Illuminating The Middle Ages 2020 PDF

Illuminating the Middle Ages
Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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Contents vii
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

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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

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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
2.5 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

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Illustrations xi
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
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
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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xii Illustrations
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
9.4 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 270b, f. 10r. © The Bodleian Libraries, The
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
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
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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Illustrations xiii
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
13.7 Cambridge, University Library MS Ee. 3. 59, f. 32v. Reproduced by kind
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
15.3 Kew, The National Archives E 36/284, f. 2v. The National Archives, reproduced
15.4 Kew, The National Archives E 36/284, f. 3r. The National Archives, reproduced
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
16.3 New York, The Morgan Library & Museum MS G.18, f. 276r. Morgan Library &
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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xiv Illustrations
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
Oxford. 303
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Illustrations xv
19.5 The Virgin in Prayer. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 128v. By
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 Sachsen-
Anhalt, 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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xvi Illustrations
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.
24.2 Obsecro te, British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (Dunois Hours), f. 22v.
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

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Illustrations xvii
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).
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).
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

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Contributors
Barbara Baert
is Professor Ordinaries at the department of Art History at KU Leuven, Bel-
gium. 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 Insti-
tutional 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 Lon-

don 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.

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Contributors xix
Lucy Donkin
is a lecturer in History and History of Art at the University of Bristol. She com-
pleted 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 com-
pleted 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 Uni-
versity. 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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xx 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.

is writing a book on the illustrated manuscripts of Terence’s comedies and cur-
rently 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.

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Contributors xxi
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 be-
fore returning to the Courtauld to take up a Bob McCarthy scholarship for her
PhD, supervised by John, entitled The Leiden Psalter (Leiden, University Li-
brary 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 vol-
ume 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 un-
der John Lowden’s supervision in 2003.
Rose Walker
holds a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship for her current project. She complet-
ed 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 Ham-
burg. She completed her Masters degree under John Lowden’s supervision in
2004.

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xxii 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.

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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 ob-
tuseness: 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 col-
league. 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 over-
come obtuseness and shape a generation of scholarship. After a brief period
at the University of St Andrews, John joined the academic staff of the Cour-
tauld 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 benefit-
ted 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 chronologi-
cally 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 late-
antique 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

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2 Introduction
a ddress the movement of people, books and ideas. In addition, Hanna Wim-
mer explores contact with the Arabic world, and Jack Hartnell’s paper looks
further afield to explore parallels in representations of medicine and cosmol-
ogy 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 ex-
plores 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 ad-
dressed by Michelle Brown, Francesca Demarchi, Maria Grasso, and Beatrice
Radden Keefe, among others. The question of meaning, and how we might re-
construct 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 cre-
ation 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 pro-
duction, 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 al-
ways 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

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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 good-
humour with which they have borne with the delays and frustrations of bring-
ing the book to fruition. His career is an important reminder that it is possible
to combine serious, rigorous, thought-provoking work with immense fun.

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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 con-
tains 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 pre-
serve 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 Cath-
erine’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, In-
cluding 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 His-
toria 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

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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 Cath-
erine, Sinai, for kindly granting me permission to examine, identify and to publish the Latin

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6 Brown
images generated by the Sinai Palimpsest Project, which enabled the identifi-
cation 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 associ-
ated 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 pre-
dates 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 frag-
mentary 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 frag-
ment, 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, resem-
bling 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 Mi-
lan 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 collec-
tion, 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, along-
side 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 In-
teractions of Words, Text, and Print in Honor of A. Doane, ed. M. Hussey and J.D. Niles (Turn-
hout, 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 assis-
tance from Daniela Mairhofer.
4 Boreczky and Németh, 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 high-
quality 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

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8 Brown
Figure 1.3 Drawing of Apollonius and his daughter, Tarsia, the Holy Monastery of St
Catherine, Sinai, Arabic NF 8, f. 15v
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 sup-
ported 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 classi-
cally indebted works from this Palestinian workshop. Weitzmann also compared the narra-
tive 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 pro-
Roman and pro-Byzantine Orthodoxy of Chalcedon. Aquileia was also later reunited into

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

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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, writ-
ten 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 multi-
layered 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, prob-
ably 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 tex-
tual passages extremely difficult, even with the aid of advanced digital imag-
ing 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.”

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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.
this apparent scale (such as the Vatican Virgil, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apos-
tolica 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 col-
umns, 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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12 Brown
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 manu-
script of which fragments survive in Sinai—which were there by at least 900
and probably when they were palimpsested earlier and were therefore unavail-
able as an exemplar to the Werden scriptorium around 1000—indicate that
there must have been other early Latin illustrated copies of the History of Apol-
lonius 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 ‘scriptori-
um’ 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 togeth-
er, 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 lati-
nate 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 centu-
ry). 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 dif-
ferent palimpsested fragments, that includes the illustrated Apollonius) incor-
porates 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 fea-
tures 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 litur-
gical 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 Cambridge, University Library MS Kk.5.16.

10 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.
11 London, BL Royal MS 2.A.XX, f. 17r.
12 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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14 Brown
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 to-
gether 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 mul-
tiple 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 con-
tact 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 give-
away), who eventually compels her into prostitution. She is so beautiful, virtu-
ous 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 dip-
lomatic 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 Ar-
culf (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 cul-
tural 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 evi-
dence of relations between early medieval Britain and Ireland and the south-
ern and eastern Mediterranean, and to the participation by Pope Gregory the
Great and the early western Church in the international orthodoxy of Chal-
cedon, focused upon Byzantium. This has included highlighting Gregory’s ini-
tiative 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 (Lon-
don, 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 Interac-
tions of Words, Text, and Print in Honor of A.N. Doane, ed. M. Hussey and J.D. Niles (Turn-
hout, 2011), 17–49; and “Imagining, Imaging and Experiencing.”

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16 Brown
guesthouse, which may have opened the way to westerners. Might our Insular
scribes even have subsequently occupied two of Pope Gregory’s endowed plac-
es in the monastery for a time? Gregory’s perception of the didactic and con-
templative function of images may accordingly perhaps have owed something
to the norms of pre-iconoclastic Byzantium and the Christian Orient, mediat-
ed 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 per-
ceptions 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 read-
ers, a picture presents to the gaze of the unlearned. For in it even the ig-
norant 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 icono-
clasm, 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 Constan-
tinople. 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-icono-
clast 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 Collec-
tion 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 (Shef-
field 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 Constantino-
ple 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 epistu-
larum, ccsl 140–140A, 2 vols. (Turnhout, 1982), ii: 000; see also The letters of Gregory the

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18 Brown
Rusticiana attempts to justify her actions by implicitly comparing her trav-

els 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 Span-
ish 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 ad-
versity 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 cer-
tainly commensurate with wealthy patronage coming from such a background
in what is increasingly emerging as the interwoven cultural, political and spir-
itual 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).

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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 ar-
tistic production, among which was the making of illuminated manuscripts.1
These were produced possibly in two scriptoria, located respectively in the ar-
chiepiscopal 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 com-
ments 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, exhi-
bition 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, (Stutt-
gart, 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. Bro-
giolo (Milan, 2000), 389, no. 376 (Carlo Bertelli).

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20 Demarchi
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 ini-
tial ‘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 embel-
lished 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 schol-
ars 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 tenth-
century 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 Pare-
di, “Nota storica sui Salteri milanesi del ix secolo,” in L. Santucci and A. Paredi, Miniature al-
tomedievali lombarde (Milan, 1978), 149–78, at 166–7; N. Ghiglione, “Il libro nel territorio am-
brosiano 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 Vati-
cana, 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 diacrit-
ici milanesi: il contributo della decorazione,” in Ansperto da Biassono, ed. M.B. Weatherill,
M. Beretta, M.R. Tessera (Milan, forthcoming).

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Milanese Early Medieval Psalters 21
Figure 2.1 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Vat. Lat. 83, f. 76v

© Vatican Library

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22 Demarchi
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 at-
test to excellent production methods, with texts written in long lines and with
wide margins on thin and smooth parchment. The Vatican manuscript dis-
plays 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 scripto-
ria and the prestige of the patron who commissioned them or of the commu-
nity 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 correc-
tions 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 Vati-
can and Munich Psalters.
1 From Insular to Franco-Saxon style
As mentioned, both manuscripts have decorated letters marking the begin-

ning of each group of ten Psalms and, since they both use the Ambrosian ver-
sion of the text, albeit with some minor differences, the decoration of the ini-
tials 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 man-
uscript 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 Psal-
morum” 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 compli-
cated 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 ani-
mals which fill the frames of the Vatican Psalter (Fig. 2.1) closely resemble pat-
terns 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 Franco-
Saxon 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, how-
ever, 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 J.J.G. Alexander, Insular Manuscripts: 6th to the 9th Century. A Survey of Manuscripts Illu-
minated in the British Isles 1 (London, 1978), no. 9. On the influence of Insular manu-
scripts 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.
11 Crivello, “Die Buchmalerei,” 182.
12 See for instance some of the decorated initials of the Lodrino Sacramentary (Milan, Bib-
lioteca Ambrosiana MS A 24 inf.), but also some of the early eleventh-century Sacramen-
tary of San Satiro (Milan, Biblioteca del Capitolo Metropolitano MS ii.D.3.2).
13 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 Vati-
cana, 84–5, no. 9 (V. Pace).

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24 Demarchi
Figure 2.2 Munich, Bayeriche Staatsbibliothek Clm 343, f. 88v

© Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München

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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 Byz-
antine 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 cat-
egories 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 produc-
tion of the middle-Byzantine period especially in manuscripts of homiletic con-
tent. 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 ep-
silon; 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 A. Boeckler, Abendländische Miniaturen bis zum Ausgang der romanischen Zeit (Berlin,
1930), 66; A. Boeckler, Kunst des frühen Mittelalters (Bern, 1949), 69, no. 162.
15 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.
16 J. Lowden, “Observations on Illustrated Byzantine Psalters,” The Art Bulletin 70, no. 2
(1988), 242–60 with previous bibliography.
17 On the development of ninth-century Byzantine initials see L. Brubaker, “Greek Manu-
script 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 Paleogra-
fia Greca (Cremona, 4–10 ottobre 1998), ed. G. Prato, 3 vols. (Florence, 2000), ii: 513–33.
18 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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26 Demarchi
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 ex-
ample 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 Byzan-
tine 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 manu-
script 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 Ven-
ice, 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 Jo-
hannes 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 lo-
cally, 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 pro-
vides rare and significant information, including that it was produced in Reg-
gio 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 peri-
ods and places of production, the human figures depicted in the initials of
25 A. Grabar, Les Manuscrits grecs enluminés de provenance italienne (Paris, 1972), 46–51, sug-
gests a south-Italian provenance for the manuscripts.
26 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 spätantik-
en Zierbuchstaben, 2 vols. (Stockholm, 1970), i: esp. 208–10.
27 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).
28 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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28 Demarchi
middle-Byzantine manuscripts may be grouped in two main categories: omi-

cron 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 drag-
on (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 de-
piction 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, respec-
tively.30 The colourful decorative patterns of the garments of the figures with
29 M. Beretta, “Il programma spirituale delle pitture murali di San Vincenzo a Galliano. Trac-
ce 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 Bal-
samo, 2007), 101–22.
30 Y. Hackenbroch, Italienisches Email des frühen Mittelalters (Basel, 1938), 31, 33.

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30 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 fur-
ther consideration.
In the Munich Psalter the patterns on the garments of the figures are in-
verted 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 en-
kolpion 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 decora-
tive 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 pre-
cise 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 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.
32 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).
33 The Glory of Byzantium, 160–1, no. 107 (W.D. Wixom).
34 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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32 Demarchi
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 apply-
ing 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 Milan-
ese illuminators not only with regard to some of their patterns, but also in rela-
tion to the use of colours and their visual effect. Early medieval Milanese art-
ists 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 in-
spired by Sassanid-oriental forms, such as those found on the ewer of St Mau-
rice 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 posi-
tioned and which are arranged in an identical way. The origin of this iconogra-
phy, however, has been identified as deriving from a late-antique model, subse-
quently 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 G. Haseloff, Email in frühen Mittelalter: frühchristliche Kunst von der Spätantike bis zu den
Karolingern (Marburg, 1990), 77–9.
36 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.
37 Crivello, “Per la datazione,” 365.

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34 Demarchi
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 vari-
ous periods and the model for these depictions may have been again a middle-
Byzantine 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 fig-
ures 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 fig-
ure 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 (Lon-
don, British Library Egerton MS 3763),38 a Milanese manuscript from the be-
ginning 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 arch-
bishop—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 re-
quired to achieve salvation among which is donating to the poor. A decorated
manuscript with a jeweled cover is certainly not what the Psalmist was refer-
ring 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 re-
sulted 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 tech-
niques. Through these manuscripts and the composite nature of the sources
that were used we have a glimpse of the wonderful array of models that Milan-
ese scriptoria may have possessed, the movement of books and the extraordi-
nary 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 Ita-
lia. L’altomedioevo, ed. C. Bertelli (Milan, 1994), 47–89 (84–5, n. 70).

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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 en-
counter 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 con-
temporary literary commentaries? Do stylistic and chronological shifts corre-
spond to the exegetical and spiritual development of the figure of Mary Mag-
dalene 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 mo-
tif 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 con-
text; 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.

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(‘Noli me tangere’) in the Codex Egberti (Reichenau, c. 977–93) 37
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 hap-
tou 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 hu-
man 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, icono-
graphic 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 Auferste-
hung in der Väterexegese,” in Stimuli. Exegese und ihre Hermeneutik in Antike und Christen-
tum. 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 touch-
ing 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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38 Baert
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 in-
carnation, 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 Mag-
dalene 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 sug-
gests 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 pas-
sage allows us to deduce that the sense of touch, at least in this archetypal
context, can lead to higher knowledge—forbidden knowledge—of the mys-
tery 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
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 expli-
cates 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 Cama-
iano’s Petroni Tomb (1313–1317),” Comitatus. A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies
(2006): 32–64.
7 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.”
8 Attridge, “Don’t be touching me.”
9 Ambrose of Milan, Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam, ccsl 14 (Turnhout, 1957),
345–400.
10 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.

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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 com-
plexity 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 Co-
dex. 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 dis-
sertation, Stockholm University, 1973); L.M. Rafanelli, “The Ambiguity of Touch. Saint
Mary Magdalene and the ‘Noli me Tangere’ in Early Modern Italy” (unpublished PhD dis-
sertation, 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 Reli-
gion 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? Interdiscipli-
nary 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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40 Baert
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 there-
fore speak of a direct text-image relationship and for the first time unmistaka-
bly 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 sar-
cophagus. 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 Magda-
lene 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 kneel-
ing, 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 proto-
type 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 palaeo-
Christian 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 composi-
tional, 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 Lou-
vre; see G. Noga-Banai, The Trophies of the Martyrs: An Art Historical Study of Early Chris-
tian 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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42 Baert
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 episte-
mology 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 re-
late 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 move-
ment 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, of-
ten 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 Vul-
gate—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 impor-
tance 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 trans-
mission 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, Interpreta-
tion, ed. G. Van Belle (Leuven, 2009), 609–30.
20 See for this exegetical interpretation: J. Smit Sibinga, “Towards Understanding the Com-
position of John 20,” in The Four Gospels 1992, Festschrift Frans Neirynck, ed. F. Van Seg-
broeck 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 Stud-
ies 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 His-
tory 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 Evange-
liar 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, wahr-
scheinlich im Zusammenhang mit dem Ablauf auf der Sonnenbahn […] Die Strahlung ist

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44 Baert
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 en-
twined 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 Ser-
mo in Veneratione Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae is considered one of the most
influential apocryphal texts dealing with Mary Magdalene.24 The sermon was
sowohl innerhalb wie ausserhalb der Kreise gezeichnet […] In den meisten Sonnen-
Symbolen kommt eine deutliche Betonung des Begriffs ‘Mitte’ zum Ausdruck, als Bestäti-
gung 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).
24 “Sermo in Veneratione Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae,” PL 133, cols 713–21; V. Saxer, “Un man-
uscrit 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

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Figure 3.3 Noli me tangere, miniature from the Gospel Book of Otto iii, Munich,
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 4453, f. 251r
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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46 Baert
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 transforma-
tion 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
25 J. Szövérffy, “Peccatrix Quondam Femina. A Survey of the Mary Magdalen Hymns,” Tradi-
tio 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.
26 K. Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church (Oxford, 1933). The text in question is a dia-
logue (p. 202): Iesum Nazarenum crucifixum, o caelicolae (“Jesus, the Nazarene, the cruci-
fied, O angels”); Non est hic, surrexit sicut praedixerat; ite, nuntiate quia surrexit de sepul-
chre (“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.
27 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 tan-
gere). 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 extraordi-
nary 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.
28 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 Benedic-
tine 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 Rep-
etitions 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 oc-
curs. The noun to mnēmeion or “the tomb” (in the Vulgate translated as monu-
mentum) 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 cov-
ered. 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 move-
ment 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 narra-
tive 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 medi-
um, 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 W. Berschin, Die Taten des Abtes Witigowo von der Reichenau (985–997). Eine zeitgenössis-
che Biographie von Purchart von der Reichenau (Sigmaringen, 1992).
30 For more on the particular artistic context of the Ottonian empire, see: A. Effenberger,
“Spätantike, karolingische und byzantinische Kostbarkeiten in den Schatzkammern ot-
tonischer Hausklöster,” in Otto der Grosse. Magdeburg und Europa, ed. M. Puhla, 2 vols.
(Mainz am Rhein, 2001), i: 149–66.

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48 Baert
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 an-
other 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: con-
versa 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 dou-
bly stressed. In verse 16, Mary Magdalene turns a second time. This is the mo-
ment 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 be-
comes 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
31 There are some examples of inversions. On this topic, see: B. Baert, “The Gaze in the Gar-
den. 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, brief-
ly 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 Magda-
lene, seeing her Rabbouni. I am currently developing an article on the impact of reading
direction and inversions in Noli me tangere.
32 U. Tranow, “‘Noli me tangere’: zur Problematik eines visuellen Topos und seiner Transfor-
mationen im Cinquecento,” in Topik und Tradition: Prozesse der Neuordnung von Wissen-
süberlieferungen 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 conver-
sions. “Über Wiederholung […] wird die Notwendigkeit einer inneren, hier jedoch auch
als konkret äusserlich zu vollziehende Wendung vom falschen zum richtigen Objekt
betont.”
33 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 so-
noric 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 ascend-
ing Christ is evoked in the representation or symbols of the heavenly Jerusa-
lem, as for example on the bronze doors at Hildesheim (1008–15) (Fig. 3.4).36
34 Iogna-Prat, “La Madeleine,” 56; in the mass of 22 July, one prays to be able to ‘see’ the maj-
esty of Christ-Sol. The internal pain is necessary for achieving and disseminating personal
salvation.
35 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).
36 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 Bern-
wards 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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50 Baert
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 disappear-
ance 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,
37 “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.
38 This deflection is supported by the Greek word order mē mou haptou; ibid. Mē mou hap-
tou means “not coming close to the Holy of Holies.” This would underline an interpreta-
tion that Christ cannot be approached because his body is—in a theological sense—the
temple.

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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 Der-
rida 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 an-
other 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 Z. Baross, “Noli me tangere for Jacques Derrida,” Angelaki. Journal of the theoretical hu-
manities 6, 2 (2001): 149–64 (154). Emphasis in the original.
40 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 accord-
ance with John’s style, Christ has to open the door to God for the believers, and God be-
comes their Father and their God.

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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 Na-

tionalmuseum, Hs. 156142/KG1138, hereafter, Codex Aureus) includes a detailed
pictorial cycle of the parable of Dives and Lazarus, showing them at the mo-
ment 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 por-
trayed in many Last Judgement depictions, where they are shown re-joined
with their physical bodies in accordance with Church doctrine.2 The distinc-
tion between the two types of soul, separated or corporeal, is vital since it in-
evitably bears on the interpretation of other depictions of the soul. The sepa-
rated 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 oblique-
ly 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 (Lon-
don, 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 Ger-
manischen 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.

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Green Tinted Souls of Dives and Lazarus in the Codex Aureus 53
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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54 Grasso
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 depic-
tion 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 pa-
trons themselves. A green tint is also employed for the skin-tone of the mourn-
ers 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 depic-
tions of the parable of Dives and Lazarus closely resemble those in Codex Au-
reus, 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 dis-
sertation, 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 Gold-
ene 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, consid-
ering 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 writ-
ten 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 primar-
ily 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 Testa-
ment 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 sat-
isfy 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. Trauf-
fler, ed., Die Abtei Echternach, 698–1998 (Luxembourg, 1999); Analecta Epternacensia: Be-
iträge zur Bibliotheksgeschichte der Abtei Echternach, Bibliothèque nationale de Luxem-
bourg, 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, pre-
cedes Mark’s. See Metz, Golden Gospels, 74, and pl. 52.
13 Luke 14:16–24.

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56 Grasso
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 lit-
tle transmission, if any, to Codex Aureus from this source. Either those Re-
ichenau 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 differ-
ences in comparison with the Aachen Gospels of Otto iii, it is worth consider-
ing 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 pos-
sible 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 recog-
nised [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 Ry-
lands 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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58 Grasso
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 sub-
stantial evidence to indicate that depictions of the soul in human form repre-
sented 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 in-
novative for other reasons that require elaboration. It is clear that Luke de-
scribes 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
21 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.
22 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.
23 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 Staatsbib-
liothek 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 as-
sembled 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 List of parable depictions, Grasso, Illuminating Sanctity, Appx i.

25 Ivrea, Biblioteca Capitolare MS 31, lxxxvi, f. 195v; full facsimile, Sacramentario del Ves-
covo Warmondo di Ivrea: Fine Secolo x, Ivrea, Biblioteca capitolare MS 31 lxxxvi, ed. L. Mag-
nani (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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60 Grasso
Dialogues to underpin its use. It is nonetheless significant that Gregory identi-

fies 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 vi-
brant 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, per-
haps 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 Abra-
ham’s Bosom and in Hell. But why Abraham’s face is also tinted green is un-
clear.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 differ-
ence is ambiguous. It may be meant to reflect theological uncertainty associ-
ated with Abraham’s Bosom, named only in Luke’s Gospel; or perhaps it is de-
signed 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 prece-
dent. 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 Oltrogge and Fuchs, Die Maltechnik, 121, notes overpainting only on the extreme left of
Abraham’s beard.
32 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.
33 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).
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Figure 4.3 Transfiguration of Christ, Gospel Book of Otto iii, c. 1000. Munich, Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek Clm 4453, f. 113r
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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62 Grasso
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 Ae-
neas 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 minia-
ture (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 art-
ist 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 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Cod. Vat. Lat. 3225, f. 47v. Full facsimile, Vergilius Vati-
canus: Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe im Originalformat von Codex Vaticanus Latinus 3225
der Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, comm. D.H. Wright (Graz, 1980–4).
35 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.
36 Vergil, Powell, 185.
37 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 Co-
dex Aureus.
5 Transmission
As noted above, there exists the possibility of earlier precedents for the depic-
tion 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 con-
tinued 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 None-
theless, this suggests the possibility that models, now lost, informed the depic-
tion under discussion. Book painting at the scriptoria of Reichenau and
Echternach is linked through the artist known as the Gregory Master.41 This art-
ist, 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 cen-
tres. The evangelist portraits in Codex Aureus derive from the Gregory Master.44
38 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 direc-
tion 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: Voll-
Faksimile-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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64 Grasso
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 refer-
enced 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 al-
though Rainer Kahsnitz and Henry Mayr-Harting are not wholly convinced.46
Whether or not this assertion has foundation, Byzantine depictions of the par-
able do not include separated souls in transit, and the soul of Lazarus in Abra-
ham’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 Ital-
ian 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 manu-
script 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 includ-
ing books from Italy, Reichenau, Trier and Tours, although no single extant
item includes all elements of the topos under discussion: that is, the homuncu-
lus separated soul, exit from the mouth and colour differentiation. Of course,
other centres and books, now lost, may also have contributed to the iconogra-
phy 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 par-
able were not of interest to patrons or artists prior to the later tenth century.
Conversely, the possibility cannot be excluded that an innovative artist work-
ing 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 surviv-
ing 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 protago-
nists 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 Das Goldene Evangelienbuch Heinrichs iii, 61–3; C. Nordenfalk, “Beiträge zur Geschichte
der Turonischen Buchmalerei,” Acta Archaeologica 7 (Copenhagen,1936): 281–304; Mayr-
Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination, ii: 198.
52 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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66 Grasso
distinguish between those souls awaiting entry to, and those in, the Under-
world. The sixth-century St Augustine Gospels distinguishes between the de-
ceased body of Lazarus of Bethany and Christ in a similar manner.53 The Gos-
pel 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 de-
piction 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 Peri-
copes 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 distin-
guishing 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 prolif-
erated in subsequent depictions throughout the West, a change in colouration
to denote different states of the soul was never again employed in any surviv-
ing parable depiction.
Use of colour differentiation for separated souls may simply have been too
nuanced for the viewers of subsequent manuscripts although this seems un-
likely since manuscripts were generally made by and for those familiar with
Christian exegesis. It may also be that for the post-Apocalyptic period this nu-
ance was not considered appropriate since it highlighted but did not resolve
the question of the exact nature of Abraham’s Bosom, its relationship to Heav-
en 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.”

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Chapter 5
Portraits of Terence, the African

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 lit-
tle 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 plagia-
rism, 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, Ter-
ence’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 Lanuvi-
nus—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 Lu-
canus, 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 Elev-
enth Centuries,” in Terence between Late Antiquity and the Age of Printing: Illustration, Com-
mentary 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 (Lei-
den, 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.

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Portraits of Terence, the African 69
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 Ter-
ence 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 com-
plexion. 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 complex-
ion dark” (torta comam labroque tumens et fusca colore).6 However, Virgil him-
self 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 na-
tionale 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 Gladi-
ators (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, Transfor-
mation, 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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70 RADDEN KEEFE
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 author-
ship is found in many manuscripts of the comedies (including the Paris Ter-
ence, 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 (Roma-
nis 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 Sueto-
nius’ 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 pro-
file 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 hand-
some 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 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. Jach-
mann, 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 Print-
ing, ed. A.J. Turner and G. Torello-Hill (Leiden, 2015), 138–80.
10 A. Riese, Anthologia Latina sive poesis Latinae supplementum 1 (Leipzig, 1906), 40.
11 There is a reproduction of this contorniate in A. Alföldi and E. Alföldi, Die Kontorniat-
Medaillons (Berlin, 1976), plate 33 (9–10): and for a description, see A. Alföldi and E. Alföl-
di, 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.
12 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 Min-
iaturen 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 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 Illus-
trated Terence (Vatican City, 2006).

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72 RADDEN KEEFE
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 syca-
more 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 illustra-
tor 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 inter-
est 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 man-
uscripts, 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 Archiv-
io 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 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.
15 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.
16 For such bearded portraits, see P. Zanker, The Mask of Socrates. The Image of the Intellec-
tual in Antiquity (Berkeley, 1995), 198–266.
17 For the Paris Terence, see the description in Wright, The Lost Late Antique Illustrated Ter-
ence, 192–7, and the description on the BnF’s Gallica website (http://gallica.bnf.fr, ac-
cessed 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 Human-
ist Plan to Illustrate Terence,” in Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae vii (Vati-
can 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
B.J. Muir and A.J. Turner, A Facsimile Edition of Terence’s Comedies: Oxford, Bodleian Li-
brary MS. Auct. F. 2. 13 (Oxford, 2011).
18 For a list of reproductions of this portrait, see Jones and Morey, The Illustrated Manu-
scripts, 222–4.
19 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).
20 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.
21 For manuscripts containing the Epitaphium Terentii see B. Munk Olsen, L’étude des au-
teurs 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 Ter-
entii,” 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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74 RADDEN KEEFE
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 head-
bands—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 head-
bands are worn by tormentors of Christ in manuscripts including the Winches-
ter 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 ori-
gins simply from his cognomen, he chose to represent the dramatist as recog-
nisably 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 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.
23 The tormentor wearing a headband and described by Debra Higgs Strickland as represent-
ing 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. (Cam-
bridge MA, 2010), 31–82; and see also Anne-Marie Eze’s essay “Africans in Medieval & Re-
naissance 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).
24 On representing difference and otherness, see R. Mellinkoff, Signs of Otherness in North-
ern 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 three-
quarter 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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76 RADDEN KEEFE
fashions, much as we find him in other author portraits in Italian manu-

scripts.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 Ter-
ence 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 bor-
der 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 Ter-
ence’s cognomen, the illuminator drew on his own notions of African-ness to
create this unique portrait.28
26 Terence wears similar garments in a portrait in the manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library
MS Canon Class Lat. 100, for instance.
27 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, Cata-
logue 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.
28 On black Africans living in Rennaisance Europe, see T.F. Earle and K.J.P. Lowe, Black Afri-
cans 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).

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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 be-
tween 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 San-
cha (Santiago de Compostela, Biblioteca Xeral Universitaria 609 Reserv. 1). Al-
though this manuscript has received much recent attention as an object of fe-
male 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 (Vi-
enna, 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 Co-
dex 1861 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, ed. K. Holter (Graz, 1980).

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78 Walker
Visigothic with some Caroline influence, and the core texts belong essentially
to the Old Hispanic monastic liturgy. Textual analysis and the style of the illu-
minated initials has led to comparisons with other Old Hispanic Psalters, nota-
bly from the scriptorium of San Millán de la Cogolla in La Rioja, including
Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional, cod. 1006B and Real Academia de la His-
toria, cod. 64ter.4 Despite this, some unexpected saints are included in the Di-
urnal’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 cen-
tury. 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 Bibli-
oteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo MS &.i.3). In neither case were substan-
tial 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 other-
wise for his efforts to emend the Psalter. There are some errors, or perhaps ad-
aptations, 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 caro-
lini 2 (Berlin, 1883), 549–50; D.G. Morin, “Le psautier visigothique de Compostelle,” Biblio-
thèque de l’école des chartes 62/1 (1901), 712–14; Díaz y Díaz, Libro de horas, 35–6; the titulus

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Manuscripts Face to Face 79
changed the first word to read “David” and illuminated it in gold capitals out-
lined 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 em-
phasise 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 ap-
pearance […]” (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
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 manu-
scrits wisigothiques de la bibliothèque de Ferdinand 1er, roi de Castille et de León,” Biblio-
theque de l’école des chartes 62/1 (1901), 374–87, esp. 377–9.
8 Pick, “Liturgical Renewal,” 35.
9 PL 101, cols 465–508; Pick, “Liturgical Renewal,” 33–5; M. Castiñeiras, “Universidad de San-
tiago,” in Enciclopedia del Románico en Galicia (Aguilar de Campo, 2013), 1143–8.
10 Moralejo, “Notas a la ilustración,” 57–8.

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80 Walker
Figure 6.1 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 compas-
sionate. Other visual aspects of the Girona Beatus, notably a Christ in Majesty
miniature, have long been linked to a possible Touronian source, perhaps a Bi-
ble.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, as-
pects 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, deli-
cately 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: Fredi-
nandi 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 minia-
ture 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 Diur-
nal looked mostly to material available in Leonese libraries, as well as employ-
ing 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 J. Williams, “Tours and the Medieval Art of Spain,” in Florilegium in honorem Carl Norden-
falk Octogenarii Contextum (Stockholm, 1987), 197–207; J. Williams, The Illustrated Beatus,
5 vols. (London, 1994), ii: 52.
12 L. Nees, “Problems of Form and Function in Early Medieval Illustrated Bibles from North-
west Europe,” in Imaging the early medieval Bible, ed. J. Williams (University Park PA,
1999), 121–77.
13 “I am the book of King Fernando and also Queen Sancha.”
14 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 mu-
nicipale MS 24 (32) f. 2r); for an illustration, see Dutton and Kessler, Poetry and Painting,
Fig. 22.

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82 Walker
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 red-
purple 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 Ot-
tonian libri memoriales.17 Visual comparisons for the gold lettering on the red-
purple 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, Bib-
liothèque municipale MS 19bis (S19)). The treatment of text in the panel
displaying the Diurnal’s colophon on f. 208v also looks to ultra-Pyrenean man-
uscripts, 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 tenth-
century 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 King-
ship 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 re-
cord 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 meth-
od of displaying text derived from late antique practice, but it was still em-
ployed, 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 intro-
duces 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 hold-
ing 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 mean-
ings 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 Wil-
liams 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 cen-
tury (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 inter-
cessory 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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84 Walker
Figure 6.2 Presentation Scene, Diurnal, Santiago de Compostela, Biblioteca Xeral

Universitaria 609, Reserv. 1, f. 3r (previously 6v)

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Figure 6.3 Incipit of Psalter, Diurnal, Santiago de Compostela, Biblioteca Xeral Universi-
taria 609, Reserv. 1, f. 7r

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86 Walker
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 ex-
plicitly 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 let-
ter 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 God-
chosen 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 hus-
band, 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 Eng-
land.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 misdemean-
ours and to enhance their reputation as pious godly monarchs. Sometimes this
preoccupation with sin and penitential action may have been personal, as en-
shrined 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 Psal-
ter Illustration,” 87–93; Dutton and Kessler, Poetry and Paintings, 43, 105–10; Nees, “Prob-
lems 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 Noth-
ing 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 man-
uscript 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 Mo-
ralejo 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 tell-
ingly, 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 con-
nections across the Pyrenees into Aquitaine.33 Fernando i and Sancha had al-
ready 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 dedica-
tion 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,” Com-
postellanum 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 dis-
puted, but the charter is accepted as a close copy if not the original.

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88 Walker
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 dy-
nasty, 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 battle-
field. Only Henry’s penance is known: it was carried out barefoot in woollen
clothing and involved processing around the churches of Regensburg and fast-
ing.38 For Fernando, the Diurnal provides the most powerful evidence of his
penance, although another figure, thought to portray Fernando i, on the reli-
quary of St Isidore, usually dated to c. 1063, helps to confirm both his peniten-
tial 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 peni-
tential 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 (Mu-
nich, 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 be-
tween 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 Fer-
nando 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 per-
sonality. 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 fam-
ily 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 tur-
bulent 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 paint-
ed images of Fernando i’s features have survived at León. The head of the fig-
ure 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 con-
trast, 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 Al-
fonso 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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90 Walker
Figure 6.4 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 Fer-
nando 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 de-
termined 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 depic-
tion 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 inde-
pendently against the more usual medieval approach to portraiture and cho-
sen 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 repre-
sented by the reigning Holy Roman Emperor Henry iii.
As the monarchs never met, any hypothesis regarding the shared facial like-
ness 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 cer-
tainty.47 This suggestion might be entirely speculative were it not for a geneal-
ogy 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 por-
traits 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 T. Dale, “Romanesque Sculpted Portraits: Convention, Vision, and Real Presence,” Gesta
46/2 (2007): 102–19.
46 H.E.J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory vii 1073–1085 (Oxford, 1995), 619.
47 M. Marrier, ed., Biblioteca Cluniacensis, in qua S.S. Patrum Abb. Clun. vitae, miracula, scrip-
ta, statuta, privilegia, chronologicaque duplex (Paris, 1614), col. 1639.

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92 Walker
Figure 6.5 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 man-
uscript 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 demonstrat-
ed by earlier Hispanic scribes. It further demonstrates a nascent but sophisti-
cated 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.

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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, espe-
cially those images prefacing the prayers to individual saints: Peter, Paul, John
the Evangelist and Benedict. The subject matter for these images differs mark-
edly 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 commu-
nity 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 con-
tinued 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 Medita-
tions,” Rutgers Art Review 9 (1988): 1–16; R. Fulton, “Praying with Anselm at Admont: A Medi-
tation 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).

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The Two Pictures Cycles in Early Manuscripts 95
“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 im-
perfections 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, espe-
cially 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 Gar-
den: “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 (Har-
mondsworth, 1973), 221, who however translates Terret me vita mea as “I am afraid of my life.”

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96 Heslop
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 re-
demption 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 par-
ticular, 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 Ade-
laide, 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 ad-
dressed 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 me-
diated by Anselm’s prayer, his words are the conduit. This level of connec-
tivity 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 friend-
ship between them as well as a similar pro-papal approach to contempo-
rary politics. Anselm’s introduction to Matilda was effected, it has been
plausibly argued, by her step-sister and erstwhile sister-in-law, Ida of Bou-
logne, 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 tribula-
tions 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 pic-
ture. 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 com-
positions in the Oxford manuscript and these connections persuaded Otto
Pächt that the two books shared a common archetype.11 However, the connec-
tions 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 par-
ticular prayers. Thus for example, the Prayer to St Paul in the Admont manu-
script 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 cy-
cles 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 fol-
low 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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98 Heslop
Figure 7.2 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. D.2.6., f. 170v

Figure 7.3 Admont, Monastery Library MS 289, f. 56r

© Benediktinerstift Admont Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9
via free access
Supposing that both the Oxford and Admont recensions go back to Anselmi-
an originals, the question arises ‘why would there have been two different cycles
of illustration?’ In seeking possible answers to this conundrum, it is first neces-
sary 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 au-
thority 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 inscrip-
tion 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 sec-
ond 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 benefac-
tions to monastic and other foundations in her charge. The subject of the Ad-
mont 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 cor-
roborative 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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100 Heslop
offer it. In the Oxford manuscript, the prayer has been adapted for St Augus-
tine, 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 Subi-
aco where he retired for prayer and contemplation (Fig. 7.4). Above is Ro-
manus, 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 suc-
cour he received while in the wilderness, the second is altogether darker. Ben-
edict 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 Ben-
edict’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 Ma-
tilda. 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 dan-
gerous territory because of the conflict between forces loyal to the emperor
and those who supported the Papacy, such as Matilda and Anselm. So, in un-
derstanding 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 estab-
lish 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 con-
trite 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. Hol-
land (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 Heslop
Figure 7.5 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. D.2.6., f. 169r

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 Biblio-
thèque 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 Tapes-
tries 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 manu-
scripts. 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 Raph-
ael’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 mo-
ment 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 let-
ters 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 Ibid., 65.
22 Ibid., 61–3. The quotation is taken from a sermon by Beatus Maximus, as in PL, 57, col. 394.
23 F. Grisar and F. de Lasala, Aspetti della sigillografia: tipologia, storia, materia e valore giu-
ridico dei sigilli (Rome, 1997), 34–5.

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104 Heslop
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 ambas-
sadors. 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 precur-
sors 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 rep-
resenting 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 pre-
pared for the Sistine Chapel tapestries. While there were very probably other
depictions of the subject in Rome, the Lateran fresco fragment of c. 1100 indi-
cates 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 ar-
chetype 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 disappoint-
ed. 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 libera-
tion 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 recen-
sion 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 Dama-
scene 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 accom-
pany. 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 Grego-
rian 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 pave-
ment. 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 accompa-
nied 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 ca-
thedral. 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, prob-
ably thirty originally, was accompanied by two Old Testament parallels or
types, arranged so that each New Testament subject had flanking pair of im-
ages to elucidate its meaning. To the east of the choir proper was the presby-
tery 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, includ-
ing miracles and parables, and focusing on the institution of the Church. In the
25 T.A. Heslop, “St Anselm and the Visual Arts at Canterbury Cathedral, 1093–1109,” in Medi-
eval Art and Architecture at Canterbury, ed. A. Bovey, British Archaeological Association
Transactions 35 (Leeds, 2013), 59–81.
26 M. Caviness, The Windows of Christ Church Cathedral Canterbury, Corpus Vitrearum Me-
dii Aevi: Great Britain 2 (London, 1981).

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106 Heslop
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 pro-
spective events. In the seven windows beyond the choir (conventionally num-
bered 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 DO-
CENTE (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 peo-
ple 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 foun-
dations 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 ground-
ed, 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 juxta-
position 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 in-
stitutional 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 arma-
tures 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 cer-
emony depended on the chance of divine revelation during the episcopal con-
secration. 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 serv-
ants 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 pre-
pared 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 ma-
jor composition, the Monologion. He sent it to his mentor Lanfranc who criti-
cised 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 G. Henderson, “Sortes Biblicae in Twelfth-Century England: the List of Episcopal Prognos-

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

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108 Heslop
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 con-
nectedness 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 sanc-
tioned 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 Canter-
bury artist around 1100, I believe at Anselm’s bidding.33 The experience of
Christian teachers was from Anselm’s perspective both universal and particu-
lar, 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 medi-
eval author to approve of narrative illustrations to accompany his own writ-
ings. 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 vi-
sionary.34 Anselm was altogether more empathetic in his outlook, employing
momentous events in people’s lives or combinations of material that encour-
aged 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.

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Chapter 8
Early Cistercian Manuscripts from Clairvaux

Kathleen Doyle
As we celebrate John Lowden’s inspirational teaching and formidable contri-

butions to manuscript studies, I thought it appropriate to revisit a paper he
encouraged me to present while I was finishing my thesis, in partial acknowl-
edgement of the great debt I owe to his encouragement of my work. At a con-
ference, 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 com-
pleted 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 unu-
sual and, as far as it appears, unprecedented ideal of a formal and specific limi-
tation 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/man-

uscrits/ (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 Cen-
tury 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).

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110 Doyle
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 re-
veals something of the early Cistercian attitude towards art, St Bernard’s Apo-
logia 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 rela-
tively 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 is-
sue regarding manuscripts made at the mother house of Cîteaux, the time-
frame 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 neces-
sarily 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, “Re-
reading 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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Early Cistercian Manuscripts from Clairvaux 111
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 ap-
parently 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 collec-
tion 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 Au-
gustini.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 con-
tents; its facing folio has a large decorated initial (Fig. 8.1).13 That these manu-
scripts were made at Clairvaux seems likely, for the ownership inscription is
9 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 transmis-
sion des textes,” in Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, i: Les bibliothèques médiévales: du
vie siècle à 1530, ed. A. Vernet (Paris, 1989), 415–36 (422).
10 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 bib-
liques, patristiques et théologiques, ed. A. Vernet (1997), esp. 379; see also Leclercq, “Lies-
sies,” 52.
11 See the Appendix.
12 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 vol-
ume 5; Contra duas epostoles Pelagianorum, Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne
Métropole MS 40-9, f. 78v (volume 6).
13 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40-1, ff. 1v–2r.

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112 Doyle
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, sug-
gest 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 Confer-
ence, November 3–5, 2016, ed. L. Fagin Davis and others (forthcoming), where she com-
ments 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 inscrip-
tion (Lib[er] s[anc]te Marie Clarevall[is]) incorporated into its frontispiece sur-
vives, 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 auc-
toritatis arcem, tam scholasticorum quam ecclesiasticorum chorus evexit. Clau-
dianus hic est […]).17 The manuscript is perhaps now Troyes, La médiathèque
de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 256, which includes Claudius Mamer-
tus’s De statu animae, and like the other volumes, has a multi-coloured geo-
metric 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 Clair-
vaux 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 read-
ing aloud, rather than for individual study. There are around twenty other sur-
viving 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 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).
16 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40-7, f. 1v; see Genest, “Le siè-
cle de saint Bernard,” 12–13; on the scribe see La Bibliothèque de l’abbaye de Clairvaux, ii:
411 (f. 220r).
17 PL 202, col. 499; on Peter, see Peter of Celle, The Letters of Peter of Celle, ed. J. Haseldine
(Oxford, 2001).
18 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 256, ff. i [verso]-1r, beginning
with Fulgentius Ruspensis’s Ad Monimum.
19 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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114 Doyle
multi-coloured borders and original bindings.20 Some of these manuscripts

may have been part of this initiative, although these other volumes are not dat-
able 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 square-
ly 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 Com-
mentaries 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 histori-
ated, and fully painted.23 This initial includes a portrait of Augustine with foli-
age 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 elab-
orate. 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 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.
21 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 115, ff. 1v–2r, see also La Biblio-
thèque de l’abbaye de Clairvaux, ii, no. F86–8, 390–1.
22 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40-5, f. 2v (for the border).
23 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40-4, f. 1r.
24 On the use of the punctus flextus by Cistercians see generally P. Stirnemann, “Le témoign-
age 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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Figure 8.2 Troyes, Médiatheque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 115, ff. 1v–2r
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 illu-
mination. 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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116 Doyle
Figure 8.3 Troyes, Médiatheque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 40–4, f. 1r

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 let-
ters.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 Cister-
cian 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 materi-
als, Bernard sets out a sophisticated philosophical justification for these new
positions, based primarily on the arguments that material imagery is unneces-
sary 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 ex-
tend 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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118 Doyle
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 col-
ours 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 de-
rived 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, name-
ly, 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 manu-
scripts, 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 addi-
tional 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 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.
30 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Métropole mss 27-1–27-5.
31 Cited in La bibliotheque, 72.
32 See also R. Gameson, “The Image of the Illuminator,” in Colour: The Art and Science of Il-
luminated Manuscripts, ed. S. Panayotova (London, 2016), 75–82 (80).

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Figure 8.4 Troyes, Médiatheque de Troyes Champagne Métropole MS 27–1, f. iv-1r

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 lumi-
ère créant un camaїeu’ as expression of an aesthetic of ‘sobriété ostentatoire.”35
Thus, these volumes, usually dated to around the middle of the twelfth centu-
ry, often by reference to the requirements of the statute (either before, or after-
ward, depending on the assumptions made),36 complicate any attempt to
33 W. Cahn, Romanesque Bible Illumination (Ithaca, 1982), no. 111, 282.

34 Reilly, “Bernard of Clairvaux,” 297.
35 Stutzmann, “La sobriété ostentatoire,” 69, 86; Stutzmann, “L’écriture,” 207.
36 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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120 Doyle
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 col-
our 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. An-
other 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 be-
tween 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 individu-
al 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 compli-
cated 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 juil-
let–27 octobre ([Paris], 2002), 69 (“avant le milieu du xiie siecle”).
37 Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 492; see also A. Lawrence, “Cistercian Decora-
tion: Twelfth-Century Legislation on Illumination and its Interpretation in England,”
Reading Medieval Studies, 21 (1995): 31–52 (32), who comments that the institutum sug-
gests 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 Char-
tres is a more probable location.

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Clairvaux and 1149, when he became bishop of Beauvais.40 Most have a Clair-
vaux 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, be-
cause 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 stat-
ute, 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 bor-
ders 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 re-
mains unclear. Therefore, it seems unwise to use the Apologia as any sort of di-
agnostic tool for the dating of Cistercian manuscripts in this period. As a result,
40 On these books and their origins see most recently Stirnemann, “Gilbert de la Porrée.”
41 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 manu-
scripts,” 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-vir-
tuelle-clairvaux.com/savoirplus/bible-de-saint-bernard/ (accessed 29.3.2018).
44 Cahn, Romanesque Manuscripts, ii: 89.

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122 Doyle
these extraordinary large-scale manuscripts from Clairvaux perhaps illumi-

nate the difficulties of working out or distilling what form the philosophical
ideal so persuasively and elegantly articulated by Bernard might take in prac-
tice, 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 proscrip-
tive 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 Multi-

in mm coloured
Frontispiece
4 Cassian and Various works 505 × 380 Monochrome: blue No

others
5 Prosper of Various works 490 × 340 En camaїeu: red with No
Aquitaine white and black
and others
27-1 Bible, vol. 1 494 × 340 En camaїeu: blue Yes
27-2 Bible, vol. 2 494 × 340 En camaїeu: red Yes
27-3 Bible, vol. 3 494 × 340 En camaїeu: purple No
27-4 Bible, vol. 5 495 × 340 En camaїeu: red Yes
27-5 Bible, vol. 6 530 × 360 En camaїeu: red No
31 Strabo and Commentary on 465 × 228 Monochrome: green Yes
Raban Maur the Pentateuch
34 Hervé of Commentary on 456 × 332 En camaїeu: blue No
Bourg-Dieu Isaiah
35 Jerome Commentary on 490 × 340 En camaїeu: blue with No
Isaiah black
39 Ambrose Various tracts 450 × 283 Monochrome: blue No
40-1 Augustine Works, vol. 1 485 × 340 Two-colour: blue with Yes
red
40-2 Augustine Works, vol 2 480 × 335 Monochrome: blue No
40-3 Augustine Works, vol. 3 480 × 335 Monochrome: red No
40-4 Augustine Commentary on 485 × 340 Historiated: portrait of Yes
the Psalms, vol 2 Augustine, in colours
40-5 Augustine Commentary on 485 × 332 Three colour: red Yes
the Psalms, vol 3 with yellow and green
40-6 Augustine Works, vol. 4 480 × 340 Two colour: yellow with No
some red
40-7 Augustine Contra Julian 460 × 320 Two colour: red with Yes
blue
40-8 Augustine Letters 498 × 342 Monochrome: green Yes
40-9 Augustine Works, vol. 6 480 × 320 Two colour: yellow with No
some red
40-10 Augustine and Works, vol. 7 460 × 315 Monochrome: red No
others
42 Haimo of Commentaries 447 × 304 Monochrome: blue No
Auxerre; (green perhaps added
Raban Maur later)
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124 Doyle
Appendix Large-format manuscripts—(cont.)
MS Author Title Dimensions Opening initial Multi-

in mm coloured
Frontispiece
43-1 Gregory the Moralia in Job, 440 × 315 Monochrome: blue Yes
Great vol. 3
Great vol. 4
71 Eugippius Anthology of 405 × 280 Monochrome: red or blue No
the works of
Augustine
Great vol. 1
76-2 Gregory the Moralia in Job, 415 × 305 Two colour: green and No
Great vol. 2 yellow
84 Zachary of Gospel Harmony 405 × 283 Monochrome: blue, No
Besançon multi-coloured canon
tables
88 Ps.-Jerome Breviarum in 430 × 300 Monochrome: blue No
Psalmos
115 Augustine Commentary on 410 × 298 Two colour: blue with Yes
the Psalms, vol. 1 red, with a multi-
coloured border around
the initial
256 Claudius De statu animae 345 × 250 Two-colour: blue Yes
Mamertus with red
and others
441 Alcuin Commentary on 340 × 235 Monochrome: green Yes
John
646 Augustine Various texts 300 × 200 Monochrome: green Black
outlines only
Dimensions and textual information from the online catalogue, https://por

tail.mediatheque.grand-troyes.fr (accessed 31.8.2018). Some of these manu-
scripts have been dated to the second half of the twelfth century but are in-
cluded here for reference.
Manuscripts in bold indicate that they may be datable by external
references.

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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 con-
struction surpassed the churches of other Norman kings, even competing with
the great power of the archbishop of Palermo.2 The mosaics at Monreale ex-
panded 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 pur-
pose of this essay is to examine the potential messages of one part of the mo-
saic 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, focus-
ing on the relation between the popes, archbishops and Norman kings. Sec-
ondly, previous studies on the mosaic decoration are examined. Thirdly, com-
parisons 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 simultane-
ously 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.

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126 Takiguchi
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 pro-
ceeds towards the west, then continues from the west to the east of the north-
ern 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 de-
picts 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, in-
cluding 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 cen-
tury. Their rulers sometimes allied with the popes and sometimes rebelled
against them, and the papal attitude towards them changed accordingly.4 Hav-
ing 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 pa-
pacy 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 mauso-
leum, 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 dis-
pute over the royal burial by constructing a new cathedral in Monreale.5
Eve Borsook scrutinized the relationship between William ii and the arch-
bishop 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 (Cam-
bridge, 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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The Imagery of Noah’s Ark in the Mosaic Decoration 127
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 archbish-
op’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 sub-
stantially 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 interrupt-
ed.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 Nor-
man 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 Mo-
saici 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 Thessa-
loniki. 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. Wil-
liam 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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128 Takiguchi
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 spe-
cific 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 dif-
ferent. 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, impossi-
ble 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 Mon-
reale 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 be-
fore 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 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 ar-
chaeological sources with contemporary depictions in manuscripts. J. Flatman, The illu-
minated ark: interrogating evidence from manuscript illuminations and archaeological re-
mains for medieval vessels (Oxford, 2007).
14 For example, London, BL Add. MS 11695, f. 79v.

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130 Takiguchi
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 con-
structed 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 distinc-
tion between clean and unclean animals), and men and birds.17 Peter
Comestor’s account was adapted by Peter of Poitiers for his Compendium histo-
riae in Genealogia Christi and in some (though not all) copies of both texts
diagrams rendered the Ark as a regular geometric shape, with possible ar-
rangements of the chambers described in Comestor’s text.18
15 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).
16 Hugh of St Victor, “A Little Book,” 49.
17 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.
18 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 inter-
pretative detail, other manuscripts provide parallels of Arks that evoke build-
ings, and this became increasingly popular in the thirteenth century. In the
mid-thirteenth century the Bibles moralisées offered a lavish visual interpreta-
tion 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 archi-
tecture 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 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 (Phil-
adelphia, 2001), passim; A. Bennett, “Mary Magdalen’s Seven Deadly Sins in a Thirteenth-
century 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 Interpreta-
tions, 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 After-
lives: 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 Renais-
sance Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, LUNA Web. (accessed 19.8.2016).
20 Noe significat Christum, uxor eius beatam Mariam, familia Noe apostolos Christi per
sanctam ecclesiam a fluctibus huius seculi liberatos.
21 Non revertitur ad archam quin persistens in peccato non redit per penitenciam.

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132 Takiguchi
Figure 9.3 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 270b, f. 9v

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

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 ar-
chaeological site inland at Piazza Armerina has floor mosaics that once deco-
rated the villa of the Roman emperor.24 They are in an excellent state of pres-
ervation 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 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.
23 G. Delmonaco et al., “Slope Dynamics Acting on Villa del Casale (Piazza Armerina, Sici-
ly),” in Landslides: Evaluation and Stabilization, ed. W.A. Lacerda et al. (London, 2004), 357.
24 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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134 Takiguchi
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 ad-
vent 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 rep-
resents 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

26 Cleaver, “From Codex to Roll,” 70, Fig. 1; L. Cleaver, “Past, Present and Future for Thir-
teenth-Century Wales: Two Diagrams in British Library, Cotton Roll xiv.12,” Electronic
British Library Journal (2013).

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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, Biblio-
thèque nationale de France MS Lat. 8846), and the Psalter of Blanche of Cas-
tile (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, compara-
ble 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 paral-
lel scenes (Noah’s Ark and Abraham) and an image of paradise where Abra-
ham is seated with the souls of the good.
Finally, let us turn back to the Bible moralisée in the Bodleian Library. Dur-
ing 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 compa-
rable 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 over-
laid 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 paral-
lel for the form of the Ark in the mosaic at Monreale is indicated somewhere
30 R. Mellinkoff, The Horned Moses in Medieval Art and Thought (Berkeley, 1970), 68; Antho-
ny 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.

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136 Takiguchi
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 sev-
eral sections. The similarity with the shape of the Ark in Monreale is quite ob-
vious. 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. Le-
one 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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138 Takiguchi
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 ca-
thedral 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.

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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;” how-
ever, as Nigel Morgan rightly states, “any examination of the original manu-
script 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. Luk-
er, “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.”

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140 Luker
images of the labours of the months and the signs of the zodiac. This is fol-
lowed by a prefatory cycle (ff. 7r–29r) of painted and gilded miniatures depict-
ing 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 open-
ings 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 col-
lects (ff. 182v–184r) that follow the Psalm text. The manuscript ends with in-
structions 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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Some Observations on the Artists of the Leiden Psalter 141
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 princi-
pally 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 im-
ages 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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142 Luker
Figure 10.2 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 delibera-
tion. In view of the following discussion, this is most likely to be artist A.

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Figure 10.3 The Leiden Psalter, Leiden University Library MS B.P.L. 76a, f. 13r (artist B)
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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144 Luker
Figure 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)

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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 fol-
lows 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 inten-
sity 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 wit-
nessed, 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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146 Luker
between the base of the mouth and the chin, and although he also often ap-
plies 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. Exam-
ples 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 im-
ages 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 min-
iatures attributable to artist A. Since the miniatures with this striking blue oc-
cur predominantly in quire 4, it seems more likely that it is somehow indica-
tive 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 prefa-
tory 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 Testa-
ment, each painted on one side of the parchment only. The first two minia-
tures (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 consecu-
tively 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 Associa-
tion 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. Col-
lins, 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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148 Luker
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 signifi-
cant that their work is not simply divided into two runs of eight, each occupy-
ing 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 art-
ist 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 art-
ists 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 close-
ly 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 ap-
prentice. However, if this were the case, artist B seems to have been thought
sufficiently capable to be entrusted with completing more than half the prefa-
tory 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 hav-
ing had greater experience than artist B in composing full-page narrative im-
ages 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 prefa-
tory 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 unwel-
come 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 sur-
rounding 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 minia-
tures. 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 varia-
tion in the intensity with which each applies them, it is possible they were

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150 Luker
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 hori-
zontal 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 parch-
ment 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 an-
other project.
3 The Artists’ Sources
Determining the sources artists A and B might have used to compile the im-
ages in the Leiden Psalter benefits from considering work probably attributa-
ble 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 im-
ages 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 de-
tailed comparison of the Leiden Psalter and the St John’s College Psalter see Luker, “The Lei-
den Psalter,” 229–54.

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Figure 10.5 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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152 Luker
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 be-
tween the two sets of images that indicate common source material, rather
than individual memory, may account for their closeness. Consider, for exam-
ple, 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 triangu-
lar 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 simi-
lar archetype to that used for the Leiden Psalter.
The greater likelihood of common source material rather than a shared art-
ist 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 inhabit-
ing 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 repro-
ducing 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 con-
ceived of as comprising a small group of relevant pictures devoid of text. Estab-
lishing the likely form of the model for the initials is more difficult. A few mo-
tifs, 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 obvi-
ous 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, Bodle-
ian 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 Psal-
ter (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 simi-
larities between the images and once again it seems more than coincidence
that the same motif occurs within the same rare letter in two different manu-
scripts. 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 relat-
ed 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 bot-
tom 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 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. Kauff-
mann, “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.
11 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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154 Luker
Figure 10.6 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 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; © Univer-
sity 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 Peters-
burg 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 For the best bibliography on both bestiaries see https://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/bibli-

ography.php (accessed 16.2.19).
13 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 Roman-
esque, ed. S. Macready and F.H. Thompson, Occasional Papers of the Society of Antiquar-
ies of London 8 (London, 1986), 118–44.

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156 Luker
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 cit-
ed 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 une-
quivocally 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 besti-
aries 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 associa-
tion 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 See Panayotova ed., Colour, 96 and no. 19, which has an accompanying bibliography.
15 Such an investigation should also include a series of fifty-one full-page miniatures depict-
ing 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, Sothe-
by’s sale catalogue (London, 4 December 2007), lot 45 and K. Collins, “Madness and In-
nocence: 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, “Bes-
tiaries: an Aspect of Medieval Patronage,” 118–44.

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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 Lero-
quais 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 intel-
lectual 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 Al-
ban, 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. (Ma-
con, 1940–1), ii: 13–17. The manuscript is on-line on Gallica.

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158 Stirnemann and Kogel
Figure 11.1 Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenale MS 1186, f. 1v

© Bibliothèque nationale de France

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A Portrait of Abraham Ibn Ezra 159
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 Nav-
arre.’ He was martyred in Pamplona during the persecutions of Emperor Aure-
lian (270–5).
Arnulf of Metz is in gold in the calendar and signals the most glorious dy-
nastic benchmark. At the beginning of the seventh century, Arnulf, before be-
ing 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 descend-
ants, including a large number of royal families in Spain and Italy. This geneal-
ogy, this lineage issuing from Charlemagne, is illustrated in a universal chroni-
cle 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 Pen-
insula: Haec stirps francigenum regi dum struxit Haberiam. (“This is the geneal-
ogy 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 be-
tween 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 Aquit-
aine 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 illumi-
nation 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 astro-
labe 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, Vi-
enna, 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. He-
brew characters recur on the book of Psalms transcribed for David in the Bea-
tus initial of Blanche’s Psalter, f. 30v. The cleric’s role was undoubtedly to cor-
rect 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 excep-
tion 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 Liter-
ary and Linguistic Study with Special Reference to the Old French Translation of Hagin (Balti-
more, 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 men-
tioned 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 in-
sulaire 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 as-
sumed 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 dis-
ciple who had it set down on parchment: ut ait philosophorum sibi contempora-
neorum Abraham magister noster egregius quo dictante et hanc dispositionem
astrolabii conscripsimus […].11 The captivating miniature that precedes the cal-
endar 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 in-
dividual, 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 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).
10 In the introduction, Ibn Ezra proclaims his identity, “Abraham the Spaniard,” and indi-
cates the year of composition, 1160. See Sela, Abraham Ibn Ezra, 77.
11 London, BL Cotton MS Vespasian A. ii, f. 40 and Arundel MS 377, f. 68; Sela, Rise of Medi-
eval Hebrew Science, 31.
12 Al-Andarzaghar, author of Kitab al-Mawalid, and Dorotheus of Sidon, author of the Penta-
biblos. 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.
13 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 Aquit-
aine, 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. 86v-
87. 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 in-
telligent consort of the future king Louis viii, the importance of Spain in the
transmission of astronomical and mathematical knowledge, and in particular
14 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.
15 See N. Whyte, “Roger of Hereford’s Liber de Astronomice iudicandi: a twelfth-century as-
trologers 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 Elea-
nor’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).
16 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 man-
uscripts 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 pen-
work in the manuscript is by a Parisian artist, the scribe is English, the illumi-
nator is Amienois, and some of the iconography is inspired by the Noyon Psal-
ter (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 See Burnett, The Introduction of Arabic Learning. In a 1922 publication, Aleksander Birke-
majer 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 Mak-
ers 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).
18 For example, Paris, BnF MS Lat. 16208, an early thirteenth-century north Italian manu-
script with the writings of Raymond de Marseille (Burnett, “Introduction,” 51) that be-
longed to Gérard d’Abbeville, who inherited Richard de Fournival’s library and donated it
with his own books to the Sorbonne.

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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 inspiration-
al teaching. He proposed this manuscript for my MA Report, and it proved a
fitting conclusion to a year spent exploring the intricacies of illustrated medi-
eval 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 unwilling-
ness to accept simple answers to perplexing questions have shaped my re-
search and teaching; he is an incomparable art historical lodestar.
The Map Psalter includes illustrations routinely present in mid-thirteenth-
century 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” (unpub-
lished 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); Calen-
dar (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); full-
page 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); unfin-
ished 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 (Lon-
don, 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.

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The Virgin and Child in the Map Psalter 165
Figure 12.1 Virgin and Child, The Map Psalter, London, British Library Add. MS 28681, f.
190v
© The British Library Board

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166 Dormer
and Child (f. 190v), is relatively unknown; its iconography deserves further at-
tention.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 sec-
ond hand, in brown ink, on 16 June; this occurred in 1276, and provides a termi-
nus 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 like-
ly. 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 Octo-
ber, 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 mid-
thirteenth-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 con-
nected 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 ecclesias-
tic, 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 posi-
tioned 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 con-
temporary 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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168 Dormer
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 recita-
tion of such texts had become entrenched in the secular liturgy, they prolifer-
ate, predominantly in lay Psalters.20 Their occurrence wanes post 1300, pre-
sumably 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 speci-
fied. 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, Kupferstichka-
binett 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 ap-
pended 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 collec-
tions 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 centu-
ry. 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 Vir-
gin, seven lack illustration. Marian themes predominate in the quartet that are
illustrated, but without standardisation of subject matter or type of illustra-
tion. Only the Map Psalter has a full-page frontispiece; the others utilise histo-
riated initials. In London, British Library Add. MS 15749 a lay man kneels be-
fore 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 (Balti-
more, Walters Art Museum MS W.34, f. 298); in the Oscott Psalter the Presenta-
tion of the Virgin in the Temple occurs at the beginning of the text (British Li-
brary 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 outer-
most 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 moth-
er’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 vir-
ginis venerandae.

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170 Dormer
Stylistically the illustration is related, in a general sense, to a group of con-

temporary manuscripts linked with Westminster, such as the Morgan Apoca-
lypse 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 cen-
tury, 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 misun-
derstanding: her knees are level with one another even though her left foot is
raised above her right. Such evidence supports the suggestion that this compo-
sition 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 Eng-
lish work. Full page illustrations of the Virgin and Child enthroned abound in
thirteenth-century English manuscripts, reflecting the general increase in pri-
vate lay devotion after the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. They occur occasion-
ally 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 par-
tial 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 dic-
tated 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 ini-
tials, 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 draw-
ing 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 Byz-
antine 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 Cathe-
rine’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 Of the eleven Virgin and Child illustrations in manuscripts catalogued in Morgan, Early
Gothic Manuscripts, ii, seven occur in Psalters.
30 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.
31 V. Lazarev, “Studies in the Iconography of the Virgin,” Art Bulletin 20 (1938): 26–65, esp.
42–6.
32 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.
33 P. Sweinfurth, Geschichte der Russischen Malerei (The Hague, 1930), 444.
34 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 Byzan-
tium: 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 Ita-
ly by 1300.

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172 Dormer
Figure 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
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-Princeton-
Alexandria 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) illus-
trate 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 moth-
er’s cheek, the right hangs down limply to touch her hand. His legs dangle
35 See L. Hadermann-Misguich, “Pelagonitissa et Kardiotissa: Variantes extrêmes du type

Vierge de Tendresse,” Byzantion 53/1 (1983): 9–16, esp. 12.
36 Reproduced in B.V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power. The Mother of God in Byzantium (Pennsyl-
vania, 2006), Figs 67 and 69.

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174 Dormer
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 proto-
type 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 typi-
cally absent from Byzantine Virgin and Child images, even those such as the
Eleousa and Gykkotraphousa types, which express fondness. The proleptic as-
pect 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 proto-
types, 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 transmit-
ted 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, Tu-
rin), 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 us-
ing, in part, materials brought from Italy, and Italian churchmen such as Otto-
buoni d’Fieschi, papal legate 1265–8, may well have brought devotional
artefacts to London. Further evidence of trading links between England and
37 Lazarev, “Studies in the Iconography,” 44.

38 This aspect of the type is stressed in Pentcheva, Icons and Power, chapter 3, “The Context
of War,” 61–103.
39 See Shorr, The Christ Child, 51, top left hand illustration. Lazarev, “Studies in the Iconogra-
phy,” 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 Collec-
tion, 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 thirteenth-
century 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 para-
doxical (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 prom-
ise of resurrection, underpinned by various textual sources.44 Unlike other li-
ons 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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176 Dormer
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 muscula-
ture, 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 Westmin-
ster Abbey (Fig. 12.5).45 But, the Map Psalter lion is passant rather than ram-
pant 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
Ora Pro Nobis: The Virgin as Intercessor in Medieval Art and Devotion (Turnhout, 2008), 51
and n. 34, and 173–7.
45 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 sym-
bolic, 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 Solo-
mon’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 her-
self 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 Vir-
gin, 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 glori-
fying 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: Es-
says 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 mes-
sage. 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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178 Dormer
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 Fred-
erick 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 in-
vention 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 charac-
terise 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 Mes-
siah, 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. Numer-
ous 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 pas-
sage 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 illustra-
tions, 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 Vir-
gin is generally accepted as a type invented in Germany in the mid to late thir-
teenth 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 pre-
cocious, and apparently unique, English example of this convention, possibly
informed by portable artefacts brought to London from the Holy Roman Em-
pire via high-level thirteenth-century connections: Emperor Frederick ii mar-
ried Henry iii’s sister, Isabelle, in 1235, and Henry iii’s younger brother, Rich-
ard of Cornwall, was king of Germany from 1257 until 1272.
In stark contrast with all Byzantine images of the Virgin, and the vast major-
ity 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 Vir-
gin’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, punctu-
ated by five roundels, suggests a carefully observed object fashioned from met-
al, 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, (vir-
ga), 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 See Bloch, “Die Muttergottes.”

56 See T. Husband, The Treasury of Basel Cathedral (New Haven and London, 2001), no. 35,
100–1.
57 “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.
58 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, Alt-
töting 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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180 Dormer
s tatus and virginity.59 The Virgin’s loose locks and uncovered head may inten-
tionally 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 Ames-
bury 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 recita-
tion 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 in-
cluded 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 sta-
tus; and line two, Psalm 25 (f. 195r), Et maternum filiis exhibens affectum, em-
phasises 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, unpar-
alleled in contemporary English work, seem to stem from a variety of more
specific visual and textual models, combined with invention. During negotia-
tions 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 cer-
tainly 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 thir-
teenth-century Westminster.
60 See British Library Department of Manuscripts, Papers relating to the purchase and acqui-
sition of manuscripts 1871–1873, for a series of letters concerning the British Museum’s pur-
chase of this Psalter. The book was eventually purchased in 1872 for £65.

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Chapter 13
Seeing and Reading the Matthew Paris Saints’ Lives

Martin Kauffmann
The thirteenth century saw the development of new ways of providing cap-
tions 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 rich-
ness 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 tit-
uli 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 consid-
ered 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, Ver-
sus 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 Manu-
scripts 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).

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Seeing and Reading the Matthew Paris Saints’ Lives 183
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 manu-
script 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 associ-
ates (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 represent-
ing 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 identi-
fication, amplifying meanings and helping to transform the pictures into part
of the structured devotional exercise.6 In these cases the captions were in Lat-
in, 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 manu-
script 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 Hunt-
ingfield 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, how-
ever, 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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184 Kauffmann
it was felt after all that there was no need for captions when the text was al-
ready in the vernacular. Not that the vernacular was always more accessible: in
the twelfth century the Anglo-Saxon illustrated Hexateuch had Latin commen-
taries 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 ex-
ample of innovation in the relations between texts, pictures, rubrics, and cap-
tions. 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 intrin-
sic differences between the two. Their inventiveness is an aspect of their for-
mat, with a picture occupying the top half of almost every page, above a con-
tinuous 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 con-
tinuous pictorial narrative; but the Apocalypses do not exhibit anything simi-
lar 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 com-
mentary) 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 be-
came the first English martyr, whose story is combined with that of St Am-
phibalus, the name acquired by the missionary who converted him to Christi-
anity (Dublin, Trinity College MS 177, hereafter Alban);11 the four surviving
9 London, BL Cotton MS Claudius B iv: C.R. Dodwell and P. Clemoes, ed., The Old English
Illustrated Hexateuch (Copenhagen, 1974).
10 S. Lewis, Reading Images. Narrative Discourse and Reception in the Thirteenth-Century Il-
luminated Apocalypse (Cambridge, 1995).
11 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. Wogan-
Browne and T.S. Fenster, The Life of Saint Alban by Matthew Paris (Tempe, AZ, 2010); repro-
duced 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 orig-
inals 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 frag-
ment. 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 rough-
ly 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 schol-
arly discussions of the circumstances surrounding the production and recep-
tion 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 Al-
bans 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 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); repro-
duced by J. Backhouse and C. de Hamel, The Becket Leaves (London, 1988).
13 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. Fen-
ster 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).
14 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.
15 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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186 Kauffmann
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 Eng-
land, 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 composi-
tional elements of Edward place it in the company of the illustrated Apoca-
lypse 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 ver-
sions 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 Ed-
ward 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 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.
17 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, Illustra-
tions to the Life of St. Alban, 20–4.
18 N.J. Morgan, “Matthew Paris, St Albans, London, and the leaves of the ‘Life of St Thomas
Becket’,” Burlington Magazine 130 (1988): 85–96.
19 P. Binski, “Abbot Berkyng’s Tapestries and Matthew Paris’s Life of St Edward the Confes-
sor,” 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 funda-
mental 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 consist-
ent, 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 ques-
tions apply whether or not all the elements in these manuscripts were com-
posed 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 to-
gether 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 occu-
pying 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 For the ideology of Edward, see P. Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets. King-
ship 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.
21 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 along-
side Guardian photos.”
22 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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188 Kauffmann
lengthy passages of text in which Amphibalus instructs Alban in the funda-

mentals 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 octo-
syllabic couplets written in red above it: they vary in length from four to six-
teen 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 ru-
brics 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 ru-
bric above the drawing (Fig. 13.1). The drawing shows Alban in one room watch-
ing through a window his mentor Amphibalus in an adjacent room; Amphiba-
lus 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 Resurrec-
tion 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 be-
fore 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 witness-
ing Gregory’s inspiration by the Holy Spirit;26 it is linked to the exegesis of the
23 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.
24 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).
25 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.
26 As illustrated in the famous tenth-century miniature which probably belonged to a man-
uscript 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 Trinity College Dublin MS 177, f. 31r

Reproduced by kind permission of The Board of Trinity College
Dublin

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190 Kauffmann
Song of Songs, 2:9, “My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he stand-
eth 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 octo-
syllabic 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 cus-
tume (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 ap-
pear 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 re-
sponse 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 les-
sons 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 reli-
quary 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 Cynthia Hahn gives a rich account of narrative, sign, and Christian witness in Alban: “Ab-
sent no Longer. The Sign and the Saint in Late Medieval Pictorial Hagiography,” in Hagiog-
raphie und Kunst. Der Heiligenkult in Schrift, Bild und Architektur, ed. G. Kerscher (Berlin,
1993), 152–75.
28 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 Trinity College Dublin MS 177, f. 55r

Reproduced by kind permission of The Board of Trinity College
Dublin

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192 Kauffmann
continued in this section, but the French ones at the top are present, still writ-
ten in Matthew’s own hand. Indeed they are now the only text directly con-
cerned 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 informa-
tion 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 cap-
tions 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 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.
30 The auction catalogue entry contained a more detailed codicological description than
was included in Backhouse and de Hamel, The Becket Leaves: Sotheby’s, Western Manu-
scripts 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 ex-
ile, 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 ex-
plained 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 unnec-
essarily, 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 ill-
treatment of his relations at home serves to increase his sufferings—and in-
deed 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 ex-
pands the individual scene into an episode. The Latin inscriptions in this draw-
ing 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 cap-
tion, 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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194 Kauffmann
Figure 13.3 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 com-
manding 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 it-
self 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 men-
tion 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 por-
tions 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 de-
scribing the papal negotiations which led to the involvement of King Louis.
The presentation of the text in two columns rather than three presumably in-
dicates 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 ac-
cording 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 reconstruc-
tion 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 confis-
cate 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 Cister-
cian 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 col-
umn’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 be-
forehand; or there was a fuller version of this text from which this was e xtracted

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196 Kauffmann
Figure 13.4 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 arbitra-
tors 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 Hen-
ry by Archbishop Roger of York, in flagrant usurpation of the rights of Canter-
bury. 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 corona-
tion 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 pro-
nouncement 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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198 Kauffmann
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 be-
neath 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 ap-
pears 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 Ed-
mund 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 concen-
trates 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 Ethel-
red’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 experi-
enced 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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200 Kauffmann
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 de-
scribed 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 appre-
ciated 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 conti-
nuity 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 sepa-
ration of the oppression from its punishment allowed both to take up two-
thirds 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 sin-
gle 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 pil-
grimage takes up eight drawings (ff. 13r-16v), providing the reader with a picto-
rial 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 draw-
ings 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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202 Kauffmann
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 oppor-
tunity 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 pic-
tures 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) de-
picted 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 car-
penter 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 ab-
bot’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 illus-
trated on f. 32v, two pages away from its place in the text. This is largely cor-
rected 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 courti-
ers 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 eight-
line 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 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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204 Kauffmann
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 man-
uscripts, it is difficult to draw general conclusions. It has not proved possible to
distinguish a clear division of labour between captions and rubrics as media-
tors: 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 exam-
ple) 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 adqui-
esco 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 al-
ready true in the twelfth-century Winchester Psalter, where the captions (posi-
tioned within the frames) are in French, but the speech scrolls within the pic-
tures 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 Edward also contains a higher number of scribal errors in its text than the other two man-
uscripts: Wallace, Estoire, xiv-xvii.
37 London, BL Cotton MS Nero C iv: K. Edmondson Haney, The Winchester Psalter. An Icono-
graphic 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 authenti-
cating 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 assem-
blage of genres that include genealogy, chronicle, courtly romance, hagiogra-
phy, 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 vernacu-
lar 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 M.D. Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford, 1963), 243–75; F. Lau-
rent, Plaire et Édifier. Les Récits Hagiographiques Composés en Angleterre aux xiie et xiiie
Siècles (Paris, 1998).
39 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).
40 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 (Ox-
ford, 2001), 151–88.
41 For hearing, reading, and seeing in a European context, see M. Curschmann, “Hören-lesen-
sehen. Buch und Schriftlichkeit im Selbstverständnis der volkssprachlichen literarischen

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206 Kauffmann
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 pro-
vide 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 Mat-
thew 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 read-
er. Eleanor of Provence, who came from one of the most cultivated of Europe-
an families, would have been quite at home with a book in which Edith, Ed-
ward’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 Litera-
tur, 106 (1984): 218–57.

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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 Mid-
dle 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 organi-
sation 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 sev-
eral small pamphlets were bound together into a single volume. These book-
lets 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 guid-
ance 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 col-
leagues 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 An-
drew 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.

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208 Gerry
the historical legacy of the monastery in the aftermath of the Norman inva-
sion.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 man-
uscripts 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 man-
uscripts in English collections and offered provocative insights into what could
be gleaned about how such books were used by individual owners.4 Much re-
cent 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 identi-
fied 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 peri-
od,” 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 character-
ised 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 discus-
sion 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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Manuscript Consolidation in an English Monastic Library 209
Art historians are perhaps especially guilty of this lack of attention to the larger
phenomenon since many of the known examples of composite books, includ-
ing 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 ramifica-
tions 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 com-
posite manuscript and several companion works from St Albans will offer in-
sight 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, measur-
ing 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 his-
tory 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 A recent exception to this is K. Rudy, Postcards on Parchment: The Social Lives of Medieval
Books (New Haven, 2015).
8 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 at-
tention when the present article was in the final stages of publication and so has not been
considered here.
9 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 Mak-
ers and Users; a Special Issue of Viator in Honor of Richard and Mary Rouse (Turnhout,
2011), 185–98.
10 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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210 Gerry
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 fourteenth-
century 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 preced-
ing 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 con-
tained material that was at some point no longer considered desirable. Per-
haps 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 fragmen-
tary 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 J. Vezin, “‘Quaderni Simul Ligati’: Recherches sur les manuscrits en cahiers,” in Of the Mak-
ing 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 discus-
sion of the medieval state of Richard of Fournival’s books: Stirnemann, “Private Libraries,”
187.
12 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.
13 The pasting is clearly visible, the leaf having been added to a stub at the end of the previ-
ous 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 sys-
tem found throughout this section of the manuscript.
14 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 line-
fillers 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 or-
namental 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 mate-
rial was added to a bifolium (now ff. 42 and 52) in order to create a larger book-
let of material related to Alban. This booklet might well have existed as a dis-
crete 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 gath-
ering, suggesting that this single quire might originally have been part of a
larger volume, or that it contained some material that was, for whatever rea-
son, not considered desirable or appropriate when the quire was eventually
bound with the other components of M.926.
15 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.
16 Thomson notes the different hands and dates both to the late eleventh century: Manu-
scripts, 115.
17 bhl 2343, and W. Stubbs, Memorials of St Dunstan (London, 1894), 53–68.

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212 Gerry
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 incom-
plete 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 Wor-
mald identified it as one hand which can be found in several St Albans manu-
scripts from the middle of the twelfth century.20 The Gesta Abbatum Monas-
terii 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 con-
taining parts of Augustine’s De ordine; the last leaf of this quire is blank.22 Hart-
zell 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 as-
sumptions: 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 Anglo-
Saxon cults.25 The St Albans community in particular seems to have had a large
Norman population and, while some monasteries did have difficulties adjust-
ing to Norman control, there is little to indicate that St Albans had much trou-
ble 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 do-
nated by a certain Norman knight.27
Although many of the saints represented in M.926 had a long past in Eng-
land, 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 Anglo-
Saxon 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 Can-
terbury 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 Anglo-
Saxon 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: post-
Conquest 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 Pa-
tronage in the English Romanesque, ed. S. Macready and F.H. Thompson (London, 1986),
107–17; Gesta, 57.

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214 Gerry
St Albans and almost certainly no pre-Conquest English history.28 It is not dif-

ficult 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 themati-
cally 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 re-
gional associations and do not share any obvious liturgical connections, such
as common or close feast days, and the selection of texts includes both liturgi-
cal 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 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),” Romanis-
tisches 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 prob-
leme 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 docu-
ments 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 Illu-
minated in the British Isles 3 (London, 1975), 64.
29 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 manu-
script is a sermon on St Benedict by Odo of Cluny, ending on f. 77v, there is then a frag-
ment of a sermon of Augustine of Hippo on the same leaf; if the Cicero text were origi-
nally 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.
30 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 re-
lation to either function or aesthetics.
The dates at which the various texts in M.926 were first copied and subse-
quently 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 determin-
ing 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 man-
uscript 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 direc-
tion 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 Al-
bans” 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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216 Gerry
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 crea-
tion 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 Psal-
ter, 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 An-
other 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 See Hanna, “Booklets in Medieval Manuscripts”; and Gumbert, “Codicological Units.”

35 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, Man-
uscripts & Libraries; Essays presented to N.R. Ker, ed. M.B. Parkes and A.G. Watson (Lon-
don, 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. Al-
though there is evidence of trimming, each of these four booklets was origi-
nally small and the present book measures 150 × 110 mm.
The booklets now in Cotton Titus D xvi were once free-standing items, rath-
er than being parts of other larger books. Differences in the quality of parch-
ment 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, Ox-
ford, 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 con-
tents 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 confronta-
tions 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 consid-
ered as a text related to conflict, and certainly one in which the forces of
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.
41 Robinson noted similar features as common to many booklets; see “The ‘Booklet’,” 47–52.
42 This formula can be found in many St Albans manuscripts; see Thomson, Manuscripts, for
numerous examples.
43 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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218 Gerry
hristian rectitude prevail. At the end of the third text in the Cotton manu-
C
script, the Altercatio Ecclesiae contra Synagogam, a twelfth-century hand simi-
lar 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 Li-
brary MS Laud Lat. 67 consists of four booklets: three single quires, and a long-
er 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 frag-
ments 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 differ-
ent 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. Wie-
land, “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 book-
lets 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 inscrip-
tion at the top, dated by Thomson to the later thirteenth century.50 This indi-
cates 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 gra-
tia 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 character-
istics. 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 scholas-
tic 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 Me-
dieval 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.
51 Ibid.

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220 Gerry
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 elev-
enth 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 pos-
sible 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 cor-
recting 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 stand-
ard 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, indi-
cating that the present books were bound together after the second of the li-
brary overhauls identified by Thomson. M.926 does not have any internal ex
52 Ibid., 29.
53 Walter the Chanter is not otherwise known; the description and excerpts were made by
John Bale: Hunt, “The Library,” 251–4, 269–71.
55 Ibid.

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libris inscriptions, so it might have been bound before the middle of the thir-
teenth 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 com-
posite manuscripts from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There are cer-
tainly examples of composite manuscripts from St Albans and from other in-
stitutions 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 remark-
able.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 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.
57 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.
58 See Robinson, “Self-contained units,” and “The ‘Booklet’,” and A. Taylor, “Manual to Miscel-
lany: Stages in the Commercial Copying of Vernacular Literature in England,” The Year-
book of English Studies 33, Medieval and Early Modern Miscellanies and Anthologies
(2003): 1–17.

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222 Gerry
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 preser-
vation 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 less-
than-luxurious books, and sought to preserve and protect them even after long
years of use and damage had compromised the materials and time had per-
haps 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 manu-
script, 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 under-
standings of how these texts were related, or if they led to new ways of study-
ing 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 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 Medi-
eval Architecture and Its Intellectual Context; Studies in Honour of Peter Kidson, ed. E. Fern-
ie 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.
60 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 infor-
mation about what those problems were.

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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 treas-
ury of advice: “Research means discovering things; but it also means not dis-
covering things.” My contribution to this volume relates to a fact-finding mis-
sion 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 idio-
syncratic and mysterious object. Second, in addition to its intrinsic signifi-
cance, this volume can also stand for all the manuscripts, and books and docu-
ments 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).

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Domesday in Disguise 225
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 recep-
tion 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 formi-
dable 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 In-
quest is sufficiently extensive to have generated its own bibliography; see: D. Bates, A Bibliog-
raphy 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 In-
quest 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 Rof-
fe’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: Re-
bound, 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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226 Berenbeim
artistic elaboration of a—perhaps the—record of central government at a criti-

cal 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 thirteenth-
century manuscript culture more generally, as well as for what one might call
the cultural history of institutional power. The following analysis of the Ex-
chequer 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 quin-
tessential 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 col-
lectively, 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 me-
talpoint, 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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228 Berenbeim
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 dis-
tinctive 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 fol-
lowing verso). Rubrics; running headers in lombardic capitals (red and/or blue
on ff. 3–4; red thereafter); important words and phrases, particularly place-
names, 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 sepa-
rate, 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. Connec-
tions 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 surviv-
ing 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, archa-
ism: 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 ulti-
mately 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 “insti-
tutional 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 Ed-
ward, 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 twelfth-
century French Vie de Saint Amand or the thirteenth-century Vie de Saint De-
nys, 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 princi-
pally 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 Gal-
braith, Administrative History, 111; and recently see also H.B. Clarke, “Condensing and Ab-
breviating 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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230 Berenbeim
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 se-
lection. 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 con-
secutive 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, de-
picting 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
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).
15 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.
16 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 virtu-
ally repeats the first vignette to accentuate his more extended arm with point-
ing finger—this time, not remarking, but emphatically accusing.
On the facing recto, the first vignette depicts an earlier episode from Ed-
ward’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 sud-
denly 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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232 Berenbeim
Figure 15.1 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


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234 Berenbeim
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 re-
versed. 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 con-
ceptually 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 per-
ceived 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 bless-
ing 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 Ed-
ward’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


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236 Berenbeim
I am John, apostle and evangelist, the disciple whom Jesus loved. I cher-
ish 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 dedica-
tion of Westminster Abbey while he still lives. Like the first two depicted vi-
gnettes, 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 col-
oured grounds from blue to rose-coloured above, then rose to blue. This com-
position therefore draws a visual parallel not only between the two rhyming
figures of Edward, but also between the figure of Edward, hands clasped, ador-
ing 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 illumi-
nated 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 man-
uscript looks very much like something else as well: a monastic cartulary-
chronicle. It resembles particularly closely, for example, the roughly contem-
porary 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 sub-
ject, 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 Me-
dieval 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 ar-
rangement, along with some ambivalent vestiges of administrative practicali-
ty: for example, the relationship between textual arrangement and quire struc-
ture. 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 ver-
sion. 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 presenta-
tion 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 (Do-
ver) 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 in-
serting 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.
18 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).
19 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 impor-
tant resource is Davis, Medieval Cartularies, in the fully revised and updated edition by
Breay, Harrison, and Smith.

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238 Berenbeim
Figure 15.4 Kew, The National Archives E 36/284, f. 3r


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Figure 15.5 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 be-
tween 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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240 Berenbeim
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 gov-
ernment 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 ex-
plication of the Exchequer, the Dialogus de scaccario. Both texts were com-
posed 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 Excheq-
uer 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 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 Chap-
ter 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.
21 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; Hal-
lam, Nine Centuries, 44; British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts online, re-
producing 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.
22 For the reforms of the Exchequer under Henry iii, see: N. Barratt, “Another Fine Mess: Evi-
dence 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.
23 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.

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Chapter 16
From Warwickshire to New York via Canterbury:

The Travels and Tribulations of the Bible of Richard
of Sholdon
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, Lita-
ny 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 illegi-
ble 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 Wil-
liam 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 snoop-
ing. The Bible of Richard of Sholdon (Glazier MS 18) contains various indica-
tions of its medieval provenance, including a Calendar, a Canterbury press-
mark and an inscription recording its donation to St Augustine’s, Canterbury,
along with other medieval and later inscriptions and bookplates. Once exten-
sively 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

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242 Law-Turner
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 measur-
ing 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 thir-
teenth 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 Psal-
ter. It was described in C. Ryskamp, ed., Twenty-First Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Mor-
gan 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 Free-
man 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. Barker-
Benfield in his magisterial study of the manuscripts from St Augustine’s Canterbury, St Au-
gustine’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, de-
scribed it as “a fine mid-13th century Bible with an inappropriate Gloucester/Worcester cal-
endar,” 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 Benedic-
tine 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 Cen-
tury: 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 Bi-
ble 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 Thir-
teenth-Century Paris Bible,” in The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages, Production, Recep-
tion 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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From Warwickshire to New York via Canterbury 243
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 re-
tains 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 man-
uscripts, 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 thir-
teenth 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 plum-
met 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 fea-
ture not common in English Bibles before about 1240. Prologues and subdivi-
sions 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 di-
minishing size of Bibles through the thirteenth century, which was notable chiefly in Parisian
manuscripts. Of the English illuminated Bibles described in Morgan, Early Gothic Manu-
scripts; 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 porta-
ble 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 manu-
scripts 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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244 Law-Turner
On one level, this was very much a working book. The text was carefully cor-
rected by the original scribe—accuracy clearly mattered—and there are mar-
ginal 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 ex-
cised, 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, Par-
alipomenon), 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
(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 bur-
nished 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 dis-
tinctive 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 pasted-
in Crucifixion miniature similar to that in the Evesham Psalter, with the rectangle containing
an image of the donor.

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246 Law-Turner
Figure 16.3 New York, The Morgan Library & Museum MS G.18, f. 276r
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 Mor-
gan to the West Midlands (Early Gothic Manuscripts, i: 54, no.8), and Oxford, Magdalen Col-
lege 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 liturgi-
cal 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 New York, The Morgan Library & Museum MS G.18, f. 279v
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 re-
quires some explanation. The vast majority of calendars are in liturgical manu-
scripts 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 pur-
pose 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 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.
11 As for example in a Parisian Bible in the Schoyen Collection (MS 115), which has a calen-
dar containing St Dominic and his translation (http://www.schoyencollection.com/Bible-
collection-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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248 Law-Turner
The calendar in G.18 has four months to a page, with feasts written alter-
nately in blue and red, the same layout as in other English Bibles with calen-
dars.12 Physically it is distinct from the rest of the manuscript, being on a sepa-
rate bifolio inserted before main text and it has no illumination like that in the
Bible itself. However, the parchment of the calendar bifolio is indistinguisha-
ble 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 deco-
rated 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 canoniza-
tion. 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
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 (Ox-
ford, 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).
12 There are some other examples of English Bibles with calendars. St John’s College, Cam-
bridge (MS N.1) has a calendar with Gilbertine saints at the beginning and Gilbertine mass-
es 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, “Thirteenth-
Century Pandect,” 211 and http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/manu-
scripts/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.
13 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, al-
though 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. Noth-
ing 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 in-
deed contain a number of saints characteristic of the diocese of Worcester:
Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester (January 19, with his Translation on June 7), Al-
date (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 Worces-
tershire/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 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. Mor-
gan, “Psalter Illustration for the Diocese of Worcester in the Thirteenth Century,” in Medi-
eval 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 ab-
bey of Tewkesbury,” in A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 2, ed. W. Page (Lon-
don, 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.
15 The invaluable Ordnance Survey Map of Monastic Britain (Surbiton, 1954), shows the ex-
tent of the medieval dioceses and the religious houses within each.
16 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 Kalen-
dars after a.d. 1100, ii, Ely to St Neots (London, 1946), ii: 21–55. Wormald’s two Henry Brad-
shaw 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: Bene-
dictine Nunneries; addenda to vols. 1–2; introduction; and cumulative indexes to vols. 1–4 is
in hand.

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250 Law-Turner
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 Ven-
eratio 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 oc-
taves 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 ap-
pear in calendars of the vast diocese of Coventry/Lichfield, the southern
boundary of which ran along the northern boundary of the diocese of Worces-
ter. 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 conven-
tional Saint Augustine’s Abbey inscription naming the donor, BIBLIA : RICAR-
DI : 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 refec-
tory.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 Bi-
ble 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 an-
notated 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 presum-
ably 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 vol-
umes, 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 do-
nations. 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 Manu-
scripts, 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 Augus-
tine’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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252 Law-Turner
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 liv-
ing 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 Cock-
ering 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 as-
sociated 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 or-
dained 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 execu-
tor 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 Philo-
sophical 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 un-
certain. 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 or-
dained 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 Ar-
istotle 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 cho-
sen 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 ex-
tensive holdings in Beoley, a hamlet between Redditch and Tanworth right on
the borders of the diocese of Worchester and Coventry/Lichfield.32 These Shel-
dons 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 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 com-
plicated 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, Bed-
fordshire, Staffordshire and Nottinghamshire, as well as a Sheldon manor near Chippen-
ham, in Wiltshire, and the variants Sheldon, Schelton, Scelton, Selton, Seledon, Chelton,
Sheltone, Schelton/e, Schuldone, Sholdon, Scholdon, Shildene, Suldon, Shilton and Shul-
don 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.
31 E. Hasted, “Parishes: Sholdon,” in The History and Topographical Survey of the County of
Kent: Volume 9 (Canterbury, 1800), 605–11.
32 “Parishes: Beoley,” in A History of the County of Worcester: Volume 4, ed. W. Page and J.W.
Willis-Bund (London, 1924), 12–19.
33 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 Shel-
don (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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254 Law-Turner
Various members of the de Sheldon or Scheldon family appear in the thir-

teenth 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 Schel-
don, 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 aris-
tocracy until relatively recently?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.
34 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).
35 Birmingham Archives MS 3888/A96 and A44. Robert de Scheldon witnessed another
grant to John Clinton in 1314 (Birmingham Archives MS 3888/A111/1).
36 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 Warwick-
shire 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 Ed-
wardian 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.
37 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 War-
wickshire 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 add-
ed 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 in-
scriptions and annotations to almost fifty surviving manuscripts, in several
styles of script, ranging from fancy headings to cursive. His note at f. 148v com-
paring 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’
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 suc-
ceeded 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 Calen-
dar 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 Shel-
don 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.
38 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 hierar-
chy 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.
39 My thanks to Bruce Barker-Benfield for his thoughts on the inscription in G. 18. Personal
communication, July 2016.

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256 Law-Turner
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 com-
pared 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 cen-
tral 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 ‘waste-
not, 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 fif-
teenth 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 cen-
tury 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 Can-
terbury (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 271) for Canterbury Cathedral
Priory.41 This volume is decorated in an almost identical diaper pattern, al-
though 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 in-
stitutions, or possibly an itinerant craftsman.42 The use of obsolete St Augus-
tine’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 Eng-
lish 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 fan-
cied. 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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258 Law-Turner
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, Ran-
dall Gossip, married one Christiana, heiress of the Hatfield family,47 and as-
sumed the names and arms of Hatfield. His great grand-daughter, Christina
Joyce Hatfield (1903–53), later Joyce, Lady Allerton, sold Richard’s Bible at So-
theby’s in July 1948.48 It was bought by Maggs for £250 on behalf of Henry Har-
vey 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 twenti-
eth 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 part-
ner in the firm then known as Lehman Brothers, bought his first manuscript in
1940, and gradually set about forming a collection illustrating the whole histo-
ry of manuscript books. By his death in 1962 had one of the finest private col-
lections 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 instiga-
tion 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 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 Ar-
chive Service, Leeds, TA (nra 11200 Hatfield); York Minster Archives Add MS 213 Collec-
tion 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.
47 Bernard Burke’s, A genealogical and heraldic dictionary of the landed gentry of Great Brit-
ain and Ireland (1862–3), i: 563. Various nineteenth-century Hatfields are buried in the
graveyard of the All Saints, Thorp Arch, Yorkshire.
48 Sotheby’s 27 July 1948 catalogue, lot 358.
49 Stratford and Reynolds, “Foyle Breviary,” 350–1.

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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 re-
lief of the Last Judgement, as if to ensure Nicola’s place among the saved, un-
derscores 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 sculp-
tor 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 NICO-
LA 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.

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260 Jackson
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 at-
tracted 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 sculp-
tors 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, dat-
ed 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 im-
possible to work conveniently at the said Opera.6
Italian sources are, however, otherwise silent on the subject of how Nicola Pis-
ano 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 conse-
quently 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, Ar-
chitektur, 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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Virgin, Devil, Bishop, King 261
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 pro-
duced. 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 introduc-
tory poem followed by 419 songs celebrating the beauty, purity and compas-
sion 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 per-
formed.8 The songs reflect a wide range of sources. Some are based on tradi-
tional 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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262 Jackson
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 collabora-
tors.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 por-
traits 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 trans-
formed the devil’s image, turning it black as pitch (come pez) so that he ap-
peared mui feo e mui lixoso (“very ugly and disgusting”).12 The following day,
9 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).
10 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 re-
counts 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 re-
sponsibility 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.
11 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.
12 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 scrub-
bing 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 mira-
cle, 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 pul-
pit, 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 Vir-
gin. 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.

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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264 Jackson
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 super-
vises 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 bot-
tom (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 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 agree-
ment, 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 identi-
fied as the master sculptor and those standing behind him are surely his assis-
tants, because one of them holds a pannier for carrying mortar.17 The implica-
tion 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 con-
clude 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 im-
ágenes (Madrid, 1986), 108–9.

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266 Jackson
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 under-
drawing, 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 resem-
blance 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 place-
ment 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 reas-
sembled, 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 min-
iatura de Alfonso x el Sabio,” Alcanate: Revista de estudios alfonsíes 1 (1998–9): 59–83, 70.

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Figure 17.5 Miracle of the Pulpit in Siena, Cantiga 219, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale
Centrale Banco Rari 20, f. 93r (detail).
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 dis-
colouration 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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268 Jackson
Figure 17.6 Unfinished miniature of pulpit, Cantiga 219, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale
Centrale Banco Rari 20, f. 93r (detail).
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 (intar-
sia) by Nicola and his collaborators, and elements of the sculptures were em-
bellished with gold because records show that when the pulpit was being reas-
sembled 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 commis-
sion 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 Ibid., 335.
21 Ibid., 316 and 335.

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Figure 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
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 Baptis-
tery 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 evi-
dence that Bishop Fusconi played any part in the construction of the Sienese

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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270 Jackson
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 arrange-
ment 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 pul-
pit 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 mira-
cle 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, com-
posed 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 Canti-
gas 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 some-
time 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 acknowl-
edge that each cantiga has an existence and history independent of the manu-
scripts 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 moth-
er, Beatriz, was Frederick ii’s cousin). Laura Molina López has argued that Al-
fonso’s imperial ambitions are reflected in several cantigas set in Italy, includ-
ing 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 princi-
pal residence.32 Connie L. Scarborough has likewise posited that Alfonso x
csm 335 (Sicily). Cantigas in which Italian place names were employed solely for sake of
rhyme have been excluded.
31 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 Manu-
scripts of the ‘Cantigas de Santa Maria,’ ed. S. Parkinson (Oxford, 2000), 186–213; S. Parkin-
son 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 Collec-
tor,” 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.
32 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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272 Jackson
“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 in-
creasingly aware of its potential to express not only his personal attachment to
the Virgin Mary, but also her unwavering support for his sustained, yet ulti-
mately 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 self-
fashioning, of Alfonso x’s wish to proclaim his personal and spiritual aspira-
tions 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 Mar-
ian 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 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.
34 Miniatures of very poor quality added to the unfinished manuscript F, reveal a brief re-
surgence 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: tum-
bas, 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 Mira-
cles 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, “Canti-
gas de Santa María: fortuna de sus manuscritos,” 323–48.
35 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 Al-
though 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 Em-
peror, although the remaining three thwarted his ascent to the throne by lend-
ing 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 superin-
tended 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 unu-
sually well qualified to participate in any or all of the king’s intellectual under-
takings, 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 H. Salvador Martinez, Alfonso x, the Learned: A Biography, trans. O. Cisneros (Leiden,

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

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274 Jackson
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 mira-
cles, 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 mak-
ing 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, Ge-
noese and Sicilians, is the subject of one cantiga.45 These men were undoubt-
edly 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 min-
iatures of the csm and Italian paintings of a similar date, and Ana Domínguez
Rodríguez has perceived in certain miniatures an emphasis on Christ’s human-
ity and the Virgin’s identification with his suffering that is characteristic of
Franciscan piety.48
42 Salvador Martinez, Alfonso x, 60–1.

43 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 Ameijei-
ras, “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 bi-
nary 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 im-
age of the Mother of the Glorious King to place beside Her a figure of the loath-
some 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 with-
out 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 Renais-
sance (Philadelphia, 1990).

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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 un-
known 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 devot-
ed 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 scholar-
ship 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 manu-
scripts 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.

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Of Venerable Teachers and Boisterous Students 277
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 schol-
arship 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 contrib-
utes 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 hi-
erarchy of the authors that he cites in regard to their status and to the applica-
bility 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 im-
ages representing not only ancient pre-Christian and Christian auctores, but
increasingly also contemporary authors, and in time those writing in the ver-
nacular, reflecting an increased dissemination and a new appreciation of lit-
erature 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 So-
cial Context (Farnham, 2009).
5 The most comprehensive study on this topic remains A.J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Author-
ship. Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1988).
6 Commentarium in primo libro Sententiarum, prologue, quaestio iv. Doctoris seraphici S. Bon-
aventurae 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: Specu-
lum naturale, prologue, chapter xii, cols. 11–12.
8 On medieval author images, see for example: C. Meier, “Ecce auctor. Beiträge zur Ikonogra-
phie 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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278 Wimmer
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 representa-
tion of an Arabic scholar (Fig. 18.1). Set against a gold-leaf ground, seated cross-
legged, 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 appar-
ently 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
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. Volksspra-
chliche 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 Überle-
gungen 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.
9 Meier, “Ecce auctor”; Meier, “Das Autorbild.”
10 See for example: Meier, “Das Autorbild,” 502–3; Lutz, “Modelle der Kommunikation.”
11 On the question of where the manuscripts belonging to the “groupe Aristôte” were pro-
duced, 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 bib-
liographical references, see ibid., 336 and 366–7.
12 See ibid., 180; Meier, “Ecce auctor,” 359; Meier, “Das Autorbild,” 504–5.

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Figure 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
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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280 Wimmer
place, adding elements which unambiguously identify him as the Greek phi-
losopher. 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 be-
tween the manuscripts and other possible models common to both manu-
scripts 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 temp-
tations of female beauty (Fig. 18.2).14 On the left, in a two-storey palatial archi-
tecture, 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 dia-
logue 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 touch-
es its other end, perhaps, in accordance with some versions of the story, in ac-
knowledgement 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 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 with-
in 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,
15 “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.
16 “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.
17 For a reproduction of this initial, see Roux, Mondes en miniatures, 171.

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282 Wimmer
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 strik-
ingly 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 en-
counter 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, di-
rectly 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 gar-
ments 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 al-
kātib, the scribe, would have been represented. Astrological imagery was fre-
quently found not only in manuscripts but also on portable metalwork objects.
On a mamluk brass bowl, perhaps roughly contemporary with the Trésor man-
uscripts (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 il-
luminator 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 refer-
ence to a significant path of transmission by which Aristotelian philosophy,
18 This has previously been noted by Roux, who suggests that the illuminator must have
been “en contact avec le monde arabe.” Ibid., 180.
19 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.
20 On the bowl, see Ereditá dell’Islam: arte islamica in Italia (Venice, 1993), no. 174, 305–7.

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Figure 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
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 commen-
taries, in particular those of Averroes (Ibn Rušhd, d. 1192). Averroes remained
the most important commentator of Aristotle for most of the thirteenth cen-
tury 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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284 Wimmer
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 minia-
tures 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
22 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). An-
other 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 Ar-
istotle is depicted wearing a pilea cornuta, a hat usually marking out Jews.
23 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 col-
lection 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 usu-
ally 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 encyclope-
dia, 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, Biblio-
thèque 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 Aristotelesco-
dices: Die medialen Konsequenzen universitärer Lehr- und Lernpraxis (Cologne, 2018),
218–9 and 397.
24 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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Figure 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
Arts, see for example M. Grabmann, “Aristoteles im Werturteil des Mittelalters,” in Mitte-
lalterliches Geistesleben. Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Scholastik und Mystik, 3 vols.
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286 Wimmer
places Aristotle in the contempary social environment of his readers.25 Any

orientalising elements of his appearance are a reference to factors that con-
stitute 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 incompre-
hensible image of Aristotle have in the Trésor manuscript? Why would the au-
thor 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 Bru-
netto 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 ac-
cordance with his own particular knowledge, for no earthly man can
know everything.26
(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 Aristot-
le’s treatises, see Wimmer, Illustrierte Aristotelescodices, 201–36.
25 See Meier, “Das Autorbild,” 509; Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 11–12.
26 “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. Bar-
rette and S. Baldwin (New York and London, 1993), 1.

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Figure 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
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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288 Wimmer
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 indi-
cates that Cicero would have turned out to be as strange and exotic as his fel-
low 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 man-
uscript 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 Bru-
netto 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 teach-
ing 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 enam-
eled 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 rheto-
ric and law that has given rise to representing rhetoric not only with an a ttribute com-
monly 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 personifi-
zierten 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 Bru-
netto’s activity is highlighted which Bonaventure omitted from his definition:
Brunetto is a translator, the compiler of one of the very first encyclopedias de-
liberately 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 con-
text, 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 him-
self 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
28 See above, n. 6. Translation taken from J.A. Burrow, Medieval Writers and their Work: Mid-
dle English Literature 1100–1500 (Oxford and New York, 2008), 31.
29 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.
30 Brunetto Latini, Li livres dou Tresor, ii.1.

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290 Wimmer
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 contra-
diction to Brunetto’s humility topos, his self-avowed ‘mean wisdom,’ it empha-
sizes the compiler-translator’s considerable challenge and honours his
achievements.

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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 Jeru-
salem 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 par-
ents 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, Cor-
pus Christi College MS 410, the image accompanying this passage shows Jo-
seph 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. Stallings-
Taney (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,” Ar-
chivum 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:

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292 Bartal
Figure 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
The Paris Meditationes Vitae Christi and Female Franciscan Spirituality in Trecento Italy (Turn-
hout, 2009), 50, n. 2.

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Lost and Found in the ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi’ 293
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 Argu-
ments 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 Medita-
tiones 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. (Ox-
ford, 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 re-
cently 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 Illumi-
nated 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, Oppo-
sition 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 man-
ner,” 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. Pame-
la 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 four-
teenth century; see “A study of the illustrations in Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410:

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294 Bartal
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 ap-
pears 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 Jo-
seph’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 wom-
an 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,” (unpub-
lished 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 pittu-
ra 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 read-
er 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 (Manches-
ter, 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 Re-
naissance 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 ap-
pear 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 experi-
ence 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 read-
ing of an individual patron.
12 Caulibus, Meditations, 53.
13 Ibid., 60.

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296 Bartal
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 in-
tently 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 end-
ing the meditation: “Ask permission to leave, and after kneeling to receive a
blessing from the child Jesus, then from his mother, and afterwards from Jo-
seph, 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 occasion-
ally 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, “Pas-
sion 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.
16 Ibid., 55.
17 M. Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago and Lon-
don, 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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2 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 pro-
gramme 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 ex-
plicit in the Infancy and Passion cycles, which encourage the reader to contem-
plate the mysteries of the Incarnation by emphasizing Christ’s body and sacri-
fice. 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 new-
born 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.
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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298 Bartal
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, elevat-
ing 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

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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 medi-
tate 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 medita-
tions 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. 136v-
141r). The depicted cross on these miniatures extends beyond the frame, sug-
gesting 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 some-
times paired with images of the Virgin and Child, and thus could offer an op-
portunity 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 pres-
ence: his public works and his post-resurrection apparitions, which are unusu-
ally described in fourteen scenes in the mvc.29 MS 410 visually links the two
25 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.
26 Flora, “Fashioning the Passion”; Bartal, “Ducitur et Reducitur.”
27 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.
28 H. Belting, The Image and its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paint-
ings 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).
29 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 Contem-
plate 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 (Al-
dershot, 2004), 129–54.

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300 Bartal
cycles of miracles and apparitions by showing Christ in a limited and repeti-

tious 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 se-
quence 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 gar-
ment 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 Jew-
ish leaders and elders, whose disbelief and unwillingness to see Christ’s divin-
ity 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 sens-
es. Occasionally this exhortation is given fresh urgency when the text and im-
agery 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 in-
structions 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 stop-
ping and restarting the reading of the mvc. The practice of devotional medita-
tion 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). Af-
ter 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 simulta-
neously refer to the following section of text, which is not illustrated, describ-
ing 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 fa-
ther 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

31 Ibid., 62.

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302 Bartal
Figure 19.3 Christ before his Parents. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 31v
College, Oxford

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Figure 19.4 Christ before his Parents. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 45r
College, Oxford

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304 Bartal
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, de-
scribing 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 begin-
ning 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 misericordis-
sime, 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 emo-
tionally 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 hold-
ing 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.
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 fulfil-
ment of Christ’s promise and her final reunion with her son. The cycle of sepa-
ration 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 dili-
gence, 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 manu-
script, she, like Mary, can ascend to share Christ’s exultation and reside near
him in heaven leaving the physical world behind.
35 Ibid., 319.
36 The Poor Clare was to use the vivid accounts of Christ’s life to attain knowledge of his di-
vinity. 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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306 Bartal
Figure 19.5 The Virgin in Prayer. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 128v
College, Oxford

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Figure 19.6 Christ appears first to his Mother. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 154v
College, Oxford

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308 Bartal
Figure 19.7 Ascension. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410, f. 169v

College, Oxford

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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 ivo-
ries, my interests at the time coincided with his fourth love—that is after Byz-
antine, 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 collec-
tion (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 stand-
ing Virgin and Child now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, traces of the an-
gelic salutation, Ave Ma[ria gratia ple]na dominus te[cum], can still be deci-
phered 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 mé-
diévaux,” 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 dé-
cennies 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.

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310 Guérin
Figure 20.1 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 in-
stance 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 palaeo-
graphical bent, these are meagre offerings indeed.
While Gothic ivories might in general be an aliterate medium, one signifi-
cant 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, name-
ly 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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Ivory Booklets, Devotion in Cologne 311
still in the fourteenth century quotidian objects, as cheap paper was just be-
coming 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 Be-
haim’s (1180–1260) cotton-paper notebook is a rare witness to the sort of
ephemera commonly jotted down: shopping lists, letter drafts, recipes, astro-
logical calculations, and philosophical musings among other tantalizing tit-
bits.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 pre-
serves 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 géné-
rale,” 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,” Biblio-
thèque 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 (ac-
cessed 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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312 Guérin
fourteenth-century Chansonnière (Oxford, Bodleian MS Douce 308, ff. 140r-

250r): 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 en-
ticing 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 further-
more 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 Collégi-
ale de Saint-Aubain before being traded with the Société archéologique de Na-
mur 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 Annuncia-
tion 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 Boi-
leau, 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 mani-
eres 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 men-
tioned 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, eb-
ony, 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 evi-
dence supports a count of Namur once possessing this booklet.
10 F. Gori, Thesaurus Veterum Diptychorum Consularium et Ecclesiasticorum, 3 vols. (Flor-
ence, 1759), i: opp. 85, and for its now lost leather case, see opp. 79; cited in D. Gaborit-
Chopin, 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 pri-
vate 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 (tain-
ture) 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 concep-
tion, 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 William-
son. Yet the underlying assumption in the literature has been that ivory book-
lets 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 exam-
ined here, I suggest they are the result of the work of one atelier, over a genera-
tion, 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 depict-
ing 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 “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.
13 Lalou, “Les tablettes de cire médiévales,” 125–6.
14 Fully illustrated in Williamson and Davies, Medieval Ivory Carving, 1200–1550, no. 121.

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314 Guérin
even in two different locales, Paris and Cologne.15 In other words, that a cus-
tomer 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 Corona-
tion 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 attribu-
tion 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 book-
let 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 paint-
ings 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 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 oberrheinis-
chen Malerei im beginnenden 14 Jahrhundert,” Festschrift für Eberhard Haufstaegnl (Mu-
nich, 1961), 11–20; and H. Wentzel, “Ein Elfenbeinbüchlein zur Passionsandacht,” Wallraf-
Richartz-Jahrbuch 24 (1962): 193–212.
16 W. Wixom, “Twelve Additions to the Medieval Treasury,” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Mu-
seum of Art 59 (1972): 87–111, at 95–101. For the use of such curtains in manuscript illumi-
nation, 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.
17 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.
18 Images in Ivory, no. 40; R. Budde, Köln und seine Maler, 1300–1500 (Cologne, 1986), nos
1–10.
19 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 reso-
lution 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 re-
moved from the parish church of Toresund, in the Strängnäs municipal-
ity in Södermanland, about 50 km due west of Stockholm.21 It has long been
20 For the altarpiece wing, see also the Staten Historiska Museum’s online collection cata-
logue: http://www.historiska.se/data/?foremal=94191 (accessed 10.3.2017).
21 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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316 Guérin
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 or-
igin 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
early thirteenth-century seated Virgin and Child, also today at the State Historical Muse-
um (inv. 14300). Its earlier style and smaller scale (80 cm), however, do not suggest it was
part of the same work.
22 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 Devotional picture booklet (3v–4r). Cologne, c. 1330–40, ivory with polychro-
my, 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 Annuncia-
tion of remarkable quality (Fig. 20.5),24 which seems a slightly older sibling to
23 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).
24 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, Gul-
benkian Museum (inv. 349), see Guérin, Gothic Ivories, no. 6.

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318 Guérin
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 Sachsen-
Anhalt, 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 tabernac-
le in particular the wind-mill-like arrangement of the angel’s wings—a char-
acteristic also observed in the stained glass roundel of the Annunciation from
the St Stephen chapel at Cologne cathedral.26 Though compelling, the simi-
larities 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_Annuncia-
tion_-_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 carv-
ing, 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 Nazion-
ale (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 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).
28 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.
29 The Gothic Ivories Project documents at least three other examples of painted wax tab-
lets. 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).
30 For a discussion of this type of binding, see Williamson and Davies, Medieval ivory carv-
ing, 1200–1550, 146–7; and Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires médiévaux, no. 222 (mrr 429).

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320 Guérin
Figure 20.6 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 com-
parison with the figures painted on the Ravenna leaves. No fewer than five fig-
ures 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

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Figure 20.7 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 out-
lines 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 ac-
complished, 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 (poly-
chrome 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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322 Guérin
compositional similarities, the carving styles are not particularly close: the he-
roic 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 poly-
chromy and the two-dimensional paintings on the leaves indicates the same
artisan: I would tend towards the answer yes for the works here under consid-
eration, 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 tab-
lets 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 exam-
ples 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 Note the difference with the apparent lack of dark browns and black on statuettes of Pa-
risian ivory sculpture, noted in Levy and Cascio, “La polychromie,” 13.
32 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 Ivo-
ries,” in Images in Ivory, 47–61.
33 The courtly booklet in Namur, though completely without painting, shows the same dis-
position of recessed and non-recessed pages—in other words the surfaces facing the in-
terior 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 protec-
tive 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 de-
votional 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 ex-
perimental 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 de-
fined 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 Glori-
fication 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 sub-
stantial 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 mixed-
media composition, utterly unique in the corpus of Gothic ivories, shows
an artist with proficiency in two as well as three dimensions, innovatively
34 Berliner, “Arma Christi”; V. Schmidt, “Portable Polyptychs with Narrative Scenes: Four-
teenth-Century De luxe objects between Italian Panel Painting and French Arts somptua-
ires,” 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).
35 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.
36 J. Destrée, Catalogue des ivoires, des objets en nacre en os gravé et en cire peinte (Brussels,
1902), no. 19.

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324 Guérin
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 Lin-
sky 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 exam-
ined.39 The style of the carving on the interior of the leaves of the Linsky book-
let, the scenes of the standing Virgin and Child and the Coronation of the Vir-
gin, resembles that on the V&A quadriptych. The summary rendering of the
Christ Child, for example, on both objects bespeaks a shared economy of ges-
ture at this small scale (Fig. 20.7). The concertina format of the V&A quadrip-
tych 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 acros-
tic.41 But careful study of the polychromy and painting on the devotional book-
lets has demonstrated the creativity of the Cologne ateliers, keeping pace with
the growing market for illuminated manuscripts for private devotion in the
37 Note that the angels’ wings at the Glorification of the Virgin scene are also painted.
38 Glyn Davies suggested a French origin in the 2014 catalogue, and proposed that the poly-
chromy 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 pro-
gramme. 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.
39 Azurite is, however, present on the Aachen triptych. See Glanz und Grösse des Mittelalters,
no. 24.
40 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: fourteenth-
century 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.
41 NB: Collige et seriose lege primam omnis paragraphi litteram.

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Figure 20.8 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, al-
lowed 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. Fur-
thermore, the recurrent depiction of owners or users on the booklets, monas-
tics 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 individu-
als themselves were involved in the commissioning of these innovative forms,
merging text and image.

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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 produc-
tion. 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 pa-
per 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 so-
called ‘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 Ivo-
ries 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 un-
healthy 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 mé-
diévaux. ve–xve siècle (Paris, 2003), no. 38, 41–4, 46, 48, 50, 52, passim.

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Gothic Ivories Unhinged 327
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 cov-
er 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 God-
frey 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 mid-
fourteenth-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 recepta-
cles for relics in each corner (Épinal, Bibliothèque multimédia intercommu-
nale 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-centu-
ry style.
4 M.-P. Laffitte, “Faux ou pastiches: quelques reliures ‘à décor rétrospectif’ de la collection Bar-
rois,” 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. Colling-
ham, “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 post-
medieval 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 (Brit-
ish 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 Ange-
les, 1970), no. 70.
8 Trésors des bibliothèques de Lorraine, ed. P. Hoch (Paris, 1998), no. 4.

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328 Yvard
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 repur-
posing of the ivories took place. The writing tablets forming the covers of a
small, late fifteenth-century manuscript in Munich (Bayerische Staatsbiblio-
thek 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 ear-
lier 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 in-
triguing mixed-media creation was a casualty of World War ii, but judging
from the one known photograph, materials and fittings, this assemblage was
9 See the useful illustration in M. Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide

to Technical Terms (London, 1994), 7. Single diptych leaves: Bayonne, Musée Bonnat-
Helleu Inv. 446 (four channels); London, V&A Inv. A.63-1949 (five rough channels); Fon-
dation 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 up-
per 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 sec-
ond 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 neverthe-
less 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.
10 G. Davies and P. Williamson, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200–1550 (London, 2014), i: no. 82.
11 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 ar-
rangements, 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.
12 See U. Däberitz, I. Bajorat and R. Wilfroth, Verlustdokumentation der Gothaer Kunst-
sammlungen, 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 tab-

p
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 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
13 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 decora-
tive effect. See for instance Cologne, Museum Schnütgen Inv. B 160.
14 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 im-
ages 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 medi-
eval 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 refer-
ences; É. du Méril, “De l’usage non interrompu jusqu’à nos jours des tablettes de cire,” Re-
vue 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.
15 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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330 Yvard
single tablets have survived in large numbers. These tablets are easily recognis-
able 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 sty-
lus.17 Most surviving ivory writing tablets present one surface carved with figu-
ral 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 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.
16 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.
17 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 writ-
ing 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
“Recueil bernardin,” in Saint Bernard et le monde cistercien, ed. L. Pressouyre and T.N.
Kinder (Paris, 1992), no. 86.
18 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 secu-
lar ivories (R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), i: 432–45), while Ber-
nard 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 re-
cently went against this preconception (Davies and Williamson, Medieval Ivory Carvings,
i: 346).
19 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 in-
ner tablets.
20 Parchment hinges and spine: Namur, Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois-
Trésor d’Oignies (TreM.a) Inv. 29. Del Marmol noted in 1860: “Toutes les feuilles sont réu-
nies par une bande de parchemin bleu et or collée au dos de celle-ci” (Del Marmol, “Tab-
lettes 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.
21 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. Jahrhun-
dert,” Lüneburger Blätter 15/16 (1965): 21–70 (esp. 21–31).

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332 Yvard
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 Bous-
manne 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 unprece-
dented opportunity for viewing and comparing the backs and sides of numer-
ous 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
22 “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.
23 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 Victo-
ria 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 parch-
ment into place. The technique bears some resemblance to a system described
by Gerlach as “frequently used” in the Middle Ages for wooden tablets of me-
dium 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 writ-
ing 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 bro-
ken 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 tab-
let, the two incisions in the thickness of the raised border on the right hand-
side 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 in-
ner 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 informa-
tion 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 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.
25 Gerlach, “Ein Lüneburger Wachstafelbuch,” 29–30, Fig. 7.
26 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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334 Yvard
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

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 re-
cording 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 sin-
gle 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 ascer-
tain 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 per-
fectly 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 In hindsight, it would have been useful to record this information in the Gothic Ivories
Project entries.
28 The following figures are based on an examination of the photographs of the tablets’ re-
verse 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.
29 Out of twenty-six examples with clear traces of hinges, fifteen are to the right and eleven
to the left.
30 Twenty at the front versus eleven at the back, out of the thirty-one examples viewable
online.
31 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 Saint-
Denis 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.
32 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 […].”
33 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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336 Yvard
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 tab-
lets 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 dou-
ble-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 illumi-
nators 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 paint-
ings seem contemporary, possibly pointing to Cologne, and to the second quar-
ter 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 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 (Lon-
don, 2010), no. 3, 5, 6.
35 On this object, see Bousmanne, “Carnet à écrire.” The carved sides now face inwards, the
result of a later re-arrangement.
36 See Büll, “Wachs als Beschreib- und Siegelstoff Wachs,” Fig. 630. Measurements: 145 × 190 ×
60 mm.
37 See S. Guérin, “Ivory booklets, devotion in Cologne,” 315–17 in the present volume.
38 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 carv-
ings 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 cen-
tury, 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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338 Yvard
onto the ivory were certainly added in the early fifteenth century.40 They de-
pict 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 sur-
vived, 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 (presum-
ably 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 fifteenth-
century Germany. This plain ivory leaf was probably once in a similar setting to
the Munich example, its function also having changed from notepad to devo-
tional 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 in-
tention, 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 ma-
terialised by the famous Book-Altar of Philip the Good, pairing a diptych, though
not made of ivory, and a prayer book (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbiblio-
thek, Cod. 1800; Flanders, c. 1430 and c. 1450).45 As both the book and diptych
40 Their layout indicates that they were specifically painted for this purpose. See F.M. Kam-
mel, G.U. Grossman, et al., Spiegel der Seligkeit: Privates Bild und Frömmigkeit im Spätmit-
telalter (Nuremberg, 2000), no. 103.
41 Not currently on the Gothic Ivories website.
42 Two incisions in the inner raised border on both sides, evidence of the type of hinge de-
scribed above, allow us to determine which side was the recto and which the verso, which
also matches the narrative chronology of the scenes.
43 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 be-
tween 80 and 100 mm high.
44 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 piec-
es. The bulk of them are dated to the fourteenth century (search conducted on 2.9.2018).
45 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 nine-
teenth-century binding by Léon Gruel.
Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, Inv. 10.39: writing tablet; upper cover of a nineteenth-
century binding by Léon Gruel.
Cracow, Czartoryski Museum, Inv. 2387: relief; upper cover of a post-medieval metal-
work binding inset with gems and cameos.
Gotha, Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein, Elfenbein Nr. 6 (Fig. 21.2): pair of writing tab-
lets; 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 inser-
tion 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 up-
per 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
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).
46 This list was obtained thanks to a search on the Gothic Ivories website (accessed 2.9.2018).
47 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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340 Yvard
at Sotheby’s, London, June 23, 1992, lot 84, and the existence of three other nearly-
identical pairs of panels (not connected to bindings), one formerly in the Kofler-
Truniger 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 post-
medieval binding, likely a nineteenth-century creation.
48 Schnitzler, Volbach, Bloch, Skulpturen, i: 29, no. S.89.

49 Maurice Kann sale, Paris, December 5, 1910, lot 223.

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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 master-
pieces 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 identi-
fied 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 de-
lighted 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 Ox-
ford, 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., En-
luminures italiennes, 32.

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342 Heck
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 antipho-
nary 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 Gon-
zaga 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 pre-
sent 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 V&A Museum, inv. 817–1894; an original identification as St Catherine was corrected in

the 2006 publications cited above.
8 Musée Marmottan, Wildenstein collection, no. 64.
9 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.
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 Renais-
sance Manuscripts, Art and Architecture, ed. S. L’Engle and G.B. Guest (London and Turn-
hout, 2006), 111–24; for the present miniature see 117–19.
11 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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Monks and Ants in the Presence of Death 343
Figure 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
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 giv-
ing 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 radiat-
ing 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 fig-
ure, 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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344 Heck
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 composi-
tion 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 gen-
eral 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 Chris-
tian 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 fur-
thered 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 re-
peated in the Latin Physiologus and in numerous bestiaries, in particular dur-
ing 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 ver-
sions 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 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 Decem-
ber 2000.
14 E. Kirschbaum and W. Braunfels, ed., Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, 8 vols.
(Freiburg, 1968–76), i: 110–11.
15 See the excellent internet site Animaliter. Tiere in der Literatur des Mittelalters, which in-
cludes 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.
16 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.
17 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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346 Heck
Bestiary, the Bestiaire divin of Guillaume le Clerc, and Pierre de Beauvais’ Bes-
tiaire, 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 in-
cluded 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 ani-
mals are not without intelligence:
18 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 (Par-
is, 1988), 95; Guillaume le Clerc, Le Bestiaire, ed. R. Reinsch, coll. Altfranzösische Biblio-
thek, 14 (Leipzig, 1890; reprint Geneva, 1970), verses 871–960, pp. 259–64; Pierre de Beau-
vais, 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.
19 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.
20 Lilienfeld, Stiftsbibliothek MS 151, ff. 25v and 135v. See H. Douteil, Die ‘Concordantiae cari-
tatis’ 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 Pe-
ter and Paul, but this has no connection with the motif in the present miniature; i: 394–
395d, and ii: pl. p. 608.
21 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 Nat-
ural 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 epi-

sode, 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 rela-
tions bury dead ants in the capsules of wheat, just as men bury their par-
ents 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 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.
23 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.
24 Aelian, Book 5, 49; p. 135. (Scholfield, i: 347).
25 Aelian, Book 6, 43; p. 162. (Scholfield, ii: 63).

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348 Heck
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 system-
atic 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, es-
pecially 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 ap-
pears at the very beginning of the work, as part of the first book’s first property:
26 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.
27 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).
28 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.
29 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.
30 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 propo-

sitions 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 Citation translated from the French, in Chène, “Des fourmis,” 336.

32 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 avail-
able at www.e-rara.ch, the portal for digitised printed works of Swiss libraries.
33 This positive symbolism is consistent across the four first books of the Formicarius. How-
ever, in the fifth, which addresses sorcery and witchcraft, ants stand for the faithful vic-
tims of devils and then for devils themselves. For the role of the Formicarius in the con-
ceptualization of witchcraft at the end of the Middle Ages, see those works cited in Chène,
2000, especially those by Catherine Chène herself.
34 There is a similar verse in Luke 9:60.

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350 Heck
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 di-
rects his eyes and his prayers skywards, towards the Divine Being in the man-
dorla.35 God the Father’s hand gestures reflect these two reactions. As has al-
ready 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 celes-
tial domain, as though God is seeking to remind Martin of the words of Mat-
thew 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 oc-
cupy 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 se-
rene 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 en-
riched 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 Mag-
nus, or the very convincing passage in Nider, or even a re-reading of Pliny en-
hanced 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 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.
36 See F.O. Büttner, Imitatio Pietatis. Motive der christlichen Ikonographie als Modelle zur
Verähnlichung (Berlin, 1983).
37 The necrophoric behaviour of ants and their creation of ‘cemeteries’ have been the sub-
ject 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 dis-
crepancy 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.

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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 Rid-
ware (d. c. 1327) and his successors the right to hold a weekly market and an-
nual 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 neverthe-
less obvious, and is likely to have been significant given the drawing’s incorpo-
ration 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 Para-

digm: The Matter of Sealing in Medieval Thought and Praxis (1050–1400),” in Good Impres-
sions: 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. Wrottes-
ley, “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 Muni-
ments of the Gresley Family (London, 1895), xi–xii, 112–19; J. Nichols, The History and Antiqui-
ties 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 353
Figure 23.1 London, British Library Egerton MS 3041, f. 8v


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354 Luxford
Figure 23.2 London, British Library Egerton MS 3041, f. 8v (detail)


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Figure 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)
qualifies as a reproduction in the useful terms proposed by Jonathan Alexan-

der: 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 manu-
script (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 prelimi-
nary 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 Medi-
eval 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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356 Luxford
(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 char-
ters 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 rou-
tinely 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 rela-
tion to its manuscript and some other images and descriptions of seals. Effec-
tively, 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 sim-
ply 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 in-
vestigation of the cartulary’s other images, as this drawing was evidently con-
ceived 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 draw-
ing has not suffered. Its height and width are more than half those of the text-
block, 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 draw-
ing 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 in-
tended for the blank space. While the royal name on folio 8v is complete, draw-
ings 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 rig-
id, 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 illumina-
tion, 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 siè-
cles (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. Bedos-
Rezak, “Image as Patron: Convention and Invention in Fourteenth-Century France,” in Pa-
trons 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 cush-
ion 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 inscrip-
tion. 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 cas-
tellated 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 em-
broidery 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 exam-
ples in window tracery and microarchitecture further north and west, includ-
ing 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 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 Man-
uscripts 1285–1385, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 5, 2 vols. (Lon-
don, 1986), nos 26, 40.
11 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 draw-
ing, 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 simulta-
neously scaling up the composition, elongating the figure and throne and add-
ing 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. Ed-
ward 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 dis-
tinct 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 hypoth-
esis would be that the iconography was only meant to be generically appropri-
ate to the document it accompanies, just as images of kings in chronicles,
12 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.
13 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.
14 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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360 Luxford
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 view-
ers 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 paral-
leled on seals from more important institutions, including those of various
bishops.16 As a number of documents in the cartulary were issued and wit-
nessed 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 need-
ed for its prestige, and its longevity was such that it had already been in use for
15 W. de Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Mu-
seum, 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.
16 See e.g. Victoria History Worcester, plate i. A good parallel in a seal for the heavy architec-
ture 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 Chival-
ry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200–1400, ed. J.J.G. Alexander and P. Binski (London, 1987),
115.

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Figure 23.4 London, British Library Egerton MS 3041, f. 5r


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362 Luxford
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 in-
tended users of any cartulary were people already familiar with documents,
and thus familiar with the Great Seal’s appearance. And thirdly, this reproduc-
tion of the seal’s majesty image forms part of a composition whose other com-
ponent is a charter issued on behalf of Edward ii to the man who commis-
sioned the cartulary.18 The charter establishes a prominent, remunerative,
perpetual entitlement. Thomas had every reason to be proud of this royal en-
dorsement 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 recall-
ing 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 pecu-
liarity 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, tran-
scripts of royal documents in a fourteenth-century abbatial register from Glas-
tonbury 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 The introduction of the sceptre on Henry iii’s third Great Seal in 1259 was noted by con-
temporary 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).
18 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 com-
mon 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.
19 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 minia-
ture 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 Ed-
ward 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), in-
cluding the fact that the original instrument had been sealed with the com-
mon 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 semanti-
cally 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 Sher-
borne 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 corre-
sponds 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 Lateinische Schriftquellen, iii: 345, 347, 350–1 (nos 6372, 6388, 6404); and see in general the
section on “Siegelkunde,” 344–51 (nos 6369–6404).
21 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.
22 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.
23 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 Malmes-
bury Abbey).
24 J. Berenbeim, Art of Documentation: Documents and Visual Culture in Medieval England
(Toronto, 2015), 73–101.

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364 Luxford
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’ mise-
en-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 inscrip-
tions 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 cartu-
lary “wretyne mad and bownd by ye handys of mayster Thomas Anlaby,” prob-
ably 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 circum-
ferential 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 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.
26 This quotation is on folio 143v. See in general F. Wormald and P. Giles, Descriptive Cata-
logue of the Additional Illuminated Manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam Museum, 2 vols. (Cam-
bridge, 1982), i: 317–19.
27 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 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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366 Luxford
Figure 23.6 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 enti-
tlements 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 dis-
puted 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 dis-
puted 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 Rich-
ard Scrope in a way that would make his claim to the arms more appealing.
Essentially, the solemnly sealed documents were produced to make a senti-
mental 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 manu-
script 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 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.”
29 See e.g. S. Heslop, “Seals and Sealing,” in Leiston Abbey Cartulary and Butley Priory Char-
ters, ed. R. Mortimer (Woodbridge, 1979), 47–9 (repairs); E.A. New, Seals and Sealing Prac-
tices (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 impres-
sions of the Great Seal specifically).
30 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.
31 The Controversy between Sir Richard Scrope and Sir Robert Grosvenor in the Court of Chiv-
alry, ed. N.H. Nicolas, 2 vols. (London, 1832), i: 101; ii: 281–2.

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368 Luxford
the service of Ridware interests. Fundamentally, it marked out an important

document and attested the existence of an original, sealed charter in the Rid-
ware 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 view-
ers to medieval images were broadly and routinely of this nature, and even to-
day are often more effectively felt than understood.

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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 anteced-
ents 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 clarifi-
cation 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 Univer-
sity 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 repro-
duced, 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

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370 Gameson
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 illu-
mination during the next generation, the last dated work in his style being
accomplished in the 1460s.3 Certain coincidences in career pattern, patron-
age and oeuvre raise the possibility that he may have been identical with the
documented illuminator, Jean Haincelin; however, in the absence of signa-
tures 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 book-
producing partnerships in later medieval Paris,5 which in turn makes it impos-
sible 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. Alexan-
der, J.H. Marrow and L.F. Sandler, The Splendor of the Word. Medieval and Renaissance Illumi-
nated 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. Ains-
worth (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 Manu-
scripts (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, “Work-
shop,” 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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Sin and Salvation in the Hours of Jean de Dunois 371
trade—beyond the fact that these will have been continuously evolving.6 In-
deed, 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 art-
ist; however, for ease of reference, the designation ‘Dunois Master’ will be re-
tained 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 Du-
nois 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 sta-
tus 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 noth-
ing 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”; Reyn-
olds, “Workshop”; and Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois.” Examples of borrowings from the back-
ground 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 Illumi-
nations. Ten Centuries of Book Production in the Medieval West (Turnhout, 2005), no. 90); Lon-
don, 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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372 Gameson
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 high-
ranking 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 chamber-
lain 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 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 particu-
lar is the fact that in that year Prigent made payment for a box and a leather pouch for
Horae: Byrne, “Coëtivy,” 249–51.
10 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 order-
ing 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.
11 This transfer of patronage is evaluated by E. Inglis, Jean Fouquet and the Invention of
France (New Haven and London, 2011), 210–11.
12 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 Li-
brary MS Richardson 31 (Decameron); London, BL Yates Thompson MS 3. In addition, frag-
ments 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 nation-
al 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 rap-
idly 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 Eng-
lish, 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 oc-
cupation.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 par-
ticular 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 M. Rolland, Dunois, compagnon de Jeanne d’Arc (Châteaudun, 1968).

14 G. du Fresne de Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles vii, 5 vols. (Paris, 1881–91), ii: 147.
15 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 im-
mediately in front of Charles vii.

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374 Gameson
that was drawn up in 1468.21 The fifty or so books in question may seem a mod-
est 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; how-
ever, 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 prince-
ly collection of the age, embracing theology, devotion, spiritual observance
and morality as well as history, geography, political science, chivalry and ro-
mance. 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 ma-
terial 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 Du-
nois is beyond question for his arms appear as an original part of the decora-
tion 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 Calendar, January, British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (Dunois Hours), f. 1r

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376 Gameson
Figure 24.2 Obsecro te, British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (Dunois Hours), f. 22v

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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 Janu-
ary (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, beseech-
ing 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 em-
blazoned, 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 iconogra-
phy, are paralleled in other Horae from the same atelier—as one would expect
of a popular devotional vade-mecum produced by a busy commercial opera-
tion 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 con-
trary, if anything, it lent them familiarity and hence enhanced their authentic-
ity and resonance as depictions of their subjects. At the same time, the manu-
script 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 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, Of-
fice of the Dead, and Suffrages.
26 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 Janu-
ary miniature of the Très Riches Heures (f. 1v), the archetype of the scene.
27 See note 7.

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378 Gameson
Figure 24.3 Psalm 6 (first Penitential Psalm), British Library Yates Thompson MS 3
(Dunois Hours), f. 157r

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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 sup-
plication 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 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 sepa-
rated 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 Janu-
ary 1447, implying that work on the volume was then well advanced, hence the unortho-
dox 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).
29 F. 269v: Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois,” 64 — recognising the likely real-world allusion.
30 Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André MS 2, f. 9v: conveniently reproduced in juxtaposition
with the relevant image in the Dunois Hours in ibid., 64.
31 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 pro-
totype in Dunois — above all the two figures confined within a prison — were specific to
that commission.
32 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’ apa-
thy in relation to fighting the English as the principal motive.

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380 Gameson
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 heav-
en, it also had the additional resonance of counteracting the special relation-
ship 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 Of-
fice 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 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.
34 Le Recouvrement de Normendie par Berry, herault du roy, §75, in Narratives of the Expulsion
of the English from Normandy, ed. Stevenson, 315.
35 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 enlumi-
nures 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.
36 George was patron saint of the Order of the Garter. His feast was elevated to one of pri-
mary importance on 4 January 1416, in the aftermath of Azincourt, and his supposed sup-
port 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 (ap-
parently 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 Me-
dieval and Early Modern Studies 27 (1997): 317–40, and J. Stratford, “St George and St Den-
is,” The Battle of Agincourt, ed. A. Curry and M. Mercer (New Haven and London, 2015),
50–62.
37 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 sec-
ond 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 tan-
dem, 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 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.
39 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 in-
terior 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.
40 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 Inkuna-
beln 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 varia-
tions): 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.
41 ‘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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382 Gameson
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 vo-
yeur akin to David himself. The physical juxtaposition of Bathsheba with Luxu-
ria’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 embla-
zoned 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 prompt-
ly 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 supplica-
tion, the Lord has received my prayer. Let all my enemies be ashamed and ex-
ceedingly 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 F. 172r. “Hunc Psalmum fecit dauid′ quando peccauit peccato luxurie cum bersabee ux-
ore.” 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.
43 Ff. 172r and 172v.
44 F. 157r: Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois,” 54.
45 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).
46 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

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384 Gameson
Figure 24.5 Office of the Dead, British Library Yates Thompson MS 3 (Dunois Hours),
f. 201v

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St Michael and the Devil for possession of a dead man’s soul are common ma-
terial 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 de-
clares: “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 de-
mon 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 permit-
ting 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 immediate-
ly following Obsecro te and O Intemerata, the two Marian prayers that are
47 E.g. Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery MS Mayer 12001, f. 164r (R.P. Monks, “An Unusual Epito-
me 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).
48 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 re-
lated 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.
49 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 (Her-
mann, Westeuropaïschen Handschriften, 210, pl. lx(6)).
50 “Circumdederunt me dolores mortis et pericula inferni inuenerunt me. Sperantem in
domino misericordia circumdabit;” “Lubricus fuit;” “Sinite illam; iustum et impium iudi-
cabit dominus.” “Penituit et elemosinam dedit.” The cadaver’s two sentences are quota-
tions from Psalm 114:3 and 31:10 respectively.

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386 Gameson
Figure 24.6 Deus propitius esto michi peccatori, British Library Yates Thompson MS 3
(Dunois Hours), f. 32v

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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 Di-
vine), 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 beg-
ging, “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 de-
fend 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 circum-
stances. 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 regu-
larly involved in military combat.
The illumination that introduces Deus propitius esto (Fig. 24.6), distin-
guished 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 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.
52 Versions printed by V. Leroquais, Les Livres d’heures manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nation-
ale, 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.
53 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: Rey-
naud, “Heures de chancelier Guillaume Jouvenel,” ill. 7) — which, lacking not only any

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388 Gameson
the framed area appear the apocalyptic Christ, the company of heaven (fore-
most 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 ar-
mour under a surcoat emblazoned with his arms, he kneels at a draped prie-
dieu 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 under-
stood 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
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.
54 Other artists occasionally used the conceit in relation to differently-designed Last Judge-
ments: 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 some-
times 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.
55 A point underlined by the less positive tone of some other broadly contemporary inter-
pretations 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 as-
pects 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 fun-
damental 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 after-
life. It permitted a layman or woman to establish and maintain a personal rela-
tionship 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 facili-
tate 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
Kneeling in the left-hand margin beside the miniature is the patron, the same well-
dressed 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 re-
appears 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.
56 Just as the depictions of the massacre of the innocents (f. 104v, bas-de-page) and the be-
trayal of Christ (f. 120r) are likely to have particular poignancy for a lieutenant-general
who had temporarily schemed against his monarch in 1440.
57 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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390 Gameson
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 illumi-
nation 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, Lou-
is, 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 F. 165r for Psalm 51. “Hunc Psalmum fecit Dauid quando peccauit peccato yre et fecit oc-
cidi uriam.”
59 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 pec-
caui nimis contra legem dei mei […]” with a miniature of a laywoman being shriven
(f. 19v).
60 By no means all depictions of the Last Judgement took the spiritual story thus to fulfil-
ment: 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 […]”).
61 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).
62 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 recog-
nise the right of either side in the Hundred Years War, while casualties and col-
lateral 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 undergo-
ing confession shortly before an anticipated battle indicates how keenly the
threat was felt).68
63 See, in general, F.H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1975). More spe-
cific 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.).
64 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 Knight-
hood in France during the Hundred Years War (Cambridge, 2013).
65 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.
66 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.
67 Rubric on f. 165r: hunc Psalmum fecit david quando peccavit peccato yre et fecit occidi uri-
am. Pilate: f. 150r.
68 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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392 Gameson
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 manu-
script seems highly unlikely. Indeed, perhaps the single most important point
to grasp about the Dunois Hours is its appropriateness for a high-ranking mili-
tary man. Whether or not Jean actually used it on a daily basis—and the discol-
ouring 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 work-
ing 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 indi-
cates 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
c onscienciam suam confessione mundaverat, arma penitencie sumpsit et non erat tunc
parcitas nisi solum parcitas sacerdotum.”
69 As Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois,” 15–16, believed, leading him to suggest that this volume,
too, was commissioned for Dunois by Charles d’Orléans.
70 See Châtelet, “Heures de Dunois,” 15.
71 Cropping for the current s. xvii binding has clearly reduced the stained areas. The han-
dling that lies behind the weathering in question is, of course, impossible to date; never-
theless, 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).
72 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. Prayer-
books 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 in-
sights into social, religious and cultural history, not to mention women’s his-
tory, their relevance to soldiers is less frequently emphasised. Yet this is a mis-
apprehension, 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 stand-
ing both politically and spiritually.74 The Dunois Hours, along with the Hours
of Admiral Coëtivy and the slightly earlier and better-known Hours of Mar-
shall Boucicaut, are the tip of an iceberg of Horae for military men whose sig-
nificance as such has yet to be fully recognised. They were the individual com-
plement 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 en-
couraging relatives to pray for them, reducing their time in Purgatory (the im-
ages 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 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 ques-
tion (now in my wife’s possession) automatically falls open at the service for the Burial of
the Dead.
74 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.
75 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 unu-
sual miniature heading the Office of the Dead depicts a pitched battle between two ar-
mies of foot soldiers, dead bodies littering the ground (private collection, f. 136v: Sotheby’s

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394 Gameson
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 restrain-
ing 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
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).
76 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.

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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, inter-
rogate them for every indication that might show how multiple, independent
hands contributed to any work, how elements might be contributed at differ-
ent 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 pur-
poses. 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 to-
day 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.

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396 Watson
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 pro-
gramme 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. (Lon-
don, 2011), 368–73, no. 65. I am glad to be able to thank John Lowden for his generous re-
sponse to enquiries in the course of compiling this catalogue. Thanks are due to Jane Ru-
therston, 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. Ap-
prenticeships 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. Vanwijns-
berghe, 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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Harreteau and His Unfinished Book of Hours 397
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, con-
fident 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 differ-
ent time scales and in very different environments, from aristocratic house-
holds to cramped studios, and from single major commissions to serial produc-
tion, 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 ad-
vanced 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 considera-
tions demonstrate that miniatures drawn by one artist were illuminated by
another.6 However, it is with unfinished miniatures in manuscripts that the ini-
tial 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 deco-
ration and images. From the mid-1480s, such works were produced in great
quantities. As is well known, it took some decades before the established man-
uscript 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 mi-
nor customising at the point of sale.7 The surviving papers of the celebrated
Paris libraire, André Le Musnier (d. 1475), document in wonderful detail as-
pects of how the trade was organised. They show, for example, that manu-
scripts, 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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398 Watson
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 dif-
ficult 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 indica-
tions 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 illumina-
tors but representing a corpus used collectively; such patterns may have been
“uncoloured drawings without notations, uncoloured drawings that had col-
our notes, completed miniatures […] perhaps even coloured images intended
8 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. Manu-
scripts and their Makers: Commercial book producers in medieval Paris, 1200–1500, 2 vols.
(Turnhout, 2000), ii: 43.
9 D. Vanwijnsberghe, ‘Moult bons et notables’. L’enluminure tournaisienne à l’époque de Rob-
ert Campin (1380–1430) (Dudley MA, 2007), 35.
10 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 de-
sign, 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, oth-
ers 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 il-
luminators 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 draw-
ings, 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 Harret-
eau in the sixteenth century; it was acquired by the V&A in 1993. Though unfin-
ished, 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 min-
iature 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 T. Kren, “The importance of patterns in the emergence of a new style of Flemish manu-
script illumination after 1470,” Manuscripts in Transition: Recycling manuscripts, texts and
images, ed. B. Dekeyzer and J. van der Stock (Leuven, 2005), 357–77.
12 Miniatures from a series of Rouen Books of Hours of the late fifteenth century are pub-
lished in R. Watson, The Playfair Hours. A late-fifteenth century manuscript from Rouen
(London, 1984).
13 C. Rabel, “Le Maître des Échevins de Rouen,” Revue de l’art 84 (1989): 48–60.
14 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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400 Watson
The manuscript was perhaps retained by a bookseller ready for rapid custom-
izing when customers, or assistants with the necessary skills, presented them-
selves; 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 adver-
tisements 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 move-
ment to overthrow the Republic.16 The binding was an act of homage to a Cath-
olic 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. Hind-
man, M. Camille, N. Rowe and R. Watson (Evanston, IL, 2001). The background is dis-
cussed 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).

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Figure 25.1 Folio with completed border and completed integrated miniature of St Mark.
London, V&A MSL/1993/2, f. 16v

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402 Watson
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 pat-
ronising 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 com-
plained 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 cruci-
fixi), 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 ar-
guas 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 The Grand Robert dictionary, Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue fran-

çaise 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. Grei-
mas 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 fran-
çais: 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.
18 Leonardo on Painting, ed. M. Kemp (New Haven and London, 1989), 15–16.
19 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 pa-
triarchs 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 bet-
ter 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 to-
gether. Throughout the manuscript are small initials of a kind that were de-
vised 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 letter-
shape sketched in with brushed gold. In this manuscript, it seems that the rec-
tangle 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, ef-
fort to make to the manuscript useable, and a few of the spaces reserved for ini-
tials 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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404 Watson
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 Gos-
pel pericopes for Luke, Mathew and Mark (the passage from John the Evange-
list’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 Vir-
gin, 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 minia-
tures. 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 parch-
ment. Mark on the other hand is completely finished, with features carefully
built up with a multitude of small hatched strokes using several colours; cheek-
bones, eyebrows, beard and moustache are carefully constructed (Fig. 25.1).
The background of a mottled grey gives the small image an element of lumi-
nosity. 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 high-
lights; 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 minia-
tures 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 pig-
ment 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 gro-
tesques included), which are quite finished—their contribution thus came af-
ter 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 land-
scape backgrounds, of a kind totally conventional in Rouen and other manu-
scripts, 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 mod-
elled 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 presum-
ably 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 single-
ton (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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406 Watson
Figure 25.2 Suffrage for St Barbara. London, V&A MSL/1993/2, f. 41v


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Figure 25.3 Adoration of the Magi. London, V&A MSL/1993/2, f. 53v


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408 Watson
Figure 25.4 The Annunciation. London, V&A MSL/1993/2, f. 18v


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Figure 25.5 Death figure greeting three horsemen. London, V&A MSL/1993/2, f. 80v

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410 Watson
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 prepar-
ing 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 meth-
od. 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 Harret-
eau image to be assumed.22
The full-page image for David’s view of Bathsheba bathing has an incom-
plete 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 draw-
ing 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 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 manu-
scrits à peintures en France, 1440–1520 (Paris, 1993), 297–300). They also appear in manu-
scripts 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).
22 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 re-
mains 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 illumina-
tion, 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 indi-
cate 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 See, for instance, Madrid, Biblioteca Real MS Res. 192, described in A. Dominguez Rodri-
guez, 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 composi-
tion (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 illumi-
nated manuscripts, held at New York Public Library, ed. C.R. Morey (New York, 1933), no. 119.
24 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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412 Watson
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 ele-
ments and accomplished before work on integrated miniatures and half-page
miniatures had got very far, it seems more likely that the campaigns were car-
ried out by different people or groups of people over time, perhaps reflecting
different phases of ownership within the book trade. The drawings for the full-
page miniatures can only have been an independent contribution, since they
provided little guidance for the illuminator; it seems most likely that the fin-
ished distant townscapes in the Bathsheba scene and the scene of horsemen
facing a death figure were done by another specialist. The frequently cited ex-
ample 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, short-
ly before 1475 paid 16 écus to André Le Musnier for the services of two appren-
tices who turned out to be incompetent—il[s] n’estoient pas abilles pour gaign-
er 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 unsat-
isfactory, Robert could dismiss Simon ([…] in quod casu quo dicto magistro Rob-
erto non placeret servicium dicti Simoni Bourbuti, […] possit […] Robertus eum-
dem 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 cate-
gory separate from apprentices or journeymen) who refused to work as he in-
structed. 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 re-
sponsible 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.

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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 min-
ing processes, this article focuses instead on the view it affords into subter-
ranean 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 view-
er. 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 sub-
jects 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 re-
lationships 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 Kanzi-
onales,” 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 Gra-
ham, 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 Refor-
mation,” in From Hus to Luther: Visual Culture in the Bohemian Reformation (1380–1620), ed.
K. Horníčková and M. Šroněk (Turnhout, 2016), 281–304.

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Subterranean Space in the Kutná Hora Cantional 415
Figure 26.1 Mining, processing and sale of ore, Kutná Hora Cantional, Vienna, Österrei-
chische Nationalbibliothek Mus. Hs. 15501, f. 1v
© önb, Vienna

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416 Donkin
religious s ignificance, the manuscripts make a distinctive contribution to un-

derstanding 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 win-
dows 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 subterra-
nean spaces, as does the mining scene in the early sixteenth-century German
translation of Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque fortune, set within a single tun-
nel.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 Mitte-
lalters,” 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 stretch-
es 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 fur-
ther. 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 tun-
nels. 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 under-
ground, 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 semi-
circular 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 cross-
section 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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418 Donkin
Cantional can be compared more closely to the frontispiece of a legal manu-

script, 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 cen-
tre is occupied by a mining landscape; while the bottom represents subterra-
nean 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 de-
pictions of mining activity in chorographical works, although again distinc-
tions 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 Howev-
er, unlike the Cantional, it includes no activities above ground, not even repre-
senting its surface. In contrast, most other sixteenth-century depictions posi-
tion 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 inter-
est 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 buck-
ets 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 Il-
luminated 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.

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Figure 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))
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 subterra-
nean space.14 However, they do operate in a different way. In the Cosmograph-
ia, since the foreground of the scene is above ground on the level, we are look-
ing 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. Hol-
länder, “Kommentare und Notizen zur Bildgeschichte des Bergbaus,” in Erkenntnis, Er-
findung, 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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420 Donkin
s ubterranean space is positioned entirely below ground. The relationship be-

tween 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 subter-
ranean 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 differ-
ent 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 look-
ing 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,” Nun-
cius 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 empiri-
cism and speculation,” in Vom Objekt zum Bild: Piktorale Prozesse in Kunst und Wissen-
schaft, 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 cen-
tury, 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 dis-
cuss 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 gold-
mine.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 cru-
cifixion is similarly positioned, but the bottom third of the composition con-
sists 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 frontis-
piece has been compared in general terms to that of a Last Judgement.27 Cer-
tainly 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. Mac-
Donald, H.N.B. Ridderbos and R.M. Schlusemann (Groningen, 1998), 133–43; V. Hone-
mann, “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 (Düs-
seldorf, 2001), 143–5.

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422 Donkin
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 composi-
tion.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 contain-
ing 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 min-
ing 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 Prague, Knihovna Národního Muzea MS 1 D a 1/18; Brodský, Katalog, 323, no. 307.
30 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 con-
trasted 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 particu-
larly 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 com-
monly 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 benefi-
cent 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 va-
pore 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 Reme-
dies for Fortune Fair and Foul: A Modern English Translation of De remediis utriusque for-
tune, 5 vols. (Bloomington, 1991), i: 165–8.
32 Paul Schneevogel, Iudicium Iovis (Leipzig, c. 1495), n.p.; Honemann, “Bergbau in der Lit-
eratur,” 249–55.
33 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1, trans. F.J. Miller, rev. G.P. Goold, Metamorphoses, 2 vols. (Cam-
bridge, MA, 1977), i: 12–13. Petrarch, De remediis utriusque fortune, 1.54, ed. and trans. Car-
raud, i: 268; Rawski, Petrarch’s Remedies, i: 166.
34 “Terra non occultat & ob oculis remouet ea quae hominu[m] generi utilia sunt & neces-
saria, 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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424 Donkin
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 ap-
pointed the depths of the earth as the proper place for the generation of met-
als.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 extrac-
tion 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 hid-
den 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 piro-
technia (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 oc-
cultos & 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 reflec-
tions on the interior of the earth are seen to prompt an interior corporeal re-
sponse. In contrast, Johann Mathesius (1504–65), a Lutheran pastor in the min-
ing 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 refer-
ences to mining and minting, that on the origins of metals is particularly insist-
ent on the impossibility of complete visual comprehension. This reflected
both the state of humanity and the nature of the material. Mathesius consid-
ered ore to be generated ultimately by God, in ways which would not be under-
stood 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 grow-
ing 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 personifica-
tion 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 “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.
40 “Gottes werkstadt unter der erden;” Johann Mathesius, Sarepta oder Bergpostill (Nurem-
berg, 1562), f. 49v; comparable phrases are found on 45v, 46r.
41 “Biß wir mit newen und gescheuerten augen hinein in die wesentiche gestalt der Crea-
turen 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 genera-
tion 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 alche-
mists,” in Laboratories of Art: Alchemy and Art Technology from Antiquity to the 18th Cen-
tury, ed. S. Dupré (Cham, 2014), 79–103, esp. 80–91.
42 “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.
43 “Weyl aber solchs unter der erden das ist in verschloßner mutter durch Gottes rechte be-
schicht 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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426 Donkin
garment is in pieces, presenting mining as wounding the ground.44 However,

not only is the female body in Mathesius’ sermon inviolate, but the compari-
son contains within itself the expectation of a future birth; it is only the pro-
cess of gestation that is hidden. And indeed, like Agricola, the preacher con-
ceived 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 extrac-
tion 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 Mathe-
sius denies, and goes further than Biringuccio’s “eyes of appraisal and judge-
ment” in showing what lay beneath the surface. This could be seen as display-
ing 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 de-
piction of Wensleslas handing over the ius regale montanorum, the inclusion
of subterranean space may have been inspired by the notion of the king’s ul-
timate legal control over it. In the Cantional it is perhaps more part of the do-
main 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 sur-
face of the ground, but also discussed its three-dimensional properties, with
the field having unlimited depth.46 Indeed, as indicated in Agricola’s Berman-
nus, 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 meas-
ure 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 ser-
mons 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 reli-
gious 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 representa-
tions 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 illumina-
tions that refer to the textual content.50 However, if focus shifts to the repre-
sentation 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 man-
uscripts were produced. In this respect the Cantional can be discussed along-
side 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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428 Donkin
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 heav-
enly, 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 rel-
ics, 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 accept-
able 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 Univer-
sity, 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 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-fifteenth-

century 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 Mag-
dalenen zu Halle (Halle, 1520), f. 10v.

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430 Donkin
Two representations of the resurrection of the body also allude to the sub-
terranean. 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 unconven-
tional 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 metal-
lic 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 man-
uscript, 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 lay-
people 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 show-
ing 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 Slotta and Bartels, ed., Meisterwerke bergbaulicher Kunst, 188–9, 562–88; Haug, “Artificial
interventions.”
58 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.
59 O. Halama, “The martyrs of Kutná Hora, 1419–20,” in The Bohemian Reformation and Reli-
gious Practice 5/1, ed. Z.V. David and D.R. Holeton (Prague, 2004), 139–46; Šárovcová, “Il-
luminated 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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432 Donkin
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 al-
ready 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 pil-
grimage church and an annual procession, which continued into the seven-
teenth 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 leto-
pisy 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 subter-
ranean 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 T.A. Fudge, Jan Hus: Religious Reform and Social Revolution in Bohemia (London, 2010), 193.
61 Halama, “Martyrs of Kutná Hora,” 143.
62 Halama, “Martyrs of Kutná Hora,” 144; J. Seltzer, “Re-envisioning the saint’s life in Ut-
raquist historical writing,” in Mind Matters: Studies of Medieval and Early Modern Intel-
lectual 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 par-
alleled 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 to-
wards 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 land-
scapes; 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 return-
ing 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 sub-
terranean 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 frontis-
piece 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 pro-
vides 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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434 Donkin
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 subter-
ranean 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 concep-
tualisation 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.

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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 Rich-
ardson 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 Boccac-
cio’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 mytho-
logical and historical figures, plus a small number of biblical women and Re-
naissance 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. Dur-
ing the Renaissance it enjoyed a wide readership, especially in French and Ital-
ian courtly circles.3 Widely diffused through vernacular translations and print-
ed editions, the text influenced authors throughout Europe, including Chaucer
1 A.-M. Eze, “Giovanni Boccaccio, De mulieribus claris,” in Beyond Words: Illuminated Manu-
scripts 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.

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436 Eze
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 magnifi-
cent book. Comprising just ten parchment leaves measuring 331 × 250 (245 ×
168–9) mm, it contains only the dedication, part of the preface, and twenty-
eight 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 nev-
er 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 mulieri-
bus’ dedicatee Andrea Acciaiuoli, countess of Alltavilla, but later received the
book-stamp of the Milanese writer and architect Count Ercole Silva of Bian-
drate (1756–1840), who is the earliest identifiable owner of MS Richardson 41.7
The manuscript’s large format, parchment leaves, formal gothic bookhand (lit-
tera gothica textualis rotunda italiana formata) written in two columns and
wide outer and lower margins classify it as a libro da banco derived from medi-
eval 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. Be-
fore 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, Mai-
son 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 (Mi-
lan, 2007), 230–1.
8 The Houghton copy of De mulieribus is classified as large format by comparison with the ex-
amples surveyed by Daniels, Boccaccio, 140–1 tables 4.Ia and 4.Ib, 144.

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A Manuscript of Giovanni Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris 437
for the beauty and unusual iconography of its underdrawings, and contempo-
rary 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 inhab-
ited 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 seem-
ingly 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 un-
related 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 Chris-
tians, 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 Visible guide letters in the framing area reserved for gilding, indicate that the drawings
were not intended as independent, monochrome penwork initials.
10 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.
11 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. Nar-
rare per parole e per immagini fra Medioevo e Rinascimento, ed. V. Branca, 3 vols. (Turin,
1999), iii: 64–6, no. 19.
12 See Daniels, Boccaccio, 154, on religious material evidence in manuscripts for readership
of De mulieribus among the clergy.
13 For Boccaccio’s non-Virgilian presentation of the widowed Dido as exemplary for com-
mitting suicide to protect her chastity before Aeneas’ arrival, see Brown, Giovanni Boccac-
cio’s, 490.

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438 Eze
Figure 27.1 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 ini-
tial 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.

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Figure 27.2 The penitent Mary Magdalene (Europa). MS Richardson 41, f. 3v (detail)
of the Cinquecento.16 They are comparable to Protasio Crivelli’s coeval illumi-

nations for a choir book for the important Benedictine convent of San Maur-
izio 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 I am grateful to Federica Toniolo and Ada Labriola for discussing the style of the drawings
with me.
17 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 collec-
tions. 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 Richard-
son 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 Palla-
dino, Treasures from a Lost Art: Italian Manuscript Painting of the Middle Ages and Renais-
sance (New York, 2003), 142, Fig. 36.

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440 Eze
Figure 27.3 A nun praying (Iole). MS Richardson 41, f. 6r (detail)

new church built from 1503–9.18 A Milanese origin accords with the manu-
script’s nineteenth-century provenance in the possession of the aforemen-
tioned 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, writ-
ing unde libia pars affrice dicta sit (“after which Libya in Africa is named”) be-
side Libya on f. 4r.20 Annotations in the margins in a clear humanist hand sug-
gest 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 Monas-
tero 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, Con-
tributi per la storia edilizia del monastero maggiore di Milano: Nuove indicazioni da docu-
ment del period 1798–1858 (Milan, 1997), 1–2.
20 Daniels, Boccaccio, 151–2.

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Figure 27.4 A nun reading (Marpesia and Lampedo). MS Richardson 41, f. 4r (detail)
classical philology and edification. In addition to identifying Boccaccio’s clas-

sical sources and the Greek etymologies of Latin words,21 this reader highlight-
ed 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 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 quot-
ed 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.
22 Erroneously identified as referring to the life of Hypermnestra, which follows that of This-
be. Eze, Giovanni Boccaccio, 267 n. 21.

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442 Eze
they could not be washed clean, even by the glory of perpetual chastity.
(Brown, Giovanni Boccaccio, 48–9, $3).
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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 praise-
worthy 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, Gio-
vanni 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 prog-
eny 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 meek-
ness 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 strong-
ly 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 Maur-
izio’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 ap-
pears in the interior margin of the life of Europa (f. 3v; Fig. 27.5). There the so-
phisticated reader of the text inscribed an excerpt from the beginning of book
25 of Sallust’s The War with Catiline, describing the Roman noblewoman Sem-
pronia 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 Ma-
noscritti 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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444 Eze
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, compris-
ing 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. ff. 1r-v. Dedication in praise of Andrea Acciaiuoli, countess of Alltavilla

(complete).
2. f. 1v. Beginning of the preface.
3. ff. 2r–2v. End of Ceres, goddess of the harvest and queen of Sicily, and
Minerva.
4. ff. 2v–3r. Venus, queen of Cyprus.
5. ff. 3r–3v. Isis, queen and goddess of Egypt.
6. f. 3v. Europa, queen of Crete.
7. ff. 3v–4r. Libya, queen of Lybia.
8. f. 4r. Marpesia and Lampedo, queens of the Amazons.
9. ff. 4r–5r. Thisbe, a Babylonian maiden.
10. ff. 5r–5v. Hypermnestra, queen of the Argives and priestess of Juno.
11. ff. 5v–6r. Niobe, queen of Thebes. Incomplete, continued on f. 9r.
12. ff. 6r–6v. End of Medusa, daughter of Phorcus, and Iole, daughter of the
king of the Ateolians.
13. f. 6v. Deianira, wife of Hercules.
14. ff. 6v–7. Beginning of Jocasta, queen of Thebes.
15. f. 7r. End of Lucretia, wife of Collatinus, and Tamyris, daughter of Micon.
16. ff. 7r–7v. Artemisia, queen of Caria (incomplete).
17. f. 8r. End of Olympias, queen of Macedonia, and Claudia, a Vestal Virgin.
18. ff. 8r–8v. Virginia, wife of Lucius Volumnius.
19. ff. 8v–9. Flora, the prostitute, goddess of flowers and wife of Zephyrus
(incomplete).
29 D. Trento, “Alessandro e Ippolita Bentivoglio in San Maurizio,” in Bandera Bistoletti, Sand-

rina. 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.

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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 imag-
es, 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 cosmologi-
cal 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 spec-
trum. On the one hand, the breadth of the Bilderatlas suggests a form of ex-
tremely 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 sin-
cerely 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 War-
burg’s Atlas of Images (Ithaca, NY, 2012).
2 S. Papapetros, ‘Panel B’ in the Mnemosyne Project, Cornell University (2013–15), http://war-
burg.library.cornell.edu/image-group/panel-b-introduction-1-3?sequence=944 (accessed
14.9.2018).

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Medicine and Cosmology in France, China, and Mexico 447
Figure 28.1 ‘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 method-
ologies. 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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448 Hartnell
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 be-
tween 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, under-
taken 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 pan-
hemispheric 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 aca-
demic job searches, and—in stark contrast to the disciplinary wariness over
arbitrary comparison—the broadness of the Bilderatlas finds increasing reso-
nance with these evolving inter-cultural connections.5 While the microscope
of the ‘New Art History’ might reject Warburg’s all-encompassing, philosophi-
cal formalism, this even newer, global face of the field is embracing a cross-
pollenated, 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 uncon-
vincingly 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 tyr-
anny 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 His-
tory (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 Medie-
val 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 Jew-
ry, 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 dis-
cipline 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 Bilderat-
las, 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 Bib-
liothèque 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 im-
age was added to aid the book’s owner in practicing its medical contents.
Primarily, the figure was a theoretical prompt that combined two funda-
mental medical concepts of the period. Firstly, its cascading Hebrew text indi-
cates 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 Reli-
gions 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 (Prince-
ton, 2015).

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450 Hartnell
Figure 28.2 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. Fol-
lowing the Hippocratic corpus of classical Greek medicine, medieval Europe-
an 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. Mainte-
nance 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. Long-
standing 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, an-
thropomorphic growths. For the medical professional, knowledge of such cor-
respondences between the body and the stars formed a foundational diagnos-
tic 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. As-
trology and Medicine, East and West (Florence, 2008).

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452 Hartnell
such an image, the planetary control over its corresponding body-part was be-
lieved to draw the deliquescent humors to the region like internal tides, mak-
ing bloodletting and other treatments seriously hazardous and best avoided.
As Roger French neatly summarises, such thinking evidences “a chain of argu-
ment 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 War-
burg’s Panel B, conceptually moulded to the same medical and cosmological
ideas governing the body, its influences, and its cure. Much harder to ascer-
tain, 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 con-
temporary example, preserves another particularly detailed human figure,
onto which are mapped zodiacal symbols and a numerical sequence corre-
sponding 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 phlebotomi-
cal 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 theo-
ries, medical recipes, and diagrammatic tropes.12
But the further back we look for a distinctive ‘beginning’ of such a visual tra-
dition, 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 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.
11 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).
12 See, for instance: G. Freudenthal, “The Brighter Side of Medieval Christian-Jewish Polemi-
cal Encounters: Transfer of Medical Knowledge in the Midi (Twelfth–Fourteenth Centu-
ries),” 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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454 Hartnell
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, discov-
ered 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 ex-
ist 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 sug-
gest 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 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.
14 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).
15 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 re-
mains 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 Lon-
don, 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 moxi-
bustion.18 The Jiu (灸) of its title refers to a form of medical cautery, the strate-
gic 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 treat-
ment 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 chan-
nels 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 cau-
tery. Although not mentioned explicitly in S.6168, the practice was also gov-
erned by celestial movement: certain parts of the body were to be avoided
16 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 Medi-
cine: The Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts, ed. V. Lo and C. Cullen (London, 2005), xii–xxiv.
17 For more on the theories behind the cache’s concealment, see Whitfield, “Dunhuang Col-
lection,” 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.
18 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: Chro-
nologies and Categories,” in Imaging Chinese Medicine, ed. V. Lo and P. Barrett (Leiden,
2018), 41.

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456 Hartnell
when the lunar calendar dictated that renshen (人神), a particular form of hu-
man 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 acu-
puncture 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 semi-
nal 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 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.
20 As well as some extant bronze figures, their existence is testified by an early eleventh-cen-
tury 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 Moxi-
bustion,” in Lo and Barrett, Imaging Chinese Medicine, 161ff.
21 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 Frag-
ments of Tang Moxibustion Figure Techniques], Wenwu 文物 [Cultural Relics] 6 (1964):
14–23.
22 Lo, “Quick and Easy,” tables 9.1–9.3.

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Figure 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
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 ren-
dered 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 be-
yond 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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458 Hartnell
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 histori-
cal 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 con-
cepts, 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 ap-
pear to have been evolved from the author’s own personal experience, Lo sug-
gests 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 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.
25 Lo, “Quick and Easy,” 210, 230.
26 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 creden-
tials 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 deep-
er 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 cross-
cultural mix. As Warburg’s Panel B makes clear, various cultures adopted relat-
ed 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 East-
ern 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
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.
27 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.
28 On early printed Zodiac Men, see T. Pesenti, Fasiculo de Medicina in Volgare, Venezia, Gio-
vanni 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.
29 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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460 Hartnell
Figure 28.5 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

via free access
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 lan-
guage). They collect together series of visual almanacs—calendars, cosmolo-
gies, encyclopedias, and spiritual rites—for the practice of divination in multi-
ple 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 peo-
ples, 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 exclu-
sively through a complex visual vocabulary of pictographs, each book contain-
ing several interconnected pages of completely un-annotated images. Every-
thing from the detailed overlapping of the twinned twenty-day and thirteen-day
Mexican weeks, together forming the 260-day ritual calendar (the tonalpohual-
li), through to prophetic dreams, supernatural visions, or astronomical signifi-
cation 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 six-
teenth 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 (ac-

cessed 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 Telleriano-
Remensis: 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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462 Hartnell
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 ton-
alamatl, 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, Flow-
er, 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 or-
der 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 tradi-
tion.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 dem-
onstrated 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 vocabu-
lary, 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 Ke-
ber, 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 manu-
scripts 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 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
via free access
464 Hartnell
prompt sickness and restore health.38 That the body and the cosmos were con-
sidered 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 gior-

no 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 ill-
ness was in accordance with the sign that reigned. Whereupon one can
see that these people were not so brutal […] and they use the same astrol-
ogy 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 Hé-
breu 1181 and even, as some have suggested, with the Chinese traditions repre-
sented in S.6168.40 Different parts of the body are related to a broader supersti-
tious calendar, medical interventions are governed by this astronomical
thinking, and both of these correspondences are plotted onto the diagram-
matic body in a consistent linear matrix. However, could the key point of com-
parison 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 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).
39 D. di Loubat, Il Manoscritto Messicano Vaticano 3738, detto il Codice Ríos (Rome, 1900), 36.
40 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 Theo-
retical 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, where-
by the coloniser replicates in facsimile, almost with respect, the entire work of
the colonised.41 Mexican and European medical imagery could even sit direct-
ly alongside each other in this historical moment: folio 12 of the colonial Codex
Mexicanus, for example, preserves a well-drawn copy of a printed European-
style 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 hu-
man 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. Al-
though clearly Mexican in its medical and calendrical concept, it is more ef-
fective 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 manu-
script 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 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 Renais-
sance: 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).
42 Paris, BnF MS Mexicain 23–24, digitised via Gallica at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bt-
v1b55005834g (accessed 14.9.2018).
43 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

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466 Hartnell
Figure 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

via free access
have seen in Dunhuang’s Tibetan heritage, similarly speaks to Himalayan and

Middle Eastern influences on Chinese medical traditions. The case of the Mex-
ican 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 inter-
cultural 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, present-
ing formal aesthetic similarities so broadly across cultures that they quickly
break down upon detailed interrogation. These relationships, detractors sug-
gest, 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 cogni-
tive 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 kick-
started 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 histo-
rian in the role of Pedro de los Ríos, glossing with wondered surprise the syn-
chronicities 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 En-
counters 20 (2014): 1–37.

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468 Hartnell
Too often our histories are based on ideas of cultural difference and distinc-
tiveness, leaving objects of the distant past alone and cold. These three manu-
scripts, though, remind us of the unifying potential for humanities research
into the shared human subject. United by in their investigation, medieval im-
ages 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.

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Index of manuscripts
Aachen, Cathedral Treasury MS 1 56–7, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum

65–6, Fig. 4.2 MS 83.1972 155
Aberdeen, University Library MS 24 (the Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum
Aberdeen Bestiary) 155–6, Fig. 10.6, MS 329 364, Fig. 23.6
10.7 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum McClean
Admont, Monastic Library MS 289 94, MS 81 371 n.7
96–105, Fig. 7.3, 7.4 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum McClean
Arras, Médiathèque MS 1325 312 n.11 MS 155 284 n.22
Autun, Bibliothèque municipale MS 19bis Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College
(S19) 82 MS 361/442 251
Cambridge, St John’s College MS K. 30 150–
Baltimore, Walters Art Museum MS 6, Fig. 10.5, 10.6
W.34 168 n.21, 169, 183 n.4 Cambridge, St John’s College MS N. 1 248
Baltimore, Walters Art Museum MS n.12
W.106 183 n.5 Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.9.34 183
Baltimore, Walters Art Museum MS Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.15.21 452,
W.230 385 n.49, 387 n.51 Fig. 28.3
Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett MS 78.A.8 168 Cambridge, Trinity Hall MS 1 363
n.21 Cambridge, University Library MS Ee.3.59
Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Theol. Lat. f. 323 58 (Life of St Edward the Confessor) 170,
n. 22, 59, 63 185–8, 198–206, 230, Fig. 13.5, 13.6, 13.7
Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Stiftung Preußischer Cambridge, University Library MS
Kulturbesitz Cod. Lat. 295 91, Fig. 6.5 Hh.1.3 247 n.11
Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Stiftung Preußischer Cambridge, University Library MS Kk.5.16 13
Kulturbesitz MS 78.A.8 168 n.21 Cambridge, University Library MS
Bremen, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Mm.5.36 168 n.21
MS b.21 (Echternach Pericopes Chartres, Bibliothèque municipale MS 24
Book) 54, 66, 77 n.2, 83, 89, 91, Fig. 6.4 (32) 81 n.14
Budapest, National Széchényi Library, cod. Carpentras, Bibliothèque Inguimbertine
Lat. 4 4–6, Fig. 1.1 MS 269 279–82, 188 Fig. 18.2
Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique Chantilly, Library of the Musée Condé inv.
MS IV 111 372 n.12 DE-343 341–51, Fig. 22.1, 22.2
Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique Chantilly, Library of the Musée Condé MS 65
MS IV 1278 331–3 (the Très Riches Heures of Jean de
Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique Berry) 371
MS 9961–2 358 Chantilly, Library of the Musée Condé
MS 401 370 n.3
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Chantilly, Library of the Musée Condé
MS 49 251 n.19 Santuario 8 380
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Copenhagen, Davids Samling Inv. no.
MS 96 364, Fig. 23.5 4/1997 282
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College
MS 286 (the St Augustine Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale mss
Gospels) 64, 66 12–15 110
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale mss
4.1979 385 n.48 167–170 110

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470 Index of manuscripts
Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale MS 173 110 Kew, The National Archives E 36/284

Dublin, Chester Beatty Library MS W.082 (the (Exchequer Breviate) 224–40,
Coëtivy Hours) 371 n.7, 372 Fig. 15.1, 15.2, 15.3, 15.4
Dublin, Trinity College MS 177 (Life of St Kew, The National Archives E 164/1 224 n.2,
Alban) 184–92, 205, Fig. 13.1, 13.2 240 n.21
Dublin, Trinity College MS 360 251 Kew, The National Archives E 164/2 240
Kew, The National Archives E 164/24 363
Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland n.23
MS 10000 168 n.21
El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasteri0 de Laon, Bibliothèque Publique MS 263 168–9
San Lorenzo MS B.I.2 262, 271 Leiden, University Library, B. P. L. 76A (the
El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasteri0 de Leiden Psalter) 135, 139–56, Fig. 10.2,
San Lorenzo MS T.I.1 261–2, 269, 272 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7
n.34, Fig. 17.1, 17.7 Lilienfeld, Stiftsbibliothek MS 151 346
El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasteri0 de Lisbon, Museu Gulbenkian LA 237 380 n.37,
San Lorenzo MS Vit. 17 (Golden 381 n.40
Gospels of Henry iii) 54 n.6, 65 n.51, Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery MS Mayer
66 12001 369 n.1, 385 n.47, 387 n.53
El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasteri0 de London, British Library Add. MS 11037 168
San Lorenzo MS &.I.3 78 n.21, n.23
Épinal, Bibliothèque multimédia London, British Library Add. MS 15749 168
intercommunale Épinal-Golbey MS n.21, n.23, 169
265 P/R 327 London, British Library Add. MS 18192 388
n.55
Florence, Archivio di Stato Mostra no. 6 331 London, British Library Add. MS 18197G 439
n.21 n.17
Florence, Bibl. Medicea Laurenziana Plut. London, British Library Add. MS 18751 369
12.17 108 n.1, 381 n.39, 385 n.47
Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale London, British Library Add. MS 18850 380
Banco Rari 20 262, 264–8, 271–2, n.36
Fig. 17.4, 17.5, 17.6 London, British Library Add. MS 18912 388
n.54
Girona, Museu de la Catedral Num. Inv. 7 (11) London, British Library Add. MS 28681 (the
(Girona Beatus) 81 Map Psalter) 164–81, Fig. 12.1
London, British Library Add. MS 30024 279–
Harvard, Houghton Library MS Richardson 81, 283, 288–9
31 372 n.12 London, British Library Add. MS 30025 278–
Harvard, Houghton Library MS Richardson 82, 288–9, Fig. 18.1, 18.5
41 435–45, Fig. 27.1, 27.2, 27.3, 27.4, London, British Library Add. MS 30851 77
27.5 n.2, 78
Hildesheim, Dombibliothek MS St Godehard London, British Library Add. MS 35312 369
1 (the St Albans Psalter) 208 n.6 n.1, 371 n.7, 381 n.38
London, British Library Add. MS 36614 327
Ivrea, Biblioteca Capitolare MS 31, lxxxvi n.5
(the Warmund Sacramentary) 59, 63 London, British Library Add. MS 36615 327,
339
Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek Hs. London, British Library Add. MS 40675 168
St. Peter perg. 92 284 n.23 n.21
Kew, The National Archives E 36/266 240 London, British Library Add. MS 44874 246

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Index of manuscripts 471
London, British Library Add. MS 47682 (the London, British Library Hargrave
Holkam Bible) 74 MS 313 240
London, British Library Add. MS 49999 183 London, British Library Harley MS 315 214
London, British Library Add. MS 50000 168 n.28
n.21, 169 London, British Library Harley MS 624 214
London, British Library Arundel MS 2 362 n.28
London, British Library Arundel MS 153 224 London, British Library Harley MS 2877 410
n.2, 240 n.21 London, British Library Harley MS 2971 371
London, British Library Arundel MS 157 168 n.7, 390 n.60
n.21 London, British Library Harley MS 4664 171
London, British Library Arundel MS London, British Library
377 161–2 Or.8210/S.6168 454–9, 465, 467,
London, British Library Burney MS 3 243–4, Fig. 28.4
251 London, British Library Royal MS 1.D.X 168
London, British Library Burney MS 266 74 n.21
n.24 London, British Library Royal MS 2.A.xx 13
London, British Library Cotton Ch. Roll London, British Library Royal MS
xiv.12 134 14.C.vii 180
London, British Library Cotton MS Claudius B London, British Library Yates Thompson MS 3
iv 184, 363 n. 23 (the Dunois Hours) 369–94, Fig. 24.1,
London, British Library Cotton MS Claudius B 24.2, 24.3, 24.4, 24.5, 24.6
vi 236 London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 3 (the
London, British Library Cotton MS Claudius Lambeth Bible) 179 n.58
C ix 363 n.23 London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 209 (the
London, British Library Cotton MS Cleopatra Lambeth Apocalypse) 170, 179 n.58,
A xvi 240 180
London, British Library Cotton MS Nero C iv London, V&A msl/1993/2 396–413, Fig. 25.1,
(the Winchester Psalter) 74 n. 24, 25.2, 25.3, 25.4, 25.5
204 Los Angeles, Getty Museum MS 66 163
London, British Library Cotton MS Nero Los Angeles, Getty Museum MS 101
C vii 214 n.28 156 n.15
London, British Library Cotton MS Nero Los Angeles, Getty Museum MS Ludwig ix.6;
D i 185 n.14 83.ML.102 3371 n.7, 385 n.47
London, British Library Cotton MS Nero D iv
(the Lindisfarne Gospels) 23 Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional, cod.
London, British Library Cotton MS Titus 1006B 78
A xxi 168 n.21 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional MS 80 82
London, British Library Cotton MS Titus Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional MS 10.069 262
D xvi 216–21 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional MS Vitrina
London, British Library Cotton MS Vespasian 14–2 78
A i (the Vespasian Psalter) 34 Madrid, Biblioteca Real MS Res. 192 411 n.23
London, British Library Cotton MS Vespasian Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia, cod.
A ii 161 64ter 78
London, British Library Egerton MS 1046 13 Manchester, John Rylands Library MS Lat.
London, British Library Egerton MS 2909 73 24 171
London, British Library Egerton MS 3041 (the Manchester, John Rylands Library MS Lat.
Ridware Cartulary) 352–68, Fig. 23.1, 164 369 n.1, 381 n.38, 390 n.59
23.2, 23.4 Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS A 24
London, British Library Egerton MS 3763 34 inf. 23 n.12

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Milan, Bibloteca del Capitolo Metropolitano Nüremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum,

MS ii.D.3.2 23 n.12 Hs. 156142/KG1138 (Codex Aureus of
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm Echternach) 52–67, Fig. 4.1
343 19–20, 22–5, 28–31, 34–5, Fig. 2.2,
2.3, 2.4 Oslo, Schoyen Collection MS 115 247 n.11
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Oxford, All Souls College Library MS 1 251
Clm 835 182 Oxford, All Souls College Library MS 6 (the
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Amesbury Psalter) 180
Clm 2574b 311 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. D.2.1 246
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek n.9
Clm 4452 88 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct.
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek D.2.6 94–106, Fig. 71, 7.2, 7.5
Clm 4453 (Gospel Book of Otto Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. F.2.13 72
iii) 36, 42–9, 60–1, 64, 66, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley
Fig. 3.3, 4.3 270b 131–3, 135, Fig. 9.3, 9.4
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 271 257
Clm 4456 88 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Canon Class Lat.
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek 100 76 n.27
Clm 23643 328 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 146 364 n.27
30111 (Prayer Book of Otto iii) 77 n.2, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 308 312
82 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Gough liturg. 2
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cod. (the Gough Psalter) 153–5, Fig. 10.6,
gall. 6 373 n.20 10.7
Munich, Residenz, Schatzkanner (Prayer Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Hatton 93 13
Book of Charles the Bald) 79 n.12
Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lat. Bibl. e.
New York, Morgan Library MS G.18 (the Bible 7 248 n.11
of Richard of Sholdon) 241–58, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Lat.
Fig. 16.1, 16.2, 16.3, 16.4 67 216–22
New York, Morgan Library MS M.43 183 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Selden
New York, Morgan Library MS M.103 168 3389 217 n.40
n.21 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Wood empt.
New York, Morgan Library MS M.358 396 13 255 n.38
n.3 Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410 291–
New York, Morgan Library MS M.453 381 308, Fig. 19.1, 19.2, 19.3, 19.4, 19.5, 19.6,
n.40 19.7
New York, Morgan Library MS M.524 (the Oxford, Keble College MS 39 371 n.7
Morgan Apocalypse) 166, 170 Oxford, Magdalen College MS 100 246 n.9
New York, Morgan Library MS M.677 411
n.23 Paris, Bibliothèque de la Arsenal MS 1186 (the
New York, Morgan Library MS M.736 200, Psalter of Blanche of Castile) 135,
214 157–63, Fig. 9.5, 11.1
New York, Morgan Library MS M.926 207, Paris, Bibliothèque de la Arsenal
209–23 MS 5086 370 n.3
New York, Morgan Library MS M.970 251, Paris, Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne
256 MS 636 163 n.17
New York, Public Library Spencer Collection Paris, Bibliothèque de Ste Geneviève
MS 26 (Tickhill Psalter) 358 MS 2200 284 n. 23

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Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 753 329 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS

n.17 Lat. 10861 13 n.12
Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 3458 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS
284–6, Fig. 18.4 Lat. 11560 341 n.1
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS
Fr. 91 411 n.24 Lat. 12048 26
Fr. 599 437 n.11 Lat. 15170 160 n.7
Fr. 1109 288 n.27 Lat. 16208 163 n.18
Fr. 1276 370 n.3 Lat. 16745 160 n.7
Fr. 9220 177 n.49 Lat. 17294 370 n.3
Fr. 22495 74 n.24 Mexicain 23–24, Fig. 28.7 465
Gr. 139 28 Mexicain 385 462
Gr. 510 25–6, 64 n.46 n.a.f. 1098 229–30
Gr. 654 26–7 n.a.f. 10039 327, 340
Hébreu 1181 449–54, 456–8, 464–5, n.a.l. 3187 410 n.21
467, Fig. 28.2 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS n.a.l. 3226 372 n.12
Ital. 115 295 n.11 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS n.a.l. 10034 392
Lat. 1 (the Vivian Bible) 79, 81 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Rothschild 2535 388 n.54
Lat. 15 246 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS MS Smith-Lesouëf MS 2
Lat. 919 390 n.61 77 n.2
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André MS 2
Lat. 920 411 n.23 (the Boucicaut Hours) 371, 379, 380
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS n.37, 393
Lat. 4889 159 Philadelphia, Free Library Lewis E M
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS 18.4 411 n.24
Lat. 7899 69 Patmos, The Holy Monastery of St John, gr.
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS 33 27
Lat. 8191 76 Prague, Knihovna Národního Muzea MS I D a
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS 1/18 422
Lat. 8846 135 Prague, Knihovna Národního Muzea MS I F
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS 34 418
Lat. 8878 81 Prague, National Library MS xxiii A 2 (Kutná
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Hora Gradual) 417
Lat. 9474 410 n.21
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Reims, Bibliothèque municipale mss
Lat. 10431 248 n.12 1459–1466 331 n.21

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Salamanca, Biblioteca de la Universidad MS Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne

2705 284 n.23 Métropole MS 40–10 111, 123
Santiago de Compostela, Archivo-Biblioteca Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne
de la Catedral acs CF 34 89 Métropole MS 42 124
Santiago de Compostela, Biblioteca Xeral Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne
Universitaria 609 Reserv. 1 77–88, 91, Métropole mss 43–1–43–2 124
93, Fig. 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne
Sinai, The Holy Monastery of St Catherine, Métropole MS 71 124
Arabic NF 8 6–16, Fig. 1.2, 1.3, 1.5 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne
Métropole mss 76–1–76–2 124
The Hague, Koninklijke Biblioteek MS 76 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne
G 8 411 n.23 Métropole MS 84 124
Trier, Stadtbibliothek MS 24 (Codex Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne
Egberti) 36, 39–42, 48–9, 63–4, 66 Métropole MS 88 124
n.54, Fig. 3.1 Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne
Trier, Stadtbibliothek MS 171/1626 63, 188 Métropole MS 115 114, 124, Fig. 8.2
Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne
Métropole MS 4 123 Métropole MS 256 113, 124
Métropole MS 5 123 Métropole MS 441 124
Métropole MS 27–1 118, 123 Fig. 8.4 Métropole MS 444 111
Métropole MSS 27– 2–27–5 118, 123 Métropole mss 458–1–458–2 121
Métropole MS 31 123 Métropole MS 511 121 n.41
Métropole MS 34 123 Métropole MS 646 124
Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne
Métropole MS 35 123 Uppsala, University Library MS 93 (the Goslar
Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Gospels) 89, 91
Métropole MS 39 123
Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale MS
Métropole MS 40–1 111, 123, Fig. 8.1 500 229
Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS
Métropole MS 40–2 111, 123 Archivio di San Pietro, H 19 72
Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Borgh.
Métropole MS 40–3 111, 123 58 284 n.22
Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Ott.
Métropole MS 40–4 114–15, 123, gr. 14 26
Fig. 8.3 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat.
Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Lat. 82 19–20
Métropole MS 40–5 114, 123 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat.
Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Lat. 83 19–23, 33–5, Fig. 2.1
Métropole MS 40–6 111, 123 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat.
Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Lat. 3225 (the Vatican Virgil) 11–12,
Métropole MS 40–6 113, 123 62, 65, Fig. 4.4
Troyes, Médiathèque de Troyes Champagne Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat.
Métropole MS 40–9 111, 123 Lat. 3738 459–67, Fig. 28.6

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Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Cod.

Lat. 3868 70–2, Fig. 5.1 2004 385 n.49
Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Cod.
Lat. 6728 74–5, Fig. 5.2 2554 160
Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Mus.
Lat. 6949 461 n.33 Hs. 15492 (Smíškovský Gradual) 414,
Venice, Biblioteca Marciana MS gr. ii, 179 26 427–8, 430–4, Fig. 26.4, 26.5
Verdun, Bibliothèque municipale MS 70 102 Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Mus.
Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Cod. Hs. 15501 (Kutná Hora
309 76 Cantional) 414–34, Fig. 26.1, 26.3
Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Cod.
1800 338 Windsor, Royal Library (the Sobiesky
Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Cod. Hours) 387 n.53
1855 380 n.37, 381 n.40 Worcester Cathedral MS 160 250
Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek Cod. Wormsley Library (the Becket Leaves) 184–6,
1861 (Dagulf Psalter) 192–7, 200, 204, Fig. 13.3, 13.4

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General Index
Abingdon 236, 363 n.23 Avignon 396–8, 412

Abraham 54, 58, 60, 64, 66–7, 135, 183, 344 Avranches 403
Abraham ben Shem Tov 449 Azincourt 380
Abraham Ibn Ezra 157–63
Acupuncture 455–7 Baghdad 282
Adam 88, 95, 134, 145–6, 244, 425 Barbara, saint 495, Fig. 25.2
Adelard of Bath 162, 276–7, 290 Bathsheba 86, 381–2, 405, 410–12
Adoration of the Magi 145, 177, 263, 314, Battle of Stamford Bridge 202
320–1, 324, 389, Fig. 20.7, 25.3 Battle of Tamarón 87
Adrianus Castellesi 257 Bec 94, 213
Aelred of Rievaulx 230, 234 Bede 13, 15
Afra, saint 216–18 Benedict, saint 94, 99–100, 106, 167, 209, 212
Alban, saint 157, 184–93, 200, 204–5, 209–11, Benedictines 44, 46–7, 125, 167–8, 251, 329
Fig. 13.1 n.17, 342, 435, 439, 443
Albert von Behaim 311 Berengaria of Navarre 162
Albertus Magnus 348, 350 Bernard of Clairvaux 109–12, 115–18, 121–2
Alessandro Bentivoglio 443 Bernardo Luini 443
Alexander the Great 183, 280–1 Bestiaries 155–6, 175, 178, 345–6, 350–1, Fig.
Alexis, saint 209, 212–14 10.6, 10.7
Alfonso v, king of León 82 Beverley Minster 363
Alfonso x, king of Castile-León 259, 261–2, Bibles 65, 74, 79, 81, 110, 117–19, 121, 123,
270–5, Fig. 17.1 241–8, 251–8, 342, 400 (see also index of
Ambrose of Milan 38 manuscripts)
Amiens 163, 398–9 Bibles moralisées 1, 131–3, 135, 160, 182, 341,
Amos 245 Fig. 9.3, 9.4
Amphibalus, saint 184, 188, 190, Fig. 18.1 Birinus, saint 209, 212, 214–15
André Le Musnier 397–8, 412 Bloodletting, see phlebotomy
Andrea Acciaiuoli 436, 444 Boccaccio, Giovanni 435–45
Annunciation, the 6, 312, 316–19, 337, 405, Boethius 16
410, Fig. 1.4, 20.3, 20.5, 20.6, 25.4 Bonaventure 274, 277, 289
Anselm, saint 94–108, 168, 209, 212, 214, 257 Books of Hours 168–9, 183, 247, 338–9,
Ants 341–51, Fig. 21.1, 21.2 369–413, Fig. 24.1, 24.2, 24.3, 24.4, 24.5,
Apocalypse 166, 170, 180, 184, 186, 245 24.5, 25.1, 25.2, 25.3, 25.4, 25.5 (see also
Apollonius of Tyre (History of) 4–15, Fig. 1.1, index of manuscripts)
1.3 Boxwood 311–12
Arculf, bishop 15 Brunetto Latini 276, 278–82, 286–9,
Aristotle 253, 276–89, Fig. 18.1, 18.4 Fig. 18.5
And Phyllis 280–2, Fig. 18.2
Arnolfo du Cambio 260 Canterbury 34, 108, 135, 195, 197, 212–14, 228,
Astrology 159, 162, 282, 311, 413, 451–2, 458, 253, 257
464 Cathedral 105–7, 193, 257
Astronomy 160–2, 446, 461, 464 St Augustine’s 241–2, 250–1, 255
Augustine of Canterbury 157, 363 See also Anselm of Canterbury, Clement of
Augustine of Hippo 37, 57–9, 100, 108, 111–14, Canterbury, Stephen Langton, Thomas
123–4, 214, Fig. 8.3 Becket

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General Index 477
Cantigas de Santa Maria 259–75, Fig. 17.1, Conrad ii, emperor 55, 88, 91

17.4, 17.5, 17.6, 17.7 Constantinople 16–17, 25, 174
Cartularies 236–7, 352, 356–68, Fig. 23.1, Cortona 299
23.2, 23.4, 23.5 Court of Chivalry 367
Cefalù 126 Coutances 403
Charlemagne 77, 79, 82, 86, 159
Charles vii, king of France 373, 379 n.32, Daniel 244
380 David, king 23 n.13, 28, 31, 33–5, 79, 83,
Charles d’Orléans 372, 374, 379, 392 n.69 86, 91, 115, 160, 171, 177–9, 244, 381–2,
Charles the Bald 79, 86, 88 388 n.54, 391, 405, 410–11, Fig. 2.4,
Charters 87, 352, 355, 357, 359–60, 362–4, 6.1
367–8 Devil 262–8, 275, 343–4, 385, 390, Fig. 17.3,
Chaucer 435 22.1
Christine de Pizan 436 Dialogus de scaccario 240
Chronicles 82, 91, 159, 205, 228, 236–7, 252, Dives and Lazarus 52–67
359, 362, 364, 432, 462, Fig. 6.5 Domesday Book 224–8, 237
Christ 23, 28, 34–5, 37–8, 43–4, 47, 49–51, 60, Donatus 68–70
63–4, 66, 74, 79, 81, 91, 95, 97, 99, 105–8, Duccio 180
115, 126, 128, 145–6, 159, 178, 188, 234, Dunhuang 454–7
263, 274, 293–308, 315, 319, 324, 336, 345, Dunstan, saint 209, 211, 215
349, 430, Fig. 6.1, 7.3, 7.5, 19.3, 19.4, 19.6
Ascension 301, 305, 319 n.29, 338, 428, Eadburga, saint 250
Fig. 19.7 Echternach 52–67, 83, 89–91
Crucifixion 23 n.13, 102, 299, 319, 323, 335, Edmund, saint 157, 198, 200, 205, 214
337–9, 343, 421 Edmund of Abingdon, saint 185–6, 248
Genealogy 130–1, 134, 171, 178–9 Edward i, king of England 177, 359
Nativity 297–8, 320, 337–8, 405, Fig. 19.2 Edward ii, king of England 352, 355–6, 359,
Passion 105, 188, 297, 299, 301, 304, 362–3, 367, Fig. 23.3
312–15, 319, 322, 336, Fig. 20.6 Edward the Confessor, king of England and
Resurrection 41, 46, 102, 188, 297, 301, saint 157, 185–8, 170, 185–8, 197–205,
304, 313, 338 225, 227–37, Fig. 13.5, 13.6, 13.7, 15.1, 15.2,
Transfiguration 60–1, 64, 66, 422, 428, 15.3
430, Fig. 4.3 Eleanor of Aquitaine 157, 159, 162
See also Last Judgement, Meditationes Eleanor of Castile 186
Vitae Christi, Noli me tangere, Virgin Eleanor of Provence 186, 206
and Child Elisabeth of Přemyslid 428
Chrysostom, John 26 Emma, queen 198, 200
Cicero 210, 214, 288 Enamels 28–33
Cistercians 109–24, 195, 259, 269 Epitaphium Terentii 70, 73–4, 76
Cîteaux 110, 117–18 Ethelred, king 198
Clairvaux 109–24 (see also Bernard of Etienne Chevalier 341, 372, 380
Clairvaux) Étienne de Boileau 312
Clare, saint 294 Europa 437, 439, 443–4, Fig. 27.2
Clement of Canterbury 255–6 Exchequer, the 224, 240
Cluny 44, 46, 77, 91, 93, 112 (see also Odo of Exchequer Breviate 224–6, 228, 230, 236–7,
Cluny) 239–40
Cnut 200 Eve 38–9, 95, 134, 145–6
Cologne 117 n.50, 309, 313–25, 336, 429 Evesham 249–50, 255

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478 General Index
Ezechiel 244 Henry iii, king of England 174, 177–9, 186,

Ezzelino iii de Romano 273 239, 362
Henry of Cockering 251–2
Fernando i, king of Léon 77–8, 81–3, 87–93 Heraclius, emperor 7
Florus of Lyon 78–9 Hildegard of Bingen 108, 446
Foch, Edmond 400 Hildesheim 49–50, 88, Fig. 3.4
Fountain of youth 312 Hosea 244–5
Fra Melano 259, 261, 263, 269–70 Hugh of St Victor 129–30, 134
Francis of Assisi, saint 248, 294, 379 n.28 Hypsypile 441–3, 445
Franciscans 273–4, 294, 299
Freiburg im Breisgau 422 Ida of Boulogne 96
Frederick ii, emperor 178–9, 259, 271, 275 Investiture Controversy 103
Ippolita Sforza Bentivoglio 443–4
Galliano, San Vincenzo 28 Isabel de Warenne 185–6, 205
Gentile da Folignio 449 Isabelle, sister of Henry iii, king of
Geoffrey of Langley 251 England 179
Geoffrey Plantagenet 135, 139, 156 Isabelle de Valois 400
Georg Agricola 420, 423–4, 426 Isidore of Seville 78, 348
George, saint 372 n.10, 379–80 Ivories 1–2, 6, 31, 309–40
Gian Galeazzo Visconti 400 Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, Inv.
Gideon 428 W.106 339
Gilbert Crispin 216 Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, Inv.
Giovanni Boccaccio, see Boccaccio, Giovanni 10.39 338 n.43, 339
Giovanni Pisano 260 Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, Inv.
Girolamo da Cremona 341–2 71.279 333
Girolamo da Libri 438 Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique
Gisela of Swabia 88–9, 91 MS iv 1278 331–2
Glastonbury 362 Brussels, Museums of Art and History Inv.
Glazier, William 258 854 323, 325, 333, Fig. 20.8
Gloucester 249–50 Cologne, Schnütgen Museum Inv.
Gonzalo Pérez Gudiel 273 B2002 338
Gregory the Great, pope 6, 14–17, 46, 57, Cracow, Czartotyski Museum, Inv.
59–60, 106, 110, 124, 188, 251 2387 339
Gregory vi, pope 82 Épinal, Bibliothèque multimédia
Guillaume Gouffier 372 intercommunale Épinal-Golbey MS
Guyot Le Musnier 398 265 P/R 327
Gotha, Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein,
Halberstadt 31, 318–19 Elfenbein Nr. 6 328, 339, Fig. 21.2
Harold Haardrada 202 Hannover, Museum August Kestner
Harreteau 395, 399, 413 Inv. Z 9 340
Heinrich Gross 418 London, British Library Add. MS
Helena, saint 18, 428–9, 433, Fig. 26.3 10301 339
Henri d’Orléans, duke of Aumale 341–2 London, British Library Add. MS
Henry i, king of England 104, 367 36614 327 n.5
Henry ii, emperor 86, 88 London, British Library Add. MS
Henry ii, king of England 157, 159, 162, 193, 36615 327, 339
195, 364, Fig. 13.3 London, Museum of London Inv.
Henry iii, emperor 54–5, 65–6, 77, 82, 10890 335
86–91, 93, Fig. 6.4 London, V&A Inv. 8–1872 340

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General Index 479
London, V&A Inv. 11–1872 313–15, 319–25, Jean Pucelle 318

331 n.20, 336, Fig. 20.2, 20.4 Jeremiah, prophet 244
London, V&A Inv. A.2–1937 328–30, Jerome, Church Father 18, 79, 123–4, 349
Fig. 21.1 Jerusalem 234, 291, 298, 301
London, V&A Inv. Circ.495–1923 333, Heavenly Jerusalem 49–50, 103
Fig. 21.4 Joachim of Rome 397
Manchester, John Rylands University Johan Mathesius 425
Library MS Lat. 51 339 Johannes Nider 348
Manchester, John Rylands University Johannes von Paltz 421
Library MS Lat. 52 340 John de Foxton 452, Fig. 28.3
Milan Annunciation, Milan, Castle John de Sholdon 252
Sforzesco, Avori 14 6–7, Fig. 1.4 John Hawkhurst 256
Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, John Peckham 362
Inv. MA2033 337, Fig. 21.6 John the Almoner, saint 209–10, 214
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek John the Baptist, saint 145, 254, 304,
Clm 23643 328 388, 403
Namur, Musée provincial des Arts anciens John the Divine, saint 377, 387–8
du Namurois-Trésor d’Oignies (TreM.a) John the Evangelist, saint 94, 97, 99, 227,
Inv. 29 311–12, 322, 331 n.20, 336 236, 404, 422, 430, Fig. 7.3, 18.3
New York, Linsky Collection, Metropolitan Jonah 245
Museum of Art 1982.60.399 319–21, Joseph 291–6, 304, 320, Fig. 19.1
323–5, Fig. 20.7 Juan Gil de Zamora 273–4
New York, Morgan Library and Museum Judith 244
M.542 340 Justinian, emperor 17
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France
MS n.a.f. 10039 327, 340 Karlstejn 428
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France Kutná Hora 414–33
MS n.a.l. 10034 327 n.5
Paris, Musée du Louvre Inv. mrr 429 332 Lanfranc 107, 209, 212
Ravenna, Museo Nazionale Inv. 1036 336 Lapo di Ricevuto 260
Ravenna, Museo Nazionale Inv. 1037 337 Last Judgement 52, 57–8, 135, 259, 263–5, 377,
Ravenna, Museo Nazionale Inv. 385, 387–90, 421, 430, 433, Fig. 17.3, 24.6
1038 319–22, Fig. 20.6 Lateran 104
Toronto, The Thomson Collection at the Lawrence, saint 313, 430
Art Gallery of Ontario Inv. 71331 335 León 77, 81–3, 87–9, 93, 261
Leonard, saint 379
Jan Chůdek 432 Leonardo da Vinci 402, 438, 446
Jan Hus 430 Liège cathedral 312
Jan van Eyck 371, 399, 421 Lion of Judah 178
Jean Bourdichon 410 Lions 159, 169, 176–9, 245
Jean d’Angloulême 379 London 178–9, 186, 342, 358, 455
Jean de Dunois 372–94 Louis vii, king of France 195
Jean de Millon 312–13 Louis viii, king of France 157, 159, 162
Jean Donat 397 Louis ix, king of France 139, 393
Jean Fouquet 372, 410 Louis the Pious 70
Jean Gillimer 412–13 Lowden, John xviii–xxi, 1–3, 18, 109, 164, 180,
Jean Guymier 398 207, 226, 241, 259, 309, 326, 335, 341,
Jean Haincelin 370 394, 396, 449
Jean Picard 398, 412 Lübeck 314–16

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480 General Index
Matilda of Tuscany 94, 96–7, 99–100 Pastorino de Giovanni Micheli 268

Matthew Paris 180, 182–206 Paul, abbot of St Albans 212–13, 215
Margam Abbey 240 Paul, saint 94, 97, 103, 105–6, 126, 245, 433
Martin, saint 341–7, 350 Pedro de los Ríos 461–2, 465, 467
Martin Kuthen 432 Pershore 249–50
Mary Magdalene 36, 38–50, 298, 300, 304, Peter, saint 60, 94, 96, 100, 102–4, 106, 126,
437, Fig. 27.2 300, 422, Fig. 7.5
Medical imagery 448–69, Fig. 28.2, 28.3, Peter Comestor 130
28.4, 28.5, 28.6, 28.7 Peter Lombard 256, 278 n.8
Meditationes Vitae Christi 291–307 Peter of Celle 113
Meliore Toscano 174–5, Fig. 12.4 Peter of Poitiers 130, 134
Mexico 449, 462–7 Peter the Venerable 112
Michael, archangel 34, 373, 385, 387–8 Petrarch 73, 76, 416, 423, 435
Milan 6, 19–35, 397, 435–6, 438–40, 443–4 Phlebotomy 449, 451–2, 454, 458–9, Fig. 28.5
Monreale Cathedral 125–38, Fig. 9.2 Philip-Augustus, king of France 162
Mosaics 125–7, 133, 135, 137, Fig. 9.1, 9.2 Pierre de Beauvais 346
Moses 60–1, 64, 66, 428 Pietro Lorenzetti 299
Mount Tabor 422, 428 Pisa 259, 269
Pliny the Elder 341, 346–50
Neath Abbey 240 Poitiers 412
Noah 125, 127–38, 145, Fig. 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4 Pontigny 193, 195, 197
Normandy 161–2, 198, 200, 213, 373, 396, Prigent de Coëtivy 372
399, 403 Provence 161, 449 (see also Eleanor of
Nicola Pisano 259–60, 263, 266, 271, 273, Provence)
Fig. 17.2, 17.3 Prudentius 216
Nicholas de Bello 251, 255–6 Psalters 19–35, 74, 77–9, 82, 134–5, 139–83,
Nicholas de Montiéramey 112–13 216, 246–7, 338, 341, 358, Fig. 2.1, 2.2, 2.3,
Nicholas Thorne 251 2.4, 6.3, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.6,
Niobe 441–5 10.7, 11.1, 12.1
Noli me tangere 36–51, 337, Fig. 31., 3.3, 3.4
Raphael 102–4
Odo of Cluny 44, 209, 212 Reichenau 36, 39, 43, 46, 56–7, 60, 63–6, 86
Offa, king of Mercia 192, 215 Richard, abbot of St Albans 215
Office for the Dead 164 n.3, 167, 377 n.25, Richard, bishop of Bayeux 277
380, 382, 390, 402–3, 406, 430, Fig. 24.5, Richard, duke of Normandy 200
25.5 Richard i, king of England 162
Opus Anglicanum 175 Richard de Fournival 163
Otto i, emperor 39, 63 Richard de Wych, bishop of Chichester 166
Otto ii, emperor 39, 63 Richard of Chichester, saint 248
Otto iii, emperor 42, 46, 63, 87 Richard of Cornwall 179, 273
Ottobuoni d’Fieschi 174 Richard of Scholdon 241, 252–4
Ovid 423 Richard Scrope 367
Robert de Bello 243, 251
Padua, Santa Giustina 342 Robert de Rubella 412
Palermo 125–7, 132–4, 137 Roger, archbishop of York 197
Capella Palatina 125, 127–9, Fig. 9.1 Roger ii, king of Sicily 126
Paris 129, 157, 163, 182, 243, 251, 255–6, 273–4, Roger de Fournival 162–3
276, 312–14, 337, 369–70, 372–3, 392, Roger of Hereford 162
396–7, 400, 412, 455 Rome 6, 12, 14–17, 27, 62, 68–70, 73, 82, 96,
Pascal ii, pope 97, 104 100, 103–5, 161, 175, 257, 433

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General Index 481
Rouen 396, 399, 402–5 Vannoccio Biringuccio 424

Rusticiana 16–18 Venantius Fortunatus 4
Victoria, queen of England 400
St Albans 72, 102, 185, 192, 207, 209, 212–22 Vincent of Beauvais 277
Salisbury 166, 363 Virgin Mary 96, 126, 128, 131, 145, 261–75,
Sallust 442–3 291–309, 313, 323, 377, 387–9, 402–4,
Sancha, queen of Léon 77–8, 83, 87–8, 91 410, Fig. 19.1, 19.2, 19.3, 19.4, 19.5, 19.6,
Sanchia of Provence 186 20.1
Saracens, images of 74, 284 Annunciation 6, 312, 316–19, 337, 405,
Seals 91, 177, 352, 356–68, Fig. 23.3 410, Fig. 1.4, 20.5, 20.6, 25.4
Sebastian Münster 418, Fig. 26.2 Coronation 314, 320, 324
Seven Sleepers of Ephesus 227, 231 Virgin and Child 164–181, 244, 263, 268,
Siena 259–60, 262, 264–73 299, 309, 320, 324, 342, 377, 389,
Silva, Ercole, count of Biandrate 436, Fig. 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 12.4, 17.7
440
Simon de Montfort 176, 255, Fig. 12.5 Walter the Chanter 220
Sinai 4, 6, 7, 10–18, 171–3 Warburg, Aby 446–9, 452, 459
Solomon 177–8 Warin, abbot St Albans 219, 222
Stephen, saint 430 Wax 16, 312, 320, 322, 329, 332, 336, 362
Stephen Langton, archbishop of Wax tablets, see writing tablets
Canterbury 168–9 Wensleslas, king 418, 426
Suetonius 68–70, 76 Westminster 166, 170, 181
Sulpicius Severus 343–4 Westminster Abbey 174, 176, 186, 234,
Sweyn, king of Denmark 198, 200, 227 236, 238, Fig. 12.5
William ii, king of England 355, 363
Terence 68–76, Fig, 5.1, 5.2 William ii, king of Sicily 125–7, 137–8, 364
Tewkesbury 249–50 William de Brailes 183, 284 n.22
Thisbe 437, 441–4 William Gossip 258
Thomas, disciple 37–8, 300 William of Wilmington 251
Thomas Aquinas 57–8, 283 William Rideware 363
Thomas Becket 157, 185–6, 188, 192–8, 200, William Thorne 252
204, 249, 257, Fig. 13.3, 13.4 Willibald 15
Thomas of Cantimpré 348, 350 Winchcombe 249–50
Thomas of Elmham 363–4 Worcester 242 n.2, 246 n.9, 248–250
Thomas of Kent 183 Writing tablets 160 n.7, 310–14, 319–20,
Thomas Ridware 352, 356–60, 362, 367 322–3, 325–6, 328–40, Fig. 21.2, 21.3,
Thomas Walsingham 185 21.4, 21.5
Thomas Wylde 257
Tobit 244 Yahya ibn Masawaih (John of
Toledo 262, 273 Damascus) 449
Tonalamatl (Books of Fate) 461–2
Toresund 315–16, 318 Zodiac 140, 150, 152, 283, 446, 451–4, 458–9,
Tostig 202 465, Fig. 28.2, 28.3, 28.7
Urban ii, pope 103–4

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Illuminating the Middle Ages

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

The Manuscript World

Richard Gameson, Durham University

Martin Kauffmann (Bodleian Library, Oxford)

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

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

Cover illustration: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS 11560, f. 8. © Bibliothèque nationale de

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lowden, John, honouree. | Cleaver, Laura, editor. | Bovey, Alixe,

Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

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

5 Portraits of Terence, the African 68

7 The Two Pictures Cycles in Early Manuscripts of St Anselm’s

8 Early Cistercian Manuscripts from Clairvaux 109

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

9 The Imagery of Noah’s Ark in the Mosaic Decoration of Monreale

10 Some Observations on the Artists of the Leiden Psalter (Leiden,

11 A Portrait of Abraham Ibn Ezra (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal

13 Seeing and Reading the Matthew Paris Saints’ Lives 182

14 Extended Shelf-life: Manuscript Consolidation in an English Monastic

16 From Warwickshire to New York via Canterbury: The Travels and

17 Virgin, Devil, Bishop, King: Nicola Pisano’s Pulpit in Siena and

18 Of Venerable Teachers and Boisterous Students: Maistre Brunetto and

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

20 Ivory Booklets, Devotion in Cologne 309

21 Gothic Ivories Unhinged 326

22 Monks and Ants in the Presence of Death: A Re-reading of Pliny the

23 The Ridware Cartulary and the Great Seal of England 352

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

25 Harreteau and His Unfinished Book of Hours 395

26 Looking Beneath the Surface: Subterranean Space in the Kuntá Hora

27 A Manuscript of Giovanni Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris from the

28 Bloodlines: Medicine and Cosmology in France, China, and

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

B AV Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

1.1 The Apollonius Pictus manuscript, Hungary, National Széchényi Library,

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

is Professor Emerita of Medieval Manuscript Studies at SAS, University of Lon-

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

T.A. (Sandy) Heslop

Beatrice Radden Keefe

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

In his reworked doctoral research, published in 1992 as The Octateuchs: a Study

1 J. Lowden, The Octateuchs: a Study in Byzantine Manuscript Illustration (University Park,

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

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

Were Early Medieval Picture Cycles Recycled from

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_003

Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin - 978-90-04-42233-9

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

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, �� | doi:10.1163/9789004422339_003

S yro-Palestinian or Alexandrian workshop (the work from which is variously

local temple. Apollonius subsequently entrusts his young daughter, Tarsia, to

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

a dating which is also suggested by the palaeographic analysis conducted by

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

e xpressing different nuances for seeing.19 The verb parakyptō, or inclinasset