'The Devout Belief of the Imagination': The Paris 'Meditationes Vitae Christi' and Female Franciscan Spirituality in Trecento Italy (Disciplina Monastica) 9782503528199, 2503528198

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DISCIPLINA M O NASTICA

161

DISCIPLINA M ONASTICA Studies on Medieval Monastic Life Etudes sur la vie monastique au Moyen Age

Editors of the Series Collection dirigée par Susan B o y n to n & Isabelle C o c h e l in

Editorial Board Sheila B o nde Florent C y g l e r

2009

BREPOLS

Holly

Flora

TH E D E V O U T BELIEF OF TH E IM A G IN A T IO N THE PARIS MEDITATIONES VITAE CHRISTI AND FEMALE FRANCISCAN SPIRITUALITY IN TRECENTO ITALY

2009

BREPOL5

© 2009 BREPOLS @ PUBLISHERS, Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

D /2009/0095/88 ISB N 978-2-503-52819-9

TABLE OF CONTENTS List of F i g u r e s ...............................................................................................................

7

A ck n o w led g m e n ts.........................................................................................................

13

Introduction......................................................................................................................

17

CH A PTER I

‘You Must Begin from This’ TH E M ED ITA TIONES V IT A E CHRISTI, TH E H ISTORY OF ART, AND TH E STUDY OF FEMALE SPIRITUALITY The Authorship, Dating, and the Original Version of the M V C .......................... The M V C and the Study of Christian I c o n o g r a p h y .............................................. The M V C and Female S p iritu a lity ...............................................................................

27 33 40

CH A PTER 2

‘Moved by the Great Sweetness of Love’ IM AGING TH E M ED ITA TIONES V IT A E CHRISTI Early Illustrated Manuscripts of the M V C ................................................................. Ms. Ital. 115 : Illustrating the M V C for a Female Franciscan Audience . . . Evidence for Exegesis : Instructions to the Artists and Captions in Ms. ital. 115 . ch apter

49 61 68

3

‘Illuminated by Divine Virtue’ INTERACTION, EM ULATION, AND EM O TION The Text-Image Structure and Modes of Reading and S e e in g ...................... 83 Beginner Lessons : the Youth of Mary and the Nativity of C h r i s t ........................90 Women Wielding Knives: The Circumcision of Christ by His Mother . . . .

101

CH A PTER 4

‘Pause Here for Awhile First’ IMAGINED PILGRIMAGE, HOLY FEASTS, AND MORAL MODELS Travels with the Holy Family: A Guide to Imagined P il g r im a g e .......................... 117 Lessons on Service to Christ: Holy F e a s t s .........................................................................143 O th e r Women’ in Christ’s Life: The Woman of Samaria and Mary Magdalen . 167 I 5

TA B LE OF CONTENTS

CH A PTER 5

‘Love Poverty with Your H eart’ PICTU RIN G FRANCISCAN SPIRITUALITY Voluntary Poverty and the Poor C l a r e s .................................................................... 188 ‘From This Love Descends all Bounty of Grace’ : Charity and the Youth of Mary . 192 ‘For No One had Greater Charity’ : M ary’s M o t h e r h o o d ......................................194 ‘The Poor of this World Who Represent our Lord’ : Almsgiving and the Poor Christ 197 The Holy Family at W o r k ...........................................................................................220 CONCLUSION

‘Requirements of Devout Contemplation’: San Martino in Pisa, Ms. ital. 115, and ‘Intervisuality’ ..................................................................................................229 The Choir Frescoes at San M a r t i n o ...................................................................................230 The San Martino Frescoes and Ms. ital. 115 in Convent L i f e ..................................... 235 Obedience and C o m m u n ity ..................................................................................................238 Devotion to the Christ Child and Model M o th e r h o o d .................................................... 241 Devotion to Poverty and to the E u c h a ris t........................................................................... 242 A PPEN DIX I

Dating and Localization of Ms. ital. 115 S t y l e ....................................................................................................................................... 249 The Various Artists at W o r k .......................................................................................... 255 Materials and T e c h n i q u e s ..................................................................................................258 Script and T e x t .................................................................................................................262 A PPEN DIX 2

A Nineteenth-Century Copy of Ms. ital. 115: Ms. Ferraioli 423 in the Vatican Library A PPEN DIX 3

Codicological Description appendix

4

Index of Artists’ ‘Hands’ B ib lio g r a p h y ........................................................................................................................ 269 Photo C r e d i t s ........................................................................................................................ 297 Index of M a n u s c r i p t s ......................................................................................................... 299 General I n d e x ........................................................................................................................ 300 6

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Chapter 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Ramsen, Switzerland, Antiquariat Bibermühle, Meditationes Vitae Christi manuscript, f. 36v. Betrayal of C h ris t................................................................. 52 Notre Dame, Indiana, Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, 85.25, f. 12r. Joseph Pondering Leaving M a r y .......................................................53 Notre Dame, Indiana, Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, 85.25, f. 18r. C i r c u m c is i o n ............................................................................... 54 Notre Dame, Indiana, Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, 85.25, f. 5v. Presentation of the V i r g i n ........................................................... 55 Oxford, Ms. Corpus Christi College Library, Oxford University, 410, f. 16v. C ircu m cisio n ......................................................................................................... 59 Oxford, Ms. Corpus Christi College Library, Oxford University, 410, f. 15v. N a t i v i t y ............................................................................................................... 59 Oxford, Ms. Corpus Christi College 410, Oxford University, f. 135v. Disrobing Before C ru c ifix io n ............................................................................... 61 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. lr. Author and Cecilia 62 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 2v. Saint Francis . . 63 Oxford, Corpus Christi College Library, Oxford University, 410, f. 7v. A n n u n ciatio n ......................................................................................................... 68 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 33v. Presentation in the T e m p l e ............................................................................... 72 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 34v. Presentation in the T e m p l e ............................................................................... 73 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 35r. Presentation in the T e m p l e ............................................................................... 74 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 4r. Dispute of the Virtues ..................................................................................... 75 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 19v. Nativity . . . 77 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 20r. Nativity . . . 78 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 52r. Christ Among the D o c t o r s ............................................................................... 79

Chapter 3 18

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 7v. The Virgin Spins in the T e m p l e .................................................................................93

L IST O F IL L U S T R A T IO N S

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 6r. The Virgin Enters the T e m p l e ........................................................................... Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 6v. The Virgin Prays in the T e m p l e ..................................................................... Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 1Or. Annunciation . . Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 1lv. Annunciaton . . Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 12r. The Virgin Thanks God After the A n n u n c ia tio n ............................................ Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 24v. Circumcision . . Florence, Accademia Gallery. Pacino di Bonaguida, Tree of Life: Detail . . Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 15r. Circumcision of John the B a p t i s t ..................................................................... 104 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 25r. The Virgin Comforts the Christ C h i l d ...............................................................105 Attributed to Perugino, Sistine Chapel, Vatican, fipporah Circumcizes the Son of Moses : d e t a i l .................................................................................................... 106

94 95 96 97 98 102 103

Chapter 4 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

8

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 37v. Journey of the Holy F a m ily ................................................................................. 123 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 39r. Journey of the Holy F a m ily ................................................................................. 124 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 39v. Flight into Egypt: Idols F a llin g ........................................................................... 125 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 40r. The Holy Family Rents a H o u s e ..................................................................... 126 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 40v. Holy Family Resting in E g y p t .................................................................................. 127 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 41 r. The Virgin with C o m p a n io n s .................................................................................. 128 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 43r. Virgin Sewing in E g y p t ...............................................................................................129 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 44r. The Virgin Praying While Joseph and Christ S l e e p ...................................... 130 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 46r. Journey of the Holy F a m ily ........................................................................................ 131 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 47v. Journey to E l i z a b e t h ...............................................................................................132 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 46v. Meeting of the Boys Christ and John the B a p t i s t ............................................ 133 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 47r. The Holy Family Visits E l i z a b e t h ............................................................................ 134

O F IL L U S T R A T IO N S

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 48r. Holy Family in N a z a re th ..................................................................................... Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 49r. Journey to J e r u s a le m ............................................................................................ Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 50r. Searching for the Lost Christ C h i l d ................................................................. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 51v. Searching for the Lost Christ C h i l d ................................................................. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 54r. Christ in the Temple . Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 66v. Christ Ascends the M o u n t ............................................................................... Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 68r. Christ Fasting on the M o u n t ............................................................................... Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 70v. Post-Temptation Feast: Christ and the A n g e l s .............................................. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 71r. Post-Temptation Feast: Mary Sends F o o d .................................................... Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 71v. Post-Temptation Feast: Christ’s M e a l ........................................................... Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 72r. Post-Temptation Feast: Angels Return to Mary and J o s e p h .......................... Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 78v. Journey to the House of the V i r g i n ................................................................. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 79r. M aria Salome and the V i r g i n ........................................................................ Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 79v. Wedding at Cana . Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 80v. Wedding at Cana: The Virgin I n t e r v e n e s ..................................................................................... Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 81v. Wedding at Cana: The Virgin Instructs the S e r v a n t s ................................................................. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 82r. Wedding at Cana: The Servants Take O r d e r s ............................................................................... Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 82v. Wedding at Cana: The Wine A p p e a r s ............................................................................................ Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 83r. Wedding at Cana: Christ Visits the V i r g i n ..................................................................................... Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 97v. Feast of Herod: Salome D a n c e s .................................................................................................. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 98r. Salome Conspires . Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 98v. Feast of Herod: Beheading of John the B a p t i s t ........................................................................

135 136 137 138 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 171 172 I9

L IST O F IL L U S T R A T IO N S

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 99r. Feast of Herod: Salome Presents the Head of J o h n ..................................................................... 173 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. lOOv. The Virgin and the Apostles Mourning the Death of J o h n ..........................174 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 90r. Feast in the House of the Mother-in-Law of S i m o n ...................................... 175 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 106r. Miracle of Loaves and F i s h e s ........................................................................... 176 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. lOlv. Christ and the Woman of S a m a r ia ..................................................................... 177 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 102r. Christ and the Woman of S a m a r ia ..................................................................... 178 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 102v. Christ and the Woman of S a m a r ia ..................................................................... 179 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 103r. Christ and the Woman of S a m a r ia ..................................................................... 180 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 93r. Anointing at B e t h a n y ...............................................................................................181 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 93v. Mary Magdalen en route to B e t h a n y ...............................................................182 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 94r. Anointing at B e t h a n y ...............................................................................................183

Chapter 5 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

10

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 8r. The Virgin Receives Angelic B r e a d ......................................................................203 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 8v. The Virgin Gives Bread tothe P o o r ....................................................................... 204 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 9v. God Sends Gabriel to M a r y ........................................................................................ 205 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 13v. Visitation . . 206 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 14v. Birth of John the B a p t i s t ........................................................................................ 207 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 28v. Adoration of the M a g i .............................................................................................. 208 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 29r. Adoration of the M a g i .............................................................................................. 209 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 30v. The Virgin Giving Away the Gifts of the Magi to the P o o r ..........................210 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 29v. The Magi Leave the Holy F a m i l y ..................................................................... 211 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 31r. The Virgin Nurses the Christ C h i l d ...............................................................212

L IST O F IL L U S T R A T IO N S

84 85 86 87 88 89

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 53r. Holy Family in the H o s p i c e ...............................................................................213 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 45r. The Holy Family Leaves E g y p t ........................................................................ 214 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 60v. Christ thePilgrim . 215 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 16r. Joseph Contemplates Leaving the V ir g in ........................................................... 216 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 16v. Joseph Contemplates Leaving Mary, Joseph’s D r e a m ........................................217 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 43v. Joseph Working . 218

Conclusion 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

Church of San Martino, Pisa, View of West F a ç a d e ...................................... 232 Church of San Martino, Pisa, View of Nave Looking E a s t ......................... 232 Church of San Martino, Pisa, View of Nave Looking W e s t ......................... 234 Church of San Martino, Pisa, View of Choir Showing Sinopie . . . . 234 Giovanni di Nicola, Detached Fresco from Nuns’ Choir of San Martino, Annunciation and V is ita tio n ..................................................................................... 237 Giovanni di Nicola, Detached Fresco from Nuns’ Choir of San Martino, Birth and Naming of John the B a p t i s t ..................................................................239 Giovanni di Nicola, Detached Fresco from Nuns’ Choir of San Martino, N a t i v i t y ...................................................................................................................... 244 Giovanni di Nicola, Detached Fresco from Nuns’ Choir of San Martino, Adoration of the M a g i ............................................................................................244 Giovanni di Nicola, Detached Fresco from Nuns’ Choir of San Martino, Presentation in the T e m p l e ..................................................................................... 245 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ital. 115, f. 34r. Presentation in the T e m p l e ..................................................................................... 246

11

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS h e i d e a f o r t h i s b o o k w a s first developed in a seminar directed by Jonathan J. G. Alexander at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Professor Alexander deserves my deepest thanks for his constant support and his unwavering interest in this topic. I also wish to thank him for the many letters of recommendation he wrote for fellow­ ships and jobs, for his sage advice regarding my career, and for his exemplary promotion of collegiality and community among his students. Throughout the process of finishing this book, I was helped beyond measure by won­ derful colleagues and by generous monetary and administrative support from Tulane Uni­ versity. Suzanne J. Walker read the entire revised text and offered much-needed perspective, as did Jessica Maier, who read much of it as well. I would like to thank the staff of the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane, as well as friends and colleagues Florencia Bazzano-Nelson, George Bernstein, Elizabeth Boone, Teresa Cole, Michelle Foa, Thomas Frazel, Jeremy Jernegan, Susann S. Lusnia, Anne McCall, and Michael Plante. Erin Coffey, our department administrator, deserves special thanks for her extraordinarily kind and efficient support. My teaching assistant, Laura Guidry, also helped tremendously as I was pulling the final edits together. Generous financial support for research toward completion of the project, as well as images and image permissions, came from Tulane University in the following forms: a COR Research Grant, a School of Liberal Arts Dean’s Book Subvention, a Phase II Research Grant, the Art History Endowment Fund, and a faculty research grant from the Newcomb Institute. The Newcomb Art Department also offered support for the purchase of high-quality digital images for this publication. Generous support for publication expenses was provided by a Samuel Kress Foundation publication grant from the Interna­ tional Center of Medieval Art. Many individuals associated with the Institute of Fine Arts or NYU also deserve my heartfelt thanks for their help with this study in its early stages. Professor Lucy Freeman Sandler offered kind advice and support for this topic, and professors Colin Eisler, Tho­ mas F. Mathews, and Marvin Trachtenberg read drafts of my proposal for this topic and offered terrific advice and moral support. Professor Kathryn Smith very kindly offered bib­ liographic suggestions and essential advice as I was re-working the dissertation into book form. For many encouragements while I was an IFA student I would like to thank profes­ sors Kathleen Brandt, Jonathan Brown, Günther Kopeke, Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, Jonathan Hay, James McCredie, Linda Nochlin, Donald Posner, and Mariët Westermann. Thanks also to Danny Dennehy, Keith Kelly, Claire Hills-Nova, Joan Leibovitz, Jenni Rodda, Nita Roberts, Brenda Shrobe, and Hope Spence. My fellow students at the IFA were among my biggest supporters for this project. Trinita Kennedy, my roommate in Florence during the first year of my dissertation research,

T

13

ACKNOW LEDGEM ENTS

offered her friendship during a difficult period and continues to inspire me as a model of dis­ cipline and thorough scholarship. Sarah Cartwright, who read drafts of the first two revised chapters, as well as Theresa Flanigan and Amee Yunn, were fantastic companions during my time doing research in Italy. Special thanks also go to Professor Alexander’s ‘Grad Group’ of Ph.D. students, including Kyunghee Choi, Melanie Hanan, Lyle Humphrey Johnson, Alison Manges, Elizabeth Monti, Eric Ramirez-Weaver, and Anna Russakoff, who read preliminary drafts and offered suggestions that much improved this study. The following former and present IFA students also deserve thanks : Susan Anderson, Meli Costoupoulos, M artha Easton, Yvonne Elet, Andria Derstine, Nancy Falkin Lynn, Mia Genoni, Desiree Koslin, Susan L’Engle, Bob LaFrance, Anne Leader, Areli Marina, Kathryn McAllister, Iraida Rodriguez-Negron, and Ashley and Chad Weinard. Thanks especially to Marcelle Polednik, who read drafts carefully and thoughtfully, and also to her husband, David Kammerman, who was always willing to listen and talk about the project with us. Colleagues at the Cloisters and the Metropolitan Museum of Art also contributed to the completion of this book. Helpful conversations with Barbara Boehm, Carmen Bambach, Helen Evans, Melanie Holcomb, Larry Kanter, Charles Little, Michael B. Norris, Pia Palladino, and Nancy Wu strengthened this study. My research was greatly facilitated by the staff of the Watson Library, the Cloisters Library, and Meg Black at the Lehman Collection Library. Fellow present and former Cloisters lecturers Alison Clark, Marc Cruse, Meredith Fluke, Jacqueline Jung, Lindsay Koval, Kathryn Rudy, and Christine Sciacca all gave warm advice and sympathy. I wish to acknowledge the staff of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, especially Fran­ çois Avril and Marie-Thérèse Gousset, for allowing me firsthand access to Ms. ital. 115. Staff members of the British Library and the library of Corpus Christi College in Oxford, especially Julian Reid, were extremely kind and generous. In Florence, mille grazie go to the staff of the Kunsthistorisches Institut, the Biblioteca Nazionale, the Biblioteca Berenson at Villa I Tatti, the Biblioteca Riccardiana, and the Biblioteca Laurenziana, in particular Angela Dillon Bussi. Mirella Levi d’Ancona and Miklôs Boskovits also suggested bibliog­ raphy and avenues for research. Staff members of the Biblioteca Communale in Siena and the Biblioteca Vaticana in Rome were of great help as I viewed manuscripts. In Pisa, I would like to thank the staff of the library of the Scuola Normale and the University of Pisa, as well as Normale professors Lina Bolzoni, Enrico Castelnuovo, Marco Collareta, and Massimo Ferretti. Chiara Balbarini, Ottavio Banti, Gigetta Dalli Regoli, Fabrizio Francescini, Chiara Frugoni, and Arianna Pecorini Cignoni of the University of Pisa pro­ vided invaluable advice and friendship. The staff of the Archivio di Stato, the Museo di San Matteo, the Scuola Santa Anna, and the parish priest Don Enrico of the church of San Martino in Pisa also deserve special mention. Cari amici Giovanna Bagni, Stefano Molino, Randa Ishak, and the Gruppi Bibblici Universitari in Florence and Pisa made life in Italy fun and meaningful. Extremely generous fellowships from the Institute of Fine Arts, a Theodore Rousseau Fellowship from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Doctoral Fellowship from the Scuola Normale in Pisa, an American Fellowship from the American Association of University 14

ACKNOW LEDGEM ENTS

Women, and an Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellowship from The Frick Collection enabled me to undertake the bulk of the primary research for this study. Much of the sec­ ondary research was also completed while I was a fellow at the Frick, and the kindness of colleagues at The Frick Collection cannot be overstated. Curators Denise Allen, Colin Bailey, and Susan Grace Galassi were extremely supportive, and Yvonne Elet and Xavier Salamon, the Frick’s other two Mellon Fellows and my office mates, offered good cheer. All members of the Curatorial Department, in particular Amy Herman, Joanna Sheers, and Elaine Koss, deserve special mention, as do Patricia Barnett, Lydia Dufour, Inge Reist, and the entire Frick Art Reference Library staff. I also wish to thank Ena Heller, Executive Director of the Museum of Biblical Art, as well as all the museum staff, for sup­ porting me in this project during my two years as curator there. I owe a tremendous debt to Susan Boynton and Isabelle Cochelin, series editors for Disciplina Monastica, for their encouragement and interest in this project, and to my editor at Brepols, Luc Jocqué, for his patience and responsiveness. The anonymous reviewers of this volume offered extremely helpful criticisms. Other scholars who merit thanks for their personal interest in my project include Michelle Brown, Caroline Bruzelius, Joanna Cannon, Mary Dzon, Dorothy F. Glass, Jeffrey Hamburger, Sandra Hindman, Colum Hourihane, Susan Karant-Nunn, Theresa Kinney, Sarah McNamer, Lawrence Nees, Dianne Phillips, Lynn Ransom, Victor Schmidt, Heribert Tenschert, and Isa Ragusa. In particular, the suggestions made by Kerr Houston in his thorough reading of the text prompted the most substantial improvements. My copy editor and college friend Jessica Royer Ocken carefully checked the text and helped me immeasurably when it came to tidying up my footnotes and tightening the text as a whole. Earlier drafts of portions of this text have been published in the journals Gesta, Studies in Iconography, Ikon, and Bollettino Storico Pisano, as well as several edited volumes of essays (see bibliography). I would like to thank the editors of these publications for granting per­ mission to re-publish research presented elsewhere in this updated form .1 My personal thanks go to my parents, Tom and Phyllis Flora, my sister, Wendy Flora, and my brother, Cody Flora, for their support of my career. In the six years they have known me, my parents-in-law Gerald and Lynette Meek have offered infinite kindness. Without the tremendous patience, loving encouragement, and thoughtful perspective of my husband, Ryan Meek, this book could not have been completed.

(1) E arlier versions of argum ents voiced in this book have been published as Holly Flora, ‘Paris Biblio­ thèque N ationale ital 115: A Pisan Trecento M anuscript’, Bollettino Storico Pisano, 74 (2003), pp. 353-59; Holly Flora, ‘A Book for Poverty’s D aughters: G ender and Devotion in Paris Bibliothèque N ationale ital. 115’, in Varieties o f Devotion in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, A rizona C enter for M edieval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 7, ed. by Susan K arant-N unn (T urnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 61-85; A rianna Pecorini Gignoni and Holly Flora, ‘Requirem ents of D evout C ontem plation: T ext and Im age for the Poor Glares in Trecento Pisa’, Gesta, 45 (2006), pp. 61-76; Holly Flora, ‘T he C harity of the V irgin M ary in the Paris Meditations on the Life o f Christ (BnF, ital. 115)’, Studies in Iconography, 29 (2008), pp. 55-89, and Holly Flora, ‘Tensions in T extual Exegesis: W ord and Picture in an Illustrated M anuscript of the Meditationes Vitae Christi’, Ikon, 1 (2008), p p .123-32. 15

INTRODUCTION h e M ed itatio n s on the L ife of Christ or Meditationes Vitae Christi (henceforth MVC) 1 is the best-known re-telling of Christ’s life to emerge from the late-Medieval period. Written in the fourteenth century in Tuscany by a Franciscan friar, perhaps John of Caulibus,2 for a Franciscan nun or ‘Poor Clare’, 3 the MVC offers a charming and col­ orful narrative that attempts to fill the anecdotal and emotional gaps left by the Gospel accounts. The author of the MVC distilled the biblical stories into accessible vignettes, blending them with paraphrases from patristic writings as well as his own imaginative embellishments. He thus imparted a unique participatory and empathetic sensibility to his narrative of Christ’s life, which made the MVC immensely popular with lay and monastic audiences alike throughout Europe. The MVC is arguably the most important text for understanding late-Medieval empa­ thetic piety. It has been quoted and cited repeatedly by scholars across disciplines as a hall­ mark of the more personal, experiential tendency in late-Medieval and early-Renaissance devotion. Art historians in particular have long studied the MVC and its supposed impact on iconographie innovations and the new interest in narrative and emotionalism that char­ acterized the early Renaissance. Illustrated manuscripts of the MVC, however, remain largely unstudied, despite this text’s assumed links to art. Additionally, few scholars have sought specific connections between the MVC and art made for the Poor Clares, even with the explosion of literature in recent years concerning female spirituality and a rt.4 In other words, much about the MVC and its relationship to art and piety has yet to be explored.

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(1) H ere I have retained the better-known spelling of this text, Meditationes Vitae Christi, rath e r th an Meditaciones Vite Christi, used by the most recent critical edition of the text, following the incipit of O xford Corpus Christi College Ms. 410, the prim ary m anuscript on which the edition is based. See Johannis de Caulibus, Meditaciones Vite Christi olim S. Bonaventurae attributae, ed. by M ary Stallings-Taney (T urnhout: Brepols, 1997), p. 8, and Jo h n of Caulibus, Meditations on the Life o f Christ, trans, and ed. by Francis Taney, Anne Miller, and M ary Stallings-Taney (Asheville, N C : Pegasus Press, 2000). For the sake of brevity, I will follow the model of recent studies and use the abbreviation M V C throughout this book. (2) See chapter 1 for a discussion of the authorship of the MVC. (3) T he terms used to describe the women of the Second O rd er of St Francis, whose founder was Clare of Assisi, vary greatly in the literature; examples include ‘Clarisse’, ‘Poor Clares’, and ‘Clarissas’. In this study I prefer the noun ‘Poor Clares’ as it is the most common in scholarly literature in English, b ut when convenient I also use the adjective ‘Clarissan’. I shall discuss the question of the authorship of the M V C in chapter 1. I am also referring to w omen of this order when I use the term ‘Franciscan nuns.’ (4) For an overview of recent literature on female monasticism and art, see Crown and Veil: Female Monasticism from the Fifth to the Fifteenth Centuries, ed. by Jeffrey H am burger and Susan M arti (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), which is an updated, English version of the essays in the exhibition catalogue: Jeffrey H am burger and others, Krone und Schleier: Kunst aus Mittelalterlichen Frauenklöstern (Essen: R uhrlandm useum , 2005). O nly recently have studies em erged connecting art for the Poor Clares to the M VC. These include Cathleen A. Fleck, “ ‘T o Exercise Yourself in These Things by C ontinued Contem plation” , Visual and T ex­ tual Literacy in the Frescoes at Santa M aria D onna R egina’, in The Church o f Santa Maria Donna Regina: Art, 17

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This book seeks a new approach to the MVC via an in-depth examination of its most important illustrated manuscript, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ms. ital. 115 (henceforth referred to as Ms. ital. 115), probably made in Pisa circa 1340-50. With 193 images executed in an unusual tempera wash technique on its 206 paper folios, Ms. ital. 115 is by far the most extensively illustrated MVC manuscript known, even in its unfin­ ished, incomplete state of survival. It thus offers tremendous evidence for the visual exegesis of the MVC in its text and image program. Further, indications of the process of illustration are also found in rare surviving instructions to the artists in the manuscript’s margins, as well as captions added later to the finished images by the same hand. These inscriptions reveal that the codex was probably designed by a friar serving in an advisory capacity for a group of Poor Clare nuns, and they shed light on such an advisor’s intentions to shape the devotional life of the book’s readers. Ms. ital. 115 is the only extant illustrated copy likely made for a Clarissan context in Tuscany, and it thus presents a unique opportunity to understand the illustrated MVC as it was designed for a female Franciscan audience like that for which the text itself was origi­ nally written. As the following chapters will demonstrate, this manuscript combines text and image in unique and powerful ways to effectively fuel the devotional imagination of its audience of Franciscan nuns. W hat this study considers for the first time is how illustrations worked alongside the MVC text to shape experiential piety for a Clarissan reader. But before we consider the image program of Ms. ital. 115, I want to underscore how central the ‘devout belief of the imagination’ was to the life of a Poor Clare nun in particular. ‘ The Devout Belief of the Imagination’ and Female Franciscan Meditation The MVC author promoted an interactive and imaginative experience of Christ’s life, and his prescription for meditation thus reached beyond traditional rumination on and absorption of holy texts in the monastic tradition. 5 In his prologue, the MVC author intro­ duces the concept of the ‘devout belief of the imagination’ as he encourages his reader to contemplate Christ’s life beyond the Gospel accounts. Defending the literary licence he freely employs as he adds anecdotal details to stories from scripture, he writes : [...] You must not believe that all things said and done by Him on which we may meditate are known to us in writing. For the sake of greater impressiveness I shall tell them to you as they occurred or as they might have occurred according to the devout belief of the imagina-

Iconography, and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Naples, ed. by Jan is Elliott and Cordelia W arr (London : Ashgate, England, and Burlington, V T , 2004), pp. 109-28, and in the same volume, A drian S. Hoch, ‘T he “ Passion” Cycle: Images to Contem plate and Im itate Amid Clarissan Clausura’, pp. 129-54. (5) I will discuss the process of m editation as it relates to Ms. ital. 115 more fully in chapter 3. Although some scholars differentiate between the meanings of the words ‘m editation’ and ‘contem plation’, in the text of the M V C in Ms. ital. 115, the term s are used as cognates, which is how I have employed them here. See J a y M . H am m ond, ‘Contem plation and the Form ation of the Vir Spiritualis in Bonaventure’s Collationes in Hexaemeron’, in Franciscans A t Prayer, ed. by Tim othy J . Johnson (Leiden and Boston : Brill, 2007), pp. 123-66. 18

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tion and the varying interpretation of the mind [...]. Take it as if I had said, ‘Suppose that this is what the Lord Jesus did and said’ [...]. 6

In the Italian version of this passage in Ms. ital. 115, the MVC author encourages the reader to contemplate Christ’s life ‘seconde alcunaymaginattive representation^, which can also be translated as ‘according to some imagined scenarios’. 7 The notion of using a representatione in the mind’s eye was, in Medieval treatises on memory, a method for making some­ thing present and thus stimulating belief via imagined experience.8 Accordingly, the MVC author goes on in the prologue to give his reader freedom not only to contemplate the imagined scenarios he includes in his text, but also to imaginatively participate in the sto­ ries herself, adding : ‘And if you wish to profit you must be present at the same things that it is related that Christ did and said [...]’. 9 It is in part this notion o f ‘being present’ that made the MVC so popular, for it enlivened the act of contemplation by allowing a reader to see herself in her mind’s eye interacting with biblical figures and experiencing sacred his­ tory firsthand. Although this notion of presence in devotion appealed to many Christians, it was par­ ticularly important in Franciscan spirituality. In founding his order, Francis of Assisi wished to create a new paradigm for apostolic life that combined the contemplative aspects of the monastic tradition with service and evangelism outside convent walls. Bonaventure describes Francis’ dual life thus in the Legenda maior: ‘For he had wisely learned so as to divide the time given him for merit that he expended part of it in working for his neigh­

(6) Meditations on the Life o f Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript o f the Fourteenth Century, trans, by Isa Ragusa and Rosalie G reen (Princeton, N J : Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 5. In Italian : ‘M a non credere ehe tutte quelle cose ehe ‘Ili dicesse ufacesse le quaipossiamo contemplare ci siano scripte; ma io ad maggiore simigliansa cost le contero ad te come se cost si fusseno istate siccome interavenne u ehe potesseno essere intravenute sanctamente si puô credere seconde alcuna ymaginattive representatione la quai l’anima in diversi modi conprende’, folio 3r. As this book is a study of Ms. ital. 115, I have chosen to use this older translation as opposed to the more recent one com pleted by Stallings-Taney and others (see footnote 1) because it is based on the text of Ms. ital. 115. I have m ade note of the rare instances in which my own translation would differ from th a t of Ragusa and Green, but for the sake of clarity for students and non-Italian-speaking readers I have kept English quotations in the body of my text. In my introduction to the text of the M V C in chapter 1 and in my discussions of the instructions to the artists in chapter 2, I have transcribed portions of the Italian text of Ms. ital. 115, which the reader will find in my foot­ notes. I have chosen not to include full transcriptions because Francesco Franceschini is currently at work on a publication of a critical Italian edition w ith a complete transcription of the text of Ms. ital. 115, and I refer the reader to his forthcoming work. (7) H ere I favor Ragusa and G reen’s evocative translation, but note th a t the last portion of the passage in question, in Italian : ‘secondo alcuna ym aginattive rapresentatione’, could also be translated as ‘certain im agi­ nary scenarios’, as in the more recent English translation from the L atin : ‘But to make them stand out, I will tell you about these unw ritten things just as if they had actually happened, at least insofar as they can piously be believed to be occurring or to have occurred ; doing this in accord w ith certain imaginary scenarios, which the mind perceives in a varying w ay’, Jo h n of Caulibus, Meditations, p. 4. In L atin : ‘Ego uero ad maiorem impressionem ea sic ac si ita fuissent tibi narrabo prout contingere uel contigisse pie credi possunt, secundum quasdam imaginarias representaciones quas animus diuersimodepercipit’, Johannis de Caulibus, Meditaciones, p. 10. (8) See M ary Garruthers, The Book o f Memory (Cam bridge, U K : Cam bridge University Press, 1990), pp. 221-24. (9) Meditations, p. 5. 19

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bor’s benefit and devoted the other part to the perfect ecstasy of contemplation’. 10 W hat Francis sought was a melding of the two key paths to spiritual perfection in the Christian tradition : the vita contemplativa (the contemplative life) and the vita activa (the active life). 11 Francis and his friars thus lived a life of prayer and contemplation outside the bounds of a convent, traveling, preaching and ministering to the poor. Their commitment to itin­ erancy was further underscored by their rejection of holding property and the sustenance that came from its income. Preaching poverty and devotion to the human, crucified Christ, the early Franciscans espoused a humble and earthy spirituality. Soon, women became drawn to this devotion as well. Clare of Assisi, daughter of a nobleman, founded an order for female counterparts to Francis’s friars in the form of the Second Order of St Francis, later known the ‘Poor Ladies’ or ‘Poor Clares’. With the addition of women to the order came clerical anxieties about women living lives of volun­ tary poverty, without property and/or protection.12 Therefore, rather than wander and beg as did the friars, the Poor Clares lived enclosed lives of prayer and contemplation more typical of traditional monasticism.13 By the time Ms. ital. 115 was made in the mid four­ teenth century, strict rules of enclosure had long been in place, precluding members of the Second Order from leaving their convents.14 Thus the Poor Clares could not physically partake in the vita activa regarded as so fun­ damental to spiritual perfection in the same way that the friars did. Although contempla­ tion remained important for the male friars, their missions to the Holy Land, ministries to the poor, and public preaching became more central as the order grew. The twofold way of spiritual life was thus ideologically divided along gender lines when it came to First and Second Order Franciscans.15 This separation is reflected in the writings of the Franciscan

(10) Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God, The Tree o f Life, The Life o f St Francis, trans, by Ew ert Cousins (Paulist Press: M ahw ah, N J, 1978), p. 303. (11) O n Francis’s calling to and definition of the apostolic life, see Jo h n M oorm an, A History o f the Franciscan Order From its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford: C larendon Press, 1968, reprinted Chicago: Franciscan H erald Press, 1988), pp. 8-9. O n the active and contem plative lives in medieval thought, see also Giles Constable, Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (New Y ork: Cam bridge University Press, 1995). (12) O n the early Poor Clares see M oorm an, A History o f the Franciscan Order, pp. 205-15. For further bibliography on the Poor Clares and the early struggles for rejection of property ownership by Clare of Assisi, see chapter 5. (13) O n the Clares in the fourteenth century, see M oorm an, A History o f the Franciscan Order, pp. 406-28. (14) O n the rules of enclosure see Rule o f St Clare, in Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, trans, by R . J . A rm strong and I. C. Brady (New York: Pauhst Press, 1982), p. 223. For further inform ation on the legislation of enclosure for all nuns in the M iddle Ages, see Ja n e Tibbetts Schulenburg, ‘Strict Active Enclosure and its Effects on the Female M onastic Experience’, in Medieval Religious Women, vol. 1 : Distant Echoes, ed. by Jo h n A. Nichols and Fillian Thom as Shank (Kalam azoo, M I: Cistercian Publications, 1984), pp. 51-86, and J . Brundage and E. Makowski, ‘Enclosure of Nuns : T he D ecretal Periculoso and its Com m entators’, Journal o f Medieval History, 20 (1994), pp. 139-55. (15) A means for lay participation in the Franciscan order for men and women came in the form of the T h ird O rder, in which aspects of the active and contem plative lives could also be combined. See M oorm an, A History o f the Franciscan Order, pp. 216-25. 20

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biographer Thomas of Celano, for example, who portrayed Francis as the paradigm of the vita activa and Clare as model of the vita contemplativa. 16 W hat is remarkable, then, is that the text of the MVC, originally written for a Poor Clare, addresses both the active and contemplative lives. This emphasis, as well as the abun­ dance of participatory commands and references to everyday life in the MVC, have led scholars to speculate that this text was not addressed solely to an enclosed Clarissan audi­ ence initially, but to a wider lay and religious public.17 However, my reading of the MVC, and particularly of the text-image program in Ms. ital. 115, suggests that the MVC author and the advisor of this manuscript were thinking specifically of Clarissan readers and wished to offer them a means to engage in both types of spiritual perfection within the bounds of enclosure. A Clarissan reader’s devout imagination thus became central to her contemplative experience, for in it she was to use her mind’s eye to perform the vita activa through her vita contemplativa. The MVC author accomplishes this incorporation of the active life into his charge’s contemplative life by focusing her meditations on the humanity of Christ. He makes this idea explicit in a lengthy discursus on the active and contemplative lives, a treatise found in Ms. ital. 115 but lacking in many other manuscript copies of the MVC. 18 Here the MVC author, quoting extensively from Bernard of Clairvaux, outlines how the complete spiritual life is composed of the active life and the contemplative life. The active life involves service to one’s neighbor and preaching the Gospel, and it is this part of the Christian life that, according to the MVC author, the female reader need not worry about : [...] The second part of the active, how one must attend to the winning of souls and the benefit of the neighbor, I do not propose to treat, since your condition does not require this. It is enough for you to place your whole effort in this [meditation] . 19

He then reassures his reader that meditation on the humanity of Christ will substitute for the active life from which her ‘condition’ precludes her : But you must know that it is not necessary for the active to precede this contemplation, for it contains corporeal matters, that is, the works of Christ according to humanity, as is proposed more easily, not to the most perfect, but to the vulgar, to look at, for in it, as in the active, we purge ourselves of vices and fill ourselves with virtues, and thus this converges with the ac­ tive. 20

(16) See Clare of Assisi: The Lady: Early Documents, ed. and trans, by Regis J . Arm strong (New York: New City Press, 2005), pp. 272 ff, 396. (17) See chapter 1 for a discussion of the original audience of the MVC. (18) See chapter 2 for treatm ent of the early illustrated m anuscripts of the MVC. (19) Meditations, p. 254. In Italian : ‘[...] della seconda parte della activa, come si debbia intendere al guadagno e all’utilitd dell’anime non intendo di trattare; perd che 7 tuo stato non richiere questo. Bastiti a te poni ad questo tueto lo tuo studio, accio ch’ dai vizy corretto e di virtudi ripieno per la prima parte dell’activa possi vacare al tuo Dio per la contemplativa’, folio 145r. (20) Meditations, p. 265. In Italian : ‘M a dei sapere ehe questa contemplazione non bisogna ehe vada inanti la vita activa, peroch’ella di cose corporali, doe della vita di Cristo seconde l’umanitade, onde agevile non alli piu perfetti ma ai rozzi, per guardarla che inlei siccome nella activa di vizy espunghiamo e di virtu riempiamo, e questa converge con l’activa’, folio 150r. 21

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For the Clarissan reader, meditation on Christ’s humanity thus becomes an appropriate way of engaging in the active life. In seeking to provide this convergence of the contempla­ tive life with the active life, the MVC author focused his treatise on experiences that would allow the reader to connect personally and to empathize with the human Christ in his suf­ fering and poverty. These include textual injunctions to imaginative participation in the narratives. Much of the remainder of this study explains how the image program of Ms. ital. 115 worked alongside the MVC text to facilitate such engagement in the narra­ tives of Christ’s life for a Poor Clare reader, providing her with a more complete experience of the ideal Christian life. The Current Study Although the reader will find a discussion of the history and historiography of the text of the MVC in chapter 1, my central focus in this book is not the text of the MVC itself. I am leaving that to scholars of literature and language better equipped to deal with prob­ lems of the text’s date and place of origin, authorship, and literary appropriation. As an art historian, my interest in the MVC text as written in Ms. ital. 115 aligns instead with my readings of the complex ways in which the images functioned alongside the text in this manuscript. The modern tendency to separate text from image is very different from Medi­ eval conceptions of these two elements, and my readings therefore consider the two closely in tandem. I have sought to understand how these two elements in this codex cross-polli­ nated in producing meaning for the read er/vie wer, that is, how the images informed the reading of the text and vice versa. W hat I am presenting is therefore a contextual art history that begins with images and the MVC text as primary documents but also seeks supporting evidence in historical, lit­ erary, religious, social, and cultural phenomena from the period. As much as possible, I have sought my supporting evidence from within the culture of female spirituality in mid-fourteenth-century Tuscany. But as such specific evidence is often lacking, I have also drawn from contexts throughout Europe in the late-Medieval period (circa 1200 to 1500). I found, however, that the text and images of Ms. ital. 115 often revealed new modes of reading and hitherto unexplored themes relevant to a female Franciscan audience, and this manuscript is thus my key primary source for looking at the MVC in this context. It is my hope that evidence from Ms. ital. 115 may therefore prove useful to scholars across disci­ plines seeking a deeper understanding of the Franciscan tradition, female spirituality, lateMedieval piety, and the artistic traditions therein. I am looking at Ms. ital. 115 from the point of view of its agents of creation, as well as its reception by its audience. The primary agent in the design of the manuscript was an unknown person who served as an ‘advisor’, planning and later checking the image pro­ gram. This person left detailed instructions to the artists in the margins of the manuscript and later added captions to the finished images. The most likely person to serve as such an advisor would have been a friar in charge of the spiritual caretaking of a group of nuns. In 22

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Clarissan contexts, these friars were responsible for both religious advisement and general communication with the outside world on behalf of their enclosed sisters. The MVC text itself was originally written by such a friar for a Poor Clare who probably had no means of obtaining books from outside the convent without his help. This situation does not preclude input from the nuns themselves in shaping the image program, although we have little con­ crete evidence of that in the case of Ms. ital. 115. As my analysis in chapter 2 suggests, the advisor and, at times, the artists themselves show a keen awareness of the lifestyle of the Poor Clare readers and a great sensitivity to them, which may hint of collaboration on their part. 21 In looking at possible female Franciscan influence on and/or responses to Ms. ital. 115, my approach is informed by studies of illustrated manuscripts for which a female reader­ ship can be argued. 22 In reaction to the explosion of scholarly literature on gender and images, some recent studies have pointed out that imagery created for male and female viewers was remarkably similar, and that the gender of the audience often did not demon­ strably shape the content and presentation of works of a rt.23 The point here is well taken; gender does not always have a definable effect on the making and commissioning of art. I do not wish to suggest that all of the potentially ‘gendered’24 or ‘Franciscan’ imagery I discuss in Ms. ital. 115 would have been uniquely meaningful to women, Franciscans, or Poor Clares.25 Many of the themes treated in Ms. ital. 115 would have been relevant to (21) For a sim ilar approach to reading female agency in a treatise w ritten by men for women, see Elizabeth Freem an, ‘T he M edieval Nuns at W atton: Reading Female Agency from M ale-A uthored D idactic T exts’, Magistra: A Journal o f Women’s Spirituality in History, 6:1 (Summ er 2000), pp. 3-36. See also Frank Tobin, ‘H enry Suso and Elsbeth Stagel: W as the “V ita” a Cooperative Effort?’ in Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters, ed. by C atherine M ooney (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 118­ 35. (22) Such recent studies include A dam S. Cohen, The Uta Codex: Art, Philosophy, and Reform in EleventhCentury Germany (University Park, PA : Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000) ; Anne Rudloff Stanton, The Queen Mary Psalter: A Study o f Affect and Audience (Philadelphia: A m erican Philosophical Society, 2001) ; K a th ­ ryn A. Smith, Art, Identity, and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England: Three Women and their Books o f Hours (Eondon: British Library, 2004) ; G ia Toussaint, Das Passional der Kunigunde von Böhmen: Bildrhetorik und Spiri­ tualität (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003) ; and Ja n e Geddes, The Saint Albans Psalter: A Book fo r Christina o f Markyate (London: T he British L ibrary, 2005). (23) Examples of studies th a t distinguish art m ade for women in M edieval Italy are Jeryldene W ood, Women, Art and Spirituality: The Poor Clares o f Early Modern Italy (New York: Cam bridge University Press, 1996), and A nabel Thom as, Art and Piety in the Female Religious Communities o f Renaissance Italy : Iconography, Space, and the Religious Woman’s Perspective (Cam bridge, Cam bridge University Press, 2003). For a critique of the con­ cept of a ‘nunnery a rt’ see K err Houston, ‘Painted Images and the Clarisse, 1212-1320: Aspects of Production and Reception, and the Idea of a N unnery A rt’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 2001), and Ju lian G ardner, ‘Nuns and Altarpieces : Agendas for Research’, Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana, 13 (1995), pp. 28-57. (24) O n the definitions of gender in scholarly discourse see Jo a n W. Scott, ‘G ender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis’, The American Historical Review, 91 (1986), pp. 1053-75. O n the problem atic of the idea of ‘gender’ in historical studies, see also Allen J . Frantzen, ‘W hen W om en A ren’t Enough’, Speculum, 68 (1993), pp. 445-71, and Carolyn Dinshaw, Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre-and Post-Modern (D urham : Duke University Press, 1999), introduction. (25) For a cautious approach to the notion of exclusively ‘Franciscan’ spirituality, for example, see Caroline W alker Bynum, ‘Franciscan Spirituality: Two Approaches’, Medievalia etHumanistica, 7 (1976), pp. 195-97. 23

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both male and female Medieval Christians in lay and monastic vocations, as the popularity of the MVC in later translations attests. Thus, while we can speak of the idea of ‘gendered looking’, 26 given the social structures inherent in Medieval society,271 wish to avoid gener­ alizations, such as the characterization of ‘affective’ imagery, or responses to it, as categori­ cally ‘female’. 28 That said, evidence from Ms. ital. 115 strongly suggests that a female readership was indeed intended and that the gender of the intended viewer shaped this manuscript’s planning and use. Throughout this study, particularly in chapters 3 through 5, I speculate as to how female readers would have absorbed, digested, and performed meditation on the life of Christ using this manuscript. In this analysis, the notion of ‘performative’ responses to the manuscript will emerge. W hat I mean by ‘perform’ in this context is that in reading or viewing the manuscript, a reader would be prompted to use her mind’s eye to participate interactively in the narrated stories. This ‘performance’ also implies an active sense of med­ itation that might require elements typically associated with ‘performance’ in dram a.29 Performing devotion using Ms. ital. 115 at times required the devout to cry ‘on cue’, when commanded by text and image in the manuscript, or to imaginatively step into a biblical story and kiss or hold the infant Jesus, for example. As I shall explain further in later chap­ ters, the manuscript prompts the reader to use it to engage deeply in affective meditation via such performative devotional experiences.30 My study begins with a broader focus on the text of the MVC and its various illustrated manuscripts in the first two chapters, and then narrows to focus on the imagery in Ms. ital. 115 in the three successive chapters. This structure establishes a context for Ms. ital. 115 within the larger history of the text and in relation to other examples of illustrated manu­ scripts of the MVC. The first chapter is devoted to the text of the MVC and its importance in the study of the history of art over the last century and a half. Here I introduce what is known about the origins of this text, including its date and place of composition, original (26) See the discussion of gendered responses in Flora Lewis, ‘T he W ound in C hrist’s Side and the Instru­ ments of the Passion: Gendered Experience and Response’, in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. by L. Smith and J . T aylor (London: T he British L ibrary, 1997), pp. 204-29. (27) For an excellent sum m ary of traditional C hristian argum ents concerning the nature of women, see M argaret L. K ing and A lbert R abil, J r ., ‘T he O th er Voice in Early M odern Europe: Introduction to the Series’, in A ntonia Pulci, Florentine Drama fo r Convent and Festival: Seven Sacred Plays, trans, by Jam es W yatt Cook (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. ix-xxviii. (28) As Jeffrey H am burger has pointed out, traditional scholarship has often dismissed im agery m ade for women either as ‘em otional’, as ‘ugly a rt’ or as ‘non a rt’. See H am burger, “ ‘To M ake W om en W eep” : Ugly A rt as “ Fem inine” and the Origins of M odern Aesthetics’, Res, 31 (Spring 1997), pp. 9-33. O n gender as it can be considered in light of the politics of sight and vision, see M adeline Caviness, Visualizing Women in the Middle Ages: Sight, Spectacle, and Scopic Economy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). (29) For definitions of perform ance and ‘perform ativity’ in M edieval dram a as well as the visual arts see H erbert L. Kessler, Seeing Medieval Art (O rchard Park: Broadview Press, 2004), chapter 7; R oberta L. K rueger and Eglal Doss-Quinby, ‘Introduction’, in Cultural Performances in Medieval France: Essays in Honor o f Nancy Freeman Regalado, ed. by Eglal Doss-Quinby, R oberta L. K rueger, and E. Ja n e Burns (New Y ork: D. S. Brewer, 2007), pp. xv-xxii, and the collection of essays in Visualizing Medieval Performance : Perspectives, Histories, Contexts, ed. by Elina G ertsm an (London : Ashgate, 2008). (30) See chapter 3 for discussion of the concepts of lectio divina and meditatio as they pertain to Ms. ital. 115. 24

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language, and intended audience. After an overview of the way this text has been studied in relation to the visual arts, I make the case for a deeper look at the M V C s relationship to its original Clarissan audience via its illustrations in Ms. ital. 115. My approach thus departs from traditional art-historical views that have focused on the relationship between this text and late-Medieval iconographie innovations. Chapter 2 is focused on illustration of the MVC. Despite its popularity and the survival of a number of manuscript copies, the MVC was rarely illustrated. The few surviving manuscripts with images employ very different strategies for illustrating this text, and they frequently reveal a selective relationship to the text in response to the needs of a specific audience. In comparison to these other manuscripts, especially two that feature evidence for male as well as female readers, Ms. ital. 115 emerges as a manuscript adapted particu­ larly to the needs of a female Franciscan audience. The second part of this chapter is devoted to an analysis of how and why the MVC text was interpreted visually in Ms. ital. 115 via an examination of the instructions to the artists and the captions added later to the finished images by the manuscript’s advisor. The subsequent three chapters focus specifically on the text-image program of Ms. ital. 115 in the context of a female Franciscan readership. The first part of chapter 3 explains how the manuscript’s unique layout facilitated interaction with the text and image pro­ gram in a variety of ways and suggests varying levels of literacy on the part of its readers. The remainder of the chapter concerns the basic lessons on imitatio, specifically the imitatio Mariae, imparted by the early narratives in Ms. ital. 115. The lessons taught in this early portion of the manuscript are more inwardly focused and would aid the reader in learning the basics of the vita contemplativa, one of the key components of the ideal Franciscan life. After teaching the reader basic aspects of monastic life via M ary’s example, the manu­ script’s text and image program shifts toward more advanced lessons on affective devotion, including a poignant lesson on empathetic prayer offered by the circumcision narrative in which Mary herself circumcises the Christ child. M ary’s portrayal as a priestly figure offers readers a more active role model and encourages emotional participation in Christ’s life. Chapter 4 continues my analysis of the text and images in Ms. ital. 115 with a discus­ sion of the more ‘advanced’ lessons in the manuscript. The reader is taught how to take an imagined or mental pilgrimage, for example. She is also given lessons on the importance of the Eucharist and direct interaction with the human Christ through pictorial emphasis on feast scenes. By introducing the reader to negative role models, such as Salome, as well as additional positive female role models, such as Mary Magdalen and the woman of Samaria, the advisor of Ms. ital. 115 offered the reader further means of interacting with the biblical narratives through her devout imagination. For an enclosed female reader, the vita contemplativa therefore becomes a means for partaking in the vita activa in a lively, yet appropriately physically limited, way. Ms. ital. 115’s specific relevance for a female Franciscan reader is further explored in chapter 5, where I focus on the themes of poverty, charity, and the mendicant life pro­ moted in the manuscript. I examine the manuscript’s promotion of the Virgin Mary as an 25

IN T R O D U C T IO N

ideal paradigm of charity, as well as its sympathetic portrayal of the poor in scenes of alms­ giving. The poor are cast as types of Christ himself, and devotion to them and to the pov­ erty of the holy family is thus strongly emphasized in Ms. ital. 115. By mentally placing herself among the holy family, the reader is given a means to experience their poverty imaginatively, though the constraints of the Second Order prevented her from living in true poverty. Once again, then, the advisor of the manuscript provided his reader with a means of experiencing a key component of the Franciscan life via her meditations. Imagi­ native devotion to poverty thus becomes the most effective strategy for combining the vita activa and the vita contemplativa. The Conclusion moves outward from Ms. ital. 115 to speculate as to how Clarissan audiences may have engaged with illustrated copies of the MVC such as Ms. ital. 115 alongside other works of art in their convents. As a case study, I examine the little-known choir frescoes in the Clarissan convent of San Martino in Pisa, a probable original context for Ms. ital. 115. I propose ways in which the monumental imagery in the choir may have informed readings of Ms. ital. 115 and vice versa. By offering this one example I suggest that Ms. ital. 115 offers a tremendous body of evidence for probing the complex and lay­ ered meanings of works of art made for Franciscan women in Medieval Italy. The Appendix includes an essay on the style, technique, language, and script in Ms. ital. 115, a codicological description, and a short essay on a nineteenth-century copy of Ms. ital. 115 now in the Vatican library. I chose to place this information outside the main body of the book not because it is unimportant but because these essays employ dif­ ferent, more traditional methodological tools such as formal, paleographic, and codicolog­ ical analysis. The present placement of this material allows it to serve as an accessible reference tool for those concerned with issues of the style and codicology of the manuscript, without distracting from the alternately focused research that forms the body of the book. My research presented in the Appendix, however, makes a strong case for the dating and localization of the manuscript to Pisa, circa 1340-50, which is an argument relevant to many of the other points made throughout the book. Each of the following chapters is given a title taken from the text of the M V G. These titles highlight key themes that emerge in this study - including imagination, contempla­ tion, and the notions of progressive lessons on divine virtue, affective devotion, and Fran­ ciscan poverty - which are all reinforced pictorially in Ms. ital. 115. With its abundance of images, many of which have no parallels in any other known works of art, this manu­ script would have provided its Clarissan reader with an intimate and vibrant means of con­ necting with the life of Christ. To understand the importance of that connection in the proper context, it is first necessary to consider the history of the MVC text itself, both in the Medieval world and in modern scholarly discourse, as will be seen in the first chapter.

26

1

‘You Must Begin from This5 THE MEDITATIONES VITAE CHRISTI, THE HISTORY OF ART, AND THE STUDY OF FEMALE SPIRITUALITY i s t o r i a n s h a v e l o n g s t u d i e d t h e t e x t of the MVC for many reasons, not the least of which is its possible links to changes in artistic representation and Christian icon­ ography in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. But despite overwhelming scholarly awareness of the MVC and countless citations of it in various studies, many questions about it remain unanswered. Much of the art-historical literature on this text also seems caught in the same modes of interpretation. Art historians tend to cite the MVC in their efforts to date a work of art, point to the text as the source for new iconography, or simply quote it as a general literary example of wider trends in popular piety. W hat is far less often emphasized is the text’s origin in female Franciscan devotion. The neglect of this point is understandable, for indeed the MVC was immediately disseminated beyond its initial Clarissan context and read by male and female, lay and monastic audiences alike. But focus on the general audiences for the MVC has occluded a fundamental part of its history. In this chapter, I will argue for a shift in scholarly readings of this text toward one that highlights its origins in female Franciscan spirituality. I will begin with an analysis of the literature on the history and origins of the text and current debates about its authorship, dating, and language of origin. Following that, a brief review of the role the MVC has played in the his­ tory of art will underscore the ways in which this text has been interpreted and how that history continues to shape contemporary interpretations. Finally, I will examine the evi­ dence in the text pointing to a Clarissan audience and call for a new, closer look at the MVC and its origins via an in-depth study of Ms. ital. 115.

H

The Authorship, Dating, and the Original Version of the MVC Part of the fame of the MVC stems from its extraordinary re-presentation of the Gospel stories in accessible anecdotes that bridge the gap between the biblical world and that of the late-Medieval reader. Even a superficial reading of the text reveals that the MVC author’s aim was to produce a detailed narrative that was as entertaining as it was spiritu­ ally edifying. He posited, for example, that after forty days of fasting and temptation by the devil, Christ must have requested a meal cooked by none other than his m other.1 (1) Ms. ital. 115, folios 66r-73r. Meditations, pp. 117-29. 27

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Stories such as this mesh everyday life in fourteenth-century Italy with timeless theological mysteries. A reader might identify with the basic human comfort and pleasure Christ takes in his mother’s good food (typical even today in Italy) while contemplating the spiritual significance of M ary’s skill in providing a meal as she provided the body of Christ, ‘eaten’ by Christians as the Eucharist. 2 Who would have written such an account, which seems quite daring in its liberties taken with the life of Christ? W hat was the author’s aim in creating it, and for whom? The writer calls his reader ‘dear daughter’, 3 and mentions ‘the holy virgin Clare your mother and leader’, 4 and thus he must be a Franciscan friar addressing a Franciscan nun or ‘Poor Clare’. 5 Franciscan friars were required by papal injunction to care for the business m at­ ters and oversee the spiritual well-being of their enclosed sisters, and small groups of friars were therefore often assigned to perform such duties for a particular convent. The MVC is a product of this male-to-female spiritual advising that was traditional in several religious orders in the late Middle Ages, a phenomenon referred to as the cura monialium, or the pas­ toral care of nuns.6 The M V C s references to St Francis, St Clare, and to poverty mark it as Franciscan, but the text gives no specific evidence of the friar author’s identity. Thus, for many years it was attributed to Bonaventure, the most prolific Franciscan devotional writer of his time. From the Renaissance until the eighteenth century, the MVC was included in editions of Bonaventure’s collected works.7 Historians of texts then declared this attribution to be spu­

(2) In M edieval and Renaissance preaching, there was a sim ilar tradition of using ‘base’ metaphors to foster understanding of higher spiritual concepts. As Lina Bolzoni has pointed out regarding the sermons of Bernardino of Siena in the fifteenth century, ‘M etaphors linked to the kitchen, to food, and even to basic physiological processes are freely used in contexts where their contrast w ith the elevated theological and m oral content of the sermon serve to create a deliberate “low ering” effect’. See Bolzoni, The Web o f Images: Vernacular Preachingfrom its Origins to St Bernardino da Siena, trans, by Carole Preston and Lisa Chien (Aldershot, U K : Ashgate, 2004), p. 124, first published as La rete delle immagini. Predicazione in volgare dalle origini a Bernardino da Siena (T urin: Einaudi, 2001). Citations are from the English edition. (3) T he author addresses his reader as dilectafigiuola. See Ms. ital. 115, folio 3V. (4) Clare is referred to as ‘la beata vergine Clara madré et dughessa tua’. See Ms. ital. 115, folio 2r. (5) Meditations, xxvii. These references are preserved in Ms. ital. 115 and in m any of the earliest m anu­ scripts, but are not present in all m anuscript copies of the text. However, scholars of this text are in agreement th a t the original version of the M V C was indeed w ritten by a Franciscan friar for a Clarissan nun. See Medita­ tions, introduction. (6) O n the legislation for the pastoral care of nuns by Franciscan friars, see Jo h n M oorm an, A History o f the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968; Chicago, IL : Franciscan H erald Press, 1988), pp. 205-06. Citations are to the Franciscan H erald edition. O n the use of works of art in the cura monialium in various religious orders, see Jeffrey H am burger, ‘T he Use of Images in the Pastoral Care of Nuns: T he Case of H einrich Suso and the D om inicans’, Art Bulletin, 71 (1989), pp. 20-46, reprinted as ‘T he Use of Images in the Pastoral Care of N uns: T he Case of H enry Suso and the D om inicans’, in The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998), pp. 197-232, and by the same author, ‘Art, Enclosure and the Cura Monialium: Prolegomena in the Guise of a Postscript’, Gesta, 3 1 :2 (1992), pp. 108-34. (7) For a list of the early editions of Bonaventure’s collected works th a t include the MVC, see Meditaciones de passione Christi olim sancto Bonaventurae attributae, ed. by M ary Jo rd an Stallings (W ashington, DC : Catholic U ni­ versity of America Press, 1965), pp. 3-4. 28

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rious based on differences in style between Bonaventure’s known œuvre and the MVC, and the moniker ‘Pseudo-Bonaventure’ was used instead. The only other name connected with the MVC authorship is that of John of Caulibus of San Gimignano, cited first by Benedict Bonelli in 1767.® This attribution is based in part on the late-Trecento (1385) account by Bartholomew of Pisa that mentions a ‘John of Caulibus from San Gimignano’ as the author of a tract of meditations on the New Testament. The MVC text also makes a vague reference to what may be the gate of San Gimignano and its proximity to the Franciscan friary in that city. 89 Additionally, the text refers to the towns of Siena, Pisa, Poggibonsi, and Colle val d’Eisa. Thus, it seems that Tus­ cany was the birthplace of the text. No known manuscript copies, however, name John of Caulibus as the author, and very little is known about h im .10 The MVC author is still sometimes referred to as ‘Pseudo-Bonaventure’ or ‘Anonymous Franciscan’, although the most recent critical edition of the MVC names John of Caulibus as the w riter.11 The evi­ dence is still inconclusive, and thus in this book I shall refer generally to the text’s ‘author’. Debates about the dating and original language of the MVC have also brought to light issues that should prompt further examination of it. In 1990, Sarah McNamer argued that the MVC was composed not at the beginning of the fourteenth century, as scholars had long believed, but instead around mid-century. Initially, the MVC had been dated to the late thirteenth century partly because it was believed to be a work of Bonaventure.12 Scholars were ready to put the date into the fourteenth century when it was realized that in chapter 82 of the long version of the MVC, the author quotes from the revelations of Mecthild of Hackenborn.13 Mecthild died in 1298 or 1299, and it is thought that her visionary text was composed after her death, thus making the early fourteenth century the earliest possible date for the MVC. Another mystical text quoted is the famous Revelations of Elizabeth of Hungary, long thought to have been written by the saintly Franciscan queen. (8) Benedict Bonelli, Prodromus ad opera omnia S. Bonaventurae (Bassano: Sumptibus Rem ondini Veneti, 1767), p. 657. (9) T he author remarks th a t C alvary was located about the same distance from Jerusalem as ‘[...] our place is from the G ate of Saint G erm anus’. See Meditations, p. 332. Some scholars have questioned w hether this unspecific description could refer to a gate in Paris rath er th an San Gimignano. O u r place’ rath er than ‘our convent/m onastery’ was a common Franciscan phrasing. See Jens Wollensen, ‘Ut poesis pictural Problems of Images and Texts in the Early T recento’, in Petrarch’s Triumphs: Allegory and Spectacle, ed. by K onrad Eisenbichler and Amilcare A. Iannucci (Toronto: University of T oronto Press, 1990), pp. 183-210. (10) O n Jo h n of Caulibus see Enrico Castaldi, ‘U n francescano sangimignanese ispiritore del rinnovam ento dell’arte nel secolo x iv ’, Miscellanea storica della Valdelsa, 35 (1927), pp. 34-51, 109-19. Castaldi also points out the existence of two men nam ed Jo h n of Caulibus, one who lived in the fourteenth century and the other in the thirteenth century, although later scholars seem to accept the later author based on Bartholomew of Pisa’s account. See also Jacques-G uy Bougerol, ‘Je a n “ de Caulibus” ’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité (Paris: Beauchesne et ses fils, 1974), V III, pp. 324-26, and K . B. Springer, ‘Johannes (de) Caulibus’, in Biographisch-Bibliographi­ sches Kirchenlexikon (H am m : Bautz, 1992), I II , pp. 303-04. (11) See Jo h n of Caulibus, Meditations, p. x, for the attribution to Jo h n of Caulibus. (12) See Sarah M cNam er, ‘F urther Evidence for the D ate of the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi’, Franciscan Studies, 50 (1990), pp. 235-61 (p. 235, n. 1). (13) See E. Colledge, ‘Dominus cuidam devotae suae: A Source for Pseudo-Bonaven tu ra’, Franciscan Studies, 36 (1976), pp. 105-07. 29

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Alexandra Barratt has proposed, however, that the Revelations were written by another holy Hungarian woman, Elizabeth of Toss, who died in 1336.14 Elizabeth of Hungary had been married and would not have been called a ‘virgin’, as is the Elizabeth described in the Revelations. If Barratt is correct, McNamer argues, then the MVC must have been com­ posed and disseminated around the middle of the fourteenth century. Following McNamer, the most recent critical edition of the MVC thus proposes circa 1346 (leaving a decade to account for the circulation of the Revelations after Elizabeth’s death in 1336) as the terminus post quem for the date of composition, with the terminus ante quern at circa 1364, the approximate date for Niccolo di Mino Cicerchia’s poems La passione de JV.S. Gesti Cristo and La Resurrezione di GestI Cristo, which are based on the MVC. 15 McNamer’s argument is convincing overall, although additional evidence would help rec­ oncile her claim with some of the extant unillustrated manuscripts traditionally thought to pre-date 1336.16 None of the early illustrated copies of the MVC date before circa 1336, and Ms. ital. 115 contains what must be an early version of the text, as will be discussed below.17 It therefore seems likely that the text was indeed composed in the mid-fourteenth century. The original language of composition for the MVC is likewise debated. The majority of studies of the MVC have assumed that the earliest version was written in L atin.18 In the introduction to their 1961 English translation of the MVC based on the Italian text of Ms. ital. 115, Isa Ragusa and Rosalie Green maintained that the author composed his text in Latin, and that vernacular translations followed soon after.19 This is also the conclusion reached by the editors of the most recent English translation, who have also produced a critical Latin version of the text.20 Based on their study of the early manuscripts, StallingsTaney and others are convinced that Latin was the original language, although they point out that only four of the 110 surviving Latin manuscripts are ‘old Latin’, that is, ‘less altered by Neo-Latin influence’. 21 Those who maintain that Latin was the original version do point out that the MVC ‘was originally written in Latin by someone who thought in

(14) A lexandra B arratt, ‘T he Revelations of St E lizabeth of H ungary: Problems of A ttribution’, The Library, 14 (1992), pp. 1-11. (15) O n these poems see Luigi Cellucci, ‘Le Meditationes Vitae Christi e i poem etti che ne furono ispirati’, Archivum Romanicum, 22 (1938), pp. 74-93. (16) M cNam er, ‘L urther Evidence’, pp. 245-46, addresses only briefly the question of the M V C m anu­ scripts th a t have been dated to the early fourteenth century, particularly Cam bridge, T rinity College Ms. 293. D avid Lalvay is also at work on the problem of the date and original language of the MVC. (17) Based on stylistic evidence, the surviving illustrated m anuscripts of the M V C all post-date 1340, so they do not shed further light on the veracity of M cN am er’s new dating. See the discussion of these m anu­ scripts in chapter 2. (18) Latin, as the ‘older’ language, is often assumed to be the original, although vernacular texts were at times translated into Latin. Lor the relationship between vernacular and L atin translations of texts in M edieval Italy, see Luigi Cellucci, T l L atino di fronte al volgare in Italia nei secoli xm e x iv ’, Cultura neolatina, 1 (1941), pp. 21-39. (19) Meditations, p. xxii. (20) Jo h n of Caulibus, Meditations, p. xv. (21) Jo h n of Caulibus, Meditations, p. xxiv; Johannes de Caulibus, Meditaciones, p. 5. 30

Y O U MUST B E G IN FR O M T H IS

Italian, and the Latin shows some markedly Italian characteristics’. 22 Ragusa and Green and Stallings-Taney and others believe that the ‘poor’ translations in the Italian manu­ scripts, seen especially in the Bernardine passages, indicate that the scribes did not under­ stand the Latin. However, their remarks on this subject do not fully explain the relationships between translators and scribes and how this offers evidence of the text’s Latin origins.23 Several other studies, old and new, suggest that the MVC was written first in Italian. Columban Fischer, who is thus far the only scholar to attempt a systematic study of MVC manuscripts, argued that the MVC was originally written in Italian. Support for his argument comes from the fact that the majority of early manuscripts of the text are in Italian. 24 Others have more tentatively suggested the possibility of Italian as the original language; in 1952, Alberto Vaccari proposed that the Italian version of the text in Ms. ital. 115 pre-dated the Latin versions, and Giuseppe di Luca, writing in 1954, believed that the Italian and Latin versions were created at the same tim e.25 McNamer has also briefly suggested that the text was composed in Italian.26 Ragusa and Green assumed a Latin origin for the text in 1961, but Ragusa’s more recent articles on Ms. ital. 115 contend that the original version was Italian. 27 Ragusa is the only author thus far to cite also the fact that the original reader was female as an argument for the text’s vernacular origins. She points to instructional passages in Ms. ital. 115 as evidence for the text’s origins as a didactic devotional text for women written in the vernacular.28 My views on the issue align closely, but not exactly (as will be discussed below) with Ragusa. I am convinced thus far that the later dating of the MVC is correct, and that it was most likely penned in Italian. 29

(22) Jo h n of Caulibus, Meditations, p. xv. (23) Jo h n of Caulibus, Meditations, p. xv. (24) Colum ban Fischer, ‘Die Meditationes vitae Christi : ihre handschriftliche Ü berlieferung und die Verfas­ serfrage’, Archivium Franciscum Historicum, 25 (1932), p. 85. (25) See A lberto V accari, ‘Le “Meditazioni della vita di Cristo” in V olgare’, in Scritti di erudizione e di filologia (Rom e: Edizioni di Storia e L etteratura, 1952), 1, pp. 341-78, and Giuseppe di Luca, Prosatori minori del Tre­ cento (M ilan-N aples: R . Riciardi, 1954), p. 1003. (26) See M cNam er, ‘F urther Evidence’, pp. 235-61. (27) See Isa Ragusa, ‘L ’autore delle Meditationes vitae christi secondo il codice ms. Ital. 115 della Biblio­ thèque N ationale di Parigi’, Arte medievale, Second Series 11 (1997), p. 145, and ‘La particolarità dei testo delle Meditationes Vitae Christi’, Arte medievale, New Series 2 (2003), p. 79. (28) ‘M a la n atu ra stessa dei testo, che ha il preciso scopo di guidare nelle sue m editazioni personali la reli­ giosa a cui si rivolge l’autore nel suo prologo, colloca le Meditationes fra le opera didattiche [...] spesso in volgare e accom pagnato da im m agini’. See Ragusa, ‘L ’autore delle Meditationes, p. 145. (29) A lthough this is a subject of scholarly debate, the fact th a t the M V C was composed for women may support the idea of its composition in the vernacular. For an excellent overview of w omen’s influence in the production of vernacular literature in Italy see K atherine Gill, ‘W om en and the Production of Religious L iterature in the V ernacular, 1300-1500’, in Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy: A Religious and Artistic Renaissance, ed. by E. A nn M atter and Jo h n Goakley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 64-104. 31

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The MVC gained such international popularity that it was translated into ‘every Western European language’ and formed the basis of many later popular paraphrases.30 Because several versions were produced over the course of more than two centuries, there is some question as to the precise length and content of the original. Based on the study of the 217 MVC manuscripts known to him, Fischer pointed to two versions of the text, a fortyone-chapter kleine Text and a ninety-six-chapter grosse Text.31 He also discovered that sev­ eral manuscripts contained a third version, the Meditationes de Passione Christi (MPC), nar­ rating the passion alone. Although Fischer later argued that the MPC was an independent and autograph work by Bonaventure, scholars have rejected his claim and maintain that the MPC is an extract of one of the two other versions.32 McNamer has yet to publish the particulars of her argument, but she believes that a short Italian version of the MVC was the first.3334According to McNamer, a long Italian version followed, then a long Fatin version, which was subsequently abbreviated into shorter Fatin versions, many of which appear in manuscripts Fischer cites as his kleine Text.34 The shorter versions tend to leave out the lengthy moralizing passages and the sections on the active and contemplative lives.35 Ms. ital. 115 was presumably intended to contain the long version of this text, although only seventy-five chapters survive in it because the codex is missing its final quires.36 Ragusa has argued that a long section of the text in Ms. ital. 115, not seen in any Fatin manuscripts, points toward the author’s act of composition and marks the long ver­ sion as the original. The passage Ragusa cites occurs at the end of chapter 61, the account of the healing of the blind man in Jericho. The author breaks from his usual narration and quotation from Bernard of Clairvaux to lament the fact that he had composed another ‘meditation’ that had once brought him great joy, but he had forgotten it. He then goes on to explain how his memory loss prompted him to write the present tract : (30) Jo h n of Caulibus, Meditations, pp. xxvi-xxviii. T he two of these th a t are best known to m odern scholars are Ludolph of Saxony’s version (c. 1377) and Nicholas Love’s English text from circa 1410. A French transla­ tion was also com pleted for Jean , duke of Berry, in the early fifteenth century. See Ludolph of Saxony, Vita Jesu Christi, ex evangelio et approbatis ab Ecclesie Catholica doctoribus sedule collecta, ed. by L.-M . Rigollot, 4 vols, (Paris and Rom e: Editio Novissima, 1870), and Nicholas Love, Nicholas Love’s Mirror o f the Blessed Life o f Jesus Christ, ed. by M ichael Sargent (New York: G arland, 1992). O n the French translation for Je a n de Berry see M illard Meiss and Elizabeth Beatson, La vie de nostre Benoit Saveur Jesucrist et la saincte vie de Nostre Dame. Trans­ latée à la requeste de tres hault et puissant prince Iehan, duc de Berry (New Y ork: New York U niversity Press, 1977). (31) Fischer, ‘Die Meditationes’, p. 78. (32) O n the question of the M PC as an extract from the M VC, see Giorgio Petrocchi, ‘Sulla composizione e d ata delle Meditationes Vitae Christi’, Convivium, 5 (1952), pp. 757-78. (33) M cN am er argues th a t it differs from the L atin kleine Text significantly and always contains the excerpt from the Revelations of E lizabeth of H ungary absent from m any of the L atin manuscripts. Citing her own forthcoming study, M cNam er, states ‘[...] I have argued th a t the short Italian version was w ritten prior to the others’. M cNam er, ‘F urther Evidence’, p. 257. (34) M cNam er, ‘F urther Evidence’, p. 257. (35) See Jo h n of Caulibus, Meditations, p. xxv, for a brief discussion of the abridged versions. (36) Because it is incomplete, we can only speculate as to exactly how m any chapters Ms. ital. 115 was to have included, but it contains the active/contem plative lives portion, E lizabeth of H ungary, and all the ‘stan­ d ard ’ features of the long-text manuscripts. 32

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Therefore, since then, I have thought of committing such beautiful things to writing, espe­ cially for my memory [...]. I thought of beginning from the beginning and arranging them, not only for my memory but also for your use, and writing them to send to you. Thus perhaps that forgetfulness will avail you. 37

Ragusa convincingly argues that this passage is a spontaneous outburst on the part of the author in which he reflects on the composition process. Because this passage seems to have been omitted from other manuscripts and does not appear to be a later addition, it offers support for the idea that the long Italian version contained in Ms. ital. 115 was the first. Her thesis therefore contradicts McNamer’s contention (of which Ragusa seems unaware) that a shorter version preceded it. The inclusion of the long treatise on the active and contemplative lives in Ms. ital. 115, if it is indeed the early version, would also make sense in terms of the text’s original purpose: as an aid to performative devotion for enclosed women. Dianne Phillips, in her study of an illustrated MVC manuscript now at the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame, has pointed out that it contains the short version of the text and was prob­ ably owned by a lay patron. Phillips contends that the shorter version, without the treatise on the active and contemplative lives, would have made more sense in a lay context, and thus wonders whether the Snite manuscript might represent an abridgement of the original text.38 Based on my investigation of a number of MVC manuscripts, I agree with Ragusa’s assertion that Ms. ital. 115 contains unique passages indicating the process of composition, which mark it, and thus the long Italian version of the text, as the original. Based on the manuscripts known to us now, Ms. ital. 115 is as close as we can get to the earliest version of the MVC text. The MVC and the Study of Christian Iconography McNamer’s re-dating calls into question a long-held art-historical assumption: that the MVC was a primary ‘source’ of iconographie inspiration, known and used by artists before the age of Giotto. Because the lively narrative flavor of the MVC lends itself well to artistic interpretation, and because certain details described in the MVC appear in works of late-Medieval and Renaissance art, art historians have repeatedly attempted to define and trace a genealogical connection between this text and a wide variety of images.

(37) Meditations, p. 295. In Italian : ‘Etperd d’allora iopensai d’arrecare in iscriptura ad mia memoria notabilemente contabilemente cotali belle cose [...]. pensai d’incominciare dal principio et non solamente ad mia memoria ordinarie ma etiandio ad tua uttilitade et scrivere per mandartele, et costfor si ehe te ne gioverra quello dimenticamento’. For a discussion of this passage in Ms. ital. 115 in relation to the authorship of the M VC, see Ragusa, ‘L ’autore’, p. 149. As Ragusa points out, this passage does not appear in other manuscripts. (38) See D ianne Phillips, ‘T he Meditations on the life o f Christ: An Illum inated F ourteenth-C entury Italian M anuscript at the University of N otre D am e’, in The Text in the Community: Essays on Medieval Works, Manu­ scripts, Authors and Readers, ed. by Jill M ann and M aura N olan (South Bend, IN : University of N otre Dame Press, 2006), pp. 237-80. 33

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Without citing all of the studies that have invoked the MVC, I will briefly summarize here the role it has played in iconographie studies over the past 150 years. Behind much of the art-historical interest in the MVC is the longstanding notion that the visual arts underwent a significant change in the late Middle Ages. The idea that the period from the late thirteenth to the early fourteenth century marked a new era in art can be traced back at least to Vasari, who declared Medieval painting in Italy to have been revolutionized by Florentine artists such as Cimabue and Giotto.39 Searching to explain this period’s increased interest in naturalism and narrative, Henry Thode, in his Franz von Assisi und die Anfänge der Kunst der Renaissance in Italien (1855), proposed Francis of Assisi and his followers as the catalysts for new imagery and new stylistic approaches in Christian a rt.40 Thode cited the MVC as a key text for understanding the Franciscan influence on artists. Positing a direct relationship between the text and the work of Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua of 1306, he was the first historian to propose and explore such a connection in depth. Thode’s work, written in German, was not always as widely read as some of the studies cited below. However, it has enjoyed new life since 1993, when it was translated into Italian and edited by Luciano Bellosi, one of the most eminent Italian scholars specializing in early-Renaissance a rt.41 The emergence of this new edition, after almost 150 years, demonstrates that art historians are still trying to explain the supposed transformation from ‘Medieval’ to ‘Renaissance’ style, and are looking back with interest to Thode’s contextual approach. As I will explain further below, Thode’s interest in MVC as part of the wider religious and cultural ambient of this period has much in common with many current methodologies. French scholars at the turn of the twentieth century were also interested in the MVC, but not as evidence for the origins of the Renaissance. They saw the thirteenth century not as the dawn of a new artistic era but as the high point of their glorious Moyen Age. Emile Mâle had perhaps the most significant influence in bringing the MVC to the forefront of iconographie studies, as he sought textual sources to decipher sacred imagery.42 In his classic Religious Art in France: the Thirteenth Century, Mâle viewed Medieval art as the Church’s means for communicating theological concepts and narratives to the humblest of Christians.43 Mâle therefore approached Medieval works of art as biblical or extra-biblical

(39) Giorgio V asari, The Lives o f the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, trans, by G aston du G. de V ere (New Y ork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), p. 55ff. (40) H enry Thode, Franz von Assisi und die Anfänge der Kunst der Renaissance in Italien (1855, reprinted Berlin: G. G rote, 1904). (41) H enry Thode, Francesco d’Assisi e le origini dell’arte del Rinascimento in Italia, ed. by Luciano Bellosi, trans, by Rossella Zeni (Rom e: Donzelli, 1993). (42) Interest in the M V C in the nineteenth and early tw entieth centuries is also evidenced in several other French studies, such as G abriel Millet, Recherches sur l’iconographie de l’évangile aux x i v ‘, x v ‘, et x v i ‘ siècles d’après les monuments de Mistra, de la Macédoine et du Mont Athos (Paris: Fontem oing et Gie, 1916) ; Louis Gillet, Histoire artistique des ordres mendiants (Paris: L ibrairie Renouard, 1912), pp. 114-26; and Louis Berhler, L ’art chrétien, son développement iconographique des origines à nosjours (Paris: Fontem oing et Gie, 1918), p. 315ff. (43) Emile M âle, Religious Art in France o f the Thirteenth Century (1913; repr. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2000), p. vii. 34

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texts. As he remarked, ‘The form can not be separated from the idea which creates and animates it’. 44 Mâle relied on a number of texts in his analysis, among them the later translation of the MVC by Ludolph of Saxony.45 He suggested Ludolph’s influence on iconographie motifs in infancy scenes, such as the presence of the ox and ass at the nativi­ ty, 46 and also cited the earlier Pseudo-Bonaventuran MVC in relation to passion iconogra­ phy.4748Mâle continued to cite the MVC and further emphasized its impact on art in his L’art religieux de lafin du Moyen Age en France, etude sur les origines de Viconographie du Moyen Age et sur ses sources d’inspiration.48 Coming from a French-Catholic tradition, Mâle stressed the importance of popular legends and the writings of the Church fathers for recognition of iconographie themes, a methodology that was adapted by later art historians such as Erwin Panofsky. As the study of ‘iconography’ was developed as a leading art-historical method, the MVC continued to be invoked. In creating his three-step process for iconographic/iconological analysis, Panofsky considered the knowledge of literary sources essential in recognizing themes and concepts in ‘iconographie analysis’, his second step.4950The MVC was one of the texts Panofsky relied on when putting his methodology into practice, particularly in his classic study Early Netherlandish Painting : Its Origin and Character. Citing Ludolph of Saxony’s text and Nicholas Love’s translation, Panofsky pointed out that certain motifs, such as Christ appearing to his mother after his resurrection, were based on the M VC .50 Panofsky and other scholars of his generation also sought to explain the new interest in naturalistic representation as well as the appearance of new iconographie motifs in early Italian painting. The MVC became part of their contextual explanation for what they saw as a groundbreaking artistic phenomenon. Unlike Mâle, these later scholars recognized the role of the artist and the importance of a pictorial tradition for understanding the ‘sources’ of iconography. Otto Pächt clarified the difference between the approach of Mâle and that of later art historians : It has long been recognized that the Meditations on the Life of Christ [...] are of crucial impor­ tance for the understanding of religious art at the end of the Middle Ages. To what extent they have been the immediate source of artistic inspiration is, however, a moot point. Emile (44) M âle, Religious Art, p. viii. (45) M âle, Religious Art, p. 208. (46) M âle, Religious Art, pp. 208, 209, n. 2. (47) M âle, Religious Art, p. 222. (48) Emile M âle, L ’art religieux de la fin du Moyen Age en France, étude sur les origines de l’iconographie du Moyen Age et sur ses sources d’inspiration (Paris: A. Colin, 1922), pp. 3-24. (49) For Panofsky, ‘pre-iconographic’ analysis involved a simple recognition of ‘pure forms’ (a male and female figure em bracing, for example) whereas iconographie analysis concerned the recognition of the ‘secon­ dary subject’ (knowing the figures are A nna and Joachim based on a literary source). ‘Iconological’ interpre­ tation involved recognizing the m eaning of a work in terms of a specific culture or period, including its symbolism. See Erw in Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art o f the Renaissance (New York: O xford U niversity Press, 1939), introduction; and the revision of his methodology in Meaning in the Visual Arts (G arden City, NY : Doubleday, 1955, reprinted Woodstock, NY : Overlook Press, 1970). (50) Erw in Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character (Cam bridge, M A : H arv ard U ni­ versity Press, 1953, rev. New York: H arper and Row, 1971), p. 262. References are to the New York edition. 35

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Mâle was inclined to give Pseudo-Bonaventura the chief credit [...]. According to him, the most characteristic iconographie innovations were due not to the inventiveness of the founders of Trecento art, to Giotto, Duccio or the Pisani [...] but to the fecund visual imagination of the late thirteenth-century Franciscan writer [...]. The literature since Mâle has gone almost to the opposite extreme [...]. The essential novelties are thought to have grown straight out of the pictorial tradition. 51

Pächt considered the possibility of pictorial, rather than textual, sources for early-Trecento iconography. To make this claim, he used the MVC as it is preserved in a little-known manuscript in Oxford: Corpus Christi College Ms. 410 (CCC Ms. 410). According to Pächt, a set of strangely archaizing images in the mid-fourteenth-century manuscript pro­ vides evidence of the existence of an earlier cycle of MVC illustrations: ‘[...] There is every likelihood that a full cycle of Pseudo-Bonaventure illustrations was already in existence when Giotto began to create the artistic idiom which opened a new era of European art’. 52 As evidence, Pächt cited the annunciation image in CCC Ms. 410, in which both the angel and the Virgin kneel, a detail described in the MVC and portrayed in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.53 Pächt was also interested in the idea of continuous narration in CCC Ms. 410 and the way the text prompted such an approach to narrative depiction. Thus, although the search for the origins of iconographie motifs had been expanded to include artistic and not only literary sources, the idea of a particular catalyst for Trecento art, whether an artist or a text, persisted.54 Before 1961, art historians tended to cite the later versions of the MVC by Ludolph of Saxony and Nicholas Love, as these were widely available in critical editions and transla­ tions. 55 Scholarly access to the MVC, particularly for Anglophone iconographers, was greatly expanded by the English edition of the MVC produced in that year by Ragusa and Green, who worked at the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University. Their transla­ tion was based on the Italian text of Ms. ital. 115, and all of its 193 illustrations were pub­ lished with their volume. Although Ragusa and Green offered only brief comments on the manuscript in their introduction, the end of their volume includes ‘Notes on the Illustra­ tions’, which are short comments on each image, including identification of the scenes depicted. Ragusa and Green’s approach to the text and to the images of Ms. ital. 115 was (51) O tto Pächt, Review of Meditations on the Life o f Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript o f the Fourteenth Century, ed. and trans, by Isa Ragusa and Rosalie Green, Medium Ævum, 32:3 (1963), p. 234. (52) Pächt, Review of Meditations, p. 235. (53) O n the iconography of the A nnunciation see also O tto Pächt, ‘Künstlerische O riginalität und ikonographische E rneuerung’, in Stil und Überlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes :Acten 21. Int. Kongress fü r Kunst­ geschichte, Bonn 1964 (Bonn: Landeskonservator Rheinland, 1964), pp. 262-71. (54) O n the problem atic persistence of a search for ‘origins’ and ‘models’ in M edieval art, see Jo n ath an Alexander, ‘A Shepherdess on a Swing in a N etherlandish Book of H ours’, in Tributes in Honor o f James H. Marrow: Studies in Painting and Manuscript Illumination o f the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. by Jeffrey F. H am burger and Anne S. K ortew eg (T urnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 35-43; and Jo n a th an Alexander, ‘A rt History, L iterary History, and the Study of Illum inated M anuscripts’, in Studies in Iconography, 18 (1997), pp. 51-66. (55) Panofsky, for example, cited Nicholas Love’s version in this edition: Bonaventure (Pseudo), The Mirror o f the Blessed L y f o f Jesu Christ (London, Edinburgh, New York and T oronto: H. Frowde, 1908). 36

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shaped by the idea that iconography is to be studied through the analysis of pictorial sources and traditions. This methodology is clear in their comments on the images, in which they ‘[...] try to relate the picture to known pictorial tradition’ either by labeling the images as ‘text illustration’ or by noting how they refer to or depart from known icono­ graphie motifs.56 In making their observations, Ragusa and Green relied on the photo­ graphic resources at the Index of Christian Art, itself an example of scholarly interest in the comparative study of iconography and its pictorial sources. 57 Citing Mâle, Ragusa and Green also mention that the MVC text was the inspiration behind a long list of pictorial motifs, including: the Virgin at the birth of John the Baptist; the ox on the Journey to Bethlehem; the saddle and column in the Nativity; the old Magus kissing the foot of the Christ Child in the Adora­ tion of the Magi; the young John the Baptist with the Madonna and Child [...] the meeting of the Virgin and Christ at the crossroads in the Bearing of the Cross ; the two ladders in the Dep­ osition; Christ appearing to his mother after the Resurrection. 58

Although their general comments do not amount to a thorough art-historical study, their volume has become an invaluable standard reference tool. Ragusa and Green deserve much of the credit for bringing the MVC to a wider audience. Much in the manner of these mid-twentieth-century art historians, scholars over the last several decades have continued to look for concrete links between the MVC and the visual arts.59 As recently as 1992, Emma Varanelli proposed that the MVC must have been written in the second half of the Duecento because, in her view, the pulpits of Nicola and Giovanni Pisano show an awareness of that text.60 Although she does not cite McNamer’s 1990 article, Varanelli acknowledges studies by Livario Öliger and Enrico Castaldi that attribute the MVC to John of Caulibus and call into question the date of the text’s composition. 61 And even in the latest critical edition of the manuscript itself, Stallings-Taney and others are compelled to address briefly the issue of the M V C s ties to art, citing it, rather confusedly, as having influence on ‘plastic iconography’ in the late Medi­ eval period. 62 McNamer as well, in the article in which she presents her re-dating of the MVC, considers the link between this text and images, but she comes at the problem from

(56) Meditations, p. xxxv. (57) For the early purposes of the establishment of the Index, see the foreword by Charles Rufus M orey in H elen Woodruff, The Index o f Christian Art at Princeton University: A Handbook (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942). (58) Meditations, p. xxviii. (59) See also D avid Wilkins, ‘T he M eaning of Space in Fourteenth-C entury Tuscan Painting’, in By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought, ed. by D avid Jeffrey (O ttaw a: University of O ttaw a Press, 1979), pp. 109-21. (60) E m m a V aranelli, ‘Le Meditationes Vitae Nostri Domini Jesu Christi nell’arte del duecento italiano’, Arte Medievale, 6 (1992), pp. 137-48. (61) V aranelli, ‘Le Meditationes’, p. 137, cites C astaldi’s idea th a t two different men nam ed Jo h n of C au­ libus existed, one in the thirteenth and the other in the fourteenth century. See also Livario Öliger, ‘Le Medita­ tiones vitae Christi dello Pseudo Bonaventura’, StudiFrancescani, 7 (1921), pp. 143-83; and 8 (1922), pp. 18-47. (62) Jo h n of Caulibus, Meditations, p. xxix. 37

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the other direction in light of her own thesis, claiming the images cited in relation to the MVC may have been the inspiration for it and for similar texts.63 While these examples reflect a continuation of earlier approaches to the MVC, over the last thirty years many scholars have moved away from looking at the text as a specific ‘source’ and toward a broader consideration of it.64 Hans Michael Thomas, in his exami­ nation of Giotto’s work at the Arena Chapel, cited the MVC as a text known to the artist but also discussed the text as a more general emblem of the religious culture of the time. 65 Scholars such as James Marrow and Hans Belting approached the MVC similarly in their discussions of late-Medieval and Renaissance passion imagery, as has Anne Derbes.66 Interest in the devotional function and purpose of such imagery is echoed in studies by Henk van Os, Sixten Ringbom, and many others.67 Ringbom, for example, cites the par­ ticipatory nature of the MVC narratives as an example of the idea of being ‘present’ in the Gospel stories through private prayer, a particular goal of the Northern Renaissance devotio moderna. 68 Rather than seeing images and texts in a linear relationship, these scholars view them as simultaneous or parallel expressions of wider trends in late-Medieval piety. As Derbes asserts :

(63) M cN am er does claim th a t M V C m anuscripts m ust have been influential: ‘T he illustrations in illum in­ ated m anuscripts of the M V C — m iniatures which were manifestly inspired by the details of the text itself — had a dem onstrable influence on other miniatures as well as on later frescoes and tableaux’. M cNam er, ‘F ur­ ther Evidence’, p. 261. (64) For more recent approaches to the study of iconography see Brendan Cassidy, ‘Introduction : Icono­ graphy, Texts, and Audience’, in Iconography at the Crossroads, Papers from the Colloquium Sponsored by the Index of Christian A rt, Princeton University, 23-24 M arch 1990 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 3-16; as well as M ariët W esterm ann, ‘After Iconography and Iconoclasm : C urrent Research in N etherlandish Art, 1566-1700’, Art Bulletin, 83:2 (June 2002), pp. 351-72. (65) T hom as’s work on the M V C and art is seen best in the following sources : H ans M ichael Thomas, Fran­ ziskanische Geschichtvision und europäische Bildentfaltung: die Gefährtenbewegung des hl. Franziskus ; Ubertino da Casale; der ‘Lebensbaum’; Giottos Fresken der Arenakapelle in Padua; die Meditationes Vitae Christi; Heilsspiegel und Armenbibel (W iesbaden: R eichert, 1989); ‘Z ur Rolle der Meditationes Vitae Christi innerhalb der europäischen Bild ent­ wicklung der G iotto-Zeit’, in Miscellanea codicologica F. Masai dicata, ed. by Pierre Cockshaw and others (G and: Story-Scientia, 1979), pp. 319-30; ‘Zum U rsprung der Meditationes Vitae Christi’, Scriptorium, 33 (1979), pp. 249-54; and ‘D er pädagogische Gedanke der Meditationes vitae Christi und ihre A nwedung der inneren Im a­ gination’, Pedagogica Historica, 15 (1975), pp. 426-46. (66) M arrow calls the M V C ‘the first comprehensive biography of Christ containing regular and extensive interpolations of extra-Gospel n arratio n ’. Jam es M arrow , ‘Circumdederunt me canes multi: C hrist’s Torm entors in N orthern E uropean A rt of the L ate M iddle Ages and Early Renaissance’, Art Bulletin, 59 (1977), p. 176. See also Jam es M arrow , Passion Iconography in Northern European Art o f the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance: A Study o f the Transformation o f Sacred Metaphor into Descriptive Narrative (K ortrijk, Belgium: V an G hem m ert Publishing, 1979), introduction. (67) O n the use of images in devotion in the later M edieval period see H enk van Os, The Art o f Devotion in the Late Middle Ages, trans, by M ichael Hoyle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) ; Sixten Ringbom, From Icon to Narrative: The Rise o f the Dramatic Close-Up in Fifteenth Century Devotional Painting, 2nd edition (Doornspijk, T he N etherlands: Davaco, 1984); and Sixten Ringbom , ‘D evotional Images and Im aginative Devo­ tions: Notes on the Place of A rt in L ate M edieval Private Piety’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 75:6 (1969), pp 159­ 70. (68) Ringbom , From Icon to Narrative, p. 54. 38

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These texts need not be taken as the sources of the images to be considered here; relatively few scholars today would insist on the primacy of texts over images. It is more reasonable to understand both as expressions of a larger discourse [...]. 69

Hans Belting sees the emergence of texts such as the MVC and new image types as parallel developments : ‘Thus the new texts and the new images, which emerged at the same time and dealt with the same themes, performed a similar function in making the content of religion a private experience’. 70 W hat many of these scholars have in common is that they invoke the MVC as general evidence for the changes in late-Medieval art and spirituality. Derbes’ book, for example, suggests that the source of the new imagery long recognized in Trecento art is to be found during the Duecento in a blend of Franciscan ideologies and Byzantine traditions repre­ sented in both images and texts such as the MVC. Likewise, Hayden Maginnis’s 2001 study of Sienese painting cites the MVC as emblematic of what he sees as a new approach to naturalism in art. Critiquing Vasarian visions of the centrality of Florence and indi­ vidual artistic genius, he suggests instead that art in this period was shaped by a combina­ tion of cultural factors. He uses the MVC to explain the new religious culture that shaped the art; in his words, ‘To be a painter in Siena was often to participate in the new vision of faith and, specifically, in the vision embodied in the Meditations on the Life of Christ’. 71 If no longer invoking it in a specific sense as a ‘direct’ source, the scholarship still considers it contextual evidence, thereby returning to an approach similar to that of Thode more than one hundred years ago. These more contemporary contextual approaches suggesting general links between the MVC and late-Medieval art are useful. It is easy to see the broad commonalities in narra­ tive interest and emotional intensity shared by the art of Giotto, for example, and the MVC. Because we have no firm evidence that any known artist read the text, nor can we

(69) Anne Derbes, Picturing the Passion in Late Medieval Italy : Narrative Painting, the Levant, and the Franciscans (Cam bridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1996), p. 21. (70) Belting mentions the M V C as a source of late-M edieval passion iconography, b ut treats Ms. ital. 115 only in a footnote, where he calls its images ‘stations of contem plation’. See H ans Belting, The Image and its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function o f Early Paintings o f the Passion, trans, by M. Bartusis and R. M eyer (New Rochelle, NY : Caratzas, 1990), chapter 3. Belting also refers to the M V C in H ans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History o f the Image Before the Era o f Art, trans, by E. Jep h co tt (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 411 ; and H ans Belting, ‘T he New Role of N arrative in Public Painting of the T re­ cento : H istoria and Allegory’, in Pictorial Narrative in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, N ational G allery of A rt, Stu­ dies in the H istory of Art, vol. 16, ed. by H. Kessler and M. S. Simpson (Hanover, N H and London: N ational G allery of Art, 1985), p. 152. (71) See H ayden B. J . Maginnis, The World o f the Early Sienese Painter (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State U niversity Press, 2001), pp. 189-90. Stating th a t the M V C was composed by the 1260s, he does not cite any author on the date, and seems unaw are of M cN am er’s article, as V ictor Schmidt pointed out in a review of his book. See V ictor Schmidt, Review of Ja n e Sakowski and H ayden B. J . M aginnis, Duccio di Buoninsegna: the Documents', and H ayden B. J . M aginnis, ‘T he W orld of the Early Sienese P ainter’, The Burlington Magazine, 145 (January 2004), pp. 31-32. O ne of the few art historians who seems to have considered M cN am er’s argu­ ment, Anne Derbes, notes M cN am er’s study only in a footnote. See Derbes, Picturing the Passion, n. 64. 39

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be certain about its date of composition, such general approaches represent responsible scholarship in terms of our current knowledge. Inspired by such approaches that look to the MVC not as an iconographie source but as a document of late-Medieval piety, in this book, I would like to offer a different way of looking at the MVC that considers it both in terms of a particular context and in light of specific visual evidence. In Ms. ital. 115, the earliest and most copiously illustrated manu­ script of the text, and one probably made for a Clarissan audience in Tuscany similar to that of the text’s original audience, we have the rare opportunity to consider the MVC text alongside a set of images illustrating it. This manuscript therefore permits us to examine the MVC and a visual exegesis of it in a context close to that of its origins as a text for Fran­ ciscan women. A more thorough understanding of the MVC in that context might then foster a deeper knowledge of its broader implications for the history of art. The MVC and Female Spirituality Because it has long been studied in connection with broad trends in late-Medieval spirituality, scholars have traditionally given the female Franciscan origins of the MVC only superficial treatment. Most of the aforementioned scholars who discuss the MVC men­ tion its origins as a book for a female Franciscan only in passing. Many studies of art and women in the mendicant orders similarly have not focused on the MVC. Jeryldene Wood’s book on art created for the Poor Clares in Italy, for example, does not discuss the MVC in depth, nor do the studies of female religious patronage by Joanna Cannon and André Vauchez or Anabel Thom as.72 Two dissertations by scholars at Harvard and Yale exploring Clarissan art cite the MVC, but do not explore its specific links to imagery or devotional practices for women in depth.73 Only more recently has Cathleen A. Fleck con­ sidered the MVC as a text written for the Poor Clares. In her articles on the convent of

(72) W ood only briefly mentions the M V C as a work m eant for the Poor Glares in her study; see W ood, Women, Art and Spirituality, pp. 73, 77-79, 119, 153. G annon and Vauchez cite the M V C in relation to passion iconography but do not m ention its relationship to w omen; see Jo a n n a G annon and A ndré Vauchez, Margherita o f Cortona and the Lorenzetti : Sienese Art and the Cult o f a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany (University Park, PA : Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), pp. 91, 94. Like W ood, A nabel Thom as only briefly mentions the M V C in her new study, quoting p art of it at the very end of her epilogue. See A nabel Thomas, Art and Piety in the Female Religious Communities o f Renaissance Italy : Iconography, Space, and the Religious Woman’s Perspective (Cam ­ bridge: Cam bridge University Press, 2003), pp. 19, 331-32. (73) See Stephan W olohojian, ‘Closed Encounters: Female Piety, A rt, and Visual Experience in the C hurch of Santa M aria D onna Regina in Naples’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, H arv ard University, 1994). K err Houston, for example, cites the M V C as a ‘source’ as in traditional studies, positing th a t the cycle of passion frescoes in the choir at Santa M aria di D onna Regina in Naples was based on the M VC, ‘[...] either the painter or the patrons clearly had access to a copy of the text, and m ade artistic decisions based on the w ritten w ork’, H ouston, ‘Painted Images and the Clarisse’, p. 309. 40

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Santa M aria Donna Regina in Naples, she cites the text heavily in her readings of monu­ mental imagery intended for nuns.74 The fact that few studies consider the MVC in depth in terms of its origins as a book for women doubtless stems from the fact that the text found such a wide readership so soon after it was written. Its broad popularity actually seems to have led to confusion about the genesis of this text and the audience the friar author had in mind when he composed it. Daniel Lesnick, for example, has argued that the MVC author wrote his text as a sermon for a lay audience, and specifically one drawn from the solidly urban middle class.75 Coun­ tering this interpretation, Michael Cusato instead categorizes the MVC as distinctly Fran­ ciscan and indeed an important example of the vita Christi genre that had its roots in Franciscan spirituality.767 More recently, others have called for a shift in scholarly emphasis toward the text’s ori­ gins as part of the tradition of didactic devotional literature for women. Comparing it to Henrich Suso’s Exemplar, Ragusa argues that the MVC should not be regarded simply as a vita Christi aimed at a general public but rather as an instructional text of the cura monialium.77 She points to some of the same passages I will review below, indicating that the author is addressing a Poor Clare and not the laity. She also cites the copious image cycle in Ms. ital. 115 as further evidence for placing the MVC in the literary genre of devotional guides for women.78 Citing different evidence from Ms. ital. 115 relating to its presentation of Franciscan poverty, I made a parallel argument in a 2003 article.79 Ragusa’s call for the MVC to be seen in light of instructive literature for nuns like the Exemplar is a valuable and convincing one. I would take Ragusa’s argument a step further to suggest that the MVC is not entirely outside the vita Christi tradition, but that it is a hybrid of instructional manual and narrative account. W hat sets apart the MVC is its unequivocal emphasis on teaching the reader through experiential, imaginative narratives. (74) See Fleck, ‘T o Exercise Yourself,’ pp. 109-28; and Gathleen A. Fleck, “ ‘Blessed the eyes th a t see those things you see” : the Trecento choir frescoes at Santa M aria D onnaregina in N aples’, Z uschrift fü r Kunst­ geschichte, 6 7 :2 (2004), pp. 201-24. (75) F urther discussion of Fesnick’s thesis can be found in chapter 3. See D aniel Fesnick, Preaching in Medieval Florence: The Social World o f Franciscan and Dominican Spirituality (Athens, G A: University of G eorgia Press, 1989), p. 152. (76) M ichael Cusato, ‘Two Uses of the Vita Christi G enre in Tuscany, c. 1300 : Jo h n de Caulibus and Ubertino da Gasale Com pared. A Response to D aniel Fesnick, T en Years H ence’, Franciscan Studies, 57 (1999), pp. 131-48. (77) See Isa Ragusa, ‘F a particolarità del testo delle Mediationes Vitae Christi’, Arte medievale, New Series, vol. 2 (2003), pp. 71-82. O n the M V C and its function as a devotional guide for a Poor Glare, see Faw rence F. H undersm arck, ‘Reforming Fife by Conforming it to the Fife of Christ : Pseudo-Bonaventure’s Meditaciones Vite Christi’, in Reform and Renewal in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Studies in Honor o f Louis Pascoe, S.J., ed. by Thom as M. Izbicki and Christopher M. Bellitto (Feiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill Academic Publishers, 2000), pp. 93-112. (78) Ragusa, ‘F a particolarità’, p. 72. (79) U nbeknownst to each other, Dr. Ragusa and I were publishing com plem entary ideas at the same time. Holly Flora, ‘A Book for Poverty’s D aughters: G ender and Devotion in Paris Bibliothèque N ationale ital. 115’, in Varieties o f Devotion in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, A rizona Center for M edieval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 7, ed. by Susan K arant-N unn (T urnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 61-85. 41

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It is the MVC author’s keen desire to enliven the devotional life of his charge, a nun living a life of enclosure, by creating a vibrant mental and spiritual vita activa within the confines of her vita contemplativa. Unlike other devotional manuals in which the reader might be taught moral and spiritual lessons via diagrams, for example, or simply encouraged to emulate a spiritual hero, in the MVC the reader is taught lessons as she is invited into imag­ inative participation in the life of Christ. It is this very interactive, participatory mode of instruction/narration via the imitatio Christi that quickly found favor with audiences outside monastic contexts. I would suggest, then, that this text must be considered more closely as a reflection of the cura monialium and a means for understanding further how trends in female spirituality shaped late-Medieval popular piety. Thus, before I embark on my analysis of Ms. ital. 115’s unique image program, I want to turn to the text itself to point out its strong, and indeed quite specific, links to a Clarissan public. I would also like to suggest that we consider the authorship of this text more broadly to include the Poor Clare for whom the text was originally composed. Facets of her lifestyle and her spiritual interests clearly shaped the text, and we can begin to see the mark the M V C s audience made on its extraordinary prescription for Christian devotion. In light of the many later versions of the MVC and the various content of different manu­ scripts, my discussion below will draw exclusively from the text of Ms. ital. 115, which must be regarded as the earliest version known to us at present. My analysis of some of the key textual clues in this manuscript, which point toward a Clarissan audience, will also underscore the discussions of its imagery in the successive chapters. First, let us consider the friar’s purpose in writing this text and how his relationship with the Poor Clare in his charge shaped his intent. From the prologue he makes it clear that he is writing a book of meditations to be used as a substitute for his live instruction and guidance. He tells the reader to receive the work for self-instruction: ‘[...]Therefore, dear daughter, I pray you to receive this work, which I undertook in praise of the Lord Jesus for your accomplishment and my benefit, with gladness, and to train yourself with more joy, devotion, and solicitude’. 80 The implied absence of the friar makes sense in the context of the Franciscan cura monialium. The frequency of advisory visits by the friars seems to have varied greatly from convent to convent, and in some places friars only saw the nuns a few times a year for the necessary performing of sacraments. There is some evidence that in the late thirteenth century and beyond, the rapid growth of female religious houses in fact made the practice of caretaking burdensome for the friars. A text such as the MVC, amply filled with both narrative content and moralizing explication, would have helped to relieve the friar’s sense of duty, perhaps even of guilt, if he could not tend to his spiritual charge regularly. In our case, the friar expresses joy - rather emphatically, in fact, using the word alle­ gramente twice - and says that he has written this tract not only for the edification of his (80) ‘Prego te dilectafigliuola ehe questo mio lavoro lo quale abbopreso ad laude del signore Iesu et tuo profecto et mia uttilitade allegramente riceve et più allegramente, più devotamente et più solicitamente te exercita in questo’. Meditations, ρ . 5, folio 3V. 42

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charge, but also for his own benefit. Similar sentiments were expressed in the unique pas­ sage in Ms. ital. 115 discussed previously, in which the friar claims to have written down the meditations to help him remember a meditation that had once brought him happiness, but that he had since forgotten. In these passages, we do not see a friar weighed down by the care of his charge, although he admits that writing the tract has been a distraction. 81 Instead, the MVC seems to be a product of the friar’s need both to attend to the spiritual life of the Poor Clare and to aid his own pious memory. 82 He also probably considered the act of composing to be itself an act of devotion, and indeed also an act of mercy, as it was often regarded in the Medieval tradition.83 A positive relationship between author and audience here is implied, as the benefit was avowedly mutual. Given the evidence of collaboration we have from other devotional texts written for nuns by their spiritual advisors, it is reasonable to speculate that the Poor Clare to whom the MVC was addressed may have had some impact on its composition.84 Although secure proof of her participation does not survive, some evidence for her part in the authoring of the MVC does exist in the many references the text makes to her spiritual life.85 The first evidence of the MVC author’s mindfulness of this female audience can be found in the text’s prologue. Here, the author immediately seeks a female role model for the person for whom he is composing the book. Holding up Saint Cecilia as a paragon for the reader because ‘We read that she always carried the Gospel of Christ hidden in her bosom [...]’, 86 he maintains that: ‘You will never find better instruction against vain and fleeting blan­ dishments, against tribulation and adversity, against the temptations of enemies and vices,

(81) ‘[...] pero chenonpogha distractione m’a arrecata questa scriptura’, Meditations, p. 295, folio 167v. (82) O u r friar m ay also have had in mind a w ider use for his meditations and thus have thought of the ‘col­ lective’ m em ory of his own com m unity as well. H e m ay have had in mind his treatise’s subsequent use in edited form as sermons and or a collectio th a t was read in a com m unal act of m editation. O n the act of composi­ tion and memory in monastic culture see M ary G arruthers, The Book o f Memory : A Study o f Memory in Medieval Culture (Cam bridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1992), pp. 156-65, and also pp. 208-09 for the example of H ugh of St Victor, whose treatise De arca Noe morale originated in his com m unity and transform ed into a col­ lectio, which was then distributed outside the convent. (83) As Emile M âle put it over a century ago: ‘L iterary amour-propre — the pride of authorship —was unk­ nown to the E arly M iddle Ages. I t was plain th a t a doctrine belonged not to him who expounded it b ut to the Church as a whole. To write a book and so to make known the tru th to one’s neighbor, was in a sense to prac­ tice one of the works of mercy’, M âle, Religious Art, p. xiv. (84) H am burger, ‘T he Use of Im ages’, p. 200. (85) In this emphasis on viewing a text as a collective product of its context and not simply a work of the author, I am indebted to post-m odern theories of authorship; see, for example, Michel Foucault, ‘W hat is an A uthor?’ in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. by D onald F. Bouchard, trans, by D onald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ith aca: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 113-38; and R oland Barthes, ‘T he D eath of the A uthor’, in Image — Music — Text, ed. and trans, by Stephen H eath (New York: H ill and W ang, 1977), pp. 142-48. For the sake of clarity I will retain the use of the term ‘au th o r’ to describe the person who put together the M V C text, bu t I w ant to acknowledge here th a t the process was more compli­ cated than our contem porary notions m ight suggest. (86) ‘Si legge che’l vangelo di Christo inascoso sempre portava in del pecto Meditations, p. 1, folio l r. 43

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than in the life of Christ, which was without blemish and most perfect’. 87 He adjures his charge toward a perfect life of holiness via meditation on Christ’s life. In itself this is nothing new in the Christian monastic tradition, and certainly not in the Franciscan order, where Francis’s conformity to Christ was central. W hat is surprising about this choice is that he does not first promote Francis himself as a role model for the reader, although he does go on in his prologue to note how Francis conversed with and contemplated Christ.88 Instead, the author mines the Legenda aurea for a virtuous virgin who was specially recog­ nized for her devotion to the vita Christi. 89 He was careful to choose an appropriate female saint, famous for her meditations on Christ’s life, and in doing so conformed to much of the prescriptive devotional literature written by men for women, which tends to align role models along gender lines.90 As will be demonstrated in later chapters, the MVC author also very much promotes the Virgin Mary as a devotional role model over Christ himself, again an indicator of the author’s intention to give his reader female role models to emu­ late. In addition to offering the reader archetypes of holiness in Cecilia and Mary, the author’s intention to teach proper moral behavior to his Clarissan audience can also be seen in the lessons he adds to the Gospel narratives. The stories from scripture that the MVC author selects and embellishes are carefully chosen and arranged for their lessons on Christian conduct, but are often further interpreted as lessons on virginity, silence, and enclosure. The MVC author generally begins with a narrative description of an event, then proceeds to moralize the event, often quoting at length from Bernard of Clairvaux or other holy writers. The moral lessons, which are frequently accompanied by commands for the reader in the second person, aid the latter in understanding ‘[...Jwhat to do and what to avoid’. 91 More specific teachings appropriate to a female Franciscan reader include several references to poverty, as well as warnings against vanity, idleness, and even perhaps the making and giving of gifts to the author of the MVC himself.92

(87) ‘Non troverai mai dove cosipossi essere amaestrato contra le vane lusinghe et cadevile, contra la tribulatione et adversità, contra la tentatione nei nimici et vitii, siccome in de la vita di Cristo qualfit sensa ogna difecto perfectissima’, Meditations, p. 2, folio Γ . (88) Meditations, p. 3. (89) In holding up Cecilia as a role model, it is of course possible th a t the author had a specific Clarissan nam ed Cecilia in mind, but it seems more plausible th a t the M V C author is simply seeking an appropriate role model in order to teach his female reader how to m editate on C hrist’s life. H e borrows the phrasing about Cecilia’s devotion to the life of Christ directly from her vita in the Legenda aurea. See Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans, by W illiam G ranger R yan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), vol. II, pp. 318-23. (90) O n Franciscan concepts of imitatio and gender see C atherine M. Mooney, ‘Imitatio Christi or Imitatio Mariae? Clare of Assisi and H er Interpreters’, in Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and their Interpreters, ed. by C atherine M. M ooney (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 52-77. See also Caroline Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1992), p. 153, for discussion of the notion of gender and exempla. (91) ‘[...] chedebbafare et ehe debbafuggire’, Meditations, p. 2, folio l v. (92) See chapter 5 for a discussion of the prom otion of poverty in the M V C and its warnings against idleness and the fashioning o f ‘curious’ faneywork, for example. 44

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Another indication that the MVC author points his text toward a cloistered female is that he prescribes contemplation of Christ’s humanity to her as a beginner and someone who is spiritually ‘imperfect’. Within his long treatise on the active and contemplative lives, he tells her there are different kinds of contemplation for the ‘perfect’ and ‘imper­ fect’ : You must know that there are three kinds of contemplation. The two principal ones are for those who are perfect; the third is added for the imperfect. Two are for the perfect: they are the contemplation of the majesty of God and the contemplation of the celestial court. The third is for beginners, those who are not perfect in the contemplation of the humanity of Christ, on which I write for you in this little book. And therefore you must begin from this if you wish to climb to the highest; otherwise you could not rise so high, but would fall. 93

The fact that the reader is a ‘beginner’ and among the ‘imperfect’ means that she must concentrate on contemplation of the humanity of Christ contained in her ‘little book’. By those who are ‘perfect’ versus those who are ‘imperfect’, the author is probably referring to monks and friars and those who have succeeded in the spiritual disciplines so to have a per­ sonal vision of God, and the ‘imperfect’ as novices, nuns, and laypeople who either have not yet reached such a level or are incapable of doing so. This passage from the MVC is absolutely in accordance with Medieval Christian texts and traditions in which women were often associated with the physical side of human nature and men with the spiritual side, and thus the human and divine natures of Christ were similarly associated with male and female. 9495Even well educated nuns were often treated as novices by their spiritual advisors and by the dicta of the Church because it was assumed that their fallen nature would preclude them from ever reaching the advanced spiritual levels attainable by men.

Although our friar here does not seem to present the case as a hopeless one, he does strongly recommend that his charge ground herself firmly in Christ’s humanity and not strive further lest she fall. This is precisely why the MVC author gives the Poor Clare practical strategies for accomplishing devotion to the humanity of Christ through the particularly earthly mode of contemplation the MVC author promotes. He prescribes imaginative visualization and emotional participation in the narratives of the text, while also providing moralizing pas­ sages to encourage his reader in a life of virginity, enclosure, and poverty. The MVC

(93) ‘Devi sapere ehe ire sono le generationi della contemplatione. Le due principali per li perfecti. La tersa i adgiunta per l’inperfecti. Le due sono per li perfecti, cioè la contemplatione della maiestä di Dio et la contemmplatione della corte celestiale. La tersa persa quelli che cominciano et per quelli ehe non sono perfecti i la contemplatione dell’umanitä di Christo la quale io ti scrivo in questo libricciuolo. E t percio da questa tu dei cominciare se vuoi saglire alie maggiori, altrimenti non potresti in cost mantare come periculare’, Meditations, p. 260, folio 148r. (94) O n the issue of m ale and female views of hum an n atu re and the soul in the M iddle Ages, see Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, pp. 171-75. (95) For a discussion of the use of images recommended for m ale novices and for nuns, see Jeffrey H am ­ burger, ‘T he V isual and the V isionary : T he C hanging Role of the Im age in L ate M edieval M onastic Devo­ tions’, Viator, 20 (1990), pp. 188-90. 45

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author famously recommends a way of imagining oneself present in the biblical narratives and participating in them. When recounting the events surrounding the nativity, for instance, he implores the reader to: ‘Kiss the beautiful feet of the infant Jesus [...] and beg his mother to offer to let you hold Him a while. Pick Him up and hold Him in your arms. Gaze on his face with devotion and reverently kiss Him and delight in Him’. 96 As in this oft-quoted passage, when an event is described, the author frequently uses the historical present tense, issuing commands for the reader without leaving the description behind. 97 Often he reminds the reader to ‘be present’ in the narratives. For example, during the annunciation sequence, he prompts her, ‘Now give heed to understand everything that was said and done, as though you had been present’. 98 The reader is also encouraged to get involved emotionally; she is adjured to ‘weep’ and ‘feel compassion’ repeatedly.99 The author’s goal, then, was to create a devotional tool that would allow his reader imagina­ tively to observe and participate in Christ’s humanity, an appropriate means of contempla­ tion given her ‘imperfection’. The ‘imperfect’ state of the Clarissan reader may also help to explain the M V C s strong visual language, which has contributed to art-historical fascination with the text. It has been noted time and again that the extraordinarily detailed descriptions the MVC author uses indicate his awareness of devotional imagery. But I would also argue that he is using such references in order to further aid his charge in her efforts to live an enclosed life of contemplation. He consciously refers to images, whether they are the ones in front of her in an illustrated copy of the text or ones she would know from other contexts. As we have seen in the M V C s discussion of the various levels of contemplation, there was a ladder of spiritual perfection. In the Medieval contemplative tradition, those who climbed this ladder and attained ‘perfection’ found mystical union with God and the ability to see and experience the divine personally, that is, without the aid of images. As Jeffrey Hamburger has made clear, literary evidence points to ‘imageless’ devotion as the ideal, but an ideal only realistically expected of monks and friars. Whereas they, at least in theory, were expected to learn to meditate without images, nuns do not seem to have been expected to

(96) ‘Poi baa li belli peducci del bambolino Iesu ehe giace in del presepio et prega la donna ehe te l’ presta u lassilo prendere a te unpogo. Prendelo et in delle braccia tuoie lo tiene. Risguarda lafaccia sua diligentemente et reverentemente lo bacia et dilectati collui’, Meditations, p. 38, folio 23r. (97) O n the use of the historical present in the M V C see, Meditations, p. xxviii. (98) ‘[...] Che tu impari di tutte quelle cose ch’essi diceno et fanno, d’apparecchiarti di presente’, Meditations, p. 16, folio 9V. (99) Several scholars have reached sim ilar conclusions in their studies of the modes of prayer recommended by the M V C author. See R obert W orth Frank, ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi: T he Logistics of Access to D ivinity’, in Hermeneutics and Medieval Culture, ed. by Patrick J . G allacher and H elen Damico (Albany, NY : State U niver­ sity of New York Press, 1989), pp. 39-50; Lawrence F. H undersm arck, ‘T he Use of Im agination, Emotion, and the W ill in a M edieval Classic: The Meditaciones Vite Christi’, Logos: A Journal o f Catholic Thought and Culture, 6 :2 (Spring 2003), pp. 46-62; and M ary M eany, ‘Meditaciones Vite Christi as a Book of P rayer’, Franciscan Studies, (2006), pp. 217-34. 46

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be ‘weaned off’ them .100 The MVC author is conscious of his audience’s need for images and therefore shapes his text to prompt the reader’s recollection of them as she reads the tex t.101 Much of the rest of this study is dedicated to understanding how such a devotional strategy might have worked, or how a Clarissan audience would have perceived the MVC text in Ms. ital. 115, a copiously illustrated copy. But before I proceed, I offer a brief dis­ claimer : I do not wish to revert to essentialist arguments about this text that would declare it to have exclusive relevance for a female audience, although there are, as I will argue in the following chapters, many passages, and especially images, in Ms. ital. 115 that are tai­ lored for a Clarissan audience. But, after all, most Medieval Christians were counted among the ‘imperfect’, and thus the M V C s earthy strategies for contemplation found favor in many contexts. W hat this study seeks to underscore, though, is that female spirituality helped to shape the wider trends in popular piety that the MVC represents. I hope in some ways, then, to restore to the Poor Clare what history has often forgotten : the traces of her own devotional life, the one that inspired this text, that can be seen and understood via a new way of looking at the MVC. To do this, it is first necessary to look at the way this text was illustrated for different audiences, and then at how the pictorial program in Ms. ital. 115 was shaped specifically for a Clarissan public.

(100) O n the ideal o f ‘imageless’ devotion in a monastic context, see H am burger, The Visual and the Vision­ ary, pp. 111-48. T he proliferation of mystical texts w ritten by women throughout the M iddle Ages stands in contrast to the idea th a t women were incapable of mystical union. (101) Ragusa finds the play of text and im age so strong in Ms. ital. 115 th a t she contends th a t from the beginning the author intended the M V C text to be accom panied by images. See Ragusa, ‘La particolarità’, p. 77. 47

2

‘Moved by the Great Sweetness of Love5 IMAGING THE MEDITATIONES VITAE CHRISTI T

N h i s r e v i e w o f R a g u s a a n d G r e e n ’s

MVC translation, Otto Pächt observed:

Strangely enough scholars have not asked the most obvious question: have the Meditations at an early time ever been illustrated as a book and, if such illustrations exist, can they help us to form a clearer idea of the influence the Meditations had on imagery and to define their real con­ tribution to the transition from Medieval to Renaissance art? 1

Pächt’s call for an investigation of MVC manuscripts has until now gone unanswered. Somehow, in the continued quest for connections between this text and art, scholars have not turned to illustrated manuscripts of the MVC for clues. After all, it is only in illustrated copies of this text that we can find images that are certainly derived from it. Through an investigation of the diverse image programs of several such codices, this chapter will examine how illustrated MVC manuscripts reveal the varied and complex ways in which this text was translated into visual form. First, I will briefly discuss some of the earliest known manuscripts with illustrations and their divergent image programs. When seen alongside the images in the other manu­ scripts, the unique aspects of Ms. ital. 115 stand out in high relief and point strongly toward a female Franciscan readership for it. Through an examination of instructions to the artists surviving in the margins of Ms. ital. 115, as well as captions later added to the finished images by the same hand, I will argue that a spiritual advisor, most likely a friar serving in an advisory role to a convent, designed the image program and later edited it. In all, the research presented in this chapter supports my contention that Ms. ital. 115 was made under the advisement of a Franciscan friar for a Poor Clare audience. Its situation of production is therefore very close to that of the original text of the MVC itself, and it is therefore an excellent candidate for a case study of this text’s visual exegesis in its initial context. Early Illustrated Manuscripts of the MVC Before taking a closer look at Ms. ital. 115, we must understand how the MVC was illustrated in other early manuscript copies. Surprisingly, despite the visual language used in the MVC and its apparent connections to images, very few of its manuscripts are illus-

(1) Pächt, Review of Meditations, p. 234. 49

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trated ; of 220 known manuscripts of this text, only nineteen contain images. 2 Only five of these nineteen feature what could properly be termed pictorial ‘cycles’, that is, enough pic­ tures to create an image presence within the book and a visual elaboration of the text. These manuscripts are: a manuscript at present owned by the antiquarian book dealer Heribert Tenschert (27 illustrations), Snite 85.25 at the Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame (48 illustrations), Royal 20.B.IV in the British Museum (98 illustrations), Corpus Christi College 410 in Oxford (154 illustrations), and Ms. ital. 115 (193 illustra­ tions). All of these manuscripts - except for Royal B.20.IV, which is French and dates to circa 1422 - were made in fourteenth-century Italy, and two of those, the Snite and Ten­ schert books, have become known to scholars only within the last twenty years.3 The four manuscripts from fourteenth-century Italy are very different in their approach to illustrating the text of the MVC. Each book seems to have been created for very different patrons in different parts of Italy, and they thus have no apparent relation­ ship to each other in terms of format or style. None can be dated conclusively based on sur­ viving evidence. The Tenschert manuscript has been assigned to a Paduan artist and dated to ‘post 1305’. 4 Snite 85.25 was likely executed by a Bolognese illuminator around 1350,5 CCC 410 has been considered ‘central Italian’ and ‘mid fourteenth century’, 6 and Ms.

(2) As Ragusa and G reen pointed out, m any ‘illustrated’ copies feature only a few pictures, and at the time of their publication (1961), there were only three known examples containing a significant num ber of images. See Meditations, p. xxiii, n. 5, for a list of the seventeen illustrated m anuscripts known to Ragusa and Green. T heir list, based on Golumban Fischer’s list of 217 total M V C manuscripts, is augm ented by an English m anu­ script th a t they add to the list: New York, Pierpont M organ Library 648. Snite 85.25 and the Tenschert m anuscript should now be added to the list. (3) O n the O xford m anuscript see G. F. W arner and J . P. Gilson, Catalogue o f Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections, 4 vols (London: British Museum, 1921), pp. 360-61, pi. 114 (folio 61v), as well as Jo n a th an J . G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods o f Work (New H aven and L ondon: Yale U n i­ versity Press, 1992), pp. 66-69. T he Snite m anuscript was given to the University of N otre D am e in South Bend, IN , by A nn M cN ear of Chicago, in memory of her husband E verett M cN ear. Before 1985, this m anu­ script was not recognized as a copy of the M VC. O n Snite 85.25 see D ianne Phillips, ‘T he Illustration of the Meditations on the Life o f Christ: A Study of an Illum inated Fourteenth-C entury Italian M anuscript at the U ni­ versity of N otre D am e’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation proposal, Yale University, n.d.), p. 2, as well as Phillips, ‘T he Meditations’, pp. 237-80. (4) See G audenz Freuler and others, Heribert Tenschert, Leuchtendes Mittelalter, neue Folge I I : dreiunddreissig mittelalterliche Handscriften aus Byzanz, Italien, Frankreich, Deutschland, Flandern, und den Niederlanden vom 11. bis zum frühen 16. Jahrhundert (R otthalm ünster: H . Tenschert, 1998), no. 8. (5) See Phillips, ‘T he Meditations’, p. 243. (6) See Pächt, Review of Meditations, p. 235. In his opinion, CGC 410 is ‘[...] hardly earlier in date th an the Paris one [Ms. ital. 115]’, and he dated Ms. ital. 115 to ‘mid fourteenth-century’. H e discerned two hands in the O xford m anuscript, one m id-fourteenth-century C entral Italian. T he other, seen in only twelve m inia­ tures, relied on a model dating from the late thirteenth century, as the architecture and style are generally com parable to mosaics by Cavallini in Santa M aria in T rastevere in Rom e or the Assisi Isaac narrative fres­ coes. A nother striking feature of this m anuscript is that, as in early Christian art, the figure of the adult Christ is blond and unbearded, as shown in folio 117r in which Christ is talking w ith a group of women and washing the disciples’ feet. See also Jo n a th an J . G. Alexander and Elzbieta Tem ple, Illuminated Manuscripts in Oxford College Libraries, the University Archives, and the Taylor Institution (Oxford: O xford University Press, 1985), no. 908. See also Phillips, ‘T he Illustration’, p. 5, who believes th a t CGC 410 pre-dates Ms. ital. 115. 50

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ital. 115, as I argue in the Appendix, was probably made in Pisa circa 1340-50.7 Ms. ital. 115 and Snite 85.25 feature a vernacular Italian text, whereas CCC 410 and the Tenschert manuscript are in Latin. All of these manuscripts are on parchment (membrane) except for Ms. ital. 115, a paper manuscript, and they vary in size.8 The Tenschert manuscript, Snite 85.25, CCC 410, and Ms. ital. 115 are so different from one another that it is impossible to speculate on an illustrated manuscript ‘tradition’ for the MVC based on them, as can be traced for other texts such as the Miracles de Notre Dame or the Roman de la Rose. 9 By contrast, what is most striking about these manuscripts, particularly Snite 85.25, CCC Ms. 410, and Ms. ital. 115, is the way each was highly per­ sonalized for a specific person or group, and the way the elements selected for illustration at times seem to reflect the gender and vocation of the intended readers. The Tenschert manuscript, on the other hand, contains a much more standard cycle of illustrations. It can thus be seen as a more ‘generic’ pictorial interpretation of this text, one that is in fact more dependent on typical pictorial cycles of Christ’s life than on the text itself. As my brief analysis of each of these manuscripts will underscore, their resulting image programs are highly subjective in terms of the choices made by the patrons, artists, and advisors of these manuscripts. O f the four Trecento manuscripts from Italy, the image program in the Tenschert seems the least dependent on the text. It has only become known to scholars recently, so its style and dating remain in question.10 W hat is immediately apparent is that all twenty(7) Ms. ital. 115 has been exhibited at the Bibliothèque N ationale at least twice and appears in the fol­ lowing two publications: Claude D albanne, ‘U n m anuscrit italien des Meditationes Vitae Christi à la Biblio­ thèque N ationale’, in Les Tresors des bibliothèques de France I I I ed. by R. C antinelb and Emile D acier (Paris: V an Oest, 1930), pp. 50-51 ; and François Avril, Dix siècles d’enluminure italienne ( v i ‘- x v i‘ siècles) (Paris: Bibhothèque N ationale, 1984), no. 50. It was also exhibited in Avignon in 1983, see Michel Laclotte, L ’art gothique siennois: enluminure,peinture, orfèvrerie, sculpture (Avignon: Musée du Petit Palais, 1983), no. 32. See also Ragusa, ‘L ’autore’, pp. 145-50, Isa Ragusa, ‘T he Dispute of the V irtues M iniature in the Meditations on the Life o f Christ’, in Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Maria Luisa Gatti Perer, ed. by M arco Rossi and Alessandro R ovetta (M ilan: V ita e Pensiero, 1999), pp. 47-52; and Ragusa, ‘L a partico larità,’ pp. 71-82. Because of the wide availability of Ragusa and G reen’s edition, scholars working over the past forty years have frequently used it when quoting from the text and have occasionaby m entioned one or two of the images. Studies th a t discuss one or two of Ms. ital. 115’s images include Anne Derbes and M ark Sandona, ‘Ave charitateplena: V ariations on the Them e of C harity in the A rena C hapel’, Speculum, 76:3 (July 2001), pp. 599-637. Folio 8V from Ms. ital. 115 is reproduced as their fig. 4. See also Stephen W agner, ‘Em bracing Convent Life through Illustrations of the H oly Fam ily in a F ourteenth-C entury Italian T ranslation of the Meditations on the Life o f Christ: Paris: Bibhothèque N ationale, Ms. Ital. 115’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, Florida State University, 1995); and Lucy W rapson, ‘C hrist’s Boyhood: a Com parison of the Iconography of the Meditationes Vitae Christi (Paris, B.N. MS. Ital 115) w ith T he H olkham Bible Picture Book (London, B.L. MS Add. 47682) in the Light of Surviving Infancy M aterial’, (unpublished masters thesis, C ourtauld Institute of A rt, 2002). (8) T he dimensions of each are as follows: Snite 85.25: 180 x 125 m m ; ital. 115: 305 mm x 210 m m ; T en­ schert: 135 X 100 m m ; CCC 410: 217 x 150 mm. (9) O n the question of a ‘pictorial traditio n ’ for certain texts in illum inated manuscripts, see Alexander, Medieval Illuminators, p. 107ff. (10) G audenz Freuler, author of the catalogue entry on the m anuscript, does not offer a date more specific than ‘post-1305’, but to me the style of painting in this m anuscript suggests a late-fourteenth-century date and 51

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F IG U R E 1

Betrayal of Christ. (Ramsen, Switzerland, A ntiquariat Bibermühle H eribert Tenschert, Meditationes Vitae Christi m anuscript, f. 36v)

seven images are standard scenes, and many compositions are highly dependent on Giotto’s Arena Chapel frescoes.11 This can be seen most obviously in the Tenschert betrayal of Christ miniature ( f i g u r e 1: folio 36 verso). Both the Arena Chapel and the Tenschert composition feature Judas and Christ at the center, with Christ’s body covered by Judas’s cloak as he leans in for the kiss.12 The only distinct feature of this manuscript is that its text, which appears to be the short Latin version of the MVC, does not follow the usual chronological structure. Instead, the infancy of Christ narrative follows the passion sections, and the reason for this is uncer­ tain. Perhaps the patrons, who are also unknown given the lack of personal names or her­ aldry in the manuscript, wished to prioritize the passion in their devotional practices, or they may have decided after commissioning the book that they wished to add the infancy section. The fact that the manuscript is in Latin points to a high level of education on the part of the reader, but beyond that no further clues can be seen either in circumstantial evi­ dence or in the choice of illustrations. W hat this manuscript does suggest is that illustrating a general affinity to m iniature painting in Padua. O n P aduan illum ination, see G ordana Ganova M ariani and others, La miniatura a Padova : dal Medioevo al Settecento, exhibition catalog, Palazzo della Ragione —Palazzo del M onte, Padua, and Accademia dei Concordi, Rovigo, 21 M arch — 27 Ju n e, 1999 (M odena: Franco Gosimo Panini, 1999). (11) O n the influence of the A rena Chapel frecoes, see A nna M aria Spiazzi, The Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (M ilan: Electa, 1993), pp. 8-9. (12) See Freuler, Heribert Tenschert, no. 8. 52

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F IG U R E

2

Joseph Pondering Leaving M ary. (Notre Dame, Indiana, Snite M useum of Art, University of N otre Dame, 85.25, f. 12r)

the MVC could simply be a matter of appropriating standard images from Christ’s life as opposed to adding new image types that depended on the novelties in the text. Snite 85.25, a manuscript containing the short version of the MVC in Italian, is in some ways also standard, but in others quite innovative. First, in this manuscript we find evidence of its patronage on the frontispiece, which features an image of Christ in majesty with two kneeling figures, without haloes, on each side. The figure on the viewer’s left is the apparent male patron, whose costume indicates a layperson of knightly status. The female figure at right wears a blue garment and a mantle, clothing likewise indicative of lay rather than religious vocation. Dianne Phillips has suggested that the male figure, kneeling at Christ’s right, is the most probable primary patron and most likely to have had agency in the creation of the manuscript’s program, but that the presence of the kneeling woman points to a female reader for the manuscript as well.13 It is unclear whether or not these two are a couple, but their kneeling postures declare them both as probable book users or owners, which points to the likely situation of a single household.14

(13) Phillips, ‘T he Meditations’, pp. 237-81. (14) As K athryn Sm ith has established in regard to devotional books produced in England, it was not at all uncom mon for fourteenth-century families to share in the reading of their devotional books, and supplicant figures such as these often indicated a book’s intended readers. See K ath ry n A. Smith, Art, Identity, and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England: Three Women and their Books o f Hours (London : British Library, 2004). 53

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F IG U R E

3

Circumcision. (Notre Dame, Indiana, Snite Museum of A rt, University of N otre Dame, 85.25, f. 18r)

Most of the scenes chosen for illustration are those found in other life of Christ pictorial cycles, and many of these correspond to the liturgical calendar. One of the most unusual features, however, is the prominence of Joseph, as Phillips has pointed o u t.15 He is as present and as visually central as Mary, and as she often is, he is shown with a special rela­ tionship to the Christ child. Frequently placed at the compositional center of the pictures, Joseph here plays a key role even in episodes like the visitation, where he is not usually seen.16 In this rendering, he stands at the center of the miniature, reverently looking on as Mary and Elizabeth embrace. It is significant that certain standard scenes prioritizing Mary seem to have been left out, whereas episodes in which she normally plays the key role are changed to emphasize Joseph. The marriage of the Virgin, for example, is omitted, whereas the more-rare image of Joseph pondering whether he should leave the Virgin when he learns of her pregnancy is included ( f i g u r e 2 : folio 1 2 recto). Joseph also figures prominently in an unusual scene of the first bath, in which Mary bathes Jesus as Joseph kneels in adoration. Also atypical is a

(15) Phillips, ‘T he Meditations’, pp. 248-54. (16) T he standard visitation iconography features M ary and E lizabeth alone, b u t ital. 115 (folio 13v) and CGC 410 (folio 10r) feature Joseph and Zaccarias also, whereas Snite 85.25 has Joseph at the center of the composition w ith three m ale figures behind him (folio 10v). 54

M O V E D B Y T H E G R E A T S W E E T N E SS O F L O V E

ΐ Γ ΐ I l f Α Γ Τ η ΐΟ (Ι« 1 Ί ί Π Π ίΤ ,Ί ίίΓ ω ΐΐ LTljTTl ΓΤιΓΊΪΤιΊ Λ·.'.1

Μ ϋ Ί 'ι ί ϊ Γ τ η κ ■mffiettttimnftittTi' ίΐίλΉίΐ .ml iinnpuinmr«BiiijeH;[rf tt^ η 1κ I iWipifl \-

IlII'V! ll-VnbPIiTT.iLl’, ί1Ι ( Ρ ί 'ΐ Ι

ί ^ Ε Ι π ' . I :J ^ Τ · I’..··... Jfc',11 t J ^ j m j a - n a a r i u M f l [ η ι ΐ ' . ι ΐ π iiu l îic .ιΐί^ ιητΗα mint ■:.’ i ι»(1*ηι (^LTTT ( & ΐ ΐ ρ ΐ η « 1 1 ΐ η « Η 1-flJi dbm^viHlntf ^CsLit(u>iaftrirr n1 F IG U R E

4

Presentation of the Virgin. (Notre Dame, Indiana, Snite M useum of Art, University of N otre Dame, 85.25, f. 5v)

miniature showing the holy family entering a house during their return from the flight into Egypt. Throughout the infancy sequence, Joseph continues to be emphasized and presented as the proper paterfamilias in the holy family. The Snite circumcision miniature ( f i g u r e 3 : folio 18 recto) shows the event taking place in public at the Temple, with Joseph holding the child while the operation is performed by a male priest. His prominence here is remark­ able because he is not even mentioned in the chapter on circumcision in the MVC. His presence at the circumcision is implied, however, because it was at the circumcision that Jesus was named, a task assigned to Joseph, according to Matthew’s gospel.17 Joseph’s importance in this scene in the Snite manuscript indicates his leadership in the family and his proper role as head of household, a role the male book owner might also have played in his own family.18 The authority of Joseph is likewise asserted in the annunciation to the shepherds and adoration of the Magi miniatures, where Joseph and Mary are presented together, as a visual unit, a compositional departure from most Trecento images, where Joseph sits apart

(17) M atthew 1:25. (18) O n the iconography of Joseph and late-M edieval exegetical traditions, see Cynthia H ahn, ‘Joseph as Ambrose’s “ A rtisan of the Soul” , in the Holy Fam ily in Egypt by A lbrecht D ürer’, Zeitschriftfür Kunstgeschichte, 47:4 (1984), pp. 515-22. See also Paul Payan, Joseph: Une image de la paternité dans l’Occident medieval (Paris: Aubier, 2006). 55

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from Mary, often with his head in his hands, pondering the mystery before him. Also remarkable are the images of the flight into Egypt and return from Egypt, where a male figure traveling with the Virgin, Christ, and Joseph is included, perhaps intended to be one of his sons, as in other examples of this scene from the period.19 The inclusion of this figure further points to Joseph’s role as proper caretaker of his family, providing for and pro­ tecting them along their journey. The particular depiction of Joseph in these images points to concerns that a male, m ar­ ried patron in Medieval Bologna might have strongly identified with in his own role in the family and community. Although the later passages in the Snite manuscript narrating Christ’s passion do not feature the same emphasis on Joseph, other details relevant to the life of a male lay patron are included. One is a unique passage in the text of the Snite manuscript digressing from the MVC description of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jeru­ salem. This passage instructs the reader as to what to do when visiting a city: First, one is to visit a church, and then upon returning to one’s own town, immediately visit the ora­ tory. 20 The fact that this manuscript contains the short version of the text, omitting the section on the active and contemplative lives, similarly points to the patronage of a lay­ person. Such an individual who did not belong to a religious order might be less concerned with perfecting the spiritual life, and perhaps favored a shorter version of the text condu­ cive to meditation on the events of Christ’s life in themselves. As Phillips suggests, the repeated image of Joseph is also significant because his cos­ tume is distinct from that of the other biblical figures shown. Rather than appear in typ­ ical, rather generalized ‘holy figure’ robes, he wears a gray tunic with an elbow-length capelet and a jaunty hat trimmed in luxurious black fur. This garb is contemporary four­ teenth-century dress typical of a prominent urban layman, perhaps a merchant or other professional. The gray colour may be a particular concession to his humility and piety, but the other details of his costume make clear that he is not a member of a religious order. This marked presentation of Joseph as a contemporary layman is perhaps intended to offer a specific figure of identification for the lay male patron depicted in the frontispiece to the manuscript.21 As these images attest, Phillips is absolutely correct in her assertion that the Snite mini­ atures and text contain ‘concessions to male concerns’, while also being appropriate for a female reader. But I would take Phillips’s argument a bit further to note the way Snite

(19) T he Protoevangelium of Jam es mentions Joseph’s sons by a form er m arriage, and one or two of them are depicted in m any Trecento Italian scenes of the flight into Egypt, including the A rena Chapel. For the apocryphal text see Jam es, The Life o f Mary and the Birth o f Jesus: the Ancient Infancy Gospel o f James, ed. and trans, by R onald Hock (Berkeley: Ulysses Press, 1997), chapter 9. (20) Phillips, ‘T he Illustration’, p. 4. (21) Phillips, ‘T he Meditations’, p. 237ff, points to the cult of Joseph as it was developed in Trecento Bologna. Joseph has also been seen as both a positive and, at times, a negative model in other contexts; see Pam ela Sheingorn, ‘Joseph the C arpenter’s Failure at Fam ilial Discipline’, in Insights and Interpretations : Studies in Celebrations o f the Eighty-Fifth Anniversary o f the Index o f Christian Art, ed. by Colum H ourihane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 156-67. 56

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85.25 simultaneously addresses the concerns of this female reader, and thus seems to be geared toward a prosperous urban family in Medieval Bologna. In many of the scenes where Joseph is emphasized, visual importance is placed not only on Joseph himself but on him as M ary’s chaste partner, Christ’s foster father, and an ideal paterfamilias, thus empha­ sizing the entire holy family. 22 The way the Virgin is portrayed also hints at the concerns of a laywoman. Emphasis on the role women play in the education of their children and their importance in the domestic sphere can be seen in several of the Snite 85.25 miniatures. In the scene of the Virgin’s presentation in the Temple, for example, Mary’s mother Anna is shown very actively guiding her daughter toward the priests, while her father, Joachim, stands behind Anna, barely noticeable in the composition (fig u r e 4 : folio 5 verso). A similar depiction of this scene in the Arena Chapel, which was probably known to the Snite manuscript illu­ minator, shows Anna guiding her daughter toward the Temple, but features a clear view of Joachim as well. 23 The Snite image is also quite different from the more common icon­ ography of the scene, which shows the Virgin ascending a flight of steps to the Temple as a sign of her willingness to enter it, while both of her parents look on. Because a prosperous laywoman in Medieval Bologna most likely was entrusted with her family’s spiritual instruction and care in her home, perhaps expected to teach her children to read or at least to develop a certain level of ‘devotional literacy’, the emphasis on Anna’s similar role is telling.24 It is also significant that the Virgin is presented reading multiple times, another marker of her piety and her education. The right half of the miniature where Mary enters the Temple shows her studiously enclosed there, engrossed in her prayerbook. A female companion sits with her, wearing distinctly secular dress, and seems to be adoring the reading Virgin by her side. I would suggest that she may be intended as a figure of identifi­ cation for the book’s female reader. The two companion figures shown in the scene of Joseph’s dilemma, both with hands clasped as if in prayer and one gazing at Mary (see f i g u r e 2 ) , perhaps also functioned the same way, prompting the female book owner to enter her world imaginatively as prescribed in the MVC text. The imagery in Snite 85.25 thus suggests multivalent readings and an intentional shaping of its pictorial program for more than one reader with closely related, yet distinct, devotional interests.

(22) O n the holy family unit as a m arriage model for devout laypeople in the late M iddle Ages, see Cynthia H ahn, ‘“Joseph W ill Perfect, M ary Enlighten, and Jesus Save T hee” , T he Holy Fam ily As M arriage Model in the M érode T riptych’, Art Bulletin, 68:1 (1986), pp. 54-66. (23) See Spiazzi, The Scrovegni Chapel, pp. 8-9. (24) O n the concept of ‘devotional literacy’, see M argaret Aston, ‘D evotional Literacy’, in Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London: H am bledon, 1984), pp. 101-33. O n A nna as teacher to M ary as a role model for literate laywomen, see Pam ela Sheingorn, “ ‘T he Wise M other” : T he Im age of St A nne T eaching the V irgin M ary’, Gesta, 32:1 (1993), pp. 69-80, reprinted in Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. by M ary C. E rler and M aryanne Kowaleski (Ithaca and L ondon: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 105-34. 57

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CCC 410 is a Latin manuscript that contains the long version of the MVC and features donor portraits that, like those in Snite 85.25, may point to two secular patrons, male and female, who must both have used the manuscript. On its first folio, a female figure in a Clarissan habit is shown facing saint Francis. A coat of arms, unfortunately obliterated, also appears on this folio. A second, bearded male donor figure is depicted a few pages later (folio 4 recto), and he is pictured below Christ enthroned with two male saints who lack attributes. The inclusion of the second donor figure later in the manuscript is remark­ able; one wonders what his relationship was to the woman depicted first, who was prob­ ably the primary book owner. It is possible that the owner(s) were members of the Third Order of Saint Francis, in which laypeople took vows of Franciscan piety and devotion to poverty. The manuscript is on fine membrane and is richly illuminated with miniatures embellished with gold leaf, and thus if its owner(s) were indeed devoted to Franciscan pov­ erty, such devotion did not preclude their considerable monetary investment in this luxu­ rious book. The image program features a number of iconographie eccentricities that point to the devotional interests of these two possible owners, in particular the woman who is the first devotee depicted. Women are unusually prominent actors in the manuscript’s image pro­ gram. Mary is emphasized, as are many of the episodes in which Christ interacts with women, such as the Samaritan woman at the well (folio 58 verso) and the healing of the woman with the issue of blood (folio 70 verso). Most striking in its inclusion of female fig­ ures is the circumcision, which is performed by a female figure while two other women and Joseph look on (fig u r e 5: folio 16 verso). None of the women wear haloes, and they are probably intended to refer to the tradition of midwives who aided Mary at Christ’s birth, but they are not mentioned in the MVC text.25 A woman shown performing the cir­ cumcision is an unusual twist on the typical iconography and may reflect an equally rare detail in the MVC text, also illustrated in Ms. ital. 115, in which the Virgin circumcises the Christ child herself. I will discuss this theme further in chapter 3, but for now I will simply note that Franciscans, and particularly female Franciscans, seem to have had an interest in it. As his presence here indicates, Joseph is also prominently featured in the image pro­ gram, but not to the degree that we see him in the Snite manuscript. Images such as the circumcision and the image that precedes it, a nativity scene in which Joseph and Mary adore the Christ child at the manger, have strong and original visual allusions to the pas­ sion. This emphasis seems to reflect Franciscan theology, for in the Franciscan devotion to Christ’s humanity, his passion and infancy were emphasized.26 In the nativity scene ( f i g u r e 6: folio 15 verso), Joseph holds the head of the infant while Mary holds his feet, as

(25) O n the apocryphal tradition of the midwives, see G ünter Aust, Die Geburt Christi (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1953), pp. x-xi. (26) See Jo h n Fleming, An Introduction to Franciscan Literature o f the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). 58

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F IG U R E

5

Circumcision. (Oxford, Ms. Corpus Christi College Library, O xford University, 410, f. 16v)

f ig u r e

6

Nativity. (Oxford, Ms. Corpus Christi College Library, O xford University, 410, f. 15v) 59

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the Christ child, who seems almost to levitate, reaches up with his right arm to touch the ox. The elongation of Christ’s nude body, paralleling the tomb-like rectangular manger, along with the two figures on either side of that body in adoration, recalls lamentation scenes. Christ’s gesture toward the ox, a traditional symbol of the Jews, is rather puzzling here, and is not found in the text of the MVC. 27 It may simply serve to highlight the pres­ ence of the animals and refer to St Francis’s celebration of the crib at Greccio. Francis had specifically asked that an ox and an ass be part of the celebration, saying : I wish in full reality to awaken the remembrance of the child as he was born in Bethlehem and of all the hardship he had to endure in his childhood. I wish to see with my bodily eyes what it meant to lie in a manger and sleep on hay, between an ox and an ass. 28

In regarding such an image, a viewer might be prompted to contemplate Christ’s earthly life in his full poverty and difficulty, both in his suffering as an infant and in his later suf­ fering on the cross. Another scene of the suffering on the cross in CCC 410 also probably derives from a Franciscan tradition. The scene in which Christ must climb a ladder to reach the cross ( f i g u r e 7: folio 135 verso) reflects only one of two different versions of the crucifixion story told in the MVC. 29 In the other, Christ is nailed to the cross when it is still on the ground, and then it is lifted up. In this manuscript, the version chosen for illustration is the first, which was particularly favored by the Franciscans, as it was interpreted to show Christ’s humility and willingness to become a sacrifice for mankind.30 A similar emphasis on Christ’s humanity can be seen in another unusual image, in which Christ weeps in the garden of Gethsemane (folio 123 verso). As the apostles sleep, an angel consoles him and he wipes his face with a handkerchief. This image, which corresponds to a lengthy passage in the MVC describing how Christ wept and sweated blood while praying for deliverance, follows a more standard image of him praying in the garden.31 These unusual images sug­ gest that the book owners who used CCC 410 were particularly attuned to the Franciscan emphasis on affective meditation on Christ’s human nature. The selection of scenes for illustration in CCC 410 thus also reveals attention to the specific religious interests of its owners as opposed to strict adherence to the MVC text.

(27) Gregory the G reat, com m enting on a passage in Isaiah 1 :3, m arked the ox as a symbol of the Jew s and the ass as a symbol of the gentiles. See S. Gregorii Magni Moralia in Job, vol. I, ed. by M arcus A driaen (Turnh o u t: Brepols, 1969), p. 16. (28) See Erw in Rosenthal, ‘T he Grib of Greccio and Franciscan Realism ’, Art Bulletin, 36 (1954), p. 58. (29) Meditations, pp. 333-34. (30) O n this iconography and its possible connections to Byzantine art, see Derbes, Picturing the Passion, chapter 6. See also V ictor Schmidt, Review of Picturing the Passion in Late Medieval Italy : Narrative Painting, Fran­ ciscan Ideologies, and the Levant by Anne Derbes, Simiolus, 261:2 (1998), p. 118. (31) Meditations, pp. 323-24. 60

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F IG U R E

7

Disrobing Before Crucifixion. (Oxford, Ms. Corpus Christi College 410, O xford University, f. 135v)

Ms. Ital. 115: Illustrating the MVCfor a Female Franciscan O f all of the early MVC manuscripts, Ms. ital. 115 is the most elaborate and complex visual elaboration of the text, and also the one that adheres most closely to it. Although the original ownership is not indicated by any personal names, colophons, or heraldry, evi­ dence of the manuscript’s situation of patronage is indicated on the frontispiece, as is the case with two of the other early MVC codices. Unlike Snite 85.25 and CCC 410, however, the frontispiece in Ms. ital. 115 is more akin to an author portrait than a ‘donor’ portrait. On the manuscript’s first folio ( f i g u r e 8 : folio 1 recto) a tonsured man, his brown robe and rope belt indicating him as a Franciscan, converses with a haloed female figure. Inscriptions in the image denote the male figure as ‘The friar who compiled this book’ and the female figure as ‘St Cecilia’. 32 This picture corresponds to a portion of the MVC pro­ logue in which Cecilia is praised because of her devotion to the life of Christ. The image is thus based on the text, but the fact that it is put first, even before St Francis ( f i g u r e 9:

(32) Ital. 115, folio l r. T he inscription above the m ale figure reads: ‘questi è il fraie che âe compilato questo libro’. 61

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CHA PTER 2

folio 2 verso), links it to the tradition of author portraiture, which frequently occurs in the form of a frontispiece.33 Unlike the more usual ‘author portrait’, in which the author is shown writing or holding a book, the friar figure here seems to be speaking. As the friar faces Cecilia with an open, raised left hand and his right hand pointing at her, she holds up her right hand in response while her left hand points downward to the text below. The gesture of the friar here is similar to those found elsewhere in Ms. ital. 115 in scenes of preaching.34 Cecilia also seems to be pointing toward the text below her, where the reader is told that Cecilia always held the life of Christ in her heart. Because no book is depicted in the image, the inscription above the friar referring to ‘this book’ indicates that the book in the reader’s hands is the one he has compiled.35 The image of the friar instructing Cecilia serves as a form of prefatory instruction for the reader of Ms. ital. 115, who would have likewise heard pastoral instruction as a prelude to reading the book on her own, and also used the book as a substitute for a friar’s ‘live’ preaching.36 The reader or readers are implicit in the image of Cecilia who serves as a devotional model for them. Signaling a male-to-female advisory relationship, this image therefore points toward a similar situation of patronage for Ms. ital. 115 ; that is, the book was made for a female context, likely also under the direction of a friar. Other aspects of the image program in Ms. ital. 115 indicate specific connections to a Clarissan reader. The manuscript features repeated images of veiled women clad in lightbrown tunics presented as companions to the Virgin. These figures occur not only in scenes where traditionally the Virgin is shown with companions, as in the sequence of her youth while enclosed at the Temple as seen, for example, in Snite 85.25, but also in much of the series showing the holy family’s exile in Egypt, where the text does not mention their pres­ ence. Ms. ital. 115 contains instructions to the artists in the margins, and these specify that companions (compagne) or ‘other women’ (altre dome) are to be included in the images. Sev(33) O n author portraits, see D on Denny, ‘A uthor P o rtrait’, in The Dictionary o f Art, vol. 2, ed. by Ja n e T u rn er (New York: G rove’s Dictionaries, Inc., 1996), pp. 835-37 ; and for author portraits in manuscripts, see Suzanne Lewis, ‘Auctor et Auctoritas: St Jo h n as Seer, A uthor, Preceptor, and Pilgrim ’, in Reading Images : Narra­ tive Discourse and Reception in the Thirteenth-Century Illuminated Apocalypse (Cam bridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1995), chapter 1 ; as well as Elizabeth Sears and Derek Pearsall, ‘Pictorial Illustration of L ate M edieval Poetic T exts: the Role of the Frontispiece or Prefatory Picture’, in Medieval Iconography and Narrative, A Sympo­ sium, ed. by Fleming G. Anderen and others (Odense, D enm ark: Odense University Press, 1980), pp. 100-23. (34) An example is found in folio 103r in the sequence of Christ and the Sam aritan w oman in w hich the instructions to the reader indicate th a t Christ is preaching. His right arm is lifted w ith his palm facing the audience in a m anner sim ilar to the left arm of the friar. (35) This im age makes clear the close connection between the oral and the w ritten in the composition and use of texts such as the M VC. As M ichael Camille has argued, pointing hands th a t frequently appear in M edieval images, as here, are signs of oral perform ance and serve as evidence th a t ‘reading was a m atter of hearing and speaking, not of seeing’. M ichael Camille, ‘Seeing and R eading: Some V isual Implications of M edieval Literacy and Illiteracy’, Art History, 8:1 (1985), pp. 26-49. (36) In showing a male advisor counseling a nun, the first im age in Ms. ital. 115 is sim ilar to th a t in an illustrated m anuscript o f ‘La Sainte Abbeye’, London, British Library, Yates Thom pson MS II (Add. 39843), folio 29r. O n nuns receiving oral instruction before proceeding to other stages of prayer in a D om inican con­ text, see H am burger, ‘T he Use of Im ages’, p. 199. 64

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eral different folios, including several from the holy family’s flight into Egypt (see chapter 4, f i g u r e 35: folio 41 recto) feature female figures seated or interacting with the Virgin, often sewing or spinning with her. These women are veiled and dressed in lightbrown costumes that echo those of Poor Clare novices.37 These figures may have been added to aid the reader in identifying personally with Mary and imagining herself along­ side her in devotion.38 Like the nun-like companions she is shown with, Mary is portrayed not only as celibate but also prayerful and an assiduous worker at spinning and needle­ work. These labors mark her as the new Eve, but more importantly connect the Virgin’s life to that of a Clarissan reader, who would most likely be engaged in similar pursuits every day in her convent.39 It is also notable that Mary and her companions are nearly always shown cloistered in architectural spaces, while the Christ child emerges to work out­ side. This use of architecture appropriately mirrors the active and contemplative lives of the friars, whose lives involved public preaching and ministry, and the Clares, who lived reclusive lives of work and prayer in their convents.40 Another aspect of Ms. ital. 115 that suggests a female Franciscan audience is its presen­ tation of the Virgin. She is the primary role model for the reader not only as example of monastic life, but as a paradigm of Franciscan charity. A number of images show the Virgin in various acts of charitable giving: While enclosed at the Temple as a young girl, she gives her bread away to the poor (see chapter 5, f i g u r e 76: folio 8 verso), and later, scorning the gifts of the Magi as against poverty, she immediately donates them (see chapter 5, f i g u r e 82: folio 30 verso). The Virgin is also made out to be the primary breadwinner when the holy family is in exile in Egypt and must work, sewing and spin­ ning, to have the means to survive.41 Although Joseph is also shown working in one image, more images depict Mary as the key wage earner of the household, a presentation that is consistent with Joseph’s portrayal in the text as ‘old’ and essentially a recipient of the Vir­ gin’s charity.42 As I will explain in chapter 5, M ary’s evident devotion to poverty and her diligence in work mark her as a relevant role model for a female Franciscan reader. Although they are vastly different in style and approach to illustration, Ms. ital. 115 and CCC 410 have commonalities that may reflect Franciscan, and specifically female (37) T he companions are specified in the instructions on folios 7V (‘compagne’), 14v paîtra donna’), 43r paître donne’), 48r (as ‘relatives’ or ‘parenti’), and in the inscriptions in 7V (‘compagne’), 41r (‘queste’), 43r (‘compagne’), and 53r paîtra [...]’ [incom plete]). O n the dress of Franciscan nuns, see Desirée Koslin, ‘T he Dress of M onastic and Religious W om en as Seen in A rt from the Early M iddle Ages to the R eform ation’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, New York University, 1999). (38) O n friendships between women in convents see K athy Lavezzo, ‘Sobs and Sighs between W om en: T he Homoerotics of Compassion in T he Book of M argery K em pe’, in Premodern Sexualities, ed. by Louise Fradenburg and C arla Freccero (New Y ork: Routledge, 1996), pp. 181-82; and for treatm ent of M ary’s com pa­ nions as identified w ith viewers, see R obert Deshman, ‘Servants of the M other of G od in Byzantine and M edieval A rt’, Word and Image, 5 (1989), pp. 33-70. (39) O n women and the production of textiles in convents, see chapter 5, note 76. (40) T he architecture as a sign of female enclosure and as em blem atic of the Tuscan spiritual landscape will be discussed further in the following chapters. (41 ) See for example the text and images on folios 43r and 43v. (42) Joseph is repeatedly referred to as ‘vecchio Giuseppe’ in Ms. ital. 115. See for example folio 23r. 65

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Franciscan, spirituality. Both prominently feature women in the image program, but CCC 410 lacks the companions to the Virgin seen in Ms. ital. 115. CCC 410 also does not have the strong emphasis on poverty seen in Ms. ital. 115. Both manuscripts, however, have a decided promotion of affective devotion. The best example of this encouragement of affective devotion is in the circumcision in Ms. ital. 115, a presentation particularly shaped by a desire for an intense emotional expe­ rience of this event consistent with Clarissan spirituality. The text of the MVC, most unusu­ ally, declares that the circumcision was actually performed by the Virgin herself.43 All the other illustrated manuscripts of this text avoid this rather unorthodox view, and indeed this detail, as far as I have been able to find, is absolutely unique to Ms. ital. 115. As I will further explain in chapter 3, the circumcision is emphasized as the first violent event to be described in detail by the MVC, offering the reader a powerful lesson on affective devo­ tional prayer. That Ms. ital. 115 was made for a Franciscan audience is likewise suggested by other evidence. As mentioned previously, the image of Francis, shown receiving the stigmata (see f i g u r e 9), denotes devotion to his order. The manuscript also features the long version of the MVC, which contains an extended narrative of the ministry of Christ and a lengthy treatise on the active and contemplative lives, a choice that in itself may point to a religious rather than a lay audience. The Snite manuscript, for example, has the ‘short’, abridged version of the MVC text, narrating only the infancy of Christ, his passion, and the resurrec­ tion. Phillips has suggested that the probable lay patrons of the Snite manuscript were per­ haps more interested in the shorter version of the text, whereas the longer version containing the treatise on the active and contemplative lives lends itself more obviously to a religious setting.44 CCC 410 also contains the long version of the text, but as suggested by its frontispiece featuring Francis, its owner(s) may have themselves been devoted to the Franciscan order, perhaps as members of the Third Order of St Francis. They thus may have desired the long version in their quest to incorporate aspects of Franciscan devotion into their lifestyle as laypeople. Ms. ital. 115 also preserves the gendered indications to the female reader in its text (mentioned in chapter 1). The reader is addressed as dilectafigliuola, for example, and told to emulate ‘la beata vergine Clara, madré e dughessa tua’. 45 As also noted in chapter 1, Ragusa has pointed out that Ms. ital. 115 contains passages in its text that are unique to it and indicate the process of composition and the conscious presence of an advisor writing for his own memory and for that of his audience, a Poor Clare.46 CCC 410 preserves many of the same basic textual references to a female Franciscan reader, but does not contain the pas­ sages in which the author digresses to talk about his reasons for writing. The text of Snite 85.25 is also uniquely adapted for its audience; it does not have the gendered references in

(43) (44) (45) (46) 66

See See See See

the text and im age on folio 24r. Phillips, ‘T he Meditations’. 239. Ms. ital. 115 folios 2r and 3V. Ragusa, ‘La particolarità’, pp. 71-82.

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its text and also contains the unique passage mentioned above, which tells the reader what to do when returning home from a journey. The colors, gold, and parchment used in all the other illustrated MVC manuscripts likewise seem more appropriate to wealthy lay patrons, whereas the watercolors and paper used to make Ms. ital. 115, although certainly not inexpensive by Medieval standards, are relatively humble and are perhaps deliberate nods to the Franciscan poverty of the book’s audience. None of the other manuscripts contains obvious visual references to Franciscan poverty, whereas that theme is highly prioritized in the image cycle of Ms. ital. 115. The layout of the three manuscripts on parchment is also much more conservative than that of Ms. ital. 115, which features images placed directly in the middle of the pas­ sages of text they illustrate, without rubrics, frames, or other devices to suggest a separation of image and texts. Each of the other three manuscripts’ illustrations instead follow a standard format. In Snite 85.25 and CCC 410, the miniatures are neatly confined by frames to the portion of the page just above the chapter the image illustrates. In these two manuscripts, a rubric and an historiated initial introduce the text to which the image cor­ responds in a line just above or below the miniature, and the miniatures always occur at the beginning of the chapter in question. In viewing each of these other manuscripts, a reader would view the pictures as a prelude to the passage of text illustrated by the image. The Tenschert manuscript, although it lacks rubrics placed near the images and sometimes inserts them in the middle of a chapter, always presents its images in the lower lines of the page, separated from the text by a frame bounded in red. Thus, the images, while also probably intended as aids to visualization, as in Ms. ital. 115, offer far less scope and detail for use in contemplation, because they are not integrated into the text itself. Ms. ital. 115 also offered far more material for meditation because of its overwhelm­ ingly extensive image cycle. None of the other manuscripts even comes close to the number of pictures in Ms. ital. 115. CCC 410 is the closest with its 153 miniatures, but because Ms. ital. 115 survives incomplete, we can assume that it would have contained more than double that number, almost 400 images. My analysis of the widely divergent image cycles in the earliest illustrated MVC manu­ scripts suggests that the visual exegesis of the MVC text was anything but a straightforward translation from text to image; instead, the text was inherently malleable and even in its earliest history was heavily adapted to address the interests of its various audiences. And, it is telling that several of the motifs supposedly inspired by the MVC are not illustrated across the board in MVC manuscripts. The detail of the eldest of the three Magi kissing the feet of the Christ child, for example, is only illustrated in Snite 85.25 (folio 20 recto), whereas the Virgin kneeling in response to the annunciation is only illustrated in CCC 410 ( f i g u r e 10: folio 7 verso) and Ms. ital. 115 (see chapter 3, f i g u r e 23: folio 11 verso). We should perhaps then think of the MVC not as static inspiration for late-Medieval Christian iconography, but as fuel for artistic and devotional imaginations shaped by a new world­ view centered on a very human Christ and Mary, whose experiences could be seen in the light of each life lived on earth. 67

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F IG U R E 1 0

Annunciation. (Oxford, Corpus Christi College L ibrary, Oxford University, 410, f. 7v)

Evidencefor Exegesis : Instructions to the Artists and Captions in Ms. ital. 115 In all of the surviving illustrated MVC manuscripts, the visual exegesis of the text was mitigated by a variety of factors, including the artists, patrons, and/or spiritual advisors. A window onto this complex process of illustrating the MVC is found in Ms. ital. 115 in the form of instructions to the artists that survive in its margins, as well as captions later added to the finished images in the same hand. The manuscript thus contains strong evidence of agency on the part of a person who wrote the instructions and who also later added the captions. Agency on the part of the artists is also revealed in many instances where the instructions were misunderstood, misinterpreted, or even ignored. My study of the relation­ ships revealed in the process of creating Ms. ital. 115 affirms that the composer of these inscriptions was a spiritual advisor for the manuscript, most likely a Franciscan friar in charge of the book’s commission for a Clarissan convent. Before looking closely at the instructions to the artists, I want to consider what Ms. ital. 115 reveals about the artists themselves. My analysis of the stylistic variations within the manuscript points to a small group of professional artists of varying skill who were 68

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trained in the same workshop.47 One reason I contend that the artists were professionals, rather than amateur artists or even the nuns who may have used the book,48 is because individual figures or details, rather than entire compositions, seem to be based on common models. Therefore, it seems as though the artists had access to different types of schema to follow, a situation that is less likely to occur in a convent, for example. A motif book with individual models or patterns seems to have been used, as opposed to a more general iconographical guide.49 As Ragusa and Green have pointed out, the artists of Ms. ital. 115 rely on familiar iconographie or compositional schemes at times, but in many other instances they seem to have created new compositions based on the text.50 This necessary creativity is probably due to the fact that the artists did not have artistic models for many of the original details described in the MVC, particularly if the text was new and no tradi­ tion for MVC illustration had been established. The artists did, however, rely on models when they had them, and this is yet another reason to think that the artists were professio­ nals. The artists were given a guide to illustration within the manuscript itself in the form of instructions found in lines of text written along the length of the outer vertical margins. Lucy Sandler and others have noted that such written notes placed next to the illustrations in manuscripts usually functioned as instructions to the artists, as opposed to a gloss, com­ ment on, or caption for the text. 51 These marginal notes in Ms. ital. 115 are perpendicular to the spaces left in the text for the illustrations, and they read from top to bottom on the verso pages and from bottom to top on the recto pages. Written in a compressed, abbrevi­ ated hand that differs from that of the scribes, these notes are no more than a single phrase long, usually between five and ten words. Most start with an abbreviated ‘q’ for qui, fol­ lowed by ‘corné, meaning ‘here how’. 52 Some of the first illustrations feature a more obvious wording aimed at the artists, ‘here one will do’ or ‘qui si vuol fa ré , followed by a short description of the scene to be depicted.53 As was typical of manuscript production, the text of Ms. ital. 115 was copied before it was illustrated. This becomes evident when one looks at the unfinished portion of the manuscript, which preserves blank spaces in the text for the illustrations, and also includes instructions to the artists in the margins. Because the pages of manuscripts were typically

(47) See Appendix for a discussion of the various artists. (48) T here is very little literature on nuns as artists in Trecento Italy. For the northern context, see Jeffrey H am burger, Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture o f a Medieval Convent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), introduction. (49) For a discussion o f ‘iconographie models’ see Alexander, Medieval Illuminators, pp. 123-25. (50) Meditations, p. xxxv. (51) O n instructions to the artists in manuscripts, see Lucy Freem an Sandler, ‘Notes for the Illum inator: T he Case of the Omne bonum’, Art Bulletin, 71:4 (1989), pp. 551-64; and for further bibliography, see Ale­ xander, Medieval Illuminators, p. 60. (52) This is a common phrasing for instructions to artists, found in m anuscripts throughout western Europe in the late M iddle Ages and Renaissance. See Alexander, Medieval Illuminators, p. 60. (53) This phrasing appears, for example, on folios 4r, 6r, and 6V, and in following folios the instructions are simplified to ‘qui come’ or ‘come’. 69

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left unbound until after the images were produced, the artists would not have had the entire text in their hands, but only part of it at a time. Instructions to the artists were thus necessary even in the case of Ms. ital. 115, where the illustrations occur very close to the place in the actual text where they are described. The notes were evidently deemed essen­ tial even though the Italian instructions, in the same vernacular Pisan dialect as the text, hint that at least some of the artists could have read and followed the text. The instructions therefore functioned as a kind of shorthand, allowing a group of artists to execute the illus­ trations without referring directly to the text. Although a group of artists was at work, only one person seems to have written the instructions in the margins. As noted in the Appendix, the handwriting of the instructions is consistent throughout the manuscript and matches that of captions found within the images themselves. W hat I shall refer to as ‘captions’ here are short lines of text written in most cases at the top of each image, sometimes simply naming the characters in the scene but often offering a synopsis of the action. These were certainly added to the images after they were executed ; they are placed carefully close to the figures in question without over­ lapping them, and at times are placed rather awkwardly within the finished images in order to fit within the composition.54 The instructions to the artists are printed in a smaller format than these captions, but the letter formation is the same, as is particularly noticeable in the letters h, q, and the crossing of the h in the abbreviation for Jesus (Jhu with the h crossed). Further evidence that the person who wrote the instructions also wrote the captions is that at times the cap­ tions use the exact wording, such as the phrase ‘qui come’, as in, to name one of many exam­ ples, folio 96 recto. The instructions say ‘here how John [the Baptist] is in prison and sends two disciples to Jesus’, while the caption says, ‘here how John is in prison and these are his disciples’. 55 These captions are written in dark-brown ink, and thus they are not ‘rubrics’ in the strictest sense of the term, which refers to red ink, but like rubrics, they serve as guides to help the reader follow the narrative flow of the pictorial sequence. 56 In their 1961 translation of the English version of the text, Ragusa and Green specu­ lated that the instructions and captions had been written by the artists.57 Ragusa’s more recent work on Ms. ital. 115, however, claims that the captions were added by someone she terms the ‘editor’, though she does not speculate on who this editor might have been. 58 It is possible that an artist, perhaps the leader of the workshop, was responsible for the (54) For a discussion of the use of inscriptions in m anuscript illustrations see Glare R ichter Sherman, Ima­ ging Aristotle : Verbal and Visual Representation in Fourteenth Century France (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London : University of California Press, 1995), p. 41ff. (55) Folio 96r, instructions : ‘qui come Johi è in prigione et mandare i due discepoli a Jesu’ ; caption : ‘qui come Johi Batt. è in prigione questi sono i suoi discepoli’. (56) As M ichelle Brown defines it, a rubric is ‘A title, chapter heading, or instruction th a t is not strictly p a rt of the text but which helps to identify its com ponents’. See Michelle Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms (M alibu: T he J . Paul G etty M useum and the British Library, 1995), p. 111. (57) Meditations, p. xxix. (58) Isa Ragusa, ‘L ’autore,’ pp. 145-50. 70

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instructions and captions, but several details argue in favor of another hypothesis. The instructions and captions were certainly written by someone other than the scribes; not only is the handwriting different but, as Ragusa and Green noted, a different vocabulary of words appears in these inscriptions as opposed to the text. Terms such as maida, desco, puella, and banco are found in the inscriptions, but they vary from those used in the body of the manuscript. 59 This use of a different vocabulary in the inscriptions indicates a delib­ erate simplification, perhaps for an audience with limited literacy, such as the artists. The inscriptions therefore point to the possibility that someone outside the workshop and scrip­ torium was the mastermind behind the image program in Ms. ital. 115. This point can be argued further via several examples of how the instructions, text, images, and captions function in terms of one another. For the image of Mary giving the Christ child to the priest Simeon in the presentation in the Temple sequence ( f i g u r e 11 : folio 33 verso), the instructions tell the artists to render ‘here how they are in the Temple, with Simeon kneeling and receiving the Child in his arms, and Anna’. 60 The artists gener­ ally followed this guideline and the scene is depicted as described ; thus the captions simply name certain characters: ‘Anna prophetess’ and ‘Simeon’. 61 More often in the pictorial sequence, however, the advisor felt the need not only to identify the figures but also to describe their actions in the captions. For instance, further on in the presentation sequence ( f i g u r e 12 : folio 34 verso), the advisor asks the artists to show ‘Here how she kneels with the Infant in her arms in front of the altar and places him on it’, then adds a caption reading: ‘Mary as she offers the infant on the altar in the Temple’. 62 In these examples, the advisor followed the text closely, and the artists, following the instructions, did like­ wise. At times, however, the artists did not fully understand the advisor’s instructions. According to the instructions, one of the images in the presentation sequence ( f i g u r e 13 : folio 35 recto) was supposed to have included the figure of Anna, but instead shows haloed male figures not specified by the advisor. 63 Among the very first miniatures in Ms. ital. 115, the dispute of the virtues is another example of how communication between the artists and the advisor at times malfunctioned ( f i g u r e 14: folio 4 recto). This illustration refers to a passage in a sermon by Bernard of Clairvaux, quoted in the MVC and telling of a time before the coming of Christ in which the virtues asked God to reconcile the fallen world through the Messiah. The virtues are described in the text of the MVC as female, in keeping with the traditional gendered language used to describe them. Usually, they are portrayed visually as female, and that is most likely what the advisor intended in Ms. ital.

(59) See Meditations, p. xxix. (60) Folio 33v, instructions: ‘q(ui) come sono al templo, col Symoneginnochiata e lo babulo i(n) braccia, Anna’. (61) Folio 33v, caption: ‘Annaprophetessa’, ‘Symeone’. (62) Folio 34v, instructions: ‘q(ui) come sta ginnochiata col pauulo i(n) collo (i) mani al altare caption: ‘Maria come offerisce lo pauulo i(n) stili’ altare al templo’. (63) Folio 35r, instructions: ‘q(ui) come lap(o)st(o) i(n) sull’altare ihu conginnochiate Josep, Symeone, Anna e altri’. 71

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