to 9, ed. A. Zucker (Paris, reissued 2004), 165. Translator’s note: English citation sourced from: Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, trans. A.F. Schofield, 3 vols. (London and Cambridge, MA, 1959), ii: 69. Aelian, Book 5, 49; p. 135. (Scholfield, i: 347). Aelian, Book 6, 43; p. 162. (Scholfield, ii: 63).

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nothing of relevance to be found in Isidore of Seville.26 But Pliny, among other authors, was read more widely from the thirteenth century onwards. Thomas of Cantimpré draws both on the Old Testament and on Pliny. In a passage of the Liber de Natura Rerum, he recalls the injunction in Proverbs 6:6, “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise.” He then goes on to write, “As Pliny said […] ants carry off and bury their dead, and out of all animals they are the only ones to do so, like human beings.”27 I have not done any systematic research to establish the extent to which this assertion was circulating in ­thirteenth-century culture,28 but in De animalibus, Albertus Magnus also says of ants: “They are said to bear the dead out for burial.”29 Finally, another source, much closer in date to the present miniature, must also be mentioned. The Dominican Johannes Nider, who was closely linked to the reformed convent of Colmar, was assigned several important roles, especially in Vienna, Basel and Nuremberg, where he died in 1438. His literary oeuvre includes the Formicarius (The Anthill), written between 1436 and 1438. This is a dense and complex treatise, packed with moral and spiritual teaching for the purpose of instructing the faithful.30 There are seven known editions, printed between 1470 and 1602. Each of the twelve chapters in the work’s five books begins by describing a property of the life of ants, which serves as the basis for a moral discourse reinforced with citations from the Bible and the Church Fathers, and with exempla. Additionally, the first property in each of the books concerns ‘differences’ expressed respectively through the activities, movement, size, development and colour of ants, always articulated in three consecutive propositions. The theme that is relevant to the present case appears at the very beginning of the work, as part of the first book’s first property: 26 27 28

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The passage concerning ants is in Book 12, iii, 9: Isidore de Séville, Etymologies. Livre xii, des animaux, ed. and trans. (into French) J. André (Paris, 1986), 130. Book 9, chap. 21; Thomas de Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum, ed. H. Boese (Berlin and New York, 1973), 303 (citation translated from the French). See C. Chène, “Des fourmis et des hommes. Le ‘Formicarius’ (1436–1438) de Jean Nider, o. p.,” in Il mondo animale. The world of animals (Proceedings of the Lausanne University Colloquium, 1998), vol. 1, Micrologus 8–1 (Florence, 2000), 297–350. Thomas of Cantimpré and Albertus Magnus are the only writers apart from Nider that Chène mentions who ascribe to ants such care for their dead; see 336 note 1. I am very grateful to Catherine Chène for confirming to me, in our correspondence of January 2016, that she knows of no other medieval texts that refer to this characteristic. Book 26, chap. 19; Albertus Magnus, On animals. A medieval Summa Zoologica, ed. K.R. Kitchell and I.M. Resnick, 2 vols. (Baltimore, 1999), ii: 1749. On the Formicarius, see Chène, “Des fourmis,” where the key references to an extensive bibliography on Nider can be found. Catherine Chène is preparing a a critical edition of the Formicarius, forthcoming.

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We have drawn out the first difference in the activity of ants, for some bury their dead, others are conscientiously occupied with useful work, others take their places on the highway, somehow managing to show the way, so that none of them take the wrong path.31 In an allegorical commentary developed over several pages,32 all three propositions of this property are explored, the ants representing the good and simple congregation of the faithful,33 whose activity is very worthy, although it cannot equal the spiritual mission undertaken by the clergy. The ants who bury their dead represent those humans who live in the world, working at material tasks, in which Nider includes the works of mercy, although he also cites the words of Christ to a disciple in Matthew 8:22: “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.”34 However, the allegory fits with an overall view in which ants are highly regarded. The introduction of the first book begins in fact with a reference to Proverbs 6:6, “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise.” A little further on, Nider again cites Proverbs, this time 30:24–5, where ants are described as extremely wise despite their frailty; he then offers up the example of the desert father Malchus of Syria, whose observation of ants, according to St Jerome, made him decide to return to the monastery. The whole of the Formicarius is structured around a dialogue between a theologian—Nider himself—and a lazy student whose name, Piger, is taken directly from the verse in Proverbs: Vade ad formicam, o piger. The faithful are exhorted to model their faith by taking inspiration directly from the example of ants. Even though the Formicarius enjoyed widespread popularity in the fifteenth century, we cannot prove with certainty that it was Nider’s work, rather than a reading of Pliny for example, that is the source of the motif in Girolamo da Cremona’s miniature. It should however be noted that in the wide range of properties of ants described and discussed in the five books of the treatise, burial of the dead is the first proposition of the first property; but it must also be pointed out that this characteristic had been first mentioned even earlier, at 31 32 33

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Citation translated from the French, in Chène, “Des fourmis,” 336. The commentary relating to this first property fills three large printed pages in the edition published in Strasbourg by Knobloch in 1517, which we have used here, and which is available at www.e-rara.ch, the portal for digitised printed works of Swiss libraries. This positive symbolism is consistent across the four first books of the Formicarius. However, in the fifth, which addresses sorcery and witchcraft, ants stand for the faithful victims of devils and then for devils themselves. For the role of the Formicarius in the conceptualization of witchcraft at the end of the Middle Ages, see those works cited in Chène, 2000, especially those by Catherine Chène herself. There is a similar verse in Luke 9:60.

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the beginning of the treatise, where it would clearly have been seen by a reader who only got as far as the introduction to Book 1. Now the message contained in the Formicarius concerning this activity of ants has a particular resonance in the composition of the present miniature. The five monks turn their tearful gaze to the saint on his death bed, while Martin does not look at them but directs his eyes and his prayers skywards, towards the Divine Being in the mandorla.35 God the Father’s hand gestures reflect these two reactions. As has already been noted, he indicates the funeral scene and its participants with his left hand, while his right hand shows what must be the right choice, the celestial domain, as though God is seeking to remind Martin of the words of Matthew 8: “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.” The moral is clear: taking care of the dead, as ants do, is a worthy but worldly task, which does not occupy the highest place on the scale of spiritual values. The kneeling monk in the foreground could have a role in this symbolism. He seems much more serene than his companions, and just as St Martin’s prayer replicates the gestures of the saints depicted on the polyptych, the monk’s prayer is in turn modelled on the virtue of his master, in an imitatio pietatis on three levels.36 We must clearly conclude that the ants’ habit of removing corpses from their nests and putting them in tidy piles, as though in ‘cemeteries,’37 has thus become incorporated in textual traditions and through them has become enriched with imaginary and symbolic elements, which explain the presence of this motif in the Death of St Martin. Whether the source for this image is Pliny or his classical successors, whether it is Thomas of Cantimpré, Albertus Magnus, or the very convincing passage in Nider, or even a re-reading of Pliny enhanced by these texts, the presence of ants in this composition—which is probably a unicum in medieval iconography—is not a picturesque detail, but a reflection on the appropriate attitude to be taken when in the presence of death. As in the bestiaries of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the property attributed to an animal is the basis for a moral commentary aimed at human 35

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In line with the words uttered by Martin according to Sulpicius Severus: “Allow me, dear brother, to fix my looks rather on heaven than on earth, so that my spirit which is just about to depart on its own journey may be directed towards the Lord,” Epistula tertia, 15; Sulpice Sévère, Vie de saint Martin, 343. See F.O. Büttner, Imitatio Pietatis. Motive der christlichen Ikonographie als Modelle zur Verähnlichung (Berlin, 1983). The necrophoric behaviour of ants and their creation of ‘cemeteries’ have been the subject of many studies. A very useful analysis is provided in L. Passera, L’organisation sociale des fourmis (Toulouse, 1984,), 187–8; and in L. Keller and É. Gordon, La vie des fourmis (Paris, 2006), 262–5. For a fascinating experimental study and mathematical modelling of the construction of ant necropolises, see G. Théraulaz et al., “Le comportement collectif des insectes,” Pour la science 314 (December 2003): 116–21.

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beings. But unlike the principle expressed in bestiaries, which plays on the discrepancy between animal behaviour and the qualities expected of mankind, here we have a behaviour that is equivalent. Our composition suggests a link between the monks and the ants, and this distinct connection to the animal world expresses a more universal conception of Creation. In this Quattrocento miniature, a new culture, a new vision of the world, draws two categories of living creature together, under the same divine gaze.

Chapter 23

The Ridware Cartulary and the Great Seal of England Julian Luxford The seal is the essence of the royal letter.1

∵ A cartulary made for the knightly family of Ridware in the early fourteenth century, now London, British Library Egerton MS 3041, contains a number of drawings inserted to accompany documents.2 These drawings are in at least three hands, one of them belonging to a trained artist. The largest and most elaborate represents Edward ii enthroned in majesty (f. 8v), and is closely based on the image on the front of the Great Seal (Figs 23.1, 23.2, 23.3). It stands at the beginning of a copy of a royal charter of 1311, granting Sir Thomas Ridware (d. c. 1327) and his successors the right to hold a weekly market and annual fair at their manor of Seal in Leicestershire.3 The artist did not include the round form or inscription of the Great Seal, but the resemblance is nevertheless obvious, and is likely to have been significant given the drawing’s incorporation into a copy of a document issued by royal warrant. As such, the drawing 1 A fifteenth-century judgement, quoted in B.M. Bedos-Rezak, “In Search of a Semiotic Paradigm: The Matter of Sealing in Medieval Thought and Praxis (1050–1400),” in Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals, ed. N. Adams, J. Cherry and J. Robinson (London, 2008), 5. 2 See, most informatively, British Museum, Catalogue of the Additions to the Manuscripts 1926– 1930 (London, 1959), 222–3 (with further references); also G.R.C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain and Ireland, rev. by C. Bray et al. (London, 2010), 275 (no. 1316). The cartulary is more expansively discussed, and its contents partially printed, in I.H. Jeayes and G. Wrottesley, “The Rydeware Chartulary,” Collections for a History of Staffordshire 16 (1895): 229–302. Other detailed descriptions are I.H. Jeayes, Descriptive Catalogue of the Character and Muniments of the Gresley Family (London, 1895), xi–xii, 112–19; J. Nichols, The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester, 4 vols. in 8 (London, 1795–1815), iii: 979–1008. 3 The villages of Overseal and Netherseal, now in Derbyshire, lie about five miles south-west of Ashby-de-la-Zouch.

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The Ridware Cartulary and the Great Seal of England

Figure 23.1

London, British Library Egerton MS 3041, f. 8v © British Library Board

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Figure 23.2

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London, British Library Egerton MS 3041, f. 8v (detail) © British Library Board

The Ridware Cartulary and the Great Seal of England

Figure 23.3

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Front of the Great Seal of England as modified and used by Edward ii. After Alfred and Alan Wyon, The Great Seals of England (London, 1887)

qualifies as a reproduction in the useful terms proposed by Jonathan Alexander: its accuracy in a specific context implies admiration for and a belief in the canonical status of its model.4 The drawing was probably executed in or shortly after 1313. It belongs to a preliminary gathering of eight leaves added to the original core of the manuscript (ff. 9–55), and follows another charter granted by Edward ii in 1313 which is the latest document in this gathering (f. 7v). Both of these royal charters, plus a non-royal one of the thirteenth century (f. 5r), were transcribed in the same anglicana hand. The same artist did another drawing to accompany this thirteenth-century document, and he evidently intended to insert one on f. 7v, too, as a large blank space has been left for the purpose. Much of this preliminary gathering is occupied by a history of the Ridware family from the reign of ­William ii, copied, so the compiler states, from an old scroll found in a chest 4 J.J.G. Alexander, “Facsimiles, Copies, and Variations: The Relationship to the Model in Medieval and Renaissance European Illuminated Manuscripts,” in Retaining the Original: Multiple Originals, Copies and Reproductions, ed. K. Preciado (Washington DC, 1989), 64.

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(ceste chose fut troue en une huche escrist sur une veyl escrouwe). There is also a memorandum in red ink stating that Thomas Ridware had the cartulary made in the second year of Edward ii’s reign (so, 1308 or 1309) (f. 3v).5 While the charters granted by this king arrived slightly too late to be copied into the original cartulary, Thomas found a neat way of incorporating them by tacking them onto his family history, where they served as flattering appendixes, as well as an appropriate opening to the series of documents that follow (cartularies routinely commence with royal documents). There is no reason to think that he waited long after 1313 to do this, and nothing obvious in the style of the script or image to suggest it. The aim of this essay is briefly to consider this drawing of Edward ii in relation to its manuscript and some other images and descriptions of seals. Effectively, this will introduce it to the current scholarship on English medieval seals, and also the literature on manuscript illumination in the period of the Decorated style, both of which it seems to have eluded thus far.6 It can claim attention in these fields on the one hand by virtue of its conceptual interest, and on the other by the fact that it is a fine quality and relatively large image that can be closely dated and in all likelihood localised. With this said, I do not intend to dwell on its broader scholarly significance. For the present, I am simply turning over a stone to show what lies underneath, and also doing a little mild prodding. Any well-balanced assessment would have to proceed from investigation of the cartulary’s other images, as this drawing was evidently conceived as one of a series that would enliven and solemnize the manuscript. The thoroughgoing historian would also want to consider the relationship of the Ridware drawings to images found in other English cartularies and registers. While this work would hardly involve an infinite regress—the number of such manuscripts is limited, if larger than usually recognised—this is not the place for it. Although the leaves of the Ridware cartulary have been cropped, the drawing has not suffered. Its height and width are more than half those of the textblock, and at 135 × 84 mm it occupies almost a quarter of the total surviving area of the page. It is executed in a lighter ink than was used for the text, and there are points of overlap with the script. Evidently, and conventionally, the text was inserted first, and it seems very unlikely (if not actually impossible) that scribe and artist were identical.7 However, there are indications of close 5 Jeayes and Wrottesley, “Ridware Chartulary,” 261. 6 I thank John Cherry and Elizabeth New for advice on this point. 7 Elsewhere in the manuscript (e.g. f. 9r) scribe and artist seem to have been identical. In these cases the hand, though different, is equally practiced, but the drawings are amateurish.

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collaboration. The blank space at the head of the charter on f. 7v, which is one of only two such blanks in the manuscript, is taller but significantly narrower than the drawing on folio 8v.8 One way of explaining why it was left unfilled is that the cartulary’s makers realised its shape would not accommodate a drawing recognisably based on the Great Seal, and, learning by their misjudgement, left a larger space at the head of the following royal charter. Folio 8v was not the obvious place for it: one would expect the monarch to appear where his authority is first invoked in favour of Thomas Ridware. In support of this idea, it should be pointed out that the lack of an initial ‘E’ at the beginning of the document on folio 7v does not show that an elaborate capital letter was intended for the blank space. While the royal name on folio 8v is complete, drawings stand in for the initial letters of documents throughout the cartulary. The charter on folio 5r, copied and embellished by the same combination of artist and scribe, supplies an example. The artist scaled up his exemplar and departed from it in minor ways that would be expected in light of his training, artistic environment and the space he had to work with. On the Great Seal, the frontal pose of the king is rigid, but the drawing suggests a slight rotation of the torso to the left (i.e. the viewer’s right), together with a moderate elevation of the left leg. The feet are cocked, and the left one shown in three-quarter profile. As might be expected given the greater fluidity of his medium, the artist has made the drapery more mobile, and has also extended the stems of the orb and sceptre held by the king relative to the height of the composition. Altogether, the drawn figure is proportionately taller than its counterpart. The adjustments to its length and torsion are precisely in line with trends in contemporary manuscript illumination, and one would assume that the artist simply referred to a model-book or painted exemplar were the resemblance to the image on the Great Seal not so obvious and the manuscript context not so peculiarly suited to that image’s reproduction.9 The architecture of the throne has also been adjusted, 8 The other is on f. 54r, next to a non-royal charter. 9 These observations apply, mutatis mutandis, to a majesty drawing derived from the French royal seal, inhabiting the initial ‘C’ of a charter issued by Charles V in 1364. In this case, the drawing reproduces the image from the front of a new royal seal made in the same year: see G. Brunel, Images du pouvoir royal. Les chartes décorées des Archives nationales xiiie–xve siècles (Paris, 2005), 125–8 (no. 16). However, the semiotic of this drawing is different from that of the drawing discussed here, for it is on a single-sheet document apparently once sealed with its iconographic exemplar, and was kept in a royal archive rather than in the hands of an individual who wanted to insinuate royal favour. For an elaborate analysis see B.M. BedosRezak, “Image as Patron: Convention and Invention in Fourteenth-Century France,” in Patrons and Professionals in the Middle Ages, ed. P. Binski and E.A. New (Donington, 2012), 224–6.

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so that it is taller in relation to its width than what is represented on the seal. Most of its components are the same, but the base of the drawn throne does not taper at the sides, and its foliate finials are less fleshy. It is fundamentally simpler, and elegant in a ‘Decorated’ rather than ‘Early English’ manner. The architectural motifs are comparatively larger, the artist preferring elaborate tracery to the stratified arrangement of small panels and geometrical motifs found on the seal. A Gothic pattern of lozenges has been applied to the cushion the king sits on, and the crocket on the wings of the throne is of a later, more flamboyant type. Omitted from the drawing are the corbel on which the throne on the seal is shown to rest, and also the lions which bracket the base of the throne. However, most of the distinctive features of the seal are reproduced, including the long-tailed lions under the king’s feet and the dove at the tip of his sceptre. As noted, the artist did not try to suggest the seal’s round form or inscription. Instead, to frame the figure, he invented a Gothic tabernacle, defined on each side by a slender column with vines winding up the shaft. This has a castellated canopy with turrets of fictive masonry, crocketed gables and a shallow, pendant arch with elaborate cusping in the centre. The suspended bases of the two inner turrets have the lion’s head masks widely found in book-art and embroidery of the period. No use is made here of ogee arches, although ogees do appear in the tracery of the throne. While everything about this tabernacle corresponds to the taste reflected in Court art of the period, the immediate manuscript context for the architecture is unclear. Some features are broadly paralleled in manuscripts like the Tickhill Psalter (New York, Public Library Spencer Collection MS 26: c. 1310) and Brussels Peterborough Psalter (Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique MS 9961–2: c. 1300–15), neither of which seems to be a London product.10 But the tracery of the throne includes split cusps of a type usually associated with south-east England (although there are examples in window tracery and microarchitecture further north and west, including in Leicestershire).11 For present purposes, this conundrum may be set aside with the simple observation that whatever the style of the drawing implies about the provenance of its artist, the work is most likely to have been done locally, on or near one of the Ridware estates in Staffordshire, Leicestershire or Derbyshire. It seems prima facie unlikely that Thomas Ridware sent a few 10

11

The Tickhill parallels are clearer with reference to the tabernacle in the drawing of folio 5r of the cartulary, with which compare particularly the Jesse Tree composition on folio 5v of the Psalter. On these illuminated manuscripts generally see L.F. Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts 1285–1385, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 5, 2 vols. (London, 1986), nos 26, 40. See e.g. S. Hart, Medieval Church Window Tracery in England (Woodbridge, 2010), 68–9.

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leaves of his cartulary far afield to have pen and ink drawings added to them— if, indeed, he sent them anywhere at all. The artist may just as well have come to him.12 In stating that an image on the Great Seal served as exemplar for this drawing, I do not mean to imply that the artist copied directly onto the page from the three-dimensional, dark green impression of that object attached to the original of the charter on folio 8v. This was suggested by a Miss M. Gresley, who published a list of the drawings in the cartulary in 1860 illustrated by copies she drew herself, but the idea is dubious.13 While there is no need to doubt that the artist knew an impression of the seal (as opposed to someone else’s drawing of an impression), he must have made one or more preliminary designs before executing the finished image. Getting everything in proportion while simultaneously scaling up the composition, elongating the figure and throne and adding and subtracting various minor details surely required some planning. Moreover, he could as easily have worked with the seal of another document (for example, that attached to the original of the charter copied on folio 7v), and an impression of Edward I’s seal would have served him just as well. Edward ii used the same die for the front of his own Great Seal, adding only a small castle motif on either side of the throne.14 The claim that Thomas Ridware and his artist intended viewers to recognise this drawing as a reproduction of the image on the Great Seal is obviously distinct from the manifest use of that seal as a model. There is good evidence for this claim, but, as it is not provable, it should not simply be accepted. Two common-sense caveats arise in relation to it: first, that the claim seems to put a lot of pressure on a small, private, presumably rarely viewed work of art; and secondly, that it suggests an interrelationship of images of a sort often wished for and guessed at by art historians but seldom demonstrated. A tamer hypothesis would be that the iconography was only meant to be generically appropriate to the document it accompanies, just as images of kings in chronicles, 12 13

14

The sense of this will obviously depend on what the reader chooses to believe about the logistics of manuscript illumination in the period. From any point of view, the evidence is slight. M. Gresley, “Drawings in the Rydeware Chartulary,” Anastatic Drawing Society 4 (1860): 8 and plates xlv–xlvii. Most of the notes and drawings in this obscure publication are by the same author, to whose family the Ridware cartulary belonged in the nineteenth century. The lack of these castles does not indicate use of an impression of Edward i’s seal. The artist had no room to include them, and could anyway be confident that omission of such minor features would not disguise the status of his drawing. For comparative illustrations see Alfred and Alan Wyon, The Great Seals of England (London, 1887), 26–7 and plates vii (no. 47), viii (no. 49).

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books of statutes and cartularies normally are. Other drawings in the Ridware cartulary might be produced in favour of this conclusion. These illustrate standing figures of knights and clerics, in or out of tabernacles, none of which is recognisably based on a seal or any other work of art. It is always possible that some of the clerics were drawn with reference to images on seals, as later medieval ecclesiastical seals often represented standing figures holding books and pastoral staves. But it is unlikely that they were supposed to remind viewers of specific seals, if only because no ecclesiastical seal other than the pope’s was widely recognisable in the way the Great Seal was. The neat little drawing on folio 5r helps to make the point (Fig. 23.4). This shows a tonsured cleric in an elaborate tabernacle, clutching a book in his right hand and pointing to it with his left. If the text of the adjacent charter is a guide, then the figure is meant to represent the prior of the Cluniac house of St James at Dudley in Worcestershire. However, while the surviving impression of Dudley’s common seal dates from around the time the charter was issued, the rudimentary figure shown on it does not occupy a tabernacle. It does hold a book, but in its left hand, while the right hand holds a staff.15 The tabernacle on folio 5r is paralleled on seals from more important institutions, including those of various bishops.16 As a number of documents in the cartulary were issued and witnessed by prelates, it is possible that Thomas Ridware owned impressions of such seals. Equally, the tabernacle here may have nothing to do with a seal. However, the drawing of a king on folio 8v is different, for reasons that have already been mentioned or implied. These can be quickly summarised. First, and in spite of the differences noted above, it closely imitates the image on the Great Seal. The only likely reasons for such imitation in manuscript decoration would be artistic insecurity leading to slavish copying or else a desire to recall the model. Insecurity can be discounted on the grounds of manifest technical facility, together with the fact that the artist was confident enough to adjust his exemplar while remaining close to it. Secondly, the image of a king in majesty used on the Great Seal was widely familiar by virtue of its prestige, longevity, and the large number of impressions of it in circulation. No argument is needed for its prestige, and its longevity was such that it had already been in use for 15 16

W. de Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 6 vols. (London, 1887–1900), i: 538 (no. 3076), illustrated in Victoria History of the County of Worcester. Vol. 2, ed. J.W. Willis-Bund and W. Page (London, 1906), plate iii. See e.g. Victoria History Worcester, plate i. A good parallel in a seal for the heavy architecture of the tabernacle on folio 5r is the common seal of Osney Abbey (c. 1290), illustrated in S. Heslop, “English Seals in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” in Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200–1400, ed. J.J.G. Alexander and P. Binski (London, 1987), 115.

The Ridware Cartulary and the Great Seal of England

Figure 23.4

London, British Library Egerton MS 3041, f. 5r © British Library Board

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over 250 years when the Ridware cartulary was made, albeit the elaborate throne and the sceptre (replacing a sword) were innovations of Henry iii.17 The printed calendars of enrolled royal letters give some idea of the number of impressions that were made. Here, it is worth emphasising that the main intended users of any cartulary were people already familiar with documents, and thus familiar with the Great Seal’s appearance. And thirdly, this reproduction of the seal’s majesty image forms part of a composition whose other component is a charter issued on behalf of Edward ii to the man who commissioned the cartulary.18 The charter establishes a prominent, remunerative, perpetual entitlement. Thomas had every reason to be proud of this royal endorsement of his interests, and to wish to signify it as distinctly and officially as possible. Hiring an artist skilled enough to reproduce the image on the seal in a recognisable manner was apparently his way of achieving this. If this idea is sound, then the drawing represents an unusual way of recalling an original document and the privileges it signified. Later medieval artists and scribes had various ways of evoking the original which authorised the copy, but it is hard to think of an exact parallel for the approach adopted here. The most common method was written description. Accordingly, a scribe would note an aspect or aspects of the seal of a document, or else some peculiarity of text, script or parchment, in order that his record of this document could be checked against an original, or else to give the reader a concrete sense of something that was inaccessible. The basic form of a seal or the colour of its wax might be mentioned, as well as how it was attached. So, for example, transcripts of royal documents in a fourteenth-century abbatial register from Glastonbury Abbey include the information that they have oblong seals hanging from them.19 John Peckham’s archiepiscopal register mentions a letter with a seal of Henry iii attached, the seal being of green wax. Statute books and chronicles also yield examples: there is a detailed fifteenth-century description 17

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The introduction of the sceptre on Henry iii’s third Great Seal in 1259 was noted by contemporary chroniclers, testifying to a broad contemporary interest in the seal’s design: Lateinische Schriftquellen zur Kunst in England, Wales und Schottland vom Jahre 901 bis zum Jahre 1307, ed. O. Lehmann-Brockhaus, 5 vols. (Munich, 1955–60), iii: 349–50 (no. 6399). As well as the transcript of the charter, there is the note of warranty (“[per breve de priv] ato sigillo”; or possibly “[per billam de priv]ato sigillo”) that originally endorsed the writ authorising the charter, and below this a memorandum about the entitlement detailed in the charter. Some of this text is missing due to loss of part of the leaf. The “sigillo” of the note of warranty is, incidentally, not to be thought a catalyst for the drawing. It was a common form of authorisation: see A.L. Brown, “The Authorization of Letters under the Great Seal,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 37 (1964): 125–55. London, BL Arundel MS 2, ff. 48v, 52r.

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of an impression of the Great Seal of William ii in a customary from Salisbury Cathedral, while the chapter act book of Beverley Minster goes into similar detail about an impression of the seal of a bishop of Coventry and Lichfield attached to a document issued in 1306.20 Also common, and involving artists, was the practice of inserting next to a document a drawing or painted miniature of a grantor handing a sealed charter to a beneficiary in the form of an oblong motif, often with a roundel appended to it to suggest a seal. There is an example of this in the Ridware cartulary (f. 17r), by the artist who did the Edward ii drawing, showing a cleric handing a sealed charter to a layman. The associated document records the grant of a messuage in Seal by the prior and canons of Church Gresley in Derbyshire to William Rideware (d. c. 1274), including the fact that the original instrument had been sealed with the common seal in the priory’s chapter-house in testimony to the grant.21 Occasionally, the attempt to evoke the form of a sealed document was more ambitious. The facsimile of a supposed bull of St Augustine of Canterbury in Thomas of Elmham’s Speculum Augustinianum, made in 1414 (Cambridge, Trinity Hall MS 1, f. 24r), is a well-known and unusually candid example.22 It was more common to introduce only a round, inscribed motif signifying a bull next to a transcript of a papal document in a cartulary.23 Another semantically and artistically complex example is the series of figures of patron-kings holding sealed charters in the tail margins of some of the pages in the Sherborne Missal. These have recently been studied by Jessica Berenbeim, who explains their sophisticated relationship to the historical and legal claims of Sherborne’s monks.24 In this case, the bottom-edge location of the seals corresponds to that of seals on independent, single-sheet documents. As the images in the Missal are compositionally self-contained, this was probably not why they were painted at the bottoms of pages. In other cases, however, scribes and 20 21

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Lateinische Schriftquellen, iii: 345, 347, 350–1 (nos 6372, 6388, 6404); and see in general the section on “Siegelkunde,” 344–51 (nos 6369–6404). As well as the two figures, the drawing includes an oak tree and a pig, although the charter is not about pannage. Perhaps some mistake was made here, but in any case, the moral is that images associated with documents do not necessarily adumbrate the content of those documents. A. Hiatt, “The Cartographic Imagination of Thomas Elmham,” Speculum 75 (2000): 871–8; idem, The Making of Medieval Forgeries: False Documents in Fifteenth-Century England (London, 2004), 52–7. E.g. London, BL Cotton mss Claudius C ix, ff. 170v, 171v and Claudius B iv, ff. 164v, 165v (from Abingdon Abbey); Kew, The National Archives E164/24, ff. 142v, 143v (from Malmesbury Abbey). J. Berenbeim, Art of Documentation: Documents and Visual Culture in Medieval England (Toronto, 2015), 73–101.

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artists­did try to get viewers thinking about the form of a document by placing an image of a seal at the bottom of a page. A distinctive, ‘documentary’ miseen-page that is frankly suggestive rather than precisely replicative was the result. Two fifteenth-century English examples may be mentioned, one incorporated into a chronicle, the other in a secular cartulary. Both incorporate inscriptions which make the artist’s intention absolutely clear. At the bottom of folio 164r in the copy of the Fitzhugh chronicle now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 96 (c. 1425–50), there is a large drawing of a yellow seal ‘attached’ to the text above it by two black tags (Fig. 23.5). This text is that of a charter ratifying the marriage of Henry ii’s daughter Joanna to William ii of Sicily in 1177, and the seal is labelled Sigillum aureum Regis Sicilie. The location and tags of the seal as well as its form make the imitative intention obvious, but the inscriptions on the seal are written in a fifteenth-century hand: this is not a facsimile of the sort made by Thomas of Elmham.25 The other example is in the cartulary “wretyne mad and bownd by ye handys of mayster Thomas Anlaby,” probably in the 1440s, for the defence of his family’s rights (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 329).26 On folio 43r there is a transcript of an eleventh-century document, with (as usual in the manuscript) a heading in English in red ink which explains the text’s importance to posterity: “Here makys mencyon how Sir Robert of Meus come into yngland at þe conquest (ac wyttnes hys sell of þis dede, qwher he ryddis on hys hors wyth hys swerd in hys hand) hes gyff to þe monkkis of Mews þes tenementis yn Myton under wrytyng.” The parenthetical clause about the seal—I have added the brackets—is answered in the outer margin at the bottom of the page by a drawing in red and black ink of a seal with a mounted knight who brandishes a sword on it, along with the circumferential inscription + Sigillum Roberti de Melsa in Lombardic lettering (Fig. 23.6). Again, this is no facsimile, but it is an attempt to do more than provide a copy of a document that could be checked against its original. It evokes an object whose form, layout and materiality were thought to contribute to the effectiveness of the volume into which it was copied.27 None of these examples of the evocation of original documents within books had any hard forensic status. Medieval standards of proof in relation to documents usually seem to have been high, to the extent that an original 25 26 27

For the text, complete with an engraving of the seal (but with Roman lettering rather than Secretary), see Historiæ Anglicanæ Scriptores x, ed. R. Twysden (London, 1652), cols 1112–14. This quotation is on folio 143v. See in general F. Wormald and P. Giles, Descriptive Catalogue of the Additional Illuminated Manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam Museum, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1982), i: 317–19. Post-medieval antiquaries occasionally produced their own versions of this conceit: see e.g. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 146, f. 89r.

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Figure 23.5

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Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 96, f. 164r Reproduced by permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

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Figure 23.6

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Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 329, f. 43r Reproduced by permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

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c­ harter might not be admissible if its seal were damaged.28 Awareness of this helps to explain why some medieval archivists went to lengths to repair chipped and broken seals in their custody, and also why bags and skippets were routinely used as protection for important impressions.29 On the other hand, sealed documents were sometimes produced in trials to insinuate entitlements which they did not actually prove. The examples that spring to mind involve those cases of disputed arms tried during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century in the Court of Chivalry.30 In these trials, seals with the disputed arms on them, or seals without the arms but bearing on the honour of a given disputant, were routinely described by deponents, and also brought into court attached to documents. When, for example, canons of Bridlington priory in Yorkshire testified to Sir Richard Scrope’s right to bear the arms azure, a bend or, they produced a number of twelfth-century charters sealed with what the deposition record describes as “solemn” seals. This meant large seals with equestrian figures on them, “like those used at the time of the Conquest” (come ceux de Conquest userent). None of these charters is said to have borne the disputed arms: at least one of them was not even issued by an ancestor of Richard, but only had a Scrope name in its witness-list.31 The reason for exhibiting them was not directly to prove that the Scope family had used the disputed arms since the reign of Henry i. The point was rather to suggest the integrity of Richard Scrope in a way that would make his claim to the arms more appealing. Essentially, the solemnly sealed documents were produced to make a sentimental impact on those charged with recording the evidence. I submit that this sort of metaphysical appeal to the viewer helps to explain why the drawing of Edward ii in the Ridware cartulary looks the way it does. While there is no evidence, or probability, that Thomas intended the manuscript to be exhibited in a court of law, he did intend it to be seen by others, both in his lifetime and in the future. To viewers of the sort he envisaged, the drawing on folio 8v must have signified a positive exercise of the royal will in 28 29

30 31

P. Brand, “Seals and the Law in the Thirteenth Century,” in Seals and their Context in the Middle Ages, ed. P. Schofield (Oxford, 2015), 111–19; Bedos-Rezak, “Semiotic Paradigm.” See e.g. S. Heslop, “Seals and Sealing,” in Leiston Abbey Cartulary and Butley Priory Charters, ed. R. Mortimer (Woodbridge, 1979), 47–9 (repairs); E.A. New, Seals and Sealing Practices (London, 2010), 23–5, 117 (bags, skippets); H.C. Maxwell-Lyte, Historical Notes on the Use of the Great Seal of England (London, 1926), 302, 312 (bags and skippets for impressions of the Great Seal specifically). For an overview of these cases see M.H. Keen, Origins of the English Gentleman: Heraldry, Chivalry and Gentility in Medieval England, c.1300-c.1500 (Stroud, 2002), 25–42. The Controversy between Sir Richard Scrope and Sir Robert Grosvenor in the Court of Chivalry, ed. N.H. Nicolas, 2 vols. (London, 1832), i: 101; ii: 281–2.

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the service of Ridware interests. Fundamentally, it marked out an important document and attested the existence of an original, sealed charter in the Ridware archive, but it also validated the Ridware family history it rounded out. It did this in an impressionistic way which is not amenable to precise definition; but this is not, perhaps, to venture a lot, for the relationships of medieval viewers to medieval images were broadly and routinely of this nature, and even today are often more effectively felt than understood.

Chapter 24

Sin and Salvation in the Hours of Jean de Dunois Richard Gameson The Dunois Hours (London, British Library Yates Thompson MS 3), a compact but very richly-decorated book, is paradoxically well known yet imperfectly understood.1 Its principal illuminator, now styled the Dunois Master after this very volume, has slowly but surely emerged as a distinct personality who plied his trade within a complicated web of collaborations with other Parisian artists and scribes. Yet these invaluable gains in understanding the artist and his working contexts, and identifying the considerable output of his atelier have tended to distract from the significance of his individual creations in their own right, not least his eponymous manuscript. The present article is a modest step towards redressing the balance. After summarising what is known about the artist, and reviewing some salient facts about the patron, we shall consider notable features within the Dunois Hours itself, focusing less on their antecedents and parallels (the aspects which have been treated most fully by previous commentators) than on their resonance in the context of this particular book. We shall then be in a position to appreciate the significance of the manuscript in relation to its original owner. Scholarly investigation over the last half century has brought gradual clarification to our understanding of the character and career of the Dunois Master.2 1 135 × 95 mm (text-block, 70 × 44 mm); c. 50 mm thick at its widest point when clasped shut. If its margins originally approximated to the ‘classic’ ratio, then the current 20 mm (inner), 20 (upper), 30 (outer) and 48 (lower) would have been c. 20, 30, 40 and 50 respectively, adding 12 mm to the overall height and 10 mm to the width, suggesting initial dimensions of 147 × 105 mm. It would still be ‘pocket sized’ and smaller than various other Horae from the same workshop, even in their current trimmed state: e.g. Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery MS Mayer 12001 (216 × 155, text-block, 95 × 58 mm); BL Add. MS 18751 (195 × 142, text-block, 88 × 65 mm); BL Add. MS 35312 (220 × 158; text-block, 100 × 72 mm); and Manchester, John Rylands University Library Latin MS 164 (220 × 160; text-block, 105 × 65 mm). The Use is Rome, the calendar Parisian. M.R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of Fifty Manuscripts from the Collection of Henry Yates Thompson (Cambridge, 1898), no. 11, pp. 49–57; all the major decorated pages are reproduced, with commentary, in A. Châtelet, “Les Heures de Dunois,” Art de l’enluminure 25 (2008): 12–73; a full digital reproduction is available on the website of the British Library. 2 E.P. Spencer, “Gerson, Ciboule and the late Bedford Master’s Shop,” Scriptorium 19 (1965): 104–8; D. Byrne, “The Hours of the Admiral Prigent de Coëtivy,” Scriptorium 28 (1974): 248–61; P.R. Monks, “Two Parisian Artists of the Dunois Hours and a Flemish Motif,” Gazette des

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_026

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Associated with the workshop of the Bedford Master in the 1430s, the Dunois Master then emerged in his own right to be a leading figure in Parisian illumination during the next generation, the last dated work in his style being accomplished in the 1460s.3 Certain coincidences in career pattern, patronage and oeuvre raise the possibility that he may have been identical with the documented illuminator, Jean Haincelin; however, in the absence of signatures or colophons, this is not susceptible of proof.4 The range of those with whom he collaborated during his long working life reflects the fluidity of bookproducing partnerships in later medieval Paris,5 which in turn makes it impossible to be specific about the particular circumstances in which he plied his

Beaux-Arts 112 (1988): 61–8; P.R. Monks, The Brussels Horloge de Sapience. Iconography and Text of Brussels, BR MS iv 111 (Leiden, 1990), 27–8; J.H. Marrow, The Hours of Simon de Varie (London, 1994); F. Avril and N. Reynaud, Les Manuscrits à peintures en France 1440–1520 (Paris, 1993), 22–4, 35–7; N. Reynaud, “Les Heures du chancelier Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins et la peinture parisienne autour de 1440,” Revue de l’art 126 (1999): 23–35; R. Watson, Illuminated Manuscripts and their Makers (London, 2003), no. 11, pp. 96–7; D. Thiébaut, Ph. Lorentz and F.-R. Martin, Primitifs franςais. Découvertes et redécouvertes (Paris, 2004), 89–92; J.J.G. Alexander, J.H. Marrow and L.F. Sandler, The Splendor of the Word. Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at the New York Public Library (London, 2005), no. 52; C. Reynolds, “The Workshop of the Master of the Duke of Bedford: definitions and identities,” Patrons, Authors and Workshops: books and book production in Paris around 1400, ed. G. Croenen and P. Ainsworth (Leuven, 2006), 437–72; Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois”; G.T. Clark, Art in a Time of War. The Master of Morgan 453 and Manuscript Illumination in Paris during the English Occupation (1419–1435) (Toronto, 2016), 257–78; Christie’s, Illuminated Manuscripts from the Collection of Maurice Burrus (London, 25 May 2016), lots 9 and 18; Christie’s, Valuable Books and Manuscripts (London, 13 July 2016), lot. 113 (‘Hachette Hours’). 3 The earliest chronological marker is provided by his contribution to the Salisbury Breviary (Paris, BnF MS Lat. 17294: Ch. Sterling, La peinture médiévale à Paris 1300–1500, 2 vols. (Paris, 1987–90), i: no. 60; F. Avril, La Passion des manuscrits enluminés. Bibliophiles franςais 1280– 1580 (Paris, 1991), no. 13), the first campaign on which (outlined by Reynolds, “Workshop,” 445 n. 17) presumably stopped in or shortly after 1435 with the death of the patron, John, duke of Bedford. Clark, Art in a Time of War, 271, regards a Leonardo Bruni, Première guerre punique of 1457x61 (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal MS 5086) and an Honoré Bouvet, Arbre des batailles of 1460 (Paris, BnF MS Fr. 1276) as his last datable works, whereas Avril and Reynaud, Manuscrits à peintures, 37, cite the Livre des cas des nobles malheureux (Chantilly, Library of the Musée Condé MS 401) that was written in 1466 for Jacques d’Armagnac. 4 Apparently first mooted by P. Durrieu (in A. Michel, ed., Histoire de l’Art, 18 vols. (Paris, 1905– 29), iii: 165; iv: 707–8), the theory was cautiously restated by Avril and Reynaud, Manuscrits à Peintures, 38, then elaborated by Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois,” 18–19. Cf. Reynolds, “Workshop,” 442–3. 5 For an overview of the collaborations see Clark, Art in a Time of War, 257–78. For the broader context of Parisian book production, see R.H. and M.A. Rouse, Manuscripts and their Makers. Commercial Book Producers in Medieval Paris 1200–1500, 2 vols. (Turnhout, 2000).

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trade—beyond the fact that these will have been continuously evolving.6 Indeed, given the range of work in the relevant style and its intersections with other idioms, it may be better to think in terms of an atelier than a single artist; however, for ease of reference, the designation ‘Dunois Master’ will be retained here. The projects in which the Dunois Master (or atelier) was involved included secular Romances and service books, but are dominated by Books of Hours (some thirty in number, divided fairly evenly between examples whose miniatures are all or almost all in the signature style, and others where the Dunois manner appears alongside those of other artists/ateliers). At the centre of the corpus is a subgroup of Horae that are distinguished by their high quality, ‘pocket’ format, and the use of Bâtarde script, not to mention the elevated status of their patrons. In these and other Horae the Dunois Master exploited to the full his familiarity with designs that had been current in the Bedford atelier, while enriching the repertoire with motifs drawn from high-status works by other hands – which, in relation to the Dunois Hours in particular, were nothing less than the Boucicaut Hours, the Très Riches Heures of Jean de Berry, and the Rolin Madonna by Jan van Eyck.7 The citations from this last work imply that the Dunois Hours was produced after c. 1436x41, the most authoritative date-range for that panel;8 and given the place of the manuscript within the trajectory of the Dunois Master’s oeuvre—in particular its proximity to, even 6 See in general Reynolds, “Workshop”; also the complementary perspectives of J. Lowden, “Beauty or Truth? Making a Bible Moralisée in Paris around 1400,” in Patrons, Authors and Workshops, ed. Croenen and Ainsworth, 197–222. 7 Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André MS 2; Chantilly, Library of the Musée Condé MS 65; Paris, Musée du Louvre inv. 1271, MR 705. On these borrowings see Monks, “Flemish Motif”; Reynolds, “Workshop”; and Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois.” Examples of borrowings from the background of the Rolin Madonna for images of King David and the Flight into Egypt in other Horae from the orbit of the Bedford and Dunois ateliers are provided by, e.g., Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS McClean 81 (P. Binski and S. Panayotova, ed., The Cambridge Illuminations. Ten Centuries of Book Production in the Medieval West (Turnhout, 2005), no. 90); London, BL Add. MS 35312, f. 56r; Los Angeles, Getty Museum Ludwig ix.6; 83.ML.102 (A. von Euw and J.M. Plotzek, Die Handschriften der Sammlung Ludwig, 4 vols. (Cologne, 1979–85), ii: 103–14, the page in question reproduced on p. 105); and Oxford, Keble College MS 39 (M.B. Parkes, The Medieval Manuscripts of Keble College Oxford (London, 1979), 175; Clark, Art in a Time of War, ill. 12). Freer but still recognisable interpretations appear in many miniatures in the Coëtivy Hours (Dublin, Chester Beatty Library W.082; e.g. ff. 13r, 34v, 68r, 73r, 172r, 303r) and form the backdrop to John on Patmos in BL Harley MS 2971, f. 13r, by another hand from the same extended circle. 8 Based on the dendrochronological evidence: M. Comblen-Sonkes and Ph. Lorentz, Corpus de la Peinture des Anciens Pays-Bas Méridionaux et de la Principauté de Liège au Quinzième Siècle 17: Musée du Louvre, Paris ii, 2 vols. (Bruxelles, 1995), ii: no. 175, pp. 11–80, esp. pp. 57–8 and 78–9.

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possible anticipation of his Coëtivy Hours, securely datable to 1444x50 and perhaps ascribable more specifically to 14449—it seems highly likely to have been accomplished in the 1440s.10 The standing of the Dunois Master is demonstrated by the circumstance that, apparently inheriting the elevated patronage that had previously been directed to the Bedford atelier, he became the illuminator of choice for highranking supporters and officials of the resurgent French monarchy from the aftermath of their reclaiming Paris from the English (1436) through to the 1450s. (The fact that it was to Jean Fouquet that this position was then ceded should surely be viewed as confirmation of the discernment of the court circle in question.)11 The notables who commissioned work from the Dunois Master included Prigent de Coëtivy (d. 1450), admiral of France, Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins, chancellor from 1445, Guillaume Gouffier (d. 1495), royal chamberlain and counsellor, Etienne Chevalier, treasurer from 1452, and, of course, Jean bâtard d’Orléans, comte de Dunois, to whom we now turn.12 Jean de Dunois (1402–68), the illegitimate son of Louis d’Orléans (brother of King Charles vi) was brought up in his father’s household and (owing to the captivity in England of two of his legitimate half-brothers, and the early death

9

10

11 12

The heraldry shows that it was produced between Prigent de Coëtivy’s marriage to Marie de Laval in 1444 (negotiated from 1443) and his death in 1450; pointing to 1444 in particular is the fact that in that year Prigent made payment for a box and a leather pouch for Horae: Byrne, “Coëtivy,” 249–51. Reynaud, “Jouvenel,” 34, n. 12, argues from finer points of the Dunois style (which, always less crisp than the signature Bedford manner, evolved over time towards a still freer, more impressionistic treatment of detail) that the Dunois Hours predates Coëtivy. This ordering has been supported by the perceived evolution of the border decoration of the mss (Reynolds, “Workshop,” 466). By contrast, the case for dating the MS specifically to 1441 on account of the castle depicted in the miniature of St George (as suggested by Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois,” 15 and 67) is not compelling, since the correspondence between the image and what is known of the appearance of Châteaudun at the time is insufficiently close (indeed the fortified town in the background of f. 48v in the Coëtivy Hours is as close to the s. xviii drawing of Châteaudun that Châtelet reproduces); and, even if it were closer, this would in no wise prove that the book was done in the very year that Charles d’Orléans formalised the gift of the County of Dunois to his half-brother. This transfer of patronage is evaluated by E. Inglis, Jean Fouquet and the Invention of France (New Haven and London, 2011), 210–11. Respectively: Dublin, Chester Beatty Library W.082; Paris, BnF MS n.a.l. 3226; Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique MS iv 111 (Horloge de Sapience); Harvard, Houghton Library MS Richardson 31 (Decameron); London, BL Yates Thompson MS 3. In addition, fragments of another fine Horae made for a (now) unidentifiable member of the Jouvenel family survive as London, V&A E4582-1910 and E4583-1910, and Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet, Wildenstein 149 and other leaves in private collections.

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of the third) became de facto head of the house of Orléans.13 He rose to national prominence through his distinguished military service against the English: he played a key role in breaking the siege of Montargis in 1427 (for which he was rewarded handsomely by the king);14 two years later he led the garrison defending the besieged city of Orléans until it was relieved by Jeanne d’Arc;15 and his subsequent campaigns in the Île-de-France (including the recapture of Chartres in 1432) did much to prepare the way for the French retaking of Paris. Indeed, his military importance was broadcast ceremonially at Charles vii’s official entry into the capital in 1437: riding a horse caparisoned in cloth of gold and carrying a staff symbolising martial authority, Dunois followed the immediate entourage of the king and dauphin, followed in his turn by a royal stableman bearing the banner of the warrior archangel, Michael.16 Although in 1439 he temporarily joined the Bourbon conspiracy (the ‘Praguerie’),17 he rapidly realigned himself with the king whom he had otherwise served with such distinction. Throughout the 1440s Jean de Dunois combined roles at court, in government and as a royal envoy with continuing campaigns against the English, notably the liberation of Dieppe in 1443;18 and from 1449–51 as the king’s lieutenant-general he was central to the military and diplomatic moves that led to the recapture of Normandy and Guyenne, the effective end of the occupation.19 His subsequent years, no less active, need not detain us since they almost certainly fall after the period during which his Book of Hours, our particular concern, was commissioned.20 One piece of evidence from the end of his life is, however, worth passing in review since it reveals a different side of the man that is of relevance here: namely an inventory of the books kept in a tower of his castle at Châteaudun

13 14 15

M. Rolland, Dunois, compagnon de Jeanne d’Arc (Châteaudun, 1968). G. du Fresne de Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles vii, 5 vols. (Paris, 1881–91), ii: 147. Thomas Basin, Histoire de Charles vii, Bk ii, chs. 11–12, ed. Ch. Samaran, 2 vols. (Paris, 1933–44), i: 134–42. 16 Sources conveniently printed in B. Guenée and F. Lehoux, Les Entrées royales franςaises de 1328 à 1515 (Paris, 1968), 72–9. 17 See further note 32 below. 18 Basin, Histoire, Bk iii, ch. 18, ed. Samaran, i: 284–8. 19 Basin, Histoire, Bk iv, ch. 9; Bk V, ch. 1, ed. Samaran, ii: 56–60 and 158–66. A contemporary encomiast, Robert Blondel, lauded his military achievements as on a par with those of Pompey and Caesar: De reductione Normannie, ch. 13; printed: Narratives of the Expulsion of the English from Normandy mCcccxlix–mCcccl, ed. J. Stevenson (London, 1863), 45. 20 He is immortalised in later life in Jean Fouquet’s miniature of the trial of Jean, duc d’Alençon (Munich, BSB cod. gall. 6, f. 2v: Inglis, Fouquet, Fig. 118) where he appears immediately in front of Charles vii.

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that was drawn up in 1468.21 The fifty or so books in question may seem a modest number in comparison with the libraries of his great-uncles, Jean de Berry and Charles v, and even with that of his half-brother, Charles d’Orléans; however, the first two were among the richest and greatest bibliophiles of the later Middle Ages, while the last was a man of pronounced literary inclinations and talent.22 By any other standards, Dunois’s holding represented a respectable cache for the time (it is, for instance, on the same scale as the seventy volumes inventoried for another of his rich, powerful and cultivated great-uncles, Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy).23 Although it is impossible to know which of these volumes had been acquired by the period of interest to us (as also the number and nature of any titles kept elsewhere), the breadth of material on the list does suggest that the collection it records offers a reasonable guide to the range of their owner’s literary tastes at least. The titles in question are spread across the spectrum of material typical of a Franco-Burgundian princely collection of the age, embracing theology, devotion, spiritual observance and morality as well as history, geography, political science, chivalry and romance. It is worth noting that the writings classifiable as spiritual observance and morality included a book about the vices and virtues, a collection of tracts on the senses and desires, and treatises on penitence,24 for, although such material commonly featured in princely libraries, these texts correspond to an emphasis that is observable in the Dunois Hours itself. The association of British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 with Jean de Dunois is beyond question for his arms appear as an original part of the decoration on twenty pages—including the first page of no fewer than eight of the eleven main sections within the text (namely the calendar, gospel extracts, 21

Printed: L. Delisle, Le Cabinet des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, 3 vols. (Paris, 1868–81), iii: 194–5, Appendix xxxiv. 22 Inventories for the first two printed by L. Delisle, Recherches sur la librarie de Charles v, 2 vols. (Paris, 1907) in vol. ii. Inventories for the third printed by G. Ouy, La librarie des frères captifs. Les manuscrits de Charles d’Orléans et Jean d’Angoulême (Turnhout, 2007), 35–54. 23 P. de Winter, La Bibliothèque de Philippe le Hardi, duc de Bourgogne (1364–1404) (Paris, 1985), esp. 121–42. See more generally G. Hasenohr, “L’essor des bibliothèques privées aux xive et xve siècles,” Histoire des bibliothèques franςaises. Les bibliothèques médiévales du vie siècle à 1530, ed. A. Vernet (Paris, 1989), 215–63, esp. 248–57. Table 5 on p. 249 presents comparative figures and statistical analysis for the libraries of some fifteen princes of the period, including Dunois (whose total holding of books, however, is inexplicably given as half the number on his inventory). 24 Delisle, Cabinet des manuscrits, 194, entries 18 (“Une passion de Nichodemus avecques le livre des vices et des vertus […]”), 21 (“[…] où est traictié des cinq sens corporelz, de six désirs de créature humaine et autres pluseurs traictiez”), and 30 (“Ung autre petit livre de traictiez de pénitance”).

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Figure 24.1

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Calendar, January, British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (Dunois Hours), f. 1r © British Library Board

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Figure 24.2

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Obsecro te, British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (Dunois Hours), f. 22v © British Library Board

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prayers to the Virgin, Hours of the Virgin, Hours of the Passion, Penitential Psalms, and Hours of the Holy Spirit).25 On three occasions, all towards the beginning of the volume, the arms accompany a representation of the Duke himself. He is first shown seated at table in the calendar miniature for January (Fig. 24.1), then kneeling on a cushion, praying to the Virgin and Child at the prayer Obsecro te (Fig. 24.2), and finally kneeling at a prie-dieu, beseeching the apocalyptic Christ in the depiction of the Last Judgement that heads the prayer Deus propitius esto michi (Fig. 24.6). In the first case, Dunois wears a scarlet hat and a luxurious robe or tunic of gold with red patterning, while his arms appear both in an escutcheon on the fire-breast/canopy above his head and, more dramatically, across a tapestry that occupies the entire back wall of the chamber.26 In the second and third instances he is clad in armour, over which is a surcoat emblazoned with his arms; additionally in the second case, an angel holds behind his head his helm and shield both likewise emblazoned, while in the third he is accompanied by his name-saint, John the Divine. Collectively the three images present Dunois as a grand secular lord, and as a pious knight who not only enjoys a direct relationship with Mary and the Christ-child, but is also present at the Last Judgement, praying for his own soul. Many elements of the Dunois Hours, down to small details of the iconography, are paralleled in other Horae from the same atelier—as one would expect of a popular devotional vade-mecum produced by a busy commercial operation that relied upon the (elegant) recycling of designs.27 The point to stress in the present context is that such multiple deployment of visual formulae in no way reduced the efficacy of the imagery in question as the accoutrements of this particular devotional book (or indeed of any of the others): on the contrary, if anything, it lent them familiarity and hence enhanced their authenticity and resonance as depictions of their subjects. At the same time, the manuscript does have certain features that give it singularity amidst the Horae in which the Dunois Master was involved—as indeed in the genre as a whole— and which accordingly merit close attention.

25 26 27

Ff. 1r, 13r, 13v, 22v, 32v, 37r, 93r, 93v, 120r, 121r, 121v, 130r, 138r, 138v, 157r, 157v, 172r, 172v, 193v, and 281v. The sections without an armorial on their first page are: Hours of the Cross, Office of the Dead, and Suffrages. The latter a more blatant declaration of personal identity than the tapestry (apparently featuring scenes from the Trojan War) that occupies the corresponding place in the January miniature of the Très Riches Heures (f. 1v), the archetype of the scene. See note 7.

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Figure 24.3

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Psalm 6 (first Penitential Psalm), British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (Dunois Hours), f. 157r © British Library Board

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Two such points appear in the Suffrages.28 First, there is the inclusion of St Leonard, patron saint of prisoners, and, more particularly, the way in which he is depicted.29 The standing Leonard holds the chain to which are manacled two prisoners who, clad only in their underclothes, kneel in supplication. To this motif (which echoes the corresponding miniature in the Boucicaut Hours)30 the Dunois Master added a second pair of captives who look on from behind the bars to the right-hand side, and a third pair, who gaze up in supplication from the lower border.31 The resulting image with its sets of prisoners shown in pairs would surely have been understood as an allusion to the long incarceration in England of Dunois’s two half-brothers, Charles d’Orléans and Jean d’Angloulême, for whose release he laboured long, it finally being achieved for the former in 1440 and for the latter in 1445.32 A second notable feature in the Suffrages is the fact that the depicted St George sports around his helmet a thick roll of fabric vividly striped in red,

28

29 30 31

32

The most striking anomaly in this section of the book is the placement of St Francis of Assisi at the start (ff. 288r-289r) of the short final quire (xxxviii, ff. 288–291) — thus separated from the rest of the male saints (ff. 259r-279v) by a quire devoted to female ones (xxxvii, ff. 280–287). The facts that he shares his quire with Barbara (ff. 289v-291r), who will not have preceded Mary Magdalene (the first of the women in Q. xxxvii), and that f. 291v is blank show that this final quire is not misplaced. For the attractive but unprovable suggestion that his inclusion here was linked to the birth of Dunois’s son Francis in January 1447, implying that work on the volume was then well advanced, hence the unorthodox placement of an extra suffrage for his name saint, see Byrne, “Coëtivy,” 261. Francis was included as an original entry in the litany (f. 179r). F. 269v: Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois,” 64 — recognising the likely real-world allusion. Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André MS 2, f. 9v: conveniently reproduced in juxtaposition with the relevant image in the Dunois Hours in ibid., 64. A very similar illustration appears in the Coëtivy Hours (f. 290r): here St Leonard stands with his open book at the centre of the miniature, holding the chains of two captives clad only in underwear, who kneel to either side of him; two further kneeling prisoners appear to either side of the lower border. The main difference is that this version does not include the depiction of two further captives within a prison that occupies the right-hand side of the Dunois version. The rendering in Coëtivy is more obviously and directly dependent on the iconography of the Boucicaut Hours, suggesting that the departures from the prototype in Dunois — above all the two figures confined within a prison — were specific to that commission. Dunois had himself experienced captivity as a prisoner of the Burgundians from 1418–20. On the theory that it was King Charles vii’s possible opposition to the release of Charles d’Orléans that precipitated Dunois’s initial participation in the Bourbon conspiracy see Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles vii, iii: 116–17, and M. Vale, Charles vii (London, 1974), 77 and 85. By contrast, Ph. Contamine, “Le chef de guerre, l’homme de pouvoir, le prince: le bâtard d’Orléans,” Art de l’enluminure 25 (2008): 2–11 at 8, sees frustration at Charles’ apathy in relation to fighting the English as the principal motive.

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white and green.33 This is the livery of Charles vii, as described by the king’s herald, Gilles le Bouvier34 and as shown being worn by all the royal guard, not to mention the king himself, in the Hours of Etienne Chevalier.35 The great warrior saint was thus explicitly made a member of the retinue of the king of France. Not only was this a powerful declaration of martial support from heaven, it also had the additional resonance of counteracting the special relationship that the English claimed to have with St George and which had been pointedly celebrated in connection with their victory at Azincourt and their pretensions in relation to France as a whole.36 A further royal reference appears in the miniature for Matins within the Office of the Dead, which features a formulaic funeral service set within a church or chapel, for the cloth draped over the catafalque is blue emblazoned with the gold fleurs-de-lys of France (not the arms of the house of Orléans).37 The user of this book was thus made an attendant at a state funeral and was encouraged to pray for the souls of departed French royalty, aiding their passage to heaven. 33 34 35

36

37

F. 274v. Reproduced: Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois,” 67 (with enlargement on p. 2). The helmet of St George in the broadly similar depiction in the Coëtivy Hours (f. 277r) is unadorned. Le Recouvrement de Normendie par Berry, herault du roy, §75, in Narratives of the Expulsion of the English from Normandy, ed. Stevenson, 315. The soldiers have plumes and tunics in red, white and green stripes; the king has a white hat, a green tunic and red hose. Chantilly, Library of the Musée Condé Santuario 8: P. Stirnemann et al., Les Heures d’Étienne Chevalier par Jean Fouquet. Les quarante enluminures du Musée Condé (Paris, 2003), 11; enlargment: Inglis, Jean Fouquet, xii and 132 (Fig. 128); see further M. Vale, “The Livery Colours of Charles vii in two works by Fouquet,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 74 (1969): 243–8. George was patron saint of the Order of the Garter. His feast was elevated to one of primary importance on 4 January 1416, in the aftermath of Azincourt, and his supposed support of the English in that battle and against the French in general was celebrated in song: see Medieval English Lyrics, a critical anthology, ed. R.T. Davis (London, 1963), no. 92. The duke of Bedford was said to have invoked George at his great victory at Verneuil in 1424; and when, as English regent in France, he was depicted in the Bedford Hours, he was portrayed kneeling in prayer, not before his name-saint, but rather before St George (apparently dressed in the royal robe of the order of the garter) as spiritual and chivalric representative of England/the English crown: BL Add. MS 18850, f. 256v. See further in general J. Bengtson, “St George and the Formation of English Nationalism,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27 (1997): 317–40, and J. Stratford, “St George and St Denis,” The Battle of Agincourt, ed. A. Curry and M. Mercer (New Haven and London, 2015), 50–62. F. 211r. As is also the case in, e.g., the Bedford Hours (f. 120r: König, Bedford Hours, 102) and its sister manuscripts in Lisbon (Museu Gulbenkian LA 237, f. 216v: M. Meiss, The de Lévis Hours and the Bedford Workshop (New Haven, 1972), ill. 43) and Vienna (önb Cod. 1855, f. 103v: E. Trenkler, Livre d’Heures: Handschrift 1855 der Österreichisches Nationalbibliothek (Vienna, 1948), pl. 15), but not in the Boucicaut (f. 142v) or Coëtivy Hours (f. 96r).

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Creating a relationship with, and soliciting assistance for, the monarchy in death as well as life, this image was the symbol of an allegiance to the French crown that extended beyond the grave. The circumstance that the usage can be paralleled in other Horae38 in no way undermines its resonance. If the details we have hitherto considered reflect family concerns and evoke political loyalties, a more striking idiosyncrasy in the Penitential Psalms seems to bear upon personal morality. Whereas the Penitential Psalms are normally introduced as a group by a single miniature, in the Dunois Hours each of the seven is headed by an image, an altogether rarer practice.39 The first of the set shows the penitent David kneeling in prayer below God (Fig. 24.3), a common subject for the context; the other six, however, feature personifications of the seven cardinal sins (anger and envy appearing together at Psalm 31, the second in the series).40 Each sin—Pride, Envy, Sloth, Anger, Gluttony, Lust and Avarice—is represented by a human type astride an animal, the ramifications of the failing being articulated by the characteristics of man and beast in tandem, any possible ambiguity removed by the inclusion of a titulus in French.41 Additionally, in the case of Lust (‘Luxure’, for Psalm 129, De profundis clamavi […]), the message of the elegantly-dressed woman gazing at herself in a mirror 38 39

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See previous note. The same basic composition reappears in, e.g., BL Add. MS 35312, f. 110r; Manchester, John Rylands Library MS Lat. 164, f. 163v. Ff. 157r, 159r, 162r, 165v, 168v, 172v and 174r: Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois,” 54–7. More typical is, e.g., the Dunois Master’s contribution for the Penitential Psalms in BL Add. MS 18751 (f. 109r), headed by a single miniature showing David kneeling in prayer before God (an interior scene, with his crown on the floor and his harp and four books on a table beside him) plus, in the lower border, a vignette of the king looking at Bathsheba in her bathtub. In the Bedford Hours (f. 96r: J. Backhouse, The Bedford Hours (London, 1990), ill. 22), as in its sister manuscripts in Lisbon (Museu Gulbenkian LA 237, f. 94v: E. Taburet-Delahaye, ed., Paris 1400. Les arts sous Charles vi (Paris, 2004), no. 220) and Vienna (önb Cod. 1855, f. 153v: R. Beer, Les Principaux manuscrits à peintures de la Bibliothèque Impériale de Vienne (Paris, 1912), 17, pl. viii; H.J. Hermann, Die Westeuropäischen Handschriften und Inkunabeln der Gotik und der Renaissance 3. Französische und Iberische Handschriften der ersten Hälfte des xv Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1938), no. 19, pp. 142–85 with pl. lii.1; Trenkler, Livre d’Heures, pl. 21), representations of Virtues and Vices are juxtaposed in the borders around the main miniature for the Penitential Psalms. The main miniature shows (with variations): in the foreground, Uriah and Bathsheba together; in the middle ground, the order that leads to Uriah’s death; and in the background, David in penitence. A similar approach was followed in New York, Morgan Library and Museum MS M 453, f. 98v: Clark, Art in a Time of War, 122–6, ill. 124. ‘Orgeuil’ etc. On the correspondences drawn between the seven sins and animals more generally see M.W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins. An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature (Michigan, 1952), with convenient tabulation at 245–9 (Appendix i).

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and clutching two arrows while seated on a goat (emblem of lasciviousness) is amplified by a vignette in the background (Fig. 24.4). For here is King David gazing at Bathsheba in her bathtub—and the circumstance that the scene is glimpsed through apertures in the rear wall casts the viewer in the role of a voyeur akin to David himself. The physical juxtaposition of Bathsheba with Luxuria’s head and mirror (evoking beauty and vanity), and of David with her arrows (evoking lust) underlines the conceptual relationship between personification and exemplification. The familiar connection with the sin is spelled out by the rubric prefacing the Psalm, which states, “This Psalm David composed when he sinned by the sin of lust with Bathsheba the wife,” a wording which signals that lechery was here compounded with adultery.42 Further modest emphasis of a different sort is given to this same Psalm by the presence of Dunois’s arms worked into the borders immediately beside both the rubric and the incipit of the text.43 Given that the artist would surely have hesitated to risk the patron’s displeasure—even ire—by including an unmistakable personal reference at so delicate a place without authorization, it is a reasonable speculation that this represents Dunois’s own acknowledgement of a known failing. Be that as it may, a more eye-catching heraldic display appears at the start of the Penitential Psalms as a whole, where angels hold up two shields emblazoned with Dunois’s arms, one below the incipit of the Psalm, the other beside the figure of David kneeling in penitence (Fig. 24.3);44 the same motif promptly reappears on the verso of the leaf, partway through the Psalm text.45 The most significant personal reference, therefore, accompanies the image of royal repentance for, and divine forgiveness of, sin, allied to the comforting words: “O Lord do not rebuke me in your indignation, nor chastise me in your anger; have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak […] Turn to me, O Lord, and deliver my soul; O save me for your mercy’s sake […] The Lord has heard my supplication, the Lord has received my prayer. Let all my enemies be ashamed and exceedingly troubled; let them be turned back and be very speedily ashamed.” Another notable feature of the manuscript is the miniature that introduces the Office of the Dead (Fig. 24.5).46 While an interment plus a struggle between 42 43 44 45 46

F. 172r. “Hunc Psalmum fecit dauid′ quando peccauit peccato luxurie cum bersabee uxore.” The four preceding Psalms (31, 37, 50, 101) are likewise prefaced by rubrics that link their composition to a particular aspect of David’s sins. Ff. 172r and 172v. F. 157r: Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois,” 54. Psalm 6. Such shields were repeated from one side of a leaf to the other on six occasions (ff. 13r-v, 93r-v, 121r-v, 138r-v, 157r-v [one of two], 172r-v). F. 201v: Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois,” 59. Rubric on f. 201r, “Sequuntur vespere mortuorum ad usum romanorum.”

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Figure 24.4

Psalm 129 (sixth Penitential Psalm), British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (Dunois Hours), f. 172v © British Library Board

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Figure 24.5

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Office of the Dead, British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (Dunois Hours), f. 201v © British Library Board

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St Michael and the Devil for possession of a dead man’s soul are common material for such a context,47 this rendering is an atypical one. Not only is the struggle for the soul the principal subject of the main miniature (as opposed to one element within a multi-part interment scene)48 but, altogether rarer, scrolls articulate a dialogue between the characters.49 Thus the cadaver declares: “The pains of death have surrounded me and the perils of Hell have found me. Mercy will enclose the man whose hope is in the Lord.” The demon who is lunging at the man’s naked soul as it rises past him but who is being beaten back by St Michael, says, “He was lascivious;” while the angels who are receiving the soul, one of them directing it upwards, state, “Leave it [the soul]; the Lord shall judge the just and the unjust,” and “He repented and gave alms.”50 The implications spelled out here are that, thanks to repentance and almsgiving, a sinner—and it is interesting that lust is again the sin that is highlighted—may escape the clutches of the Devil and hence Hell, to be judged by God at the Last Judgement (interim suffering in Purgatory permitting the possibility of redemption and eternal life). A last distinctive aspect of the book to which attention should be drawn is the presence of the prayer Deus propitius esto michi peccatori immediately following Obsecro te and O Intemerata, the two Marian prayers that are 47

48

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E.g. Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery MS Mayer 12001, f. 164r (R.P. Monks, “An Unusual Epitome of a stylistic Labyrinth,” Scriptorium 52 (1998): 3–11, pl. 1); London, BL Add. MS 18751, f. 163r (procession from church, interment, and struggle for soul in the main miniature, complemented in the lower border by death on horseback aiming a spear at a pope and an emperor); Los Angeles, Getty Museum Ludwig ix.6; 83.ML.102, f. 132r (von Euw and Plotzek, Handschriften der Sammlung Ludwig, 109). The procession from the church and the interment are presented separately in the lower border. The struggle for the soul is also the main subject in, e.g., the Dunois Master’s related compositions in the Hachette Hours (f. 178r; see n. 2) and Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum 4. 1979 (the start of the Office of the Dead, surviving as a single leaf): F. Wormald and P.M. Giles, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Additional Illuminated Manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam Museum, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1982), ii: 611, with pl. 47. The inscriptions reappear in a version of the scene that prefaces Deus propitius esto in Baltimore, Walters Art Museum MS W.230 (Horae; Use of Rome, f. 25v: L.M.C. Randall, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery ii: France 1420–1540, 2 vols. (Baltimore and London, 1992), i: no. 121; ii: Fig. 218; noted by Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois,” 59) and also accompanying the slightly reduced version of the image that heads the Office of the Dead in the s. xvmed Parisian Horae, Vienna, önb Cod. 2004, f. 192r (Hermann, Westeuropaïschen Handschriften, 210, pl. lx(6)). “Circumdederunt me dolores mortis et pericula inferni inuenerunt me. Sperantem in domino misericordia circumdabit;” “Lubricus fuit;” “Sinite illam; iustum et impium iudicabit dominus.” “Penituit et elemosinam dedit.” The cadaver’s two sentences are quotations from Psalm 114:3 and 31:10 respectively.

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Figure 24.6

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Deus propitius esto michi peccatori, British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (Dunois Hours), f. 32v © British Library Board

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­ ear-universal in Horae.51 These two ubiquitous prayers begin by meditating n on the Virgin, her life and significance (as also, secondarily, on John the Divine), progressing to wide-ranging requests for her aid to achieve virtuousness and spirituality in this life, to be forewarned of the day and hour of one’s death, and to attain God’s favour and eternal life thereafter. The rarer Deus propitius esto, by contrast, is both more direct and more desperate.52 It starts by begging, “God be merciful to me a sinner and be my guide all the days of my life.” Next, it asks that God send the Archangel Michael to guard, protect and defend the suppliant “from all [his] enemies, visible and invisible, of the flesh, of the spirit, and of the world.” Then, Michael is addressed directly and implored to extract the suppliant “today and always from every evil, past, present and future.” Thereafter, the help of all angels and archangels is sought, and they are asked to safeguard the subject against injury by any enemy in all circumstances. Finally, the Holy Cross is likewise implored, “Defend me from all evil.” A particularly wide-ranging plea both for salvation and for protection against enemies, this prayer will have had special relevance to a man who was regularly involved in military combat. The illumination that introduces Deus propitius esto (Fig. 24.6), distinguished by a lively interaction between what is inside and what outside the framed zone, presents the Last Judgement in a version of a formula derived from the Bedford atelier that was much used by the Dunois Master.53 Within 51

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Ff. 32v-34r (O intemerata ends at the bottom of f. 32r). The juxtaposition also appears in the aforementioned Walters Art Museum MS W.230; however, the image used there for Deus propitius was the struggle for the soul (see note 49). In the Coëtivy Hours, the prayer (ff. 141r-142v) appears after prayers to be said at Mass, before the so-called Verses of St Bernard and a long run of prayers to different parts of the Godhead. Its miniature shows the patron kneeling at a prie-dieu under a canopy, looking up to God in heaven above, and holding a scroll on which is inscribed the incipit of this prayer; beside him St Michael, flying down, impales with a cross shaft an inverted devil; a further depiction of Michael battling devils features in the lower border. Versions printed by V. Leroquais, Les Livres d’heures manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, 2 vols. (Paris, 1927), i: 51, and Horae Eboracensis. The Prymer or Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary according to the use of the illustrious Church of York, ed. J. Wordsworth, Surtees Society 132 (Durham, 1920), 125. The synopsis and translations given in the text here are of and from the recension in the Dunois Hours itself. Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois,” 40–1. Compare, e.g., Bedford Hours, f. 157r (König, Bedford Hours, 110); Sobiesky Hours, f. 109r (Windsor, Royal Library, s.n.: E.P. Spencer, Sobieski Hours, Roxburghe Club (London, 1977), pl. xlii, with colour pl. facing p. 30); Guillaume Jouvenel Hours, f. 48r (Reynaud, “Heures du chancelier Guillaume Jouvenel,” ill. 4); also Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery MS Mayer 12001, f. 246v (Monks, “Unusual Epitome,” pl. 1). In Coëtivy one version appears for Compline in the Hours of the Holy Spirit (f. 74v: Reynaud, “Heures de chancelier Guillaume Jouvenel,” ill. 7) — which, lacking not only any

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the framed area appear the apocalyptic Christ, the company of heaven (foremost among whom, flanking Christ, are the Virgin and John the Baptist), and the dead being raised by a trumpet-blowing angel, some of whom are being guided towards Paradise by another angel, while St Michael drives down others to a Hell-mouth filled with flames and demons at the bottom of the page— outside the frame. In the lower border, an angel in a graveyard reassembles a disarticulated skeleton or corpse to make it whole for the bodily resurrection; in the upper border to Christ’s left, angels hold the implements of his passion; while in that to his right, an angel carries up a naked soul, other souls rising up beside it. Unique to this rendering of the formula is the prominent inclusion in the side border, to Christ’s right, of the patron, Jean de Dunois.54 Clad in armour under a surcoat emblazoned with his arms, he kneels at a draped priedieu on which is an open book (presumptively the present Book of Hours); his hands are clasped in prayer, his gaze raised to Christ, who looks directly back at him, and to whom he is being presented by his name-saint, John the Divine. That the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, the figures who (as in all Bedford and Dunois atelier versions of the scene) flank Christ, would here be understood to be interceding specifically for Jean de Dunois in heaven is rendered highly likely by the facts that the former was shown receiving his prayers in person a mere ten folios earlier (in the miniature accompanying Obsecro te), while the latter is his other name-saint. Whether or not the soul being carried heavenwards above Dunois’s head is supposed to be his own, this is a potent image of ultimate salvation55—one which not only requests but apparently

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human patron on the left but also St Michael driving condemned souls down to Hell on the right, is a depiction of the Saved in general — and another for the Last Judgement in the Articles of Faith (f. 356v), again without any depiction of the patron. Other artists occasionally used the conceit in relation to differently-designed Last Judgements: e.g. the Master of the Munich Golden Legend — a contemporary of the Dunois Master who had likewise worked with the Bedford atelier and who subsequently sometimes collaborated with the Dunois Master (among others) — placed a female patron in the left-hand border (to Christ’s right) beside his much simpler Last Judgement in BL Add. MS 18912, f. 89v (see further note 55), and King David (his scroll imploring, “Misere mei deus secundum magnam misericordiam”) in the right-hand border (to Christ’s left) of that in Paris, BnF MS Rothschild 2535, f. 77r: L. Ungeheier, “Le Manuscrit Rothschild 2535 à la BnF,” Art de l’enluminure 56 (2016); this folio reproduced on p. 39. A point underlined by the less positive tone of some other broadly contemporary interpretations of the scene, such as that accompanying the start of the Penitential Psalms in BL Add. MS 18192 (Horae; Use of Paris), decorated by the Master of the Munich Golden Legend (see note 54). Here the space immediately below the Apocalyptic Christ and the company of heaven in the main miniature is dominated not by the saved but by the damned being driven towards, and cast into a Hell-mouth; the saved are limited to one single naked soul, being pulled up (apparently from Hell) by an angel and offered a crown.

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promises far more than the aforementioned depiction of Jean kneeling in prayer before the Virgin and Child. Exceptionally powerful though it is in its own right, this optimistic Last Judgement derives additional force from its presence within a book that is equipped with the other elements we have just considered. The fact that the features we have highlighted—as also the many other aspects of the Dunois Hours that have not been singled out for comment here— can be paralleled in whole or part elsewhere should not blind us to the fact that they have distinctive resonances in the context of this particular book and in connection to its original owner.56 And interesting as they are in their own right, all these features must be understood in relation to the nature and fundamental purpose of a Book of Hours. If such a volume might signal family and political loyalties and could project social status—as was demonstrably the case for Dunois’s copy—a Book of Hours remained in essence a tool to help secular society negotiate its way through the perils of life to a favourable afterlife. It permitted a layman or woman to establish and maintain a personal relationship with heaven via the Virgin Mary and selected saints, to minimise the burden of sin that was inevitably accumulated during life, to achieve a ‘good death’57 at the end of it (hopefully with due warning thereof), thereby avoiding the immediate danger of Hell, to reduce the time of painful but necessary cleansing in Purgatory, and hence to be fit to be numbered among the blessed at the Last Judgement. Any and every copy was, in principle, designed to facilitate this process, more or less customised to the particular circumstances of the owner according to their perceived needs and the size of their purse. It is easy to appreciate, then, how several of the features of the Dunois Hours that we have contemplated added to the efficacy of this particular copy for its owner in these crucial respects. The sequence of images associated with the Penitential Psalms alerted Jean to the diversity of forms that cardinal sin

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Kneeling in the left-hand margin beside the miniature is the patron, the same welldressed woman who was shown using her Horae and a rosary in the margins beside the Adoration of the Magi and the Circumcision (for Terce and Sext, ff. 59r, 65r) and who reappears in church receiving the host from a priest as the subject of the miniature heading the prayer, “Je te salue tres saint et tres precieux corps de mon createur iesu crist” (f. 196r); at the Last Judgement she begs (via a scroll) for God’s mercy. The Last Judgement in the Hachette Hours (f. 261v; see note 2) features the damned alone — without a single saved soul. Just as the depictions of the massacre of the innocents (f. 104v, bas-de-page) and the betrayal of Christ (f. 120r) are likely to have particular poignancy for a lieutenant-general who had temporarily schemed against his monarch in 1440. Illustrated in summary form in the lower border of f. 211r of the Dunois Hours and more fully on f. 11v of the Sobieski Hours (Spencer, Sobieski Hours, pl. xliii).

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could take, notably Lust (Fig. 24.4), and to what it could lead—not least killing (as the rubric for Anger signals).58 Simultaneously, the first miniature of the cycle reminded him that recognising, confessing and atoning for his sins could, in principle, permit their direst consequences to be mitigated (Fig. 24.3).59 The bas-de-page illustration at Matins for the Office of the Dead showed the ideal good death—receiving the last rites on one’s death-bed, with family in attendance—while the miniature heading the Office of the Dead underlined the message that a sinner who trusted in the Lord, was truly repentant, and gave alms might escape the clutches of the Devil at the moment of death and so be given the opportunity of purification in Purgatory (Fig. 24.5). The illumination for Deus propitius esto then proclaimed that such a man would, at the Last Judgement, be raised whole, escaping the horrors of damnation to enjoy the bliss of eternal life (Fig. 24.6).60 The presence here of Jean de Dunois not only praying for this inestimable blessing but seemingly receiving it, renders this extremely positive view of the culmination of life and afterlife a highly personal one for him himself.61 The unusually detailed presentation both of the sins that beset a man’s life and of the path to salvation in the face of them that distinguishes the Dunois Hours should be seen in relation to the fact that the hurdles that its owner had to surmount to achieve redemption will have seemed particularly high— as moralising tracts like those that he certainly possessed by the end of his life will have underlined.62 Quite aside from any personal failings in terms of greed and of lasciviousness (something to which his own illegitimate son, Louis, bore testimony), his role as a military leader during a period of protracted warfare meant that he was inevitably responsible directly and indirectly for countless deaths. There were, of course, definitions of ‘just war’ from Gratian 58 59

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F. 165r for Psalm 51. “Hunc Psalmum fecit Dauid quando peccauit peccato yre et fecit occidi uriam.” Manchester, John Rylands Library MS Lat. 164 prefaces “Miseratur uestri omnipotens Deus et dimittat uobis omnia peccata uestra […]” and “Confiteor deo omnipotenti, et beate marie uirgini et omnibus sanctis eius, et uobis pater quia ego miser peccator peccaui nimis contra legem dei mei […]” with a miniature of a laywoman being shriven (f. 19v). By no means all depictions of the Last Judgement took the spiritual story thus to fulfilment: plentiful examples show souls being raised from their graves at the Last Judgement but not the possible outcomes thereof (one such from many: BL Harley MS 2971 (Horae, Use of Paris), f. 163r — for “Doulx dieu doulx pere sancte trinite et ung uray dieu […]”). Comparably audacious is the image of Jean de Berry being received by St Peter at the Gates of Heaven in his Grandes Heures (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 919, f. 96r: Les Grandes Heures de Jean duc de Berry, ed. M. Thomas (London, 1971), pl. 93). See note 24.

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onwards63—stipulating that it had to be from necessity, for defence of one’s land or property, without unnecessary violence, without clerical involvement, and authorised by a prince—and Dunois’s campaigns might naturally have been seen as qualifying under most if not all of these headings. Equally, there were standards of conduct that a good Christian soldier would endeavour to uphold,64 and Dunois was lauded as a model of probity in this regard.65 Yet grey areas remained, not least because the Papacy steadfastly refused to recognise the right of either side in the Hundred Years War, while casualties and collateral damage abounded.66 Moreover, the more conscientious the knight, the more troubling the implications are likely to have been: a model commander would not just mourn the fallen but would surely also fret vicariously over the fate of their souls and his responsibility for them. Whatever the terrestrial justifications for such deaths, in terms of a celestial ‘balance sheet’ this could represent a tremendous burden of sin, potentially deadly to the immortal soul (the case of David and Uriah, as highlighted in the Penitential Psalms within the Dunois Hours itself, underlined the culpability of indirect murder through sending someone into battle; while Pontius Pilate, depicted in the Dunois Hours at the crucial moment of washing his hands, underlined the fact that delegating—even refusing to make—a difficult decision did not permit one to avoid blame for a tragic outcome).67 The consequences of sin were all the more severe if one died unprepared and unshriven—a particular danger for a soldier (and the fact that contemporary sources show good soldiers undergoing confession shortly before an anticipated battle indicates how keenly the threat was felt).68 63

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See, in general, F.H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1975). More specific to the Hundred Years War, Geoffroi de Charny (who died in battle at Poitiers in 1356) outlined when one could engage in combat “securement pour les corps et pour les ames” in his Le Livre de Chevalerie (The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny, text, context and translation, ed. R.W. Kaeuper and E. Kennedy (Philadelphia, 1996), §35, ll. 145 ff.). See most recently M. Strickland, “Chivalry, Piety and Conduct,” Battle of Agincourt, ed. Curry and Mercer, 36–49; and, more generally, C. Taylor, Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood in France during the Hundred Years War (Cambridge, 2013). E.g. the partisan Robert Blondel stressed the strict standards of military discipline that supposedly obtained under him: De reductione Normanniae, ch. 50, in Narratives of the Expulsion, ed. Stevenson, 49. Consider Thomas Basin’s bleak description, written in 1471–2, of the northern French lands devastated by the very struggles in which Dunois was involved: Histoire, Bk ii, ch. 1, ed. Samaran, i: 82–8, esp. 84–6. Rubric on f. 165r: hunc Psalmum fecit david quando peccavit peccato yre et fecit occidi uriam. Pilate: f. 150r. Thus, e.g., the English before Azincourt: Gesta Henrici Quinti. The Deeds of Henry the Fifth, ed. F. Taylor and J.S. Roskell (Oxford, 1975), 78: “Et tunc unusquisque qui non prius

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In such circumstances a new Book of Hours that highlighted the pervasive threat of sin and presented the means of counteracting it through penitence and piety, far from being an unnecessary luxury,69 was surely highly desirable. The Parisian Horae that Jean had been given in 1417 by Louis d’Orléans is lost or unidentified so its nature is unknowable,70 but that it would have matched the nature and needs of the mature Dunois as closely as does the present manuscript seems highly unlikely. Indeed, perhaps the single most important point to grasp about the Dunois Hours is its appropriateness for a high-ranking military man. Whether or not Jean actually used it on a daily basis—and the discolouring and weathering of the margins demonstrates that the manuscript has seen extensive if respectful handling71—the very fact of possessing it will have been extremely reassuring (not unlike a modern insurance policy). To sum up: thanks to the meticulous scholarship that has steadily pieced together the output, career, visual repertoire and sources of the Dunois Master and his collaborators, we have a better understanding of the atelier’s working practices and a clearer view of the place of the Dunois Hours within its oeuvre. Considering some of the more unusual details of this particular book in relation both to its original owner and to the functions of Horae in general then permits us to appreciate characteristics that made it especially suitable and spiritually efficacious for Jean de Dunois himself. The precise processes that gave the book its particular profile are irrecoverable, for it is impossible to know how far Jean himself may have been responsible for the sort of details we have considered (the extraordinary quantity of heraldry and rebus motifs in another high-grade Book of Hours decorated by the Dunois Master indicates that the atelier would do all that was required to accommodate what must surely have been that patron’s specific wishes).72 Nevertheless, there is every reason to believe that, subject to the nature of Horae as a genre, to the expectations contingent upon Jean de Dunois’s rank, and to the repertoire of the Dunois Artist and his co-workers, this Book of Hours was tailored to suit

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c­ onscienciam suam confessione mundaverat, arma penitencie sumpsit et non erat tunc parcitas nisi solum parcitas sacerdotum.” As Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois,” 15–16, believed, leading him to suggest that this volume, too, was commissioned for Dunois by Charles d’Orléans. See Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois,” 15. Cropping for the current s. xvii binding has clearly reduced the stained areas. The handling that lies behind the weathering in question is, of course, impossible to date; nevertheless, it is worth noting that it is most pronounced at the start of the Penitential Psalms (f. 157r), the suffrage for St George (f. 274v) and, above all, at “Deus propitius esto michi peccatori” (f. 32v). Paris, BnF MS n.a.l. 3226: Reynaud, “Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins,” 26–7.

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the spiritual needs of a high-ranking warrior who, in a world of sin at a time of near-continuous conflict, will have wanted to exploit the form for all it was worth in order to maximise his chances of salvation. There is a broader point here that is worth spelling out in conclusion. Prayerbooks that are also objets d’art are not naturally associated in the modern mind with warfare. Accordingly, while Books of Hours have been explored for insights into social, religious and cultural history, not to mention women’s history, their relevance to soldiers is less frequently emphasised. Yet this is a misapprehension, for it was in relation to those most liable to die suddenly in a state of sin—above all the fighting class—that they were most valuable.73 Moreover, the famous ‘miracle’ of the breviary of Louis ix—whereby a service book that that saintly king had taken with him on crusade was returned to him, supposedly by divine intervention, so that he could continue his devotions in captivity—provided a model for such practices that was of the highest standing both politically and spiritually.74 The Dunois Hours, along with the Hours of Admiral Coëtivy and the slightly earlier and better-known Hours of Marshall Boucicaut, are the tip of an iceberg of Horae for military men whose significance as such has yet to be fully recognised. They were the individual complement and counterpart to the collective celebration of mass that was the ideal before combat, and were all the more efficacious for being usable without the mediation of a cleric, personal to the owner and, if portable (like that of Jean de Dunois), always potentially to hand. Moreover, Horae had the further recommendation that, should their owners perish in battle, these books might still, if transferred to the right person, benefit the souls of the deceased by encouraging relatives to pray for them, reducing their time in Purgatory (the images of Jean de Dunois in his copy gave him the reassurance that he would forever be doing this on his own behalf in effigy).75 One is tempted to wonder, 73

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One of the two volumes that my Father-in-Law, Alan Young (d. 1995), carried with him throughout the Second World War (in which he served as a colonel in the King’s Indian Rifles) was a pocket edition of the Book of Common Prayer. Soberingly, the book in question (now in my wife’s possession) automatically falls open at the service for the Burial of the Dead. On the elaboration of this event from the simple statement by William of Chartres that the Saracens gave the captive king a breviary and a missal from his own chapel see L.A. Crist, “The Breviary of Saint Louis: the development of a legendary miracle,” jwci 28 (1965): 319–23. The ‘miracle’ features as an illustration to the Hours of St Louis within the Book of Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux: New York, The Cloisters Acc. 54.1.2, f. 154v. In this connection it is worth drawing attention to a Parisian Book of Hours from the third quarter of the fifteenth century, illuminated by Master Franςois, wherein the highly unusual miniature heading the Office of the Dead depicts a pitched battle between two armies of foot soldiers, dead bodies littering the ground (private collection, f. 136v: Sotheby’s

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therefore, whether the internecine strife and warfare that raged in north-west Europe during much of the first half of the fifteenth century, with Armagnacs pitted against Burgundians and England at war with France, far from restraining the production of Books of Hours, may not rather have contributed to the continuing demand for them then. The more uncertain earthly life seemed, the more valuable Horae became.76

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Western Manuscripts and Miniatures (London, Tuesday 5th December 1989), lot. 110; Dr Jörn Günther Antiquariat, Catalogue 8: Fifty Manuscripts and Miniatures (Hamburg, 2006), cat. 26, this folio reproduced on p. 89). I am very grateful to Kathleen Doyle for kindly arranging access to the Dunois Hours itself. I thank John Lowden for three decades of friendship and inspiration.

Chapter 25

Harreteau and His Unfinished Book of Hours Rowan Watson Books of Hours are commonly seen as ‘medieval bestellers’, a view often linked with embarrasing historical clichés referring to a rising merchant class or a prestige-seeking bourgeoisie.1 While this view is useful in suggesting mass production and wide-spread ownership, it also suggests that such works, by analogy with modern consumer goods, were fully completed before delivery to their first owners. Those who study Books of Hours, on the other hand, interrogate them for every indication that might show how multiple, independent hands contributed to any work, how elements might be contributed at different times, possibly over spans of many years, in the course of production, and how owners might use and edit them over the generations to suit their purposes. Books of Hours are particularly useful as sources to observe change in devotional and liturgical practice, since their owners frequently wrote in them and brought up them to date over the years to follow changing habits. Textual and other alterations to them, especially at the time of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, provide a particulaly sensitive indication of how they were considered in both traditional and Protestant communities, outlawed by the former at the Council of Trent in favour of new printed versions, and distrusted by the latter as icons of nefarious religious practices. A problem today is that, as they were usually owned by individuals and not institutions, a high percentage came into public collections through the nineteenth-century art trade which was expert in adapting them to meet the expectations of collectors—a final stage of editing in the process by which they changed from utilitarian objects (not best-sellers but vital tools to avoid suffering after death) to heirlooms, antiquarian relics and art objects. Manuscripts with unfinished pictorial and decorative elements can give a privileged view of methods of manufacture; they can as well create doubts about where responsibility lies for the final surfaces that meet our eyes. An 1 V. Reinburg, French Books of Hours (Cambridge, 2012), 3, 80, refers to Books of Hours as prized by rising social classes, books of which their owners were proud. I. Delaunay, “Livres d’heures de commande et d’étal,” l’Artiste et commanditaire aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age, ed. F. Joubert (Paris, 2001), 251–7, more satisfyingly relates owners to specific professional backgrounds.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_027

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unfinished Book of Hours, one that was being produced for use in Normandy in the 1490s, generates a number of questions about the internal workings of the book-making industry, and the way it was used in its unfinished state.2 Manuscripts were of course produced in very different environments. By the fifteenth century, there were clearly centres (Paris, Rouen, Bruges, for example) which developed methods for bulk production to a standardised design; against these products, what was produced by nuns in the Low Countries and Germany, and by clerics who were not professional book-makers, can look very different from work that came from the established routines associated with the settled book trade. The value of the unfinished manuscript to be discussed lies in the fact that it evidently came from the professional book trade run by people termed libraire; had it been completed, it would have matched the standards which governed what was produced by the book trade in cities of northern France. The stages by which miniatures and borders in illuminated manuscripts were produced, from the preparation of grounds, under-drawing, application of pigments and gold, seem to have been more or less uniformly followed by all involved in making manuscripts.3 Occasional references to a common programme of training survive. In 1455, an apprentice was taken on in Avignon to be trained in “the usual course and stages for [learning] the art of illumination” (in arte illuminacionis […] secundum cursus et gradus communes in illa arte); the term artem illuminacionis et ystoriarum was used in another contract of this kind in Avignon, where an apprentice was recruited in 1493 for two years.4 There are indications that the two-year apprenticeship was common in Paris 2 The manuscript, V&A MSL/1993/2, is described in R. Watson, Victoria and Albert Museum. Western Illuminated Manuscripts, a catalogue of works in the National Art Library, 3 vols. (London, 2011), 368–73, no. 65. I am glad to be able to thank John Lowden for his generous response to enquiries in the course of compiling this catalogue. Thanks are due to Jane Rutherston, Victoria Button and Alan Derbyshire of the V&A Conservation Department for examining the manuscript with me. 3 The standard reference is to R.G. Calkins, “Stages of execution: procedures of illumination as revealed in an unfinished Book of Hours,” Gesta 17, no. 1 (1978): 61–70, describing New York, Morgan Library MS M.358. 4 P. Pansier, Histoire du livre et de l’imprimerie à Avignon du xiv au xvi siècle, 3 vols. (Avignon, 1922), iii: 48–9, 84–5; see also J.J.G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work (New Haven and London, 1992), 27, 127. The contract of 1455 was for an apprenticeship of three years, but the apprentice had extensive household duties including cooking. Apprenticeships in Flanders are mentioned in C. Renolds, “Illuminators and the painters’ guilds,” in Illuminating the Renaissance: the triumph of Flemish manuscript painting in Europe, ed. T. Kren and S. McKendrick (Los Angeles and London, 2003), 15–31, and in D. Vanwijnsberghe, De fin or et d’azur: les commanditaires de livres et le métier de l’enluminure à Tournai à la fin du Moyen Age (Leuven, 2001), 125.

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and Flanders, the short length of time possibly suggesting that other skills were acquired before recruitment. An Avignon bookseller, Joachim of Rome, could take on Jean Donat from Milan as a ‘journeyman’ to illuminate his books, confident in his ability to produce work that conformed to recognised standards. Cases of this kind evidently refer to very routine production, familiar to anyone who looks beyond atypical high-quality examples at the multitude of surviving less glamorous works. It is clear that manuscripts were produced to very different time scales and in very different environments, from aristocratic households to cramped studios, and from single major commissions to serial production, and it can be dangerous to assume that what is noticed as a pattern of production in one manuscript is automatically applicable to others. Under-drawing in panel painting has been studied using a variety of advanced technologies, though only outstanding manuscripts, almost by their nature atypical, have received this kind of detailed attention. What can be achieved is shown by work on the Limbourgs’ Belles Heures that used Raman spectroscopy, X-rays and microphotography with infrared and ultra violet light.5 Another late fourteenth century manuscript made for the Duc de Berry, the Petites heures, is among a whole series of works where stylistic considerations demonstrate that miniatures drawn by one artist were illuminated by another.6 However, it is with unfinished miniatures in manuscripts that the initial stages of making images in books are best revealed. Demand for Books of Hours was so great in the late fifteenth century that Paris publishers could amass the huge amount of venture capital necessary to produce printed Books of Hours where text was accompanied by printed decoration and images. From the mid-1480s, such works were produced in great quantities. As is well known, it took some decades before the established manuscript book trade disappeared, while de luxe production continued well into the sixteenth century. Isabelle Delaunay has described the characteristics of manuscript Books of Hours that were produced speculatively, with some minor customising at the point of sale.7 The surviving papers of the celebrated Paris libraire, André Le Musnier (d. 1475), document in wonderful detail aspects of how the trade was organised. They show, for example, that manuscripts, and especially Books of Hours, were not necessarily made in response to an individual order but were regularly produced speculatively. André shared 5 See M. Lawson, “Technical observations: materials, techniques and conservation of the Belles Heures manuscript,” The Art of Illumination. The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry, ed. T.B. Husband (New York and New Haven, 2008), 325–41. 6 F. Avril et al., Les petites heures de Jean, duc de Berry; introduction au manuscrit latin 18014 de la Bibliothèque nationale (Lucerne, 1989), 123, 128–9, 281, 286. 7 Delaunay, “Livres d’heures,” 257–61.

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with his brother in law Jean Picard a number of Heures prestes et escriptes when André’s father died; on the death of Guyot Le Musnier, Books of Hours prestes et écrits both bound and unbound were found to be part of his estate. It is difficult not to think that at any time he had unfinished manuscripts in various states of completion on his premises as well, articles which might be traded among book producers—if Jean Picard could borrow for more than two months two apprentices from Guyot Le Musnier in the 1450s to help finish an order for the duchess of Brittany, he might surely pass on unfinished works for completion elsewhere when it suited him. The sale by André Le Musnier or Jean Picard of a Grandes heures à l’usage de Rome to a fellow libraire, Jean Guymier, shows that works were passed from hand to hand within the book trade, though in this case, the price of three écus suggests that it was finely finished or nearly finished.8 Archives from Avignon refer to works returned to their patrons when the illuminator to whom they had been entrusted died, and these unfinished works were doubtless entrusted to others for completion, through the intermediary of the patron rather than within the book trade. Where there was production in bulk of very similar Books of Hours, it has been assumed that close similarities in miniatures reflect reliance on drawings, perhaps in model books, that were shared by different producers. Manuscripts of the enormous ‘Gold Scrolls Group’ show the regular use of individual motifs in miniatures, though the actual compositions show no such uniformity.9 In Amiens during the period 1425–50, similarities in miniatures found in Books of Hours suggest reliance on pattern books containing drawings of figures and some complete compositions, perhaps even with page designs and indications for colouring.10 Thomas Kren, in examining the appearance of what are still known as the “Ghent-Bruges School” manuscripts after 1470, identified at least fifty patterns in use by 1483, apparently generated by individual illuminators but representing a corpus used collectively; such patterns may have been “uncoloured drawings without notations, uncoloured drawings that had colour notes, completed miniatures […] perhaps even coloured ­images intended 8

9 10

C. Couderq, “Fragments relatifs à Andry Le Musnier, libraire-juré de l’université de Paris au xv siècle,” Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Ile de France 45 (1918): 105. Information about Le Musnier is brought together in M. Rouse and R. Rouse, Illiterati et uxorati. Manuscripts and their Makers: Commercial book producers in medieval Paris, 1200–1500, 2 vols. (Turnhout, 2000), ii: 43. D. Vanwijnsberghe, ‘Moult bons et notables’. L’enluminure tournaisienne à l’époque de Robert Campin (1380–1430) (Dudley MA, 2007), 35. S. Nash, “Imitation, invention or good business sense? The use of drawings in a group of fifteenth-century French Books of Hours,” in Drawing 1400–1600, ed. S. Currie (Aldershot, 1998), 12–25.

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primarily for use as patterns.”11 In Rouen, the remarkable uniformity of both details and overall compositions in miniatures, as well as of colouring and design, found in a very large production of Books of Hours from the 1470s to even after 1500 makes one think that a community of book makers had recourse to a common set of drawings of complete compositions or of discrete motifs.12 The model may have been set by the Master of the Echevins de Rouen, but the quantity of Books of Hours produced in his wake, some of good quality, others by less competent hands, make one doubt that all were responding to his ‘influence;’13 a working practice seems to have been established where models were shared. Bulk production in the late fifteenth century probably depended on collective use of shared models, perhaps one of the ways the manuscript book industry responded to competition and increased demand. In places like Rouen or Amiens, the mere fact of repetition could create uniformity, so that a drawing or model of a common scene could be produced spontaneously by someone who had produced multiple versions of any pattern or scene in their working life. Drawings by Jan van Eyck, or those attributed to outstanding illuminators such as the Zweder van Culemborg Masters, the Housebook Master or the Dresden Prayerbook Master, may have survived because their virtuoso qualities matched the expectations of later connoisseurs who collected drawings, but the works may not be representative of drawings and patterns used by bulk producers of Books of Hours and other works.14 These reflections are of some relevance when considering an unfinished manuscript being made in Normandy in the 1490s and owned by one Harreteau in the sixteenth century; it was acquired by the V&A in 1993. Though unfinished, it appears to have been intensively used, the worn state of the first folio suggesting that it was un-bound for a considerable time. A single finished miniature shows that, had it been completed, it would have been a work of very respectable quality (Fig. 25.1). Why it was unfinished cannot be established. 11 12 13 14

T. Kren, “The importance of patterns in the emergence of a new style of Flemish manuscript illumination after 1470,” Manuscripts in Transition: Recycling manuscripts, texts and images, ed. B. Dekeyzer and J. van der Stock (Leuven, 2005), 357–77. Miniatures from a series of Rouen Books of Hours of the late fifteenth century are published in R. Watson, The Playfair Hours. A late-fifteenth century manuscript from Rouen (London, 1984). C. Rabel, “Le Maître des Échevins de Rouen,” Revue de l’art 84 (1989): 48–60. E. Konig, “How did illuminators draw? Some fifteenth-century examples, mostly Flemish,” Master Drawing 41 (2003): 216–27, discusses “autonomous drawings,” intended as models or as independent creations, done by artists who were or might have been illuminators, and also what he terms “preparatory drawing” done as part of the production process; in bringing together two these two kinds of drawing, he suggests “there was no one way that illuminators drew.”

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The manuscript was perhaps retained by a bookseller ready for rapid customizing when customers, or assistants with the necessary skills, presented themselves; it may even have been a work that was traded between booksellers, since it would have had a commercial value among book-producers even when incomplete. The scrappy nature of some of the work suggests that problems emerged as it was being produced. That it was being professionally made is indicated by the catchwords and quire signatures (the calendar pages have the name of the month in a minute cursive script in French written horizontally at the foot of the recto, either a leaf signature or a direction to a rubricator), a few of them spared by the twentieth-century binder. The manuscript was certainly valued in early twentieth-century France when the Parisian binder Edmond Foch gave it a sober binding of polished calf with rich gilded decoration on the turn-overs and doublures of glossy marbled papers.15 The binding might strike us as rather minimal, but the sobriety was a positive statement: when Queen Victoria gave Bibles as gifts, they had a similar simple coverings. There was a cult of making decorated Prayer Books by hand in France in the years around 1900, as we can see from the articles and advertisements in a magazine like Le colouriste-enlumineur, a Catholic magazine from 1894 published for the Société de Saint Augustin. The magazine was an organ of the Augustinians of the Assumption; viciously opposed to the secular and modernising mission of the Third Republic, the order was banned from France in 1900 on the grounds that it was amassing money for a royalist movement to overthrow the Republic.16 The binding was an act of homage to a Catholic art associated with the monarchy of medieval France. The date of 1402, written in what is possibly a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century hand on folio 1r of Harreteau’s manuscript, and appearing on the binding in gilded numerals at the base of the spine, is difficult to explain—the death of the duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, in 1402 seems an unlikely event to commemorate, even if his first wife was Isabelle de Valois. On folio 3r is the inscription, written vertically in the outer margin, J’appartiens à Harreteau, in a highly competent Secretary script, probably of the second quarter of the sixteenth century, such as was used by lawyers and bureaucrats at the time. The positioning may have been intentionally discrete: 15

Foch is known to have been active as a binder in Paris before 1914; see J. Fléty, Dictionnaire des relieurs français ayant exercé de 1800 à nos jours (Paris, 1988), 99–100. 16 See Manuscript illumination in the modern age: recovery and reconstruction, ed. S. Hindman, M. Camille, N. Rowe and R. Watson (Evanston, IL, 2001). The background is discussed in R. Watson, Illumination and illuminated manuscripts in the nineteenth century: a survey of responses in England, France and Germany to the revival of a medieval art form (London, 1997).

Harreteau and His Unfinished Book of Hours

Figure 25.1

401

Folio with completed border and completed integrated miniature of St Mark. London, V&A MSL/1993/2, f. 16v © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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it allowed the owner to try to write his name in this difficult script at the top of folio 1r, though the task was beyond him—the letters are unintelligible. It was as if an upper-class professional had decided to give the unfinished manuscript to someone less well educated, someone who could read—and who knew the Latin liturgy well enough to be able to follow the text—but not write, and who might be satisfied by the colour in the manuscript rather than the finish. The name was a diminutive version of ‘Haret’, on the one hand a hunter’s cry to encourage dogs in the chase (or a town-crier’s call to end a fair), and on the other the name for a domestic cat that had become feral.17 It is difficult not to think that the name reflected low social status, bestowed in a friendly but patronising manner. The mere fact of colour may have given it value to such an owner, someone of the kind criticised by Leonardo da Vinci when he complained that “the ignorant masses” appreciated colour more than artistry.18 That the manuscript was used as a working document even in its unfinished state is shown by additions to the original Latin text. A further Latin prayer to the Trinity, one recited after the office (Sacrosancte et individue trinitatis crucifixi), was apropriately added on a blank page (f. 57r) to follow the Hours of the Virgin in a sixteenth-century hand. This hand also makes comments in the margin to instruct the user, as when the Psalm 6 (Domine ne in furore tuo arguas me) that appears in the Office of the Dead is noted as being appropriate as well for the first of the Penitential Psalms (f. 82r). The area of intended usage is suggested by liturgical details. The calendar is very sparsely filled in, though a number of feasts are written out in red; of these major feasts, none points to a local cult, though St Mary de nive on 5 August was common in Rouen calendars, and the feast of the Conception of the Virgin on 8 December shows that up-to-date liturgical innovations were followed.19 The word Vigilia in red announces the Assumption of the Virgin for 15 August, but the feast-day itself is blank; Christmas has its Vigil in brown ink and is itself 17

18 19

The Grand Robert dictionary, Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française 3, comp. P. Robert (Paris, 1969), s.v. HARET, refers to both senses, citing usage from the seventeenth century. The Dictionnaire du moyen français: la Renaissance, ed. A.J. Greimas and T.M. Keane (Paris, 1992), s.v. HARE, refers to a cry to excite dogs and to irritate or torment in general, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the Dictionnaire de l’ancien français: le Moyen Âge of Greimas (Paris, 1994), s.v. HARE, mentions thirteenth-century use of “hare, hare” as the cry by sergeants to mark the end of the fair. Leonardo on Painting, ed. M. Kemp (New Haven and London, 1989), 15–16. The Feast of the Conception of the Virgin was regularly promoted in printed Books of Hours from the mid-1480s (see for example the descriptions of the contents of printed Horae in the Catalogue of books printed in the fifteenth century now in the Bodleian Library, ed. A. Coates et al., 6 vols. (Oxford, 2005), iii), making only an occasional occurrence in manuscript Books of Hours.

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blank, both feasts probably awaiting the inscription in gold. However, a series of saints in brown ink (Gregory of Tours on 12 March, Cermicus of Maine on 7 May, Renobertus of Bayeux on 16 May, Romanus of Rouen on 23 October, Gatian of Tours on 18 December) have very specific attachments to Normandy, and this intended location is confirmed by the Use of the Hours of the Virgin, which is that of Avranches, the use of the Office of the Dead being one found in Rouen and Coutances.20 As is usual, the saints in the calendar have little in common with the saints in the litany, the exception being John the Baptist, who appears in the litany immediately after the archangels to represent all patriarchs and prophets, and whose feasts in the calendar, in red, are found on 6 May, 24 June and 29 August. John the Baptist is found at the head of the litany in many Rouen Books of Hours, though Ursinus in this position would be a better sign of Rouen attachment. Books of Hours are usually given a look of coherence and visual uniformity by the subjection of the whole book, many parts of which might have been made independently, to a final campaign of secondary ornament. Calendars were routinely added to Books of Hours as a last element, perhaps to suit any particular customer, but initials and borders covering the complete book hide the fact that discrete parts, and different scribal stints, were being brought together. Throughout the manuscript are small initials of a kind that were devised from about the 1470s for rapid execution and which were ideally suited to cope with the accelerating rate of production of manuscript and printed books, both of which needed coloured initials to articulate the text. These initials had alternate rectangular monochrome grounds of red and blue, with the lettershape sketched in with brushed gold. In this manuscript, it seems that the rectangle was drawn in grey ink and the pigment applied over this; the pigment in many cases was so messily applied that a further bounding line in black was necessary to give the initial some neatness; this was only done in one or two places. The brushed gold initials were only applied to two leaves, leaves where the border ornament was complete, with the same pigment as is found in those borders. A few initials put in with white pigment represent a further, later, effort to make to the manuscript useable, and a few of the spaces reserved for initials have letters lightly drawn with metalpoint. Rubrics have been written with red ink, though they are absent from much of the text. Later use of the manuscript is shown by a rubric, Matines de la Croix, on folio 43v written in a late sixteenth- or seventeenth-century hand; this page is otherwise blank and 20

The use was identified using the wonderful resource of the late Eric Drigsdahl, which is available online. Readings for the Office of the Dead can, of course, be traced in K. ­Ottosen, The responsories and versicles of the Latin Office of the Dead (Aarhus, 1993).

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has traces of encrusted paste glue—it is not inconceivable that a print once covered the page. The manuscript contains three integrated miniatures to illustrate the Gospel pericopes for Luke, Mathew and Mark (the passage from John the Evangelist’s Gospel which usually begins the sequence is strangely missing); there is as well an integrated miniature for Lauds (the Visitation) in the Hours of the Virgin, and eleven more for the suffrages to the saints which come after the hours. All of these integrated miniatures are on folios with completed borders— full-frame borders with acanthus, fruit and grotesques for the Gospel pericope miniatures, and three-sided borders of acanthus and stylised fruit and flowers (the right-hand edge with no ornament) for the Visitation and suffrage miniatures. The borders were clearly an independent campaign of work, completed before the miniatures were begun. The miniatures of Luke, Mathew and Mark for the Gospel pericopes too were the result of a separate campaign, all on the third gathering with Luke and Mark on the same bifolium. The borders are all finished. The figures of Luke and Mathew have carefully modelled robes complete with highlights in brushed gold, though the faces are unfinished, with only a rough indication of features shown by a liquid grey line drawn with a brush onto the bare parchment. Mark on the other hand is completely finished, with features carefully built up with a multitude of small hatched strokes using several colours; cheekbones, eyebrows, beard and moustache are carefully constructed (Fig. 25.1). The background of a mottled grey gives the small image an element of luminosity. This gathering (ff. 13r-19v, f. 18 a singleton) was at least approaching completion. The other integrated miniatures, one (the Visitation for Lauds) on the last folio of the fourth gathering (f. 27v) and the others (portraits of saints for the suffrages) all on the sixth gathering (ff. 36r-43v), are incomplete. The figures themselves have neat outlines and probably awaited some brushed gold highlights; the faces are prepared in a very different manner from the Evangelists in that there is a ground of skin-coloured pigment with features incompetently sketched in with a clumsy light-grey line. The colours are different from those of the Evangelists, and there is no highlighting in brushed gold. These miniatures are apparently by a different hand, the washes put in neatly but the faces done by someone incapable of drawing—someone who attempted to make a face before a more competent illuminator did their work. The backgrounds are either of simple architectural facades of classical type, so common in Rouen illumination and very often rather cursorily done (in Bourdichon manuscripts they were executed with great care), or of landscape; both would need further work, the landscapes brushed gold highlights and the architecture some firmer

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boundary lines—though in one case, St Barbara, the tower she holds in her hand has a neat outline added (Fig. 25.2). These integrated miniatures appear to represent a single campaign carried out by people capable of applying pigment but not of modelling faces or finishing backgrounds. There are striking differences in the four half-page miniatures, one of them on the seventh gathering (f. 45v) and the others on the eighth (ff. 50v, 53v and 57r). The miniatures have rounded tops: a bounding line in what is probably metalpoint is visible in some, but the painters of the miniature have painted over it and indeed encroached on the completed frame borders (with grotesques included), which are quite finished—their contribution thus came after the borders had been completed. In the miniatures, washes of colour have been put in for the figures and backgrounds, with varying elements of further modelling. In all cases, the face area is just a wash of a skin colour, with the beards in brown. It seems most likely that the application of layers of pigment was reserved for people who had no skill as draftsmen or draftswomen (at a later date, it is known, of course, that simple colouring of maps and prints was done by a workforce with rudimentary skills and paid accordingly). The landscape backgrounds, of a kind totally conventional in Rouen and other manuscripts, are nearly finished, with the eaves of distant houses carefully executed, the timber framing of the barn in the Nativity (f. 45v) carefully marked out with black bounding lines. The robes of the figures are all in the state of rough washes, with the exception of the Magi scene (Fig. 25.3), where they are modelled with some care and finished with highlights in brushed gold, making the unfinished faces look particularly crude (the integrated miniatures of the Evangelists are the only other images to have garments modelled in brushed gold). The care with which the landscapes and the robes of the Magi are done makes the faces of the figures with their very clumsily sketched features appear outlandish. The use of darkened patches for the eyes and beards was presumably to make painting in the faces an easier task for a specialist painter. In these half-page miniatures, done quite independently of the borders, it seems likely that there was a division of labour between the application of washes and the beginnings of further modelling for elements within the background and elsewhere. Evidence for the participation of a variety of hands of varying skill is most apparent in the three full-page miniatures, the Annunciation on f. 18v, a singleton (Fig. 25.4), the image of David and Bathsheba for the Penitential Psalms on f. 67v and the figure confronting three horsemen for the Office of the Dead on f. 80v (Fig. 25.5). The Annunciation has a timber-frame border sitting on a black ground which bleeds off the page; frames of this kind can of course be found in deluxe manuscripts from the large production associated with Jean

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Figure 25.2

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Suffrage for St Barbara. London, V&A MSL/1993/2, f. 41v © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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Figure 25.3

Adoration of the Magi. London, V&A MSL/1993/2, f. 53v © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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Figure 25.4

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The Annunciation. London, V&A MSL/1993/2, f. 18v © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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Figure 25.5

Death figure greeting three horsemen. London, V&A MSL/1993/2, f. 80v © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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Bourdichon (1457/59–1521) and even Jean Fouquet (c. 1420-before 1480) from the 1470s onwards.21 In the Annunciation of Harreteau’s manuscript (Fig. 25.4), the frame is well on the way to completion, with a mitred and nimbed figure in an architectural niche at the bottom; the timbers too have a texture to suggest grain and stand from the page surface in relief, as does the canopy under which the Virgin sits. The robes of the Virgin, the angel, and God the Father at top right, remain at the state of washes. The features of the Virgin’s face are very roughly sketched on bare parchment using a brush with a grey line, though over this is some drawing in graphite or metalpoint. This latter may have been done independently at a later date, but the way the nose has been put in, with two long curved parallel lines against which the position of the eyes could be calculated, might more probably be the first strokes of an illuminator preparing to apply pigment and modelling for the face. The parallel lines may have been a formula for the rapid execution of a face, one acquired during training which would give some kind of stylistic consistency to anyone using this method. The composition itself follows one used by Bourdichon, though at this state of completion it cannot be seen how close it might have been eventually to his version, in, for instance, British Library Harley MS 2877, f. 29r—this view of the Virgin in close-up was in too general a circulation for any link with the Harreteau image to be assumed.22 The full-page image for David’s view of Bathsheba bathing has an incomplete timber frame border in brushed gold; this pigment is used as well for the rim of the fountain in which Bathsheba bathes her legs and for David’s robe (the gold fabric hanging outside the window may be a cloth of honour or David’s robe, an ambiguity which further illumination would presumably have resolved). The practice of applying gold leaf as the first stage after drawing has been noticed by Calkins and others, though here it applies to grounds of brushed gold. David and his attendants, and the figure of Bathsheba, remain 21

22

The timber frame borders appear regularly in Bourdichon manuscripts, as for instance in his Hours of Louis xii of c. 1498 or the Grandes Heures d’Anne de Bretagne of c. 1508 (BnF MS Lat. 9474), where they appear on a black ground that bleeds off the page and with text on the lower part of the frame (see T. Kren and M. Evans, A masterpiece reconstructed: the hours of Louis xii (Los Angeles and London, 2005); and F. Avril and N. Reynaud, Les manuscrits à peintures en France, 1440–1520 (Paris, 1993), 297–300). They also appear in manuscripts associated with Fouquet, such as the Anne de Beaujeu Hours (BnF MS n.a.l. 3187) illuminated by the Munich Boccaccio Master and others (Jean Fouquet, ed. F. Avril, (Paris, 2003), 328–33). Images in BL Harley MS 2877 can be accessed online via the British Library website and see note 20 above. Compositions used by Bourdichon and his circle are conveniently brought together in black and white images in R. Limousin, Jean Bourdichon, peintre et enlumineur, son atelier et son école (Lyon, 1954).

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at the stage of drawings in brown ink on bare parchment. The landscape remains as a bare green wash, but the distant townscape, done with a great deal of care, is carefully finished. The distant figures on a balcony in this townscape survive as drawings, their shapes distorted, overlapped by parts of the black ground wash; in front of the left-hand figure, barely perceptible, descends a flowing garment as if blowing in the wind, either the survival of an earlier now irrelevant drawing (there is a suggestion of the gable end of a house) or a shape that was to be developed by an illuminator—it is filled in with a grey wash, almost the same as the ground. Bathsheba is usually depicted nude, standing in the basin at the foot of a fountain. Here, however, a rarer iconography is followed, in which we see a demure figure lifting up her skirt to put her legs in the fountain. The figure of Bathsheba—but not the background or the positioning of David—is very similar to that appearing in a number of manuscripts from the Loire valley area in which the influence of Fouquet has been noticed; most of these follow a model where the V-shaped front of the Bathsheba’s coat is laced, a detail that the Harreteau illuminator might have added.23 The significant point is that what is visible of the draftsmanship, and not covered by washes or illumination, shows a free-hand sketch, a spontaneously-drawn version of a standard composition. The drawing in the full-page miniature showing a death figure holding up three young men on horseback (f. 80r) is very similar (Fig. 25.5): it was done on bare parchment with a brush using a liquid brown pigment or ink. As with the figure of Bathsheba, the drawing is done with much more detail than was needed to guide the illuminator, with many repeated free-hand strokes to indicate the form. Other cases have been noticed where free-hand draftsmanship was much more elaborate than was needed to guide the illuminator, a contrast to instances where nothing beyond an outline was provided.24 The washes for 23

24

See, for instance, Madrid, Biblioteca Real MS Res. 192, described in A. Dominguez Rodriguez, Libros de Horas del siglo xv en la Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid, 1979), 41–3. The Hours of Louis de Laval (BnF MS Lat. 920), described in Les Très Riches Heures de Champagne, ed. F. Avril et al. (Paris, 2007), 170–1, shows the young Jean Colombe using this composition (the Bathsheba scene is illustrated in colour). It appears as well in other associated manuscripts including the Hours of Anne de Beaujeu (New York, Morgan Library MS M.677), and in a Book of Hours in the Hague (Koninklijke Biblioteek MS 76 G 8) — see the Très Riches Heures de Champagne, 156, and Pierpont Morgan Library. Exhibition of illuminated manuscripts, held at New York Public Library, ed. C.R. Morey (New York, 1933), no. 119. The drawing by Jean Colombe for a scene in the Histoire de Merlin (BnF MS Fr. 91, f. 178r) is a clear case of a draftsman providing a drawing beyond what an illuminator needed: Alexander, Medieval Illuminators, 62. See the entry for Philadelphia, Free Library Lewis E M 18.4, in Leaves of Gold. MS Illumination from Philadelphia Collections, ed. J.R. Tanis

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the landscape have encroached upon the drawing in places; the trees in the landscape await a final highlighting with brushed gold. The townscape in the background, however, is very carefully finished, evidently done by a specialist. It seems clear from the unfinished layers found in the Harreteau Hours that a series of campaigns over time was envisaged to complete the manuscript. With completed borders, many of them with grotesques and figurative elements and accomplished before work on integrated miniatures and half-page miniatures had got very far, it seems more likely that the campaigns were carried out by different people or groups of people over time, perhaps reflecting different phases of ownership within the book trade. The drawings for the fullpage miniatures can only have been an independent contribution, since they provided little guidance for the illuminator; it seems most likely that the finished distant townscapes in the Bathsheba scene and the scene of horsemen facing a death figure were done by another specialist. The frequently cited example of Anastaise, mentioned by Christine de Pisan in 1404–5 as experte à faire vigneteures [i.e. borders] d’enlumineure en livres et champaignes d’istoires, indicates how manuscript production could commonly rely on specialists for illuminating parts of miniatures, even if this individual was associated with de luxe production.25 Documentary sources occasionally refer to the kind of problems that might arise in the manuscript book industry. In Paris, Jean Picard, for instance, shortly before 1475 paid 16 écus to André Le Musnier for the services of two apprentices who turned out to be incompetent—il[s] n’estoient pas abilles pour gaigner argent.26 Master Robert de Rubella provided against this sitution when he took on Simon Bourbuti as an apprentice in Avignon in 1493: if work was unsatisfactory, Robert could dismiss Simon ([…] in quod casu quo dicto magistro Roberto non placeret servicium dicti Simoni Bourbuti, […] possit […] Robertus eumdem Simonem licenciare […]).27 The 1480 statutes in Tournai allowed a master to sack an apprentice after fifteen days if he proved unfitted for the work— serviteurs could be similarly dismissed after a month if incompetent.28 Jean Gillimer found himself in an awkward situation in 1471: he informed his interrogator that, when working in Poitiers de son mestier d’enlumineur, he had (Philadelphia, 2001), for a miniature of Pilate exhibiting Christ to the Crown in outline, done in France, c. 1440. A very clear example of outline drawing can be seen in miniatures sold at Christie’s, New York, 7 Oct. 1994, lot 11, Paris work of about 1500. 25 References to discussion of Anastaise are given in Rouse and Rouse, Manuscripts and their makers, ii: 14. 26 Couderq, “Fragments,” 100. 27 Pansier, Histoire du livre, ii: 84. 28 Vanwijnsberghe, De fin or et d’azur, 120, 122.

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a number of helpers (plusieurs grans serviteurs, the last word denoting a category separate from apprentices or journeymen) who refused to work as he instructed. Gillimer therefore got a series of spells written on slips of parchment by a friar expert in astrology which, properly addressed to each of the seven servants involved, would make them obedient.29 The person or persons responsible for making Harreteau’s manuscript may have had much in common with Jean Gillimer, being unable to manage a workforce efficiently or unable to find a client to finance the final stages of the making of the book. Unsuitable for a lawyer of means, this manuscript in a rudimentary state of completion was doubtless found very useful by Harreteau. 29

The account of Gillimer’s interrogation in AN, J 950, nos 13, 14, was published in A. Lecoy de la Marche, “Interrogatoire d’un enlumineur par Tristan l’Ermite,” Revue de l’Art Chrétien 5e série, iii (1892): 396–405, and in V.P. Day, “Portrait of a provincial artist: Jean Gillemer, Poitevin illuminator,” Gesta 41/1 (2002): 39–49.

Chapter 26

Looking Beneath the Surface: Subterranean Space in the Kutná Hora Cantional Lucy Donkin Rarely does the painted page represent the ground beneath our feet in so striking a manner as in the Kutná Hora Cantional.1 This late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century music manuscript, actually a gradual, is well known for its full-page frontispiece showing miners at work above and below ground (Fig. 26.1).2 While attention has traditionally concentrated on its depiction of mining processes, this article focuses instead on the view it affords into subterranean space and substance, an unusually extensive cross-section through the earth. The section is first compared with the treatment of the subterranean in other mining scenes, with particular reference to the position of the viewer. While partial parallels can be found in contemporary liturgical and legal manuscripts from Kutná Hora, as well as in sixteenth-century chorographical and technical literature, similar approaches are also found when mining subjects are combined with religious scenes. Secondly, the article considers the implications of this approach in terms of the way in which seeing through the ground was presented in technical, religious and legal discussions of mining. Finally, comparisons are drawn with other representations of subterranean space in the Cantional and in the late fifteenth-century Smíškovský Gradual, which illustrate biblical or hagiographical material, suggesting these share with the frontispiece an interest in the permeability of the ground. In the relationships forged between ground that was mined and ground that was of 1 Vienna, önb Mus. Hs. 15501. 2 Recent overviews of the literature are given in R. Slotta, “Titelblatt des Kuttenberger Kanzionales,” in Meisterwerke bergbaulicher Kunst vom 13. bis 19. Jahrhundert, ed. R. Slotta and C. Bartels (Bochum, 1990), 180–4; J. Richter, “Die Gradualhandschriften für die Kuttenberger Pfarrkirchen,” in Die Jagiellonen: Kunst und Kultur einer europäischen Dynastie an der Wende zur Neuzeit, ed. D. Popp and R. Suckale (Nuremberg, 2002), 189–200, at 199; B.F. Hunter Graham, Bohemian and Moravian Graduals, 1420–1620 (Turnhout, 2006), 576–81, at 580–1. The manuscript is given a terminus ante quem of 1499 in Richter, “Gradualhandschriften,” 192–3; and dated to 1509–16 in Graham, Bohemian and Moravian Graduals, 577–8. On this type of manuscript see also M. Šárovcová, “Illuminated musical manuscripts in the Bohemian Reformation,” in From Hus to Luther: Visual Culture in the Bohemian Reformation (1380–1620), ed. K. Horníčková and M. Šroněk (Turnhout, 2016), 281–304.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_028

Subterranean Space in the Kutná Hora Cantional

Figure 26.1

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Mining, processing and sale of ore, Kutná Hora Cantional, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Mus. Hs. 15501, f. 1v © önb, Vienna

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religious s­ ignificance, the manuscripts make a distinctive contribution to understanding the environmentally-informed religiosity of mining communities between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. 1

Looking into the Earth

The Cantional was probably made for the church of St James in Kutná Hora, one of the most productive silver mining towns in late medieval Europe. The frontispiece shows the process of mining ore, from extraction to sale, and, as noted above, it has received considerable attention as an early representation of an industry and indeed of industrious work more generally.3 However, the miniature is also of interest for its complex representation of space. Not only does it combine the depiction of interior and exterior spaces with scenes above and below ground, but the latter are presented from different perspectives. The composition is divided into three tiers: at the bottom, the extraction of the ore below ground; in the middle, its processing above ground; and at the top, its sale, which takes place inside. The walls of the room are cut away, and exterior morphs into interior with no change in the level or appearance of the ground. Both are shown from a slightly elevated position, and the room’s three windows afford further views over the surrounding countryside. However, in the bottom third of the composition, we are presented with a vertical cross-section through the silvery-grey ground, filled with tunnels and shafts in which miners hew the rock and collect the ore. Although valorising the miner’s underground activities, it does not present a miner’s perspective from within the subterranean spaces, as does the mining scene in the early sixteenth-century German translation of Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque fortune, set within a single tunnel.4 Rather it is an all-encompassing view, which slices through the rock as well as the spaces within it, and as such is more a product of the imagination than of experience. The tunnels are differentiated from the surrounding rock by hints of gold to suggest the metallic ore, and are also interconnected in ways that are suggested as well as shown. In one place two men operate a pulley system, and below them another man attaches a basket of ore to be lifted up; 3 K.-E. Fritzsch, “Der Bergmann in den Kuttenberger Miniaturen des ausgehenden Mittelalters,” Der Anschnitt: Zeitschrift für Kunst und Kultur im Bergbau 19 (1967): 4–39; G. Jaritz, “The visual representation of late medieval work: patterns of context, people and action,” in The Idea of Work in Europe from Antiquity to Modern Times, ed. J. Ehmer and C. Lis (Farnham, 2009), 125–48 (131–2). 4 Francesco Petrarch, Von der Artzney bayder Glück, des guten und widerwertigen (Augsburg, 1532), f. 70v.

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between the two groups the rock interposes, and the rope disappears from view. Parallels can be drawn with the cut-away room above, which also stretches the full width of the miniature, and thus between the architectural interior and the interior of the earth. However, by positioning the viewer below the surface of the ground and by providing a cross-section through dense material as well as excavated spaces, the representation of the subterranean goes further. The manuscript includes other depictions of miners, mainly clustered around black Gothic initials with a few pen-work examples in the margins, but the cross-section format is not reprised.5 Although the Cantional forms part of a wider trend around the turn of the fifteenth century of representing subterranean space in the context of mining, the exact approach taken is unusual, particularly in the perspective afforded the viewer. Correspondences can be drawn with other music manuscripts from Kutná Hora with full-page scenes devoted to mining and related activities.6 However, these contain no exact equivalent. Perhaps the earliest is the mining landscape in the so-called Kutná Hora Gradual (actually an antiphonary), which is dated to 1471.7 Here subterranean space is alluded to through the top of three shafts, with men descending or ascending, and several views into tunnels. In some places, the surrounding area is green, suggesting the surface of the ground, but one section may act as a cut-away showing miners underground, since the area surrounding the figures is brown. Alternatively, it may represent an exposed rock-face. Certainly, beneath this, the miniature returns to activities above ground, with workers pushing wheelbarrows of ore beside a stream. A single leaf with a mining scene has also been associated with Kutná Hora, and thought to pre-date the Cantional.8 Here the bottom of the space is occupied by a bird’s eye view into workshops with the mining landscape above. The representation of subterranean activities is restricted to a roughly semicircular section on the right-hand side. As in the Cantonial, the figures work within a coherent silvery-grey environment of connected passages, suggesting that the whole area represents subterranean space. At the same time, because of its position within the composition, it does not present such a radical crosssection through the ground. In terms of the representation of the ground, the

5 For example, the initials on ff. 16r, 22r, 42v, 43r, 51r, 66r, 105r; for the penwork figures see 111v, 115v, 213v. 6 K.-E. Fritzsch, “Die Kuttenberger Bergbauminiaturen des Illuminators Mathaeus: Ein Beitrag zu ihrer bergbaugeschichtlichen und volkskundlichen Interpretation,” Deutsches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde 6 (1960): 213–28; Richter, “Gradualhandschriften.” 7 Prague, National Library MS xxiii A 2. 8 Slotta, “Titelblatt,” 180–4. Long considered lost, it was recently sold by Sotheby’s.

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Cantional can be compared more closely to the frontispiece of a legal manuscript, a copy of the Ius regale montanorum dated to c. 1525.9 This also features a tripartite division of the page, which corresponds to different kinds of space: at the top, King Wensleslas presents the law code to groups of miners; the centre is occupied by a mining landscape; while the bottom represents subterranean space, with miners at work. The surface of the ground cuts across the whole page and everything beneath it is below ground, giving the impression of a cross-section, as in the Kutná Hora Cantional, which it has been seen to copy.10 Sections and cut-away scenes are also found in works on mining and in depictions of mining activity in chorographical works, although again distinctions can be drawn. A section through the workings of a mine in the Vosges, one of a series of drawings of the site made by Heinrich Gross in around 1530, shows several levels of tunnels and shafts cut through the solid rock.11 However, unlike the Cantional, it includes no activities above ground, not even representing its surface. In contrast, most other sixteenth-century depictions position the viewer entirely above ground and offer only partial glimpses within. Amongst the earliest examples are those in the expanded second edition of Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia (1550), which displayed considerable interest in mining.12 Accompanying his discussion of the mines of Alsace is a large scene showing miners at work (Fig. 26.2).13 This includes two cut-away views into the mountain, the upper one showing men using a pulley to haul up buckets of ore from below, and the lower one depicting miners at the rock-face and shovelling the ore. The spaces are shown to be interconnected by a shaft within the mountain; the rope suspending one of the buckets and the ladder beside it disappear from sight between the two ‘windows.’ Similarly, the lower tunnel 9

Prague, Knihovna Národního Muzea MS I F 34. G. Heilfurth, Der Bergbau und seine Kultur: eine Welt zwischen Dunkel und Licht (Zurich, 1981), 66–7; G. Schade and M. Ohlsen, ed., Dasein und Vision. Bürger und Bauern um 1500 (Berlin, 1989), 34–5, cat. no. A 77; P. Brodský, Katalog Iluminovaných Rukopisů Knihovny Národního Muzea v Praze [Catalogue of the Illuminated Manuscripts of the Library of the National Museum, Prague] (Prague, 2000), 14, no. 11, 339. 10 Schade and Ohlsen, Dasein und Vision, 35. 11 P. Benoit, “Histoire des techniques et iconographie: la place du manuscript de Heinrich Gross dans l’iconographie minière germanique,” in L’Art et les Mines dans les Vosges, Pierres et Terre 25–6 (1982): 67–83, discusses the section alongside works including the Kutná Hora Cantional. The volume reproduces Gross’s manuscript at the end, including the section on ff. 26–27. 12 Sebastian Münster, Cosmographia (Basel, 1550), 433, 628; M. McLean, The Cosmographia of Sebastian Münster: Describing the World in the Reformation (Farnham, 2007), 217–18, 309. 13 Münster, Cosmographia, 431.

Subterranean Space in the Kutná Hora Cantional

Figure 26.2

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Miners at work, Sebastian Münster, Cosmographia (1552), p. 431 Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library (L*.9.8(B))

exits into the open air from behind the rock-face. These devices make it clear that these are imaginary views into the mountain. They have been described as “without precedent,” though in fact they postdate the Kutná Hora manuscripts, including the Cantional’s even more radical cross-section through subterranean space.14 However, they do operate in a different way. In the Cosmographia, since the foreground of the scene is above ground on the level, we are looking at a mountain from the side, as though apertures had been bored into it. In other words, it is an ‘impossible’ view from a possible position, in the manner of a cut-away view of an architectural structure or an anatomical drawing with the surface of the skin peeled off.15 In the Cantional the viewer of the 14 McLean, The Cosmographia of Sebastian Münster, 206. 15 On the precedent formed by anatomical diagrams, with reference to Agricola, see H. Holländer, “Kommentare und Notizen zur Bildgeschichte des Bergbaus,” in Erkenntnis, Erfindung, Konstruktion: Studien zur Bildgeschichte von Naturwissenschaften und Technik vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, ed. H. Holländer (Berlin, 2000), 643–71, at 660–2; M.-C.

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s­ ubterranean space is positioned entirely below ground. The relationship between the surface of the page and that of the ground is also different: in the former the two are on the same plane, with sections of rock opened up like windows in an advent calendar, while in the latter the page intersects with the surface of the ground at 90°. Shortly after the printing of the expanded version of the Cosmographia, Georg Agricola’s works on mining employed various devices to display subterranean space.16 Although the woodcuts in the De re metallica have been seen to share visual conventions with the Bohemian manuscripts, they too offer no exact parallel with the Kutná Hora Cantional.17 Some show veins intersecting the hills, although in other respects these are depicted as if from the outside. As Susanne B. Keller has noted, “the images are reluctant to show these hidden structures, as if one could actually perceive them visually,” and differentiate between the observed and the inferred.18 Considerable use is also made of the partial cut-away, for example in a woodcut showing three mine-shafts in different stages of completion.19 Parts of these are opened up to the viewer, and their routes otherwise indicated through shading, but the tree stumps and ­tunnel mouth at the bottom of the composition make it clear that, again, we are looking at and into the side of the mountain. Even in more extensive cut-aways, there is almost always an allusion to exterior space—a tree stump or a sprig of vegetation—towards the bottom of the scene to locate the viewer in the open air.20 In a few images, such as one showing a horse-powered pump, the surface of the ground bisects the page horizontally and the lower part of the scene is entirely subterranean.21 Yet even here we are looking into excavated space, rather than at a cross-section through rock with tunnels within it. Only in the seventeenth century do representations of mine workings commonly combine a section through rock and tunnels and shafts with a bird’s eye view of the landscape above ground in a similar manner to the Cantional.22 Déprez-Masson, Technique, Mot et Image: Le De re metallica d’Agricola (Turnhout, 2006), 249, n. 580. 16 O. Hannaway, “Reading the pictures: the context of Georgius Agricola’s woodcuts,” Nuncius 12/1 (1997): 49–66; Déprez-Masson, Technique, Mot et Image, 159–60, 179–250. 17 Déprez-Masson, Technique, Mot et Image, 159–60, 249–50. 18 S.B. Keller, “Picturing the inaccessible: gazing under the earth’s surface between empiricism and speculation,” in Vom Objekt zum Bild: Piktorale Prozesse in Kunst und Wissenschaft, 1600–2000, ed. B. Gockel (Berlin, 2011), 157–87 (164–6). 19 Georg Agricola, De re metallica (Basel, 1556), 72. 20 For example, Agricola, De re metallica, 80, 145, 147, 162. 21 Ibid., 152. 22 See, for example, Slotta and Bartels, Meisterwerke bergbaulicher Kunst, 248–60.

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The format of the totalising cross-section together with a bird’s eye view was also used at a later date within both legal and devotional contexts. For example, in the title page to a collection of mining codes from the early seventeenth century, half of the mining scene surrounding the title information is devoted to a subterranean cross-section.23 A variety of activities are depicted as if to cover those legislated for in the texts. An eighteenth-century print of the ‘Biblische Fundgrube’ or ‘Biblical Mine’ by M. Christ. Gottlieb Fritzsche employs the same convention for other purposes.24 This composition and concept has its origins in pre-Reformation devotional literature that used mining metaphors to discuss theological concepts. A notable example is Johannes von Paltz’s De himmlischer Fundgrube or ‘Heavenly Mineworks,’ first printed in 1490, in which God’s grace was presented as ‘heavenly ore’ and the suffering of Christ as a goldmine.25 Some editions of the Latin version, the Celifodina (first printed in 1504), not only show the crucifixion flanked by two monks with a pick and shovel, but also the entrance to a mine-shaft at the foot of the cross.26 In the print the crucifixion is similarly positioned, but the bottom third of the composition consists of a subterranean cross-section. The use of the format in these spheres suggests that it did not necessarily fulfil an informative function but could rather communicate a more general, all-encompassing vision of the ground. It should be noted in this respect that the overall organisation of the frontispiece has been compared in general terms to that of a Last Judgement.27 Certainly specific comparisons can be drawn with depictions of Hell, such as that of Jan van Eyck, c. 1430, in which the surface of the ground meets the page at 90° and a cross-section through subterranean space spans the width of the lower part of the composition.28 Closer in time and space to the Cantional is 23 Heilfurth, Bergbau, 70. 24 M. Bachmann, H. Marx and E. Wächtler, Der silberne Boden: Kunst und Bergbau in Sachsen (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1990), 325, no. 500. 25 Johannes von Paltz, Die himelische Funtgrube (Leipzig, 1490); C. Burger and F. Stasch ed., Johannes von Palzt: Werke, 3 vols. (Berlin and New York, 1983–89), iii: 157–69, 201–53, esp. 201–36. R.J. Bast, “Strategies of communication: late-medieval catechisms and the Passion tradition,” in The Broken Body: Passion Devotion in Late-Medieval Culture, ed. A.A. MacDonald, H.N.B. Ridderbos and R.M. Schlusemann (Groningen, 1998), 133–43; V. Honemann, “Bergbau in der Literatur des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Stadt und Bergbau, ed. K.H. Kaufhold and W. Reininghaus (Cologne, 2004), 239–61, at 246–8. 26 Burger and Stasch,  Johannes von Paltz: Werke, i: np, iii: 200. 27 C. Beutler, “Bildwerke von der Gotik bis zum Rokoko,” in Der Bergbau in der Kunst, ed. H. Winkelmann (Essen, 1958), 69–112 (74); Slotta, “Titelblatt,” 183. 28 New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1933 33.92ab. M. Zlatohlávek, C. Rätsch and C. Müller-Ebeling, Das Jüngste Gericht: Fresken, Bilder und Gemälde (Düsseldorf, 2001), 143–5.

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the depiction of the damned in hell in a Bohemian breviary from the 1490s, where the subterranean space occupies the bottom two thirds of the composition.29 The lack of exact parallels within the corpus of technical images also supports such a reading. However, the most suggestive comparison is with the stained glass of the minster of Freiburg im Breisgau, whose fortunes, like that of Kutná Hora, were built on silver mining. The mid-fourteenth-century Schauinsland window, donated by those mining the eponymous mountain, shows a version of the Transfiguration with Christ flanked by St Peter and St John.30 Beneath the feet of each figure is an individual cross-section containing a miner at work. As well as showing the interior of the working space, the depiction slices through the surrounding ore and rock. The window is notable for the way in which it elides the Holy Land, the land that Christ had trodden, with the local landscape. In showing the extraction of ore, it may also associate the products of mining with the stones from Mount Tabor that were widely venerated as relics. In the present context, it is striking that this elision involves a privileged view into the earth together with a more conventional one of the figures above ground. 2 Visibility Cut-away views and cross-sections of subterranean space render the invisible visible and in doing so engage with issues raised in textual discussions of mining in this period. Visibility, both within the mines and more fundamentally into the earth itself, was often given a moral or religious dimension. It played a part in debates as to whether mining was an appropriate activity at all, and informed discussion of the potential and limitations of human understanding of the subterranean. Additionally, definition of legal rights over subterranean space involved practices of imaginative visualisation. The approach adopted in the Kutná Hora Cantional is part of a wider discourse of looking beneath the surface. Mining could be seen as destructive, both to the earth itself and to those who engaged in it, and with the intensification of mineral extraction in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries doubts continued to be voiced. Debate as to whether subterranean riches should be mined included consideration of their proper visibility. Contrasts between activities above and below ground 29 30

Prague, Knihovna Národního Muzea MS 1 D a 1/18; Brodský, Katalog, 323, no. 307. R. Becksmann, Die Mittelalterlichen Glasmalereien in Freiburg im Breisgau, 2 vols. (Berlin, 2010), i: 343–52.

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highlighted the presence and absence of light. Already Petrarch’s popular De remediis utriusque fortune, composed c. 1354–66 and first printed in 1474, described gold miners as working “in the dark, without sky or sun,” and contrasted the “blessed light of heaven” with the “black horror of the pit.”31 Similar attitudes were expressed in Niavis’s Iudicium Iovis, printed in Leipzig c. 1495, in which Mercury described miners as hiding from the light of heaven in the squalor of the earth.32 Precious metals too were characterised as hidden from sight beneath the surface of the ground. Petrarch quoted Ovid on the topic of bringing to light wealth that the creator had deliberately hidden.33 A particularly full expression of concern was set out by Agricola in the first book of his De re metallica (1556), in the course of countering a number of arguments commonly advanced against mining. This contrasted the earth’s mineral resources lying beneath the surface of the ground with its agricultural wealth evident above ground, the unseen being opposed to the immediately apparent: The earth does not conceal and remove from our eyes those things which are useful and necessary to mankind, but on the contrary, like a beneficent and kindly mother she yields in large abundance from her bounty and brings into the light of day the herbs, vegetables, grains, and fruits and the trees. The minerals on the other hand she buries far beneath in the depth of the ground; therefore they should not be sought.34 In opposing this opinion, Agricola made a brief appeal to Christian values, suggesting that it would be impious to imply that God had created anything 31

“celo et sole derelicto in tenebris evum agere didicerunt, ceco et noxio ante tempus vapore consumpti […] vivus is sub terram, neque te hinc almum celi lumen retinet, illinc atre telluris horror excludit;” Petrarch, De remediis utriusque fortune, 1.54, De inventione aurifodine, ed. and trans. C. Carraud, Les remèdes aux deux fortunes. De remediis utriusque fortune. 1354–1366, 2 vols. (Grenoble, 2002), i: 266–8; C.H. Rawski, trans., Petrarch’s Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul: A Modern English Translation of De remediis utriusque fortune, 5 vols. (Bloomington, 1991), i: 165–8. 32 Paul Schneevogel, Iudicium Iovis (Leipzig, c. 1495), n.p.; Honemann, “Bergbau in der Literatur,” 249–55. 33 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1, trans. F.J. Miller, rev. G.P. Goold, Metamorphoses, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1977), i: 12–13. Petrarch, De remediis utriusque fortune, 1.54, ed. and trans. Carraud, i: 268; Rawski, Petrarch’s Remedies, i: 166. 34 “Terra non occultat & ob oculis remouet ea quae hominu[m] generi utilia sunt & necessaria, sed ut benefica benignaque mater maxima largitate fundit ex sese, & in aspectum lucemque profert herbas, legumina, fruges, fructus arboru[m]: at fossilia in profundo penitus abstrudit, eruenda igitur non sunt;” Agricola, De re metallica, 4; Georg Agricola, De re metallica, trans. from the first Latin edition of 1556, H.C. Hoover and L.H. Hoover (New York, 1950), 6–7.

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without purpose, thus ultimately characterising metals as part of the divinely created world. He went on to refer to the providence of Nature, which had appointed the depths of the earth as the proper place for the generation of metals.35 Agricola then differentiated between the subterranean origins of metal and its destiny to be brought and worked above ground, arguing that “the earth does not conceal metals in her depths because she does not wish that men should dig them out.”36 He drew parallels in this respect between the extraction of metals and the catching of fish, “hidden and concealed though they be in the water, even in the sea.”37 While water, unlike earth, is visually permeable as an element, this comparison brings the two closer by setting the former in an environmental context. Although this is not made explicit, it alludes to the experience of looking at the surface of bodies of water, which in reality is often a barrier to seeing what lies below. The idea that something “enclosed and hidden from sight” should be brought into view is reinforced by the provision of images within the De re metallica, however they show what lies beneath the surface.38 The earlier and even more radical representation of subterranean space in the Kutná Hora Cantional can also be seen in these terms. In the light of debate as to whether that hidden from sight beneath the surface of the earth was meant to remain so, the very visualisation of this sphere had a rhetorical quality. The cross-section undermines the idea of the surface of the earth as impermeable to sight and light and, together with the scenes above, works to naturalise the activities of men descending and ore ascending. If bringing ore to the surface was seen as making visible that which was “removed from our eyes,” understanding its presence beneath the ground was also expressed in terms of sight and seeing. Different attitudes can be found in technical treatises and in religious texts. In an interpretation that stresses the intellectual penetrability of the mountain, Vannoccio Biringuccio’s De la pirotechnia (1540) discussed the way in which signs on the surface of the ground could be read as evidence of wealth-bringing mineral deposits below, adding: “For this reason men penetrate with eyes of appraisal and judgement within the mountains and see almost exactly the places where there is ore and the

35 Agricola, De re metallica, trans. Hoover and Hoover, 12. 36 “Deinde, metalla certe terra non reco[n]dit in profundo, propterea quod ea ab hominibus fodi non velit;” Agricola, De re metallica, 8; trans. Hoover and Hoover, 12. 37 “Ego autem istis reprehensoribus nimium molestis pro metallis pisces regeram, quos occultos & latentes in aquis, marinis etiam, capimus;” Agricola, De re metallica, 8; trans. Hoover and Hoover, 12. 38 “inclusa & abdita latent in occulto;” Agricola, De re metallica, 8; trans. Hoover and Hoover, 12.

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quantity of it.”39 Nevertheless, the “occhi de la consideratione & buon iudicio” are the eyes of the mind and the process of seeing a virtual one, so that reflections on the interior of the earth are seen to prompt an interior corporeal response. In contrast, Johann Mathesius (1504–65), a Lutheran pastor in the mining town of St Joachimsthal (Jachymov) in western Bohemia, stressed the difficulty of envisaging “God’s underground workshop.”40 Among the collected sermons of his Sarepta oder Bergpostill (1562), which explored biblical references to mining and minting, that on the origins of metals is particularly insistent on the impossibility of complete visual comprehension. This reflected both the state of humanity and the nature of the material. Mathesius considered ore to be generated ultimately by God, in ways which would not be understood until creation could be seen with “new and scrubbed eyes” as Adam saw it before the Fall.41 At the same time, he also cautioned that experience could not fully speak of these secret and forbidden matters, “for […] who can see into the mountain and through stone, how God works therein?”42 He compared God’s secrecy in this regard to that of Venetian artists, adapting a long tradition of relating divine and human creativity. He also compared the metal ore growing within the earth to the gestation of a child in its mother’s womb into which “no human eyes can see.”43 The corporeal metaphor, which likens the ground and its surface to human flesh and skin, draws on a wider female personification of the earth, which could also be used to criticise mining. In the Iudicium Iovis, Mother Earth’s stomach or womb is punctured in many places and her 39

40 41

42 43

“E per questi modi con gli occhi de la consideratione & buon iudicio penetrano dentro ali monti, & veggano le quantita & li luoghi quasi aponto dove sono;” Vannoccio Biringuccio, De la pirotechnia (Venice, 1540), preface to book 1, unnumbered; trans. C.S. Smith and M. Teach Gnudi (Cambridge, MA, 1966), 13–14. “Gottes werkstadt unter der erden;” Johann Mathesius, Sarepta oder Bergpostill (Nuremberg, 1562), f. 49v; comparable phrases are found on 45v, 46r. “Biß wir mit newen und gescheuerten augen hinein in die wesentiche gestalt der Creaturen wie Adam vorm falle wider sehen werden;” Sarepta, f. 42v. On Mathesius’ treatment of the generation of ore more widely, see J.A. Norris, “The providence of mineral generation in the sermons of Johann Mathesius,” in Geology and Religion: A History of Harmony and Hostility, ed. M. Kölbl-Ebert (London, 2009), 37–40; H. Haug, “Artificial interventions in the natural form of things: shared metallogenetical concepts of goldsmiths and alchemists,” in Laboratories of Art: Alchemy and Art Technology from Antiquity to the 18th Century, ed. S. Dupré (Cham, 2014), 79–103, esp. 80–91. “Erfarung kan von disen heimlichen und verborgnen dingen nichs gruendlichs reden. Denn wer hoert das graß wachsen: wer kan inn berg und durch den stein sehen wie Gott drinne wircke und arbeyte;” Mathesius, Sarepta, f. 46v. “Weyl aber solchs unter der erden das ist in verschloßner mutter durch Gottes rechte beschicht da kein menschen aug hinsehen kan redet Job von formirung des menschen in einem gemeinem und kendtlichem gleichnuß;” Mathesius, Sarepta, f. 47r.

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garment is in pieces, presenting mining as wounding the ground.44 However, not only is the female body in Mathesius’ sermon inviolate, but the comparison contains within itself the expectation of a future birth; it is only the process of gestation that is hidden. And indeed, like Agricola, the preacher conceived the extraction of ore as potentially divinely sanctioned. The process is expressed in terms of illumination: “even if God often hides [it] deep under the earth, nevertheless it comes eventually into the light of day, if God allows it to be revealed.”45 If the majority of these texts postdate the Cantional, they still provoke reflections on its approach. While the miniature depicts the extraction rather than the generation of ore, it nevertheless seems to offer the viewer precisely the means to “see into the mountain and through stone” that Mathesius denies, and goes further than Biringuccio’s “eyes of appraisal and judgement” in showing what lay beneath the surface. This could be seen as displaying a particular confidence in human vision, but especially given the unusual positioning of the imagined viewer partially below ground, the way in which the view slices through the rock rather than simply offering visual access to hollow spaces, and the context of the miniature in a liturgical book, it is also possible that the Cantional vouchsafed its viewers an essentially divine vision of the subterranean. Finally, ideas of ownership, both human and divine, may have acted as a prompt towards visualisation of this sphere. In the early sixteenth-century depiction of Wensleslas handing over the ius regale montanorum, the inclusion of subterranean space may have been inspired by the notion of the king’s ultimate legal control over it. In the Cantional it is perhaps more part of the domain of the Kutná Hora miners themselves or at least the elite who controlled the enterprise. Certainly the way in which a mining plot was leased in the ius regale montanorum not only stipulated its two-dimensional extent on the surface of the ground, but also discussed its three-dimensional properties, with the field having unlimited depth.46 Indeed, as indicated in Agricola’s Bermannus, Kutná Hora was known for its particularly deep shafts, which Bermannus’ interlocutor characterises as approaching the court of Pluto.47 Agricola himself noted two possibilities in terms of the subterranean field: “If the vein descends 44

“vestitum distractum ventre[m] denique vidisses multimode perforatum;” Schneevogel, Iudicium Iovis, n.p. 45 “und obs Gott offt eben tieff unter die erden verstecket dennoch kompt es entlich ans tag liecht wenn es Gott offenbaren lesset;” Mathesius, Sarepta, f. 45r. 46 P. Jánošíková, “Mining business pursuant to ‘Ius regale montanorum’ in the 14th century,” Journal on European History of Law 2, no. 2 (2011): 165–8. 47 Agricola, Bermannus, ed. and trans. (into French) R. Halleux and A. Yans, Le Mineur: Un Dialogue sur les Mines (Paris, 1990), 33.

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vertically­into the earth, the boundaries similarly descend vertically; but if the vein inclines, the boundaries likewise will be inclined.”48 Although the measure followed the mineral bed, rather than extending exclusively downwards as in the spatial disposition of the illuminated page, the verbal description and mental imagining of subterranean space in the legal arena could have helped to inspire a sectional view. At the same time, the space could be conceived as ultimately subject to divine rule and law. In Mathesius’s sermon on the origins of mining, the presentation of the subterranean as God’s realm is supported by his formulation of a “Christliche Bergkordnung.” While expressly modelled on the Ten Commandments, themselves possessing montane associations (“Gottes Bergkordnung [...] auffm Berge Synai außgeruffen”), it was perhaps also inspired by the existence of secular mining codes.49 In the context of the liturgical books too, it is possible that the subterranean was understood as both divinely created and controlled, consolidating the idea of a divine perspective. Of course, to juxtapose the Utraquist music manuscripts with Mathesius’s sermons is to appeal to a later writer from a different confession. However, both the Cantional and contemporary liturgical manuscripts with images of mining do display an interest in representing the subterranean with specifically religious connotations. 3

Holy Ground

There has been a tendency to treat the Cantional frontispiece and the mining scenes more generally in isolation from the rest of the manuscript. Even in holistic discussions, distinctions have been drawn between the representations of work and the rest of the illumination. Jörg Richter suggests that the former can be positioned within a visual hierarchy; they are not found within the major historiated initials and are clearly differentiated from the illuminations that refer to the textual content.50 However, if focus shifts to the representation of space, and in particular the ground and the subterranean, there are ways in which the mining scenes can be seen to intersect with the biblical and hagiographical material in alluding to the environment in which the manuscripts were produced. In this respect the Cantional can be discussed alongside the Smíškovský Gradual, dated to 1495 and made for the church of the

48 Agricola, De re metallica, trans. Hoover and Hoover, 81–2. 49 Mathesius, Sarepta, ff. 28r–29r. 50 Richter, “Gradualhandschriften,” 197.

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Holy Trinity in Kutná Hora under the patronage of Jan Smíšek.51 This contains a large number of marginal scenes and initials featuring miners, as well as scenes relating to its liturgical content. A variety of religious scenes in the Cantional relate to the ground. Some present its surface as a point of interaction between the earthly and heavenly, such as Moses taking off his sandals before the burning bush, Gideon’s fleece (f. 62v), and the provision of manna from Heaven (f. 125v). There are also depictions of the New Testament holy places that generated earthen relics, including two of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives (ff. 80r, 167v), the first showing the imprints of Christ’s feet, and two of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor (ff. 101r, 198r). Relics of the site of the Ascension were particularly popular, including in fourteenth-century Roman Catholic Bohemia: one was included in the crux gemmata in the chapel of the Virgin at Karlstejn; another had been in the possession of Elisabeth of Přemyslid.52 Although Utraquists circumscribed the cult of relics, Christological contact relics of this kind were employed in Prague in the early fifteenth century as being relatively acceptable to conservative members of the movement.53 Most pertinently, however, there are representations of subterranean space in both the Cantional and Smíškovský Gradual. Like the mining scene, these all characterise the surface of the ground as permeable, and the area below as containing things of value, to be extracted and brought into the light of day. This is perhaps best exemplified in the representation of St Helena in the Cantional, a marginal scene accompanying the Invention of the Holy Cross (Fig. 26.3). The saint stands on a rocky outcrop gesturing to a man below, who is engaged in uncovering the cross. His white clothes and pick are reminiscent of the miners who are shown, tools in hand, around many of the initials, although these are generally hooded. The cross, still half in the ground, is surrounded by dark grey material the colour and texture of ore. It is likely that the scene held particular connotations for the inhabitants of Kutná Hora. Helena was one of several saints associated with mining. In particular, her unearthing of the True Cross was seen in these terms, with the Cross construed as ‘Schatz’ or 51 Vienna, önb Mus. Hs. 15492; Graham, Bohemian and Moravian Graduals, 561–8. 52 P. Crossley, “The politics of presentation: the architecture of Charles iv of Bohemia,” in Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe, ed. S. Rees Jones, R. Marks and A.J. Minnis (York, 2000), 99–172 (149); K. Horníčková, “In Heaven and on Earth: Church Treasure in Late Medieval Bohemia” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Budapest, Central European University, 2009), 202. 53 K. Horníčková, “Memory, politics and holy relics: Catholic tactics amidst the Bohemian Reformation,” in The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice 8, ed. Z.V. David and D.R. Holeton (Prague, 2011), 133–42, esp. 137–9.

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Figure 26.3

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St Helena and the Invention of the True Cross, Kutná Hora Cantional, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Mus. Hs. 15501, f. 165v © önb, Vienna

treasure.54 The association could be given visual form, as in a mid-fifteenthcentury panel by an artist from Cologne, where a man dressed explicitly in the hooded apparel of a miner, pick and shovel laid to one side, hands the cross up out of the ground.55 If the figure in the Cantional is not so clearly identified, the materiality of the cross’s surroundings is perhaps more evocative of the local environment than that in the panel. It is therefore significant that in this period the earth from around the cross could be venerated as a relic in its own right, as indicated by an entry in the Hallesches Heiltumsbuch of 1520.56 The representation of this earth in similar tones to that of the Kutná Hora mine workings may serve to designate both as precious. 54

P. Plattner, Geschichte des Bergbau’s der östlichen Schweiz (Chur, 1878), 25–8; discussed in G. Schreiber, Der Bergbau in Geschichte, Ethos und Sakralkultur (Cologne, 1962), 409–20. 55 Schreiber, Bergbau, Fig. 24; the painting was said to be in a private collection in Essen. 56 “Von der erden der erfindung des Heyligenn creutzes;” Vortzeichnus und zceigung des hochlobwirdigen heiligthumbs der Stifftkirchen der heiligen Sanct Moritz und Marien Magdalenen zu Halle (Halle, 1520), f. 10v.

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Two representations of the resurrection of the body also allude to the subterranean. While not connected to mining in the same way, they too can be seen to represent an unearthing. The initial accompanying the Office for the Dead (f. 142v) shows Christ flanked by Mary and John, who kneel on a dark grey ground punctuated by open graves, from which emerge the figures of the dead. A similar treatment can be found in a smaller initial (f. 146r), in which souls emerge from the ground beneath Christ’s feet. These are far from unconventional renderings of this subject. However, the depiction of the same episode in the Smíškovský Gradual (Fig. 26.4, f. 335v) is more unusual, and shows how it could be expressed more explicitly in the visual vocabulary of mining. In a composition that occupies the entire left margin, souls climb up out of a rocky outcrop positioned above the fires of Hell, and into a ladder of foliage leading towards God in Heaven. The pointed form of the crevassed rock and its metallic grey colour, similar to that used for the tunnels in the frontispiece of the Cantional, are highly reminiscent of a ‘handstein.’ These compositions, which were crafted particularly in St Joachimsthal, combine un-worked ore with both biblical and mining scenes.57 Although surviving examples postdate the manuscript, the inclusion of reliquaries with a mining scene and a scene of the Transfiguration employing gold and silver ore in the Hallesches Heiltumsbuch of 1520 indicates that the format was already known towards the beginning of the sixteenth century.58 Where the Cantional initials look down on the ground, the marginal illumination represents space vertically, from subterranean to heavenly. It is closer to the arrangement of the mining scene in the Cantional, strengthening the suggestion that the latter draws on a Last Judgement. A third conceptualisation and representation of subterranean space is also found in the Smíškovský Gradual. This concerns the martyrdom of Hussite laypeople and clergy in the early fifteenth century by being thrown down mine shafts at Kutná Hora (Fig. 26.5).59 The Gradual (f. 285r) depicts the scene at the beginning of the Common of Martyrs, together with a historiated initial showing Jan Hus flanked by St Stephen and St Laurence. In the bottom margin, the white-clad Hussites, chained together at the waist and surrounded by armed 57 58

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Slotta and Bartels, ed., Meisterwerke bergbaulicher Kunst, 188–9, 562–88; Haug, “Artificial interventions.” Vortzeichnus und zceigung des hochlobwirdigen heiligthumbs, ff. 22r, 75r. The woodcut and subsequent illumination of the Transfiguration reliquary are illustrated together in D. Eichberger, “A Renaissance reliquary collection in Halle,” Art Bulletin of Victoria 37 (1996): 19–36, at 30. O. Halama, “The martyrs of Kutná Hora, 1419–20,” in The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice 5/1, ed. Z.V. David and D.R. Holeton (Prague, 2004), 139–46; Šárovcová, “Illuminated musical manuscripts,” 292.

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Figure 26.4

Resurrection of the Dead, Smíškovský Gradual, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Mus. Hs. 15492, f. 335v © önb, Vienna

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Figure 26.5

Martyrdom of Hussite laypeople and clergy at Kutná Hora, Smíškovský Gradual, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Mus. Hs. 15492, f. 285r © önb, Vienna

men, kneel around a circular, water-filled hole in the ground, two of them already plunging in head first as though actively embracing martyrdom.60 The scene takes place outside a walled city representing Kutná Hora. The place of the martyrdom appears to have been marked through the erection of a pilgrimage church and an annual procession, which continued into the seventeenth century.61 However, at the time the Gradual was created in 1492, interest in the episode was particularly intense because remains of the martyrs had just come to light. In 1539, the chronicler Martin Kuthen, following the Staré letopisy české, described the discovery of the bones, including some still clad in the remains of a chasuble, which were identified as the remains of the priest Jan Chůdek.62 These latter had the quality of relics, emitting a myrrh-like smell. Although the scene chosen for representation is naturally the moment of martyrdom itself, the idea of the ground giving up priestly relics and bodies of the faithful is equally important for understanding the implications of subterranean space in late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Kutná Hora. Ota Halama has discussed an account in which the martyrs were beheaded prior to being thrown down the mine-shafts. Halama notes that the detail that one 60 61 62

T.A. Fudge, Jan Hus: Religious Reform and Social Revolution in Bohemia (London, 2010), 193. Halama, “Martyrs of Kutná Hora,” 143. Halama, “Martyrs of Kutná Hora,” 144; J. Seltzer, “Re-envisioning the saint’s life in Utraquist historical writing,” in Mind Matters: Studies of Medieval and Early Modern Intellectual History in Honour of Marcia Colish, ed. C.J. Nederman, N.E. Van Deusen and E.A. Matter (Turnhout, 2009), 275–97 (294–5).

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severed head bounced on the ground, exclaiming “The Blood of Christ” three times, is directly inspired by the martyrdom of St Paul, an episode shown in both the Smíškovský Gradual (f. 394v) and the Cantional (f. 186r), emphasising the authenticity of the martyrs through allusion to apostolic precedents.63 If comparisons such as this likened Kutná Hora to the blood-soaked soil of Rome, the subsequent unearthing of the relics from the mine-workings could be paralleled with the excavation of the True Cross, which could already be seen in terms of mining, and which generated earthen relics. It may also have given an added layer of significance to the depiction of the resurrection of the dead in the Gradual, with bodies moving up out of the crevices of the mountain towards heaven. Thinking about the ground within the music manuscripts more generally reveals it as a dynamic space, which concealed things only temporarily: the wood of the cross, revealed by St Helena; the bodies of the ordinary faithful, buried only until judgement day; and the bodies of the martyrs, cast into the earth but brought to light some decades later. Individually, each can be seen to bear a relationship to mining: the first understood more widely in these terms; the second corresponding with sacralised representations of mining landscapes; and the third actually taking place within a mining environment. There are also wider comparisons to be drawn. The spiritual preciousness of relics, local and universal, may relate to the preciousness of the excavated ore and its God-given nature. The human bodies going into the ground and returning could also be seen to intersect with the scenes in the frontispieces, in which the miners are shown descending and ascending. Together they cast the subterranean world as a temporary place, from which one returned in this life or the next. Because these images are not all found in the same manuscript, this is not a case of cumulative effect when using a single work. Rather they suggest some more general religious associations of subterranean space in Kutná Hora, which a contemporary viewer might have brought to the Cantional frontispiece and other mining scenes. 4

Conclusion

The frontispiece of the Kutná Hora Cantional offers a view into subterranean space that not only positions the viewer partially below ground but also provides a cross-section through solid matter. In doing so it constitutes a more radical and complex envisioning than can be found in associated manuscripts 63

Halama, “Martyrs of Kutná Hora,” 141.

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and in the illustrations of early technical literature. Parallels in both religious and legal spheres suggest that such a view might be associated with conceptual rather than practical insights. Discussions of visibility and the limits of human sight in the context of the generation and extraction of ore further imply that such a comprehensive vision might be conceived of as divine. At the same time, in the light of mining as a contested activity, this visualisation of subterranean space may express the view that divinely created mineral wealth should properly be brought to the surface. As such it also partakes of a wider conceptualisation of the ground within the liturgical manuscripts in which the earth gave up its precious contents, including relics and the bodies of the faithful, both legitimising the presence of the miners below ground and speaking of a return to the light in this life or the next.

Chapter 27

A Manuscript of Giovanni Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris from the Library of the Benedictine Convent of San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore in Milan? Anne-Marie Eze In 2016 the major exhibition Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections brought renewed scholarly attention to Houghton Library MS Richardson 41 at Harvard University.1 The manuscript is a late fifteenth-century Italian copy of the De mulieribus claris of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75), the first collection of biographies in western literature devoted exclusively to women.2 The text was composed in 1361–2 during the mature phase of Boccaccio’s career when, influenced by Petrarch’s humanist ideals, he abandoned writing vernacular courtly literature for erudite encyclopedias and compendia in Latin. De mulieribus comprises 106 lives of mainly Greek and Roman mythological and historical figures, plus a small number of biblical women and Renaissance contemporaries, renowned for both exemplary and infamous deeds. A panegyric of feminine achievement, proposing female pagans for emulation by Christian women, De mulieribus was unprecedented in Latin literature. During the Renaissance it enjoyed a wide readership, especially in French and Italian courtly circles.3 Widely diffused through vernacular translations and printed editions, the text influenced authors throughout Europe, including Chaucer

1 A.-M. Eze, “Giovanni Boccaccio, De mulieribus claris,” in Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections, ed. J.F. Hamburger et al. (Boston, 2016), 266–7, no. 216. The last study of the manuscript’s iconography was published in S. Marcon, “De mulieribus claris,” in Boccaccio visualizzato. Narrare per parole e per immagini fra Medioevo e Rinascimento, ed. V. Branca. 3 vols. (Turin, 1999) ii: 267–70, no. 111. 2 V. Brown, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Famous Women, trans. V. Brown (Cambridge and London, 2001), xi. 3 B. Buettner, Boccaccio’s “Des cleres et nobles femmes”: Systems of Signification in an Illuminated Manuscript (Seattle, 1996), 15–16 and R. Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book: Production and Reading in Italy 1340–1520 (London, 2009), 142.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_029

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and Christine de Pizan.4 De mulieribus was overshadowed only in the modern era by the Decameron, now Boccaccio’s best-known work.5 The Houghton Boccaccio is a fragment of what was intended to be a magnificent book. Comprising just ten parchment leaves measuring 331 × 250 (245 × 168–9) mm, it contains only the dedication, part of the preface, and twentyeight complete or partial biographies of ancient women (see Appendix A).6 None of the lives of biblical or Renaissance women survives in this copy. The manuscript’s decoration was abandoned unfinished with its illumination never begun. There are twenty unpainted preparatory drawings in pen-and-ink for inhabited initials, and five empty spaces reserved for a further four initials and one large rectangular miniature at the head of the frontispiece. The latter was most likely intended for a presentation scene with Boccaccio and De mulieribus’ dedicatee Andrea Acciaiuoli, countess of Alltavilla, but later received the book-stamp of the Milanese writer and architect Count Ercole Silva of Biandrate (1756–1840), who is the earliest identifiable owner of MS Richardson 41.7 The manuscript’s large format, parchment leaves, formal gothic bookhand (littera gothica textualis rotunda italiana formata) written in two columns and wide outer and lower margins classify it as a libro da banco derived from medieval university books, indicating that it was made for scholarly reading and annotation.8 Despite its fragmentary condition MS Richardson 41 is fascinating 4 Brown, Giovanni Boccaccio’s, xxii. 5 The text survives in more than 100 manuscripts. Vernacular translations in Italian, French, German, English and Spanish appeared soon after the Latin text was circulated in the later 1300s. It was printed three times in the 1470s-80s and in 1539. Brown, Giovanni Boccaccio’s, xx–xxii. 6 The manuscript was already fragmentary in 1869 when it was described as having eleven leaves and some excised initials. A.-L. Potier, Livres rares et précieux, imprimés et manuscrits […] provenant de la bibliothèque de M. le comte H. de S***, de Milan (Paris, 1869), lot 284. Before 1940 it had lost a leaf, presumably the one from which cuttings had been taken. 7 Daniels, Boccaccio, 143 believed that the intended decorative program of Cambridge (MA), Houghton Library MS Richardson 41 (referred to as Cm) included “no full-scale miniatures,” most likely because she did not examine the manuscript itself but studied details of eighteen initials reproduced in Marcon, “De mulieribus claris.” The provenance of the manuscript is as follows: possibly in the library of Donato ii Silva, count of Biandrate (1690–1799), Milanese litterato, patron, bibliophile and founder of the learned Società Palatina, which was inherited by his nephew Ercole Silva (1756–1840), count of Biandrate, Milanese writer and architect. Sold by Ercole’s great-nephew Carlo Ghirlanda Silva (1825–1903), Italian patriot, at Paris, Maison Silvestre, February 15, 1869, lot 284. With William H. Schab (1888–1975), New York book dealer, by December 1940. Purchased by the American lawyer William K. Richardson (1859– 1951) and bequeathed by him to Harvard College Library in 1951. For the Silva library, see Nuove ricerche su codici in scrittura latina dell’Ambrosiana, ed. M. Ferrari and M. Navoni (Milan, 2007), 230–1. 8 The Houghton copy of De mulieribus is classified as large format by comparison with the examples surveyed by Daniels, Boccaccio, 140–1 tables 4.Ia and 4.Ib, 144.

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for the beauty and unusual iconography of its underdrawings, and contemporary marginalia which present tantalizing clues to its provenance.9 The dedication opens with an initial ‘P’ containing a full-length portrait of Boccaccio, seated and reading from a book held open by a putto. The author is unusually depicted as long-haired and bearded, but is recognizable from the hooded habit of his minor orders.10 Most of the remaining initials are inhabited by half-length, elegant female figures shown in profile, three-quarter and frontal views, clothed in Renaissance dress. Other than the initials for Arachne (weaving, f. 9v), Minerva (a teacher and pupil representing wisdom, f. 2r; Fig. 27.1), Thisbe (giving a love token to Pyramus, f. 4v), and Flora the prostitute (dancing with a client, f. 8v), the depictions of the women are generic or seemingly incongruous with the biography they introduce. Simple attributes, such as a mirror or crown and scepter denote famous beauties (Venus, f. 2r) and queens (Isis, f. 3r); however books are assigned randomly (Jocasta and Medea, ff. 6v and 9r, respectively), and many figures have one or more accessories unrelated to their tales. Most unusually, with loose hair, upward gaze and arms crossed over her chest Europa is fashioned as the penitent Mary Magdalene (f. 3v; Fig. 27.2). Similarly, Dido, the tragic Carthaginian queen (f. 10v), Hercules’ wife Iole, the cunning seductress-avenger (f. 6r; Fig. 27.3), and Marpesia and Lampedo, warrior-queens of the Amazonians (f. 4r; Fig. 27.4), are all depicted as gentle nuns or pious laywomen.11 The representation of pagans as Christians, which contradicts Boccaccio’s privileging of the ancients in the belief that saints had been sufficiently celebrated in hagiography, suggests to me that the book belonged to a religious institution.12 I propose that the parallels drawn between Amazonian matriarchy and female cloistered life, and between the chaste Carthaginian dowager and Christian widowhood, point to a nunnery.13 9 10 11

12 13

Visible guide letters in the framing area reserved for gilding, indicate that the drawings were not intended as independent, monochrome penwork initials. V. Kirkham, “L’immagine del Boccaccio nella memoria tardo-gotica e rinascimentale,” in Boccaccio visualizzato. Narrare per parole e per immagini fra Medioevo e Rinascimento, ed. V. Branca, 3 vols. (Turin, 1999), i: 134. The visual classification of women into four broad types is akin to that found in a French copy of the De mulieribus, Paris, BnF MS Fr. 599, where bust portraits depict virtuous women, courtesans, warriors and poetesses. M.H. Tesniere, “Des clares et nobles femmes (De mulieribus claris, traduzione in francese, anonima),” in Boccaccio visualizzato. Narrare per parole e per immagini fra Medioevo e Rinascimento, ed. V. Branca, 3 vols. (Turin, 1999), iii: 64–6, no. 19. See Daniels, Boccaccio, 154, on religious material evidence in manuscripts for readership of De mulieribus among the clergy. For Boccaccio’s non-Virgilian presentation of the widowed Dido as exemplary for committing suicide to protect her chastity before Aeneas’ arrival, see Brown, Giovanni Boccaccio’s, 490.

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A teacher listening to her pupil read (Minerva). MS Richardson 41, f. 2r (detail) Houghton Library, Harvard University

The manuscript was first explored in depth by Susy Marcon, who dated the drawings to the end of the fifteenth century—possibly executed decades after the text was copied—and assigned them to a Veronese artist in the circle of the Dai Libri, based on the architectural, foliate and zoomorphic forms of the initial letters and the figures’ Renaissance dress.14 However, I find that the Houghton manuscript’s figures bear little relation to those in preparatory drawings attributed to Girolamo da Libri around 1500.15 Their naturalistic and expressive facial types, characterized by subtle glances, inclined heads and supple hair modelled in chiaroscuro, recall trends in monumental painting that developed in Milan under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci at the turn

14 Marcon, “De mulieribus claris,” ii: 269–70. 15 Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare ms dcclviii. Per Girolamo dai Libri: Pittore e miniatore del Rinascimento veronese, ed. V. Castiglione (Venice, 2008), 84–5, no. 14.

A Manuscript of Giovanni Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris

Figure 27.2

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The penitent Mary Magdalene (Europa). MS Richardson 41, f. 3v (detail) Houghton Library, Harvard University

of the Cinquecento.16 They are comparable to Protasio Crivelli’s coeval illuminations for a choir book for the important Benedictine convent of San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore in Milan.17 Pier Luigi Mulas dates the choir book to the mid-1490s, but a later dating in the early 1500s would make more sense as a new set of choir books was probably commissioned for use in the convent’s 16 17

I am grateful to Federica Toniolo and Ada Labriola for discussing the style of the drawings with me. Formerly identified as the Master of the Wildenstein Solomon, Crivelli’s corpus mainly consists of cuttings from the San Maurizio choir book which are dispersed in many collections. M. Levi D’Ancona, The Wildenstein collection of illuminations: the Lombard school (Florence, 1970), 107–11, plates xxv–xxvii. The drawings in Cambridge (MA) MS Richardson 41 are stylistically closest to Paris, Musée Marmottan, Collection Wildenstein no. 26, initial ‘N’ with St Maurice and the Theban League. Levi D’Ancona, Wildenstein, 109, plate xxvi. London, BL Add. MS 18197G, initial C with St Helen. A.-M. Eze, “Additional 18197D, G and I,” in British Library: Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts (2010). Initial R also with St Helen (location unknown, formerly New York, Lehman Collection MS A. 6). Pia Palladino, Treasures from a Lost Art: Italian Manuscript Painting of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (New York, 2003), 142, Fig. 36.

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Figure 27.3

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A nun praying (Iole). MS Richardson 41, f. 6r (detail) Houghton Library, Harvard University

new church built from 1503–9.18 A Milanese origin accords with the manuscript’s nineteenth-century provenance in the possession of the aforementioned Count Ercole Silva of Biandrate.19 Two Renaissance readers left their marks on the pages of the manuscript. One displayed an unremarkable response to the text, limited to noting key names and paraphrasing useful facts from the biographies—for example, writing unde libia pars affrice dicta sit (“after which Libya in Africa is named”) beside Libya on f. 4r.20 Annotations in the margins in a clear humanist hand suggest that the other individual was motivated to read the text by an interest in 18

P.L. Mulas, “Crivelli, Protasio,” in Dizionario Biografico dei Miniatori Italiani: Secoli ix–xvi, ed. M. Bollati (Milan, 2004), 187–8, and M.L. Gatti Perer, “Milano—S. Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore,” in Studi e ricerche nel territorio della provincia di Milano (Milan, 1967), 153. 19 The convent was suppressed on 20 November 1798 though it continued to be occupied by laicized nuns until the 1860s when its buildings were sold or demolished. G. Pertot, Contributi per la storia edilizia del monastero maggiore di Milano: Nuove indicazioni da document del period 1798–1858 (Milan, 1997), 1–2. 20 Daniels, Boccaccio, 151–2.

A Manuscript of Giovanni Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris

Figure 27.4

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A nun reading (Marpesia and Lampedo). MS Richardson 41, f. 4r (detail) Houghton Library, Harvard University

classical philology and edification. In addition to identifying Boccaccio’s classical sources and the Greek etymologies of Latin words,21 this reader highlighted with a distinctive monogram for the Latin word Nota (take note) four moral and didactic passages on the temperament and education of young women in the lives of Europa, Thisbe,22 Niobe, and Hypsypile: 1. Europa, f. 3v, second column, lines 8–10 (Fig. 27.5): That is why I consider it highly inadvisable to give maidens too much freedom to stroll about and listen too readily to the words of just anyone. I have often read that girls who do this have seen their reputations so stained that afterwards

21

22

For example, on f. 3v: διοσ/divinos, διαβολοc/dyabolo, στομμωτα/stemmatibus, φιλοσοφοσ/ philosopho, and on f. 4r: τιραννοσ/tira[n]num. An excerpt from the beginning of book 25 of Sallust’s The War with Catiline, regarding the Roman noblewoman Sempronia, is quoted in the interior margin of the life of Europa (f. 3v). Sallust, The War with Catiline. The War with Jugurtha, ed. J.T. Ramsey and trans. J.C. Rolfe (Cambridge, 2013), 60–1. Erroneously identified as referring to the life of Hypermnestra, which follows that of Thisbe. Eze, Giovanni Boccaccio, 267 n. 21.

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2.

3.

4.

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they could not be washed clean, even by the glory of perpetual chastity. (Brown, Giovanni Boccaccio, 48–9, $3). Thisbe, f. 5r, second column, lines 8–12: Certainly the impulses of the young should be curbed, but this should be done gradually lest we drive them to ruin in their despair by setting up sudden obstacles in their path. (Brown, Giovanni Boccaccio, 60–1, $13). Niobe, f. 5v, second column, lines 34–8: It is a hard and especially hateful thing to look upon proud men, to say nothing of enduring them. But it is perfectly unbearable to observe proud women. For the most part, Nature has made men high-spirited, while she has given a meek and submissive character to women, who are more suited to luxury than to power. (Brown, Giovanni Boccaccio, 68–9, $6). Hypsypile, f. 9r, first column, lines 38–41: Most sacred indeed is the love of children for their parents. What is more seemly, more just, more praiseworthy than to reward generously and honorably those from whose labor we received nourishment when we were helpless, who watched over us with solicitude, brought us to maturity with constant love, taught us manners and gave us knowledge, enriched us with honors and skills, and made us strong in morals and in intellect? Surely nothing! (Brown, Giovanni Boccaccio, 70–3, $6).

Figure 27.5 Marginalia: description of Sempronia excerpted from Sallust’s The War with Catiline. MS Richardson 41, f. 3v (detail) Houghton Library, Harvard University

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While Boccaccio extolled Europa’s virtue for giving her name to a continent,23 the anonymous annotator of MS Richardson 41 focused on her defilement by Jupiter. Boccaccio concluded that the moral of Thisbe’s tragic demise was that passionate love in the young is ungovernable and so should be tolerated,24 but our reader’s interest was piqued by the author’s suggestion for how to keep it in check. From Boccaccio’s narrative of Niobe’s pride for her numerous progeny as the cause of their death and other misfortunes,25 the book’s owner dwelled on the aberrance of hubris in women whose natural state is meekness and submissiveness. Finally, the reader agreed with Boccaccio’s praise of Hypsypile as a model of filial loyalty and obligation for refusing to commit patricide.26 The combination of the iconography and marginalia outlined above strongly suggest that this book provided guidance for novices and unmarried girls from Milan’s nobility cloistered at the aforementioned Benedictine convent of San Maurizio. Unfortunately, information on the convent’s library is scarce. Neither of the extremely detailed post-suppression inventories of San Maurizio’s property compiled in 1798 and 1828 mentions a library let alone books.27 It could be particularly fruitful to compare MS Richardson 41 to manuscripts from the library of Ippolita Sforza Bentivoglio (1481–1521) and her husband Alessandro Bentivoglio, major patrons of the convent who are memorialized in the celebrated wall frescoes of Bernardo Luini in the church of the faithful (1522). Their daughters were nuns there and included abbess Alessandra. A connection, albeit a tenuous one, between the manuscript and Ippolita appears in the interior margin of the life of Europa (f. 3v; Fig. 27.5). There the sophisticated reader of the text inscribed an excerpt from the beginning of book 25 of Sallust’s The War with Catiline, describing the Roman noblewoman Sempronia as: “In birth and appearance, in her husband too and children, she was quite favored by fortune; she was well versed in Greek and Latin literature, and at dancing more skillfully than a virtuous woman needed to.”28 The eloquence, classical training and poetic skill of Sempronia perfectly describe Ippolita, an

23 Brown, Giovanni Boccaccio, 48–9, $7. 24 Ibid., 60–1, $14. 25 Ibid., 70–1, $9. 26 Ibid., 72–5, $8–11. 27 Pertot, Contributi, 11–17 and 19–65, respectively. M. Pedralli, Novo, grande, coverto e ferrato. Gli inventari di biblioteca e la cultura a Milano nel Quattrocento (Milan, 2002), 256 lists three liturgical manuscripts made for the convent and Manus Online: Censimento dei Manoscritti delle Biblioteche Italiane lists a further two service books which are thought to have belonged to San Maurizio. 28 Sallust, War, 60–1.

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erudite poetess, schooled in Latin and hostess of a humanist salon in Milan, who was a major cultural figure before her premature death.29 Ippolita and her sister Angela inherited a forty-four volume library, comprising devotional and spiritual texts, as well as school books and literary works.30 It is conceivable that Ippolita donated or bequeathed the Houghton Boccaccio to San Maurizio, for which or where it was illustrated with images of novices and pious laywomen, and where its text was combed by a nun or abbess as a manual on moral instruction for women. Appendix 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

29

ff. 1r-v. Dedication in praise of Andrea Acciaiuoli, countess of Alltavilla (complete). f. 1v. Beginning of the preface. ff. 2r–2v. End of Ceres, goddess of the harvest and queen of Sicily, and Minerva. ff. 2v–3r. Venus, queen of Cyprus. ff. 3r–3v. Isis, queen and goddess of Egypt. f. 3v. Europa, queen of Crete. ff. 3v–4r. Libya, queen of Lybia. f. 4r. Marpesia and Lampedo, queens of the Amazons. ff. 4r–5r. Thisbe, a Babylonian maiden. ff. 5r–5v. Hypermnestra, queen of the Argives and priestess of Juno. ff. 5v–6r. Niobe, queen of Thebes. Incomplete, continued on f. 9r. ff. 6r–6v. End of Medusa, daughter of Phorcus, and Iole, daughter of the king of the Ateolians. f. 6v. Deianira, wife of Hercules. ff. 6v–7. Beginning of Jocasta, queen of Thebes. f. 7r. End of Lucretia, wife of Collatinus, and Tamyris, daughter of Micon. ff. 7r–7v. Artemisia, queen of Caria (incomplete). f. 8r. End of Olympias, queen of Macedonia, and Claudia, a Vestal Virgin. ff. 8r–8v. Virginia, wife of Lucius Volumnius. ff. 8v–9. Flora, the prostitute, goddess of flowers and wife of Zephyrus (incomplete).

D. Trento, “Alessandro e Ippolita Bentivoglio in San Maurizio,” in Bandera Bistoletti, Sandrina. Bernardino Luini e la pittura del Rinascimento a Milano: gli affreschi di San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore (Milan, 2000), 37, 40–1. 30 Pedralli, Novo, 47, 135, 186, 581–2.

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20. f. 9r. End of Niobe, queen of Thebes (continuation of f. 6r), and H ­ ypsypile, queen of Lemnos. 21. ff. 9r–9v. Medea, queen of Colchis. 22. f. 9v. Arachne of Colophon (incomplete). 23. ff. 10r–10v. End of Penelope, wife of Ulysses, and Lavinia. 24. f. 10v. Beginning of Dido or Elissa, queen of Carthage.

Chapter 28

Bloodlines: Medicine and Cosmology in France, China, and Mexico Jack Hartnell Panel B of Aby Warburg’s unfinished Bilderatlas Mnemosyne presents man as ineffably at one with a mystical cosmos (Fig. 28.1).1 It exemplifies Warburg’s project to chart the recurrence of specific visual vocabularies from antiquity to the present, a philosophical argument in pictorial form. In ten images, ranging from Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber divinorum operum to Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man, the panel follows the recurrent trope of an idealised figure surrounded by zodiacal signs and astronomical circuits; it implies an underlying lineage at work across the cultures on display, each in turn metaphysically intertwining the human body with a larger cosmological frame. But in its juxtaposed images, Panel B—one of the project’s earliest panels, the “panel of panels” to use Spyros Papapetros’ words—also exemplifies the novel forms of analogous thinking that Warburg was seeking to pioneer. The recurrence of its cosmological motif suggests that by tracking the fate of certain classical morphologies a cultural historian can chart the visual and, importantly, emotional courses that run from the ancient world through to the Middle Ages, early modernity, and beyond.2 Set against the disciplinary evolution of art history in more recent years, Warburg’s project feels more and more paradoxical. This is due largely to its differing appeal amongst two quite separate ends of the art historical spectrum. On the one hand, the breadth of the Bilderatlas suggests a form of extremely wide-ranging comparative work that has become highly suspect. Since 1 Working across cultures is by its very nature a collaborative task. In this spirit I wish to sincerely thank Vivienne Lo, Ittai Weinryb, Nicholas Herman, William Gassaway, Sam Rose, and the editors of this volume for all sharing their expertise. I would also like to thank John Lowden for a decade of generous support and kind advice: without it, I would not be writing this piece, nor any other art history. Der Bilderatlas: Mnemosyne in Warburg’s Gesammelte Schriften, ii.1, ed. M. Warnke (Berlin, 2008); C.D. Johnson, Memory, Metaphor, and Aby Warburg’s Atlas of Images (Ithaca, NY, 2012). 2 S. Papapetros, ‘Panel B’ in the Mnemosyne Project, Cornell University (2013–15), http://warburg.library.cornell.edu/image-group/panel-b-introduction-1-3?sequence=944 (accessed 14.9.2018).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_030

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Figure 28.1

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‘Panel B’ of Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, 1928–9 Photograph © The Warburg Institute

the 1960s and the move towards examining the deep specifics of an object’s local socio-economic and cultural histories, the grandiose historical schemes advanced by Warburg—or, for that matter, others like Alois Riegl’s Kunstwollen or even Erwin Panofsky’s iconology—are rarely advocated as viable methodologies. Invoked instead as the fitful historiographical workings of a young and evolving discipline, programmes of likeness such as Warburg’s appear more as

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abstract, even mystical turns than satisfyingly explanations of pictures. So too is his Bilderatlas caught up in a long turn away from a formalist art history, wherein visual comparison alone might suffice to expand the relationship between images. Simple visual comparisons were explicitly not Warburg’s aim, yet his unaccompanied pin-boards of contrasting images still somehow seem to tug at a disciplinary anxiety over approaches rooted in morphology, undertaken today only ever through thick layers of caveat and caution.3 On the other hand, art history’s increasing turn towards ‘global’ histories is asking us to think broadly across cultures and time periods like never before. Medieval and early modern studies are, rightly, considering afresh networks of cultural exchange beyond merely the Mediterranean, emphasising panhemispheric connections as well as interdisciplinary theoretical innovations from anthropology to postcolonial studies. As one German exzellenzcluster on the topic opaquely yet dramatically proclaims in its mission statement: “a Global Art History begins by reconstituting its units of analysis, replacing fixed regions by mobile contact zones with shifting frontiers and viewing time as non-linear and palimpsestic.”4 These methodologies are rapidly on the rise in theoretical tracts, newly-founded journals, even the advertising copy of academic job searches, and—in stark contrast to the disciplinary wariness over arbitrary comparison—the broadness of the Bilderatlas finds increasing resonance with these evolving inter-cultural connections.5 While the microscope of the ‘New Art History’ might reject Warburg’s all-encompassing, philosophical formalism, this even newer, global face of the field is embracing a crosspollenated, almost Warburgian style of thinking. In this essay, I want to explore this disciplinary conflict through a particular type of European medieval medical image that would itself be comfortably at home in Warburg’s Panel B, concerned as it is with man, medicine, and the cosmos. Its origins have long frustrated scholars, who most often turn unconvincingly to faded classical precedents for explanation. Here, however, I want to echo Caroline Walker Bynum’s recent call for more inventive and nuanced forms of cultural comparison in the practice of history. As she puts it, “the tyranny of morphology has operated too long in comparative study […]. We must seek dissimilar likenesses—that is, things like each other at some level deeper 3 For an expansion of this problem in more detail see J. Elsner, ed., Comparativism in Art History (New York, 2017). 4 “Cluster of Excellence: Asia and Europe in a Global Context,” University of Heidelberg, http:// www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/research/hcts-professorships/global-art-history. html (accessed 14.9.2018). 5 The Journal of Medieval Worlds launched in 2018, The Medieval World in 2015, and The Medieval Globe in 2014.

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than appearance.”6 Taking the contrasting compass-points of John Lowden’s own geographically wide-ranging western medieval and Byzantine scholarship deliberately in extremis, in what follows I want to present this visual medical tradition across manuscripts from Europe, the Far East, and the Far West. All three examples maintain remarkable similarities in form despite emanating from totally different cultures and chronologies: fifteenth-century French Jewry, ninth-century Tang China, and late sixteenth-century colonial Mexico. But by approaching this trio in the same conceptual space I shall demonstrate how, despite their disparate origins, their comparison can offer something to a discipline inexorably diverging. Positing such images as a point of art historical reconnection, I consider how we might view the formal, the social, and the global not as points of methodological friction but as obvious partners, forging a route of escape for a group of medieval images caught, like Warburg’s Bilderatlas, between two ends of an increasingly polarized field. 1

Hébreu 1181

At first glance the large figure eyeballing the reader from the pages of the Bibliothèque nationale’s MS Hébreu 1181 seems an aggressive hybrid (Fig. 28.2).7 Part man-part beast, multiple red lines shoot forth intimidatingly from his face and limbs. Yet the curative contents of the Hebraic manuscript in which it is found make clear that this image was intended as more medicinal than monstrous. Made in Provence around 1430, the book contains a number of medical treatises by ancient and medieval authorities: Abraham ben Shem Tov (‫)אברהם בן שם טוב‬, Yahya ibn Masawaih (‫יחיא אבן מאסויא‬, also known as John of Damascus), Gentile da Folignio, and an abridged version of Ibn Sina’s famous Canon. Around twenty years later, perhaps in northern Italy, this full-page image was added to aid the book’s owner in practicing its medical contents. Primarily, the figure was a theoretical prompt that combined two fundamental medical concepts of the period. Firstly, its cascading Hebrew text indicates particular bodily points to carry out phlebotomy, one of the main

6 C. Walker Bynum, “Avoiding the Tyranny of Morphology; Or, Why Compare?” History of Religions 53:4 (2014): 341–68. 7 The manuscript is digitised on the BnF’s catalogue, Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/ btv1b10539366c (accessed 14.9.2018). See also M. Garel, D’une Main Forte: Manuscrits Hébreux des Collections Françaises (Paris, 1991), no. 137. For more on Jewish manuscripts of this period, see M.M. Epstein, ed., Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink: Jewish Illuminated Manuscripts (Princeton, 2015).

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Zodiac Man from a Hebrew medical miscellany, ink on parchment. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Hébreu 1181, f. 266r © Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2018

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t­ echniques known to western physicians for balancing the body’s humors. Following the Hippocratic corpus of classical Greek medicine, medieval European writers considered the body’s health to hinge on four fundamental bodily substances—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile—each correspondent with internal bodily states of heat and moisture. The balance of these humors governed various aspects of human development, temperament, and health, influenced by everything from gender and age to diet and social class. Maintenance of the correct harmony between these internal humors was the primary goal of much European medieval healthcare: pharmacology drew upon the inherent properties of plants and other materia medica to balance the humors, whilst bloodletting provided a more direct method for intervening in their equilibrium. Different points on the body were to be bled depending on the patient’s diagnosis and symptoms, and the captions surrounding the figure in Hébreu 1181 outline details of this practice in a relatively typical format.8 Linked topographically by red bloodlines to certain bodily points, each caption names the region or vein in question and the occasion on which it should be let. The leftmost line on the figure’s left arm, for instance, reads: “Basilic vein, helpful for stomach and the liver” (‫)וריד בסיליקא מועיל לאסטומכא ולכבד‬. Secondly, the figure reflects medieval medico-astrological concerns. Longstanding conceptions of man’s central position within the universe had, by the Middle Ages, created a consistent discourse of correspondences between health and a broader macrocosmic ideology. European practitioners inherited from classical and Arabic cosmology the concept of melosthesia, wherein the body’s individualised parts fell into concordance with lunar and planetary movements.9 We see this relationship realised in Hébreu 1181, where the twelve signs of the zodiac lurk within and atop the body. The ram of Aires (‫)טלה‬, for instance, sprouts above the figure’s head; a pair of Saggitarial archers (‫)קשת‬ and Capricornish unicorns (‫ )גדי‬take aim from his upper and lower thighs; two water vessels symbolising Aquarius (‫ )דלי‬float and splash before his shins; and at each arm the twins of Gemini (‫ )תאומים‬emerge almost as elbow-bound, anthropomorphic growths. For the medical professional, knowledge of such correspondences between the body and the stars formed a foundational diagnostic and curative tenet. In moments when the moon inhabited a particular zodiacal sign, as calculated in the calendrical tables that often accompanied 8 Its captions appear to be drawn from a work circulating in the region during the fifteenth century associated with the Montpellier-trained Catalan physician, Arnau de Vilanova. For more on Arnau see the online “Corpus digital d’Arnau de Vilanova,” http://grupsderecerca .uab.cat/arnau/en (accessed 14.9.2018). 9 For more on this idea, see A. Akasoy, C. Burnett, and R. Yoeli-Tlalim, ed., Astro-Medicine. Astrology and Medicine, East and West (Florence, 2008).

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such an image, the planetary control over its corresponding body-part was believed to draw the deliquescent humors to the region like internal tides, making bloodletting and other treatments seriously hazardous and best avoided. As Roger French neatly summarises, such thinking evidences “a chain of argument that reached from the patient’s symptoms back to the very fundamentals of the world picture.”10 We can quickly see, then, how Hébreu 1181 would fit comfortably into Warburg’s Panel B, conceptually moulded to the same medical and cosmological ideas governing the body, its influences, and its cure. Much harder to ascertain, however, are the specific historical origins of the tradition which this manuscript presents. Certainly by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, such figures—Bloodletting or Zodiac Men, as they are sometimes called—were common across Europe, found in both Latin and vernacular medical texts. A manuscript of John de Foxton’s Liber cosmographiae, to give just one contemporary example, preserves another particularly detailed human figure, onto which are mapped zodiacal symbols and a numerical sequence corresponding to the paragraphs of a bloodletting treatise which follows on the manuscript’s next two folios (Fig. 28.3).11 Made in England in 1408, its form and function suggest a number of clear correspondences with a figure painted only a few years later like Hébreu 1181, both concerned with visualising phlebotomical and zodiacal processes. We know too that Jewish doctors had been looking concertedly to the Latinate European medicine they lived alongside from as early as the twelfth century, translating into Hebrew both their curative theories, medical recipes, and diagrammatic tropes.12 But the further back we look for a distinctive ‘beginning’ of such a visual tradition, the more fragmented the picture becomes. It was the penchant of early twentieth-century historians, especially historians of medicine, to locate the genesis of this phlebotomical imagery directly in Ancient Greece alongside the Hippocratic milieu which spawned its foundational theories or the medical 10 11

12

R. French, “Astrology in Medical Practice,” in Practical Medicine from Salerno to the Black Death, ed. L. García-Ballester et al. (Cambridge, 1994), 30–59. Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.15.21, digitised through the James Catalogue of Western Manuscripts Online, https://mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/ (accessed 13.2.2020); and discussed extensively in J.B. Friedman, ed., John de Foxton’s Liber Cosmographiae (1408): An Edition and Codicological Study (Leiden, 1988). See, for instance: G. Freudenthal, “The Brighter Side of Medieval Christian-Jewish Polemical Encounters: Transfer of Medical Knowledge in the Midi (Twelfth–Fourteenth Centuries),” Medieval Encounters 24 (2018): 29–61; R. Barkaï, A History of Jewish Gynaecological Texts in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 1998); J. Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society (Berkeley CA, 1994).

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Figure 28.3

Zodiac Man from John de Foxton’s Liber cosmographiae, 1408, ink on parchment. Cambridge, Trinity College Library MS R.15.21, f. 28v Reproduction permission kindly granted by the Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge

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schools of Alexandrian Egypt which subsequently promoted them.13 Others still, note that the Hebraic zodiacal traditions expressed in manuscripts like Hébreu 1181 have an equally long history: calendars have for centuries guided Jewish ritual and dietary hygiene and are found as early as the fragmentary Aramaic texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls from the fourth century bce, discovered at Qu’mran.14 The reality, though, is that such distant origin stories are at best speculation. The links between these far-flung textual sources and their visualisation in medieval medical imagery are based entirely on their antique timbre and not on any definitive evidence. No such bloodletting diagrams exist before the formalisation of their curative contents in the medical schools of the later Middle Ages. This lack, however, is where the disciplinary tension with which I began might in fact offer a route forward. For art historical notions of the global suggest that rather than delving backwards in time for answers, it might be equally fruitful to instead search tangentially across geographies. Look Eastwards, for instance, and we find a branch of medicine from medieval China that presents itself as a far more interesting parallel to Hébreu 1181 than the hollow claims of classical European beginnings. 2 S.6168 The British Library fragments S.6168 and S.6262, preserve six broken sections of a Chinese medical scroll originally around 110 cm in length.15 That this fragile piece survives at all is testament to the remarkable happenstance of its history, kept intact in the dry desert climate of the Mogao caves outside the town of Dunhuang, in the northern Chinese province of Gansu. The caves ­themselves 13

14

15

K. Sudhoff, “Anatomische Zeichnungen (Schemata) aus dem 12. und 13. Jahrhundert und eine Skelettzeichnung des 14. Jahrhunderts,” Studien zur Geschichte der Medizin 1 (1907): 49–65; K. Sudhoff, “Die graphische Weiterbildung der anatomischen Fünfbilderserie aus Alexandrinerzeit und eine anatomische Serie aus Stockholm,” Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 8:2/3 (1914): 129–45; H. Bober, “The Zodiacal Miniature of the Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry—Its Sources and Meaning,” jwci 11 (1948): 1–34. J. Isserles, “Some Hygeine and Dietary Calendars in Hebrew Manuscripts from Medieval Ashkenaz,” in Time, Astronomy, and Calendars in the Jewish Tradition, ed. S. Stern and C. Burnett (Leiden, 2013), 273–326; H.R. Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars in the Dead Seas Scrolls and their Reception: Ancient Astronomy and Astrology in Early Judaism (Leiden, 2015). Digitised as part of the International Dunhuang Project: http://idp.bl.uk/database/oo_ loader.a4d?pm=Or.8210/S.6168 (accessed 14.9.2018). It is also transcribed in Ma Jixing et al., Dunhuang yiyao wenxian jijiao 敦 煌 醫 藥 文 獻 輯 校 [The Dunhuang Medical Texts Edited and Collated] (Nanchang, 1998).

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are a network of nearly 500 rooms dug into the cliffside between the fourth and tenth centuries to house a series of Buddhist temples and monasteries, each decorated with increasingly elaborate wall painting and sculpture.16 It was only during the nineteenth century that in Cave 16 of the complex, originally built around 862 by a Dunhuang priest named Hong Bian, a false tenth-century wall was removed to reveal a cache of tens of thousands of scrolls, the British Library fragments amongst them. Why these manuscripts were so hidden remains unknown, although scholars have noted their concealment coincided with the arrival of Muslim Karakhanid armies in the region and a perceived threat to Dunhuang’s Buddhist culture and heritage.17 Regardless, ever-more invasive excavation across the course of the twentieth century saw the site’s contents distributed by eager archaeologists to collecting institutions in London, Paris, India, and elsewhere. S.6168, as I will call the full scroll here, is roughly dated to the early part of the Tang Dynasty (618–907) and contains a text, now entitled Jiufa tu (灸法圖, Charts of a Cautery Method), that outlines techniques for the practice of moxibustion.18 The Jiu (灸) of its title refers to a form of medical cautery, the strategic burning of the body at particular points with ai (艾), the dried, prepared leaves of the mugwort plant (Lat. Artemisia vulgaris). Still carried out today in certain branches of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the intention of the treatment was to ease pain and arrest causes of disease by influencing the flow of the body’s qi (氣), the ethereal, almost fluid energy that was understood in Chinese medicine to animate and nourish the body along a network of channels or mai (脈). In this circulatory schema, illness could arise when the mai were blocked, and moxibustion—as well as acupuncture, which it often ­accompanied—could balance the qi’s flow through subtle, topographic cautery. Although not mentioned explicitly in S.6168, the practice was also governed by celestial movement: certain parts of the body were to be avoided 16

17 18

For Dunhuang in general, see R. Whitfield, S. Whitfield, and N. Agnew, Cave Temples of Mogao at Dunhuang: Art and History on the Silk Road (Los Angeles, 2000); S. Whitfield, “The Dunhuang Collections and International Collaboration,” in Medieval Chinese Medicine: The Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts, ed. V. Lo and C. Cullen (London, 2005), xii–xxiv. For more on the theories behind the cache’s concealment, see Whitfield, “Dunhuang Collection,” xvi–xvii; R. Xinjiang, “The Nature of the Dunhuang Library Cave and the Reasons for its Sealing,” Cahiers d’Extreme-Asie 11 (2000): 247–75. Wang Shumin and Gabriel Fuentes note that in the text’s seventh figure the character xie (泄 ) has missing strokes, perhaps complying with a taboo against recording the name of the Emperor Li Shimin 李 世 民 , thus dating the scroll (albeit unreliably) to the first years of the Tang dynasty. Wang Shumin and G. Fuentes, “Chinese Medical Illustration: Chronologies and Categories,” in Imaging Chinese Medicine, ed. V. Lo and P. Barrett (Leiden, 2018), 41.

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when the ­lunar calendar dictated that renshen (人神), a particular form of human spirit, was dwelling cyclically within it.19 Whilst reference to such charts exist in earlier canonical medical literature, S.6168 is the earliest known to diagram the practice, pre-dating a group of sculpted bronze figures from the Song Dynasty (960–1279) that imaged acupuncture points in three-dimensions.20 The scroll once preserved eighteen full-length figures, only several of which today survive intact.21 Those which remain are delicate black ink drawings of men, nude save their loincloths, with long, feather-like hands and hair pinned into elegant double buns. Each figure profiles the moxibustion to be undertaken for a particular illness or series of symptoms, the specific locations of the cautery named and adjoined by thin lines to large black dots on the body. The best-preserved figure, for example, outlines the moxibustion needed for various genitourinary conditions in men and boys known as Nanzi wulao qishang (男子五勞七傷, Five Wearinesses and Seven Damages in Men) (Fig. 28.4). A band of text to the figure’s right names the symptoms addressed by the treatment: a loss of shi jing (失精, loss of seminal essence), and niao xue (尿血, blood in the urine). Five further shorter stems of text linked to the body name and elucidate specific moxibustion locations, for example, at the right foot we read “Zhongfeng (中封), this is an acupuncture location name and its location is: in front of the ankle between the two tendons.”22 With each point cauterised 1000 times, as specified in the image’s introductory caption, the patient’s qi would be unblocked and their symptoms relieved. Instantly a number of conceptual relationships between this image and the medical figure of Hébreu 1181 present themselves: both outline external 19 20

21

22

V. Lo, “Quick and Easy Chinese Medicine: The Dunhuang Moxibustion Charts,” in Lo and Cullen, Chinese Medicine, 233; V. Lo, “Heavenly Bodies in Early China: Astro-Physiology in Context,” in Akasoy et al., Astro-Medicine, 143–88. As well as some extant bronze figures, their existence is testified by an early eleventh-century work by the author Wang Weiyi (c. 987–1067), Xin zhu tongren yuxue zhenjiu tujing 新 鑄 銅 人 腧 穴 針 灸 圖 經 (Newly Cast Bronze Man Illustrated Canon of Acupoints and Acu-Moxa). A copy in the National Central Library of China has been digitised here, https://www.wdl.org/en/item/11421/ (accessed 14.9.2016). For more on these bronzes, see H. Longxiang, “Reading Visual Imagery and Written Sources on Acupuncture and Moxibustion,” in Lo and Barrett, Imaging Chinese Medicine, 161ff. Lo, “Quick and Easy,” 230, revises this down to 16 from the 18 cited in Ma Jixing, Tangren xiehui jiuftu canjuan kao 唐 人 写 绘 灸 法 图 残 卷 考 [Examination of the Scroll Fragments of Tang Moxibustion Figure Techniques], Wenwu 文 物 [Cultural Relics] 6 (1964): 14–23. Lo, “Quick and Easy,” tables 9.1–9.3.

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Figure 28.4

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Three figures outlining moxibustion points, early Tang Dynasty (c. 618), discovered in Cave 16 of the Dunhuang complex, China. London, British Library Or.8210/S.6168 © British Library Board

­ edical treatments designed to realign the body’s internal balance, both m equate these practices with lunar and cosmological movement, and, in terms of aesthetics, both illustrate this medical information through a body rendered flat, frontal, passive, and diagrammatic. So similar are their mappings of body and practice that it is tempting to build something of a historical link between the two. We know comparatively little of Tang Dynasty medicine beyond its Imperial centres, while moxibustion’s initial emergence as a form of medical treatment remain debated by historians: its earliest extant texts have been found in archaeological settings, written on bamboo and buried c. 186 bce at Zhangjiashan (modern Hubei); some scholars even suggest origins as far back as the fifth century bce.23 It was, of course, not only material goods that were traded between Europe and Asia across the Silk Roads: medicine and its imagery were, like many contemporary cultural products, intellectually portable in much the same way. And it was in this trade milieu that various medical techniques might have been passed to and fro between the classical Greek, Persian, and East Asian worlds, from cataract surgery to pharmacology and hospital culture. As Susan Whitfield has noted, a ‘Greek’ doctor—either a Greek native or one practising methods that were definably Greek in nature— is recorded in the eighth-century Tibetan court; Dunhuang, after all, was itself ruled for almost a century by the Tibetans, and related Tibetan moxibustion 23

Y. Keiji, The Origins of Acupuncture, Moxibustion, and Decoction (Kyoto, 1998); Lo, “Quick and Easy,” 239; L. Gwei Djen and J. Needham, Celestial Lancets. A History and Rationale of Acupuncture and Moxa (Cambridge, 1980).

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charts show just how porous this form of medicine and its imagery could be between China and more westerly cultures.24 However, we must again recognise that these are the very vaguest of historical roots. Returning this comparison to disparate pre-histories in the same manner as the supposed Greek precedents of Hébreu 1181 does not in truth do much to advance our understanding of these objects beyond their broad-brush heritage. Indeed, a more fruitful and complex relationship between the two emerges if we are not tempted into the past for a second time, but instead dwell for a moment more within medieval China. Although S.6168 outlines moxibustion practice with a degree of specificity and some sophistication, Vivienne Lo has demonstrated that the scroll’s images in fact mark something of a divergence from the elite concepts of Chinese medicine emanating from major Imperial medical centres at the time.25 By categorising each figural treatment simply by symptom, not by recourse to medico-theoretical concepts, the scroll eschews a more learned style of internal medicine, including the standard reading of the patient’s pulse and complexion that formed the typical diagnostics of the Chinese medical establishment. In this, as well as the manuscript’s preservation of certain unique moxibustion techniques that appear to have been evolved from the author’s own personal experience, Lo suggests that these images ally themselves not with the medical authorities of the moment but with a more popular medical culture of self-cultivation, a ‘quick and easy’ medicine that could be administered much more freely. Intriguingly, this deeply social role of medical imagery revealed by Lo strikes a resonant chord with Hébreu 1181. For as well as diagrammatically outlining important medical ideals, the Hebrew Bloodletting and Zodiac Man would also have played an important role in the practice and performance of contemporary European medicine. Astrological cures propounded by such images walked a precarious tightrope between the much-lauded inheritance of antique m ­ edical theory and more taboo practices of the magical and the occult.26 The inclusion 24

25 26

Whitfield, “Dunhuang Collections,” xv; C. Beckwith, “The Introduction of Greek Medicine into Tibet in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 99:2 (1979): 297–313. For recent work on Tibetan medicine, see a recent edition of Curare, Zeitschrift für Medizinethnologie, 39 The Human Body in Asian Texts and Images, guest ed. K. Sabernig (2016). On related cross-cultural medicine between East and West see: P. Berlekamp, V. Lo and W. Yidan, “Administering Art, History, and Science in the Mon­ gol Empire: Rashid al-Din and Bolad Chengxiang,” in Pearls on a String: Artists, Patrons, and Poets at the Great Islamic Courts, ed. A. Landau (Washington, 2015), 67–99; V. Lo and R. Yoeli-Tlalim, “Travelling Light: Sino-Tibetan Moxa-Cautery from Dunhuang,” in Lo and Barrett, Imagining Chinese Medicine, 271–90. Lo, “Quick and Easy,” 210, 230. Such figures are recorded for their advice on bloodletting, but were also used to divine less official prognoses regarding, for example, the future professions of newborn children

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of rich, detailed images in medical books were thus designed as a repository of physicians’ knowledge, but also to both placate and impress their clientele. Given the various contemporary legal and religious restrictions around letting blood, presenting diagrammatic figures and their corresponding authoritative calendrical material would have served to reassure patients as to the credentials and professionalism of the book’s wielder.27 Despite their distinct contexts, Chinese and European imagery both played the same subtle societal role in arresting and affirming a medical status quo. This is the value of layering a cross-cultural investigation over a purer formal critique: although these images look alike, their most valuable relations do not reside in their surface aesthetics but rather evolve to consider a shared role as arbiters of practical socio-medical concerns. 3

Vaticanus 3738

Taking a formalist veneer as the point of departure for investigation into deeper cross-cultural similarity provides more than one avenue for investigation, for we can not only move backwards through time from later medieval Europe to early medieval China, but forwards towards an even more diverse crosscultural mix. As Warburg’s Panel B makes clear, various cultures adopted related medico-cosmological frameworks long after the Middle Ages: Renaissance printed books reproduced medical Bloodletting and Zodiac Men from their earliest beginnings (Fig. 28.5), and the imagery merged too with Middle Eastern visual discourses on health.28 But perhaps the obscurest of these traditions is a manuscript separated by perhaps the most significant geographical gulf a medievalist might ever consider, found on the opposite side of the Atlantic Ocean within an indigenous cultural milieu whose relations to Europe would even trouble Warburg in his later life.29

27

28

29

or for guidance in prophecy and the alchemical arts. For a good introductory outline of these issues, see S. Page, Astrology in Medieval Manuscripts (Toronto, 2002), 55ff. See further H.M. Carey, “What is the Folded Almanac? The Form and Function of a Key Manuscript Source for Astro-medical Practice in Later Medieval England,” Social History of Medicine 16:3 (2003): 481–509; F. Saxl, “Microcosm and Macrocosm,” Lectures 1 (London, 1957): 58–72. On early printed Zodiac Men, see T. Pesenti, Fasiculo de Medicina in Volgare, Venezia, Giovanni e Gregorio De Gregori, 1494, 2 vols. (Treviso, 2001). On Islamic anatomical imagery, see: E. Savage-Smith and P. Pormann, Medieval Islamic Medicine (Georgetown, 2007); E. Savage-Smith, “Attitudes Toward Dissection in Medieval Islam,” Journal of the History of Medicine 50 (1995): 67–110. Posthumously edited and most recently published as: A. Warburg, Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America, trans. M.P. Steinberg (Ithaca, 1995).

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Figure 28.5

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Bloodletting figure from the Fasciculus medicinae (Venice: Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, 1491). Printed ink on paper. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rar. 749 © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00052856-8

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The Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana’s MS Vaticanus 3738 is a book written in the tradition of Mexican ‘Books of Fate’ (tonalamatl in the Aztec Nahuatl language). They collect together series of visual almanacs—calendars, cosmologies, encyclopedias, and spiritual rites—for the practice of divination in multiple arenas of pre-Columbian daily and religious life.30 Once used across much of Mesoamerica, early colonisers left virtually none of these divinatory codices intact, most of which were originally painted on gessoed deer-parchment or paper and which unravel in a folding, concertina form.31 As Elizabeth Boone has poetically noted, these books are a unique corpus, for unlike the extant historical manuscripts and tribute lists that account for specific Mexican peoples, objects, and places, the tonalamatl contain a body of distinctly abstract cultural beliefs, and thus “float unanchored in space and time.”32 Even more difficult for us today is their uniform decision to render their contents exclusively through a complex visual vocabulary of pictographs, each book containing several interconnected pages of completely un-annotated images. Everything from the detailed overlapping of the twinned twenty-day and thirteen-day Mexican weeks, together forming the 260-day ritual calendar (the tonalpohualli), through to prophetic dreams, supernatural visions, or astronomical signification are all presented in deeply symbolic images that have taken scholars much time to decode. Vaticanus 3738’s 95 large folios are, however, codicologically distinct from extant pre-conquest tonalamatl: made of European paper, it is bound in codex not concertina form. Its watermarks, as well as its recorded presence in the Vatican libraries from at least 1596, instead situates it in the middle of the sixteenth century as an early colonial object.33 This is confirmed by two mentions of the annotator of the book (or its model), the Dominican lay brother Pedro 30

Vaticanus 3738 has been digitised here: http://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.lat.3738 (accessed 27.6.2016). The manuscript is also known in the scholarship as “Vaticanus A” and the “Codex Ríos.” For an overview of the tonalamatl, see E. Boone, Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate (Austin, 2007). See also: M.E.R.G.N. Jansen and G.A. Pérez Jiménez, The Mixtec Pictorial Manuscripts. Time, Agency, and Memory in Ancient Mexico (Leiden, 2011); K. Nowotny, Tlacuilolli: Style and Contents of the Mexican Pictorial Manuscripts (Norman, 2005); M. León-Portilla, Códices: Los Antiguos Libros del Nuevo Mundo (Aguilar, 2003). 31 Only fifteen extant Mayan, Mixtec, and Aztec codices of any type are today thought to have pre-conquest origins, although as Eloise Quiñones Keber notes none of these are associated with indisputable dates and locations. E. Quiñones Keber, Codex TellerianoRemensis: Ritual, Divination, and History in a Pictorial Aztec Manuscript (Austin, TX, 1995), 107. 32 Boone, Cycles of Time, 3. 33 The inventory in which the books is mentioned is bav MS Vaticanus 6949.

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de los Ríos (d. 1563–5), who was responsible for compiling these paintings: “che recopilò queste depinture,” as he says in his Italian gloss.34 Ríos’ words, which absorb and extend that of another extant book, the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, makes clear Vaticanus 3738 is a document either painted in Mexico by native artists under the direct supervision of early colonisers or a copy made soon after in Italy by a Mexican or European hand from a colonial original.35 Despite these Old World restraints, however, Vaticanus 3738 nonetheless contains much of the same material as earlier Mexican books, including tonalamatl, cosmologies, chronicles, and ritual outlines. That its visual language correlates directly with pre-Columbian originals is made particularly clear by an image on folio 54r (Fig. 28.6), which includes with accuracy the long-standing pictographs of the twenty-day ritual week: the Serpent, Deer, Crocodile, Flower, Movement, Eagle, Vulture, Water, House, Death, Rain, Dog, Rabbit, Flint, Wind, Monkey, Reed, Grass, Lizard, and Jaguar. This week was linked by its users to the origins of time itself, its twenty-fold measures in turn derived from the digits of the body, and although the image does not follow the standard order of the count—starting with Crocodile (Cipactli) and finishing with Flower (Xochitl)—the days are set into correspondence with parts of the human form via a series of lines, associations inherited from a much longer Aztec tradition.36 As Boone notes, in several such “corporeal almanacs” certain natural correspondences guided sign-body relations: the twisted strands of Grass echo the curling of the entrails, the skull of Death is linked with the head, and so on.37 As Uta Berger, Jacques Chevalier, and Andrés Sánchez Bain have demonstrated using similar colonial sources, pre-Columbian peoples appear to have viewed this symbolic body alongside a relatively subtle understanding of human physiology and disease, including an extensive anatomical vocabulary, specialised fields within medicine and midwifery, and an understanding of bodily heat and cold which, like the European humors, were thought to 34

Ríos’ name is mentioned on folios 4v and 23r. For an overview of the role of Ríos, see Keber, Telleriano-Remensis, 130–2. For a fuller discussion and bibliography, see M. Jansen, “El Códice Ríos y Fray Pedro de los Ríos,” Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 36 (1984): 69–81. 35 The Codex Telleriano-Remensis is Paris, BnF MS Mexicain 385, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/btv1b8458267s (accessed 27.6.2016). The relationship between the two manuscripts was noted as early as the 1850s, but has been most recently been discussed in detail by Keber, Telleriano-Remensis, 129–32. 36 Boone, Cycles of Time, 14–17; 107–10. On related bodily issues in Mexican ritual imagery, see: M.H. Bassett, Fate of Earthly Things: Aztec Gods and God-Bodies (Austin, TX, 2015); J.  Elkins, “The Question of the Body in Mesoamerican Art,” res 26 (1994): 113–24. 37 Boone, Cycles of Time, 109.

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Figure 28.6

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Figure displaying the days of the week, from the so-called Codex Ríos (also known as Codex Vaticanus A), mid-sixteenth century, Mexico or Italy. Ink and paint on paper. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Vat. Lat. 3738, f. 54r © Vatican Library

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prompt sickness and restore health.38 That the body and the cosmos were considered closely linked is confirmed by the annotator of Vaticanus 3738 himself, who records with surprise the medical value of astrological correspondences for local indigenous peoples. As he writes in his heavily Hispanicised Italian gloss to the image: ancora i medici usavano questa figura quando curavano et secondo il giorno et l’hora nella quale alcuno s’infermava, cosi vedevano se l’infermità era conforme con il segno che regnava. Dalla qual cosa si conoscer che questa gente non era cosi bestiale […] et che usano gli astrologi et i medici fra noi altri […].39 […] even doctors use this figure when curing, and depending on the day and the hour at which someone becomes ill, they could see if the illness was in accordance with the sign that reigned. Whereupon one can see that these people were not so brutal […] and they use the same astrology and medicine as the rest of us […]. The system of bodily-cosmological correspondence in this Mexican-style book once more presents itself as an intriguing parallel to European books like Hébreu 1181 and even, as some have suggested, with the Chinese traditions represented in S.6168.40 Different parts of the body are related to a broader superstitious calendar, medical interventions are governed by this astronomical thinking, and both of these correspondences are plotted onto the diagrammatic body in a consistent linear matrix. However, could the key point of comparison here again be something beyond surface aesthetics? Certainly there are several complex social processes at work in the creation of a book like Vaticanus 3738. Most important perhaps for pre-Columbianist 38 39 40

U. Berger, Die Anatomie der Azteken: Bernardino de Sahagúns anatomischer Bericht aus dem Codex Florentinus, Buch 10, Kapitel 27 (Bern, 2010); J.M. Chevalier and A. Sánchez Bain, The Hot and the Cold: Ills of Humans and Maize in Native Mexico (Toronto, 2003). D. di Loubat, Il Manoscritto Messicano Vaticano 3738, detto il Codice Ríos (Rome, 1900), 36. Such parallels were first pointed out by Karl Sudhoff as early as 1923, but not picked up by subsequent historians. Boone, in Cycles of Time, compares divinatory ideas of Mexican imagery to the Chinese “Systems of Correspondence” discussed in M. Porkert, The Theoretical Foundations of Chinese Medicine: Systems of Correspondence (Cambridge, 1974). The two medical systems have long been equated: see R.H. Geoghegan, “Some Notes on the Ideograms of the Chinese and the Central American Calendars,” The Monist 16:4 (1906): 562–96; or for more general relations, see D. Graña-Behrens, ed., Das kulturelle Gedächtnis Mesoamerikas im Kulturvergleich zum alten China: Rituale im Spiegel von Schrift und Mündlichkeit (Berlin, 2009).

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histories, is the way the book evidences the incorporation of both the written word and the object of the codex into processes of colonisation. Such Mexican and pseudo-Mexican codices allowed Europeans to consolidate a largely oral Mexican culture into digestible form, fodder for better evangelising its peoples. But specifically, they represent an atypical form of colonial advance: many original Mexican books were destroyed by the Spanish, but at the same time extant post-colonial examples testify to an extremely unusual process, whereby the coloniser replicates in facsimile, almost with respect, the entire work of the colonised.41 Mexican and European medical imagery could even sit directly alongside each other in this historical moment: folio 12 of the colonial Codex Mexicanus, for example, preserves a well-drawn copy of a printed Europeanstyle Zodiac Man—much in the style of Hébreu 1181—placed beside images of Aztec gods, calendars, and histories (Fig. 28.7).42 The very reason Europeans like Pedro de los Ríos might have gravitated towards such Nahuatl corporeal almanacs in the first place are the similarities they offer between their own culture and the largely unknown, un-Christian world they wished to dominate. Medicine, therefore, is enrolled as a colonial tool; the irreducibility of the human body as a unit of measure for all civilisations is recast as a point of both familiarity and control. We appear, in a sense, to have come full circle in our trio of examples. Although clearly Mexican in its medical and calendrical concept, it is more effective to consider the corporeal almanac in Vatican 3738 as evidence of an inter-cultural visual vocabulary. This, and not its coincidental visual format, is the most useful idea to reflect back from Mexico onto late medieval Europe and early medieval China. We are reminded that Hébreu 1181 is itself a manuscript staged at an interesting cross-cultural moment within southern France, where complex interactions between Jews and Christians were often mediated by cultural forces like medicine or theories of time.43 Likewise S.6168, as we 41

42 43

On the colonial history of these and related works, see T. Cummins, “From Lies to Truth: Colonial Ekphrasis and the Act of Cross-cultural Translation,” in Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America 1450–1650, ed. C. Farago (New Haven, 1995); W. Mignolo, “Literacy and Colonisation: The New World Experience,” in 1492–1992: Re/Discovering Colonial Writing, ed. R. Jarra and N. Spadaccini (Minneapolis, 1989), 51–96; S. Gruzinski, Painting The Conquest: The Mexican Indians and the European Renaissance (Paris, 1992). Paris, BnF MS Mexicain 23–24, digitised via Gallica at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b55005834g (accessed 14.9.2018). See, for example: S. Lipton, Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography (New York, 2014); C.P.E. Nothaft and J. Isserles, “Calendars Beyond Borders: Exchange of

466

Figure 28.7

Hartnell

European-style Zodiac Man, from the so-called Codex Mexicanus, c. 1590, Mexico. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Mexicain 23–24, page 12 © Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2018

Medicine and Cosmology in France, China, and Mexico

467

have seen in Dunhuang’s Tibetan heritage, similarly speaks to Himalayan and Middle Eastern influences on Chinese medical traditions. The case of the Mexican almanac thus prompts us to look beyond visual semblance and consider the cross-cultural political capacities of medical imagery in France or China, where manuscripts might too one day be proven to act as pivots for intercultural absorption, even domination. 4 Bloodlines To conclude, as art historians we can view this trio of images in one of two ways. On the one hand, we can believe that by placing Hébreu 1181, S.6168, and Vaticanus 3738 in the same conceptual space we initiate an inconsolable clash of methodology. Read in this manner, their comparison can be caricatured as the ultimately fruitless temptation of the mystical Warburgian model, presenting formal aesthetic similarities so broadly across cultures that they quickly break down upon detailed interrogation. These relationships, detractors suggest, are like linguistic false friends: objects whose surface familiarity belies their complex intra-cultural functions and inter-cultural difference. Instead, I am suggesting that if we wish to we can engage in a kind of disciplinary cognitive dissonance, wherein the formal, the social, and the global come together to bring something unique to bear. Initiating new and unexpected inferences, the knock-on prompts each supposedly distant manuscript above has kickstarted in the next shows that a form of comparativism can exist which is more subtle than overly-broad formalism and more aesthetically sensitive than catchall globalism. A formal likeness between objects acts not as a comparison completed but as a seed for further work, extending aesthetic relationships like dominos into the medical nuances of three individual, diverse cultures, each treated equally and on their own terms. This is not simply to recast the historian in the role of Pedro de los Ríos, glossing with wondered surprise the synchronicities of disparate visual traditions. Rather, taken together these three images and their confluences are able to argue fiercely for ideas even greater than themselves. By considering three global images, rather than one, we are allowed to see the field of medicine in all its richness as a social agent, one whose imagery was just as capable of enforcing cultural dominance as it was undermining and reinventing it.

Calendrical Knowledge Between Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe,” Medieval Encounters 20 (2014): 1–37.

468

Hartnell

Too often our histories are based on ideas of cultural difference and distinctiveness, leaving objects of the distant past alone and cold. These three manuscripts, though, remind us of the unifying potential for humanities research into the shared human subject. United by in their investigation, medieval images are able to reveal medicine’s ultimate subject—the body—as the most potent of all diagrammatic signifiers, drawing its corporeal vocabulary into that of the revolving stars and time itself.

Index of manuscripts Aachen, Cathedral Treasury MS 1 56–7, 65–6, Fig. 4.2 Aberdeen, University Library MS 24 (the Aberdeen Bestiary) 155–6, Fig. 10.6, 10.7 Admont, Monastic Library MS 289 94, 96–105, Fig. 7.3, 7.4 Arras, Médiathèque MS 1325 312 n.11 Autun, Bibliothèque municipale MS 19bis (S19) 82 Baltimore, Walters Art Museum MS W.34 168 n.21, 169, 183 n.4 Baltimore, Walters Art Museum MS W.106 183 n.5 Baltimore, Walters Art Museum MS W.230 385 n.49, 387 n.51 Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett MS 78.A.8 168 n.21 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Theol. Lat. f. 323 58 n. 22, 59, 63 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Cod. Lat. 295 91, Fig. 6.5 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz MS 78.A.8 168 n.21 Bremen, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek MS b.21 (Echternach Pericopes Book) 54, 66, 77 n.2, 83, 89, 91, Fig. 6.4 Budapest, National Széchényi Library, cod. Lat. 4 4–6, Fig. 1.1 Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique MS IV 111 372 n.12 Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique MS IV 1278 331–3 Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique MS 9961–2 358 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 49 251 n.19 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 96 364, Fig. 23.5 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 286 (the St Augustine Gospels) 64, 66 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 4.1979 385 n.48

Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 83.1972 155 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 329 364, Fig. 23.6 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum McClean MS 81 371 n.7 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum McClean MS 155 284 n.22 Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College MS 361/442 251 Cambridge, St John’s College MS K. 30 150– 6, Fig. 10.5, 10.6 Cambridge, St John’s College MS N. 1 248 n.12 Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.9.34 183 Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.15.21 452, Fig. 28.3 Cambridge, Trinity Hall MS 1 363 Cambridge, University Library MS Ee.3.59 (Life of St Edward the Confessor) 170, 185–8, 198–206, 230, Fig. 13.5, 13.6, 13.7 Cambridge, University Library MS Hh.1.3 247 n.11 Cambridge, University Library MS Kk.5.16 13 Cambridge, University Library MS Mm.5.36 168 n.21 Chartres, Bibliothèque municipale MS 24 (32) 81 n.14 Carpentras, Bibliothèque Inguimbertine MS 269 279–82, 188 Fig. 18.2 Chantilly, Library of the Musée Condé inv. DE-343 341–51, Fig. 22.1, 22.2 Chantilly, Library of the Musée Condé MS 65 (the Très Riches Heures of Jean de Berry) 371 Chantilly, Library of the Musée Condé MS 401 370 n.3 Chantilly, Library of the Musée Condé Santuario 8 380 Copenhagen, Davids Samling Inv. no. 4/1997 282 Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale mss 12–15 110 Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale mss 167–170 110

470 Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale MS 173 110 Dublin, Chester Beatty Library MS W.082 (the Coëtivy Hours) 371 n.7, 372 Dublin, Trinity College MS 177 (Life of St Alban) 184–92, 205, Fig. 13.1, 13.2 Dublin, Trinity College MS 360 251 Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS 10000 168 n.21 El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasteri0 de San Lorenzo MS B.I.2 262, 271 El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasteri0 de San Lorenzo MS T.I.1 261–2, 269, 272 n.34, Fig. 17.1, 17.7 El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasteri0 de San Lorenzo MS Vit. 17 (Golden Gospels of Henry iii) 54 n.6, 65 n.51, 66 El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasteri0 de San Lorenzo MS &.I.3 78 Épinal, Bibliothèque multimédia intercommunale Épinal-Golbey MS 265 P/R 327 Florence, Archivio di Stato Mostra no. 6 331 n.21 Florence, Bibl. Medicea Laurenziana Plut. 12.17 108 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Banco Rari 20 262, 264–8, 271–2, Fig. 17.4, 17.5, 17.6 Girona, Museu de la Catedral Num. Inv. 7 (11) (Girona Beatus) 81 Harvard, Houghton Library MS Richardson 31 372 n.12 Harvard, Houghton Library MS Richardson 41 435–45, Fig. 27.1, 27.2, 27.3, 27.4, 27.5 Hildesheim, Dombibliothek MS St Godehard 1 (the St Albans Psalter) 208 n.6 Ivrea, Biblioteca Capitolare MS 31, lxxxvi (the Warmund Sacramentary) 59, 63 Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek Hs. St. Peter perg. 92 284 n.23 Kew, The National Archives E 36/266 240

Index of manuscripts Kew, The National Archives E 36/284 (Exchequer Breviate) 224–40, Fig. 15.1, 15.2, 15.3, 15.4 Kew, The National Archives E 164/1 224 n.2, 240 n.21 Kew, The National Archives E 164/2 240 Kew, The National Archives E 164/24 363 n.23 Laon, Bibliothèque Publique MS 263 168–9 Leiden, University Library, B. P. L. 76A (the Leiden Psalter) 135, 139–56, Fig. 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7 Lilienfeld, Stiftsbibliothek MS 151 346 Lisbon, Museu Gulbenkian LA 237 380 n.37, 381 n.40 Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery MS Mayer 12001 369 n.1, 385 n.47, 387 n.53 London, British Library Add. MS 11037 168 n.21, n.23 London, British Library Add. MS 15749 168 n.21, n.23, 169 London, British Library Add. MS 18192 388 n.55 London, British Library Add. MS 18197G 439 n.17 London, British Library Add. MS 18751 369 n.1, 381 n.39, 385 n.47 London, British Library Add. MS 18850 380 n.36 London, British Library Add. MS 18912 388 n.54 London, British Library Add. MS 28681 (the Map Psalter) 164–81, Fig. 12.1 London, British Library Add. MS 30024 279– 81, 283, 288–9 London, British Library Add. MS 30025 278– 82, 288–9, Fig. 18.1, 18.5 London, British Library Add. MS 30851 77 n.2, 78 London, British Library Add. MS 35312 369 n.1, 371 n.7, 381 n.38 London, British Library Add. MS 36614 327 n.5 London, British Library Add. MS 36615 327, 339 London, British Library Add. MS 40675 168 n.21 London, British Library Add. MS 44874 246

Index of manuscripts London, British Library Add. MS 47682 (the Holkam Bible) 74 London, British Library Add. MS 49999 183 London, British Library Add. MS 50000 168 n.21, 169 London, British Library Arundel MS 2 362 London, British Library Arundel MS 153 224 n.2, 240 n.21 London, British Library Arundel MS 157 168 n.21 London, British Library Arundel MS 377 161–2 London, British Library Burney MS 3 243–4, 251 London, British Library Burney MS 266 74 n.24 London, British Library Cotton Ch. Roll xiv.12 134 London, British Library Cotton MS Claudius B iv 184, 363 n. 23 London, British Library Cotton MS Claudius B vi 236 London, British Library Cotton MS Claudius C ix 363 n.23 London, British Library Cotton MS Cleopatra A xvi 240 London, British Library Cotton MS Nero C iv (the Winchester Psalter) 74 n. 24, 204 London, British Library Cotton MS Nero C vii 214 n.28 London, British Library Cotton MS Nero D i 185 n.14 London, British Library Cotton MS Nero D iv (the Lindisfarne Gospels) 23 London, British Library Cotton MS Titus A xxi 168 n.21 London, British Library Cotton MS Titus D xvi 216–21 London, British Library Cotton MS Vespasian A i (the Vespasian Psalter) 34 London, British Library Cotton MS Vespasian A ii 161 London, British Library Egerton MS 1046 13 London, British Library Egerton MS 2909 73 London, British Library Egerton MS 3041 (the Ridware Cartulary) 352–68, Fig. 23.1, 23.2, 23.4 London, British Library Egerton MS 3763 34

471 London, British Library Hargrave MS 313 240 London, British Library Harley MS 315 214 n.28 London, British Library Harley MS 624 214 n.28 London, British Library Harley MS 2877 410 London, British Library Harley MS 2971 371 n.7, 390 n.60 London, British Library Harley MS 4664 171 London, British Library Or.8210/S.6168 454–9, 465, 467, Fig. 28.4 London, British Library Royal MS 1.D.X 168 n.21 London, British Library Royal MS 2.A.xx 13 London, British Library Royal MS 14.C.vii 180 London, British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (the Dunois Hours) 369–94, Fig. 24.1, 24.2, 24.3, 24.4, 24.5, 24.6 London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 3 (the Lambeth Bible) 179 n.58 London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 209 (the Lambeth Apocalypse) 170, 179 n.58, 180 London, V&A msl/1993/2 396–413, Fig. 25.1, 25.2, 25.3, 25.4, 25.5 Los Angeles, Getty Museum MS 66 163 Los Angeles, Getty Museum MS 101  156 n.15 Los Angeles, Getty Museum MS Ludwig ix.6; 83.ML.102 3371 n.7, 385 n.47 Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional, cod. 1006B 78 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional MS 80 82 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional MS 10.069 262 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional MS Vitrina 14–2 78 Madrid, Biblioteca Real MS Res. 192 411 n.23 Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia, cod. 64ter 78 Manchester, John Rylands Library MS Lat. 24 171 Manchester, John Rylands Library MS Lat. 164 369 n.1, 381 n.38, 390 n.59 Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS A 24 inf. 23 n.12

472 Milan, Bibloteca del Capitolo Metropolitano MS ii.D.3.2 23 n.12 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 343 19–20, 22–5, 28–31, 34–5, Fig. 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 835 182 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 2574b 311 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 4452 88 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 4453 (Gospel Book of Otto iii) 36, 42–9, 60–1, 64, 66, Fig. 3.3, 4.3 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 4456 88 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 23643 328 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 30111 (Prayer Book of Otto iii) 77 n.2, 82 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cod. gall. 6 373 n.20 Munich, Residenz, Schatzkanner (Prayer Book of Charles the Bald) 79 New York, Morgan Library MS G.18 (the Bible of Richard of Sholdon) 241–58, Fig. 16.1, 16.2, 16.3, 16.4 New York, Morgan Library MS M.43 183 New York, Morgan Library MS M.103 168 n.21 New York, Morgan Library MS M.358 396 n.3 New York, Morgan Library MS M.453 381 n.40 New York, Morgan Library MS M.524 (the Morgan Apocalypse) 166, 170 New York, Morgan Library MS M.677 411 n.23 New York, Morgan Library MS M.736 200, 214 New York, Morgan Library MS M.926 207, 209–23 New York, Morgan Library MS M.970 251, 256 New York, Public Library Spencer Collection MS 26 (Tickhill Psalter) 358

Index of manuscripts Nüremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Hs. 156142/KG1138 (Codex Aureus of Echternach) 52–67, Fig. 4.1 Oslo, Schoyen Collection MS 115 247 n.11 Oxford, All Souls College Library MS 1 251 Oxford, All Souls College Library MS 6 (the Amesbury Psalter) 180 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. D.2.1 246 n.9 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. D.2.6 94–106, Fig. 71, 7.2, 7.5 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. F.2.13 72 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 270b 131–3, 135, Fig. 9.3, 9.4 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 271 257 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Canon Class Lat. 100 76 n.27 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 146 364 n.27 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 308 312 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Gough liturg. 2 (the Gough Psalter) 153–5, Fig. 10.6, 10.7 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Hatton 93 13 n.12 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lat. Bibl. e. 7 248 n.11 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Lat. 67 216–22 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Selden 3389 217 n.40 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Wood empt. 13 255 n.38 Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410 291– 308, Fig. 19.1, 19.2, 19.3, 19.4, 19.5, 19.6, 19.7 Oxford, Keble College MS 39 371 n.7 Oxford, Magdalen College MS 100 246 n.9 Paris, Bibliothèque de la Arsenal MS 1186 (the Psalter of Blanche of Castile) 135, 157–63, Fig. 9.5, 11.1 Paris, Bibliothèque de la Arsenal MS 5086 370 n.3 Paris, Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne MS 636 163 n.17 Paris, Bibliothèque de Ste Geneviève MS 2200 284 n. 23

473

Index of manuscripts Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 753 329 n.17 Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 3458  284–6, Fig. 18.4 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Fr. 91 411 n.24 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Fr. 599 437 n.11 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Fr. 1109 288 n.27 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Fr. 1276 370 n.3 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Fr. 9220 177 n.49 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Fr. 22495 74 n.24 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Gr. 139 28 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Gr. 510 25–6, 64 n.46 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Gr. 654 26–7 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Hébreu 1181 449–54, 456–8, 464–5, 467, Fig. 28.2 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Ital. 115 295 n.11 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 1 (the Vivian Bible) 79, 81 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 15 246 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 919 390 n.61 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 920 411 n.23 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 4889 159 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 7899 69 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 8191 76 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 8846 135 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 8878 81 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 9474 410 n.21 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 10431 248 n.12

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 10861 13 n.12 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 11560 341 n.1 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 12048 26 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 15170 160 n.7 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 16208 163 n.18 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 16745 160 n.7 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Lat. 17294 370 n.3 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Mexicain 23–24, Fig. 28.7 465 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Mexicain 385 462 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS n.a.f. 1098 229–30 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS n.a.f. 10039 327, 340 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS n.a.l. 3187 410 n.21 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS n.a.l. 3226 372 n.12 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS n.a.l. 10034 392 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Rothschild 2535 388 n.54 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Smith-Lesouëf MS 2  77 n.2 Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André MS 2 (the Boucicaut Hours) 371, 379, 380 n.37, 393 Philadelphia, Free Library Lewis E M 18.4 411 n.24 Patmos, The Holy Monastery of St John, gr. 33 27 Prague, Knihovna Národního Muzea MS I D a 1/18 422 Prague, Knihovna Národního Muzea MS I F 34 418 Prague, National Library MS xxiii A 2 (Kutná Hora Gradual) 417 Reims, Bibliothèque municipale mss 1459–1466 331 n.21

474 Salamanca, Biblioteca de la Universidad MS 2705 284 n.23 Santiago de Compostela, Archivo-Biblioteca de la Catedral acs CF 34 89 Santiago de Compostela, Biblioteca Xeral Universitaria 609 Reserv. 1 77–88, 91, 93, Fig. 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 Sinai, The Holy Monastery of St Catherine, Arabic NF 8 6–16, Fig. 1.2, 1.3, 1.5 The Hague, Koninklijke Biblioteek MS 76 G 8 411 n.23 Trier, Stadtbibliothek MS 24 (Codex Egberti) 36, 39–42, 48–9, 63–4, 66 n.54, Fig. 3.1 Trier, Stadtbibliothek MS 171/1626 63, 188 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 4 123 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 5 123 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 27–1 118, 123 Fig. 8.4 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MSS 27– 2–27–5 118, 123 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 31 123 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 34 123 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 35 123 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 39 123 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40–1 111, 123, Fig. 8.1 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40–2 111, 123 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40–3 111, 123 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40–4 114–15, 123, Fig. 8.3 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40–5 114, 123 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40–6 111, 123 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40–6 113, 123 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40–9 111, 123

Index of manuscripts Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40–10 111, 123 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 42 124 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole mss 43–1–43–2 124 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 71 124 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole mss 76–1–76–2 124 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 84 124 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 88 124 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 115 114, 124, Fig. 8.2 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 256 113, 124 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 441 124 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 444 111 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole mss 458–1–458–2 121 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 511 121 n.41 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 646 124 Uppsala, University Library MS 93 (the Goslar Gospels) 89, 91 Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale MS 500 229 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Archivio di San Pietro, H 19 72 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Borgh. 58 284 n.22 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Ott. gr. 14 26 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. Lat. 82 19–20 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. Lat. 83 19–23, 33–5, Fig. 2.1 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. Lat. 3225 (the Vatican Virgil) 11–12, 62, 65, Fig. 4.4 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. Lat. 3738 459–67, Fig. 28.6

Index of manuscripts Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. Lat. 3868 70–2, Fig. 5.1 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. Lat. 6728 74–5, Fig. 5.2 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. Lat. 6949 461 n.33 Venice, Biblioteca Marciana MS gr. ii, 179 26 Verdun, Bibliothèque municipale MS 70 102 Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Cod. 309 76 Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Cod. 1800 338 Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Cod. 1855 380 n.37, 381 n.40 Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Cod. 1861 (Dagulf Psalter)

475 Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Cod. 2004 385 n.49 Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Cod. 2554 160 Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Mus. Hs. 15492 (Smíškovský Gradual) 414, 427–8, 430–4, Fig. 26.4, 26.5 Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Mus. Hs. 15501 (Kutná Hora Cantional) 414–34, Fig. 26.1, 26.3 Windsor, Royal Library (the Sobiesky Hours) 387 n.53 Worcester Cathedral MS 160 250 Wormsley Library (the Becket Leaves) 184–6, 192–7, 200, 204, Fig. 13.3, 13.4

General Index Abingdon 236, 363 n.23 Abraham 54, 58, 60, 64, 66–7, 135, 183, 344 Abraham ben Shem Tov 449 Abraham Ibn Ezra 157–63 Acupuncture 455–7 Adam 88, 95, 134, 145–6, 244, 425 Adelard of Bath 162, 276–7, 290 Adoration of the Magi 145, 177, 263, 314, 320–1, 324, 389, Fig. 20.7, 25.3 Adrianus Castellesi 257 Aelred of Rievaulx 230, 234 Afra, saint 216–18 Alban, saint 157, 184–93, 200, 204–5, 209–11, Fig. 13.1 Albert von Behaim 311 Albertus Magnus 348, 350 Alessandro Bentivoglio 443 Alexander the Great 183, 280–1 Alexis, saint 209, 212–14 Alfonso v, king of León 82 Alfonso x, king of Castile-León 259, 261–2, 270–5, Fig. 17.1 Ambrose of Milan 38 Amiens 163, 398–9 Amos 245 Amphibalus, saint 184, 188, 190, Fig. 18.1 André Le Musnier 397–8, 412 Andrea Acciaiuoli 436, 444 Annunciation, the 6, 312, 316–19, 337, 405, 410, Fig. 1.4, 20.3, 20.5, 20.6, 25.4 Anselm, saint 94–108, 168, 209, 212, 214, 257 Ants 341–51, Fig. 21.1, 21.2 Apocalypse 166, 170, 180, 184, 186, 245 Apollonius of Tyre (History of) 4–15, Fig. 1.1, 1.3 Arculf, bishop 15 Aristotle 253, 276–89, Fig. 18.1, 18.4 And Phyllis 280–2, Fig. 18.2 Arnolfo du Cambio 260 Astrology 159, 162, 282, 311, 413, 451–2, 458, 464 Astronomy 160–2, 446, 461, 464 Augustine of Canterbury 157, 363 Augustine of Hippo 37, 57–9, 100, 108, 111–14, 123–4, 214, Fig. 8.3

Avignon 396–8, 412 Avranches 403 Azincourt 380 Baghdad 282 Barbara, saint 495, Fig. 25.2 Bathsheba 86, 381–2, 405, 410–12 Battle of Stamford Bridge 202 Battle of Tamarón 87 Bec 94, 213 Bede 13, 15 Benedict, saint 94, 99–100, 106, 167, 209, 212 Benedictines 44, 46–7, 125, 167–8, 251, 329 n.17, 342, 435, 439, 443 Berengaria of Navarre 162 Bernard of Clairvaux 109–12, 115–18, 121–2 Bernardo Luini 443 Bestiaries 155–6, 175, 178, 345–6, 350–1, Fig. 10.6, 10.7 Beverley Minster 363 Bibles 65, 74, 79, 81, 110, 117–19, 121, 123, 241–8, 251–8, 342, 400 (see also index of manuscripts) Bibles moralisées 1, 131–3, 135, 160, 182, 341, Fig. 9.3, 9.4 Birinus, saint 209, 212, 214–15 Bloodletting, see phlebotomy Boccaccio, Giovanni 435–45 Boethius 16 Bonaventure 274, 277, 289 Books of Hours 168–9, 183, 247, 338–9, 369–413, Fig. 24.1, 24.2, 24.3, 24.4, 24.5, 24.5, 25.1, 25.2, 25.3, 25.4, 25.5 (see also index of manuscripts) Boxwood 311–12 Brunetto Latini 276, 278–82, 286–9, Fig. 18.5 Canterbury 34, 108, 135, 195, 197, 212–14, 228, 253, 257 Cathedral 105–7, 193, 257 St Augustine’s 241–2, 250–1, 255 See also Anselm of Canterbury, Clement of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, Thomas Becket

477

General Index Cantigas de Santa Maria 259–75, Fig. 17.1, 17.4, 17.5, 17.6, 17.7 Cartularies 236–7, 352, 356–68, Fig. 23.1, 23.2, 23.4, 23.5 Cefalù 126 Charlemagne 77, 79, 82, 86, 159 Charles vii, king of France 373, 379 n.32, 380 Charles d’Orléans 372, 374, 379, 392 n.69 Charles the Bald 79, 86, 88 Charters 87, 352, 355, 357, 359–60, 362–4, 367–8 Chaucer 435 Christine de Pizan 436 Chronicles 82, 91, 159, 205, 228, 236–7, 252, 359, 362, 364, 432, 462, Fig. 6.5 Christ 23, 28, 34–5, 37–8, 43–4, 47, 49–51, 60, 63–4, 66, 74, 79, 81, 91, 95, 97, 99, 105–8, 115, 126, 128, 145–6, 159, 178, 188, 234, 263, 274, 293–308, 315, 319, 324, 336, 345, 349, 430, Fig. 6.1, 7.3, 7.5, 19.3, 19.4, 19.6 Ascension 301, 305, 319 n.29, 338, 428, Fig. 19.7 Crucifixion 23 n.13, 102, 299, 319, 323, 335, 337–9, 343, 421 Genealogy 130–1, 134, 171, 178–9 Nativity 297–8, 320, 337–8, 405, Fig. 19.2 Passion 105, 188, 297, 299, 301, 304, 312–15, 319, 322, 336, Fig. 20.6 Resurrection 41, 46, 102, 188, 297, 301, 304, 313, 338 Transfiguration 60–1, 64, 66, 422, 428, 430, Fig. 4.3 See also Last Judgement, Meditationes Vitae Christi, Noli me tangere, Virgin and Child Chrysostom, John 26 Cicero 210, 214, 288 Cistercians 109–24, 195, 259, 269 Cîteaux 110, 117–18 Clairvaux 109–24 (see also Bernard of Clairvaux) Clare, saint 294 Clement of Canterbury 255–6 Cluny 44, 46, 77, 91, 93, 112 (see also Odo of Cluny) Cnut 200 Cologne 117 n.50, 309, 313–25, 336, 429

Conrad ii, emperor 55, 88, 91 Constantinople 16–17, 25, 174 Cortona 299 Court of Chivalry 367 Coutances 403 Daniel 244 David, king 23 n.13, 28, 31, 33–5, 79, 83, 86, 91, 115, 160, 171, 177–9, 244, 381–2, 388 n.54, 391, 405, 410–11, Fig. 2.4, 6.1 Devil 262–8, 275, 343–4, 385, 390, Fig. 17.3, 22.1 Dialogus de scaccario 240 Dives and Lazarus 52–67 Domesday Book 224–8, 237 Donatus 68–70 Duccio 180 Dunhuang 454–7 Dunstan, saint 209, 211, 215 Eadburga, saint 250 Echternach 52–67, 83, 89–91 Edmund, saint 157, 198, 200, 205, 214 Edmund of Abingdon, saint 185–6, 248 Edward i, king of England 177, 359 Edward ii, king of England 352, 355–6, 359, 362–3, 367, Fig. 23.3 Edward the Confessor, king of England and saint 157, 185–8, 170, 185–8, 197–205, 225, 227–37, Fig. 13.5, 13.6, 13.7, 15.1, 15.2, 15.3 Eleanor of Aquitaine 157, 159, 162 Eleanor of Castile 186 Eleanor of Provence 186, 206 Elisabeth of Přemyslid 428 Emma, queen 198, 200 Enamels 28–33 Epitaphium Terentii 70, 73–4, 76 Ethelred, king 198 Etienne Chevalier 341, 372, 380 Étienne de Boileau 312 Europa 437, 439, 443–4, Fig. 27.2 Exchequer, the 224, 240 Exchequer Breviate 224–6, 228, 230, 236–7, 239–40 Eve 38–9, 95, 134, 145–6 Evesham 249–50, 255

478 Ezechiel 244 Ezzelino iii de Romano 273 Fernando i, king of Léon 77–8, 81–3, 87–93 Florus of Lyon 78–9 Foch, Edmond 400 Fountain of youth 312 Fra Melano 259, 261, 263, 269–70 Francis of Assisi, saint 248, 294, 379 n.28 Franciscans 273–4, 294, 299 Freiburg im Breisgau 422 Frederick ii, emperor 178–9, 259, 271, 275 Galliano, San Vincenzo 28 Gentile da Folignio 449 Geoffrey of Langley 251 Geoffrey Plantagenet 135, 139, 156 Georg Agricola 420, 423–4, 426 George, saint 372 n.10, 379–80 Gian Galeazzo Visconti 400 Gideon 428 Gilbert Crispin 216 Giovanni Boccaccio, see Boccaccio, Giovanni Giovanni Pisano 260 Girolamo da Cremona 341–2 Girolamo da Libri 438 Gisela of Swabia 88–9, 91 Glastonbury 362 Glazier, William 258 Gloucester 249–50 Gonzalo Pérez Gudiel 273 Gregory the Great, pope 6, 14–17, 46, 57, 59–60, 106, 110, 124, 188, 251 Gregory vi, pope 82 Guillaume Gouffier 372 Guyot Le Musnier 398 Halberstadt 31, 318–19 Harold Haardrada 202 Harreteau 395, 399, 413 Heinrich Gross 418 Helena, saint 18, 428–9, 433, Fig. 26.3 Henri d’Orléans, duke of Aumale 341–2 Henry i, king of England 104, 367 Henry ii, emperor 86, 88 Henry ii, king of England 157, 159, 162, 193, 195, 364, Fig. 13.3 Henry iii, emperor 54–5, 65–6, 77, 82, 86–91, 93, Fig. 6.4

General Index Henry iii, king of England 174, 177–9, 186, 239, 362 Henry of Cockering 251–2 Heraclius, emperor 7 Hildegard of Bingen 108, 446 Hildesheim 49–50, 88, Fig. 3.4 Hosea 244–5 Hugh of St Victor 129–30, 134 Hypsypile 441–3, 445 Ida of Boulogne 96 Investiture Controversy 103 Ippolita Sforza Bentivoglio 443–4 Isabel de Warenne 185–6, 205 Isabelle, sister of Henry iii, king of England 179 Isabelle de Valois 400 Isidore of Seville 78, 348 Ivories 1–2, 6, 31, 309–40 Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, Inv. W.106 339 Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, Inv. 10.39 338 n.43, 339 Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, Inv. 71.279 333 Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique MS iv 1278 331–2 Brussels, Museums of Art and History Inv. 854 323, 325, 333, Fig. 20.8 Cologne, Schnütgen Museum Inv. B2002 338 Cracow, Czartotyski Museum, Inv. 2387 339 Épinal, Bibliothèque multimédia intercommunale Épinal-Golbey MS 265 P/R 327 Gotha, Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein, Elfenbein Nr. 6 328, 339, Fig. 21.2 Hannover, Museum August Kestner Inv. Z 9 340 London, British Library Add. MS 10301 339 London, British Library Add. MS 36614 327 n.5 London, British Library Add. MS 36615 327, 339 London, Museum of London Inv. 10890 335 London, V&A Inv. 8–1872 340

479

General Index London, V&A Inv. 11–1872 313–15, 319–25, 331 n.20, 336, Fig. 20.2, 20.4 London, V&A Inv. A.2–1937 328–30, Fig. 21.1 London, V&A Inv. Circ.495–1923 333, Fig. 21.4 Manchester, John Rylands University Library MS Lat. 51 339 Manchester, John Rylands University Library MS Lat. 52 340 Milan Annunciation, Milan, Castle Sforzesco, Avori 14 6–7, Fig. 1.4 Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Inv. MA2033 337, Fig. 21.6 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 23643 328 Namur, Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois-Trésor d’Oignies (TreM.a) Inv. 29 311–12, 322, 331 n.20, 336 New York, Linsky Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art 1982.60.399 319–21, 323–5, Fig. 20.7 New York, Morgan Library and Museum M.542 340 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS n.a.f. 10039 327, 340 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS n.a.l. 10034 327 n.5 Paris, Musée du Louvre Inv. mrr 429 332 Ravenna, Museo Nazionale Inv. 1036 336 Ravenna, Museo Nazionale Inv. 1037 337 Ravenna, Museo Nazionale Inv. 1038 319–22, Fig. 20.6 Toronto, The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario Inv. 71331 335 Jan Chůdek 432 Jan Hus 430 Jan van Eyck 371, 399, 421 Jean Bourdichon 410 Jean d’Angloulême 379 Jean de Dunois 372–94 Jean de Millon 312–13 Jean Donat 397 Jean Fouquet 372, 410 Jean Gillimer 412–13 Jean Guymier 398 Jean Haincelin 370 Jean Picard 398, 412

Jean Pucelle 318 Jeremiah, prophet 244 Jerome, Church Father 18, 79, 123–4, 349 Jerusalem 234, 291, 298, 301 Heavenly Jerusalem 49–50, 103 Joachim of Rome 397 Johan Mathesius 425 Johannes Nider 348 Johannes von Paltz 421 John de Foxton 452, Fig. 28.3 John de Sholdon 252 John Hawkhurst 256 John Peckham 362 John the Almoner, saint 209–10, 214 John the Baptist, saint 145, 254, 304, 388, 403 John the Divine, saint 377, 387–8 John the Evangelist, saint 94, 97, 99, 227, 236, 404, 422, 430, Fig. 7.3, 18.3 Jonah 245 Joseph 291–6, 304, 320, Fig. 19.1 Juan Gil de Zamora 273–4 Judith 244 Justinian, emperor 17 Karlstejn 428 Kutná Hora 414–33 Lanfranc 107, 209, 212 Lapo di Ricevuto 260 Last Judgement 52, 57–8, 135, 259, 263–5, 377, 385, 387–90, 421, 430, 433, Fig. 17.3, 24.6 Lateran 104 Lawrence, saint 313, 430 León 77, 81–3, 87–9, 93, 261 Leonard, saint 379 Leonardo da Vinci 402, 438, 446 Liège cathedral 312 Lion of Judah 178 Lions 159, 169, 176–9, 245 London 178–9, 186, 342, 358, 455 Louis vii, king of France 195 Louis viii, king of France 157, 159, 162 Louis ix, king of France 139, 393 Louis the Pious 70 Lowden, John xviii–xxi, 1–3, 18, 109, 164, 180, 207, 226, 241, 259, 309, 326, 335, 341, 394, 396, 449 Lübeck 314–16

480 Matilda of Tuscany 94, 96–7, 99–100 Matthew Paris 180, 182–206 Margam Abbey 240 Martin, saint 341–7, 350 Martin Kuthen 432 Mary Magdalene 36, 38–50, 298, 300, 304, 437, Fig. 27.2 Medical imagery 448–69, Fig. 28.2, 28.3, 28.4, 28.5, 28.6, 28.7 Meditationes Vitae Christi 291–307 Meliore Toscano 174–5, Fig. 12.4 Mexico 449, 462–7 Michael, archangel 34, 373, 385, 387–8 Milan 6, 19–35, 397, 435–6, 438–40, 443–4 Monreale Cathedral 125–38, Fig. 9.2 Mosaics 125–7, 133, 135, 137, Fig. 9.1, 9.2 Moses 60–1, 64, 66, 428 Mount Tabor 422, 428 Neath Abbey 240 Noah 125, 127–38, 145, Fig. 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4 Normandy 161–2, 198, 200, 213, 373, 396, 399, 403 Nicola Pisano 259–60, 263, 266, 271, 273, Fig. 17.2, 17.3 Nicholas de Bello 251, 255–6 Nicholas de Montiéramey 112–13 Nicholas Thorne 251 Niobe 441–5 Noli me tangere 36–51, 337, Fig. 31., 3.3, 3.4 Odo of Cluny 44, 209, 212 Offa, king of Mercia 192, 215 Office for the Dead 164 n.3, 167, 377 n.25, 380, 382, 390, 402–3, 406, 430, Fig. 24.5, 25.5 Opus Anglicanum 175 Otto i, emperor 39, 63 Otto ii, emperor 39, 63 Otto iii, emperor 42, 46, 63, 87 Ottobuoni d’Fieschi 174 Ovid 423 Padua, Santa Giustina 342 Palermo 125–7, 132–4, 137 Capella Palatina 125, 127–9, Fig. 9.1 Paris 129, 157, 163, 182, 243, 251, 255–6, 273–4, 276, 312–14, 337, 369–70, 372–3, 392, 396–7, 400, 412, 455 Pascal ii, pope 97, 104

General Index Pastorino de Giovanni Micheli 268 Paul, abbot of St Albans 212–13, 215 Paul, saint 94, 97, 103, 105–6, 126, 245, 433 Pedro de los Ríos 461–2, 465, 467 Pershore 249–50 Peter, saint 60, 94, 96, 100, 102–4, 106, 126, 300, 422, Fig. 7.5 Peter Comestor 130 Peter Lombard 256, 278 n.8 Peter of Celle 113 Peter of Poitiers 130, 134 Peter the Venerable 112 Petrarch 73, 76, 416, 423, 435 Phlebotomy 449, 451–2, 454, 458–9, Fig. 28.5 Philip-Augustus, king of France 162 Pierre de Beauvais 346 Pietro Lorenzetti 299 Pisa 259, 269 Pliny the Elder 341, 346–50 Poitiers 412 Pontigny 193, 195, 197 Prigent de Coëtivy 372 Provence 161, 449 (see also Eleanor of Provence) Prudentius 216 Psalters 19–35, 74, 77–9, 82, 134–5, 139–83, 216, 246–7, 338, 341, 358, Fig. 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 6.3, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 11.1, 12.1 Raphael 102–4 Reichenau 36, 39, 43, 46, 56–7, 60, 63–6, 86 Richard, abbot of St Albans 215 Richard, bishop of Bayeux 277 Richard, duke of Normandy 200 Richard i, king of England 162 Richard de Fournival 163 Richard de Wych, bishop of Chichester 166 Richard of Chichester, saint 248 Richard of Cornwall 179, 273 Richard of Scholdon 241, 252–4 Richard Scrope 367 Robert de Bello 243, 251 Robert de Rubella 412 Roger, archbishop of York 197 Roger ii, king of Sicily 126 Roger de Fournival 162–3 Roger of Hereford 162 Rome 6, 12, 14–17, 27, 62, 68–70, 73, 82, 96, 100, 103–5, 161, 175, 257, 433

481

General Index Rouen 396, 399, 402–5 Rusticiana 16–18 St Albans 72, 102, 185, 192, 207, 209, 212–22 Salisbury 166, 363 Sallust 442–3 Sancha, queen of Léon 77–8, 83, 87–8, 91 Sanchia of Provence 186 Saracens, images of 74, 284 Seals 91, 177, 352, 356–68, Fig. 23.3 Sebastian Münster 418, Fig. 26.2 Seven Sleepers of Ephesus 227, 231 Siena 259–60, 262, 264–73 Silva, Ercole, count of Biandrate 436, 440 Simon de Montfort 176, 255, Fig. 12.5 Sinai 4, 6, 7, 10–18, 171–3 Solomon 177–8 Stephen, saint 430 Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury 168–9 Suetonius 68–70, 76 Sulpicius Severus 343–4 Sweyn, king of Denmark 198, 200, 227 Terence 68–76, Fig, 5.1, 5.2 Tewkesbury 249–50 Thisbe 437, 441–4 Thomas, disciple 37–8, 300 Thomas Aquinas 57–8, 283 Thomas Becket 157, 185–6, 188, 192–8, 200, 204, 249, 257, Fig. 13.3, 13.4 Thomas of Cantimpré 348, 350 Thomas of Elmham 363–4 Thomas of Kent 183 Thomas Ridware 352, 356–60, 362, 367 Thomas Walsingham 185 Thomas Wylde 257 Tobit 244 Toledo 262, 273 Tonalamatl (Books of Fate) 461–2 Toresund 315–16, 318 Tostig 202 Urban ii, pope 103–4

Vannoccio Biringuccio 424 Venantius Fortunatus 4 Victoria, queen of England 400 Vincent of Beauvais 277 Virgin Mary 96, 126, 128, 131, 145, 261–75, 291–309, 313, 323, 377, 387–9, 402–4, 410, Fig. 19.1, 19.2, 19.3, 19.4, 19.5, 19.6, 20.1 Annunciation 6, 312, 316–19, 337, 405, 410, Fig. 1.4, 20.5, 20.6, 25.4 Coronation 314, 320, 324 Virgin and Child 164–181, 244, 263, 268, 299, 309, 320, 324, 342, 377, 389, Fig. 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 12.4, 17.7 Walter the Chanter 220 Warburg, Aby 446–9, 452, 459 Warin, abbot St Albans 219, 222 Wax 16, 312, 320, 322, 329, 332, 336, 362 Wax tablets, see writing tablets Wensleslas, king 418, 426 Westminster 166, 170, 181 Westminster Abbey 174, 176, 186, 234, 236, 238, Fig. 12.5 William ii, king of England 355, 363 William ii, king of Sicily 125–7, 137–8, 364 William de Brailes 183, 284 n.22 William Gossip 258 William of Wilmington 251 William Rideware 363 William Thorne 252 Willibald 15 Winchcombe 249–50 Worcester 242 n.2, 246 n.9, 248–250 Writing tablets 160 n.7, 310–14, 319–20, 322–3, 325–6, 328–40, Fig. 21.2, 21.3, 21.4, 21.5 Yahya ibn Masawaih (John of Damascus) 449 Zodiac 140, 150, 152, 283, 446, 451–4, 458–9, 465, Fig. 28.2, 28.3, 28.7