Emblematica : an interdisciplinary journal for emblem studies 1991 and 1992 [print 1992, 1993 and 1994] [5,2; 6,1; 6,2]

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EMBLEMATICA An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies Winter, 1991

Vol. 5 No. 2

Editors

Peter M. Daly

Daniel S. Russell

Egon Verheyen

AMS Press, Inc. New York

EMBLEMATIC A ISSN 0885-968X

Manuscripts and books for review may be sent to either editor; however, no obligation is recognized to review or return any book received. Articles and essays should conform to the guidelines published in the MLA Handbook for Writers (1977 edition); authors should submit their work in duplicate and will be expected to provide high-quality glossy prints of any illustrations to be published with their work. Submissions should be accompanied by return postage. Subscriptions and remittances should be sent to the publisher, AMS Press, 56 East 13th Street, New York, NY 10003 U. S. A. The annual subscription rate for institutions is $55.00 and for individuals $30.00. Subscribers outside the United States please add $5.00 for surface delivery and $10.00 for air mail. New York residents add appropriate sales tax.

Camera-ready copy of this issue of EMBLEMATICA was produced at the University of Pittsburgh on a Xerox 8010 system provided to the University under the Xerox University Grants Program.

Copyright © AMS Press, Inc., 1992 All rights reserved.

Manufactured in the United States of America

EMBLEMATICA An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies is published twice a year, in the spring and fall. limblematica publishes original articles, essays, and specialized bibliographies in all areas of emblem studies. In addition it will contain review articles, reviews, research reports (work in progress, including theses, conference reports and abstracts of completed theses), notes and queries, notices (forthcoming conferences and publications), and various types of documentation.

Editors Peter M. Daly

Daniel S. Russell

McGill University Department of German 1001 Sherbrooke Street W. Montreal, PQ Canada H3A 1G5

Department of French and Italian University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA 15260 U. S. A.

Egon Verheyen Robinson Professor Department of Art George Mason University Fairfax, Va. U.S.A. 22030

Advisory Board John Rupert Martin

Jan Bialostocki

Princeton

Warsaw

University

Karel Porteman

Barbara С Bowen Vanderbilt University August Buck

Katholieke Universiteit,

Leuven

Thomas P. Roche, Jr Princeton

Marburg and Wolfenbuttel

University

John M. Steadman

Wolfgang Harms Munich

University of California,

Riverside

J. B. Trapp The Warburg Institute,

London

Editorial Board Virginia W. Callahan Howard University,

emerita

Pedro F. Campa University nooga

of Tennessee,

Karl Josef Holtgen Erlangen-Nurnberg

Chatta­

Bernhard F. Scholz Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht Agnes Sherman Princeton

University

Alan Young Acadia

University

EMBLEMATICA An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies

Volume 5, Number 2

Winter, 1991

Preface

211 Articles

Bernhard F. Scholz The 1531 Augsburg Edition of Alciato's Emblemata: A Survey of Research

213

Virginia W. Callahan An Interpretation of Four of Alciato's Latin Emblems

255

David Graham Putting Old Wine in New Bottles: Emblem Books and Computer Technology

271

Malcolm Jones The Hangman's Stone and the Unwonted Fruit: Two Emblems of Folkloric Origin

287

Lyndy Abraham "The Lovers and the Tomb": Alchemical Emblems in Shakespeare, Donne and Marvell

301

Mara R. Wade Emblems of Peace in a Seventeenth-Century Danish Pageant

321

Alan R. Young The English Civil War Flags: Emblematic Devices and Propaganda

341

Daniel Russell Emblems in Nineteenth-Century France: The Examples of Sainte-Beuve, Baudelaire and Pontsevrez

357

Documentation Mason Tung Whitney's Marginal References: Corrections and Addenda to the Index Emblematicus

379

Review and Criticism Reviews Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, The Golden Game: Alchemical Engravings of the Seventeenth Century by Michael Bath

393

Bernhard F. Scholz, Michael Bath and David Weston, eds., The European Emblem: Selected Papers from the Glasgow Conference, 11-14 August,1987 by Barbara C. Bowen

395

Alan Young, Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments by Clifford Davidson

398

Research Reports, Notes, Queries, and Notices Queries

405

Recent Conferences

407

Notices

409

Volume Index

417

Preface With this issue of Emblematica, we are initiating a slight modification of format made possible by a move to a new desktop publishing system. Through the generous support of the Provost's Advisory Committee on Academic Computing and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, the Department of French and Italian has acquired Ventura software, the hardware to use it, and an appropriate PostScript printer to help us reach a new degree of sophistication in all our ventures in desktop publishing, but most especially in the production of Emblematica. The major changes are the shift from endnotes to footnotes, and the integration of illustrations into the text. We hope that it will make Emblematica more attractive and easier to use. The new Ventura stylesheet for this modified format was developed by Anna Maria Fabiano of the Department of French and Italian at the University of Pittsburgh, who is now serving as editorial and production assistant. Without her skill and hard work, the transition could not have come so quickly, so easily, nor with such handsome results; for her efforts she has the very deep gratitude of the editors and the board. PMD DR

211

The 1531 Augsburg Edition of Alciato's Embiemata: A Survey of Research BERNHARD F. SCHOLZ Utrecht University

I Most devotees of emblem studies 1 would probably agree that the edition published on February 28, 1531 by Heinrich Steyner of Augsburg, the Emblematum liber, as it is commonly referred to, is indeed the editio princeps of Alciato's Embiemata. The fact, however, that the emblematum pater et princeps was to dissociate himself from the Augsburg edition a year after a rather different looking edition by Christian Wechel had become available in Paris in 1534, makes that editio princeps of the Embiemata a somewhat dubious candidate for the honour of having ushered in a new literary genre. Add to this that apparently no document by Alciato's hand has survived which would supply us with direct information about his plans for having 1. I should like to express my thanks to Jochen Becker, Virginia Callahan, Peter M. Daly, Arie Gelderblom, Karl Joseph Holtgen, Johannes Kohler, Stephen Rawles, David Weston, and above all, William S. Heckscher for comments and advice on the first draft of this article. But they cannot be blamed for the remaining inaccuracies and omissions. 2. Andreae Alciati. . . Emblematum liber, Augsburg (H. Steyner) 28 February 1531. I shall use ''Embiemata" for Alciato's manuscript and "Emblematum liber" for Steyner's edition.

3. Andreae Alciati Emblematum Libellus, Paris (C. Wechel) 1534.

213

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the Emblemata published, or which would give us a reliable hint about the whereabouts of the manuscript between the early 1520's, when he worked on it, and 1531, when the Emblemata at last came off the press. Consider also that in the few documents which have come down to us Alciato is silent about his part in deciding to publish the Emblemata in the form of an illustrated book and not, as might just as well have happened, as a book of epigrams without illustrations, and you begin to understand why the events and decisions leading up to the publication of Heinrich Steyner's edition of the Emblematum liber of February 28, 1531 were destined to be­ come objects of intense investigation and speculation. Modern research on the 1531 edition of the Emblemata began with Henry Green's Andrea Alciati and his Book of Emblems of 1872, a detailed account of an attempt at identifying the editio princeps of the first book of emblems by means of an enquete among the librarians of most major European libraries. A vigorous new impulse to the study of the 1531 edition was the publication, in 1953, of Barni's edition of Alciato's correspondence. Now it became possible for the first time to tackle seriously issues which had to do with Alciato's own ideas about the Emblemata, i. е., with issues related to the problem of authorial intention. A third stage, I believe, was reached in 1988 with the publication of Vera Sack's reconstruction of the printing history of the work, a first attempt to bring to bear on the problem of the 1531 edition the methods and results of bibliography in the sense of the study of books as material objects. A listing of the topics which have so far been dealt with in conjunction with the printing and publishing history of the Emb­ lematum liber would comprise the following items: 5 4.

All bibliographical references to studies discussed in this article are given in note 5.

5. R. Abbondanza, "A proposito deU'epistolario dell'Alciato/' Annali di storia del diritio, 1 (1957), 467-500. M. A. de Angelis, Gli emblemi di Andrea Alciato nella edizione Steyner del 1931. Fonti e simbologie [Salerno, 1984]. C. Balavoine, "Archeologie de Г е т Ы ё т е litteraire: La Dedicace a Conrad Peutinger des Emblemata d'Andre Alciat," in M. T. Jones-Davies, ed. Emblhmes et devises au temps de la Renaissance (Paris: Jean Touzot, 1981), pp. 9-21. G. L. Barni, Le lettere di Andrea Alciato giureconsulto (Florence, 1953). V. W. Callahan, "Andreas Alciatus and Boniface Amerbach: The Chronicle of

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(1) The possible existence of a Milan 1522 edition of the i.iitblemata and, as a corollary, the date of publication of the editio princeps of the Emblemata: 1522 or 1531. (Green, Rubensohn, I lomann) (2) The date of a letter by Alciato to Francesco Calvi, which contains Alciato's earliest extant reference to the manuscript of the a Renaissance Friendship," in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Guelpherbytani. Pro­ ceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies. Ed. Stella P. Revard et al., Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies (Binghamton, New York, 1989), pp. 193-200. H. Green, Andrea Alciati and His Book of Emblems. A Biographical and Bibliograph­ ical Study (London, 1872; reprint: New York: Burt Franklin, n. d.). (= Green I) H. Green, A. Alciati Emblematum Fontes Quatuor; namely an Account of the Original Collection Made at Milan, 1522, and Photo-Lith Facsimiles of the Editions Augsburg 1531, Paris 1534, and Venice 1546, Publications of the Holbein Society, vol. 4 (Manchester, 1870). H. Homann, "Andrea Alciati, 'libellum composui, cui titulum feci Emblem­ ata'," in Studien гиг Emblematik des 16. Jahrhunderts, Bibliotheca Emblematica, vol. IV (Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker & Gumbert, 1971), pp. 25-40. J. Kohler, Der 'Emblematum liber' von Andreas Alciatus (1492-1550). Eine Untersuchung zur Entstehung, Formung antiker Quellen und padagogischer Wirkung im 16. Jahrhundert, Beitrage zur Historischen Bildungsforschung, vol. 3 (Hildesheim: August Lax, 1986), pp. 14-32. (=K6hler I) J. Kohler, "Warum erschien der Emblematum liber von Andreas Alciat 1531 in Augsburg?/' in B. F. Scholz et al., eds., The European Emblem. Selected Papers from the Glasgow Conference 11-14 August, 1987 (Leiden / N e w York /Kobenhavn /Koln: E. J. Brill, 1990), pp. 19-31. (= Kohler II) F. W. G. Leeman, Alciatus' Emblemata. Denkbeelden en voorbeelden (Groningen: Bouma's Boekhuis, 1984), pp. 5-30. H. Miedema, "The Term Emblema in Alciati," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 31 (1968), 234-50. M. Rubensohn, Griechische Epigramme und andere kleinere Dichtungen in deutschen Ubersetzungen des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts, Bibliothek alterer deutscher Ubersetzungen, II-V (Weimar 1897). V. Sack, 'Glauben im Zeitalter des Glaubenskampfes. Eine Ode aus dem Strafiburger Humanistenkreis und ihr wahrscheinliches Fortleben in Luthers Reformationslied 'Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. Textanalysen und Interpreta-tionen. Mit einem Beitrag zur Fruhgeschichte des Emblems (Freiburg i.Br.: Universitatsbibliothek, 1988), pp. 126-149. B. F. Scholz, "'Libellum composui epigrammaton, cui titulum feci Emblemata': Alciatus's Use of the Expression Emblema Once Again," Emblematica, 1 (1986), 212-226.

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Emblemata: February 9,1521 or February 9,1522 or January 9, 1523. (Barni, Abbondanza, Homann, Callahan) (3) The approximate date of composition of the epigram with which Alciato dedicated the Emblemata to Conrad Peutinger of Augsburg: around the beginning of the 1520's or some time in 1530, and, as corollaries, the question whether this dedicatory epigram was intended by Alciato to accompany a particular edition, and whether an expression like "emblemata cudere" should be understood literally or metaphorically. (Miedema, Homann, Balavoine, Kohler, Sack) (4) The whereabouts of Alciato's manuscript of the Emblemata during the years between 1522/23 and 1531: with Alciato himself, with Peutinger, and thus in Augsburg, or with Heinrich Steyner (or another printer). (Homann, Leeman, Kohler, Sack) (5) The choice of Augsburg as a place of publication, and of Heinrich Steyner as a printer and publisher of the Emblemata, and Alciato's and Peutinger's roles in making these choices. (Kohler, Sack) (6) Alciato's involvement in the decision to have woodcuts added to the epigrams of the Emblemata. (Rubensohn, Miedema, Homann, Balavoine, Leeman, Kohler, Sack) In the absence of direct evidence in the form of explicit statements regarding most of these issues, attempts to deal with them had to rely heavily on circumstantial evidence: passages from the Emblemata and other works by Alciato, and from his correspondence, lines from the printer's prefaces to the Augsburg 1531 and the Paris 1534 editions, and, most recently, information obtained from the study of the Augsburg printing and publishing trade during the first half of the sixteenth century. These include: Letters: (1) Alciato to Francesco Calvi, January 9, 1523 (Barni, p. 46): Alciato informs Calvi that he has p u t together a " l i b e l l u s epigrammaton" with the title "Emblemata" at the request of Ambrosius Vicecomes. (Miedema, Homann, Leeman, Kohler) 6.

Gian L. Barni, Le lettere di Andrea Alciato giureconsulto (Florence, 1953).

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217

(2) Alciato to Bonifatius Amerbach, May 10, 1523 (Barni, p. 59): Alciato sends Bonifatius Amerbach two folio pages of Emblemata with poems by Albutius and the inventio by Ambrosius Vicecomes, and informs him that this inspired him to write a book of poems also. (Miedema, Homann, Leeman, Kohler) (3) Alciato to Bonifatius Amerbach, August 23, 1528 (Barni, p. 44): Alciato informs Bonifatius Amerbach that his house has been ransacked and a manuscript has been stolen. (Kohler I) (4) Amerbach to Alciato, October 2, 1529 (Hartmann, Amerbachkorrespondenz, no. 1383): Amerbach warns Alciato about the dangers of 'Oekolampadianism' in Basel. (Kohler II) (5) Alciato to Amerbach, February 3, 1529 (Barni, pp. 81f.): Alciato sends Amerbach corrections to epigrams he had sent him earlier. (Leeman) (6) Alciato to Amerbach, August 3, 1530 (Barni, p. 107): Alciato sends Amerbach more corrections. (Leeman) (7) Alciato to Vigilius van Zwichem (also known as Vigilius ab Aytta), October 2,1532 (Barni, p. 139): Alciato informs Vigilius that he has sent a list of errata to Rupilius. (Miedema, Homann, Leeman) (8) Alciato to Pietro Bembo, February 25, 1535 (Barni, pp. 15657): Alciato complains to Pietro Bembo about the Augsburg edition and dissociates himself from it. (Miedema, Homann, Balavoine, Leeman) Other texts: (9) D. Andreae Alciati iurecons. clarissimi de verborum significatione libri quatuor. Eiusdem, in tractatum eius argumenti. . . commentaria. L u g d u n i ( G r y p h i u s ) , 1530, p . 97; ( k n o w n as De verborum significatione). (Miedema, Homann, Leeman) (10) "Candido Lectori S. P.," Emblematum liber (1531), Title-page, verso. (Known as "Steyner's address to the reader"). (Miedema, Homann, Leeman, Kohler I) 7. David Weston has pointed out that Miedema works from an uncorrected version of Steyner's prefatory remarks to the "honest reader/' See his "Correction to Miedema," Society for Emblem Studies, Newsletter 4 (1989), p. 8.

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(11) Colophon, Emblematum liber (1531), F3 verso: precise date of the editio princeps. (12) Praefatio ad D. Chonradum Peutingerum Augustanum. Emblematum liber, A2 (known as the "Dedication to Peutinger"). (Miedema, Homann, Balavoine, Leeman, Kohler) (13) Manuscript, Basel University Library, Shelf mark O.IV.8.N0. 21 (Autograph by Amerbach with copies of epigrams by Alciato). (Leeman) (14) Preface, Andreae Alciati Emblematum libellus. Parisiis, Excudebat Christianus Wechelus . . ., Anno M.D.XXXIIII. (Miedema, Homann, Leeman) Non-textual evidence: History of the Augsburg printing and publishing trade during the early sixteenth century. (Sack) On the basis of the available evidence a consensus, it appears, has so far only been reached about the fact that the 1531 edition is indeed the editio princeps, about the terminus a quo of the events leading up to the publication of the Emblematum liber, the 'Saturnalia' (i. е., Christmas recess) of 1522), when Alciato put together a collection of epigrams, and about the obvious terminus ad quern of that process, Heinrich Steyner's publishing of the Emblematum liber on February 28,1531. Information about the earlier date is contained in Alciato's letter of January 9, 1523 (1), about the later date in the colophon of the copies of the 1531 edition (11). Whatever else may have hap­ pened to Alciato's manuscript during the nine years between these securely established dates is a matter of deduction and speculation since the crucial event, the sending off of the manuscript, is not even indirectly referred to in these texts. Alciato is thought to have worked on his manuscript until after August 3, 1530 (Rubensohn, Leeman) or even until sometime in December 1530 (Kohler II); the manuscript is thought to have been stolen from Alciato's house during the Summer of 1528 (Kohler I); Alciato is thought to have sent off his manuscript to Peutinger in 1519 (Balavoine, Sack), sometime between the end of 1521 and the beginning of 1523 (Homann); Heinrich Steyner is thought to have been given Alciato's epigrams by Peutinger (Homann), or to have obtained them through a now no longer traceable channel (Miedema, Balavoine), or acquired them, together with a number of other manuscripts, from the inventory of

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«mother Augsburg printer who had gone bankrupt, but who himself had obtained Alciato's manuscript from Peutinger (Sack). Needless to say that all of the issues which constitute the "problem of the 1531 edition" are closely interrelated. A solution to one of them will therefore very likely prejudge the manner in which some or all of the remaining issues can be tackled: in the absence of external evidence, coherence, consistency and an absence of contradictions become the prime criteria against which to test the interpretations of the texts used as circumstantial evidence. If, for example, one decides to foreground the issue of Alciato's usage of terms and arrives at the view that Alciato used the expression emblema as a name for his verbal epigrams only, and not for the combination of epigrams and woodcuts as it was to appear in the Emblematum liber, one will have prejudged to a considerable extent the issue of Alciato's involvement in the decision to add woodcuts to the printed epigrams (Miedema). If, on the other hand, one insists that Alciato himself must have supplied some of the drawings or at least some instructions for the woodcuts, this will also affect the manner in which one has to look at the question of his usage of terms (Rubensohn, Homann). If one believes that there is compelling circumstantial evidence for dating the dedication to Conrad Peutinger sometime in the early 1520's (Balavoine), one will very likely look for a different answer to the question about the whereabouts of Alciato's manuscript between the early 1520's and 1530 from the answer one would tend to favour if one had come to the conclusion that the dedication must have been written only late in 1530, that is shortly before the publication of the 1531 edition (Leeman). We should realize that the issues listed above have been dealt with from various disciplinary angles: art history, literary history, book history (bibliography), definition theory, general history. They have also been approached in varying combinations and selections, and, most importantly perhaps, in varying hierarchical arrangements. In order not to loose sight completely of the disciplinary situs of a particular solution to one the issues, and of the manner in which a solution to a particular issue frequently entails or at least suggests a solution to an adjacent one, I shall not organize my survey strictly by topic. Instead, in order to retain something of the "ifthen" structure of the arguments which have been put forward, it seemed preferable to proceed at times chronologically, at times topically, and to focus on the precise manner in which the issues

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mentioned are themselves interrelated in the arguments put forward by various scholars. II That the edition of the Emblemata which came off the press of the Augsburg printer Heinrich Steyner on February 28, 1531 should indeed be considered "the real FIRST EDITION . . . published to the world" and not, as had long been assumed, an earlier Milan edition of 1522, was the conclusion at which Henry Green arrived in 1870. By then he had evaluated the negative outcome of an "Enquete pour decouvrir la premiere Edition des Emblemes d'Andre Alciat, illustre Jurisconsulte Italien, Milan A. D. 1522" which he had undertaken in the Spring of 1869.8 About that elusive Milan 1522 edition, he observed in 1872 that "as an historical fact it may be admitted that a collection of emblems was made at Milan in 1522 by Andrea Alciati, and communicated to his friends," 9 while two years earlier he had still firmly believed that "the existence of the Milan collection in 1522 cannot, however, be doubted—it is an historical fact." 10 Both times, it should be noted, Green was thinking of a manuscript collection of Alciato's Emblemata, rather than of a printed edition: "My opinion . . . is that the first collection of the Emblems was made by the author himself, while residing in his native country Milan, about 1522, but that it was not printed before 1531, after Alciati had addressed a preface for it to his friend Conrad Peutinger, of Augsburg, and when Henry Steyner, of that city, issued it from his press." Green's enquiry had been based on the not altogether implausible assumption that if a printed edition of Alciato's Emblemata had indeed been published in Milan in 1522, a copy might have survived in one of the major libraries of Europe. He was clearly right in 8. Henry Green, Andrea Alciati and his Book of Emblems (as in note 5). For Green's detailed account of his enquiry see pp. llOff. 9.

Ibid. p. 103

10. Henry Green, A. Alciati Emblematum Fontes Quatuor . . . (as in note 5) p. 7. 11. Ibid. p. 12.

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thinking that if his enquiry were to track down even a single copy, the existence of the 1522 edition could be established beyond doubt. But he was wrong to assume, as he apparently did, that failure to turn up a copy would justify the conclusion that such an edition never existed. All he did in fact prove was that if there ever was a Milan edition of the Emblemata in 1522, no copy of it had survived in any of the libraries he had contacted. What Green also failed to consider, however, was the possibility that the ultimate source on which he had based his assumption about the existence of a 1522 Milan edition, a collection of Humanist letters by Marquard Gudius published in Utrecht in 1697 by Petrus Burmannus was unreliable. In 1897 Max Rubensohn had suggested on the basis of the close relation between two letters by Alciato to Francesco Calvi, one of which was dated November 5,1521, the other December 9,1522, that second letter which contains the crucial first extant reference to a collection of epigrams called "Emblemata" ("lihellum composui epigrammaton, cui titulumfeci Emblemata") should be dated December 9,1521 rather than December 9,1522, as had been assumed since the time of Burmannus's edition of Gudius's collection. The earlier date suggested by Rubensohn did not, however, find favour with many emblem scholars, and so the date he thought to be erroneous can still be found in the edition of Alciato's letters which Gian Luigi Barni published in 1953. In 1957 Roberto Abbondanza, in a review of Barni's edition, suggested yet another date. Unlike Rubensohn he did so on the basis not of internal evidence but of having studied the autograph of Alciato's letter to Calvi: though incomplete be­ cause of damage to the paper the only possible reading, according to Abbondanza, is January 9, 1523. 14 In 1984 R W. G. Leeman put

12. Marquardi Gudii Epistolae. Quibus Accedunt ex Bibliotheca Gudiana Clarissimor et Doctissimorum Virorum . . . Epistolae, Cur ante Petro Burmanno, Ultrajecti (Utrecht) 1697; Franz Kohler et al., eds., Die Gudischen Handschriften. Nachdruck der Ausgabe 1913 (Frankfurt/M., 1966).

13. Max Rubensohn, Griechische Epigramme . . . (as in note 5), pp. LIV and LXIf. A detailed discussion of the 1521/1522 controversy can be found in Holger Homann, Studien zur Emblematik des 16. Jahrhunderts (as in note 4), pp. 8f. 14. The relevant passage reads as follows: "Non si pu6 datare 9 dicembre 1522; l'autografo reca infatti: 'Mediolani V eidus .. / e la carta lacerata non permette di andar oltre. Semmai ё ancora visible qualcosa come 'Ja . . / Ecco un caso in cui ё utile la nota del destinario: 'Alciati ex Mediolano V Id. Jan MDXXIII, etc/

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forward a detailed argument, again based on internal evidence, against Rubensohn's and in favour of the old December 9, 1522 dating adopted by Barni, unaware, it appears, of Abbondanza's discovery of the autograph. Abbondanza's suggestion, which was unfortunately published in a somewhat out-of-the-way place, was confirmed in 1985 by Virginia Woods Callahan in a paper read at the Sixth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies: the torn autograph of Alciato's letter to Calvi which is in the Herzog August Library at Wolfenbuttel, Germany, she suggested, does indeed bear the date of January 9, 1523. If this date is accepted as correct we can assume that work on the manuscript of the Emblemata was completed by the end of December 1522. During the early 1960's the ghost of the 1522 Milan edition which Green, nearly a century before, had thought he had put to rest, still had some adherents. But it is safe to say that by and large Heinrich Steyner's 1531 Augsburg edition had by then been acknowledged as the editio princeps. Regarding the dating of Alciato's letter to Calvi there is no such consensus to be found in the studies under consideration. The arguments concerning the whereabouts of Alciato's manuscript prior to the February 28,1531 are variously based on the 1521,1522, and 1523 datings. But curiously enough, as we shall also see, holding on to one of the "wrong" dates of December 9, 1521 or December 9,1522 does not necessarily mean that an argument incorporating one or the other of these two dates is untenable.

che si riferisce, come in altri casi (vedi sopra n. 23) alia partenza della lettera. La quale pertano va con ogni probability datata 9 gennaio 1523." (p. 481)

15. F. W. G. Leeman, Alciatus' Emblemata (as in note 5), pp. 8ff.

16. Virginia W. Callahan (as in note 5), p. 197, and note 10. 17. Thus in the seventh edition in 1961 of his influential book Das sprachliche Kunstwerk Wolfgang Kayser still refers to the Emblemata "die der italienische Humanist Alciatus zuerst 1522 in Mailand veroffentlichte" (p. 75). In later editions this becomes "die Emblemata des italienischen Humanisten Alciatus, die zuerst 1531 in Augsburg gedruckt wurden."

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III If Mario Praz's Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery of 1939 is rightly credited with having put the emblem genre back on the scholarly map, Hessel Miedema's article of 1968 entitled "The Term Emblema in Alciati" deserves the credit for being the first study to make extensive use of Barni's edition of Alciato's correspondence, and with having argued convincingly for the need for an historical study of the expression "emblema" as it appears in the title of the 1531 edition. In the introductory paragraphs of his article Miedema takes issue with the various terminological proposals that Mario Praz, William S. Heckscher, Karl-August Wirth, and Albrecht Schone had made for emblem studies, and with their respective views on the character and form of the emblem. All of these terminological proposals, Miedema insists, err by not "being demonstrated from the sources/4234) and the various views of the emblem as genre which rest on these proposals are therefore tarnished by an historically inadequate understanding of the beginnings of the terminology of emblem studies in Alciato's usage. In opposition to his predecessors who, he insists, used to base their concepts of the emblem on later developments of the genre, and who then projected those concepts back on to Alciato, Miedema wishes to determine on historical grounds whether Alciato himself already had a combination of word and image in mind when he chose emblemata as the title of his "libellus epigrammaton," or whether he was referring to the verbal texts of the epigrams only, while leaving room for the possibility that these epigrams might be used in the production of making certain kinds of visual artifacts. In his attempt to settle this question Miedema identified a number of texts—some of them for the first time—which have since become the loci dassici of Alciato research, in particular Alciato's dedication to Peutinger, (12) his letters to Francesco Calvi, (19) 18. Daniel S. Russell has extended Miedema's inquiry into sixteenth-century French usage in his "The Term 'embleme' in Sixteenth Century France/' Neophilologus, 59 (1975), 337-351. See also Daniel S. Russell, The Emblem and Device in France (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1985), esp. pp. 76-111. An attempt at clarifying the definitional status of Alciato's usage can be found in my '"Libellum composui epigrammaton, cui titulum feci Emblemata': Alciatus's Use of the Expression Emblema Once Again," (as in note 5).

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Bonifatius Amerbach (3), and Pietro Bembo, (8) a passage from Alciato's treatise entitled De Verborum significations, (9) and the prefaces to the 1531 and 1534 editions of the Emblemata (10 and 14). Miedema's primary interest, it should be noted, was semantic. He therefore did not concern himself with the problems of dating the letter to Calvi or the dedication to Peutinger or with solving the problem of the whereabouts of Alciato's manuscript during the years between 1522 and 1531, opting instead for an account which, in a sense, neutralizes these issues : "In 1531 the Augsburg publisher Heinrich Steyner managed to lay hands on a collection of Alciati's emblemata, dedicated to Conrad Peutinger, and this marks the be­ ginning of publication on a large scale"(p. 237). To this is added in a footnote: "It is not certain whether this collection, dedicated to Peutinger, can be identified with that mentioned in 1522, which was after all, as appears from Alciati's letter to Calvo, dedicated to Visconti" (note 17). In the documents studied, Miedema insists, "the emblemata are never talked of as anything but poetry and epigrams, and in the letter of 1522 [i. е., the letter to Calvi dated correctly January 9, 1523] a definition of the emblem is given: an epigram which describes something, so that it signifies something else" (pp. 237f.). An emblem then, according to Miedema's reconstruction of Alciato's usage, is "a special kind of epigram," (p. 238) and, as employed by Alciato, the term "emblema" did not yet refer to a combination of word and image as was to be the case later on. In keeping with these findings about terminology, he also suggested that the Augsburg printer Heinrich Steyner, rather than Alciato himself, was responsible for the decision to add woodcuts to the epigrams of the Emblemata: "the plates . . . were added to the Emblemata by Steyner as a guide for the less educated, where the learned understood just as well without an illustration" (p. 243). With regard to the circumstances of Alciato's non-involvement, Miedema's sources are silent: "Concerning Alciati's rejection of this edition, the question remains whether Peutinger deliberately gave the collection to Steyner . . . or was as much in the dark about the affair as Alciati"(p. 237, note 17). Undoubtedly the most controversial of all the texts studied by Miedema, is the epigram which serves as a dedication to Conrad Peutinger, and which a p p e a r s in the 1531 edition after the publisher's preface. Lines 3-6, in particular, have, from the sixteenth

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century onwards, called up numerous mutually exclusive translations and interpretations: Haec nos festiuis Emblemata cudimus horis, Artificium illustri signaque facta manu. Vestibus ut torulos, petasis ut figere parmas, Et ualeat tacitis scribere quisque notis. As Daniel Russell has shown in an analysis of a number of widely diverging early French translations, even to Alciato's contemporaries the precise meaning of these lines was anything but clear. Miedema, in accordance with his position outlined above, translates: "In our leisure hours we make these emblemataisigna, executed by the master hand of craftsmen" (p. 241). He is clearly aware of the fact that "cudere" is thereby not rendered literally: "The author lets it appear, in the first place, as though he has embossed ('cudimus') emblemata or signa. But Alciati has not embossed them, but made them in a different way, namely, written them, for his emblemata are, after all, epigrams, containing descriptions of representations, which, if they have not been executed ('facta') by craftsmen, then certainly can be" (pp. 241f.). Hence, we might add, the translation of "cudere" by "to make" which avoids any craft-specific reference to the production of the Emblemata. Miedema's discussion of Alciato's usage thus added a new facet to the question of the latter's involvement in the publication of the 1531 edition. While Christian Wechel's dedication to Philibert Baboo in his own edition of the Emblemata published in Paris in 1534, and a letter by Alciato to Pietro Bembo dated February 25,1535 had already suggested Alciato's dissatisfaction with the Emblematum liber, and allowed for doubts about his involvement in that first edition, Miedema strove to show that Alciato retained his original usage of the expression "emblema" even after the bi-medial publication of his Emblemata had become the norm. The question about the specific circumstances of the publication of the Emblematum liber now became rather urgent. If it was true that Alciato never thought of his Emblemata as integrated bi-medial texts but of a collection of 19. Daniel S. Russell, The Emblem and Device in France (as in note 18), pp. 76-111. An earlier account can be found in his article "The Term 'embleme' in Sixteenth-Century France," Neophilologus, 59 (1975), 337-351.

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epigrams for which the addition of woodcuts was in principle irrelevant and external, what precisely was the extent of the authorial claims of the emblematum pater et princeps to the edition of 1531, and what was the extent of the claims made on his behalf by generations of emblem writers that he had invented the emblem genre? IV While Henry Green, as we saw above, tried to put to rest the ghost of a Milan edition prior to the 1531 Augsburg edition by means of an enquete among librarians, Holger Homann relied solely on internal textual evidence in his attempt to determine the status of the assumed 1521 collection and of its relation to the editio princeps published ten years later. He was not primarily interested, as Miedema had been—whom, incidentally, he does not mention—in matters of usage, but in a strictly bibliographical problem, and therefore approached more or less the same corpus of extant documents from a rather different angle. Interestingly enough, Alciato's usage comes into the purview of Homann's discussion, too, but only at the very end, and after the bibliographical point has been established. Thus while Miedema first discussed Alciato's usage, and subsequently concluded from his findings about Alciato's use of the expression "emblema" that it was not very probable that the latter had a hand in furnishing the woodcuts of the 1531 edition, and that he did not even authorize the addition of woodcuts to his epigrams, Homann started out from a number of observations of a bibliographical nature, supplemented by interpretations of a number of passages from the epigrams, and eventually arrived at precisely the opposite conclusion. While Alciato may not himself have supplied detailed instructions for all of the picturae of the Emblematum liber, it was certainly he who suggested that illustrations be added to the printed epigrams. According to Homann we may assume that Alciato on the whole relied on the artist and expected him to be able to design a pictura on the basis of his familiarity with the text. Only where he thought that the text was not sufficiently unambiguous, or where he took the ignorance of the artist for granted (as in the case of the visual appearance of a chameleon) did he supply literary references or even sketches by his own hand (p. 37). 20. "dafi Alciati sich im wesentlichen auf den Ktinstler verliefi und erwartete, dafi

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Attempting to assess the validity of Homann's conclusion about Alciato's involvement in the 1531 edition we have to keep in mind that he is arguing against Max Rubensohn who had suggested in 1897 that Alciato himself had supplied the drawings for the—unfortunately lost—manuscript of his epigrams. Rubensohn had arrived at this position on observing that in the first lines of practically all of the subscriptiones of the word-image combinations of the 1531 edition there was a descriptive reference to the res picta of the accompanying pictura. That, he thought, meant that there were indeed pictures to which Alciato's epigrams were referring. Homann objects to this conclusion about the existence of drawings by Alciato's hand. He stresses the fact that the latter had been interested in demonstrating that not only words but also things could have meaning: "it therefore follows that those things, namely the res pictae have to be named first, before their significatio can be pointed out" (p. 36). 21 But he himself uses the presence of six emblemata nuda in the Augsburg edition to support a weaker position which agrees with the passage just quoted. Alciato must have relied on the understanding of the artist and provided explicit information about the way in which a pictura was to be executed only occasionally. The verbal parts of two of these emblemata nuda, he points out, contain "revealing textual insertions which allow us to speculate what Alciato's instructions to the artist may have looked like" (p. 36). The two passages Homann is referring to both contain bibliographical references of the type: "De Chameleonti uide Plin. natur. histor. libro. viii. cap. xxxiii," (In adulatores) and "Vide Fulgen.in Mithalogijs lib. 3 in princ." (Consilio et Chimeram superari . . . ). According to Homann, Rubensohn had gone too far in postulating the existence of drawings by Alciato's own hand for all epigrams. But he likewise takes it for granted that Alciato wished his epigrams to be accompanied by woodcuts, and he postulates drawings by Alciato only for those cases where the descriptive first part of the dieser aus der Kenntnis des Textes heraus eine pictura entwerfen wtirde; wo der Text ihm nicht eindeutig genug erschien oder wo er Unkenntnis seitens des Kunstlers voraussetzte (etwa hinsichtlich des Aussehens des Chamaleons), gab er literarische Verweise oder gar gelegentlich eigenhandige Skizzen."

21. "woraus folgt, dafi zunachst einmal diese Dinge, eben die res pictae, genannt werden mussen, bevor ihre significatio gezeigt werden kann."

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epigram did not provide the artists with sufficient information about how to execute the woodcut, or where Alciato, as in the two cases just mentioned, did not or could not give any bibliographical hints which might lead the artist to the information he needed. 2 2 What Homann failed to consider at this point of his argument was the fact that a descriptive component is an intrinsic generic feature of the epigrams from the Anthologia Graeca which Alciato had included in his Emblemata in Latin translation, and that in writing: his own epigrams he made sure he retained this particular feature. In the absence of additional evidence there is thus little reason to assume that Alciato intended to provide additional instructions to the artist in the form of the descriptive elements of his epigrams. To the extent that they contain such information they clearly do so for generic reasons. These critical remarks, it should be noted, do not in any way invalidate Homann's claim that Alciato was himself interested in having illustrations added to his epigrams. He is supported in this view, we shall see, by Leeman and Sack. Homann did not produce, as Miedema had done, a translation of Alciato's dedicatory epigram. His commentary, however, makes it sufficiently clear that he wishes to read it literally. Alciato's use of the expression "emblema" must be viewed as follows: Alciato obviously makes a distinction between the emblem and the epigram; the epigram is not part of the emblem, and the designation 'emblem' is reserved for the image, for the res picta. For only the res picta can be attached as a badge to clothing and hats or be used for learning a secret code related to hieroglyphs, (p. 38) 24 22. Neither Rubensohn nor Homann, it should be noted, provides any external evidence for the existence of such drawings. That they may indeed be waiting to be discovered is suggested in a letter by William S. Heckscher: "No one to my knowledge has looked at Alciati's early drawings of epigrams found in Milan, and if one does, it becomes clear that the Breu woodcuts look damn much as if Alciati had furnished the sketches."

23. On Alciato's use of the Greek Anthology see James Hutton, The Greek Anthology in Italy to the Year 1800 (Ithaca, NY, 1935); Alison Saunders, "Alciati and the Greek Anthology," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies , 12 (1982), 1-18. 24. "Offensichtlich trennt Alciati zwischen Emblem und Epigramm; das Epigramm ist nicht Teil des Emblems, sondern die Bezeichnung 'Emblem'

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It hardly needs pointing out that a distinction between the emblem and the epigram, as suggested by Homann, can be derived from this passage only with some difficulty. The Emblemata to which Alciato is referring in the dedicatory address are clearly the epigrams to which he chose to give this particular name. Furthermore the equation of image (Bild) a n d res picta on which the remainder of Homann's argument rests would appear to be untenable: the res picta of an emblem is the denotatum of the pictura, its depicted content. What is attached to a hat can therefore hardly be the content of a picture, depicted or otherwise, but a picture in the form of an embroidered or embossed badge. Homann, it seems to me, is committing a category mistake. Though Miedema and Homann both used the identical set of extant texts by Alciato, they arrived at very different conclusions about the latter's use of the expression "emblema" and about his involvement in the decision to add woodcuts to the epigrams of the Emblematum liber. What made those texts "speak" differently in each case was the perhaps trivial fact that each used them in a different argumentative-polemical context. Miedema, we saw, was arguing against the terminological proposals put forward by Heckscher and Wirth, and by Schone. He used those texts in support of a hypothesis about Alciato's usage. His claims about the latter's non-involvement in the production of the Emblematum liber, we saw, are a corollary of his views on usage. Homann, by contrast, used those texts in order to be able to argue in favour of a modification of a hypothesis about Alciato's involvement in the Emblematum liber, which he had inherited from Rubensohn. Once he had substantiated this hypothesis about Alciato's involvement to his own satisfaction, he put forward as a corollary a claim about Alciato's use of the expression "emblema" which appeared to be supported by the texts. Is it possible, one wonders, that any hypothesis about Alciato's role in seeing the Emblematum liber into print will remain inconclusive by virtue of the paucity of supporting evidence? kommt nur dem Bild, der res picta zu; denn nur die res picta kann als Abzeichen an Kleidern oder als Schilder an Huten getragen werden oder zur Erlernung einer den Hieroglyphen verwandten Geheimschrift dienen."

25. On this issue of using the expression 'emblema' as a name rather than as a term see my article "'Libellum composui epigrammaton . . . ' " (as in note 5).

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V Claudie Balavoine's "Archeologie de l'embleme litteraire: la dedicace a Conrad Peutinger des Emblemata d'Andre Alciat" of 1981 is the most detailed analysis to date of Alciato's notoriously ambiguous dedicatory epigram, Balavoine deals with three related problems: Alciato's usage, his role in furnishing the illustrations, and chronology. Justifying her decision to focus on this particular text she observes que ces quelques phrases, eparses dans sa correspondance et le reste de son oeuvre, aggravent leur paucite par leur isolement dans un contexte etranger qui prive ^interpretation d'un precieux support. De l'epigramme, au contraire, on postulera la coherence, se donnant ainsi, on l'espere, les moyens de forcer le mystere d'un texte enigmatique pour penetrer plus avant dans la connaissance de la nature premiere de l'Embleme litteraire et des circonstances de son apparition, (p. 9) Balavoine is the only author discussed in this survey to insist on a difference in hermeneutic status between pragmatic texts (e. g. letters) and literary texts (e. g. epigrams) and to draw interpretive conclusions from that difference. References to the Emblemata in a literary text, we might paraphrase her position, metaphorical or not, are subject to the constraint of coherence which is in force for such texts, while references in a pragmatic text, despite the fact that they may be, semantically speaking, literal references, are not subject to such a constraint; they are, for that reason alone, very often contextually isolated. In other words, if I understand Balavoine's position correctly, if you wish to determine the referent of the expression "emblemata" as it occurs in a pragmatic text like a letter, you must in a sense know what Alciato is talking about before you can understand what he is saying; in a literary text, by contrast, since the constraint of coherence is in force, you should be able to determine the referent of that expression on the basis of your understanding of what the text says. Hence the hope that being able to force 26. That, at least, was the generally accepted doctrine before the advent of deconstructionism.

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the secret of an enigmatic literary text will provide reliable information both about the nature of the first emblems and about the circumstances of their production and publication. According to Balavoine it is essential both for a proper understanding of the text of the dedication to Peutinger, and of Alciato's role in the 1531 edition to insist on "l'independance de l'epigramme et de l'edition" (p. 10). Failure to consider even the possibility that Alciato's dedicatory epigram was not written for the edition which Heinrich Steyner was eventually to produce, she suggests, "explique les erreurs de perspective des analyses precedentes" (p. 10). As far as Alciato's contemporaries were concerned, noting the epigram addressed to Peutinger used as a preface to the first edition meant, she is prepared to grant, that interpreting that epigram "indissociablement de ce livre, et des gravures qu'il comportait" (p. 10) was unavoidable. The constraint of coherence, we might add, demanded that this should be the case. The same excuse, however, cannot be made for modern emblem scholars—Balavoine's explicit target is Holger Homann's reconstruction of the events leading up to the 1531 edition—since modern scholars, in contrast to Alciato's contemporaries, do have access to Alciato's correspondence, in particular to the letter by Alciato to Pietro Bembo dated February 25,1535, which contains Alciato's complaint about the Augsburg edition, and which appears to suggest that the manuscript of the Emblemata ended up in Augsburg by accident: 'T do not know for what reason the Augsburgers have published this little lost work so badly" (Hoc opusculum) nescio quo casu amissum Vindelici edidere corruptissime. Homann, in keeping with the thrust of his reconstruction, felt compelled to brush this passage aside by assuming a lapse of memory on Alciato's part. Balavoine, by contrast, insists, that Alciato's claim that his manuscript had been lost, should be taken at face value: 27. Homann (as in note 5), p.126: "Es ist dies eine etwas ratselhafte Stelle; Alciati scheint sagen zu wollen, dafi das ursprungliche Manuskript seiner Emblemata aus einem ihm unerklarlichen Grunde verloren gegangen sei, um dann plotzlich in Augsburg im Druck zu erscheinen. Dies steht in deutlichem Widerspruch zu seinem Widmungsgedicht an Conrad Peutinger. Ob ihm der wahre Sachverhalt entfallen war, oder er es mit der Wahrheit nicht zu genau nahm, oder ob das Widmungsgedicht eine Falschung ist, lafit sich heute wohl nicht mehr entscheiden; ich neige zu der Annahme einer Gedachtnislucke."

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Sur un point aussi important que la premiere edition de ses Emblemata Alciat ne peut avoir quatre ans apres, perdu totalement la memoire, et la declaration, concise mais explicite, de 1535 ne saurait etre revoquee en doubte. Elle prouve que l'epigramme imprimee par Heinrich Steyner en tete du recueil qui lui etait tombe entre les mains ne concernait pas une edition, qui loin d'etre prevue par l'auteur n'etait meme pas souhaitee. (p. 10) Balavoine, it should be noted, bases her interpretation of the passage from Alciato's letter to Bembo on what might be called a maxim of common sense psychology: "you just don't forget about as important an event as a first edition of a book of yours after only four years." Because of this law-like feature of human consciousness, she seems to suggest, Homann's claim about a lapse of memory cannot be upheld. Neither she nor Homann, however, considered a possibility which, though it may not be any more plausible than those suggested, one should admit for the sake of completeness. Is it conceivable that Alciato felt the need to distance himself from the Augsburg editions for legal reasons? Heinrich Steyner's last printing of his edition of the Emblemata was in 1534, the same year in which the first Paris edition by Christian Wechel came off the press. From a letter by Alciato to Christian Wechel which most likely needs to be dated January 30,1533, we know that by then the latter had already been commissioned to produce a new edition of the Emblemata: "emblematum edendorum curam arbitror tibi excidisse . . . . " [I assume that it has slipped your memory that you have the task of bringing out the Emblemata. . . . ] If Alciato had indeed in any way been involved in the Augsburg edition—there is, we recall no documentary evidence for or against that possibility—he may, as a lawyer, and writing to a man of Bembo's renown and influence, not have wished to be looked upon as an author who had offered his manu28. This letter is not to be found in Barni's collection of Alciato's correspondence. The autograph is in the possession of the Pierpont Morgan Library where it was discovered by Curt F. Buhler. The complete text can be found in: Curt F. Buhler, "A Letter Written by Andrea Alciato to Christian Wechel," The Library, 5/16 (1961), 201-205, esp. 202f. The existence of this letter has been brought to my attention by Johannes Kohler.

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script to two publishers in sequence, thereby perhaps appearing to infringe on the nascent right of a printer to have the first printing of a book protected from being reprinted by a different printer for a certain number of years. If we accept Balavoine's suggestion that Alciato's letter to Bembo should be taken at face value, and there is probably good reason for doing so, the path seems indeed clear for separating the dedicatory epigram from Heinrich Steyner's 1531 edition, and for interpreting it in such a way that no referential links with the actual appearance of the 1531 edition are established, i. е., reading the epigram in such a way that it will not refer to the woodcuts supplied by Jorg Breu at the behest of Heinrich Steyner, but also reading it in such a way that Alciato cannot be understood to be referring to his own involvement in the decision to add woodcuts to the epigrams of the Emblemata, certainly not as making suggestions about how those woodcuts should be executed: Dans l'impossibilite ou se trouvait Alciat de prevoir l'existence, et a fortiori la nature, de l'edition qui devait suivre avec un tel ecart ce premier manuscrit, il n'a pu faire a l l u s i o n , d a n s sa d e d i c a c e , au t r a v a i l des dessinateurs et de graveurs mis a contribution par Heinrich Steyner. Artificium illustri signaque facta manu ne saurait done renvoyer aux figures ajoutees en 1531 sur l'initiative inspiree de l'editeur. (p. 12) In keeping with this view it becomes imperative for Balavoine to reads signaque without having it refer to the woodcuts of the 1531 edition. She therefore treats signum as a synonym of symbolum, and thus as a term used "pour designer la res significans, «l'objet»,

29. On the beginnings of copyright protection in the early sixteenth century see, e. g. M. Baelde, "De toekenning van drukkersooctrooien door de Geheime Raad in de zestiende eeuw," De gulden passer, 40 (1962), 19-58; P. Verheyen, "Drukkersoctrooien in de 16e eeuw," Tijdschrift voor boek- en bibliotheekwezen, 8 (1910), 203-236; 269-278. But see Elizabeth Armstrong, Before Copyright: the Trench Book Privilege System, 1498-1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), who mentions no such right. I submit this possibility primarily in order to illustrate the ease with which, given the scarcity of documentary evidence, explanatory hypotheses about Alciato's real motives can be framed. Stephen Rawles drew my attention to Armstrong's recent book.

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figuratif, naturaliste ou historique, dont on degage la signification symbolique," (p. 13) rather than the physical artifact produced by the craftsman for the purpose of depicting such a res significans. In keeping with this reading of "signaque," and in contrast to Homann, who, we recall, insists on a reading which connotes the craft of the artists invoved, she takes "Emblemata cudimus" metaphorically. And in order to avoid any suggestion of an involvement on Alciato's part in the process of making the woodcuts, she treats "cudere" as a metaphor for "rediger," "mettre au point." Such a reading, Balavoine points out, is supported by a line from a letter dated December 1520, in which Alciato states that he is putting the final touches on the commentaries of De verborum sienificatione: "De verborum on

°

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significatione commentarios cudo/ Her own translation of line 3 of the dedication is therefore meant to be read metaphorically: "en ces festivites j'ai forge ces Emblemes" (p. 18). Her interpretation of this line is thus identical to Miedema's who, we saw, chose to render "cudere" by "to make" so as to avoid any possible craft-specific connotations. Her rendering of line 4 {"Artificium illustri signaque facta manu") by "et a d'illustres mains les symboles sont dus rigorously insists on the separateness of the dedicatory epigram from the edition in which it appears, which happens to be an illustrated one, by suppressing Alciato's term identifying the owners of those "illustres mains"—they are, after all artifices, and not e. g. poetae—as well as by giving "signaque" (which Miedema had retained in his English translation) as "symboles." Objects referred to as symbols by illustrious hands are clearly less easily confused 30. Balavoine, pp. 12f. There is no additional bibliographical identification of this letter. 31. In this context it should be noted that Balavoine in her transcription of the Latin text of the dedicatory epigram changes the lower-case initial 'e' of "emblemata cudimus" to an upper-case letter: "Emblemata cudimus." The latter spelling is used only from Christian Wechel's 1534 edition onwards. I have argued elsewhere that with the upper-case letter the expression Emblemata becomes anaphoric of the title of the book while with the lower case letter emblemata is likely to be read as a noun in the plural, and as such would call up the literal, extra-literary everyday use of emblema where it denoted a mosaic or a type of detachable decoration. See the article mentioned in note 5, pp. 221 f.

32. Balavoine (as in note 5) p. 18, note 1.

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with the woodcuts on the pages following the dedicatory epigram, than "signa, executed by the master hand of craftsmen/' as Miedema translates. 33 That also goes for the "disegni fatti da artisti con mano illustre"as de Angelis renders this line in Italian, for the "afbeeldingen . . . gemaakt door de voortreffelijke hand van kunstenaars" [illustrations made by the excellent hand of artists!, as Leeman translates into Dutch, and for the "Zeichen, welche geformt Kunstler mit treffender Hand," as Kohler translates into German. 36 Balavoine thus manages to produce a reading of the dedicatory epigram to Conrad Peutinger which is on all points consistent with her reading of Alciato's letter to Bembo, and which proceeds from the assumption that Alciato was in no way involved in the decisions which led up to the shape in which the editio princeps of his Emblemata was to appear. The only thing that could undermine her reading would be a piece of evidence suggesting that the dedicatory epigram to Peutinger was in fact intended as a preface to an illustrated edition. That, we shall see later, is a central point of Vera Sack's reconstruction of the printing history of the Emblematum liber. It is also the focus of Leeman's reconstruction. VI Regarding the years which passed between Alciato's letter announcing the completion of the libellus epigrammaton (December 9, 1521, according to Homann) and the publication on February 28, 1531 of the first edition of the Emblematum liber Homann, was of the opinion that "this lapse of time is indeed rather long but not altogether uncommon in those days," (p. 35) thereby neutralizing the issue, as it were, by explaining it in terms of an assumed characteristic of sixteenth-century book production. 33. Miedema (as in note 5), p. 241. 34. De Angelis (as in note 5), p. 48.

35. Leeman (as in note 5), p. 27.

36. Kohler I (as in note 5), p. 27. 37. In view of the output figures of the hand-press period reported in Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985), pp. 54ff.,

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F. W. G. Leeman, by contrast, makes a strenuous effort to deter­ mine what precisely happened to Alciato's manuscript during those years. The question which interests him in particular is whether Alciato, once he had sent off his manuscript, retained any influence on the form in which the printed book was eventually to come off the press. Arguing against Rubensohn's dating of the letter to Calvi, he returned to the traditional date of December 9,1522, again on the basis of internal evidence; arguing against Miedema's view that Alciato used the term emblema for a kind of epigram, he tried to make a case that Alciato did in fact have in mind a combination of word and image for his Emblemata, i. е., an illustrated edition. Since the issue of dating Alciato's letter to Francesco Calvi, and thus of establishing when Alciato was working on his manuscript, appears to have been settled for good by Abbondanza and Callahan, we need only consider the other two points raised by Leeman. Both are closely interrelated: if one were to succeed in establishing a case for Alciato's continued access to the manuscript of the Emblemata right up to the date of publication, then one could also hope to have a strong case for arguing that he must also have had a voice in the decision to add a woodcut to each of the epigrams, regardless of whether or not there exist documents explicitly supporting such a claim. Leeman was interested in establishing the latter point against his fellow art historian Miedema, but decided, unlike Rubensohn, and later Homann, not to argue for Alciato's share in the woodcuts primarily on the basis of certain intrinsic peculiarities of a number of the epigrams of the Emblemata. He does, however, accept Homann's reading: "Two of the emblems without woodcuts contain a reference by the author, indicating the text in which an adequate description of a chameleon and of Bellerophon can be found" (p. 28). 38 Homann's explanation does not seem tenable as far as the technical possibili­ ties of a sixteenth-century printer are concerned. An explanation for the delay in printing, if we assume that Alciato's manuscript did indeed go to the printer in the early 1520% must therefore be sought in the accidents of this particular manuscript, rather than in the general condition of the printing trade. 38. 'Twee van de emblemen zonder prent hebben een verwijzing van de auteur meegekregen naar de passus waar een adequate beschrijving van een kameleon en van Bellerophon te vinden is."

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Leeman's own case is based on a document which had not been used by any of his predecessors, a manuscript copy of epigrams by Alciato in the possession of the library of Basel University, which Bonifatius Amerbach had apparently made on the occasion of a visit to Alciato in Novi near Avignon around 1522 (p. 12) , and on two letters to Amerbach, likewise not earlier viewed in relation to the 1531 Augsburg edition. The letters are dated February 3,1529, and August 3,1530. Both letters, Leeman points out, written close to the date of publication of the Emblematum liber, contain corrections to the text of epigrams which eventually found their way into the editio princeps (pp. 10ff.). "All of these corrections were faithfully entered by Amerbach in a manuscript which is to be found in the Library of Basel University. These must be the epigrams which Amerbach had copied over eight years earlier and to which Alciato was referring in his letter to Calvo" (p. 12). The conclusion to be drawn from this must therefore be, in Leeman's opinion, that "the definitive conception of the Emblemata most probably has to be dated after February 3,1529 and around the time the second letter was sent off" (p. 12). As for the location of the manuscript first mentioned in the letter to Calvi dated January 9, 1523, during those eight (in Leeman's view nine) years, the answer, if we follow Leeman, can only be: "At the beginning of 1530 Alciato must still have been working on his Emblemata-meLiuiscript: after August 3,1530, the copy was probably sent off to Peutinger, together with a dedication" (p. 13). But what are we to make of the letter to Pietro Bembo dated 39. Ms.O.IV.8. no. 21. For more information on this manuscript see A. Hartmann, Die Amerbach-korrespondenz (Basel, 1943-1953), p. 409, note 9; p. 477, note 4. Leeman's dating of this manuscript is based on a letter by Alciato to Calvi dated January 21, 1530 (p. I l l , note 50).

40. "Al deze verbeteringen zijn door Amerbach trouwhartig in een manuscript overgebracht, dat zich in de Baselse Universiteitsbibliotheek bevindt. Dit moeten de acht jaar tevoren door Amerbach overgeschreven epigrammen zijn, waarop Alciatus doelde in zijn brief aan Calvus." 41. "De definitieve conceptie van de Emblemata ligt dus hoogstwaarschijnlijk na 3 februari 1529 en moet dus rond het verzenden van de tweede brief worden geplaatst."

42. "In het begin van 1530 moet Alciatus nog aan zijn Emblemata-manuscript gewerkt hebben: na 3 augustus 1530 zal de kopij naar Peutinger zijn op-

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February 25, 1535, almost exactly four years after the editio princeps, in which Alciato appears to apologize for the Emblemata: "Composueram praetextatus et nescio quo casu amissum Vindelici edidere corruptissime; quae res effecerat ut agnoscere foetum ilium nollem." [I had composed it as an adolescent, and I don't know the reason why that lost work (amissum) has been published in Augsburg, teeming with errors. That is why I did not want to acknowledge this "foetus"]? If we take Alciato at his word this is a serious threat to Leeman's reconstruction. Leeman, however, dismisses this threat in a footnote: "Therefore, when Alciato writes to Pietro Bembo on February 25 . . . 'Composueram praetextatus . . / he can hardly be said to be speaking even a half truth" (p. 113, note 60). But why would Alciato wish to tell Bembo that the Augsburg edition was based on a lost manuscript which he had produced in his young years if, as appears to follow from Leeman's argument, he had worked on that manuscript until about three months before the book was published? That letter to Bembo, it needs to be remembered, was written only in 1535, a year after the last Augsburg edition and the first Paris edition had come off the presses of Heinrich Steyner and Christian Wechel respectively. In Leeman's opinion that letter can certainly not be used to argue "that the first edition was meant [to be published] without illustrations and therefore [in the form in which it was published] did not meet his expectations," as Miedema had claimed. Alciato, Leeman believes, would not have hesitated to deny all knowledge of a particular publication if it had been less than favourably received. In this case, "it was probably the [poor] artistic quality of the illustrations, and misunderstanding and the lack of erudition to which they testify, which Alciato found embarrassing" (p. 26). 44 gestuurd, voorzien van een opdracht."

43. "Wanneer Alciatus op 25 februari aan Pietro Bembo schrijft... spreekt hij dus nauwelijks een halve waarheid." 44. "Zijn verloochening van de Augsburgse uitgave achteraf kan nooit als doorslaggevend argument gebruikt worden, om aan te tonen dat de eerste uitgave zonder illustraties bedoeld was en dus niet aan zijn intenties voldeed. Alciato zag er . . . geen been in om [in] het geval van een minder gunstige ontvangst elk medeweten van een publicatie te ontkennen. Het zullen eerder het artistieke niveau van de illustraties zijn en het wanbegrip en het gebrek aan

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The essential point of Leeman's argument about Alciato's concern with the manuscript of the Emblemata until shortly before the book appeared is, however, the conclusion which it appears to permit, even suggest: "Now that it has been shown that Alciato made corrections in the manuscript until shortly before he sent it off to Peutinger, there is good reason to assume that his involvement [in the Augsburg edition] was greater than has been believed so far" (p. 26). This conclusion suggests in turn a reading of the dedication to Peutinger which proceeds from the idea that an illustrated edition had been intended by Alciato from the beginning: "'Cudimus'', a word from the language of the artistic crafts, which refers to the beating of (precious) metals, is used figuratively by Alciatus. The word 'illustri/ too can be understood as an allusion to 'illustrare/ thereby underscoring the illustrative function of the emblems" (p. 27). 46 In Leeman's view Alciato kept control over the manuscript of the Emblemata almost to the very last moment, and therefore must also have been involved somehow or other in the decision to produce an illustrated edition. Leeman's reconstruction, we saw, rests totally on the assumption that Amerbach's manuscript copy of a number of Alciato's epigrams was made in 1522 and was kept "at hand" by Amerbach for corrections until only a few months before the publication of the Emblematum liber. If Leeman's reconstruction is correct—and his case looks strong indeed—the question arises why the final product, Heinrich Steyner's edition, is so poorly executed that Alciato felt he had to dissociate himself from even knowing about it. Leeman is laconic, to say the least, when it comes to dealing with the related issues of the role of Peutinger and the choice of Heinrich Steyner as printer and publisher: "Alciato must still have been eruditie waarvan zij getuigen, die Alciatus in verlegenheid brachten."

45. "Nu echter is aangetoond, dat Alciatus het manuscript nog vlak voor de verzending aan Peutinger heeft gecorrigeerd is er reden om aan te nemen, dat zijn betrokkenheid groter was dan vermoedt wordt."

46. "'Cudimus', een woord uit de kunstnijverheid dat drijven van (edele) metalen betekent, is door Alciatus hier figuurlijk gebruikt, maar draagt nog steeds de letterlijke betekenis van emblema als zetstuk in metalen vaatwerk met zich mee. Ook het woord 'illustri' kan als een toespeling op 'illustrare' worden opgevat, waardoor de beeldende functie van emblemen onderstrept wordt/'

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working on his Emblemata-manuscript at the beginning of 1530; after August 3,1530 he must have sent off the copy to Peutinger, together with a dedication" (p. 13). 47 VII Johannes Kohler's first publication on the editio princeps of the Emblematum liber is a chapter in a monograph devoted primarily to Alciato's use of classical sources, and to the pedagogical effect of the Emblemata during the sixteenth century. Taking Alciato at his word in the by now notorious letter to Pietro Bembo of February 25,1535, where he had referred to the Emblemata as a work which he had written in his youth [praetextatus], and which had subsequently been lost and published in Augsburg with many errors [et nescio quo casu amissum edidere corrumptissime], Kohler proposes to follow the traces of that lost work. A letter from Alciato to Amerbach dated August 23,1528, in which Alciato reports that his house had been ransacked by soldiers that summer, appears to contain such a trace: attempting to get at least his books back, Alciato meets "a doctor from Augsburg" who undertakes to be of assistance and, in the process, absconds with one of Alciato's manuscripts. Kohler identifies that unnamed doctor as Leopold Dichius and furthermore someone who "played a somewhat opaque role during a time which is also important in conjunction with the first printing of the Emblemata" (p. 21). He concludes: "Since our sources do not tell us clearly which manuscript Dichius took with him from Milan . . . we can only state that perhaps some of the threads which turned into the knot of questions surrounding the editio princeps went via him . . . " (pp. 21f.). If this assessment of the less than honourable activities of Dichius is cor47. "In het begin van 1530 moet Alciatus nog aan zijn Emblemata-manuscript gewerkt hebben: na 3 augustus 1530 zal de kopij naar Peutinger zijn opgestuurd, voorzien van een opdracht." 48. "Leopold Dick (Dichius) spielt eine undurchschaubare Rolle in der Zeit, die auch fur die erste Drucklegung der Embleme wichtig ist."

49. "Da aus den Briefstellen nicht eindeutig hervorgeht, welche Urschrift Dichius aus Mailand mitgenommen hat, . . . bleibt nur festzustellen, dafi moglicherweise uber ihn, Dichius, manche Faden liefen, die zu jenem Knoten wurden, aus dem die Fragen um die 'editio princeps' bestehen."

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red, where did Alciato's dedication to Alciato come from, which found a prominent place in the 1531 edition? Kohler discusses this dedication in some detail in conjunction with an analysis of Alciato's use of the expression emblema, but he does not raise the question of its provenance which, it seems to me, is suggested by his prior reconstruction of the fate of Alciato's manuscript. In a later article based on a paper read at the Glasgow Emblem Conference (August 1987) and published in the proceedings, Kohler makes no more mention of this cloak-and-dagger story. Instead he offers what must be considered the first serious attempt to explain the choice of Augsburg as the place of publication on the basis of the religious and political situation of the day. Like Leeman before him, and in contrast to Homann, he assumes that Alciato kept the manuscript of the Emblemata in his possession until the end of 1530 when he decided to have it published in Augsburg. The question with which Kohler is exclusively concerned in this article is why Alciato chose Augsburg, a town where none of his previous works had been published, as the place of publication for his Emblemata, and not Lyons or Basel, where he had prior contacts with printers and publishers. In his attempt to answer this question Kohler provides a sketch of the religious situation both in Basel and in Augsburg during the years preceding the publication of the Emblemata, in particular of the manner in which two of Alciato's contacts, Bonifatius Amerbach in Basel, and Conrad Peutinger in Augsburg were affected by the advances of the Reformation in both cities. The publication history of the 1531 edition, he maintains, is closely intertwined with the history of the Reformation in southern Germany, despite the fact "that the emblem book itself has nothing to do with religious questions" (p. 25). A key figure in Kohler's reconstruction is now Johannes Oekolampadius (1482-1531), the most i m p o r t a n t Swiss Reformer a s i d e from H u l d e r i c h Z w i n g l i . Oekolampad had been living in Basel since 1522, and after 1525 he was the driving force behind strenuous efforts at introducing the Reformation in that city. Amerbach, Alciato's correspondent and friend in Basel, resisted these efforts, deciding to remain a Catholic. On April 1,1529, Basel officially became a Reformed city, and in June 1530 Amerbach was threatened by the Reformed authorities if he continued to refuse to take the Host in accordance with Reformed dogma. In a letter dated October 2, 1529, Amerbach warns Alciato about Oekolampad: "See to it also, my Alciato, that you are on guard

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about "Oekolampadianism" as far as your literary work is concerned/ Why should this warning be relevant for Alciato's decision regarding the place of publication of his Etnblemata? According to Kohler it was the dedication to Peutinger which would have called down "Oekolampadianism" on Alciato's book of emblems. Oekolampad had been a Catholic priest in Augsburg from 1518 until 1520; in 1522 he joined the Reformation, and in the same year he took up residence and office in Basel. The decision to join the Reformation eventually led to a break in relations with Conrad Peutinger of Augsburg, who, like Amerbach, remained a Catholic. This, in Kohler's view, made publication in Basel inadvisable: "If under these circumstances one of Alciato's 'lucubrations' with a dedication to Peutinger were to be printed in Basel . . . at the time of the controversy about Amerbach's participation in the eucharist, the latter's warning to Alciato would have a p o i n t . . . " (p. 23). It should be noted that the relevance of this historical sketch for a reconstruction of the events leading up to the edition of February 28, 1531 depends entirely on the validity of the assumption that Alciato sent off his manuscript only towards the end of 1530, and not, as Homann and, as we shall see, Vera Sack assume, around the time of the letter to Francesco Calvi (December 9,1521 or December 9, 1522, or January 9, 1523). No letter by Alciato containing a direct reference to the decision or the fact of sending the manuscript of the Emblemata to Augsburg appears to have survived, and so both dates are supported by circumstantial evidence only. If, therefore, one were to find the indirect evidence for the earlier date more compelling, Kohler's argument would lose its point: in that case the manuscript would have found its way to Augsburg years before the events referred to by Kohler took place, and years before Amerbach's warning letter was written. If, on the other hand, one were to find the later dating more plausible, Kohler may indeed have a case, but it would appear to be primarily a case against the choice of Basel, but 50. "Cave etiam, mi Alciate, ut 'oikolampadianismou eneka' tuis lucubrationibus metuas" (quoted by Kohler p. 22). 51. "Wenn nun eine 'lucubratio'von Alciat, Konrad Peutinger gewidmet, in Basel oder in einer eng mit Basel verbundenen Druckerei, gerade in der Zeit der Auseinandersetzung um die abendmahlsteilnahme Anmerbachs gedruckt wurde, wird dessen Warnung Alciat verstandlich."

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not necessarily one in favour of Augsburg as a place of publication. Hut an argument against the case against Basel can be developed quite readily: did the manuscript of the Emblemata contain a dedication to Conrad Peutinger because Augsburg was chosen, and he was the most prominent resident scholar whose services Alciato hoped to enlist in finding a publisher, or was Augsburg chosen—and Basel avoided—because of the dedication to Peutinger? Renaissance dedication practices which allowed an Erasmus to change the printed dedication of a book depending on whom he was going to present a copy, it would seem to me, would suggest the first rather than the second possibility. Kohler realizes that his case for Augsburg is largely based on circumstantial evidence, and he is therefore prepared to consider the fact "that Alciato's book of emblems was first published in 1531 in Augsburg—'nescio quo casu', as Alciato was to write later—as a coincidence, if by coincidence we mean 'that an unexpected event' takes place 'as the result of things which come together which were undertaken for a specific purpose 7 (Boethius)" (p. 25). As Vera Sack has demonstrated there were indeed a few more of the "things which came together" in bringing about the 1531 edition of the Emblemata. In order to find out about them one has to turn to sources of information other than letters, dedications, prefaces and emblems. VIII Leaving aside Green's attempt to establish the editio princeps of the Emblemata by means of a questionnaire, an undertaking which Rubensohn was quick to denounce as "heitere[s] Kommodienspiel, all other studies on the 1531 edition of the Emblematum liber which we have looked at so far have relied exclusively on the study 52. Rubensohn (as in note 5), p. LXI. But as thorough a scholar as Karl Giehlow in 1915 accepted Green's problematic reasoning: "In irrthumlicher Auffassung des bei Gudius vom 9. December 1522 datirten Briefes hat man lange an eine Mailander Ausgabe von 1522 geglaubt und die Steynersche als die zweite aufgefasst, bis die mit erstaunlicher Ausdauer angestellten Nachforschungen Green's diese Annahme als haltlos erwiesen haben." (Karl Giehlow, "Die Hieroglyphenkunde des Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissance," Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten Kaiserhauses, 32 [1915], p. 141, note 4.)

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of surviving written documents: letters, prefaces, p«iss diuertttad :cdn tc:-dc;: ^ !>„ П5\ he . o u r vcrncderc, t:n dat ieknenr; /н. le yecn rull с en с с •, г со; c,n ick ll:k ks gcbeeterc • '• >' -odel Qttaderrio, ^i no prat tea -t

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sighted"; the blind man led by his little Dog is "an excelent example [o]f faith & resignation"; both details pointedly criticize the pride and presumption of those who rely upon their own judgment in the labyrinth of this world. These interpretations of the visual motifs differ from the earlier published English versions of the same emblem by Quarles and Arwaker, and betray the quietistic bias of the version by Mme de Guyon, which the English prose translation echoes. For de Guyon the soul only reaches union with God by means of a dark faith, an absolute abandonment to God's love (see, for example, the translation of Hugo's Emblem 1). The translation of Hugo's Emblem 38 (see Figs. 4 and 5) moralizes the notion of imprisonment and bondage which are dominant emblematic motifs throughout the collection, and which do much to raise the emotional temperature of the experiences described in it. Yet the text of the translation here strains at the very limits of their iconographical representation: the notion of being "shutt vp with in my self" is not strictly conveyed by the cut, while the spirit drawing upward and the body weighing down is more effectively portrayed by the more conventional iconography of the following Emblem (No. 39). Longing for death and for ultimate spiritual union with the Creator is taken to extremes. At one point the soul exclaims, "yea hell, even hell, might I be but near to thee, shoud be to me a Blessed inheritance, its Torments shoud be sweet vnto me. heaven & all its joys without thee woud be my torments" (Hugo, The Conclusion). This extreme spiritual paradox occurs at the end of the first part of the book based on the emblems of Hugo. At the end of the Vaenius section this is replaced by a more satisfying emblem of spiritual union (see Figs. 6 and 7): "The end of love is that two should be made one." The iconography of the emblematic cut shows considerable wit: the figure of Terminus, the Roman God of Boundaries and Death, is here conflated with a hermaphroditic figure intimating the seraphic marriage of the soul with its Lord. The text speaks of such a union in rapturous tones. But there is hardly any iconographic commentary in the prose translation that accompanies the cut. The English text resists, and is perhaps embarrassed by, an attempt to translate this mystery into visual terms. Ultimately the emblematic form: the text cannot be read with the plates in view, just as the quietistic theology ultimately resists any physical depen-

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Fig. 7. UArtie amante de son dieu, Emblem 59. Reproduced by courtesy of the British Library.

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dency upon external forms and images. The method by which spiritual union is to be achieved is by denial and abnegation. The heterodox nature of the religious doctrine propounded in the translation may have been sufficient to insure that this English version was never published. However, it also shows something of a reaction against the rather bland quality of public Augustan spirituality. The intensity of the religious experience offered within the pages of de Guyon's verse must have exerted some degree of fascination and interest on this early reader of the collection. The English prose translation, freed from the exigencies of metre and rhyme, is often more intensely succinct and focused than the French original. Occasionally, the translator will, however, emphasize a point by using two English words for one French word: in Emblem 2 "sure and vpright" translates the French "certaines/' "I made thee loath & abhor me," "Je vous faisois horreur"; in Emblem 11, "le trouble" is translated by "trouble and anguish"; in 14, "courage and fidelity" renders "courage." Some few phrases are omitted in the translation, but these are in many cases not necessary to the sense and may have been considered unnecessary in the change from verse to prose. A reluctance to emphasize salvation by works may have influenced the omission of "si je pouvais par mes travaux" in the translation of Emblem 4. In the same Emblem the translator omits Mme de Guyon's reference to the wrath of God, possibly on the grounds that this may not have been a quality altogether appropriate to the "Adoreable Master" and the "Divine Lover." There are some mistranslations: in Emblem 1, "conversation" does not properly render the French "conversion"; in Emblem 3 "Envy" translates "ennui"; "ingratitude" is given for "inquietude" in Emblem 27; "prosperity" is not the meaning of the French "propriete" in the penultimate line of Emblem 35: the translation should be property, ownership, or even, self-hood. The omission of certain unnecessary phrases, and the inclusion of many "oh's," "ah's" and other exclamations, adds to the emotional intensity of the English version. Textual Note The following transcript of the text faithfully preserves the paragraphing, spelling, punctuation and scribal contractions of the original. Even obvious slips and errors in the manuscript (e. g. "Th soul" [Hugo, Emblem 12]; "habitaions" in the introductory verse to Vaenius; "languising" [Vaenius, Emblem 41]) have been retained,

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since the aim was to provide a transcription rather than an edition. It seemed inappropriate, however, to follow the lineation and pagination of the manuscript. Since the translation is in prose, line breaks would seem to have been dictated by the width and size of the page rather than sense. The manuscript emblematic verses appear in most cases on a single page, and in this the translator follows the format of the printed book. It seemed unnecessary, however, to retain this feature in this transcription. Portions of words and elements of punctuation lost in the cropping of the margins during rebinding have been supplied wherever possible by the editor. Such text has been placed within square brackets [...]. When conjectures were not possible the gap in the text has been indicated by asterisks ***. On occasions the translator has deleted part of his text. Where the editor has been able to decipher the deleted characters, the text has been recorded within angled brackets. The Dedicat n To Jesus the Desired. I sigh after Thee o' My only happiness altho' My tongue be silent, yet My sighs are y e faithfull interpreters of My heart, a language well known, & vnderstood By thee, oh thou that knowest y e secrets of My soul, reject not my sighs, but give them vent, for tho' they encrease my flame, they soften my greife. thou ever seing Eye, thou adorable wisdom: nothing can be hid from thee: Thou seest y e misery w w Im overwhelmd: in this sacred Desart I sigh without ceasing: tho' Im well asured such sighs are y e effect of My own weakness: and by no means agreeable to y e most perfect Lover. Embl m : 1. My soul Desired thee in the Night season. of two sorts of Nights, in w c we seek after y e spouse, one Begins y course: By y e favour of whose light we forsake sin, Then y e soul perceives y* she walks in Darkness: & y e Effect of an obscure sort [o]f Day, makes y e conversation remarkable: [nevertheless this Weak light proceeds from Love. There is another night, but a Night [a]lltogether Divine: therein appears neith r Lamp nor Torch, y e most pure Love enlight n s & works a change in vs; e

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[О] Dark faith thou art preferable to w We call Brightness: thou givest vs the [e]njoyment of that vnchangable All that makes vs happy: 2d

О God thou knowest My foolishness & my sins are not hid from thee: О how Wretch was I; w n I had withdraw[n] My self from thee, & sett My Mind vpon vanity; then With oth r fools, I thought My Ways were sure & vpright, I was every moment Wandering after vain amusement to w c I Boldly gave the Name of Wisdom: О Divine Love thou comest to call Me, to Draw Me out of my Weakness; thou Touchest my heart, & condescendest to speak to it. Alas I Did not give attention to that charming voice w c spoke in y e Bottom of my soul, I was so impudent as to shake off thy sweet & pleasent flame, to pursue My own vnworthy choice, I made thee loath & abhor Me: & yet I secretly applauded My follfy] О how Doe I now grieve at it: О look vpon my repentance: its thou, О Divine Love, th[at] shalt change my life, for thou alone hadst y e power to convert Me!

3 d Emb: Have Mercy vpon Me, О Lord, for I am weak: О heal Me for my Bones are vexed. Have pity on me, О my Adoreable Mast r , for my Body is Weak & Languishing: Every moment Destroys my Being, & thou [a]lone canst heal me, О my Heavenly Lover. [A]lass my inward pains are much more [u]nsupportable, than those that Afflict my Body: [If] I might be agreeable to thee, I shoud Laugh [A]t outward calamities. О heal me: О Change [m]y heart, & then how contented shall I Be [t]o Endure every Day a thousand Different Torments; make me thy Beloved, & I shall [B]id Defiance to all the World: When once, I Belong to Love, I shall no Longer apprehend the power of Envy or sufferings: to carry thy chain, I Would Willingly forsake y e Light of y e Day:

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4 Emb: my pain Look vpon my Afflict11, & forgive all my sin[s] I accknowledge my iniquity, & y e greatness of my offence. Behold my penitence, О Lord. & Deal with me according to thy good plea­ sure: I shall not complain of my painfu[ll Labour, I woud suffer much more misery, if I coud be so happy as to have thee sencible of my pain: ah w 1 Doe I say, Lord: stri[ke,] redouble, thy Blows: spare not this rebellious heart: since it has Deserved thy Displeasure: ah, strike and make it more faithfull -. I hate this ingratfull heart. I love my Chastisment, for I find it to be just: & vnder y e sorrow y* consum[es] me, I secretly Bless y e strokes with w c I [am] over­ whelm : Ah. redouble my misery, but Blott out my sin: this О Love, is all that I require: for if I am but pleasing to thee; all Torments shall Be as so many pleasures to me. 5 Emb: Remember, I Beseech thee, that thou hast made me of the clay: & that thou wilt Bring me to Dust again. 0 Lord, thou hast made me of a little Dust, and I shall soon be reduced to the same again, far from being Elevated & puff'd vp: I [o]ught allways to be abased. I will abandon my self to sufferings & contempt. О thou that [a]rt my only hope in my Tedious misery: in makeing me after thine own likeness imprint on me this lesson that I am but Dust: Is it possible that being thus conscious of my original, I shoud be in any way lifted vp? [i]f I again sink Down into my proper [n]othing, I shall again enter into the Divine [E]ssence. my pure & simple spirit Did flow [f]rom God. & my Body proceeded from the [e]arth. may each of them return to its place: the Body to its Dust: & the soul to [G]od that gave it. О Almighty Love, transport [m]y spirit into its Divine original. & [a]lso make my Body that falls into Dust rise again to be pertaker in the happiness of my soul. 6 Emb: I have sinned, What shall I Doe vnto thee, О thou pre­ server of Men: Why hast thou sett me as a Mark against thee: 1 have resisted thee, О Divine Love, I have resisted thee, with what Boldness was I possest! Ah can I yet Endure y e light: No I

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Tremble w n I ask pardon! I submit my self vnto thee with all my Heart: it is Done, I render vp my arms. I that am even vnworthy of thy Displeasure, can hope for nothing fro[m] my Tears: - thou hast Disarm Me: О Most Charming Conqueror: thou hast seiz My Heart, I am thy Captive. Im no more afrai[d] О Divine Love, that ever I shall contend wit[h] thee any More: to prevent such a Mischief I here yeild My self without Dissimulation: My soui has lost all fear, & willingly Exposes her self to thy strokes - punish Me. or pardon Me. thou art now my Master: these strokes coming from thee shall make my heart to rejoyce: it woud be a most Traterous wretc[h] shoud thy chastisment seem hard vnto it: for thou art the Author of its Being, & hast also touch it with strong Love: 7Emb. Wherfore hidest thou thy face. & boldest Me for thine Enemy; The soul. [A]h hide not thy charming countenance from Me [a]ny Longer: tis a chastisment too cruel for me to Bear, it woud be a far easier punishm* for Me: [t]o be Deliver over to y e roughest Torments. [h]ast thou no other Pains: oh sacred & holy Love, rather Deliver me vp to thy fiercest flames: exercise [o]n my Body y e most Terrible Tortures: But hide not [f]rom my Eyes y e sight of thy Charms: Alass. Im [sufficiently punish , О Divine Love: let Me see [t]hee But for one moment, or else I cannot Live. Our Lord. Dost thou not perceive, о too indiscreet Love, that thou art not yet in a condition to Behold me, [t]hy heart is not yet void of particular Desires & inclinations; nor wholly & without reserve [s]ubmitted to my Will; Doe not then importune Me [a]ny further. But suffer my Absence as a punisment of thy Error & thy foolish resistance, for Before [t]hou canst see me, thy heart must be more pure, [t]hou must abandon thy self, & suffer Me to Doe what I please, Without repin­ ing: Didst thou Love Me, as I Desire to Be Loved, [t]hou Durst not presume to form vnto thy self one single Desire.

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8Emb. О that My head were Waters, & My Eyes a fountain of Tears: that I might weep Day & Night. Like vnto an Alambic, the heat of Love Dissolves y e heart, & Distills it into Tears: it has But slightly tasted y e Divine Charms, if it is not continualy poured out. this is y e first Effect that this Bright flame produces; but y e more Ardent fire Does even carry y e Lover himself into y e Bossom of y* Divinity whom he adores, it consumes every thing y* Divided y e Lover from his God[.] Weep then О my Eyes, be ye converted into fountains, that I may at length attain vnto that exalted Charity that shall vnite Me to my God: 9Emb. The pains of hell compassed Me round about, & the snares of Death laid hold on Me. Wretch that I am: to what Misery Doe I see my self reduced, Death & hell have laid hold on Me, they on too good grounds asure me of certain ruine, Without permitting Me [t]o see wither I am led. Death has Me allready in his snare, my soule is allready captivated By his Terrors, & hell that holds me in his netts leaves me no room even to hope, great God, [c]ome & help me, for I am ready to perish; [I] perceive my saviour coming with a helping [h]and, quickly to Dis­ solve my Bonds, [O] how favourably Does his succour come; [y] e very hope with w c it has enlivend my [s]oul is to me a thousand Treasures; [alias take me but from my self, & I shall no more be afraid either of Death or hell: [l]et my heart be But once touch with thy Love, [&] I shall Laugh at all their Efforts, [O] my powerfull Deliverer, pardon my Demerit & make me follow thee; [&] then if thou art pleased I shoud live, let it be to thy Honour: 10 Em: enter not into judgment w* thy servant. [O] how holy & righteous are thy Judgm t s О Divine Master of my fate. I have surrenderd my self into thy hands, but am not able to give any further accont, thou hast all My estate allready in thy hands. I have made it over vnto thee without reserve, how y11 shoud I reckon w* thee any more, Love is my security w thou has

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permited me confidently to offer, Alass, shouldst thou come to account with me I must soon be reduced to ashes, my spirit must be filled w* terrour & My [s]oul must tremble in expect n of thy Thunder. To prevent y s great missfortune I have [a]bandon'd y s villianous self, y s pernicious Me, I have surrenderd all vnto thee Oh Lord; [s]o yt now I remain a very Nothing.[O] Sovereign happiness, I never made any ace* of [m]y Labours & sufferings; while I thus remain in my Nothing then how canst thou be avenged [o]n me. But without reckoning I am most willing to submit to y e August Law of thy justice w c is Dear vnto Me; yet I Doe not see, Oh my King where thy angar can fall: let thy Thunders break out on my body. I fear not w* they can doe. there they fall vpon nothing & therefore can have no effect. Alas - oh my Divine Master, in y* Terrible Day * * * * * * *[My entire Love]. Em. y e 12. [Recte 111 let not y e water floods overflow me; neith r let y e Deep swallow me vp. Th soul. I am allmost swallowed vp w* y e storm & y e wave[s,] I see a horrible Tempest falling vpon me: yea y e Thund[er] is allready on my head; & has fill' d Me w grivous Trouble & Dispair; come to my aid, oh thou y* art y e alone Author of my being: for wi* out thee I quickly perish. Alass: look on y e trouble & anguish of my soul. & refuse not to give Me timly assistance. - Ah tis not in vain, Great God, y* I call on thee; thou comest at my peircing cryes, & in y e most pressing Danger shewest thy faithfull Love. I was allmost swallowed [vp] in y e bottom of y e Deep. I had allready plung into y e waves: but w n I was just ready to be overwhelm , thy Grace brought me releife. Our Lord I save thee from y s . but its to make thee suffer a much greater shipwrack: for I will plunge thee into y e Depths of Love, & there thou shalt one Day find both thy profit & thy Loss. The soul. Oh Lord in whom I trust, save me but from my present misery & my soul is too much a captive to thy will not to comp[ly] joyfully

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w thy Desires in all things. Doe w me w thou pleasest, only vouchsafe to give me constancy: I shall no more be afraid of suffer­ ings, for I feel a Desire of y m allready Kindled in my Heart. 13 Emb. [Recte 12] Oh that thou wouldst hide me in y e Grave & keep me secret vntill thy wrath be past. What shall I Doe oh Lord to hide Me from thine angar [&] to avoid thy Blows, is there ever a cave in the Bowels [o]f y e earth; where I may be in safety from thy just Displeasure, Im so pierced w 1 greif for haveing Drawn vpon me thy vengeance, y* y e fear of it Does not Afflict me near so much as y e sorrows for my offence. [II am cruely tormented w* y e greif of haveing Displeasd thee. My Heart is now no more Rebellious. [Ye] force of thy chastisments has brought it into [s]ubjection: - Oh thou y* art y e saviour of mankind, give me not vp to y e severity of my missery; suspend y e rigour of thy justice for some [t]ime, & vouchsafe to take me vnder thy powerful! protection:- I know y* thy mercies far surpass [o]ur iniquities, if y n thou wilt grant Me pardon & art pleased to agree to it I will make thee acknowledgm ts in my Humility. 14 Emb. О that they were wise, that they woud understand this, consider their latter end. Thou showest Me oh Lord, that future Glory, to comfort my Heart, this indeed is pleasent & agreeable to Nature, but I woud love thee with a much more noble flame - hide from Me that recompence thou hast prepared for the Children!:] let me alone to love thee with such a coura[ge] as Does not want to be supported with thy gifts, tho' thou hadst no reward to give Me[,] I woud yet love & serve thee with the same courage & fidelity. but alass how can I come by y s pure love tha[t] I so much Desire, except thou О Lord shoudst give it Me: tis an effect of thy goodness w c I woud willingly purchase tho' at y e rate of the severest Tor­ ments - 1 have nothing with w I can purchase it for I am poverty it self. I can abandon & resign my self in every respe[ct] [t]o God: & therby shew that I love thee - receive my Nothing tis my whole estate. I have no oth r portion - I will have thee, О Love or I will have nothing. О be thou my only inheritance.-

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16 Emb: My soul hath longed for thy statutes. stand back, begon Deceitfull love. I Detest & abhor thee: since y e time I gave my heart to y s supream God whom I love & adore. [I] have no more listen to thy profane Discours how Darest thou y n come to trouble me in my chast flames - he y* holds my heart knows well how to Defend it: lay aside y11 thy Bow & thy quiver, or else get thee into anoth r Country: y e flames of love y* have consumed me [t]o ashes suffer me no more to relish any thing here below, having once tasted their sweetness, its impossible I shou afterwards suffer my self to be caught with a vain object - О My heavenly spouse, my Eyes, my chast eyes can behold with pleasure nothing but thee - all oth r objects are grievous. & wou lead me into y e Blackest Darkness, thou art my [o]nly happiness, thou art my only light. I know none but thee о supream Beauty, its thou y1 Dost penetrate into ye centar of my soul - its thou y* burnest me with so sweet a flame that I Desire not to be healed. eith r burn my heart for ever or take away my life This emb: read for y e next Picture

15 Emb: My life is spent in griefe & my years in sighing. My Days are consumed with grief: & My life is spent in heavyness: but О King of loves I shall soon be set at liberty: I can see Death at a Distance & he seems to aproach towards Me - yet I Dare not rejoyce for fear of Displeasing thee: Alass let me enjoy thy Presence - thou canst at once purify my Heart, & make it agreeab[le] to thy self, in spight of y s Drooping faintness so that nothing humane shall any more remain [in] me - but being free from every thing I shall n[o] longer subsist being torn from My self by thee О Lord, I shall no longer live but in Jesus: Ah I am reduced to nothing his lo[ve] has ravish me of my first strength in w c I was wont incessantly to run after y s fountain] of light.-I can no more act I can only sufffer;] my heart it self even my heart can only sigh[;] its in a profound peace as if it were in the world alone: I Doe not so much as perceive my self, yea I know not if I subsist. I have neith r strength nor power, thy arms that us to support me, give Me no relief now in my present missery: I cannot will, I canno[t] Desire, my soul is Dead to every

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thing, is it not time y n oh my Dear Lord to Dy[e] & be reunited to my first cause.17Emb: О that my steps were Directed to keep thy statues. [I] travell without fear, in this terrible Labyrinth so full of wind­ ings & turnings being confident of thy assistance О my Dear Lord I can see at a Distance y e boldest & most clear sighted falling headlong from [y] e rocks, yet I goe on without so much [a]s looking - & all my policy is that I have resignd my self to the care of my Heavenly Lover - that Blind Man whom I behold with admiration [a]t a Distance, is an excelent example [o]f faith & resignation - he is led by his little Dog. & vnder his conduct he [t]ravels securly with­ out stumbling or making a false step: is it possible then that I being vnder y e protection of thy providence shoud make any Difficulty [t]o resign my self, he that reckons vpon his own [s]trength activity or cunning is by his pride [qluickly drawn into Destruction. Oh how [e]xtreamly insolent & presumptous must he Be [y]* Dares in so great Danger trust to himself. [Th]ou hast taught Me to submit my self to the care of thy providence. & hereby I am rend [ejntirely free from further concern, this life [is] a labyrinth. & whoever woud travel safely must have a sincere faith and a pure [love.] 18 Emb: Establish my goings in thy paths that my footsteps may not slide О Divine Love, Doe thou lead Me for Im a child & cannot goe: О God consider my weakness for its exceding great: thou teachest me y e true paths y* lead vnto thy righteousness - but vnless thou assistest me I see my self so surrounded with mire, pitts, & precipices, that I cannot avoid my Destruction - I tremble at every step I make, О come to my aid: this stay is good for little, for without y e assistance of thy Love I am in continua[l] Danger of falling. - О Love forsak[e] Me not, but allways govern & conduct my goings -

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19Emb My flesh trembleth for fear of thee and Im afraid of thy judgments. О Lord Im vnworthy of thy angar, for Im vile Dust, & a vain empty Nothing, let Me therefore become y e object of thy pity & compassion, ah no. I Doe not fear thy Blows; oh Devine love, I apprehend Nothing but thy Displeasure, Alass My grief is great; My Horrour [increases every Moment, oh Where [c]an I hide Me, for avenging justice will [s]urely overtake Me & easily find Me [o]ut -1 can yet Oh my Dear Master, Discern thee vnder у Mask of fury minding [t]o conceal thy self for a season, it may [b]e then my Missery will not prove so [glreat as My fear - Alas, how inconsid-[e]rable a thing I am: wouldst thou Destroy me in a Moment; thou art My original & [f]irst Cause, and mayst easily reduce me to Nothing! withdraw thy thunder then [t]hou hast no need of thy Darts, for one of the looks, alass, will soon consume me to ashes[.]20 Emb. Turn away mine eyes, lest I behold vainity. all the vanitys that We comonly sett our hearts on in this World, doe pass away mor[e] swiftly that ye rivers of Water, happy are they that turn away from beholding their flattery - & Despise their Charms, they shall be Doubly happy, for their spirits shall be Deliv­ ered from hatefull Objects, and they may contemplate the King of Heaven, tis thou О Devine love, that worke[d] these wonders, for so soon as we abandon our selves to thee thou savest vs from the world, & its attempts: and dost load vs with vnspeakable favours, thou makest vs to hate foolish vanity, and to love the truth[,] thou guidest our steps in thy wisdom, and makest vs to avoid effeminate softness: ah hide me ever more from this Deceitfu[l] object, this sly and cunning impostor that woud with false and enchanting pleasure steal away y e heart of thy servant. 21 Emb. let my Heart be found in thy statutes that I be not ashamed Ah, receive My heart, for vnless it be to love thee, О lord, I will have no More to do with it. Oh grant Me this request and

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[v]ouchsafe to inspire it with thy own flames: if it is in thy keeping thou wilt make it allways faithfull. & I cannot abuse it since I must be governd by thy [g]ood pleasure! renew thy law within Me that 1 may never Depart from thy ways, but my heart May be allways vnder thy Direction. Govern it, О sovereign goodness, yea Doe More hide it within thy own Breast - let it never come forth again. May 1 never see it more but all my searches be vain, that while it is thus Burry & swallow'd vp in thy pure & Devine Essence, [I] may be ever employ in Blessing its too happy fate. 22 Emb. Come my Beloved, let vs go forth into the feild, let vs Dwell in the villages. let vs go My love, let Me follow thee into the village that We may Dwell there, let vs forsake y e City with its cumber & confusion, for I had much rather live in some savage & vnfrequented Cave, there at a Distance from the world, and free from its Noise, I will love & converse with thee continualy; there I shall enjoy a Calm and quiet silence, that I may contemplate] thy Devine wisdom; in travelling with thee I shall not be weary , for thou givest Me new strength, in these eternal ways one may walk Day & Night even without think­ ing of it. come my adoreable Master[,] let vs Depart quickly, & never return any more. Ah, I might soon goe astray if it was not for thy company. О Devine Love what Doe I say; I might: yea I certainly Must if thou shoudst leave me one moment. О how terribly must I lose My self, if I was not conducted by My Heavenly Lover. 23 Emb: Draw me oh My Divine spouse & I will run after thee, for the sweet odour of thy heavenly perfumes, has revived Me from my fatal languishing, and ravish My sences, this perfume sweeter than incence invites Me to follow thee without ceasing, without this Divine perfume I can no longer live how ignorant art thou yet in thy love - answer y e Heavenly spouse, so long as thou Desirest y e inviteing sweetness of perfumes, thou art but a weak lover, the shorter & more solid way is that of pure love, there neith r perfumes nor tenderness are Desired by y e soul that is entirely govern by my wisdom, there grief and pain & Torments Distinguish the perfect lover. What; wouldst thou walk

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•nnongst flowers & roses, when I led a life [o]f Torments; thou must lollow me in Missery, & expire on the Cross, before thou canst be worthy of Being Chosen by Me. 24 Emb: 0 that thou wert as My Brother: that sucked the Breasts of My Mother, when I shoud find thee without I woud Kiss thee Yea I should not be Despised. O, that I had thee for My Brother that sucks My Mothers Breasts, that I might carry thee in My Bosom & embrace thee fervently! shouldst thou favour Me wit[h] thy Chast kisses, I woud no more fear bein[g] Despised, yea I woud carry thee abroad that every one might behold My transport,] О Divine Infant, the author of My long sufferings, now that I have found thee thou dost revive My hope & fill Me with exceeding pleasure - I will now vnfold vnto thee My Desire, and it is that I may be wholly joyned vnto thee: grant Me this favour, О peaceable possesssor of My only happiness, and I shall no more be afraid of any thing:25 Emb: By Night on My Bed I sought him whom My soul loveth; 1 sought him but found him not. Why searchest thou thy spouse vpon the bed, о indiscreet love; its in vain for thee to seek him in such gloomy Darkness for thither he never uses to retire, look a little further, and behold him lying on the Cross, pierc'd with nails, [a]nd crowned with thorns, you shall [a]llways find him on this painfull Tree, for all his Divine ways are in missery, [a]nd Torments, - tis in vain for vs [t]o seek Jesus on a couch of shamefull softness, he lives in grief & Dyes in sufferings, hee's incessently Fatigu'd, in endeavouring to gain the sinfull [s]oul: his repose is in Torments, let vs suffer, let vs Dye to everything, [tjhen we shall easily find y e illustrious spouse of our Affections, but its a fruitless attempt to endeauour to find our saviour on the Bed-

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26 Emb. I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him but I found him not.

No, No, I will live no longer in ease & quietness[,] I will run every where to seek him whom I love: I have allready sought him but to little purpose, I will Doe so no more. He now mak[e] a Tour round this great city to express M[y] love for him. What art thou a Doing о foolish love; ah how vnskillfull & vnseasonable are thy researches; thou art led purely by thy ow[n] fancy & guided wholly by thy own sence. first thou seekest him on thy Bed, where as Jesus is on the Cross: afterwards thou art about runing into the city to seek for him that is allready hard by you, thou art Deceiv[d] in the method thou hast Chosen: Doe not forsak[e] this small Dwelling, only love & suffer, & hee will soon take vp his abode in thy heart; then thou shalt be satisfied being possess of thy happiness at all times & in all places, thou shalt then enjoy peace even in y e midst of sufferings, thou shalt Desire no more, thy heart shall be fully contented in the possession of thy treasure, that in every thing else thou shalt be more than satisfied. 27 Emb. saw ye him whom my soul loveth; it was but a little that I pass from them: but I found him whom my soul loveth; I held him & would not let him go. In withdrawing My self from every creature, I found him whom my soul loveth; while I follow'd nature so closely I Deprived my self of so sweet a Treasure, now I hold this heavenly Lover & will never any more suffer him to escape from Me: this Day I swear vnto him an eternal friendship, & a Fidelity never to be violated, let vs abide together oh my adoreable Master in this solitude, & I will Discover vnto thee my flames, I shall no more suffer Black ingratitude, for to possess thee is the end of all my wishes, here then separated & at a Distance from every thing; I will give thee an account of My love. Ah, let my heart rest on thy Bosom & there let it ever remain. 28 Emb: how excellent a thing it is for Me to cleave vnt[o] thee, & to put My trust in thee, is there any thing My Divine Master More Charm­ ing than such an adherence, thereby our hearts shall be vnited, we

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uli.ill have but one will & my hope shall not be in vain - I shall r\|HTu*nce y° Divine power who will bear Me vp with a mighty IM IU1, I Doe not fea[r] pain or Danger any More. While Im thus carry by y1' God whom I adore; all Torments are most easie to Me, I love y ,n as much as I abhor pleasures. What Change, great God, do I I >iscover in my heart -1 loved vanity. Now I Detest it. I fear y e least suffering: now Torments are lovely to me, it is thou О Divine love I hat hast Made Me thus happy: for without thee I coud Doe nothing.29 Emb: I sat Down vnder his shadow in whom I Delighted so much.Alass, what pain & Travel have I suffer'd: I have been a wanderer & a vagabond yet I have found nothing that coud comfort Me in my Missery, happily at last I have found him whom My soul loveth, how oxtreamly happy was I in makeing this Choice! [I] have found my repose vnder this fruitfull Tree, to which love is fasten . [I] have chosen it for my Dwelling, My heart can never be Disengaged from it: I rest vnder its shadow, its my habitation night & Day, y e More lonely & obscure [i]t is, tis so much more agreeable to My love, here I find fruits of an exquisite sweetness, others it may be will think there is better (for me) I freely own I never saw such for goodness in y e vniverse. 30 Emb:

how shall we sing y e lords song in a strange land: The Soul. alass, how can I tune my voice to holy musick, now I am in a strange land. w n I was near to thee[,] Oh my lord, & My Father, y111 made sacred consorts[,] but now I have laid aside my Lyre: I can sing n[o] more now I must sigh, I must groan, my heavy heart now knows no other notes.our Lord. it is I, it is I, that woud have thee for my glory to sing in every place, for theres no Dwelling so black as to make thee Desist from loving and burning in my flames: The Soul, let vs sing then, Dear Spouse: О how sweet is the harmony w n two hearts are truly in love: О ho[w] wonderfull is the concord, tis a

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consort allways the same, without y e least mixture of false stops, or Disagreeable sounds, that w c one Desires w n love is great, y e oth r answers without Delay, & there never happens a jarring note. О how charming is the song that Divine love marks out; let vs sing then О My heart, both Day & Night, they can never sing enough that are full of Love31 Emb. I charge you, oh Daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my Beloved, that ye tell him I am sick of love О you my faithfull companions, whom I see there you that run about the fields, if at any time you happen to meet my spouse, tell him that I [a]m sick of love. Alass, I was running my self [a]s you doe, to meet him whom my soul loveth, [&] all my travells were sweet vnto me, in seeking [t]his lovely spouse, but at present my sickness [i]s extream, my heart is so pierced with his Divine charms, that I am not able to move one step, here I lye in y e love that has charm Me, & am thus brought to the last gasp: Alass, I shoud recover a little from my sickness, coud I but yet hear his adoreable voice; Tell him that I am Dying: Describe vnto him my Torments, О My sweet sisters, inform my Heavenly lover, that I am ready to expire vnder y e weight of My sufferings. 32 Emb. stay Me with flowers, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love: Alass, Im Dying: ah cover Me with flowers, & forsake me not my sisters, surround me with thes[e] apples, that are found in the garden of my spouse: Ah hide me from all men, & let Me remain with you alone. О incomparable Love, to what purpose are these apples and these flowers: thou art sick & Dost not want flowers, but some of loves heavenly favours, these are Triffles and can no longer comfo[rt] thee, thorns & crosses, are now y e new flowers that love will have thee partake of. lay aside the sweet apple; and learn to be generous, if thou wouldst please thy adoreable Master: this is the way to gain his presence with thee. -

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33: Emb: My Beloved is mine, & I am his: hee feedeth amoung the lillies, vntill the Day Break & the shadows flee away. tis done, tis done, He have no more flowers, except it be to make a crown for my heavenly spouse: & for his sake I Doe from this moment forsake all fadeing pleasures, the heap of lillies that are about me represents my purity: & it was my spouse that gave it Me: Whatsome ever Does not come from him can [b]e nothing but vainity, ah my Dear, & Divine [Mlaster, keep still thy favours, for no sooner Dost thou confer y m y111 will return y m to thee again, these flowers are not sufficient. My heart likewise is wholly thine, never to be recalled, we will rejoyce here amoung the lillies, till Day returns, my nights are sweet because then thou sufferest Me to entertain thee, [I] am wholly thine, & thou art wholly mine, my happiness & Joy are both extream, love is my only law, thou lovest Me. & thou knowest Lord I love thee again. 34 Emb. I am my well beloved's, and his Desire is towards me. As the Iron follows the loadstone, so Does my heart allways follow after thee о my Divine Master: thou makest an impression on my heart as on a Marinars compass, by thy looks, thy words, & thy adoreable Desires; & turnest me round w way thou wilt, as the sun flower turns towards y e light of y e sun, of w c it seems to be amourous[;] and tho' it cannot forsake y e earth, yet shews its incli­ nation to follow him in his round through y e heavens, my heart likewise being turned towards love, the same is my shineing light, it leads me in my course, and makes both my night & my Day: When I am at a Distance from it then I am in Darkness: but when it is near y e night is gone, it inspires me with its truth and without it all objects are black & Dismal to me. without love, I am in Death, he is my spirit and My life, by him I am set free from all mischeif, without any endeavou[r] of my own, he is mine & I am his: О how reciprocal is our love: theres nothing in it Deceitfull, since he is himself, it is firm support.

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35 Emb. When my beloved spake my soul Melted in me. О pure & Divine fire, О most Delicious warmth, thou Destroyest an amourous soul, I melt as soon as I hear the sweetness of that Divine voice, its that w c Disolves My heart, О how admirable a school is love, y e soul steals into its lord, it has no more proper existence, but is lost & swallowed vp in its God: Ye acctivity of so excelent a fire gives it a perfect innocence, it is thou О Divine love that art the author of this Change: tis thou w maketh the soul pass into that w c it loves, tis thou w c Dost reduce it to a certain Nothing, where in by an extream happiness it finds the all: let us Banish prosperity, & we shall find the truth, yea we shall find it in its very sourse.

36. Emb. Whom have I in heaven but thee, & there is none upon earth y* I Desire in comparison of thee: After this change, what can I Desire on earth, or even in heaven it self: I have no more any Desire, or strength all is pass into him whom I love, thou oh my God, art vnto me y e heaven of heavens, thy happiness Makes me contented, all my Desire & expectation is that thou mayes[t] be ever glorious, all my happiness is in thee, therefore it cannot fail, that thou mayst be ever praised is y e vtmost extent of My Desiref;] thy felicity renders mine immoveable. Oh my heavenly spouse, I cannot express what I feel in y e Bottom of my heart, for thou hast vouchsafed to imprint on it a succession o[f] y e purest flames: Ah that thou woudst nev[er] Blot y m out is y e height of My wishes -

37. Emb.

alass, that I shoud soiourn so long in Mesech, & Dwell in y e tents of Keder [O] Dear & Divine spouse how Tedious is my Banishment: I wait for y e end of My Course, but am forbid by thy Divine wisdom [t]o wish for so sweet a happiness. I am in [a] strange land the inhabi­ tants whereof [I] abhor, for they have no knowledge of thee, & this

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redoubles my Torments, thy enemies make war against Me, Yet I Dwell among y m . & were it not for thee I shoud be in Dreadfull Missery. [I] withdraw My self into a solitary place, [&] there I recount vnto thee my sufferings; thus am I without Disturbance, in the midst of a wicked people, thou art not loved of y m О sweet Center of my soul, theres none of y m Burns with thy flames, О how wicked it is not to love thee, thou hast inflamed me, why then dost [t]hou leave me in a rebelious generation, it is only for thy sake that I live, Ah, if ever my heart was faithfull to thee, take me hence, О my Dear Master. 38 Emb: Oh wretched Man that I am: Who shall Deliver Me from this Body of Death I languish in a prison, О My adoreable Master, in w c I am in Danger of being made thy enemy: Ah, look vpon my Affliction, and preserve me from offending thee. I am, alass, I am a wretched Man, as yet wholly shutt vp with in my self: I am one that doe nothing generously, to please y e object that I love & adore, y e spirr[it] Draws me vpwards, and y e Body weighs M[e] Down, it is a strange combat that I am i[n-] gaged, in, I woud walk in thy ways[;] but in spite of me, My Body subjects me to its Desires, oh great God have pity on my wretched condition, thou knowest my extream weakness: Deliver me from this Body of Death, this is what I hope for from thy goodness: 39 Emb: I am in a strait between two. for I Desire to Depart that I may be with Christ. My Heart flyes towards thee, oh my adoreable Master, but My Body is tyed to the Earth, О Break y e Chain that confines me for thou alone canst do it. О be not angary with My request О Lord [i]n whom I trust, take part in My sufferings: thou art my Lord & my Father. My ardent Desire is to be vnited to thee & to be at a Distance from every thing else, thou knowest [O] my Divine spouse how much I Detest y e world, yet Im in it in spite of Me, Yea, I abide in it with patience, thy will shall ever be my law, & I will ever live in obedience to it.

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40. Emb. take my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy Name. Alass, о Dear spouse, My soul is prison[d!] and thou only canst bring it out of prison: thou Dost not hearken vnto My prayer, at which I am much confounded, ah, if of thy goodness thou wouldst take Me out of M[e,] I shoud reap a Double advantage: for this Me is nothing but a slavery that renders Me vnworthy of thee. О Divine lord, sweet center of my soul, tis against this Me that I mak[e] endless exclamations, for this is the too fatal prison of my heart, the other I can patiently Bear - Bring Me out of Me, О Dear conquerour, and I shall live tho in y e greatest sufferings, without complaining of My Misery.

41. Emb. As the Hart panteth after the water Brooks, so panteth My soul after thee О God: the Hart Does not so ardently Desire the Clear Waters of a foun­ tain, As I Desire that water w c thou О God Didst promise to the woman of Samaria, suffer Me not to languish for my thirst is extream. thou knowest how much I love thee; I cannot Defer this happiness any longer without Dying. О give Me in this my thirst those rivers of everlasting waters that produce in vs rivers of perfect peace, thy Bounty is inexhaustible, oh vouchsafe to satisfy My re­ quest, in quenching My thirst thou givest Me life. Ah have pity on my Condition. & since I am thy servant, eith r come to my aid or give me Death.-

42: Emb. When shall I come to appear before the presence of Go[d] When wilt thou do me this favour to call Me hom[e] to thy self, when shall it be О Divine Master, that thou wilt compleat My happiness. w n wilt thou let me see thy lovely Countenance: I lan­ guish nig[ht] and Day: if thou acceptest my love, Deliver Me from this Bondage, thou art my sovereign happin[ess,] my Treasure, my comfort, & glory, besides thee I Desire nothing thou hast the entire conquest of My heart wilt thou suffer me to languish very long thou that art the author of my Chast Flames.- thou Drawest Me thou carryest away My soul by force; о how happy shoud I be in this

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attraction, migh[t] I but Dye, might I Dye before thy eyes! О too happy love, how lucky is thy lot! yet thou thinkest thy self most vnfortunate; to asure thee of thy Destiny, y e spouse needs only Draw aside the curtaifn.] but thou Dost not vnderstand this high mystery: Didst thou know how to find him By faith, far from longing thus after thy last hour, thou wouldst wholly abandon thy self to the Will of th[y] King, what we take to be extream love, Does frequently bear too great regard to self, We woud enjoy our object, without considering that God is Best pleased with a perfect resignation] of our selves into his hands, hee is not honour' by every thing that wee Desire, ye Desire is ye effect of our Will, and this we ought to submit to his pure goodness in everything].

43. Emb: О that I had wings like a Dove, that I might flye away, & be at rest give Me oh my Divine Master, wings like a Dove, that I may fly towards thee, & my flames May be Eternal. My soul & My heart have allready forsaken the Earth, & taken vp their habitation in thy heavenly rest, Oh Divine Love, Destroy this heavy Body that con­ fines Me, tis this that yet withholds Me, My soul is allready in heaven: Oh lord, whom I adore, let me expire in thy presence, Im in extream pain[,] Im in an agony, take Me hence, oh My adoreable Master, & seing I love thee, call Me home to thy self; there I shall enjoy a profound peace that is not known here below, happy is hee, that being seperated from y e world, is occupy night and Day with thy Divine Charms.

44. Emb: how lovely are thy Tabernacles, Oh Lord of Hosts. My Soul longeth for y e courts of the Lord: Oh love how pleasent is thy Dwelling; Almighty God, oh lord of Hosts: oh pure & adoreable Beauty, thou hast ravish my sence[s:] thou hast so transported Me that I no more kno[w] what I am, y e more vehemently that I love, th[e] less Doe I know what I say, alass I have lost My speech. Doe thou speak for Me, О My supream happiness, I come to learn at thy school, and thou secretly instuctest me in my nothing: When I saught thee By my self I relyed on my own endeavours, but thy infinite wisdom by instructing me in its

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marvelous Designs, has made me to vnderstand how I ought to love thee, and that I ought to moderate my Transports, since they are too mean for thy excelent greatness.

45: Emb. Make hast My beloved, and be thou like vnto a roe or a young Hart, on the Mountains of spices [T]hou hast taught Me a high lesson, О my [CJharming Teacher, & my soul is well contented with it, I love no more after my own way. [I aim now entering on y e Dutys of a perfect Lover, once I Desired thee for my own sake, but [n]ow I Desire thee for thy self. Make hast, make hast, My Dear Master, fly & conquer: [I] shall make no more requests but for thy interests. & for pure love, ah run through [a]ll y e Earth. & make a long journey every where: that in running from one [e]nd of y e Earth to the other thou mayest [glain a multitude of Hearts. My mind is satisfied, I have no more wishes for my [s]elf, alass how weak was I in thinking My flame pure, all was mixed with uncleaness: while in loveing thee, [I] was secretly My self y e end of my love. [I]s this the way to love thee, О my Sovereign Lord. I love thee now after another fashion, & tho' its not attended with such forward fondness: yet my love is a hundred times more strong, tis pure & without mixture or Disguise, Oh my heavenly master mayest thou [conquer all the hearts in] this great [world.] I think of nothing now but thy glory; and tho' I shoud suffer a thousand Different Torments; My heart, my sorrowfull heart shall no more complain, it loves thee now without Dissimulation: its no more Divided, I have no[w] found y e secret of a perfect vnion, О perfect Indivisible, and Immense Being - that art in every place, tho' not comprehended in any; hee that mourns thy Absence, knows not yet that thou art God. The Conclusion. let us conclude that the end of these passionate sighs, is the end of all our Desires. What is there to be Desired besides thee о my adoreable Master. The heavens themselves, without thee О sweet author of my Being: coud never satisfy such a heart as mine, for thou [a]rt my only treasure. with thee, even sufferings shall be my interest & advantage, yea hell, even hell, might I be but near to thee, shoud be to me a Blessed

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inheritance, its Torments shoud be sweet vnto me. heaven & all its joys without thee woud be my torments. To explain this wee say that when the heart truly loves thee, all places near to thee are alike vnto it; there can be no more sufferings where thy love is predominant. Be then so Calm, О my fire, that one spark fly not from thee, let vs have no more sighs, no more fear, no more zeal, except it be for the Glory of God. Amen

Reviews THOMAS HEFFERNAN, Art and Emblem: Early Seventeenth-Century English Poetry of Devotion. Tokyo: The Renaissance Institute, Sophia University, Japan, 1991. Pp. viii + 123,14 illus. [no price recorded]. There has been little enough recent work on the English devotional emblem and its place in seventeenth-century poetics, and so one is well disposed towards any attempt to update Barbara Lewalski's Protestant Poetics (1979) in this field. Heffernan's study includes close readings of particular emblems by Quarles and Hawkins, and of a few well-known poems by Donne and Herbert, in the context of a wider discussion of the "continuity of world view from medieval to late-Renaissance times'' (p. v). The starting point for its argument would thus be Douglas Bush's comment that the Renaissance emblem was "one of the last European manifestations of a medieval habit of mind" (English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century, p. 89). The trouble with this study is that it does not appear to have taken much account of published work on the emblem any later than Bush. Not only are many of its arguments out of date, but it is full of mistakes of the kind which could easily have been corrected by a scholar who knew the recent literature of his subject. The most useful part of the book is its attempt to define the relationship between the secular, humanist, sixteenth-century emblem modeled on Alciato, and the spiritual emblems of seventeenthcentury England. Heffernan recognizes the essential continuity of the latter with the devotional practices of the late-medieval English mystics, and their common basis in theories of symbolism which go back to Augustine. However, he does not attempt to trace the precise channels of transmission through which such writers as Julian of Norwich or Walter Hilton, let alone St. Bonaventura or Hugh of St. Victor, reached seventeenth-century readers in England: "what I have to say about them [late-Renaissance poets] does not depend on whether they read the authors I cite" (p. v). The confession is disappointing, since the channels through which at least the major Patristic writers were transmitted are well-known, and would 183

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give this book the historical specificity which it sadly lacks. Instead, the methodology of this study is in the C. S. Lewis, or perhaps D. W. Robertson, mode, which tends to assume that the historicity of texts is largely a matter of reducing them to Augustinian stereotypes— shadows of a discarded image. This lack of historical focus extends most damagingly to the use of key terms, notably the word "emblem" itself. In his desire to demonstrate the continuity of Medieval with Renaissance theories of symbolism, Heffernan is far too ready to assume that the history of the word "emblem" conforms with Renaissance usage. His claim (p. 1, repeated p. 36) that Augustine already called parable "emblems" rests on no better authority than a statement by Ruth Wallerstein (Studies in Seventeenth-Century Poetic [1950, repr. 1965] p. 36), for which neither Wallerstein nor Heffernan give a reference. I have to say that I do not believe Augustine anywhere uses the term "emblem" in the required sense. The similar claim (Heffernan, p. 1, repeated p. 35) that Lydgate attests this meaning in English as early as 1419 is based on a mistaken reading in OED of The Chorle and Byrd which was corrected in Russell's Emblem and Device in France (1985, p. 198) and Ayers Bagley's article in Emblematica, 4 (1989 p. 195, n. 5). That a book on emblematics published in 1991 should show no knowledge of Hessell Miedema's important article (JWCI, 1968) and the large body of work on the definition and prehistory of the term that have followed in its wake is, frankly, scandalous. Having noted that Alciato invokes hieroglyphics as a model for his emblems, Heffernan blithely identifies emblems with hieroglyphics: "As the name given the new Renaissance art form . . . the term emblem refers to the Alciatian 'hieroglyph'" (p. 36). Such a statement shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the differentia specifica between the two forms. The statement that Quarles's Emblems was "the most popular book in England during the seventeenth century, apart from the Bible" (p. 76) is patent nonsense—it is misquoting Bush, op. cit. p. 89, whose claim that "Emblems (1635) was the most popular book of verse of the seventeenth century" (my emphasis) is plausible, even though unsupported by any evidence, and has occasionally been correctly quoted since (e. g. by K. J. Holtgen, Aspects of the Emblem 1986, p. 31—Heffernan does not appear to know any of Holtgen's published work on Quarles). What is one to say of a book where nearly all the primary references are cited from secondary sources, and most of the secondary

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sources that are relevant to the argument are ignored? Any competent examiner could have corrected such a mistake when this book was presented as a doctoral thesis. Though they may be difficult to find overseas, you cannot do good work in this field without access to authoritative texts and to current research. It is over ten years since Peter Daly's Literature in the Light of the Emblem (1979) tried to clarify the terms in which it was meaningful to speak of what Heffernan calls "emblem poems." Of course, it is possible to disagree with Daly, but it is surely inadvisable to treat the poetry of Donne and Herbert as "naked emblems" (p. 16 using a definition of "naked emblem" quoted from Henry Green) as though such a definition and such description were still uncontroversial. The argument of the second of this book's three chapters is that, as a version of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the emblem was an expression of "mystical humanism"—an ideographic sign-system used to shadow divine ideas. This made it readily adaptable to the established symbology of Christian mysticism in the seventeenth century. The historical development from humanist neo-Platonism to postTridentine Christian emblematics can be accounted for on these terms. The development is already prefigured, Heffernan argues in a somewhat confusing digression, in Pico's 1495 conversion, and could thus be seen as a version of Renaissance syncretism writ large (Heffernan does not quite say this, but it is what he means). But such an equation elides too many differences—the connections of early emblem books with Florentine neo-Platonism were not at all close, despite their common interest in Horapollo. Heffernan appears to have been misled by the early claims of Edgar Wind and Ernst Gombrich concerning the relevance of emblem books to neo-Platonic studies. The issue may not be quite dead, but it now needs extremely careful handling. The third chapter finds the "unifying principle" of seventeenthcentury emblematics in what Heffernan calls "the figural I." The argument is based on an analysis of the function of figura in formal meditation, which involved not only the application of Old and New Testament figures to the speaker's own spiritual condition, but also what Heffernan calls "a figural relationship between speaker and reader or hearer" (p. 77) in which the three powers of the soul— memory, understanding and will—are enlisted to participate vicariously in a meditation that becomes the reader's own. But though this analysis produces some suggestive readings of particular em-

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blems, it seems to raise a number of problems. The precise sense of such terms as "figure" and "type," and their relationship to the traditional fourfold levels of biblical exegesis, are already complex (and confused) enough by the seventeenth century for any extension of such usage to become even more confusing. If we are going to kidnap the technical terms of traditional exegesis to apply them to our own models of communication, we need to be quite clear about the differences between our own and historical usage. Those distinctions are frequently blurred in this discussion. Moreover, though the relation of the meditative "I" to the reader of seventeenth-century devotions is a highly interesting topic for analysis, the claim that the speaking voice can be subsumed under the model of the "figural I" seems to me to oversimplify the variety and complexity of the actual speech situations in Quarles's emblems. Quarles's speaker may be Anima or Cupid, and the quatrain "Epigram" which has the last word in each emblem has a wholly different identity and voice from that of the subscriptio, which it frequently corrects or contradicts. Indeed, Quarles recasts many of the poems he found in his Jesuit sources in the form of a dialogue; it is unclear to me how the reader can identify with the "figural I" of a dialogue. Indeed, even in the more monologic meditations, the voice of Quarles's emblems is seldom a single meditative or reflective voice, but a conversation or dialogue of voices. Because the voices are both, in some sense, those of the Christian conscience debating with itself, it is often difficult to say whether what we are listening to is one speaker or two, for though there are two voices they are parts of a single self or subject. Only a close analysis of far more emblems than Heffernan discusses would serve to show whether these are, finally, closed, monologic texts, or an open and unresolved discourse between competing voices. Though I have called this mode "dialogue," it is, effectively, identical with what Richard Baxter later in the century was to call "soliloquy": Because meer Cogitation if it be not prest home, will not so pierce and effect the heart, therefore we must here proceed to a second step which is called Soliloquy, which is nothing but a pleading the case with our own souls, and:

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Turn your cogitations often into soliloquies; methodically and earnestly preaching to your hearts, as you would do on that subject to others if it were to save their souls . . . The only difference between Baxter's "soliloquy" as the sermon­ izing of the soul, and Quarles's meditative dialogues is that in the latter the heart is often allowed to answer back as if in a sic et поп debate. The idea that the reader of such a debate should identify with its conflicts of argument, and thus be drawn to the act of reformed will with which it concludes, is not implausible. But to call such identification "figural," and thus identify it with the essen­ tial modus operandi of the emblem, is to misrepresent the essential meaning of both figura and "emblem." This study might be thought to provide a useful introduction to the concept of the Book of Nature and its historical connections with Biblical exegesis, though this has been done better elsewhere (Lewalski, op. cit.; Michael Schilling, Imagines Mundi, Frankfurt a. M : Peter Lang, 1979). It contains useful discussions of the concept of "the eye of the mind"—the oculi mentis and the apex mentis. Henry Hawkins's claim in Partheneia Sacra that he is dedicating profane instruments to "a better use" is usefully shown to go back to a phrase of St Augustine's—the fact that Augustine's example of such "better use" is the vessels and ornaments of gold and silver which the Israelites carried away from Egypt (p. 36) is suggestive if one recalls that it was precisely the inlaid ornaments on such vessels which were traditionally known as emblemata. This is the first scholarly work I have seen which recognizes the historical significance of the eighteenth-century modernized text of Quarles. But this is not the book we need on seventeenth-century English emblematics. Why is there no bibliography, no index? MICHAEL BATH University of Strathclyde, Glasgow

1. Richard Baxter, Saints Everlasting Rest (1671), p. 749, p. 307; quoted in Barbara Lewalski, Protestant Poetics (1979), p. 154.

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LESTER С. OLSON, Emblems of American Community in the Revolu­ tionary Era: A Study in Rhetorical Iconology. Washington and Lon­ don: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. Pp. xxii + 306, 56 illus. ISBN 1-560-98066-4. Lester Olson's Emblems of American Community in the Revolution­ ary Era is a densely-packed and highly-informative study of the changing iconography of America during the eighteenth century. As the sub-title of the book (A Study in Rhetorical Iconology) suggests, Olson is concerned with images of America, "speaking pictures" of the body politic of the emerging nation-state that were employed to "influence a people to feel, believe, or act in desired ways" (p. xvi). As the reader quickly discovers, Olson is attempting to chart the highly complex transformation of images that mostly originated, not in America itself, but in Britain and France. Furthermore, the images themselves—principally the snake, the Indian (Olson is careful to explain his choice of this term), and the child—were throughout the period frequently capable of evoking multiple meanings. To show how certain pictorial images that designated the British colonies in America as a body politic evolved and transformed themselves in Britain, France, and America, beginning over two decades before the Revolution itself, is a demanding task. To show how those images were themselves a powerful part of the rhetoric that led to the creation of the United States is perhaps an even more demanding task, but it is a very worthwhile one that leads Olson into exciting new territory. Truly interdisciplinary in its approach, for it draws upon the disciplines of iconography, rhetoric, and history, Emblems of Ameri­ can Community attempts to incorporate the study of material culture through its detailed attention to vernacular objects. These, Olson shows, can frequently be read as symbolic "texts" in the endeavour to gauge the political impact of an image within the popular culture as conveyed through such diverse media as statues, paintings, prints, flags, coins, medals, paper-money, newspaper mastheads, illuminated displays, and houseware. Through such media the attitudes and beliefs of the less literate colonists were shaped, Olson contends, and their political identity established by contact with powerfully persuasive images.

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Although the key images of the snake (whether the divided snake, the circular snake, or the rattle snake), the Indian, and the child are relatively familiar, Olson's work is full of surprises. One is struck by the sheer variety of ways each image was used, a product of the inherent ambiguity of each, the snake being a particularly effective example with its traditional associations with evil (guile, deceit, and treachery) but also with its seemingly contradictory potential as an image of the geographical form of a divided land soon to be joined or of such humane values as prudence, vigilance, and eternity. The Indian could be female, foreign, alien to European culture, and above all inferior; and the same figure could also be presented as a victim (sexual and otherwise) of patriarchal and colonial British policy. At the same time, the Indian could be male, an aggressive symbol of the power latent in the New World. The child by contrast was initially useful as an image of dependency upon the "Parent" country, but in time expectations concerning the nature of "family" relationships introduced notes of doubt and scepticism. In the political turmoil of the Colonies' revolt, who needed to be reformed— parent or child? Furthermore, as Richard Wells pointed out in 1774, "We look to manhood—our muscles swell out with youthful vigour, our sinews spring with elastic force; and we feel the marrow of Englishmen in our bones. The day of independent manhood is at hand . . ." (quoted p. 199). Or, as another writer in The Pennsylvania Magazine early in 1775 put it: "America has now outgrown the state of infancy: Her strength and commerce make large advances to manhood" (quoted p. 199). Equally surprising and gratifying is the skilful manner in which Olson traces the broad development of each central image through the chronology of the pre-Revolution, Revolution, and post-Revolution eras in Britain, America, and (perhaps to a lesser extent) France. In broad terms, as already implied, he is concerned with the ways in which key images within the popular culture, while initially depicting the inferiority of all things American, ultimately adopted, in American hands, a positive and often Neo-Classical manner in the light of newly-achieved independence. One should add too that Olson, though concentrating on three central images, constantly enlivens his discussion by introducing a number of examples of other images employed in emblematic ways in the ideological struggle that led to independence—the eagle (that fascinating transformation from lowly snake to regal bird), the Massachusetts Bay pine,

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the severed limbs (the colonies) of Britannia, and so on. His final chapter on "Uncommon Images of the Colonies" is a storehouse of such images. Of particular importance here are images alluding to the Roman Empire and Republic, suggestive at times of the decline of British imperial power and at other times of the growth of a new political entity based upon republican principles. A quite different set of emblematic images depict the colonies as various animals, almost always beasts of burden or sources of nourishment to be exploited or devoured by Britain. As one might expect, the number thirteen is prominent to suggest the united but separate colonies, whether as thirteen hearts, hands, candles, stars, stripes, pillars, arrows, interlinked rings, harp-strings, bees, or stripes on a zebra. Another delight of Olson's book is his delineation of the media through which the images were carried within the popular culture. Olson deals with the burgeoning of newspapers, pamphlets, political prints, magazines, and almanacs. However, this leads into discussions of numerous examples from the other media mentioned above. For example, after 1775 paper currency was produced and circulated in large quantities by the individual colonies and by the Continental Congress. Such paper notes were usually decorated with images, the vast majority in the form of emblems and devices involving pictures and mottoes. While numismatists have written about these images, they have largely been ignored by students of the emblem and by historians at large. What Olson attempts to do (as in his discussion of other media) is argue for the cumulative impact upon the emerging American consciousness of such items of material culture, whether military and state flags, textiles, rebuses, decorated powder-horns, or porcelain and creamware plates, bowls, and pitchers. Olson's Emblems of American Community contains detailed discussions of such emblematic devices as the divided snake with the motto "Join or die," the rattle snake with the motto "Don't tread on me," and Benjamin Franklin's more complex medal design of the infant Hercules killing two snakes while defended by Minerva holding a shield with the fleurs-de-lis of France who is in turn attacked by a leopard representing Britain, the motto being "Libertas Americana" on one side and "Non sine diis animosus infans" on the obverse. Understandably, Olson's book will be of considerable interest to students of the emblem anxious to explore American manifestations of the emblematic mode at all levels of the cultural spectrum.

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What is disappointing, however, is that Olson's study tends virtu­ ally to ignore the whole tradition of emblem literature, referring only to George Richardson's 1777-79 translation of Ripa (Olson cites the depiction of an Indian to represent America), and two French счпЫет books of Nicolas Verrien, Livre curieux et utile pour les sqavans, et artistes (Paris, 1685) and Recueil d'emhlemes, devises, medailles, et figures hieroglyphiques (Paris, 1696 and 1724), these latter cited as the source for the segmented snake motif, though earlier noted by Frank Sommer and Leo Lemay. One looks in vain for some indication of the continuity and subsequent transformation of the emblem tradition as it crossed the Atlantic. Apart from the one example of the segmented snake, Olson offers no hints about this matter. Yet he makes much of the snake arranged in circular form taking its tail in its mouth, and he mentions the emblem of the snake that strikes back when trodden upon ("Nemo me impune lacessit"), a familiar heraldic and emblematic topos. The name that calls out for a great deal more attention than Olson has been able to offer here is that of Benjamin Franklin. Not only did Franklin design emblematic devices for paper money, for flags, and for prints, but he drew fairly extensively upon emblem books to do so. It is known that he owned emblem books and had access to others, and he also wrote a number of explanatory articles on the emblems and devices he created. A certain amount of study con1. Frank H. Sommer, "Emblem and Device: The Origin of the Great Seal of the United States/' Art Quarterly, 24 (1961), 56-76 (see 63 and 65); J. A. Leo Lemay, "The American Aesthetic of Franklin's Visual Creations," The Pennsylvania Magazine, 111, no. 4 (Oct. 1987), 465-99 (see 479-80). 2. Not mentioned by Olson are the copies of emblem books by Joachim Camerarius, Diego Saavedra, and J. C. Weigels, all used by him for his designs for the Continental Currency in 1775; see Eric P. Newman's "Continental Cur­ rency and the Fugio Cent: Sources of Emblems and Mottoes," Numismatist (Dec. 1966), 1587-98; and the same author's The Early Paper Money of America (1967; rpt. Racine, Wis., 1976).

3.

See Pennsylvania Gazette (12 Jan. 1748 and 16 April 1748) on his emblematic designs for flags; and Pennsylvania Gazette (20 Sept. 1775) and Pennsylvania Joyrnal and Weekly Advertiser (27 Dec. 1775) on his emblematic designs for the Continental Currency and the meaning of the rattlesnake device "on one of the drums belonging to the marines now raising, . . ." For detailed discussion of these, see the works by Newman already referred to in Note 2, together with the important and thorough article by J. A. Leo Lemay referred to in Note 1.

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cerning these matters has already been carried out, something acknowledged only very cursorily in Olson's endnotes. One would like to know much more about all this. Was Franklin's acquaintance with the European emblem atypical? How widely-known in America were European emblem books? Were American publishers producing emblem books and were their aesthetics different from those of their European counterparts in the kinds of significant ways that Olson has discussed in his comparison of the different images emanating from Britain, France, and America? Perhaps all this belongs in a separate study, but, having surveyed part of the general landscape of emblematic images in eighteenth-century America, Olson is clearly well-equipped to answer some of these crucial questions. However, in spite of this disappointment, Olson's book remains an important model for those working in emblem studies. It shows what can be done when the close scrutiny of material culture (what student of emblem literature, for example, has not paid lip service to the ubiquity of the emblem and the impresa in all manner of artistic media in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?) is used as an analytical tool to examine popular culture and the processes of what Olson has chosen to call "rhetorical iconology." ALAN R. YOUNG Acadia University

This last is unaccountably ignored by Olson, even though it touches on a number of points germane to his arguments.

RESEARCH REPORTS, NOTES, QUERIES, AND NOTICES

An Unlisted and Unrecorded Sixteenth-Century French Emblem Book: Charles Jourdain's Le Blason des Fleurs John Manning The Queen's University of Belfast Charles Jourdain's Le Blason des Fleurs, published at Paris in 1555, would appear to have escaped notice as a significant contribution to emblematic production in France. No mention of this work is to be found in Praz or Saunders, or indeed in any of the standard bibliographical works of reference concerning the French emblem book. The failure of so many scholars to mention this work perhaps may be forgiven, since the book is exceedingly rare. The sole surviving copy of the first edition is in the Pierpont Morgan Library. It is not in the card catalogue, but has been allocated the call number 76443. There is no copy of any subsequent edition in the British Library, the Bibliotheque Nationale, the Firestone Library, Princeton, or the Stirling Maxwell Collection in Glasgow University Library, and it may be conjectured that only this single copy in one edition has survived. Although its format is unusually small, it conforms in its contents and typographical lay-out to the form and substance of many midcentury emblem books published in France: each emblem occupies both sides of the opening, the pictura on one side, text on the other. In this case the woodcut appears on the right, the explanatory verses on the left, although in some other books, such as La Perriere's, the order of pictura and text is the other way about. There are few surprises as the author takes familiar meanings from various flowers and herbs, drawing moral lessons, practical advice, and directions for physical and spiritual health from the individual offerings that make up this floral tribute. The "fleur de Lys" is a sign of Virginity, the white rose of Candour. We are told the familiar story from Fulgentius's Mythologicon II, 4, of how the red rose gained its colour, and, through this story of Venus and 195

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Adonis, warned against foolish love. The Musk Rose is an emblem of Purity. Various plants are valued for their medicinal properties: the "Aulbisoin" may be applied to sore eyes, the "peruenche" (periwinkle) relieves stomach cramp, the "pauot" (poppy) brings sleep, the juice of the strawberry is said to cure skin blemishes, while its fruit remedies splenetic disorders ("la rate"). Bugloss is recommended against "le tremblement de cueur," while two remedies are given for constipation. Stocks ("gyroflees") are said to promote fertility in women, while the broad bean ("La febue") is recommended to promote the supply of milk in breast-feeding mothers. Red-currants ("les groseilles") guard against all evil spells and malign influences. Other plants are extolled simply for their beauty and flavour and for the pleasure they bring the human spirit. The commonplace nature of much of this means that it would be almost impossible to establish Jourdain's precise sources. Significance may sometimes be procured by means of a pun, but many meanings may be found in the contemporary iconographical handbooks of Cartari, Gyraldi, and Valeriano. Medical information could derive as much from the classical authority of Pliny or Dioscorides as from contemporary reference books on medical botany like those of Fuchs or M a t t h i o l u s , b u t the a u t h o r does not d i s d a i n countryman's lore and rustic superstition. Yet, despite the commonplace nature of much of its content, this was obviously intended to be no ordinary book. Each woodcut has been delicately and tastefully hand-coloured. Jourdain, who describes himself on the title page as an "enlimineur," exercises his professional skill at every opportunity. The choice of the small format must have constituted an artistic challenge that calls to mind the fashion for the portrait miniature. Moreover, the book was particularly designed for Royal readers, and was specifically dedicated to "Marguerite Princesse de France," the third daughter of Henri II and Catherine de' Medici. The parents would have seen, and probably were meant to see, the gift presented to their daughter. In 1555, the date of publication and presumably of presentation, the Princess was eleven or twelve years old. The small format of the book may have been chosen deliberately as more appropriate for a child than an adult. The analogy of the royal portrait miniature seems not inappropriate, for Jourdain's "blason" is not simply a catalogue of herbal remedies, but an iconographic portrait of the Princess herself. Pre-eminent among the flowers that make up the collection is, not altogether unexpectedly,

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the "Marguerite/' a punning reference to both the Princess's name and to "la fleur de Marguerite" (the daisy), which is here characterized as "des fleurs la plus elite." Emblem and courtly rebus are on this occasion virtually indistinguishable. The place of the "fleur de Lys" in this garland of compliments is assured not only because it is a symbol of the Princess's chastity, but because it is also the national badge of France. The inclusion of the Iris is intended to recall the famous emblem of the Princess's mother, Catherine de' Medici. The physical and moral significances of the flowers in the collection, the beauty, the health-promoting properties, the candour and the virginity, are all part of the royal portrait, since they indicate qualities the Princess possesses. Just as the "Violette de Mars" (the March violet) betokens Spring and promises happiness to humankind ("ie rends les humains contens"), so too the people of France must similarly rejoice in their royal Princess. The book must also have been intended as something of a vademecum for the young Princess as she entered young womanhood. She is warned against the dangers of foolish love, and is offered natural recipes that will ensure the continuance of her beauty and health throughout her life. The poet also offers her the means to promote fertility, and herbal remedies to promote the flow of milk from her breasts which will continue the royal line. He calls down good wishes for her continued health and happiness, and through a species of natural magic offers her talismanic protection against maleficent influences that may assail her in future life. All this can be seen as the poet's praise of the book's young recipient and sincere wishes for her future success in her maturity. It would be churlish, and undoubtedly naive, to point out that it all did not work out quite like this in the subsequent course of her life. Her marriage to Henri de Navarre in 1572 ended in divorce in 1599. While Jourdain was no prophet, there can be little doubt of the author's sincerity in wishing for the future happiness of this young woman, when the book was presented to her in 1555. Apart from the significance of the individual herbs and flowers, what is of interest about this book is what it tells us about the nature of emblematic writing at this time in France, and of the way that this book typifies at a very early date tendencies that were to become more common and marked as the genre developed during the last half of the sixteenth century. The small print-run of the book reminds us perhaps more of the tradition of emblematic manuscripts

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than of published emblem books. Many manuscripts were dedi­ cated to noble patrons, and these do not seem to have been conceived of in terms that suggest that they were preliminary drafts intended for future publication. They were finished works in their own right governed by a particular and separate decorum from that which pertained to the printed emblem books conceived for a wider audi­ ence. I am reminded, of course, of several English works of this kind: Thomas Palmer's Two Hundred Poosees (British Library Sloane MS 3794), dedicated to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester; the same author's Sprite of Trees and Herbes (British Library MS Add 18040), dedicated to William Cecil, Baron Burleigh; and of Geffrey Whit­ ney's manuscript Choice ofEmblemes (Houghton Library MS Тур 14), dedicated to the Earl of Leicester. Yet there are also other works in printed form that partake of this particularized manuscript tradition and are extant only in limited numbers of copies. Of this kind in the English tradition is Robert Whitehall's EXAETIKON IEPON, a printed emblem book of the late seventeenth-century, recently dis­ covered by my wife, Gillian Manning. This was produced in only twelve copies, which were directed towards the sons of twelve English noblemen. Jourdain must have been among the first, if not the first, to introduce the floral motif as a central organizing device for a collec­ tion of emblems and to see the potential of this sort of thing for praise and gratulation of a noble patron. The idea, of course, was not one of such vast originality that it could not be thought of by others without having his model by them for direct imitation. The title of Palmer's two manuscripts mentioned above ought to remind us that Jourdain was not alone in seizing upon a central floral theme as the basis for organizing a collection which aimed to praise his noble patron. I have spoken elsewhere in this connection of the rhetorical definition of "poosees" and their rhetorical links with the classical apophoreta. Later Joachim Camerarius (Symbolorum et Emblematum ex re Herbaria [Nuremberg, 1593]) and Daniel Stolcius (Hortulus Hermeticus Flosculis Philosophorum [Frankfurt, 1627]) would produce printed emblem books dedicated to the explication of the significance of flowers, trees, and herbs and organized around a floral theme, while Partheneia sacra (Rouen, 1633) would expound the virtues of the Virgin Mary using the plants found in the hortus conclusus. However, these things were to come only later in the history of emblem literature. Le Blason des fleurs shows Jourdain as

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an innovative thinker, who was stretching the nature of emblematic forms and structures to encompass new areas at an early stage of the development of the genre a full decade before Palmer's first English manuscript collection. It must be a matter for regret that Jourdain's achievement has hitherto gone unnoticed and unrecognized.

A Comment on the 1531 Edition of Alciato's Emblems Virginia W. Callahan Howard University, Emerita All scholars working on Alciato and his emblems owe a debt of gratitude to Bernhard F. Scholz for his article "The 1531 Augsburg Edition of Alciato's Etnblemata: A Survey of Research/' It is a masterly resume of the material published in connection with the 1531 edition. However, I would like to offer a footnote to Scholz's article by suggesting that Beatus Rhenanus may have played a role in the publishing of the edition. In 1511 Beatus left his hometown of Selestat for Basel, in order to study Greek with Johannes Cono. (Cono also instructed the Amerbach brothers in Greek.) He became an editor in the printing house of Froben, living in Froben's house until 1519. The first Froben edition he saw through the press was Paolo Cortesi's Sententiarum libri quattuor which contained a dedicatory epistle from Konrad Peutinger to Beatus. 2 He became a friend and co-worker of Erasmus. In 1527, distressed by the religious dissension in Basel, he returned to his family home in Selestat. In 1526 Froben had published a work of Beatus entitled Pliniana, which contained annotations to the text of Pliny's Natural History. In 1530 another work by Beatus, entitled C. Plini Secundi Historia Mundi, was published by Froben. In 1530 Beatus spent some time in Augsburg. On May 26, 1528 Alciato wrote to Boniface Amerbach from Avignon: 1.

Emblematica, 5, 2 (1991), 213-254.

2.

Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus, ed. Adalbert Horawitz & Karl Hartfelder (Nieuwkoop, 1966), Nr. 33, pp. 57-58.

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As for what you ask of me in connection with Beatus Rhenanus, namely that I consider some elucidations [8i6aaKaXioc] on the titles of the jurisconsults as aids to students, I would gladly undertake to do this, if I were g i v e n any l e i s u r e from my o r d i n a r y s c r i b b l i n g s [stribliginibus]. In my opinion the authority of that man is very great, both on account of his extreme erudition and his almost incomparable diligence. For I saw what he restored most accurately in Pliny and how he solved the knotty passages judiciously, while remaining faithful to the ancient manuscripts. Would that the great God had put it into his mind to finish in a complete work what he began so felicitously in connection with a few books, and finally give to the printers an emended version of the work so many talents of very learned men have sweated over up to this point. I would like him to see to it that for individual chapters there would be added graphically [eiKoviKCO^] animals, geography, fish, plants, which I think would be not at all difficult. I myself could be of some help in this matter, since, as you know, I am an aficionado and collector of the works of Dioscorides. I think that everywhere there could be found makers of inlay [tessellarios] and wood-workers who could very easily make type-foundings of this kind. Surely this would not only teach the nature of things, which Pliny does, but set forth for the inexperienced things that they ought to recognize. And what if he might be pleased to sprinkle annotations of learned men in the margins? About the end of July Boniface responded to Alciato in a letter from Basel: That excellent suggestion of yours about editing Pliny that you wrote to me previously I would have made known to our Beatus, except that he has now gone off to his homeland [Selestat]. But, my Alciato, if, as you wrote 3.

Barni, Lettere , Nr. 42, p. 73 11. 57ff. Amerbach-Korrespondenz, Nr. 1261.

4. AK, Nr. 1278, p. 345

VIRGINIA W. CALLAHAN

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to us, it were to be illustrated, whoever do you believe would be equal to taking on this burden? Your shoulders would be sufficient for the task, except that your business would not allow it. There is no one who could do this better; to no one would it yield more felicitously. If you should select a lively specimen of a passage of Pliny, and send it to me, I would dare to assert that Pliny himself, if he were living, would announce that your opinion and his were practically the same; nor do I doubt that Beatus, because of his pliant nature, would yield to your opinion with all his might. Sometime after that Boniface forwarded to Beatus the part of Alciato's letter about the possibility of him doing a complete work on Pliny with illustrations. On September 24, 1528, Beatus wrote to Boniface from Selestat telling him he had received the pertinent part of Alciato's letter: Many thanks for the part of Alciato's which you sent to me. I see that my work is not utterly displeasing to that man, although Erasmus disdained it, nay, he more often dismissed [exsibilarit] it. But more about this when we are face to face. It is interesting to compare Alciato's recommendation that Beatus have illustrations added to a completed edition of Pliny with Alciato's famous letter to Francesco Calvo written in January 1523: During the Saturnalia I composed a little book of epigrams to which I have given the title Emblemata: in individual epigrams I describe something, which from history and natural phenomena describe something elegant from which painters, goldsmiths, founders could 5.

BRE, Nr. 267, p. 376,11. 1-4.

6. On Erasmus's disdain see Allen, Epistle 1674, VI, 28, a letter from Erasmus to John Lasky from Basel, March 8,1526: "Beatus Rhenanus is publishing some little annotations [nescio quid annotatiuncularum] to Pliny; I think he will dedicate them to you." 7.

Barni, Lettere, Nr. 24, p. 46,11. 28-35.

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make the type of thing which we call shields and fashion for caps or use for insignia like the anchor of Aldus, the dove of Froben or the elephant of Calvo, long in labor, but giving birth to nothing. Alciato's idea here that artisans might produce works which in a sense would be illustrations of the texts of the epigrams is strikingly similar to his later suggestion that artisans could be found to produce illustrations for the text of Pliny. Unfortunately Beatus did not respond to the suggestion. In 1530 Beatus was in Augsburg. It was an exciting time to be there as the Diet was in session and the Emperor Charles V was in attendance. Beatus saw the famous Tabula Peutingeriana and doubtless renewed his aquaintance with Peutinger. Peutinger would, probably as a courtesy, have referred to Beatus's work on Pliny, and this may have led Beatus to relay to Peutinger Alciato's suggestion that an edition of Pliny should be illustrated. Peutinger may have mentioned that he had recently received a copy of Alciato's Emblemata which were dedicated to him. Could the idea have then occurred to them that the Emblemata too could be illustrated?—a wild conjecture on my part, but not beyond the realm of possibility. One further conjecture. It is my opinion that Alciato may have sent the manuscript of the Emblemata to Peutinger as late as 1529. This belief is based on the last epigram in the 1531 edition, the one in which Thrasybulus is praised for having restored peace to Athens by initiating an amnesty. I have argued elsewhere that the emblem is a tribute to Erasmus who had recommended an amnesty for dissenters in a letter to Pope Adrian VI dated March 23, 1523. According to Allen (Epistle 1352) the letter was not published until 1529. I conclude from this that the Trasybulus emblem was not written until 1529 and added without pictura to the other emblems. 8. Cf. Boniface's letter to Alciato from Basel, August 1,1530. (AK 1448) where he writes that he has had no news about the Diet in Agusburg, but that he does not doubt that Alciato would be getting reports of it from friends which he has there. Beatus would surely have been among those friends. 9. Cf. my article "Andrea Alciati's View of Erasmus: Prudent Cunctator and Bold Counselor/ 7 published in the Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Sanctandreani (Binghamton, NY, 1986).

Queries Request for Bibliographic Information We are trying to locate copies of the following emblematic works: John Bunyan, Divine Emblems, London, 1840 Jeremias Drexel, The Considerations of Drexelius, Cambridge 1661. Pistrucci, Iconology, London, 1824 [BL copy missing since 1983]. vom Nordstern, Sinnbilder der Christen, Leipzig, 1818. Robert Louis Stevenson, Moral Emblems, Davos-Platz, ? 1881 [90 copies printed on hand press at Davos by R. L. Stevenson's stepson]. Verzameling van Zinspreuken, Amsterdam, 1741 We should be grateful to receive information on library location and pressmark for any of the above. Peter M. Daly and Mary V. Silcox Department of German 1001 Sherbroooke Street West Montreal, Quebec H3A 1G5 Canada

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Winter, L992

Vol. 6 No. 2

EMBLEMATICA \irfuti fortune comes

An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies AMS PRESS

EMBLEMATICA ISSN 0885-968X

Manuscripts and books for review may be sent to either editor; however, no obligation is recognized to review or return any book received. Articles and essays should conform to the guidelines published in the MLA Handbook for Writers (1977 edition); authors should submit their work in duplicate and will be expected to provide high-quality glossy prints of any illustrations to be published with their work. Submissions should be accompanied by return postage. Subscriptions and remittances should be sent to the publisher, AMS Press, 56 East 13th Street, New York, NY 10003 U. S. A. The annual subscription rate for institutions is $55.00 and for individuals $30.00. Subscribers outside the United States please add $5.00 for surface delivery and $10.00 for air mail. New York residents add appropriate sales tax.

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Copyright © AMS Press, Inc., 1994 All rights reserved.

Manufactured in the United States of America

EMBLEMATICA An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies is published twice a year, in the summer and winter. Emblematica publishes original articles, essays, and specialized bibliographies in all areas of emblem studies. In addition it regularly contains review articles, reviews, research reports (work in progress, including theses, conference reports and abstracts of completed theses), notes and queries, notices (forthcoming conferences and publications), and various types of documentation.

Editors Peter M. Daly McGill University Department of German 1001 Sherbrooke Street W. Montreal, PQ Canada H3A1G

Daniel S. Russell Department of French and Italian University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA 15260 U.S.A.

John Manning Review Editor Department of English The Queen's University of Belfast Belfast, Northern Ireland U.K. BT7 INN

Advisory Board Karel Porteman Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven Thomas P. Roche, Jr Princeton University John M. Steadman University of California, Riverside

Barbara C. Bowen Vanderbilt University August Buck Marburg and Wolfenbiittel Wolfgang Harms Munich John Rupert Martin Princeton University

J. B. Trapp The Warburg Institute, London

Editorial Board Claudie Balavoine CNRS, Paris Virginia W. Callahan Howard University, emerita Pedro F. Campa . University of Tennessee, Chattanooga Karl Josef Holtgen Erlangen-Niirnberg

Bernhard F. Scholz Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Agnes Sherman Princeton University Alan Young Acadia University Egon Verheyen George Mason University

EMBLEMATICA An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies

Winter, 1992

Volume 6, Number 2

Articles William S. Heckscher Andrea Alciati's Laurel Tree and its Symbolic Traditions

207

Virginia Woods Callahan Andrea Alciato's Palm Tree Emblem— A Humanist Document

219

Mark Thornton Burnett The "Trusty Servant": A Sixteenth-Century English Emblem

237

Dietmar Peil Emblem Types in Gabriel Rollenhagen's Nucleus Emblematum

255

G. Richard Dimler, S. J. Jakob Masen's Imago Figurata: From Theory to Practice

283

Gillian Manning Hexastichon Hieron: A Hitherto Unrecorded English Emblem Book of the Restoration Period

307

Documentation John Manning An Unedited and Unpublished Manuscript Translation of Les Emblemes D'Othon Vxnius

325

Wendy R. Katz The Emblem Collection of William Bragge

357

Review and Criticism Reviews Jose Manuel Diaz de Bustamente, Instrumentum Emblematicum, by Johannes Kohler

367

Pedro F. Campa, Emblemata Hispanica. An Annotated Bibliography of Spanish Emblem Literature to the Year 1700, by Santiago Sebastian

371

Peter M. Daly and Mary V. Silcox, The English Emblem: Bibliography of Secondary Literature, and, The Modern Critical Reception of the English Emblem, by Lucy Gent

372

Joachim Camerarius, Symbola et emblemata, edited by Wolfgang Harms and Ulla-Britta Kuechen, by Peter M. Daly

378

Santiago Sebastian, Alquimia у Emblemdtica. La Fuga de Atalanta de Michael Maier, by Paul P. Raasveld

381

Research Reports, Notes, Queries, and Notices Notes Alison Adams The Woodcuts of Alciati's Death Emblems

391

Recent Conferences

399

Volume Index

407

Andrea Alciati's Laurel Tree and its Symbolic Traditions WILLIAM S. HECKSCHER Princeton, N. J.

Alciati first published his laurel tree emblem in 1546. The edition from which our illustration is taken (Fig. 1) is that of Padua 1661 where the laurel is Emblem CCXI (pp. 881-85).

Laurus. E M B L E M A

CCXI.

Fig. 1. Emblem CCXI, Laurus (ed. Padua, 1661).

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Emblema CCXI The motto, rather title than motto, reads simply "Laurus" [The Laurel Tree—laurus nobilis, L.]. The woodcut shows center stage a laurel tree with a slender trunk from which issue three main-branches ending in the characteristically tapering leaves of the plant. The tree is flanked by Apollo's altar and tripod; to the left, on the laurel-wreathed altar, two crossed laurel twigs are burning, and from the fire smoke is rising; to the right, the tripod between whose legs a dove is visible as in a cage while a laurel branch is diagonally stuck between the tripod's legs; above the tripod, a dolphin. Against the base of the tree is leaning a small oval shield with an imperial victor's head in profile (Emperor Charles V) crowned with a laurel wreath. The Padua picture is the most complex devised for the laurel, as a comparison with the woodcuts of earlier editions will show. The 1546 edition (i. е., the editio princeps of Alciati's arbores) features a tree with laurel-shaped leaves; there are several buildings in the background (leaf 1). The 1551 edition has a tree with laurel-shaped leaves and berries (p. 225). The 1577 shows an entire tree with roots and lower branches exposed; it has laurel-shaped leaves, berries and some blos­ soms (p. 668). The epigram reads in translation: (A) The laurel foreknowing the future, offers symbols of security: placed under the pillow it makes dreams come true. (B) Another. 1. The reader will note that the Thuilius-inspired 1621 woodcut may serve as an additional commentary to the emblem. The dolphin on the tripod may be intended as an allusion to Apollo Delphinios mentioned in one of the Homeric Hymns "To the Pythian Apollo" (492-496) which mentions "a swift boat in the form of a dolphin"; see Loeb ed. of Hesiod, tr. Hugh G. Evelyn White (p. 359). I am not certain about the meaning of the dove. Gerhart B. Ladner (p. 320) has shown that there exists a close affinity between tree and bird [See the appended bibliography for complete references on this and all other works cited]. The tripod, often fashioned of laurel wood, was invariably wreathed with laurel; it served as one of the standard paraphernalia of the Delphic oracle; cf. Ogle, pp. 302ff. and esp. note L, p. 303.

WILLIAM S. HECKSCHER

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A laurel is due Charles for defeating the Phoenicians: such wreaths grace victorious heads. The laurel, Greek SacpVT), was an indigenous tree of Greece and most likely also of Italy. It is part of the earliest recorded plant-folklore. Before it became the tree sacred to Apollo and, later on, to the Roman emperors, the laurel, full of vis divina, featured in chthonic rituals, serving as protection against the evil powers of the spirits of the underworld. This earlier, primitive strain survived undiminished in Apollonian times when the laurel was regarded as the tree whose wood prophetically and apotropaeically crackled when burned in a fierce fire. It also was the tree whose leaves, when worn about the temples, when slept upon, or when carried in the mouth, imparted magic gifts and shielded the bearer against all kinds of dangers, above all those of lightning, a tree whose leaves and berries served as antidotes against pestilence and spastic incidents such as headaches, a tree which was applied to houses and their doors in order to protect those vulnerable for a variety of reasons— the ailing, the newly born, 2.

Ogle's carefully structured laurel article makes a convincing distinction be­ tween Apollonian and pre-Apollonian laurel icongraphy; see especially pp. 303 and 311.

3.

Laurel untouched by lightning: the classical example is the case of emperor Tiberius: "tonitrua tamen praeter modum expavescebat: et turbatiore caelo, nunquam non coronam lauream capite gestavit, quod fulmine afflari negetur id genus frondis" [He was uncommonly fearful of thunderstorms and no sooner did the weather wear an ugly look than Tiberius would invariably place a laurel wreath on his head since it is said that this kind of plant would ward off the scorching impact of lightning]: Suetonius, "Tiberius," chap, lxix; L. Junius Moderatus Columella (fl. 50 В. С.) relates that anti-lightning laurelleaves were placed in the nests of brooding hens (VIII, v, 12); the concept is echoed by Cesare Ripa whose "Poesia" is crowned with laurel because it is evergreen and does not fear the force of celestial lightning; see also John Webster (1580-1625), "Reach the bays - / I'll tie a garland here about his head; / 'T will keep my boy from lightning." (The White Devil, 1617, V.i); in general see Pliny "[Laurus] fulmine sola non icitur" [the laurel alone (of all trees) is not hit by lightning,] Hist, nat., XV, xxx, 134 and also XVII, vii, 2. For a careful summary, see Ogle, pp. 295f., and a chapter in Albrecht Schone's Emblematik und Drama im Zeitalter des Barock (pp. 86-89), which discusses laurel and lightning under such mottoes as "Intacta virtus" [Virtue untouched], and "Nil fulgura terrent" [Strokes of lightning won't terrify] etc.

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those ripened into puberty and people united in wedlock. Since the leaves and berries of the laurel lent themselves to lace wine with, it was considered a potent remedy against poisons, and, being itself an intoxicant, it induced visions. Its effusions, especially when used in fumigation, would lead to inspiration from where the concept of the prophetic sibyl on her tripod and of the poeta laureatus whose laurelwreath coronation was nothing but a happy conclusion to the laurelinspired creative act of prophetic and poetic production. At Delphi in particular, Apollo was preceded by other divinities such as Dionysus, whose prophetic vehicles were dreams. Prophetic dreams may be considered chthonic events—they derive from the earth and from the underworld. It was perhaps only natural that Apollo, the God of the midday heat and of the sun with its many concomitant dangers and benefices, should have appropriated the laurel, the fiery, demonic, powerfully medicinal tree as his felix arbor when prophesying, when healing and when warding off demonic threats to himself and others, especially those that resulted from bloodshed. The god's main attributes were the laurel wreath and the laurel staff. While obviously the message of the first of Alciati's two laurel-distichs responds to the earlier, chthonic strain of ancient laurel-lore, the second distich with its terse eulogy of emperor Charles V, clearly alludes to the concept of laurel as the distinguishing mark of the victor—a concept first introduced by Apollo, after he had slain the Python. It was then that the god purified himself with laurel. The Apollonian laurel was sacred to Julius Caesar and his gens and to Emperor Augustus, and from him onward it became the Roman impe4.

For Dionysus, see Ogle, p. 304 and notes 2-5, and J. B. Trapp, p. 232; For Diodorus, I, xvii, 4, see I. A. Richmond, Archaeology and Afterlife (Oxford, 1950), p. 31.

5. For Apollo's self-purification with laurel, see Tertullian, De corona militis, ed. Migne, P. L., II, col. 85; cf. also Friedreich, pp. 300 and note 1 on 301, and Ogle, p. 287 and note 1; Charles's victory at Tunis was still very much part of contemporary history when Alciati composed his emblem (1535-1546). Claude Mignault, as I believe, resented the brutal destruction brought about by the emperor; he referred to Tunis as the heir of Carthage and added: "in ea fuerant viri literatissimi" [in Tunis resided most cultured men]; and he praised her as the city of St. Augustine; see Mignault's separate Notae in the Lyons 1614 edition, p. 786.

WILLIAM S. HECKSCHER

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rial tree par excellence. In imperial times, a victory achieved by bloodshed required magic counter measures of purification in which the laurel played its indispensable part in order to stave off the assault of the revengeful spirits of those that had been "murdered" on the battlefield. This is the reason why the victorious emperor—not so much as we might expect in celebration of his victory, but primarily in terms of tradition-bound magic—sought to protect himself by means of the laurel-crown. Imperial triumphs were indeed celebrated to the accompaniment of a whole assortment of carefully paraded countermeasures. The soldiers following his chariot wore laurel wreaths, carried a phallus and shouted obscenities to frighten away the spirits of those that had been killed in battle. At the same time, the laurelwreathed emperor carried the so called bulla, an amulet containing secret remedies against Invidia-envy enclosed in it. Looking more closely at Line 1 of Epigram A, the three words beginning the epigram—"praescia venturi Laurus" [the laurel foreknowing the future]—echo Claudian's "venturi praescia laurus." We may envy and, if we are fortunate, may even hope to emulate Alciati and his learned commentators who were so adept at mnemosyne and who were mentally equipped to choose, by association, among a host of pertinent and felicitous phrases and words echoing classical antiquity. The line ends by stating that the laurel offers symbols of security. Other words such as well-being, health, protection, safety might equally well have been used to express the multiple meanings of the Latin salus. Whether it is the propitious fulfillment of dreams, or the triumph in victory, Alciati clearly had this cluster of meanings in mind. 6.

"Laureati milites sequebantur currum triumphantis ut quasi purgati a caede humana intrarent urbem" [laurel-wreathed soldiers followed the chariot of the triumphator so that—purged as it were of human bloodshed—they might (safely) enter the city], Festus, 117, 13.

7.

De raptu Proserpinae, II, 109.

8.

The idea of safety/security, etc. was summed up by Pierio Valeriano (Hieroglyphica [Lyons, 1602], L, 541: "Quin Romani . . . Laurum boni genij plantam sunt appellare soliti: persuasumque habuere, locum, vbi Laurus esset nequea sacro vllo morbo, nequea demone infestari. Et salutaris ominis gratia folia ipsius a populo calendis Januarij Magistratibus offerabantur . . ." [Thus were the Romans accustomed to referring to the laurel as the plant of a tutelary spirit and they held that the site where the laurel grew was utterly free from any kind

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A few examples will sufficiently illustrate this magic help bestowed upon the individual strenuously trying to placate the harmful and threatening spirits. Orestes, being purified for having shed the blood of his mother, witnesses a laurel tree rising from the ground on which his expiation took place. The "Superstitious Man" who features in Theophrastus's Characters spends an entire day walking around with a laurel leaf in his mouth—quite obviously "boni ominis causa." We may assume that it was Isidore of Seville who, in his Etymologies (XVII, vii, No. 2), transmitted much of what we may consider the standard laurel-lore to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Etymologically he associated "laurus" with an older form "laudis" which yielded "laurus" when "r" was exchanged for "d." Apart from Apollo, the laurel was sacred to innumerable deities and mythological personalities, among others Aesculapius, Cassandra ("prophesying from her laurel-eating mouth"), Dionysus, Herof obnoxious disease or evil spirit. And its leaves were presented by the people on the first of January to the Magistrates as a salutory (crown)]: characteristically, Pierio Valeriano deals in his Hieroglyphica (539) with the laurel under the heading of "Custodia": "Pro custodia vero Laurum poni, & incolumitatis esse symbolum ex Proclo [of Constantinople, 410-485 A. D.] didicimus . . ." [We learned from Proclus that indeed the laurel expressed protection (custodia) and it is a symbol of being intact . . .]. Unchanged in Cesare Ripa where we read under "Medicina" "in capo hauera vna ghirlanda d'alloro, perche questo albero gioua a molte infermitate.../' ([Rome, 1603], p. 311). The standard laurel legend, the account of Apollo's hapless pursuit of the nymph Daphne, curiously enough celebrates the one occasion when the god's prophetic gifts failed him lamentably; Ovid, Metamorphoses 1,452-567; see Leopold Ettlinger, passim. 9. See Ogle, pp. 288f.

10. Theophrastus, chap, vii Opuscula mythologica, in ed. Isaac Casaubon (Amsterdam, 1688), p. 595; for a discussion of this good omen, cf. Ogle, p. 292. 11. A corresponding modern etymology of "laurus" does not exist. Various attempts have been made; Mignault, in a separate commentary to CCXI (Lyons, 1614, p. 702) derives "Daphne" from 8a cpwveco which, he declares, would be (da and "to sound") in reference to the characteristic crackling of the burning laurel—"quo in igne sonitum & crepitum edat." 12. And this despite the fact that laurel did not feature in the Greek pharmacopoeia.

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mes, Hygieia, Juno Lucina, Mars, Orpheus and the Vestal Virgins, and—in post-classical times—Anna of the New Testament as well as the Virgin Mary and Christ. Saints such as Gudule (8 January 712) and Libertus (14 July 783), Petrarch's Laura (I'aura), as well as many Venetian beauties, were frequently portrayed against a laurel tree by Quatrocento painters. In sum we can say that in all those instances elements of magic and buona fortuna, of faith and perpetuity commonly beyond death (the laurel, after all, was evergreen) and security (salus) stood in the foreground. Apollo nevertheless must have been the fons et origo of this kind of laurel-tradition; the very embodiment of the "praescia venturi laurus," he was born under a laurel tree and, as already mentioned, he was represented as inseparable from his laurel staff and wreath. Poets were at the beginning 13. Thus Lycophron, Alexandra, 6.

14. See Ogle, p. 304.

15. A sender of dreams, Hermes was "lauripotens." 16. See above Note 12, as well as Friedreich, p. 300. 17. Juno as the deity of marriage and in particular childbearing: a laurel was planted in her honor on the Esquiline.

18. See Ogle, p. 293. 19. Orpheus is closely linked with the laurel as a tree signifying chastity. According to Ovid, Metamorphoses, X, 92, Orpheus, residing on Mt. Rhodope, attracts all kinds of creatures as well as trees by his musical magic, and among them the "innuba laurus" [the unwed laurel], a passage which, in all its brevity, has exercised a far-ranging influence. For the laurel as a symbol of chastity, see Mirella Levi-d'Ancona, No. 3, p. 202; and also in reference to Berchorius's Christ-Apollo equation (ca. 1340 A. D.)—one embraces the Cross, the other the laurel. Finally, for the Vestal Virgins, No. 5, same page. 20. Anna, while seated under the prophetic laurel, ponders the sterility of her husband Joachim while she watches the sparrows—fertilissimi—besporting themselves; Protevangelium Jacobi, ii, 4; for the Virgin Mary, see Levi-d'Ancona, loc. cit. 21. Cf. Heleen A. Noe and Egon Verheyen, passim; also Johannes Wilde. 22. See Ogle, pp. 304f. and note 7, where exhaustive references will be found to Latin poets celebrating the laurel as sacred to Apollo. The idea of the Laurel's perenially green appearance suggests the all-important role of perpetuity in

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vates, singing of future events; consequently Hesiod (Jheogony, 29) was portrayed leaning on a laurel staff, the scipio laureatus, or scipio laureus, which quite in general imparted the power of divination to seers and prophets alike. Down to our own time when the bay-leaf is kept in the kitchen cabinet, the laurel-tradition has survived uninterruptedly. On April 8,1341, the first crowning of a poeta laureatus— that of Petrarch—took place; we are fortunate in having full records of diploma and acceptance speech. Line 2 notes that the laurel placed under the pillow makes dreams come true: the classical source here is Fulgentius's Mythologiae, 1,14. We have already hinted that prophesying by means of dreams belongs to a primitive stratum of folk-belief. The Delphic oracle, on the other hand, operated with visions which possibly were induced by laurelingestion with subsequent intoxication as well as fumigation derived from the burning laurel branches (Fig. 2). both love and death; see especially Franz Cumont, Index General, under: "couronne d'immortalite, symbole du triomphe sur la mort." 23. See Ogle, pp. 306f. Erasmus mentions the laurel-staff but not as referring to divinatory powers: "Laureum baculum gesto" [I carry a cane of laurel attributes to it the power of warding off the dangers of poison and lightning] Adagia, 1,1, lxxix.

24. For Petrarch's coronation as poeta laureatus on the Roman Capitol, see E. H. Wilkins, pp. 9ff. Older post-classical passages dealing with laureation are dealt with by J. B. Trapp, pp. 232f., note 24. Petrarch's oration (he refused myrtle in preference to laurel and thereby set the tone for the later coronations) is by itself a magnificent summing up of laurel symbolism. Petrarch's wreath was deposited on the altar of St. Peter. The custom of crowning academic graduates with laurel—the baccalaureate—apparently goes back to a privilege granted by Emperor Charles V in 1529/30 to the university of Bologna; see Trapp, p. 241 and note 58.

25. For translation and commentary of the relevant passage, see Leslie G. Whitbread (Columbus, 1971), p. 55. In one of the most sophisticated discourses on prophetic dreaming the Renaissance has produced, Francois Rabelais ridicules the prophetic laurel-dreams: " 'But wouldn't it be a good thing/ he asked Pantagruel... 'if I were to put a few sprigs of laurel under my pillow?' 'There is no need for that now/ replied Pantagruel. Tt is a superstition, and all that has been written about i t . . . is just so much nonsense'"; III, chap, xiii, tr. J. M. Cohen (Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1977), p. 324.

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Fig. 2. Gold Medal, attributed to Nicholas Hilliard (ca. 1547-1619) Obverse: Queen Elizabeth with Sceptre and Orb; Reverse: Laurel Tree Protecting an Island, 1589.

The second epigram (B) contains the rousing compliment which Alciati paid Emperor Charles V by ranking him along with the great military victors of Rome's imperial past. In July 1535 the emperor had achieved a personal triumph in the field as a leader of troops when he defeated the Sultan's admiral, Barbarossa Xhair-al-Din, and liberated Tunis. By freeing some twenty-thousand Christian slaves (a veritable fifth column), Charles was regarded as God's standard-bearer. In sacking Tunis, Charles inflicted a bloody defeat upon its inhabitants, the Poeni, i. e. the Phoenicians. In the conclusion (line 2) Alciati delivers, as it were, a brief commentary to the preceding line by saying that laurel wreaths must by rights adorn the heads of conquerors and victors. We can appreciate 26. See the altar in our woodcut of the 1621 and 1661 editions (Fig. 1). 27. Two classical eulogies of laurels as symbols of victory—victrices lauri—will show what Alciati must have had in mind: (a) Virgil in his Eclogue VIII, 11-13, addressing Gaius Asinius Pollio (76 B. C - A. D. 5) on his return from Illyricum (39 B. C ) : "accipe iussis / Carmina coepta tuis atque hanc sine tempora circum / inter victrices hederam tibi serpere laurus" [accept the songs begun at your request and grant this ivy to be wound about your temples amidst the victor's laurels] (for the interweaving of ivy and laurel see J. B. Trapp); (b) Tibullus, I, vii, 5-8, addressing his patron Marcus Valerius Messala Corvinus (64 B. C.-A.

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that quite in general the word "laurus" could take the place of the word "victory." As Pliny mentions it, quaint portents and miracles reveal the imperial destiny of the laurel. A laurel tree sprouts on the day Augustus is born. And while thus the laurel turns into a tangible attribute of the emperor, it cannot—logically—survive his death: "it was observed that upon every emperor's death the tree he had adopted would wither away." Similarly, the laurel became a portent of the assassination of Julius Caesar: on the day before the Ides of March, 44 В. С , a wren, carrying a small laurel branch, strayed into the portico of the Pompeian Curia when all kinds of birds from a nearby forest having pursued it, tore the wren to shreds in that place. Such thinking was revived in the Renaissance. That the image of supernaturally tall laurel tree towering over an inhabited island with the motto NON IPSA PERICVLA TANGVNT [not even dangers reach her, i. e. the island] might serve to hint at Elizabeth's triumph over the Spanish Armada we can see in a gold medal of 1589 (struck one year after the defeat), which has been attributed to Nicholas Hilliard (ca. 1547-1619), in the Fitzwilliam Mu­ seum, Cambridge. The obverse shows the crowned Queen with her regalia, sceptre and orb, and the motto, NON ALTER CIRCVLVS ORBE DITIOR IN TOTO [in the entire Universe there is no orb more splen­ did].

D. 8): "novos pubes Romana triumphos / vidit et evinctos bracchia capta duces: / at te victrices lauros, Messala, gerentem / portabat nitidis currus eburneus equis" [the young men of Rome have seen new triumphs, and chiefs with shackles on their captive arms but you, Messala, wearing the victor-laurels were carried in the ivory chariot by splendid steeds]. The laurel had, from the beginning, been an attribute of the gens Julia, see Ogle, p. 299. 28. Naturalis historia, XV, 136. 29. "nata erat laurus in Palatio eo die quo Augustus"—words we read in Servius's commentary to Aeneid, VI, 230. 30. "observatum est sub cuiusque [Caesaris] obitum arborem ab ipso ins titu turn elanguisse," see Suetonius, "Augustus." 31. "Pridie autem easdem Idus avem regaliolum, cum laureo ramulo Pompeianae Curiae se inferentem, volucres varii generis ex proximo nemore persecutae ibidem discerpserunt." See Suetonius, "Caesar," chap, lxxxi; also Ogle, p. 299.

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We may admire in Alciati's last emblem but one the poetic and imaginative economy with which he selects from an embarrassment of riches two salient examples of laurel tree symbolism which truly encompass the intricate iconography of this classical tree. NOTE No emblem study can exist without reference, expressis verbis or by tacit assumption, to the two Alciatus volumes "edited by Peter M. Daly with Virginia Woods Callahan assisted by Simon Cuttler" (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985). The author is indebted both to Professor Daly and Professor Callahan who have been guardian angels in support of the work here offered. Agnes B. Sherman whose special field is emblem bibliography has been of steady and deeply appreciated assistance throughout. Valuable addenda were provided by the author's friend and colleague Dr. Anita Schorsch. My laurel essay was first formulated in a paper presented in German at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbuttel, whose officer in charge of research, Dr. Sabine Solf, has been eminently helpful. My friend and colleague Karl-Ludwig Selig has generously provided me with laurel information. Professor Daniel S. Russell has carefully supervised editorial aspects of this publication. Dr. Michael Bath kindly read and interpreted my laurel paper at the conference Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory (1500-1700) held at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, May 1-3,1992. Bibliography of Secondary Sources Far from wishing to present an exhaustive laurel-bibliography, I have confined myself to listing works that seemed relevant to Alciati's emblem CCX1. (i.) Franz Cumont, Recherches sur le symbolisme funeraire des Romains. Paris, 1942. (ii.) Leopold Ettlinger, " D a p h n e , " Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte. cols. 1052-1057. (iii.) J. B. Friedreich, Die Symbolik und Mythologie der Natur. Wtirzburg, 1859, pp. 299-303. (iv.) Victor Hehn, Cultivated Plants and Domesticated Animals in their Migration from Asia to Europe. New ed. Amsterdam, 1976, pp. 170-75.

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(v.) Arthur Henkel and Albrecht Schone, Emblemata. Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1967, cols. 202-208. (vi.) "Lorbeer." In Herder, Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, III (1971) cols. 106f. (vii.) Gerhart B. Ladner, "Vegetation Symbolism." In De artibus opuscula XL in Honor of Erwin Panofsky. New York, 1961, pp. 303-22. (viii.) Mirella Levi-d'Ancona, The Garden of the Renaissance. Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting. Florence, 1977, pp. 201-04. (ix.) H. Marou, "Palma et laurus," Melanges d Archeologie et Histoire (Ecole de Rome), LVIII (1941-1946), 109ff. (x.) Heleen A. Noe, "Messer Giacomo en zijn 'Laura/ (Een dubbelportret van Giorgione?)," Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, XI (1960), 1-35 (discusses the endurance of matrimonial faith as expressed by the evergreen laurel). (xi.) Ogle = M. B. Ogle, "Laurel in Ancient Religion and Folk-Lore," American Journal of Philology, XXXI (1910), 278-311. (xi.) Pauly-Wissowa, "Lorbeer," Real-Encyclopadie, XIII (1927), cols. 1431-42 (Steier). (xii.) Albrecht Schone, Emblematik und Drama im Zeitalter des Barock. Munich: Beck, 1964. (xiii.) J. B. Trapp, "The Owl's Ivy and the Poet's Bays, An Inquiry into Poetic Garlands," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXI, 3-4 (1958), 227-55 (a rich discussion of laurel-wreaths in post-classical times). (xiv.) Egon Verheyen, "Giorgione's 'Laura'," Pantheon, XXVI, iii (MayJune, 1968), 220-27 (discusses the interrelation of laurel and matrimony). (xv.) Johannes Wilde, "Uber Venezianische Frauenbildnisse der Renaissance." In Hommage a Alex Petrovics. Budapest, 1934. (xvi.) E. H. Wilkins, "The Coronation of Petrarch," The Making of the Canzionere. Rome, 1951, pp. 9ff.

Andrea Alciato's Palm Tree Emblem: A Humanist Document VIRGINIA WOODS CALLAHAN Florence, MA OBDURANDUM ADVERSUS URGENTIA Nititur in pondus, et consurgit in arcum: Quo magis et premitur, hoc mage tollit onus: Fert et odoratas, bellaria dulcia glandes, Queis mensas inter primus habetur honos. I puer, et reptans ramis has collige: mentis Qui constantis erit, praemia digna feret. [The palm struggles against a weight, and rises into an arch: The more it is pressed down, the more it lifts its load. It bears fragrant dates, sweet sweetmeats, Which has the first honor among the courses. Go boy, and creeping among the branches gather these, the man of constant mind will win worthy rewards.] In 1531 Alciato's first emblem book was published in Augsburg. Among the emblems contained therein was one in which Alciato used the image of the palm tree (phoenix dactylifera) to exhort students to overcome the difficulties of their studies by hard work in order to achieve fame and fortune. My main purpose in this paper is to interpret and evaluate this emblem as it related to Alciato's life and work. 1. A version of this paper was read at the conference Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory (1500-1700) held at The University of Tennessee at

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It is my belief that in order to appreciate it fully one should consider various ways in which the image of the tree was seen before 1531 and also examine the aftermath of the emblem's publication. What I propose to do is to create a kind of triptych in which Alciato's emblem will be the centerpiece, flanked on the one hand by examples of early images of the tree and, on the other, by a number of later emblems which were seemingly derived from Alciato. First some early images which I shall call "antecedents": Homer, Odyssey VI.160ff. Odysseus is addressing the Phaeacian princess Nausicaa: Never have I laid eyes on equal beauty in man or woman. I am hushed indeed. So fair, one time, I thought a young palm tree at Delos near the altar of Apollo— I had troops under me when I was there on the sea route that later brought me grief— but that slim palm tree filled my heart with wonder: So now, my lady, I stand in awe so great I cannot take your knees. tr. by Robert Fitzgerald. Cf. W. B. Stanford's note on the palm tree in his edition of the Odyssey (p. 314): "not found on the mainland of Greece and mentioned only here by Homer. With its shapely columnar trunk it makes a charming comparison for a tall slender girl, with a hint of archaic sculpture in it. Compare the Hebrew girl's name Tamar (Palm tree) and the Song of Songs 77. Perhaps Homer is referring to the sacred palm tree of Delos, mentioned in The Homeric Hymn to Apollo 117." The image in the Song of Songs is, by the way, in striking contrast to the virginal Delian palm: Thy stature is like a palm tree and thy breasts to clusters of grapes. I said: I will go up into the palm tree, and will take hold of the fruit thereof.

Chattanooga, May 1-3,1992.

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In the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, 117-118 (8th с. В. С?) Leto gives birth to Apollo: She cast her arms about a palm tree and kneeled on the soft meadow while the earth laughed for joy beneath. Then the child leapt forth to the light and all the goddesses raised a cry. tr. by Evelyn-White

Cf. Euripides, Hecuba, 458ff. The captive Trojan women are wondering where they are to be taken: Shall we dwell where the first-born palm (npcoxoyovoc; (poivi£) ascending from the earth with the bay entwined, glorifying with enshrining frondage the couch where lying dear Leto attained her travail's ending? tr. by Arthur Way

What we see in the three Greek texts is the birth of the god Apollo Musagetes—the leader of the Muses. In connection with Musagetes as an epithet of Apollo I would call to mind the discussion on right education (opGrjv rcociSeictv) in Plato's Laws (Bk. II653D - 654A; Loeb ed., 1,90) between the Athenian Stranger and Clinias of Crete. The Athenian says: N o w these forms of childtraining, which consist in right discipline in pleasures and pains, grow slack and weakened to a great extent in the course of men's lives; so the gods, in pity for the human race thus born to misery, have ordained the feasts of thanks-giving as periods of respite from their troubles: and they have granted them as companions in their feasts the Muses and Apollo Musagetes, and Dionysus, that they may at least set right again their modes of discipline by associating with the gods . . . Shall we accept this account to begin with, and postulate that education (naibeiav) owes its origin to Apollo and the Muses? tr. by R. G. Bury

and the Cretan agrees.

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The connection of the palm with the Muses was noted in the 1551 edition of Alciato's emblems by a quotation from Lucius Annaeus Cornutus. (Wrongly called Phornutus by the commentator.) Cornutus was a Greek Stoic philosopher, a freedman of Seneca, who taught rhetoric and philosophy in Rome in the first century A. D. His one extant work is a summary of Greek mythology, E7u5pojir| TWV ката EAA,r|viKr|v #eoA,OYiav 7capa5e8o|ieva>v. The commentary contains a quotation in Greek and Latin from a section of this work on the Muses: According to the opinion of the ancients the Muses are crowned with a palm on account of the similarity of the word cpaiviKCOV with the name of the Phoenicians who are believed to have been the inventors of the alphabet. How­ ever, a more reasonable reason is that the palm is a delicate plant, beneficent, and perpetually green. It is difficult to ascend and produces a sweet fruit. For most people in ancient Greece and Rome the palm would have been a symbol of victory. In Greece a palm branch was given to the winners of athletic contests. In Plutarch's Table Talk (Moralia, 724 A-B) it was recalled that in a history of Athens Theseus tore off a branch of the sacred palm tree and that it was at the Pythian games that people first, in honor of the god Apollo, decked victors with laurel and palm. The custom of awarding the palm to victors was taken over by the Romans in 293 B. C. (Livy 10.47: eodem anno [A. U. C. 461] . . . palmae primum translato e Graecia more victoribus datae. [In the same year palms were given to victors, a custom taken over from Greece.]) Isi­ dore, Etym. XVIII.4, in a section on triumphs, reports that in the triumphal processions the triumphantes wore a golden crown and a palmed toga (palmatam togam). In Latin literature the word palma most frequently meant "prize." Cf. Plautus, Most. 1.1.32: "is nunc in aliam partem palmam possidet" [now he wins the prize the other way]. Virgil who described the tree as lofty (ardua) (Georgics, 2.76) and prescribed its shade for bees (Georgics, 4.20) used palma twelve times as meaning "prize." Suetonius {Augustus, 94) in the following anecdote suggested that the palm tree even played a part in Roman history. As Julius Caesar was felling a wood near Munda in Spain to clear a site for his camp, he noticed a palm tree and ordered it to be spared, fronds being the presage of victory. The tree suddenly put out a new shoot which, a few days

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later, had grown so tall as to overshadow it. What was more, a flock of doves began to meet in its fronds, although doves notoriously dislike hard, spiny foliage. This prodigy was the immediate reason, they say, for Caesar's desire that his grand-nephew, and no one else, should succeed him. Aside from the palm's function as the symbol of victory, what intrigued the ancients most about it was the belief reported in a number of Greek and Roman texts that, if a weight was placed upon the timber of the palm, it resisted the burden of the weight and rose upward. The number of authors in which this observance occurs is remarkable. They include Aristotle (Fr. 229), Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants, V. vi. 1, and Natural Questions XXXII, Pliny, Natural His­ tory, XVI, 223, Strabo, Geography XV.3.10, Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, III. VI. Erasmus encapsulated the most important of these in his adage "Palmam ferre" [to bear the palm] I.iii.iv. (LB 112C-113B). Alciato's addiction to the Adages is well known, and this adage could well be looked upon as the immediate antecedent of Alciato's emblem. I quote it in full in the translation of Margaret Mann Phillips: "To bear the palm," "to award the palm," "to carry off the palm," and suchlike expressions, even if they seem straightforward through their frequent use, are yet a pro­ verbial figure of speech. The palm does not itself signify victory, but a tree with "leaves perpetually green, which the Greeks call ф о т к а . " Why the metaphor should be taken particularly from this tree is a question answered, I think, by what Plutarch says in his Table Talk that this tree alone was used for the crown common to all the sacred contests, whereas otherwise each game had its own tree or plant to mark the victor: such as the bay, myrtle or celery. Some think this was the tree sacred to Apollo before the bay, and that the oldest sign of victory was the palm, not any other tree. Why this tree was chiefly selected by the ancients for this use Aulus Gellius tells us in Attic Nights, book 3, chapter 6, where he writes that the palm tree has a peculiar quality which agrees with the natural temper of brave men: "for if," he says, "you place a heavy weight on the wood from this tree, and so increase the pressure that the weight of the burden cannot be borne, the palm does not break

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down nor bend, but reacts against the weight, pushes upwards and makes a rising curve/' He quotes authorities for this amazing thing. Aristotle in Problemata, book 7, and Plutarch in the Table Talk Book 8. And I found the words of Plutarch on this subject in the book quoted by Gellius: "For the wood of the palm tree, if you subject it to great pressure under a weight, is not bent downwards, but curves the other way, just as if it were resisting the violence done to it by the weight. This very thing happens also in contests between athletes. For those who yield to their opponents through weakness and lack of spirit are pushed out of the way by them, but those who persevere steadfastly (perdurant) in this exercise are borne forward and strengthened not only in physical force but in quality of mind. Pliny says the same thing in his sixteenth book (XVI, 22) chapter 42: "Fir and larch are strong for bearing weight, even when placed transversely; Oak and olive bend and give under weight, but those others resist, and are not easily broken; if they give way it is from decay rather than strain. And the palm tree is the most robust of trees, for it curves the other way. The poplar would spread under any downward weight; the palm, on the contrary, takes the form of an arch." Theophrastus says the same in his fifth book on plants (5.6.1). This force of mind, corresponding to the native strength of the palm tree is aptly described by Virgil (Aeneid VI.95) when he says: "You must not yield to affliction, but go forth all the more daringly, as your fortune allows you." And that passage of Horace (Odes 4.4.57) is not unlike it: Like some tough-grained oak, lopped by the woodman On Algidus, that dark-browed, verdurous mountain: It bleeds, it feels the shock, Yet draws its vigour from the very axe, Flourishing as fiercely as the severed Hydra Sprouted at chafing Hercules. Old Cadmus' Dragon-sown fields at Thebes Never pushed up a prodigy like this. Whelm it in water, it will come up brighter, Throw it, and it will grapple with the winner

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22!

Again and take the applause. Cf. also Erasmus, Parabolae, LB I, 617C (CWE, XXIII, 263): Like a palm branch which when a burden is hung on it, does not bend down to the ground as others do, but resists and pushes upwards unbidden against the weight of its load, so the brave man's spirit is more unbending, the more he is oppressed by misfortune. I turn now to Alciato's emblem to see what use he made of thii heritage. The motto reads: "Obdurandum adversus urgentia" [One must hold out against harsh circumstances] For a classically trained reader these words would be reminiscent of < famous passage in Virgil's Georgics I, 145-46, in which the poet ii describing the labor of primitive man to insure his survival: "labo omnia vicit / improbus et duris urgens in rebus egestas" [persisten toil and need in harsh circumstances conquered all obstacles]. In th< Loeb edition of Virgil, H. T. Fairclough translated it more poetically "unrelenting toil conquered the world and want that pinches when lift is hard." There is no documentary evidence as to when Alciato decided t( impose what we now call "mottoes" on the epigrams he composec during the holiday season of 1522. If it was shortly after that that hi chose "obdurandum adversus urgentia" as the motto for the palm tre< epigram, his mind may well have turned back to his Oration in Praisi of Civil Law, his inaugural speech to students at Avignon in 1520 published by Gryphius in Religua Opera (Lyons, 1548). The main purpose of the address was to persuade the students tha there were so many advantages to be gained from the practice of law that they should not be deterred by the hardships they might encoun ter in the course of their studies. He reminded them that professor; of jurisprudence were held in high esteem, that they were callec 2.

The Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982) XXXI, 237ff.

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sapientes and used as consultants in matters public and private, that they were honored by kings and princes, that they contributed to civic harmony (concordia). He even waxed poetic: Since you see the many rewards (praemia) proposed for the studious as a result of this discipline, come, strive with all your might to conquer the dark mist through so many laborious paths and arrive at your goal as soon as possible where you will taste everything sweet (dulcia), everything pleasing. He cited a verse of Menander in which a venerable old man admonishes his students to fall upon their studies with alacri animo in order to obtain wealth. He did not, of course, neglect to insist that riches in the life of a man are of no importance unless accompanied by virtue. The climax of the speech comes when he says: "Rightly the greatest of poets says 'Labor improbus omnia vincit'." His audience would have recognized that this quotation was part of that famous passage in Virgil (Georgics 1,145-46) just cited (p. 225). Alciato's motto for his emblem is surely reminiscent of it. The epigram: Lines 1-2 Nititur in pondus palma et consurgit in arcum. Quo magis et premitur hoc mage tollit onus. [The palm tree struggles against a weight and rises into an arch. The more it is pressed down the more it lifts its load.] Line 1 is Alciato's adaptation of Aulus Gellius's Latin translation of Plutarch's description of the phenomenon in his Table Talk, VIII.4.5, Moralia, 724 E-F: adversus pondus resurgit et sursum nititur recurvaturque, which Erasmus had incorporated into the adage "Palmam ferre," I.iii.iv (LB 1-112 E). Alciato's reworking of Gellius gives the emphatic position to "nititur," a vivid verb, and creates the alliteration "pondus palma" which is continued in line two in "premitur."

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Line 2. The two parts of this second line of the couplet, an elucidation of line 1, are neatly balanced by the alliterative "magis mage." Lines 3-4 Fert et odoratas bellaria dulcia glandes Queis mensas inter primus habetur honos. [And it bears fragrant dates, a sweet dessert, which holds first place of honor among the courses.] The couplet defines the function of the tree, its production of dates, its use at banquets. Note the word order: "odoratas . . . glandes" enclosing "bellaria dulcia." The term glans could be applied to the fruit of all trees growing in the upper branches, a species called by the Greek аяобргж. Cf. the Greek fiaXavoc,. Herodotus, 1.193, in his account of Babylon noted that the palm trees ((poivuceq) supplied bread, wine and honey. On bellaria, cf. Aulus Gelluis, Attic Nights, XIII.11.7.: "On Varro and banquets": And he does not omit to tell what the nature of the dessert (secundis mensis) ought to be, for he uses these words: "Those sweetmeats (bellaria) are sweetest which are not sweet": for harmony between delicacies and digestion is not to be counted on. That no one may be puzzled by the word bellaria which Varro uses in this passage, let me say that it means all kinds of dessert. For what the Greeks called яёццата or Tpayf)ц,ата our forefathers called bellaria. In the earlier comedies one may find this term applied also to sweeter wines, which are called Liberi bellaria, or "sweetmeats of Bacchus." Cf. Erasmus, Parabolae, LB, I 607D: Ut palma quia cortice sit cultellato, difficilis est adscensu, sed fructum habet dulcissimum: Itidem eruditio et virtus aditum habent difficilem, sed fructum dulcissimum. [The palm-tree, having bark with knife-sharp edges, is dif­ ficult to climb, but it bears delicious fruit. In the same way

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learning and goodness are hard to attain, but their fruits are delicious.] In line 4 "Which holds first honor among the courses" Alciato is saying that the sweetmeats which were served as dessert were the most highly prized part of a banquet. There is a veiled pun here with primus, as the dessert was called the secunda mensa. Note the anastrophe "mensas inter" and the alliteration "habetur honos." Lines 5-6

I puer. et reptans ramis has collige: mentis Qui constantis erit, praemia digna feret.

[Go, boy, and creeping among the branches collect these: the person of steadfast mind will carry off worthy rewards.] Line 5. The boy enters the picture, the focal point of the emblem. reptans - the frequentative of repo [to creep] is used here, as the commentary suggests, metaphorically. It was a favorite word of Claudian, an author Alciato became familiar with as a young student. Note also the alliteration, "reptans ramis." Line 6. The symbolism of the boy becomes clear: he is the symbol of the young man whose unwavering determination will bring him the rewards he deserves. What those rewards would be, Alciato, as we have seen, had outlined in detail in his Oration in Praise of Civil Law (Avignon, 1520). The concept of such a man (mentis constantis) is a suitable coordinate for the motto of the emblem. The commentary suggests Quintus Fabius Maximus as a fine example of one who exhibited steadfastness of mind, citing Valerius Maximus De Constantia, Bk. Ill, ch. 8. 2. Ironically, many years later Alciato felt that he had to defend himself against the charge of inconstancy because he had taught in so many different universities. In 1543 in his inaugural address at the University of Ferrara he said the following: 3. For the translation, see CWE, XXIII, 241.

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I know that I have been suspect because of my frequent changes of abode, having taught now at Avignon, now at Bourges, now at Pavia, now at Bologna. Nor are there lacking those who attribute this to inconstancy (inconstantiae), as if I could never stay in one place as is said in the Horatian poem (Ep. I. 8. 12): "At Rome, fickle as the wind, I love Tibur, at Tibur Rome." For it is a sign of a mind not well composed (поп bene compositae mentis) if one runs hither and thither and is unable to be at rest. But my excuse is at hand and well known to all. While I was fleeing the tumults of war and seeking a safe place for my studies I was driven hither and thither by the orders of princes and not able to have a fixed seat. Thus was I borne about, snatched by the impetus of water instead of wood, agitated by various waves. But whatever wandering there was resulted in the public good (publicum utilitatem). Alciato's emblem is a good example of a humanistic document. He availed himself of two ideas of antiquity, namely that the palm tree is the symbol of victory and that it is also the symbol of resistance to pressure. For the epigram, a classical genre, he chose the language of the Roman authors and employed traditional rhetorical and poetic devices. However, by adding to the image of the tree the figure of the boy who will achieve victory by his stubborn pursuit of its fruit, Alciato imposed on the ancient concepts a new and original interpre­ tation. The implied comparison of the boy with the student who will win rich rewards through his assiduous application to his studies provides a kind of academic setting. Furthermore, Alciato has a dou­ ble role in the emblem. It is he who exhorts the student and he may also be seeing in himself a student who already possessed the rewards.

4.

D. Andreae Alciati lureconsulti Oratio Habita Ferrariae, M. D. XLIII cum Primum Professurus Illuc Venit, in Reliaua Opera (Lyons: Gryphius, 1548), p. 84.

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II Next, some comments on the sequence of the woodcuts: 1531 ed. Augsburg 1531 ed., B3: A log of palm wood rests horizontally across the trunk of a tree among the lower branches. There is a border on each side: the one on the left has a seated putto with right arm upraised looking at a leaved branch; the one on the left has an upside-down putto hanging from a leaved tree branch.

Fig. 1. Andrea Alciato, Emblematum liber (Augsburg, 1531), B3. Reproduction through courtesy of Princeton University Library.

Paris 1534 ed., p. 28: A small naked boy is aloft clinging to a branch of a palm tree; there are dates visible in the inner part of the tree. The trunk of the tree is smooth.

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Fig. 2. Andrea Alciato, Emblematum libellus (Paris, 1534), p. 28. Reproduction through courtesy of Princeton University Library.

Lyons 1551 ed., p. 43: A somewhat larger boy, partially draped in a stole, is clinging to the end of a branch of a palm tree. No dates are visible. The boy holds a knife in his left hand. Below in the distance a stream and a hilltown. The trunk of the tree is very bristly.

Fig. 3. Andrea Alciato, Emblematum liber (Lyons, 1551), p. 43. Reproduction through courtesy of Princeton University Library.

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Padua 1621 ed., p. 198: A fairly large naked boy clinging with both hands to branches of a palm tree which has a bristly trunk. Below in the background, hills and a walled city.

Fig. 4. Andrea Alciato, Emblematum liber (Padua, 1621), p. 43. Reproduction through courtesy of Princeton Univer­ sity Library.

Note the drastic difference between the woodcuts of the 1531 and the 1534 editions. We know from a letter of Alciato to Cardinal Bembo dated February 25, 1535 (Barni Lettere No. 93), that he had disowned the earlier Augsburg edition because it was corrupt. Apparently, he felt that the theme of the emblem, the students achieving rich rewards as a result of their rigorous application to their studies, was better served by the image of the boy struggling to gather the dates of the palm tree. Ill I come to part three of this triptych—emblems which could be considered offshoots or extensions of Alciato's emblem. There are twenty-one emblems listed under the word "palm" in the HenkelSchone Emblemata. Handbuch гиг Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1967), cols. 191-202. I have selected three of these as examples of adaptations of Alciato's emblem.

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1. Nicholas Taurellus, Emblemata Physica Ethica Naturae Morum, Nurnberg, MDCII (1602), D. 6. (Henkel-Schone, col. 196)

Motto:

Sursum Deflexa Recurret [Bent down it will rise up.]

Pictura: A mature man, fully clothed, is clinging with both hands to a branch of a palm tree; both of his feet are on the ground. A coat of arms is suspended from a branch of the tree on the right. In the background buildings and hills. Epigram: Si quern deflectas magno molimine ramum: Hujus ab extrema parte resurget apex. Totus et infracta summum virtute cacumen Injustam fugiens vimque, manumque petet. Exsurgens multo, stabilitaque tempore virtus, Nullo devictum robore robor habet. Et si forte graves fortunae injuria casus Inferat: haud ullo victa labore jacet. [If you bend a branch downwards with great effort, it will rise again from the farthest part. Remaining whole and fleeing from the unjust violence and force, it will seek the peak, its excellence impaired. Thus excellence rising high at a fixed time will not be overcome by any power. And if, by chance the injury of fortune brings great mishaps, it will not be overcome by any hardship.] The emblem is dedicated to Christopher Stockhammer and is really more of an impresa than an emblem.

2. Barthelemy Aneau, Victa Poesis. Ut pictura poesis, Lyons, 1552, p. 95. (Henkel-Schone, p. 197): Motto:

Studiorum Contentio [Student rivalry]

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Pictura: Two naked boys, one of them climbing a palm tree, another, crouched groveling at the base of the tree, is being used as a kind of footstool by the climber. A hilltown in the background. Epigram: Ad fructus palmae veniunt puer unus, et alter, Hie supra ascendit, pronus at ille iacet, Is qui ad radices desperans substitit imas Praestat opem erecto, supedijque vicem. Qui vero ascendit: fructus decerpit: et ex iis Largitur socio: participem facit. Certamen studij. et doctrinae gloria, Palma est Ad quam contendunt ingenui pueri. Quorum alij pulchro victi in certamine, tollunt Victores: et ijs corpora subijeiunt. Queis tamen excerptos prudentiae ab arbore fructus Dant impertitos, consilioque, iuvant. Non omnes quicunque student: profectibus aequis Ad frugem veniunt, deficit at bona pars. Qui nitentur enim ad summum: illis altius ibunt: Qui circa excordes infima substiterint. [Two boys come to the fruit of the palm tree: One ascends and picks the fruit, the other lies prone. The one who in despair stays at the lowest roots aids the one above, acting as a footstool. The one who really ascends picks the fruit and gives some of it to his comrade, making him a partner. The palm means rivalry in study and the glory of learning to which clever boys aspire. Those conquered in a fair contest lift up the victors and subject their bodies to them. Some fruit plucked from the tree of prudence they give to the unskilled and help them with advice. Not everyone studies; they come to the fruit with equal advantages, but a good part are deficient. Those who struggle to the top will go higher than those who foolishly remain at the lowest levels.] Aneau was professor of rhetoric in Lyons. His French translations of Alciato's emblems were published there in 1549. It was he who

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arranged the emblems according to their commonplaces. He also did a translation of More's Utopia. Alciato would probably have considered this charming scene of student life too idyllic.

3. Denis Lebey de Batilly, Dionysii Lebei Batillae Regii Mediomatricum Praesidis Emblemata, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1596, No. 44, (HenkelSchone, col. 198): Motto:

Carpturus Dulcem Fructum Radicis Amarae [You will gather sweet fruit from a bitter root.]

Pictura: At the right a palm tree with three boys fully clothed: one boy is climbing the trunk of the tree, knife in hand, another stands nearby looking up. A third kneels at the base of the tree. At the left, with a book on his lap, is a seated student looking up at his teacher, a bearded man, who stands next to him holding a book. Epigram: Ascensu teneras pueri secat aspera palmas, Non alitur fructus palma datura suos. Hos aditus primum virtus spectantibus offert Ad sese et praeceps ardua monstrat iter. Sed quibus ipse dabit summum contingere culmen, Perpetua hos requies lausque decus manent. [Boys cut tender palms in a difficult ascendNot otherwise will the tree give up its fruit, To those looking upward excellence offers these approaches first of all showing them a hard and headlong path. But for those to whom it is given to reach the summit Unending repose and praise and honor await.] No doubt Alciato would have been pleased by the inclusion of the teacher as a symbol of those who, like Alciato, spent their lives urging their students to overcome difficulties in order to attain the rewards attendant upon the practitioners in the world of jurisprudence. I hope that in this overview of palm imagery Alciato would have found himself and Apollo and the Muses well served.

The "Trusty Servant": A Sixteenth-Century English Emblem MARK THORNTON BURNETT The Queen's University of Belfast Literary representations of servants in the English Renaissance are now attracting a critical attention that is long overdue. Studies of visual realizations of domestics in the period, however, are few and far between, possibly because of the paucity of surviving materials. In Continental Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the most obvious examples are Italian family compositions, which included black pages, or Michael Sweerts's "Playing Checkers," a 1652 Dutch work showing footmen at play. Turning to England, there are similarly scattered and fragmentary sources of evidence. Popular pamphlets, particularly conduct books or polemical exhortations produced during the Civil War, occasionally printed idealized emblematic

1. Linda Anderson, "Shakespeare's Servants/' Shakespeare Yearbook, 2 (Spring, 1991), 149-61; Mark Thornton Burnett, "Apprentice Literature and the 'Crisis' of the 1590s," The Yearbook of English Studies, 21 (1991), 27-38; Mark Thornton Burnett, "Masters and Servants in Moral and Religious Treatises, c. 1580-c. 1642," in Arthur Marwick, ed., The Arts, Literature and Society (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 48-75; David Evett, "'Surprising Confrontations': Ideologies of Service in Shakespeare's England," Renaissance Papers (1990), pp. 67-78.

2.

Dennis Romano, "The Regulation of Domestic Service in Renaissance Venice," The Sixteenth-Century Journal, 22.4 (1991), 676; Diana de Marly, Working Dress: A History of Occupational Costume (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1986), p. 42.

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impressions of dependants, usually maidservants and apprentices. Those in royal employment were more fortunate. The Gentlewoman of Elizabeth I's bedchamber, Blanch Parry, who died in 1589, is com­ memorated by two memorials with inscriptions, one in Bacton Church, Herefordshire, the other in St. Margaret's, Westminster. More strik­ ing instances of royal favour are reflected in the portraits of Katherine Elliot, who died in 1688, a nurse to James II, and Bridget Holmes, who died in 1691 aged one hundred years, described as a "Necessary Woman" in Charles I's service. Even a trawl of the private collections belonging to aristocratic families yields limited results. Prior to 1642, servants were not usually sketched or painted, it appears. However, still in existence are eighteenth-century portraits of gamekeepers, skullions, fools and crippled factotums at Chirk Castle, Clwyd, at Dudmaston, Quatt, and at Knole, Sevenoaks, and, lower down the scale, Hogarth's drawings of his household servants are often cited as demonstrations of a master's interest in his domestic charges. It was, then, only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in England that

3.

John Heywood, The spider and the flie (London, 1556; STC 13308); Thomas Heywood, The four prentises of London (London, 1615; STC 13321); The maids petition (London, 1647; Wing M280); Paul Seaver, "A Social Contract? Master against Servant in the Court of Requests," History Today, 39 (September, 1989), 50-56; David Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603-1660 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), figure 2A.

4.

Dorothy Margaret Stuart, The English Abigail (London: Macmillan, 1946), pp. 37-38.

5.

Oliver Millar, The Tudor, Stuart and Early Georgian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen: Plates (London: Phaidon, 1963), plates 125 and 144; Oliver Millar, The Tudor, Stuart and Early Georgian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen: Text (London: Phaidon, 1963), p. 140.

6.

Letter from V. B. Keen (21 January 1992), Chirk Castle, Clwyd; letter from Michael Chambers (15 January 1992), Dudmaston, Quatt; letter from F. С Downer (10 January 1992), Knole, Sevenoaks. There are nineteenth-century portraits of servants in the Buccleuch collection (letter from Kate Hannah, 14 January 1992, Drumlanrig Castle, Thornhill). On Hogarth and his servants, see Celina Fox, Londoners (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987), p. 127.

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servants began to be perceived in detail as autonomous individuals in their own right. For these reasons, the neglected emblematic wall-painting of the "Trusty Servant," which dates from the sixteenth century and is located near the kitchen at Winchester College, England, deserves a more extended and scholarly treatment than it has so far received. An animal combined with a man, a hog, a deer and an ass (or a "Hircocervus," as it is termed), the "Trusty Servant" is accompanied by rnyming Latin verses. With his hooves planted firmly on the ground and his arms raised, the servant, dressed in a blue and red jerkin, wearing a wig and bearing the tools of his trade, stares impassively into the distance, and is set in a rustic, verdant landscape. Figure 1 shows the servant today, and Figure 2 offers a closer look.

Fig. 1. The "Trusty Servant." From Elizabeth Godfrey, Home Life under the Stuarts 1603-1649 (London: Grant Richards, 1903), facing p. 210. Every effort has been made to locate the photographer of the picture.

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' •

•••

•

i

Fig. 2. T h e ' T r u s t y Servant." Courtesy of The Warden and Scholars of Winchester College.

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The Latin text explains the allegorical significances of the portrait: Effigiem Servi si vis spectare probati, Quisque es, haec oculos pascat imago tuos. Porcinum os quocunque cibo jejunia sedat, Haec sera consilium ne fluat arcta premit. Dat patientem Asinus Dominis jurgantibus aurem, Cervus habet celers ire, redire, pedes. Leva docet multum tot rebus onusta laborem, Vestis munditiem, dextera aperta fidem. Accinctus gladio, clypeo munitus, et inde Vel se vel Dominum quo tueatur, habet. An English translation, which can be traced to the late eighteenth century, reads: A trusty servant's portrait would you see, This emblematic figure well survey. The porker's snout, not nice in diet shews: The padlock shut, no secret he'll disclose. Patient, the ass, his master's rage will hear. Swiftness in errand, the stag's feet declare. Loaden his left hand, apt to labour saith; The vest, his neatness: open hand, his faith. Girt with his sword; his shield upon his arm; Himself and master he'll protect from harm. 7. The Latin verse is accurately reproduced in Louise Brown Osborn, The Life, Letters, and Writings of John Hoskyns 1566-1638 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937), p. 168. 8. I cite the English translation from The History and Antiquities of Winchester, 2 vols. (Winton: J. Wilkes, 1773), I, 92. Antiquarian and scholarly interest in the figure seems to date from this period. See also W. E., "A Piece of Antiquity/' The Gentleman's Magazine, 82.1 (February, 1812), 112-15; John Milner, The History Civil and Ecclesiastical, & Suruey of the Antiquities, of Winchester, 2 vols. (Winchester: Ja.s Robbins, 1798), II, 126. Baird W. Whitlock suggests in John Hoskyns, Serjeant-at-Law (Washington, D. C : University Presses of America, 1982), p. 33, that the English translation is also by Hoskyns, but he gives no evidence to support this statement.

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In this article, I will be correcting some of the errors of previous assessments, adding new data to provide a comprehensive description, and furnishing fresh information about the origins of the emblem. The English translation specifically identifies the "Trusty Servant" as an "emblematic figure," and it might be worthwhile pausing to consider what exactly constituted an emblem in the English Renaissance. Strictly an emblem consists of three parts: pictura, "motto" and "epigram" combine so that text and image illuminate each other in a self-reflective and self-conscious interpretive process. Images in emblem books sometimes acquired denser shades of meaning when they were used in more sophisticated forms on the title-pages of other publications. Although the "Trusty Servant" lacks a motto, it shares with the Renaissance emblem the pictura and the "epigram," the most striking formal features. Various candidates for the verse and painting have been put forward by scholars. Italian artists such as Bernardi, or those belonging to French and German schools have been suggested, but the most popular contender has been Christopher Johnson, Headmaster of Winchester from 1561-1571. In 1848 Charles Wordsworth published an account of the College in which he included some Latin hexameters, of sixteenth-century provenance describing the life of a Winchester student. This poem, "De Collegio seu potius Collegiata Schola Wicchamica Wintoniensi" (in manuscript in the Fellows' Library), Richard Johnson composed in 1549-53 while still a boy, it was thought. On the ninth leaf there appears an "Effigies Servi Collegiati," with the Latin lines:

9. See Alain Boureau, "Books of Emblems on the Public Stage: Cotejardin and cote com," in Roger Chartier, ed., The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print i Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Polity, 1989), p. 262.

10. Cecil Deedes, "The Trusty Servant," Notes and Queries, 12 (September 11,1915), 194; T. F. Kirby, Annals of Winchester College (London: Henry Frowde, 1892), p. 40. The attribution to Johnson is argued by Elizabeth Godfrey, Home Life under the Stuarts 1603-1649 (London: Grant Richards, 1903), p. 210; W. H. Gunner, "The Trusty Servant at Winchester College," Notes and Queries, 6.157, (October 30,1852), 417; Arthur F. Leach, A History of Winchester College (London: Duckworth, 1899), p. 119.

MARK THORNTON BURNETT

Fig. 3. The "Trusty Servant." From Robert Mathew, "De Collegio seu potius Collegiata Schola Wicchamica Wintoniensi," manuscript dated 1647, ninth leaf. Part of Schola Wichamica, a volume in the Fellows' Library. Courtesy of The Warden and Scholars of Winchester College.

Since the discovery of a very similar Latin poem about Winchester at Magdalen College, Oxford, however, and a fresh examination of the manuscripts, it is now clear that both texts belong to 1647, a much later date. The Magdalen manuscript, bound in a volume entitled Theological Tracts (pressmark S. 11. 24), is signed by Robert Mathew, a scholar at Winchester in 1647 who subsequently studied at New College. While it is satisfying to know that Robert Mathew compiled the Winchester and Magdalen verses in the mid-seventeenth century, we cannot conclude that the wall-painting of the "Trusty Servant" is contemporaneous. 11. Details are taken from A. K. Cook, About Winchester College to which is Prefixed

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Only comparatively recently was it established that the painting and the verses are the work of John Hoskyns, a Winchester scholar of 1579. A description in Aubrey's Brief Lives reinforces the attribution, and there are other references which confirm Hoskyns as the originator of the text and the image. As Hoskyns matriculated in 1584 to study at New College, the, "Trusty Servant" is almost certainly a product of the early 1580s. After his university training, Hoskyns went on to become a barrister, an M. P. for Hereford, a Serjeant-at-Arms, a Justice in Wales, and a member of the Council for the Marches. Briefly, he spent time in the Tower for his scurrilous, anti-Scottish satirical writings. Throughout his career he cultivated an enthusiasm for emblematic exercises; at Morehampton, his country seat, he drew on the outside wall of the house pictures of his servants (the gardener and the old man who made the fires), and beside them added Latin distichs. Many of his literary preoccupations (he also wrote occasional poems, epitaphs and epigrams) are explored in his treatise, Directions for Speech and Style, assembled between 1598 and 1603, which survives in manuscript. An emblem is defined by Hoskyns in this work: an EMBLEM is but the one part of the similitude, the other part (viz., the application) expressed indifferently and jointly in one sentence, with words some proper to the one part, some to the other . . . .

"De Collegio Wintoniensi" by Robert Mathew (London: Macmillan, 1917). 12. John Aubrey, Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1958), p. 168. See also Herbert Chitty, "Our Trusty Servant/' The Wykehamist, 652 (November 4,1924), 12 (Chitty's note has provided a number of the leads which are pursued in this article); J. E. Jackson, "The Trusty Servant at Winchester," Notes and Queries, 6.160 (November 20, 1852), 495; Osborn, p. 18. The contributions of G. Green Smith and John B. Wainewright to Notes and Queries, 12 (October 2, 1915), 267-68, offer equally useful reflections on the figure, as does H. C., "The Trusty Servant," Notes and Queries, 12 (October 30, 1915), 342-44. 13. See Osborn, pp. 20-56, 212-213; J. W. Saunders, A Biographical Dictionary of Renaissance Poets and Dramatists, 1520-1650 (Brighton: Harvester, 1983), pp. 82-83.

14. John Hoskins, Directions for Speech and Style, ed. Hoyt H. Hudson (Princeton:

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In the privacy of study Hoskyns reflected upon emblems, allegories, similitudes and fables; as a country gentleman he put into practice his academic concerns, and displayed them in public. But the "Trusty Servant" did not emerge out of nowhere: the figure participates in a network of Elizabethan discourses about authority, and is part of a larger system of contemporary cultural practices. Attempting to track down the earliest representations of the "Hircocervus" can be rewarding. According to some scholars, late seventeenth-century writers claimed that the Greek painter, Apelles, "invented" the emblem; an entry in a commonplace book of 1690-1720 runs: Apelles painted a servant with his hands full of tools to signify diligence in work; with broad shoulders to bear many wrongs; with hind's feet to run swiftly at his master's command; with a lean belly that he should be content with spare diet; with the ears of an asse and his mouth shut with two keys, to signifie he should be swift to hear and slow to speak. 5 In the Lubomirski Museum at Leopol there is a sixteenth-century Polish woodcut of an allegorized animal-servant which may predate Hoskyns's creation. Whatever visual sources were available for Hoskyns to draw upon, his "Trusty Servant" gained steadily in popularity, being reproduced in engravings in 1749, in 1773, in 1812, and on later occasions during the nineteenth century. Figures 4 and 5 show some of the servant's later incarnations.

Princeton University Press, 1935), pp. 9-10.

15. Deedes, p. 193. Unfortunately Deedes does not identify the commonplace book consulted. However, see also F. Madden, "The Trusty Servant at Winchester/' Notes and Queries, 140. 6 (July 3,1852), 13; F. Saxl, "A Spiritual Encyclopaedia of the Later Middle Ages," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5 (1942), 101. 16. Chitty, p. 11. 17. Deedes, p. 193; The History and Antiquities of Winchester, facing p. 92; W. E., p.

EMBLEMATICA

Fig. 4. The "Irusty Servant." From The Gentleman's Magazine, 82.1 (February, 1812) 112.

If we make reference to written materials, further details emerge, and it may well have been that Hoskyns was recollecting flourishing French traditions when he devised his work. For Pierre Gringore's The Cast ell of Labour, printed in French in 1499 and then in English in 1506 and 1510, includes the following account. I cite from Alexander Barclay's 1506 translation:

112; Madden, p. 12; Leach, facing p. 401.

MARK THORNTON BURNETT

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Fig. 5. The "Trusty Servant." A nineteenth-century engraving from Arthur F. Leach, Л History of Win­ chester College (London: Duckworth, 1899), facing p. 401. Every effort has been made to locate the photographer of the picture.

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If that thou wylte thy mayster please Thou must haue these thre propretees Fyrst must thou haue an asses eares With an hertes fete in all degrees An hogges snoute / and after these By suche meanes shall I declare That in tyme of aduersytees By them the better thou mayst fare By an asses eares this is ment That thou must harken hym aboute If thou se he be not content Saye nought but se thou hym doute Where as he is se thou not route What he co[m]maundeth do gladly Than shall he not put the out If thou behaue the thus wysely By this hogges snoute mene I this What mete so euer to the is brought Though it be somwhat a mysse Take pacyence and saye thou nought Ete thou it not but it be ought Rather suffre thou a lytell penurye Another tyme better shall be bought For to amende that Iniurye Let thy snoute smell in eche place And specyally for to seke labour If thou so do in lytell space Thou shalte not fayle of his fauour Let thy pacyence ouercome his rygour And take good hede to his condycyon Se that thou alway hym honour Submyttynge the to his correccyon This sygnyfyeth the fete of an herte Thou must do thy mayster socour Bothe daye and nyght though thou sholde smerte To renne and go at euery houre

MARK THORNTON BURNETT

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Daye nor nyght spare no laboure Rather than he sholde haue domage Helpe hym in welth and in doloure If ony man do hym outrage Barclay's rhyming axioms take the form of an exhortation, which enjoins the servant to cultivate dutiful and virtuous conduct, and his text was almost certainly read aloud by newly literate bourgeois householders to their assembled families. The poem differs in several respects from Hoskyns's, but the essential contours of the descriptions are the same. Originally written in Latin, Gilbert Cousin's Of the office ofseruantes, printed in an English translation in 1543, defines an ideal servant in parallel terms: the image or portraiture of a good seruant, accordinge as the frenche me[n] haue the same paincted in their howses, and that in this wyse. Furste shoulde he haue a skarlette bonet apon his heade, with a faire shurte on his backe, but in steade of a nose, they make him a hogges snowte, with asse eares, and hertes feate, holdinge vp his right hande stretched fourth, and apon his left shoulder bering a cowlestaffe with two pailes of water, one before, an other behinde. Last then, holding in his left hande a shouell full of quicke coles, signifienge by theise deuises, as towchinge the fayre cappe, and shurte, howe a seruant should go netely apparellyd. by the hogges snowte was mente, he sholde nat be lykerous, or ouerdayntie mowthed, but content with al meates. the asse eares pretended, that he also should haue pacient earis, in suffrynge what euer his maister should roughly say vnto him. So lyke wyse his hande holden vppe warned him of vprightnes, in ha[n]dlynge his maisters goodes. The hertes fete betokenid quykenes in dispatchinge lightly what euer he went abowt, and so by the two pailes, and the fyre was 18. Pierre Gringore, The Castell of Labour, trans. Alexander Barclay, ed. Alfred W. Pollard (Edinburgh: Roxburghe Club, 1905), sigs. dii v -diii r .

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vnderstode both deftenes, and good conueyaunce in bringinge many thinges at ones to passe. Conspicuously lacking in Hoskyns's verse are the pails of water and the "quicke coles"; he chooses to emphasize alternative features signifying the servant's exemplary qualities. A final example comes from a devotional tract of 1613 by Robert Hill, which appears to be alluding to these earlier portrayals: Quest. How then may a good man-servant be described? Answ. You told me, that you haue seene him thus described in print: He must haue, I The snowt of a swine, to be content with any fare. 2 A locke on his mouth, to keepe his masters secrets. 3 The long eares of An Asse, to hearken to his masters commandements. 4 Good apparell on his back, for his masters credit. 5 A sword and buckler on his right arme, for his masters defence. 6 On his left arme a Curry-combe for his horse, a beesome for his chamber, and a brush for his apparell, as one ready for any seruice. 7 The eyes of an Eagle, to see into that which may be for his masters good. 8 The feete of an Hinde, to go with all speed about his masters businesse. 20 Apart from the implements the servant is carrying, Hill's catechetical exchange invites comparison with Hoskyns's verses; it is even

19. Gilbert Cousin, Of the office ofseruantes (London, 1543; STC 5879), sigs. Cvir"v. See also Madden, p. 12; M. Y. R. W., Notes and Queries, 5.131 (May 1,1852) 417. 20. Robert Hill, The pathway to prayer, and pietie (London, 1613; STC 13474), p. 96. The relevant extract is taken from "A Commvnicant prepared to the Lords Table," a sub-section of the book. For later Dutch and Italian descriptions, see Madden, p. 12-13.

MARK THORNTON BURNETT

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possible that it was inspired by the early popularity generated by the Winchester portrait. Unfortunately, these descriptions allow only an indication of how I he "Trusty Servant" may have appeared to sixteenth-century eyes. Subsequent repaintings—in 1611-12, in 1627-28, in 1633-37, in 1657-58, in 1678-79, in 1778 and in 1809—would seem to have transformed the 21

figure into more of an Augustan official than an Elizabethan menial. Despite the changes, it would be useful to reflect upon what kind of servant the portrait represents. In his poem about Winchester College (the Magdalen College version), Robert Mathew depicts the servants working at the school: The servants are as follows: a manciple, two cooks, two brewers, a gardener, a bread-butler, a miller, a porter, a butcher, a baker, an under-butler or beer-butler, an ostler, two squalid scullions, a man who cleans trenchers, and an old woman for the kitchen. To all these the two Bursars pay a well-earned wage. A close inspection of the "Trusty Servant," however, suggests that Hoskyns did not have in mind the employees of the College; instead, his figure bears more resemblances to the dress of Elizabethan aristo­ cratic servants, particularly in the details of the sword, buckler and blue coat. Walter Darell wrote in A Short discourse of the life of Seruingmen (1578) that "Not euery one hauing a blade by his side, or a liuerie cote on his backe, may be termed a Seruingman," while A Health to the Gentlemanly Profession of Seruingmen: or, The Seruingmans Com­ fort, a pamphlet of 1598, extols the servants of a nobleman who wear blue-coloured livery and carry rapiers. And a former servant, Wil-

21. Chitty, p. 12. For the visit of George III in 1778, the servant was given a new "Windsor" uniform. See Kirby, p. 39. 22. Cook, p. 27. The lines have been translated by the editor. 23. Louis B. Wright, "A Conduct Book for Malvolio," Studies in Philology, 31.2 (1934), 122; A Health to the Gentlemanly Profession of Seruingmen: or, The Seruing­ mans Comfort (1598) in W. С Hazlitt, ed., Inedited Tracts (London: Roxburghe Library, 1868), pp. 131-34, 140.

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liam Basse, wrote eulogistically in Sword and Buckler: Or, ServingMans Defence (1602) that: Who treads my stage is chaleng'd, yet not tride: Who tries my combat fights, yet feels no weapon: Who sees my buckler's dar'd, but not defide: Who touch my sword is hit, but neuer beaten: For peace tries no man, words can make no fight, Muses doe but inuent, and pens but write. Hoskyns's portrait accords significantly with these glowing, nostalgic evocations, and points to a contemporary worry about the passing of the "golden age" of service, and to sentimentalized notions of dutifulness and obedience, which seemed increasingly under threat at a time of rapid social change and political upheaval. But the "Trusty Servant" is an ultimately ambiguous creation, a confusing composition which manifests a range of contradictory attitudes towards the labouring classes. It is a portrait of an aristocratic servant rather than a worker of the "lower sort": notwithstanding his professed sentiments, Hoskyns cannot bring himself to depict a domestic beneath the ranks of the nobility. The animal associations, moreover, work against the thrust of the verses so that the final impression is of a gentrified werewolf, not a respectable college servant. While the devoted servant was frequently urged to be secretive in Elizabethan treatises, the "Trusty Servanf's tongue is chained and his throat is swathed in a scarf, suggesting that he will speak out if allowed a voice. In the Latin verses, the references to food and diet are equally degrading, and they have the effect of still further reducing the servant to a beast-like, grotesque status. The stag is swift, but an

24. William Basse, Sword and Buckler: Or, Serving-Mans Defence (1602) in The Poetical Works of William Basse (1602-1653), ed. R. Warwick Bond (London: Ellis & Elvey, 1893), p. 5. See also G. K. Hunter, "Flatcaps and Bluecoats: Visual Signals on the Elizabethan Stage," Essays and Studies 1980 (London: John Murray, 1980), pp. 16-47.

25. Thomas Bentley, The sixt (seuenth) lampe ofvirginitie (London, 1582; STC 1894), p. 64; Isabella Whitney, A sweet nosgay, or a pleasant posye: contayning a hundred and ten phylosophicall flowers (London, 1573; STC 25440), sig. Cviii v .

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implicit converse idea is that the servant will run away, having abandoned employment. The "Trusty Servant" finally operates in two directions at one and the same time, and behind the painting's seeming celebrations lurk hidden fears and anxieties. This Satanic figure who wields possibly destructive implements is hemmed in by a pastoral scene which displaces his unsettling implications. There is no sense of an interiorized individual with an authentic existence for the emblematic representation displays a purely figurative type, a collection of signifying fragments which fail to cohere and which indicate a need to repress what is perceived to be the dangerous potential of the lower orders. Only later were employees seen to possess independent psychologies; for Hoskyns, the servant could be no more than a monstrous anomaly, fixed in a paradoxical pose combining supplication with defiant menace.

26. I have argued elsewhere that perceiving the "other" or the lower orders as a collection of fragments produces an illusion of the wholeness and invulnerability of the oppressing class, an argument which obtains here; see my "Colonialist Discourses in the English Renaissance," in Marie-Therese Jones-Davies, ed., Langues et Nations au Temps de la Renaissance (Paris: Klincksieck, 1991), p. 247.

Emblem Types in Gabriel Rollenhagen's Nucleus Emhlematum DIETMAR PEIL Universitat Miinchen With its total of 200 emblems, Gabriel Rollenhagen's Nucleus Emhlematum, published in two volumes in 1611 and 1613, is without a doubt one of the most important emblem collections by a German author. 1 Although this collection ranks as a "masterpiece of the genre/' 2 it has so far not received the scholarly attention which it 1. A version of this paper was read at the conference Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory (1500-1700) held at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, May 1-3,1992. 2. Carsten-Peter Warncke in Gabriel Rollenhagen, Sinn-Bilder. Ein Tugendspiegel, ed. Carsten-Peter Warncke, Die bibliophilen Taschenbucher, 378 (Dortmund: Harenberg, 1983), postscript, p. 430 ("Spitzenwerk der Gattung"); cf. postscript, p. 425: "model example of the art of the emblem" [Musterbeispiel der Emblematik]; cf. preface, p. 7: "the most beautiful example of the whole genre" [schonstes Beispiel der ganzen Gattung]. Warncke adds a short commentary with a translation of motto and subscriptio to each emblem. The French translations of the 100 epigrams in the first part of Rollenhagen's work are quoted from Gabriel Rollenhagen, Nucleus emhlematum selectissimorum (Cologne and Arnheim, 1611; repr. in the series: "Emblematisches Cabinet," Hildesheim and New York: Olms, 1985); the French epigrams of the second part are quoted from Gabriel Rollenhagen, Selectorum emhlematum centuria secunda (Arnheim and Utrecht, 1613). Both parts are reprinted together in the series: Les recueils d'emblemes et les traites de physiognomie de la Bibliotheque Interuniversitaire de Lille, 4 (Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1989).—I am indebted to Gabriele Knappe (Bamberg) for the translation of my original German version.

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deserves. In the main part of my paper I will attempt a detailed analysis of the different conceptions of the pictura in order then to draw up a suitable classification of types. Moreover, I want to take a fresh look at the interaction of word and picture, taking into consideration the anonymous French translation of the epigrams. With regard to a comparison to contemporary impresa and emblem theory, with which Rollenhagen was certainly familiar, I will have to confine myself to a few remarks in the final section. When dealing with the problem of different principles for the design of the emblematic pictura, scholars have up to now mainly concentrated on possible deviations between emblematic theory and practice. Albrecht Schone was one of the first to consider the problem of different emblem types. He differentiated between distinct emblem types by supposing an "ideal type of the basic form of the emblem 7 which is characterized by the potential facticity of its image content. From this basic form Schone sets apart, but does not further define, the "allegorical variant/ Here it is not now the represented event in itself that deserves credibility, but only its content. A third type, the "hieroglyphic variant of the emblem/ is established by an argument which is ultimately derived from a 3. Apart from Warncke's comments, which at times have to be considered with a critical eye, there is only one more relevant contribution: Wolfgang Harms, "Der Fragment-Charakter emblematischer Auslegungen und die Rolle des Lesers Gabriel Rollenhagens Epigramme," in Deutsche Barocklyrik, ed. Martin Bircher and Alois M. Haas (Bern and Munich: Francke, 1973), pp. 49-64.

4. Cf., e. g., Dieter Sulzer, "Zu einer Geschichte der Emblemtheorien," Euphorion, 64 (1970), 23-50; Hartmut Freytag, "Die Embleme in Ludwigsburg und Gaarz vor dem Hintergrund zeitgenossischer Emblemtheorie," in Aufierliterarische Wirkungen barocker Emblembiicher. Emblematik in Ludwigsburg, Gaarz und Pommersfelden, ed. Wolfgang Harms and Hartmut Freytag (Munich: Fink, 1975), pp. 19-39; Dietmar Peil, Zur 'angewandten Emblematik' in protestantische Erbauungsbuchern. Dilherr - Arndt - Francisci - Scriver, "Beihefte zum Eupho ion," 11 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1978), passim.

5. Albrecht Schone, Emblematik und Drama im Zeitalter des Barock, 2nd. ed. (Mu nich: Beck, 1968), p. 30 ("idealtypischen emblematischen Grundform"). 6. Schone, Emblematik und Drama, p. 30 ("allegorische Spielart"). 7. Schone, Emblematik und Drama, p. 38 ("hieroglyphische Spielart des Emblems")-

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critical study of the sources. It must be granted that this last type can be seen as a special form of the allegorical emblem even though Schone claims that in this variant the "potential facticity [is], as it were, obscured, mystified, lifted onto an enigmatic level of abstraction/ Peter M. Daly, on the other hand, differentiates according to the mode of thought which takes effect in the respective cases. Thus he arrives at "three broad groupings: typological, hieroglyphic and allegorical." The typological variant corresponds to Schone's ideal type of the emblem. The hieroglyphic form is "a meaningful arrangement of motifs to present visually a piece of . . . wisdom/' 1 0 and due to its inorganic combination, its "facticity" is in doubt. Therefore it follows that Daly's hieroglyphic form can be approximated to Schone's allegorical variant. According to Daly the allegorical mode of thought takes effect: where the emblem-writer employs an existing pictorial generalization, such as a personification, to illustrate a general truth, which is not rendered specific in any way. In such instances the complete concept is anticipated, indeed, fully stated in the picture, with the result t h a t . . . pictorial representation and textual elucidation operate on the same intellectual plane and no development may be observed. l Since it is not possible for me to examine in this paper Daly's stimulating thoughts on the differentiation between "the typological use of a classical motif and its allegorical employment' more thoroughly, I would like to replace the classifications of types presented above with my own attempt at such a classification. 8.

Schone, Emblematik und Drama, p. 38 ("potentielle Faktizitat . . . gleichsam verdunkelt, verratselt, auf eine anigmatische Abstraktionsstufe gehoben").

9.

Peter M. Daly, Emblem Theory. Recent German Contributions to the Characterization of the Emblem Genre, Wolfenbtittler Forschungen, 9 (Nendeln: Kraus Thompson Organization, 1979), p. 80.

10. Daly, Emblem Theory, p. 84. 11. Daly, Emblem Theory, p. 92.

12. Daly, Emblem Theory, p. 96.

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Although I consider both Schone's notion of the ideal type and Daly's typological emblem as a distinct formal type to be entirely reasonable, I prefer to use the term "hermeneutic emblem." This designation takes account of the fact that we have to proceed from the idea of the priority of the picture, that is to say, from the emblematic element of meaning. Its semantic cont e n t , as the w e l l k n o w n e x a m p l e of N i k o l a u s Taurellus suggests, is initially arrived at by the emblem writer in a herm e n e u t i c way, a n d has then to be reconstructed anew by the r e a d e r t h r o u g h recourse to the interaids pretational provided by the verbal parts of the emblem. This type is r e p r e s e n t e d by emblem 1,96, the main Fig. 1. Gabriel Rollenhagen, Nucleus Emblematum, 1,96. c o m p o n e n t of its pic-

tura b e i n g a flail above stalks of wheat (Fig. 1). A first aid in the process of comprehension is provided by the motto "Tribulatio ditat" [Enrichment through tribulation], the subscriptio discloses the complete emblematic meaning: "Tribulat atque quatit segetes ditescere sperans / Rusticus, et nobis crux bene nostra facit" [In the hope of becoming rich the farmer presses and beats the wheat; and we are ennobled by the Cross]. The process of threshing wheat is thus interpreted as a symbol of purification through suffering. The motif is taken from everyday rural life and as such it is observable at any time; the fact that an arm, which reaches out of a cloud and holds the flail, is depicted as well is iconographic convention and therefore irrelevant 13. Cf. Schone, Emblematik und Drama, p. 27.

DIETMAR PEIL

\^рщм£тщEAVZT calido coramortptrufiwi

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259

to the structure of the pictura. As s c h o l a r l y discussion has shown, the designation ''ideal type of the emblem" can be misunderstood. 1 4 In view of the intense dis­ cussion of the term "ty­ p o l o g y " in G e r m a n philology, 15 it is advis­ able to restrict the use of the adjective "typologi­ cal," which was already used by Schone in this c o n n e c t i o n w h e n he talked about a typologi­ cal interpretation, to the t y p o l o g i c a l rela­ tions between the char-

Fig. 2. Gabriel Rollenhagen, Nucleus Emblemaium,

a c t e r s a n d e v e n t s of t h e

1,39.

Old a n d N e w Testa­ ments.

14. Cf. Dieter Sulzer, "Poetik synthetisierender Kiinste und Interpretation der Emblematik," in Geist und Zeichen. Festschrift Arthur Henkel, ed. H. Anton, B. Gajek and P. Pfaff (Heidelberg: Winter, 1977), pp. 401-26, esp. p. 410.

15. Cf. Rudolf Suntrup, "Zur sprachlichen Form der Typologie," in Geistliche Denkformen in der Literatur des Mittelalters, ed. Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, Klaus Grubmuller and Klaus Speckenbach, Munstersche Mittelalter-Schriften, 51 (Munich: Fink, 1984), pp. 23-68, esp. pp. 24-38; for the interdisciplinary discus­ sion of typology cf. Friedrich Ohly, "Typologie als Denkform der Geschichtsbetrachtung," in Typologie. Internationale Beitrage zur Poetik, ed. Volker Bohn, Edition Suhrkamp N. F., 451: Poetik, Internationale Beitrage, 2 (1983; Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1988), pp. 22-63. More recent theoretical considerations are contained in Paul Michel, "Ubergangsformen zwischen Typologie und anderen Gestalten des Textbezugs," in Bildhafte Rede in Mittelalter und fruher Neuzeit. Prohleme Hirer Legitimation und ihrer Funktion, ed. Wolfgang Harms, Klaus Speckenbach and Herfried Vogel (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1992), pp. 43-72. 16. Cf. Schone, Emblematik und Drama, p. 46.

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For the second type of emblematic form I would like to suggest the term "allegorizing emblem." This type embraces combinations of significant single elements, that is to say allegorical or still life groupings. The only criterion for the arrangement of the single elements is the meaning which the emblem is intended to convey. The problem of potential facticity is irrelevant for this type; priority of the picture is out of the question because the starting point is the m e a n i n g . With this meaning in mind, a suitable picture is chosen, a n d it is i r r e l e v a n t whether the elements of the picture derive from the s p h e r e of h i e r o glyphics or from other pictorial traditions. Emblem 1,39 is an example of such an allegorical arrangement, emblematizing doubts of love (Fig. 2). The m o t t o a n d the subscripts tell us that it is ur TESEjRgosliaicauchars wticcrafo. l o v e w h i c h is d e s i g n a t e d by the b u r n i n g heart, the anchor is emp l o y e d as a c o n v e n Fig. 3. Gabriel Rollenhagen, Nucleus Emblematum, tional symbol for hope, 1,4. and the taut bow represents timid fear: "Speque metuque pavet calido cor amore perustum / Spes est solicito plena timore venus" [The heart burning which hot love is trembling with hope and fear. Love is hope full of timid fear]. Probably most emblems featuring personifications have to be interpreted as allegorizing emblems of this kind since these personifications are usually characterized by allegorical attributes. The personification of Occasio (1,4) is shown standing with winged feet on a wheel, the back of her head shaved and still holding the shearing knife in her hand, her wrap blowing in the wind (Fig. 3). Although the subscriptio elucidates nothing more than the meaning of her peculiar hair-style, the other elements are also laden with

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moaning; I would like to draw attention only to the wheel as an allusion to fickleness. The third type is not employed as frequently; I would like to term it "exemplary" or "example-emblem/' Here "example" is under­ s t o o d in the sense of classical rhetoric as one kind of comparison em­ ploying facts which can be found in history, my­ thology or literature. It is not always possible to draw a clear dividing line b e t w e e n this em­ blem type and the alle­ gorizing emblem with a p e r s o n i f i c a t i o n as its main picture element. The Arion-Emblem (1,10) can be understood as such an example-em­ jSon аЖ/тпtimetsPEnvrrTfr,PEBICITLl РТ1Щ blem (Fig. 4). In connec­ jlk vclm medio,nr/a£ ohirr,mart t i o n w i t h the m o t t o "Spernit p e r i c u l a virFig. 4. Gabriel Rollenhagen, Nucleus Emblematum,

t u s

1,10.

gers], Arion signifies the invincibility of virtue.

" [Virtue spurns dan-

17. Cf. Gottfried Kirchner, Fortuna in Dichtung und Etnblematik des Barock. Tradition und Bedeutungswandel eines Motivs (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1970), pp. 21-24 (with numerous illustrations). For the pictorial relationship of the depictions of Occasio and Fortuna, cf. ibid, pp. 27-33. For depictions of Fortuna in Rollenhagen, cf. 1,6 and 11,40. 18. Cf. Heinrich Lausberg, Elemente der literarischen Rhetorik, 9th ed. (Munich: Hueber, 1987), p. 135, § 404.

19. For other example-emblems cf. 1,14 (Hercules), 1,19 (Sisyphus), 1,33 (Pyramus and Thisbe), 1,53 (David), 1,57 (Ixion), 11,45 (Geryon), 11,67 (Claus Narr), 11,76 (Apollo).

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EMBLEMATICA

florinabAATEvfmt'gloriaMARTE vmit

Fig. 5. Gabriel Rollenhagen, Nucleus Emblematum, 1,68.

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Fig. 6. Gabriel Rollenhagen, Nucleus Emblematum, 1,24.

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263

But whenever mythological personifications are merely used as visual correlatives of their respective virtues or skills, the border with the allegorizing type is very likely to be breached. Thus, for example, in emblem 1,68 (Fig. 5), Mars and Athena together with the motto "Arte et marte" [Through science and the art of war] represent exclusively wisdom and generalship, two virtues of a sovereign. The hermeneutic type is approached in the Diana-Emblem (1,24 [Fig. 6]) where the Goddess of the Hunt's accuracy of aim—motto: "Consequitur quodcunque petit [She reaches what she wants]—is explicitly e q u a t e d w i t h m a n ' s c e r t a i n t y in faith in the subscriptio: "Consequitur quodcunque petit Dyctinna sagittis, / Et mens consequitur quod pia cunque petit" [What she wants Diana reaches with her arrows; likewise a pious mind achieves what it wants]. Mixed types of the hermeneutic, the allegorizing and the example-emblem are quite tj possible. Thus em^O^X blem 11,15 features as sy\X its main picture element a crane standing on a c r o s i e r , holding a stone in its right talon (Fig. 7). This combination of crosier and crane can be considered inorganic, an allegorizing still life. A c c o r d ingly, this e m b l e m w i l l h a v e to be classed as allegorizT)ctirut hunc rum dim ^uies fimilisdueJdvori, ing in so far as the lui-vvjili, TICS' zrds res, rdtwne, redit— structure of its pict u r e is c o n c e r n e d . The crosier, its identity established by an Fig. 7. Gabriel Rollenhagen, Nucleus Emblematum, a p p r o p r i a t e i n s c r i p -

11,15.

tion, represents, acc o r d i n g to the subscriptio, the power of control and is a symbolic sign; and therefore it is an allegorizing element as well. From the point of view of rhetor-

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EMBLEMATICA

ical theory, this crosier can be considered as a metonymy in the sense of an "actual interweav­ ing of social phenome­ non and symbol."20 According to the theory of natural science trans­ m i t t e d from classical antiquity, the crane is holding a stone in its talon in order to stay awake. This image can claim potential facticity; and if it were the only element of mean­ VlRIBKC elriyNGEXDA XddlSSAPTEXTIA СШ1СТ13 ing, as is often the case in other emblems, we would classify the re­ Fig. 8. Gabriel Rollenhagen, Nucleus Emblematum, spective emblem as hermeneutic. However, 1,91. the combination of an element of meaning from the realm of natural science with an alle­ gorizing picture element as we have it here, when seen as a whole, has to be classified as an allegorizing emblem type. Although it is quite conceivable that a crane could sit down on a crosier—and in so doing meet the criterion of potential facticity—, this was certainly not the intention of the arrangement in this picture. The crosier would have more closely approximated a "perch" had it been stuck into the ground rather than held by a hand reaching out of a cloud. A combination of the allegorizing emblem with the example-type can be seen in the centaur-emblem (1,91). Chiron is holding a snake in his right hand and a bow in his left (Fig. 8). In an emblem by 20. Lausberg, Elemente der literarischen Rhetorik, p. 78, § 224 (" flechtung von sozialem Phanomen und Symbol . . . ")•

realen Ver-

21. Cf. Emblemata. Handbuch гиг Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts, ed. Arthur Henkel and Albrecht Schone, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1976), cols. 820f.

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Barthelemy Aneau, Chi­ ron is aiming at the sky with bow and arrow, but this is not the case in R o l l e n h a g e n ' s sketch. H e r e , snake and b o w cannot be made to func­ tion on the level of po­ tential facticity, but are e m p l o y e d m e r e l y be­ cause they are able to refer to prudence and strength. They there­ fore resemble the allego­ rizing attributes that are OlueSCOPVM(iom,lJCEry£GRE,i whesca usually a d d e d to per­ E t FRlGTRA,mokmjVOlUCTTU0lUl Л sonifications. It is also possible to combine the exampleFig. 9. Gabriel Rollenhagen, Nucleus Emblematum, type with hermeneutic 1,19. picture elements. The subscriptio to the Sisyphus-emblem (1,19 [Fig. 9]) gives a new, posi­ tive interpretation to the hero's fate, as it is an appeal to untiring endeavour: "Volve scopum donee, licet aegre, attingere possis, / Et frustra, molem volve revolve tamen" [Roll until you reach the goal, you might reach it, although it may be difficult and unsuccessful, roll your burden, and roll it yet again]. This exemplary quality of the mythological figure is specified by a further (hermeneutic) pic­ ture element: two rabbits are crouching in a cave in the rock. With its breeding-place on the rock, however, the rabbit is understood in the exegetical tradition as man hoping for God. Taking this tradi-

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22. Cf. Emblemata, col. 1672. According to Aneau this behaviour is a reference to the combination of reason and effort necessary when striving for the highest. 23. The structure of the Chiron-emblems (cf. Emblemata, cols. 1669-1674) is ambig­ uous. Whenever Chiron's function as a teacher of heroes and gods is implied, we can consider it an example-type; the allusion to his combined human and animal nature is more in accordance with the hermeneutic procedure.

24. Cf. Filippo Picinelli, Mundus symbolicus (Cologne, 1687; ed. Dietrich Donat,

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EMBLEMATICA

tion into account, Sisyphus is no longer a mere example of laborious effort but an example of the untiring virtuousness of the devout. 2 5 It is not only this possi­ bility of c o m b i n i n g the basic emblem types which is of i n t e r e s t in the Sisyphus-emblem. At the same time it also points to a further particularity in the organization of the pictura. Not only does it com­ bine those elements which belong to different basic types but add up to a ho­ mogeneous and to some extent self-contained pic­ ZNufeuam титл TII>ES:TICC fomnius iutusab hoflz,, ture like the Chiron-em­ t-QuiJdpitifac cautus, посте Jtefypavct . blem, but it also allows the r e a l i s a t i o n of d i f f e r e n t possiblities depending on Fig. 10. Gabriel R o l l e n h a g e n , Nucleus how the main element of Emblematum, 11,49. meaning is embedded into the background of the pic­ ture. Apart from the relatively rare scenes set inside a building, most backgrounds consist of a landscape which, like the background of the Sisyphus-emblem, can be irrelevant or connected to the main element of meaning in different functional relationships. Similarly, Hildesheim and New York: Olms, 1979), part I, p. 404 (lib. IV, num. 511).

25. Warncke understands this emblem in this sense and is therefore justified in extending the meaning given in the handbook Emblemata ("untiring endeav­ our"). The French verses complement the appeal, which they express exclu­ sively on the level of meaning, by a justification: "Ne desiste couart, de ton sage dessein, / Bien qu'il t'ayt reufii par plusieurs fois en vain: / Car Dieu ne manque point, d'un secours fauorable, / A ceux qui perseuerent, d'vne Const­ ance stable [Never cowardly abandon your wise plan even if it has failed many times; because God never fails to provide benevolent help to those who hold out with stable constancy]. 26. Cf. 1,77, 82, II, 47, 57.

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the foreground of a picture can represent different partial pictures side by side which, while possessing an informative value of their own, are only held together by the integrative power of the frame which the landscape provides and which they all share. In this way the Sisyphus-emblem, for example, depicts two scenes from the myth, namely Sisyphus on his toilsome way to the top of the mountain and the frustrating final outcome of his efforts which have to be repeated time and again: having reached the summit Sisyphus has to watch his stone rolling back down the mountain. This kind of combination of partial scenes from one course of action can be considered as a simultaneous depiction of events. Such a simultaneous depiction is also provided by the elephant-emblem (11,49 [Fig. 10]) which shows in the foreground skilled hunters who are sawing into a tree-trunk while in the background the consequences of this action are to be seen: the elephant has fallen over together with the thus prepared tree. Now, we know from the natural science of classical antiquity that elephants lean against a tree when they want to sleep, and that they can be easily caught when they have fallen over together with the tree because they do not have the joints which allow them to s t a n d u p a g a i n i m m e d i a t e l y . In showing the elephant as an eye-witness, as it were, to the act of sabotage, the pictura contradicts the laws of the logic of events; but this illogical representation must be attributed to the author's endeavour to depict the emblematic elem e n t of m e a n i n g in a n eye-catching way. ~r " " Let u s r e t u r n to laumrum

VIRES SOLERTU cauta. SCIURI

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.

.

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1 1 . .

Sisyphus. The rabbits, which are integrated into the foreground of the picture in such a w a y as to Fig. 11.

Gabriel

Emblematum, 11,2.

Rollenhagen, Nucleus p a s s a l m o s t u n n o t i c e d , a r e

threatened with the possibility of becoming victims

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EMBLEMATICA

Fig. 12. Gabriel Emblematum, 1,23.

Fig. 13 Gabriel Emblematum, 1,51.

Rollenhagen,

Rollenhagen,

Nucleus

Nucleus

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of the falling millstone. They can be regarded as a second element of meaning with the task of modifying, or accentuating differently, the emblematic main element of meaning. However, it is also possible that a second element of meaning with the same significance as the main one is included in the picture. The squirrel-emblem (11,2 [Fig. 11]), illustrating the victory of c u n n i n g over power, includes in the foreground two barely perceptible crabs and some shells on the shore. This picture element seems to be an abbreviated version of a different emblematic subject, an allusion to the stratagem I i^Jt canJclaverk, nobis Jum lumina meqtat: employed by the hunting CDux'ita.fibitiios Jumpvct,wfc caJit. crab: it holds the shells of the oyster apart by means of a little stone in order to be a b l e to s u c k o u t its 27 Fig. 14. Gabriel Rollenhagen, Nucleus prey. If this interpretaEmblematum, 11,31. tion is correct, Rollenhagen has provided two different elements of meaning in this emblem with approximately the same significance. Elements of meaning of this kind can also be placed in the background of the picture. Thus emblem 1,23 (Fig. 12) depicts as its main picture element a bear climbing up a tree in order to get to the honey of a colony of bees while being stung all over by the bees. The motto "Patior ut potiar" [In order to win I suffer] points just like the subscriptio to joy gained t h r o u g h suffering: "Ut potiar patior stimulos pro melle, dolores, / Mille et mille feram pectore delicias" [In order to win 1 suffer the stings because of the honey. A thousand pains and a thousand joys I bear in my breast]. In the background of the picture we see an owl which has been tethered to a pole, with 27. Cf. Emblemata, cols. 725f.

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EMBLEMATICA

several birds swarming around it aggressively. Some of them have already settled next to the owl onto a pole covered with bird Lime/ and in so doing, have already fallen victim to the bird-catcher's trick. This motif appears in emblem 1,51 (Fig. 13) as the main element of meaning and is interpreted in the subscriptio as triumph through complaisance. In the background of this emblem, the bird-catcher is shown at work. By this device the b a c k g r o u n d e m b e d s the main picture element in its appropriate context. Many more examples in Rollenhagen's collection demon­ strate such a contextualizing function of the back­ ground. Even though the bear in emblem 1,23 uses force to achieve his aim and, in contrast to the owl, is himself the cause of his suffering, both elements of (vrro anforrgariJRx cum гымм&лт VT£3.