Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts, 1270-1310 [1 ed.] 0415977606, 9780415977609, 9780203944011

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Studies in Medieval History and Culture

Edited by

Francis G. Gentry Professor of German Pennsylvania State University

A Routledge Series

Studies in Medieval History and Culture Francis G. Gentry, General Editor Worlds Made Flesh Reading Medieval Manuscript Culture Lauryn S. Mayer Empowering Collaborations Writing Partnerships between Religious Women and Scribes in the Middle Ages Kimberly M. Benedict The Water Supply System of Siena, Italy The Medieval Roots of the Modern Networked City Michael P. Kucher The Epistemology of the Monstrous in the Middle Ages Lisa Verner Desiring Truth The Process of Judgment in FourteenthCentury Art and Literature Jeremy Lowe The Preaching Fox Festive Subversion in the Plays of the Wakefield Master Warren Edminster Non-Native Sources for the Scandinavian Kings’ Sagas Paul A. White Kingship, Conquest, and PATRIA Literary and Cultural Identities in Medieval French and Welsh Arthurian Romance Kristen Lee Over Saracens and the Making of English Identity The Auchinleck Manuscript Siobhain Bly Calkin

Traveling through Text Message and Method in Late Medieval Pilgrimage Accounts Elka Weber Between Courtly Literature and Al-Andalus Matière d’Orient and the Importance of Spain in the Romances of the TwelfthCentury Writer Chrétien de Troyes Michelle Reichert Maps and Monsters in Medieval England Asa Simon Mittman Rooted in the Earth, Rooted in the Sky Hildegard of Bingen and Premodern Medicine Victoria Sweet “She, This in Blak” Vision, Truth, and Will in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde T. E. Hill Through the Daemon’s Gate Kepler’s Somnium, Medieval Dream Narratives, and the Polysemy of Allegorical Motifs Dean Swinford Conflict and Compromise in the Late Medieval Countryside Lords and Peasants in Durham, 1349–1400 Peter L. Larson Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts, 1270–1310 Elizabeth Moore Hunt

Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts, 1270-1310

Elizabeth Moore Hunt

Routledge New York & London

For David

Contents

List of Illustrations

ix

List of Tables

xv

List of Manuscripts

xvii

Acknowledgments

xix

Chapter One Introduction

1

Chapter Two Ars Profana in Cistercian Tomes

21

Chapter Three Luxury Psalters by the Dampierre Group

45

Chapter Four Re-Reading the BnF-Yale Romance

79

Chapter Five Treasured Collections

111

Chapter Six Opening Books, Underlining Authorities

145

Chapter Seven Conclusion

171 vii

viii

Contents

Notes

177

Bibliography

219

Index

233

List of Illustrations

All photographs are reproduced with the kind permission of the collections and libraries concerned. For photographic work, acknowledgement extends to Bart Stroobants for Figs. 2–11, 41, and 44–46, to Paul Stuyvens for Figs. 42 and 47–51, and to René Alber for digital formatting. Biblical references are numbered according to the Vulgate-Douai. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Prologue to Genesis, Henricus Bible (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 4/1), fol. 1r.

3

Lancelot, pt. 3 (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, MS 229), fol. 31r.

11

Book of Genesis, Henricus Bible (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 4/1), fol. 8r.

23

Book of Daniel, Henricus Bible (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 5/191), fol. 172r.

28

Prologue to Abdias (Obadiah), Henricus Bible (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 5/191), fol. 205r.

30

Book of Ruth, Henricus Bible (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 4/1), fol. 215v.

31

Book of Isaiah, Henricus Bible (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 5/191), fol. 25v.

34

Prologue to Isaiah, Henricus Bible (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 5/191), fol. 25r.

35

ix

x 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

List of Illustrations Prologue, Monaldus of Istria, Summa de jure canonico (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 45/144), fol. 2r.

39

“Yconomus,” Monaldus of Istria, Summa de jure canonico (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 45/144), fol. 67r.

41

“Sacerdos,” Monaldus of Istria, Summa de jure canonico (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 45/144), fol. 141v.

42

Psalm 52, Dampierre Psalter (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 10607), fol. 84v.

50

Psalm 42, Dampierre Psalter (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 10607), fol. 71r.

52

Psalms 46–47, Dampierre Psalter (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 10607), fols. 76v-77r.

60

Psalm 71, Dampierre Psalter (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 10607), fol. 110v.

65

Psalm 65, Dampierre Psalter (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 10607), fol. 98v.

65

Psalms 84–85, Franciscan Psalter (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 1076), fols. 105v–106r.

70

Psalm 80, Franciscan Psalter (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 1076), fol.

73

Queste del Saint Graal (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, MS 229), fol. 187r.

81

L’Estoire de Merlin (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 95), fol. 249v.

87

Lancelot, pt. 3 (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, MS 229), fol. 29r.

90

Lancelot, pt. 3 (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, MS 229), fol. 110v.

91

Lancelot, pt. 3 (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, MS 229), fol. 23v.

92

List of Illustrations 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

31. 32.

33.

34. 35.

36.

Lancelot, pt. 3 (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, MS 229), fol. 100v.

xi 95

L’Estoire del Saint Graal (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 95), fol. 78r.

100

L’Estoire del Saint Graal (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 95), fol. 66v.

103

Psalm 68, Psalter-Book of Hours, use of Thérouanne (Arras, Musée Diocesian, MS 47), fol. 74r.

104

Mort Artu (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, MS 229), fol. 363r.

107

“Here begins the Book of the Treasure,” Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, chap. 1 (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, ms. Laur. Ashb. 125), fol. 16r.

116

“The parentage of Our Lady,” Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, chap. 64 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 567), fol. 15v.

121

“How nature works,” Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, chap. 99 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 567), fol. 24v.

122

“How God made all things in the beginning,” Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, chap. 6 (The British Library, Yates Thompson MS 19), fol. 5r.

130

“The things that happened in the second age,” Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, chap. 21 (The British Library, Yates Thompson MS 19), fol. 10r.

131

“The New Law,” Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, chap. 63 (The British Library, Yates Thompson MS 19), fol. 18r.

133

“The parentage of Our Lady,” Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, chap. 64 (The British Library, Yates Thompson MS 19), fol. 18v.

134

Prologue to Artistotle’s Ethics, Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, book II (The British Library, Yates Thompson MS 19), fol. 65r.

135

xii 37. 38. 39. 40.

41.

42. 43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

List of Illustrations Li ars d’amour, de vertu, et de boneurté (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 9543), fol. 117r.

140

Recueil ascétique (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 9400), fol. 88v-89r.

142

Recueil de poésies morales, fabliaux, dits, contes (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS, 9411–26), fol. 105r.

142

Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, book 13 (Bibliothèque municipale de Boulogne-sur-Mer (France), MS 131), fol. 285v.

147

Prologue, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale (Vellereille-les-Brayeux, Abbaye de Bonne-Espérance (Belgium), MS 5, Books 26–32), fol. 1r.

149

“Apologia,” Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum doctrinale (Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 251), fol. 1r.

150

Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, book 10 (Bibliothèque municipale de Boulogne-sur-Mer (France), MS 130), fol. 183v.

154

Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale, book 29 (Vellereille-les-Brayeux, Abbaye de Bonne-Espérance (Belgium), MS 5, Books 26–32), fol. 146r.

157

Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale, book 32 (Vellereille-les-Brayeux, Abbaye de Bonne-Espérance (Belgium), MS 5, Books 26–32), fol. 330v.

159

Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale, book 32, cont. (Vellereille-les-Brayeux, Abbaye de Bonne-Espérance (Belgium), MS 5, Books 26–32), fol. 331r.

160

“De arte gramatica,” Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum doctrinale, book 2 (Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 251), fol. 54v.

164

“Dyaletica,” Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum doctrinale, book 3 (Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 251), fol. 112v.

165

List of Illustrations 49. 50. 51.

xiii

“De monostica,” Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum doctrinale, book 5 (Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 251), fol. 191r.

167

“De politica,” Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum doctrinale, book 7 (Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 251), fol. 254v.

168

“De causis et litibus,” Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum doctrinale, book 8 (Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 251), fol. 299v.

169

List of Tables

1.

Quires 3–22, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607.

49

2.

Distribution of marginal images on side B of quire 7, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607, fols. 62r-73v.

54

Distribution of marginal images on side A of quire 13, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607, fols. 129r-139v.

56

Distribution of marginal images on side B of quire 13, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607, fols. 129v-139r.

56

Distribution of marginal images on side A of quire 8, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607, fols. 74r-85v.

58

Distribution of marginal images on side B of quire 8, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607, fols. 74v-85r.

59

Distribution of marginal images on side A of quire 17, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607, fols. 178r-189v.

62

Distribution of marginal images on side B of quire 17, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607, fols. 178v-189r.

62

Distribution of marginal images on side A of quire 16, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607, fols. 165r-177v.

66

Distribution of marginal images on side B of quire 16, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607, fols. 165v-177r.

67

3a.

3b.

4a.

4b.

5a.

5b.

6a.

6b.

xv

xvi

List of Tables

7.

Quires 3–17, Franciscan Psalter, BnF latin 1076.

71

8a.

Distribution of marginal images on side A of quire 6, Franciscan Psalter, BnF latin 1076, fols. 55r-66v.

74

Distribution of marginal images on side B of quire 6, Franciscan Psalter, BnF latin 1076, fols. 55v-66r.

75

Distribution of marginal images on side A of quire 10, Franciscan Psalter, BnF latin 1076, fols. 101r-112v.

76

Distribution of marginal images on side B of quire 10, Franciscan Psalter, BnF latin 1076, fols. 101v-112r.

76

Selected quires 3–4, 13–17, 24–25, and 44–46, Yale Lancelot, Queste, and Mort Artu, Yale MS 229.

85

Selected quires 8–10 and 29–36, BnF Estoire del Graal and Estoire de Merlin, BnF fr. 95.

88

8b.

9a.

9b.

10.

11.

List of Manuscripts

Alphabetical by short title: followed by author, title; location, shelf number (with measurements and folios). “BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur” BnF fr. 95: L’Estoire del Saint Graal, L’Estoire de Merlin, Sept Sages de Rome, La Penitence Adam, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 95 (490x340 mm., 394 fols.). Yale 229: Lancelot du Lac (pt. 3), Quest del Graal, Mort Artu; New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library MS 229 (475x343 mm., 363 fols.). Boulogne Speculum historiale: Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale; Bibliothèque municipale de Boulogne-sur-Mer, MS 131, (305x225 mm., 436 fols.). Bruges Speculum doctrinale: Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum doctrinale; Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 251 (374x260 mm., 339 fols.). Dampierre Psalter (KBR MS 10607): Psalter; Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 10607 (107x78 mm., 245 fols). Florence Trésor: Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor; Florence, Biblioteca Medici Laurenziana, MS Ashburnham 125 (335x230 mm., 245 fols.). Franciscan Psalter (BnF latin 1076): Psalter, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS latin 1076 (193x136 mm., 189 fols). Henricus Bible: Bible, 2 vols.; Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie MSS 4/1 and 5/191 (450x320 mm., 218 fols. and 465x330 mm., 231 fols.). KBR 9400: Recueil ascétique; Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 9400 (378x258 mm., 106 fols.). KBR 9411–26: Recueil de poésies moral, fabliaux, dits et contes; Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 9411–26 (385x265 mm., 141 fols.). KBR 9543: Li ars d’amour, de vertu, et de boneurté; Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 9543 (355x240 mm., 314 fols.). KBR 9548: Li ars d’amour, de vertu, et de boneurté; Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 9548 (356x260 mm., 264 fols.).

xvii

xviii

List of Manuscripts

London Trésor: Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor; London, British Library, Yates Thompson MS 19 (310x221 mm., 162 fols.). Margaret the Black Psalter: Psalter of Countess Margaret of Flanders and Hainault; H. P. Kraus, New York, Catalogue 75, no. 88 (110x80 mm., 227 fols.). Monaldus Summa: Monaldus of Capo d’Istria, Summa de iure canonico; Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 45/144 (305x215 mm., 217 fols.). Paris Trésor: Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 567 (355x245 mm., 158 fols.). St. Petersburg Trésor: Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor; St. Petersburg, MS Fr.F.v.III,4 (310x220 mm., 149 fols.). Vellereille Speculum naturale: Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale, 3 vols.; Vellereille-les-Brayeux, Abbaye de Bonne-Espérance, MSS 4–5, Books 16–25 (302x220 mm., 369 fols.), and Books 26–32 (360x260 mm., 377 fols.).

Acknowledgments

Several institutions made this research possible by generously providing financial support. The J. William Fulbright Scholarship, the Belgian-American Educational Foundation, the P.E.O. Women Scholars Award, and the Samuel H. Kress Travel Award in Art History fully funded the research conducted in European libraries. Faculty and staff of the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Missouri-Columbia provided invaluable support throughout my graduate studies. The warm welcome that I received from colleagues at the Studiecentrum Vlaamse Miniaturisten and the Tabularium at the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium, greatly facilitated my research and enriched the time I spent abroad. I am particularly indebted to Bert Cardon for hosting me during my work in Leuven. Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, Tine Melis, and Alison Stones were especially generous with their advice and correspondence. This study could not have been completed without the many library directors and museum curators who granted me access to the manuscripts in my study. I am particularly grateful to François Avril at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Franca Arduini at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, Robert Babcock at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, Bernard Bousmanne and Ann Kelders at the Royal Library of Belgium, Michelle Brown at the British Library, Martin Kauffmann at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Freddy Bourlard of the College Notre-Dame de Bonne Ésperance in Vellereille-les-Brayeux, Ludo Kerkove at the Stadsbibliotheek in Bruges, Kurt Priem at the Groot Seminarie in Bruges, Pascal Rideau at the Mediathèque municipale in Arras, and Béatrice Seguin at the Bibliothèque municipale in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Thank you to Dr. Frank Gentry for including my study in the series and to the dissertations editor, Max Novick, at Routledge for his kind support. I extend my thanks as well to the readers of my dissertation at all stages xix

xx

Acknowledgments

of its preparation. I appreciate the thoughtful suggestions and guidance from members of my dissertation committee including Lois Huneycutt, Emma Lipton, Patricia Crown, John Klein, and Martin Camargo. Jara Ahrabi, Suzanne Lyle, and Alexi Sherrill were gracious with feedback and editing drafts at critical stages. The numerous readings by my dissertation advisor, Anne Rudloff Stanton, have resulted in a vastly improved manuscript. My gratitude for her assistance in this project is second only to the value I place on her mentorship and friendship. My parents, Tom and Becky Moore, have provided continuous moral, emotional, and financial support throughout my academic career. Their love and sense of humor are the foundation from which this project has grown. My time at home with my sisters, brother, nephews, and niece always serves as my touchstone. My husband, David, has supplied me with constant encouragement, guidance, and enthusiasm, reminding me to smell the roses and to walk the dogs along the way.

Chapter One

Introduction

Images painted in the margins of Gothic manuscripts are tiny. Some measure a few millimeters tall, while others measuring three centimeters wide are considered large. Surrounding the text, borders of gold, red, and blue baguettes serve as stages for these minute figures of knights, ladies, monks, angels, simians, animals, and hybrids. They dance, play, hunt, battle, and jest, performing a range of activities and interchangeable roles that distinguish each illuminated page from any other. Despite the diminutive presence of these images, when considered in the larger context of the manuscripts in which they appear, they offer insightful commentary about cultural values and the socio-political climate of medieval northern Europe. Marginal images abounded on the borders of manuscripts produced throughout Europe during the late thirteenth century. Art historians have tended to concentrate their studies on deluxe manuscripts produced in England and Paris.1 By emphasizing liturgical and devotional manuscripts, this research has vastly expanded the understanding of how marginal images interacted with the text, other images, and the audience. Marginal illumination, however, was not limited to sacred texts produced in England and Paris. Manuscripts produced in the counties of northern France and Flanders exhibit the widest range of marginal repertoires and book types such as romances, historical works, encyclopedia, and poetry.2 Building on extant studies of marginal illumination, this study explores how the practice of illuminating margins developed with respect to the production of both sacred and secular manuscripts. By examining both Latin and French texts, this study demonstrates the breadth of influence illuminators had on book production and reception in medieval western Europe.

1

2

Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

MANUSCRIPT PRODUCTION ON THE FLEMISHARTESIAN BORDER The broadest spectrum of book types embellished with marginal images occurred during the late thirteenth century in northern French and Flemish counties.3 Likely composed of lay, itinerant artisans, the groups of illuminators developed and shared repertoires of motifs that were applied to the margins of illustrated Latin and French texts. Among the workshops participating in this fashion, those in the centers of the dioceses of Thérouanne, Arras, and Tournai had important patrons in the courts of Flanders, Artois, and Hainault, among others, and in the abbeys of various monastic communities.4 These marginal images, or marginalia, emerged over the course of the thirteenth century from the inhabited scrolls and zoo-anthropomorphic initials of decorated letters dividing the books of the Bible or the major Psalms. By the mid-thirteenth century, the figures merge with the vines and border stalks surrounding the text, morphing into foliage, dragons, and human bodies, while others begin to stand independently on the borders as groundlines.5 In his study of the marginal spaces of medieval art, Image on the Edge, Michael Camille notes that the Rutland Psalter, made in England, ca. 1260, can be counted among the earliest Gothic manuscripts fully decorated with marginalia, and that the newly available manuscripts of Aristotle’s Physics at the universities in Paris and Oxford were also among the earliest examples with marginal vignettes.6 Connected to Bruges in the diocese of Tournai and dating to ca. 1265–75, a Bible named for its scribe, Henricus, is addressed in chapter 2 to demonstrate how closely socalled profane motifs of nudes, birds, and jongleurs were tied to the decorated letters in the early stages of the Flemish-Artesian repertoire’s development (fig. 1). Devotional manuscripts produced by related artists in Thérouanne, called the Dampierre group, and customized for local patrons are examined in chapter 3 to demonstrate the expansion of the repertoire into numerous folios containing variations and combinations of marginal motifs throughout the initials, borders, line-fillers, and margins. Also in the mid-thirteenth century, new categories of manuscripts became subject to illustration, especially deluxe romances, histories, and encyclopedia, which are explored in chapters 4–6. Written in the vernacular, such books were increasingly favored by noble and clerical readers.7 Romances were on the whole not illuminated in England, and Parisian illuminators rarely incorporated marginalia into illustrated vernacular texts.8 Yet the artisans of the manuscript centers featured in this study applied marginal figures with abandon to new programs of illumination in both Latin and French texts on both large and small scales. While our knowledge of literacy and patronage

Introduction

3

Figure 1. Prologue to Genesis, Henricus Bible (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 4/1), fol. 1r.

4

Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

for texts in this period is riddled with lacunae, the varied combinations of marginal images attest that each manuscript was a specialized product and should be considered on its own terms.9 The enhancement of these different types of commissions with a shared repertoire demonstrates the flexibility and adaptability of marginal figures toward generating meaning for readers in a variety of contexts. Although each manuscript product is certainly unique, illuminators typically followed models for compositions and for iconography.10 Like their counterparts in Liège, East Anglia, and Paris, illuminators in northern France and Flanders shared repertoires for accentuating the borders with figural elements. As Lilian Randall aptly demonstrated in her 1964 index for Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts, not only do marginal figures tend to be repetitive, but also the types of images are hard to categorize as they are rarely developed from biblical sources and are usually described by manuscript catalogers as profane, droll, and grotesque.11 Given the sometimes rote non-sense of numerous marginal motifs in any given manuscript, I consider these illuminated borders in the terms of the “manuscript age of reproduction.”12 Through the repetition, transposition, and juxtaposition of recognizable motifs, the added contours, polychrome, and gilt required specialized attention for major turns in the pages, making all the subjects of each opening more pronounced. During a period in which new kinds of texts written in both Latin and French were becoming available to a growing and diverse audience of readers, the Flemish-Artesian illuminators treated both secular and religious commissions with marginalia. The concentration of marginal imagery in this region’s manuscripts, therefore, affords a glimpse into the intersection of artistic, literary, and social values in book production and ownership. Surviving manuscripts produced in the counties of northern France and Belgium during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries exhibit a variety of different and overlapping styles that have led to difficulties in identifying their origins and to their third-cousin status in relation to elegant styles of illumination in Paris and England. Recent and forthcoming scholarship remedies the problems of stylistic attribution. Maurits Smeyers, in his recent survey of manuscript illumination, outlines the regional developments in detail and highlights the best manuscript products of the major centers.13 Judith Oliver’s monograph on illumination in Liège provides an in-depth study of an overlooked but rich area of manuscript production in one diocese.14 The dissertation by Kerstin B. Carlvant, “Thirteenth-Century Illumination in Bruges and Ghent,” provides additional background to the painting styles discussed in for the Dampierre group as some of the illuminators are related to manuscripts linked to Bruges.15 The backbone for research

Introduction

5

on the manuscripts addressed in this study comes from the work of Alison Stones, who has identified the individual hands of illuminators and specific styles practiced in Thérouanne, Arras, Tournai, Douai, and Cambrai. Her forthcoming catalog of manuscripts illuminated in France, ca. 1260–1320, promises to clarify the puzzling sphere of individual hands and workshops based in northeast France and Flanders.16 These studies of northern French and Flemish workshops show an intriguing body of religious and secular manuscripts, many of them containing marginalia and dating roughly from the 1260s to 1290s. As Stones emphasizes, the relevance of model-book images to sacred or profane texts was blurred by the last decade of the thirteenth century.17 For example, warriors in biblical battle scenes are dressed as medieval knights in chain mail and tunics, as are those who skirmish in the margins of psalters, romances, and encyclopedia. Profane themes of everyday life such as agricultural labors and courtly games were already present in calendar illustrations and continued in ivory carvings that decorated luxury domestic objects. Ceramic production was particularly strong along the North Sea; surviving fragments show that the marginal designs were shared among artisans in different media, including manuscript illumination and stained glass. The popularity of marginal motifs from the repertoire only increased through the fourteenth century, but the application of these motifs to earlier customized manuscripts provides immediate contexts for understanding the cultural significance of each book. The fact that the exact same figures and compositions were applied to different types of illumination programs, by copying a model, template, or even a preparatory sketch, would seem to indicate that artistic choices were made independently of the text.18 The fringe, or physically peripheral, location of the marginal images, furthermore, has led many scholars to celebrate the so-called “freedom of the artist” in the choices of motifs, variations on themes, and plays on words.19 Yet in some cases, directions to the illustrator were written in French, then cut off or erased from the outer margins.20 As the debate on artistic literacy continues, Keith Busby offers a sensible proposition to the margins of an Alexander Romance: “While the illuminator need not have read the text, it is certain that in this and many other cases, the planner had.”21 Individual bookmakers—variously called planners, advisors, or the French term, libraires—may have been responsible for organizing the workshops of scribes, illuminators, and binders.22 A planner may have played a significant role in the choice of marginal subjects where it interested him to expand upon or alter a motif from the repertoire.23 In addition to proximate imagery, the rubrics and text also supply probable sources for the choices of marginal motifs. Examination of the contents of each individual manuscript

6

Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

and the imagery contained within its pages provides archaeological evidence for aspects of production and customization in the workshop practices and also fosters inquiry into the impact on the manuscripts’ readers or viewers. The working habits and expanding iconographic repertoire of artists in the diocese of Thérouanne, centered in Saint Omer or Thérouanne, can be examined in manuscripts made for liturgical, devotional, secular, and didactic uses. Two Cistercian tomes, the Henricus Bible and a theological Summa by Monaldus of Istria, serve to establish the emergence of the repertoire in relation to the decorated letter and the text in chapter 2. Linked to Bruges in Flanders through the same artists, one of the most influential workshops contributing to the repertoire is called the Dampierre group, named for the psalter made for Guy of Dampierre, the Count of Flanders (1280–1305). Analysis of this psalter’s gatherings, or quires, of folios reveals that marginal motifs occur in clusters, so a codicological approach is used to analyze a related luxury psalter and a deluxe Vulgate Arthur related to the same artists and patronage in chapters 3 and 4. The application of the Dampierre group’s repertoire in new kinds of texts, particularly encyclopedia and compendia addressed in chapters 5 and 6, reflect the growing literary tastes of patrons who afforded the extra expense for “mirrors of knowledge,” such as the Speculum majus by Vincent of Beauvais and Le Trésor by Brunetto Latini. To the south of Thérouanne, workshops in neighboring Arras and Douai were also active in the production of the same types of books—including encyclopedia, romances, lives of saints, and books of hours. Stones has identified the body of work by one master likely based in Arras, the “Maître au menton fuyant.”24 A less refined painting style characterized by minimal contours and black legs emerged out of Douai in a number of different types of texts.25 In order to examine more closely the encyclopedias of the region in chapters 5 and 6, I leave examination of the liturgical and devotional books by these workshops for the future.26 In the heftier tomes of reference works, marginal images are spread farther apart, appearing only on the folios dividing large sections of texts, books, or chapters. These texts specify and describe categories of nature, history, knowledge, and the human soul, so the relationship of the illustrations or text to the marginal images is especially acute for discerning meanings relevant to monastic or secular audiences. METHODS AND APPROACHES Several recent studies on the development of marginalia in manuscripts and sculpture supply an adequate historiography concerning the problems that marginal images have posed to original viewers and to pioneers in the field

Introduction

7

of medieval art.27 For the sculptural programs of the church, marginal motifs were seen as excessive and meaningless both by the medieval theologian, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, and by the modern iconographer, Emile Mâle of the Sorbonne.28 As a result, the subjects of marginal motifs were long regarded as genre scenes, whether naively amusing or appallingly grotesque, and the marginal spaces were categorically relegated to the realms of sinful outcast or mere decoration. Manuscript catalogers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries inconsistently included descriptions of marginal figures, although the sheer amount in some manuscripts made this task daunting and impractical to print. Some complete catalog descriptions, like those by Camille Gaspar and Frédéric Lyna or M. R. James, contributed to the practice of codicology in considering the whole book as archaeological artifact.29 In terms of the social context of marginal imagery, Meyer Schapiro brought the jongleurs, musicians, and dancers out of the spandrels when he suggested that the new Romanesque style of sculpture at the Spanish monastery at Silos, next to the traditional Mozarabic style, reflected class-conscious changes among the monastic and lay communities.30 By investigating the immediate historical circumstances surrounding the use of a jongleur motif, Schapiro demonstrated more meaningful positions for marginal images in relation to both the makers and the viewers. The purpose of this study is to explore the varying contexts within which a burgeoning repertoire of subjects for the borders began to frame the manuscript text. The concept of framing is essential to a two-prong approach that accounts for both the making and reading of different kinds of texts. Jonathan Alexander, in his influential article “Iconography and Ideology,” proposes this shift in thinking about the problems of marginalia plagued by the dichotomies of its historigraphy: It is conventional to describe the scene in the border as ‘marginal’ and ‘secular,’ thus opposing it to the historiated initial as ‘religious’ and ‘central.’ But that may be tendentious. Suppose rather than ‘marginal’ we describe it as ‘framing’? Does the image not then assume a different importance and a different role, a dynamic interaction of meanings, both secular and religious, on different levels for a variety of viewers?31

The most often repeated motifs are associated with worldly activities: jugglers, acrobats, and musicians, battles or duels, and hunts or chases after prey. But images in the margins are not always categorically profane, for monks, nuns, angels, and saints are among the more serious figures. In both Latin and French manuscripts, nudes and mermaids from the antique tradition

8

Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

appear frequently forming borders and inhabiting initials. Painted by the same illuminator for the illustration, the marginal images potentially interact with other elements of the page or quire. Rather than regarding marginalia as mere copy or afterthought, the concept of framing allows the whole of the illuminated page to be activated at once and in relation to proximate imagery. In this study, the whole book functions as the structural framework for discerning the choices made by the artists and for gauging the significance of those choices to the readers. The dissemination of marginal motifs in both religious and secular manuscripts made along the Flemish-Artesian border allows an examination of each manuscript on its own terms and offers comparisons for the different uses of popular motifs. Issues regarding the physical locations of marginal images, the significance of their subjects, and the social contexts of the viewers are addressed in the following chapters through case studies of individual manuscripts. Briefly, the contributions to research in codicology, iconography, and historical context that shaped this study are reviewed here by way of introducing the Flemish-Artesian manuscripts within the broader circumstances of late thirteenth-century manuscript production. CODICOLOGY The organizing principal for this study was to gather the data according to the working habits of the illuminators, who most likely painted folios quire by quire. Typically, marginal images are clustered around divisions in the text that are distinguished by decorated, inhabited, or historiated initials or miniature illuminations.32 The archaeological method put forward by L. M. J. Delaissé, codicology, takes the whole of the book into consideration, including the pricking and ruling, the collation of quires, and the pigmentation of the materials.33 Using this method to great effect, Richard and Mary Rouse in Manuscripts and their Makers in Paris discern the workshop practices and the role of the libraire, or organizer, in executing the various new types of commissions which in Paris were increasingly oriented toward university materials.34 Parisian workshop practices and organization influenced book production in outlying provinces catering to local nobility and clergy. Particularly instructive is the example of the Montbastons, a husband and wife team who illuminated a Roman de la Rose with bawdy scenes of a nun gathering phalluses and taking those of monks. The scenes have been connected to pilgrim’s badges and bawdy fabliaux, but their sequence failed to cohere in an intelligible narrative, seeming to point to the female artist’s illiteracy, on the one hand, and her illustrative capacity for literary allegory,

Introduction

9

on the other.35 The work of this pair is also well known for the scene of the husband and wife at work in the scriptorium, as bifolia hang drying along a rod behind her desk and bench.36 The Rouses took the background cue and deconstructed the manuscript—literally. Looking at the manuscript quire by quire, they were able to see that what appeared to be disjointed scenes may have been drawn on separate bifolia before the libraire collated them together into a gathering. According to the Rouses, “As far as we know, all illumination on all text pages of all manuscripts of this time was painted in the same fashion as Jeanne of Montbaston’s bas-de-page scenes in BnF fr. 25526: quire by quire and, within the quire, one sheet or bifolium at a time and, on the bifolium, one side at a time.”37 One definite rule in the medieval production of manuscripts is that the hair side (the exterior part of the original hide) of a folio always faces another hair side and the flesh (the interior side) always faces flesh.38 The sizes of the manuscripts produced during the late thirteenth century vary from duodecimo, in which four folds of parchment produce twelve pages, to folio, in which large sheets are folded once and nested. The psalters in this study are all composed of quires of fine, thin parchment containing twelve folios, or six bifolia each, measuring 10–20 x 15–25 centimeters. This indicates that each quire probably came from the same sheet of parchment, which when folded guarantees the consistency of the sides facing one another. Meanwhile, the romance and encyclopedia pages were cut from large, whitened sheets of usually heavy quality; four or six sheets were folded once and nested together to form quires of eight or twelve. To keep the bifolia straight, signatures mark the first four or six folios and a catch phrase is written on the last verso of each quire to correspond to the first words on the next one. These codicological clues, which still remain in many of these manuscripts, help the art historian follow the artistic process. Marginal motifs often relate to one another across whole openings, verso facing recto, creating what Camille calls a “reflexivity of imagery” that can account for the choice of motifs as much as the text, the principal image, or the intended reader can.39 Taking this one step further in a deconstructed gathering, the method of looking at the collation of bifolia is especially applicable to the psalters of the late thirteenth century, which are among the earliest deluxe examples of manuscripts with profuse marginalia. The bifoliate relationships in these manuscripts are complicated to study. The small size of the manuscripts suggests to me that they may have been ruled, written, and painted prior to folding and collating the gatherings for binding. Looking at the bifolia as sections of a larger sheet of parchment sometimes reveals associated themes within the same quires. In larger-scale texts, on the other

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Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

hand, the bifolia are rarely illuminated on two sides because the divisions in the prose text are spread farther apart. In these instances, studying the concentration or collection of images on the same page, and within and among neighboring quires, contributes to understanding the choice and significance of imagery within the whole of the book. ICONOGRAPHY AND AUDIENCE During the incipient period of border illumination in the mid-thirteenth century, marginal images echo the use and function of sermon exempla, or stories told in the vernacular to illustrate biblical points that were developed by preachers after the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.40 The example of a knight afraid of a rabbit or snail illustrates the vice of cowardice, appearing on the façades of French Gothic cathedrals and frequently in the margins of FlemishArtesian manuscripts. In her studies on the Flemish-Artesian repertoire, Randall traces some of the popular motifs to sermon exempla as well as to political slander and social commentary in contemporary literature. For example, the snail may have specifically referred to the social-climbing Lombard bankers who posed an economic threat to the nobility.41 The most idiosyncratic of the Flemish motifs is the “nesting-eggs” motif, which depicts a hooded, half-naked man sitting on a basket of eggs and holding one up for examination. Randall refers to popular Flemish poetry that cited this motif as a slander against English men who were ridiculed for growing tails and hatching schemes.42 While investigating the context of the nesting-eggs motif in the Dampierre Psalter, I noticed that it appeared in the same quire as several common images based on sermon exempla, such as the music-playing ass who cannot hear and the farmer’s housewife chasing a fox. There is also an apparent absence of a motif in the same quire and those next to it—there are none of the heraldic shields that are frequently pictured elsewhere in the margins bearing the coats of arms of Flemish noblemen.43 In the Vulgate Arthur, likely also produced for the family of the count of Flanders, the nesting-eggs motif appears next to the miniature depicting King Arthur enthroned—in this one of many images of the English king, the ruler’s face has been rubbed out (fig. 2). Again, heraldry is absent from the margins in the same quire. In both cases, the slander of the motif of nesting eggs was clearly meaningful to the artists and the readers. Placing the motif in the context of nearby imagery raises the issue of how the contents of the text and illustrations may have also informed the relevance of a motif appearing in one manuscript versus another made for a different context.

Introduction

11

Figure 2. Lancelot, pt. 3 (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, MS 229), fol. 31r.

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Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

In her recent article on the state of the field of medieval marginalia, Lucy Freeman Sandler notes that studies limited to one sort of marginal motif, such as women, scatology, etc., have resulted in equally limited conclusions about meaning.44 Recognizing that several types of images appear within one book, Sandler suggests viewing them collectively and in relation to one another: Rather than looking at one kind of image in all books, therefore, it would be better to look at all kinds of image in any one book—or more ambitiously, all books with marginalia—and to consider every aspect of their meaning, including contradictory and overlapping meanings. Recent codicological studies of manuscripts have taught us to consider the page and the book as a whole from the point of view of its physical making; a no less wholistic approach to marginal imagery might yield new understanding of a subject that has fascinated, horrified, and perplexed historians for the last hundred years.45

Sandler also outlines the specific questions for the circumstances of production: “who wanted it, for whom was it made, who made it, and how.”46 The iconography of marginal motifs remains important to the reception of the manuscript text by a viewing and possibly a reading audience. Heraldic shields in the margins, in particular, functioned as the portraiture, or the group portraiture in some cases, that identified the primary owners of luxury books.47 Case studies of individual manuscripts, like the Luttrell Psalter and the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux, focus on the potential text-image and imagepatron relationships, which are more conclusive in the manuscripts of the fourteenth century.48 For example, Camille examines all of the images in the Luttrell Psalter within the contexts of the hands of the artists, their repertoires, and the structure of the book.49 The relationship of the patron to the imagery is explicit in his title, Mirror in Parchment, for he approaches the margins as a reflection of the ideals of the noble audience. Such documented provenance and clues from heraldry are not always explicit in the FlemishArtesian manuscripts, but generic figures of nobles, ladies, and clerics may reflect the gender or position of an intended owner. While customized, luxury devotional books have been rewarding studies in artistic virtuosity and patronage, Sandler does not mention romances and reference texts in her description of the late thirteenth-century developments in marginalia.50 The margins of these texts deserve more attention to support the decorative, devilish, and didactic roles such images may have played in devotional books. Rather than attempting a comprehensive survey,

Introduction

13

this study undertakes an ambitious route to examine the marginal images in a cross-section of books with marginalia, involving both new and traditional cycles of illustration. The codicological, iconographic, and historical contexts of the different types of manuscripts are brought to bear on the meanings and selections of certain motifs. Schapiro’s view of marginal spaces as a realm for the “individualism” and “free invention of an artist” is shared by Camille’s enthusiasm in Image on the Edge.51 In this book, the social sphere of the viewer, whether in the cloister, in the church, or in the court, is also emphasized.52 Camille illustrates how the broad cross-section of media that carried marginal motifs permeated sign systems of medieval viewers. From the section “In the Cloisters,” for example, Camille emphasizes the physical context of marginal sculpture and the kind of audience privy to the spaces of the church. For example, images of women beating their husbands and wielding power were the antithesis of Church doctrine and depicted on misericords; the disorderly conduct was in turn physically suppressed under the bottoms of clerics sitting in the choir stalls.53 In this circular transaction of ribald humor that at the same time reinforces what it critiques, Mikhail Bahktin’s theory of laughter may account for the dominant religious contexts of such bawdy and churlish subjects.54 Found in both secular and religious contexts, however, some marginal subjects continue to call religious and secular dichotomies into question. Considering a moral point for one of the earliest and most common motifs, hunting, the prey is likened to the Christian soul. Its modern descriptor as a “favorite medieval pastime” could be seriously called into question, yet in the households of the courts, hunting hounds were prized by some more than manuscripts. In didactic texts, the bow is used as a metaphor for the preparation of study and the recollection of memory. The example of hunting alone shows how multiple meanings existed for the same kind of image, the liturgical, romance, or instructional context of which perhaps framed its perception. Camille’s emphasis on varying contexts and multiple audiences provides a lens for inquiries into the historical contexts of individual manuscripts. In her recent study, Reframing Medieval Art: Difference, Margins, Boundaries, Madeline Caviness explores the relationship between marginal iconography, the gender of the intended audience, and the construction of ideology. Facing the problematic subjects of nudity, obscenity, women, and aggressive actions, she emphasizes the viewer’s role in the reception of gender-charged imagery. Moreover, the intended audience of male or female, monastic or lay, or private or public seemed to affect decisions in the design and quantity of marginal subjects. The gender of “grotesque freaks” (animal hinds with human torsos and heads), emblematic objects, and gendered activities all

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Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

participated in visualizing the maintenance of social hierarchies.55 The construction of gender through the selection of motifs, however, is less likely a unified intention on the part of the planner but more likely activated by existing ideological positions of the reader. From the feminist perspective, Caviness suggests that the overtly fecund and sexual motifs in devotional books for young women were frightening and threatening.56 Her readings are elaborated into an exploration of issues of masculinity in the margins of devotional books for both men and women.57 Marginal women appear most often in hip swaying poses, dancing or playing music. Men fighting with weapons seem to populate most of the margins of any given manuscript. Apes and men are shown hunting and trapping birds, and hounds and hares abound. As Sandler shows in her study of the fourteenth-century English Ormesby Psalter, the pointed weapons and the furry animals had bawdy genital equivalents.58 Caviness’s statistics show how the proportions of men and women, as well as animals, musical instruments, and foliage, in the margins reflect the gendered positions of intended patrons. Because different social types of men and women are figured in the margins, the social positions of the probable audiences aid in interpreting the reception of reflexive as well as repetitive imagery. A recent article by Jean Wirth provides three rules to follow in studying the manuscript context of marginal images. He first warns against making allusions that have no perceptible chance of being provable. In his critique of Randall’s formal parallel drawn between the game of “frog-in-the-middle” beneath the Annunciation and the Betrayal of Christ on the facing page in the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreaux, he argues instead that the game of the marginal scene belongs with the spring season of the Annunciation, the feast of which is on March 25.59 Second, the possibility of an allusion is inversely proportional to the frequency of the iconographic motif and the textual motif to which it is supposed to relate. Thus, overly symbolic interpretations of a repeated model, like hunting scenes or grotesques, to the contents of the text should be tempered by their high frequency.60 Third, because a motif ’s meaning can shift according to context and audience, the signification of a motif cannot be established by an examination of its different occurrences, a point also emphasized in Sandler’s state-of-the-field article.61 These shifting contexts in the different kinds of manuscripts, I argue, are exactly those in which the marginalia perform. Most important, Wirth emphasizes the relationship between marginal images and principal images—for often the illuminator is the same for both (e.g., fig. 43).62 This relationship is especially important to my analysis of the codicology of the manuscripts in which I focus on the collation of

Introduction

15

folios within gatherings as well as clusters of images across folios. To map the entirety of marginal models across codices as Caviness has done will take additional time and effort, but the iconography of selected motifs can be considered in terms of their individual pictorial and textual contexts as well as in the contexts of their audiences. HISTORICAL CONTEXT In “Iconography and Ideology,” Alexander proposes to look at “how art was used . . . as a representational matrix that both codified and strengthened social values and thus ensured social cohesion throughout medieval Christian society.”63 In order to examine the social positioning of repetitive and reflexive marginal images, it is necessary to inquire into the circumstances of the local noble and clerical patrons of illuminated books. Whereas some patrons are barely traceable, others help to secure the dates for particular commissions and stylistically related manuscripts. In considering manuscripts for which the evidence of patronage is nonexistent, scant, or even roughly suggested, the social group for which the manuscript was most likely intended—either in the court of the aristocracy or in the library of the monastery—can be understood in terms of larger trends in book production and literacy during the late thirteenth century. Meanwhile, incipient conflicts among counts, kings, towns, artisans, and the Church provide the historical backdrop for the development of marginalia in new types of manuscripts illuminated for the powerful patrons who could afford them. The family history of the count of Flanders in the thirteenth century is in itself an intriguing examination of familial structures. Most unusually, two sisters held the seat in succession through the middle of the century: Jeanne and Margaret, the daughters of Baldwin of Constantinople. However, Louis IX, to his favor, controlled this arrangement and their inheritance. Both countesses founded convents for nuns and contributed generously to monastic abbeys throughout the region.64 Margaret married twice, to Bouchard of Avesnes and then to William of Dampierre, so that she was Countess of Flanders and Hainault until 1278 when she abdicated.65 The county of Hainault was ceded through the first son of her first marriage, John (d. 1257), whose son John II of Avesnes (d. 1304) also gained Luxembourg through marriage and Holland upon the death of Floris V’s son, John I, in 1299.66 Three of his brothers were bishops of Metz, Utrecht, and Cambrai, and his sister the abbess at the convent at Flines, which was founded by Margaret. The county of Flanders eventually ceded to Margaret’s second son by her second marriage, Guy of Dampierre, who himself married twice and fathered sixteen

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Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

children. Most of his offspring were placed in lucrative marriages; his fifth daughter, Johanna, entered the convent at Flines, and his third son, John, became archbishop of Liège in 1282. In 1294, the count’s sixth daughter, Philippina, was engaged to the future king of England, Edward II.67 Members of these comital families are connected to several luxury manuscripts illuminated by the same groups of artists incorporating the fashionable marginalia in exuberance into the framework of the borders. The Psalter of Guy of Dampierre was likely made for the count of Flanders some time around 1275–85. A psalter sold through H. P. Kraus (cat. 75, no. 88) painted by a hand of the Dampierre group has been attributed to the readership of Countess “Margaret the Black” herself.68 Although the heraldic devices in these manuscripts supply connections to the intended owners, heraldry is not always the firmest indicator of provenance. Stones demonstrates how the armorial evidence in the Tournai Psalter (Tournai Cathedral, Scaldis H 12/2), for example, points less likely to Louis le Hutin than to William of Termonde, Guy’s second son who was a known patron of illuminated manuscripts and romances.69 In her article on the Vulgate Arthur, shared between the Bibliothèque nationale de France (henceforth “BnF”) and Yale University Library, Stones bases the patronage on the arms of William of Termonde that appear on the destrier, or warhorse, of a knight in the bas-de-page of the opening page of the Quest.70 Detailed in chapters 3 and 4, these manuscripts were illuminated with a high density of marginalia per gathering and were commissioned specifically for the court. Gabrielle Spiegel’s study of vernacular prose historiography in the early thirteenth century incorporates the history of the Franco-Flemish lords surrounding the count of Flanders.71 Prose historiography appeared in this region as a way to appropriate a “usable past” for the nobility’s position in the face of the increasing power of the Capetian kings, Philip Augustus and Louis IX.72 By the end of the century, the demand in this region for prose histories in the vernacular increased, especially for those illuminated with miniatures depicting battles and feats of past rulers and noblemen. For example, William of Termonde commissioned the prose text for Judas Maccabee et ses nobles frères, and the Spiegel Historiael by Jacob of Maerlant was the first written in Dutch, possibly for Count Floris V of Holland.73 Arthurian romances and “mirrors of knowledge” are similar in their large scale and copious illustration to these histories, which romanticized the past and legitimized the present. The popularity for illuminated manuscripts of Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum majus, upon which the vernacular histories were based, and Brunetto Latini’s Le Trésor lent to luxury commissions with marginalia on the borders. Illustrated copies of these texts are explored in chapters 5 and 6 including artists from Thérouanne to Arras and Douai.

Introduction

17

In her book, Sealed in Parchment, Sandra Hindman covers the last quarter of the thirteenth century and the first quarter of the fourteenth century in her study of the illuminated manuscripts of Chrétian of Troyes, whose works gained popularity in the counties of northeast France and Flanders.74 Spiegel argues for the development of prose historiography as a way for the nobility to articulate their identity under the shadow of the Capetian dynasty; Hindman argues a similar role for Chrétian’s verses. Hindman rereads the texts and images—mainly in the form of knights on horseback in historiated initials—to explore issues of inheritance, marriage, and social station that were sources of anxiety among the nobility. Five categories of the knight—the clerc, the bacheler, the seignor, the combateor, and the roi—are reflected in the miniatures. Both military exploits and dynastic connections are key to how the “passage from bachelorhood through marriage to lordship or kingship” shows the social expectations of the knightly class.75 Armed knights in chain mail, young bachelors with weapons, and crowned bodies occupy in the margins of the Flemish-Artesian manuscripts and highlight the noble class for whom many of the manuscripts were made. Malcolm Vale’s recent book, The Princely Court, on comital households brings more archival evidence to the often confusing social history of the northern Europe. He notes the linguistic difficulty of studying the French and Flemish border counties, the allegiances and powers of which changed so frequently through history.76 Sections on “Luxury, display, and the arts,” and “The structures of court patronage,” situate the status of the Low Countries’ counts vis-à-vis the royal houses of England and France. Due to the lack of Flemish material evidence, aspects of court patronage are based upon surviving accounting lists in Arras that Vale uses to show the sheer amount of expenditures recorded for the nobility and their entourages. For example, one All Saints Day’s livery, including furs and cloths from Ghent for the entire retinue of Count Robert of Béthune, who succeeded Guy of Dampierre in 1305, cost 4,650 livres flandres.77 Weekly expenses for the count’s household in the 1270s averaged around 350–400 livres parisis, which of course increased when hosting feasts, hunts, or visiting dignitaries.78 In his history of Medieval Flanders, David Nicholas draws attention to the patronage of manuscripts, especially romances, among the Flemish nobles, but Vale neglects this rich trove of art-historical evidence.79 For instance, the Viel Rentier d’Oudenaarde is a manuscript of property accounts and inventories for the nobleman, Jean of Oudenaarde, and it is illustrated with unframed images in green and red wash of his lands and the people working them.80 Observing the surviving provincial manuscripts, as well as

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Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

the architecture, furniture, and decorative arts in the region, provides scholars with historical settings for the courts as well as the towns and the abbeys. Of the latter categories of artistic production, there is much more archaeological evidence from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in Flanders that, although not necessarily “high” art, belong in an analysis of material culture.81 In popular art, the sign of the count of Flanders—the lion rampant—was seen throughout the county and outside the manuscript context. Ceramic horses and knight riders blazoned with the heraldry survive from the city gates of Ypres, Ghent, and Courtrai. The ceramic tiles lining the floors of urban hôtels and monastic lavatories, as well as panels of stained glass at Saint Michael’s in Ghent, for example, displayed the lion rampant over and over.82 Not unlike the “golden arches” of McDonald’s, which to some have become emblematic of economic power and excess, the identity of the nobility was physically layered with the fabric of the towns and in the repertoire of the region’s artistic production.83 The manuscripts of this region reflect the tastes of the audience who could afford the extra decorative illumination, so the margins containing heraldry are employed to frame the reception of potential readers in their historical context. The reception and use of the marginal images in reading the Latin or French texts depends upon the unknown factor of the reader’s level of literacy. The religious and lay individuals who commissioned the various manuscripts with illuminations and marginalia came from the same social echelon of noble rank and increasingly of the merchant class.84 Luxury manuscripts were designed to be highly personal, as in the case of devotional books, but other large-scale manuscripts likely had multiple users. For example, Joyce Coleman supports the idea that romances were read aloud in small groups or ensembles, so the marginal imagery may have been engaged in the reading process.85 Scholars of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century manuscripts argue for awareness of this transitive period between hearing texts read aloud versus reading them silently and in private, a process that was visualized in marginalia, romances, and reference texts. Given these fluid concepts of reading, Sandler emphasizes that the use of marginalia provides a situation in which “the experience of reading the text may be heightened and intensified through the discovery and appreciation of all the riches apparent and concealed in the words.”86 The reception of marginal images and the texts they accompany must be couched in terms of what can be known of the probable historical context in individual cases. The support of this study lies within the folios themselves. Given a changing and broadening market in manuscript production, the manuscripts of this border region—between Paris and England—reflect new ways of

Introduction

19

accessing the authority of the text. In the guise of a decorative frame, the marginal imagery underlines these shifting circumstances, and the application of particular motifs could function to interact with the text and the reader. Chapters 2–4 focus on manuscripts illuminated by the Dampierre group including a Bible, a penitential manual, several psalters and the sumptuous Vulgate Arthur. Chapters 5–6 focus on the genre of encyclopedia and didactic compendia illuminated by artists in Thérouanne, Arras, and Douai. The marginalia in these manuscripts illustrate the diversity of applications of marginal motifs to supplement the reading of Latin and French texts. This region’s dynamic juncture in book illumination provides a cross-section of the broader developments across Western Europe, including the elaboration of devotional manuals, the compilation of encyclopedia, and the composition of romances created for a growing number of book owners and readers. This study examines manuscripts produced between ca. 1270 and 1310, although slightly earlier and later works inform the major trends as well. Dates in the late thirteenth century are loosely ascertained by stylistic evidence, while 1304–1305 mark the passing of two well-known manuscript patrons: Guy of Dampierre, Count of Flanders, and his half-nephew John II of Avesnes, Count of Hainault. The psalter of the elder count was illuminated by artists who completed other manuscripts for members of the Dampierre family; a didactic compendium on love, virtue, and happiness was compiled by the brother of the younger count, the bishop of Utrecht, and its main miniatures contain marginal motifs. Made for local patrons in the church and the court, this generation of book production reflected the tastes, morals, and values of its books’ owners. As an interface between the text and the audience, marginalia provide a culturally rich framework for gaining insight into those reflections.

Chapter Two

Ars Profana in Cistercian Tomes

The contents of libraries from two Cistercian monasteries along the coast of the North Sea are now preserved in Bruges, at the bishop’s seminary and the city library, and contain several manuscripts filled with marginalia from the repertoire developing in Flanders and Artois.1 One of the earliest works illuminated by the Dampierre group is the Henricus Bible, copied in the scriptorium of Saint Mary’s Abbey at Ter Doest, north of Bruges, and now split between the Grootseminarie, MSS 4/1 and 5/191, and the Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 6. Another manuscript illuminated by the Dampierre group was the first penance manual to be alphabetized, the Summa de jure canonico by Monaldus of Istria (Grootseminarie MS 45/144). It belonged to the library of Ter Doest’s mother abbey, Ter Duinen, near Furnes on the Flemish-Artesian border. In exploring the graphic manifestations of border illumination in these manuscripts, the expansion of the Dampierre group’s repertoire between Flanders and Artois, which include the dioceses of Tournai and Thérouanne, is established for further discussion. The marginal motifs are used to illustrate the establishment of the repertoire as part of developments in textual embellishment and to review the traditional interpretations of profane or droll themes as moralistic in Latin texts. The compositions of motifs inhabiting the initials of these Cistercian tomes frequently appear on the borders of closely related manuscripts by the Dampierre group. In his book, The Decorated Letter, Jonathan Alexander explains that the thirteenth century was a transitional period in manuscript illumination during which figures seem to crawl out of the initials to decorate the borders—leaving the initials to be filled with narrative images. Similarly, Otto Pächt traces a trajectory from zoomorphic to historiated initials, but he pursues the development of pictorial narrative in historiated initials to the exclusion of other decorative elements, including 21

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marginalia.2 The extension of borders from the decorated letter was a form of adornment added by illuminators in Paris that quickly gained vogue in workshops across modern Belgium and England.3 The baguette borders, gilded cusps, and pinwheel terminals may have suggested platforms and perches for miniature animals and birds. The process is indeed visible in this generation of manuscripts as the figures in the borders are tied closely to the illumination of the letters. In the Henricus Bible and the Monaldus Summa, social figures and hybrids inhabit and stand on top of the letters; others also form herms that terminate the borders extending from the initials and surrounding the text. Studying the imagery of the illuminated initials and borders opens the discussion of the manuscripts’ textual and historical connections. Every Cistercian monastery owned an authorized manuscript of the Bible for the community to read in the choir or in the refectory.4 Cistercian monasteries also held numerous commentaries, including penitential manuals and encyclopedia. The manuscripts addressed in this chapter were not included in Lilian Randall’s survey of marginal images, but the uses of imagery in Latin texts provide a starting point from which to survey the basic elements of the repertoire.5 Viewing the marginal imagery in a monumental Bible or a penitential manual, therefore, entails keeping the cloistered context in mind. Archaeological remains of the Ter Duinen abbey contribute to an artistic and a historical context for viewing marginal motifs in these Cistercian tomes. TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF THE HENRICUS BIBLE The three surviving volumes of the Henricus Bible were copied by the lay scribe Henricus, hence the eponymous title. On the last page of each volume, in large rubrics, is the colophon: “Hunc librum scripsit frater Henricus conversus beate Marie professus in Thosan.”6 According to his colophons in several other manuscripts, including three volumes of Saint Augustine’s works and several commentaries on the Bible, Henricus served as a lay brother in Saint Mary’s scriptorium perhaps as early as the 1250s and possibly functioned as the libraire, or head manager, of the atelier.7 The Cistercian audience is reflected in the margins on the first folios with figures of tonsured monks wearing gray and brown cowls (fig. 3). References to monks are also made in the script along the top margin of the text; Henricus often incorporated profile heads into the capital letters—sometimes with a tonsure (e.g. MS 4/1, fols. 84v, 143r, 193v, etc.) and once in another manuscript’s colophon with a beard in a caricature of himself.8

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Figure 3. Book of Genesis, Henricus Bible (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 4/1), fol. 8r.

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Kerstin Carlvant confirms that the Henricus Bible is “one of the earliest manuscripts decorated by a Dampierre hand,” and that it can be dated to approximately 1265–1275.9 The first volume contains the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth (Bruges, Grootseminarie, MS 4/1), and another volume contains Job and the Major and Minor Prophets (Bruges, Grootseminarie, MS 5/191)—both volumes are illuminated with inhabited initials and marginal figures. The third volume (Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 6) contains I-III Ezra, Esther, Tobit, Judith, I-II Maccabbees, and the New Testament.10 The latter volume is not illuminated, but the books open with the large pen-flourished initials in red and blue ink that characterize the Cistercian aesthetic.11 Pen-flourished initials measuring two or three lines each divide each of the chapters in all three volumes; their flourished sprays extend the full lengths of the text columns. Characterized by stalked bulbs, pipped half-circles, and spiral infilling, the decoration of the initials stands out vibrantly against thick sheets of white, pounced parchment.12 Despite Bernard of Clairvaux’s admonishment of art in the monastery, the ban on figurative art was relaxed, at least in practice, by the late thirteenth century. Limited to the foliated, inhabited, and zoo-anthropomorphic initials opening sections of text, the decoration of the Pentateuch and Prophets volumes follows Cistercian traditions of restraint. Dominated by vine scrolls and repetitive figures, heads, and animals, the contents of the initials and borders often seem unrelated to the contents of the text. The use of particularly ‘profane’ figures, such as animals, nudes, and gilded garments, however, seems to invite the reader’s contemplation of the text. In addition to the figural imagery, the large size of some initials and connections with the marginal imagery seem to engage a reader’s lingering gaze.13 There are a total of ten opening pages, or incipit pages, illuminated in the Pentateuch volume—including one for the prologue by Saint Jerome and one for the preface to Joshua. The greater number of openings with inhabited initials and margins occurs in the Prophets volume, which contains thirty-seven incipits on thirty-four pages. The first five incipit pages open with large initials but without any figures in the margins (MS 5/191, fols. 1r, 2r, 25r, 25v, and 66r). These decorated initials are much larger than those in the remainder of the volume’s books, averaging eight to ten lines in height. Running the length of the page, there are two I-initials containing figures in the first volume and six in the second volume, three of which are zoo-anthropomorphic (i.e., composed of a combination human and animal figure).14 By the time the openings for the Minor Prophets were designed (MS 5/191, fol. 190r), the initials were more economical in

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space and distribution, measuring generally four to seven lines in height. Isolated marginal figures stand upon the frames of these smaller initials or their baguettes. The prologues, rather than the books themselves, more frequently open with figures in the margins. In the Prophets volume, nine of seventeen prologues contain figures in the marginal space; of the nineteen incipits for the books themselves, only four have marginal figures. This seems appropriate—as the preface or prologue was a commentary on the book, so too was the function of marginal gloss.15 Of the twenty-three figures standing on initials or perched on arabesques in the two volumes combined, six are modeled upon conventional representations of birds. The borders also include two apes, four acrobats wearing gold tunics, and eight religious figures, including monks, scribes, and a prophet. There are also two terminal heads, one of an abbot and one of a saint. The initials, on the other hand, contain four nude figures, including Jonah, and three dressed figures possibly of Moses, Isaiah, and Ruth incorporated in the vines and serpents’ tails. Animals, apes, and birds also fill the initials and constitute the familiar menagerie of marginalia in later manuscripts. With figures in the letters, borders, and margins, the initials of the Henricus Bible provide an early example of letter decoration and border decoration crossing the illuminated boundaries of the folio. OPENING REPERTOIRE: MONKS, PROPHETS, JONGLEURS, AND BIRDS In terms of the perceived tension between profane, marginal images and sacred, central images in examples of Romanesque art, Meyer Schapiro exclaims how “such figures juxtaposed to holy personages—acrobats and dancers among fantastic beasts!” constitute an “aesthetic attitude” that made marginalia integral to medieval art.16 In the margins of the Henricus Bible, however, a combination of religious figure types, such as monks and prophets, and profane figure types, such as jongleurs and animals, enables the reader to engage more subtle distinctions of literal, moral, and allegorical senses in the context of the biblical text. The prologue of Saint Jerome begins the first volume and, like the opening pages of contemporary Bibles, the folio is decorated with the largest initial and the greatest number of marginalia. Five motifs are attached to the exterior of the initial F of Frater Ambrosius, whom Jerome addresses, and three pairs of animals inhabit the main field (fig. 1).17 In the upper left corner of the page on top of the initial, a saint, possibly Saint Ambrose, is depicted as a monk writing at his desk, cloistered by a scalloped tendril rising from

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the border. Such author portraits were used in ninety percent of illuminated Bibles, while magisters wearing birettas are similarly positioned as authorities opening literary and encyclopedic texts.18 The square frame of the initial contains six circular vine scrolls supported by hooded hybrids and framing minute animals, including, in pairs, a hare being shot by a centaur, a squirrel and a lion, and a stag and a goat. The enigmatic hoopoe, a bird with two contradictory meanings in bestiaries, fills a vine scroll between the top corner of the letter and the scribe’s seat.19 At the base of the stem, below the last line of text, a bearded herm wearing an elongated mitre holds two border arabesques on his shoulders. The arabesque below the first column of text holds the one of the most popular compositions of the repertoire. A scene of Reynard the Fox, in which the fox fools and steals a rooster, typically includes the housewife chasing him with her distaff aloft, but the housewife figure is absent from this model.20 The Reynard the Fox motif continued to occupy the margins of many and various types of manuscripts, but, as Jean Wirth suggests, it represented different things to different audiences.21 In this Bible made for a Cistercian abbey, the fox could have parodied the Mendicant Orders—preaching to and pilfering the flock of the Church.22 By contrast, in the later BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur the fable is used to moralize an episode of one of King Arthur’s knights, whose vices of pride and greed lead to his downfall (Yale MS 229, fol. 199r). For both the Bible and romance, the fox motif is used to elucidate the reading of the text, but the sense or meaning of the fable remains dependent on the positions of the viewers. The author portrait and the fable are staged at the beginning and the end of the letter.23 As the commentaries were written to supplement the Word, so too with sermon exempla: a comic tale, fable, or animal lore could be used to illustrate or comment on the sense of a biblical text. Similar to the tradition of textual gloss written in the margins of the ruled folio functioning as a means of understanding the sense of the text, images painted in the margins visually engaged the reading.24 Diagonally opposite the saint writing above the letter F, an ape occupies a tendril extending from the letter’s main field to contrast with the author portrait. The ape is looking at a round mirror that can be understood as the “blank state of mind,” so called in a sermon by Jacques of Vitry.25 Textual knowledge and ignorance are presented in direct contrast by use of the sheet of parchment half-filled with words and the blank surface of the mirror, positioning the cloister of the letter opposite the marginal space. As bishop of Milan, Saint Ambrose expounded on the three senses of the biblical text—the literal, the moral, and the allegorical, or mystical. The placement of exempla motifs within and on the letter

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containing an author perhaps reflects an understanding of Ambrose’s exegesis, especially when compared to the letter on the next opening folio containing another scribe, possibly Saint Jerome. The Cistercian readers of this Bible may have found themselves mirrored in the margins of fol. 8r. Three monks in brown and gray cowls occupy the borders extending from the I-initial of Incipit, which runs the length of the page and contains fourteen prophets with unfurled scrolls (fig. 3).26 One monk delivers a long scroll, echoing those in the initial, to the cloistered scribe atop the incipit. Two cowled and bearded figures walk in opposite directions under each of the columns of text. One is tonsured and the other is faced frontally but seems to have more hair, so he may represent a lay brother.27 At the top of the initial, a saint wears a red cap and wimple, perhaps indicating the thirteenth-century attribution of Saint Jerome as a cardinal. His feet rest on the scrollwork looping two lions’ heads and framing the prophets below. Compared to the marginal exempla on the first folio as commentary associated with Saint Ambrose, the letter opening Genesis contains imagery emphasizing the transmission of the letter of the Word, from the prophets to the Cistercian reader. Typical motifs in the group’s artistic repertoire include those of the jongleur type, four of which appear balancing on the initials of the Bible. A popular jongleur in the repertoire balances a chalice and lance atop the letter opening the preface to Joshua (MS 4/1, fol. 173v).28 Three other marginal figures in the second volume are familiar as jongleurs, also appearing in the margins of related manuscripts by the Dampierre group: a juggler balancing a board decorated with lancets, a jester playing bagpipes, and an atlantis supporting an initial (MS 5/191, fols. 212r, 222v, and 229r). Wearing gold tunics, these figures highlight the foliated letters to which they are attached. Likewise, the pointed hats of a prophet and two Cistercian monks (MS 5/191, fols. 119v, 199v, and 217v) as well as the herms with the mitre of an abbot or bishop and the halo of a tonsured saint (MS 5/191, fols. 66v and 205v) are used to punctuate the marginal spaces and tie the readers’ gaze to the letters of the books.29 Almost equal in number to the religious figures painted with the initials are the birds occupying the initials’ frames and borders. Birds are shown in a variety of species and poses, betraying the use of models like the illustrated Aviarium by Hugh of Fouilloy. The prologue to Jeremiah has a construction similar to the column of prophets in the incipit initial I of Genesis (MS 5/191, fol. 66r). There are eleven birds of recognizable species nested in the links of vine, and their variety echoes that of Apocalypse images for the “Call of the Birds” or illustrated bestiaries.30 More precisely, several fully

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illuminated copies of Hugh’s Aviarium, written in the first half of the twelfth century, survive from the region. One late-twelfth century copy, the “Ter Duinen Aviary” (1190–1200), was housed in the library of the Abbey of Ter Duinen and another, the “Dyson Perrins Aviary” in the style of Saint Omer and dating to 1270–80, also has a regional Cistercian monastic provenance.31 The aviary in the Bible’s I-initial includes: a seagull with red wings; a green bird flapping rose-colored wings (either duck or passerine species, such as a kingfisher or partridge); an owl; a woodcock; a blue heron; a spoonbill, pelican, or goose; a hawk or falcon; a dove; a parrot; another hawk or falcon; and a peacock at the base. Perched on a foliated initial opening the book of Judges in the first volume is the owl, a bird of bad omen (MS 4/1, fol. 194v). The birds in

Figure 4. Book of Daniel, Henricus Bible (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 5/191), fol. 172r.

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five margins of the second volume follow conventional bestiary models. Many are repeated in other manuscripts: a crane clattering its bill (fol. 126r) across from a stork pluming its wings (fol.125v), a stork swallowing a green frog (fol. 196v), the pelican piercing itself to feed its young (fol. 219v), and the sparrow feeding its offspring (fig. 4)—these are all avian exempla that frequently appear in marginalia.32 The swallow feeding its nest of young is repeated twice in the vertical margins of the Psalter of Guy of Dampierre (fols. 51r and 170v). H. W. Janson refers to Psalm 101 to categorize birds in the margins: the pelican was understood as pagan, the owl as Jew, and the sparrow as Christian.33 The pelican’s sacrifice for its young, however, was more often likened to Christ’s wounds, and the crane’s watchfulness was likened to the spiritual care of monastic elders. Hugh of Fouilloy cites numerous authorities on the sparrow—the several possible meanings support the assertion that marginalia can be used to operate at different levels within the same work.34 The symbolic aspects of salvation in the avian motifs are significant to three of the initials that include naked men and are discussed next: fol. 125v, the prologue to Ezekiel; fol. 172r, the book of Daniel; and fol. 219v, the prologue to Aggeus (Haggai). MODEL ICONOGRAPHY: MERMEN, NAKED MEN, AND RUTH The monks, jongleurs, and birds in the margins of the Henricus Bible form a core repertoire for the motifs in other manuscripts of the Dampierre group. Birds and small animals occupy a few of the large foliated initials in the Henricus Bible, but many initials are filled with foliate vines, serpents’ tails, and human-faced hybrids that also typically terminate the borders of other contemporary manuscripts. The use of full-human figures and half-human hybrids embedded in other initials presents interesting formal patterns that are also basic to the repertoire disseminated through the Dampierre group. As with the incipit I-initials of Genesis and the prologue to Jeremiah, the format of the initial creates a compositional frame that also serves as a border. Prophets and birds cross boundaries as both elements of the initials and the marginalia within the same work. More a border element than an independent marginal figure, a characteristic motif for one Dampierre group artist is the half-man, half-fish that fills two of the I-initials in MS 5/191 in the form of a tonsured merman and Jonah emerging from the whale. The motif allows for numerous combinations that were applied to line-endings and vertical borders in later manuscripts.35 A similar, equally prominent theme in five large initials, including an initial I, is a man, either clothed or naked, ensnared in the animated foliage of the initial. The motif

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is conventional for incorporation into a structural element like an initial, as in the incipit letters of the twelfth-century Moralia in Job from Cîteaux, for example, or the minor initials in the ninth-century Book of Kells.36 These full male figures, whether nude, bearded, and/or wearing a hat, are employed in the Henricus Bible for allegorical metaphors consistent with reading the biblical text. The prologue to Ezekiel opens with a merman playing a harp in the initial I, which extends nearly the length of the text and is surmounted by a stork resting its beak on its wing (fol. 125v). With a tonsured head, perhaps echoing Ezekiel’s shaved head (Ezekiel 5:1), this hybrid figure combines the religious with profane patterns for the letter’s decoration. In fact, in some cases, initials that depict a recognizable theme do not necessarily open the book that would seem to provide the textual basis. A variation on the merman

Figure 5. Prologue to Abdias (Obadiah), Henricus Bible (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 5/191), fol. 205r.

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theme occurs with the depiction of Jonah and the whale, in which the nude figure of Jonah emerges from the mouth of a vertical fish to form the initial I of Iacob (Jacob), which extends over twelve lines into the lower border (fig. 5). On the lower border, an ape with a hood and the hindquarters of a wyvern holds the fish tail.37 This initial, however, opens the prologue to Abdias (Obadiah), rather than the book of Jonah on fol. 207r, which begins with a smaller initial E containing decorative foliage. In other cases, as with Numbers, Isaiah, and Ruth, the chosen figure is related to the book. For example, the book of Ruth opens with the only female figure in the Bible (fig. 6). With wyvern hinds and a vine tail twisting the length of the page, the female hybrid wears a knotted hennin, blows a long trumpet in the upper margin, and holds a flounder along side the baguette separating the columns of text. Together, the elements discourage temptations of the flesh: the hennin usually indicated a mature woman, as Ruth was a widow; and the bestial hindquarters would serve to repulse the desire for the feminine.38 While the fish may symbolically moderate the female character’s religious role, it may borrow more closely from the sea motifs

Figure 6. Book of Ruth, Henricus Bible (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 4/1), fol. 215v.

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of the repertoire.39 In the manuscripts by the Dampierre group, mermaids naked to the waist with fish tails and loosened hair play music and hold fish in the I-initials and borders (see figs. 16 and 21). On the opening page of the Bible, it should also be recalled that the fox motif was lacking a housewife, but in the other Dampierre models the housewife wears a hennin like that on the trumpeting wyvern opening Ruth. Thus, the hybrid composition of this female figure topping the I-initial contains interchangeable elements that were varied for other female-oriented compositions in related manuscripts. The motifs in the Henricus Bible appear in later manuscripts in varied compositions and contexts, yet they remain recognizable as descendants of the same models. For example, on fol. 177r of the Dampierre Psalter, a nimbed Jonah emerges from the mouth of a fish on the inner border, while an ape astride a peacock points his lance to the “is” of Israel from the outer margin. Connecting the hand of the psalter to the Yale Lancelot, Alison Stones compares the template to that of an ape joust beneath a border mermaid playing bagpipes (fol. 126r).40 This is a good example of how patterns could be re-used yet transformed from one manuscript to another. From the Latin contexts of the biblical and the devotional to the vernacular parody of romance, the ape of the lower border (fig. 5) shifts from wearing a cowl to bearing arms, while the vertical fish-human shifts from the pious Jonah to the profane mermaid, which, in turn, signifies the Lady of the Lake in the context of the romance. The opening initial for the prologue to Aggeus (Haggai) also required the large letter I, filled with a nude wearing only an arming cap (fol. 219v).41 His limbs are wrapped in the foliate tail of a dragon that stands on the nude’s shoulder and spits more vine scrolls from its mouth. The baguette continues between the columns of text to the top, where the pelican of piety is pictured in her nest piercing her breast for her three hungry offspring. Next to the Christological symbol of the pelican, the naked man represents the sinful entrapment of the flesh.42 Thus, the juxtaposition of the two motifs on this page encourages contemplation on the flesh in a cyclical way, with physical mortification in the entanglement and symbolic ascension beyond flesh in the exemplum. In the initial opening the book of Daniel, a dragon in the initial A ensnares a nude man and again an avian theme alights the upper margin with a sparrow feeding the young in its nest (fig. 4). Hugh of Fouilloy dedicated six chapters to exempla on the sparrow in his Aviarium, and several of those meanings are expounded in the juxtaposition of the initial’s figure and margin. Willene B. Clark, in her work on the well-used copies of Hugh’s text, shows that the illustrated Aviarium was intended as a teaching tool for

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the lay-brotherhood and the novitiate, which explains Hugh’s emphasis on the sparrow.43 The sparrow alighting on a rooftop, specified in Psalm 101, resembles the “faithful teacher making known the heights of virtue.”44 Furthering this metaphor, the sparrow in the cedar is like the preacher and the nest is like the cloister in which chicks find rebirth and repose. The land of the rich donated to the monastery was also analogous to the cedar, which has the danger of harboring “proud men of wealth.”45 Wearing a gold biretta in the initial, the naked figure additionally relates to one of the snares set for the sparrow—the “charms of the flesh.”46 The figure’s splayed legs reveal that his genitalia have been scratched out and, although the censorship may have taken place at a point later in the manuscript’s history, the physical reception of the image suggests that the carnality necessitated physical aversion.47 Direct juxtapositions to avian motifs supply these naked figures with allegorical functions, and the headgear points to equating the sins of the flesh with a desire for the things of the world. In “Glossing the Flesh: Scopophilia and the Margins of the Medieval Book,” Michael Camille argues that over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the margins were “more generally a site for the confrontation and even the intercourse of the flesh and the spirit.”48 In visual art, the naked figure represented the literal flesh as well as the transcended soul. Understood in terms discussed by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the distinction between the carnality of the fleshly body and the perfection of the resurrected body provided an interpretive framework for these entangled, naked figures.49 Camille also observes that more images of naked youth, body parts, and human heads appear in marginal spaces during the transition from oral to silent reading; these images were activated in the increasingly tactile experience of the human flesh contacting the flesh of parchment. In effect, the naked flesh, usually in the form of the male body in manuscript illumination, grafts an “eroticized” site for the new physicality and internalization of reading and consultation.50 Representations of man struggling against nature or against demons are the main subjects of violence in Conrad Rudolph’s recent analysis of the Cîteaux Moralia in Job.51 The defeat of dragons, often by clothed noblemen, “symbolizes the spiritual dangers by which the individual Christian is threatened.”52 Similar themes of struggle are figured in three large initials of the Henricus Bible, although they are not accompanied by images in the margins.53 A figure of Moses in the incipit of Numbers and a nude figure biting vines in the incipit of Amos are similar themes of entanglement. A third entangled figure opening the preface to Isaiah provides a tangible connection to the historical context of the monastery, and the initial on the verso contains jousting apes with shields, the secular parody of which may be pointed

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to noble patrons of the monasteries (figs. 7–8). Similar compositions from the repertoire re-appear in the nearby context of Ter Duinen, whose floor tiles and theological Summa are used to illustrate the crafted versus textual applications of popular motifs. CISTERCIAN CONTEXTS: APES AND LIONS One common motif found in both initials and margins of other manuscripts is that of the ape bearing spears and shields blazoned with the arms of nobles. Two apes entwined within the large initial opening the book of Isaiah carry simple gilded shields and one displays a black chevron, more likely generic than belonging to a particular noble (fig. 7). Janson, in Apes and Ape Lore, provides some of the background to the motifs of battling apes and fighting nudes.54 He notes that in Romanesque art the

Figure 7. Book of Isaiah, Henricus Bible (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 5/191), fol. 25v.

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representation of the ape riding on a demonic monster and wielding a weapon was analogous to that of a nude fighting man, a descendent of ancient athletes. The ape and nude both were “denizens of the same savage and tormented world of animal demons.”55 Janson concludes that apes jousting with arms became overt parodies of knighthood by the end of the thirteenth century. The theme remains important to the manuscripts by the Dampierre group as the individual blazons are often linked to contemporary nobility in the Flemish courts. In the Henricus Bible, the apes may parody the secular nobility, which will be discussed in the next section on the Monaldus Summa, but the shields may also be used to respond to the description of Isaiah as a rich nobleman in the prologue on the previous page. On the recto of the same folio, the prologue to Isaiah opens with the letter N containing a man wearing gold with his hands raised upward and two lions resting below, filled with symmetrical coils of vine in between (fig.

Figure 8. Prologue to Isaiah, Henricus Bible (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 5/191), fol. 25r.

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8). The lions and the prayer gesture perhaps refer to the story of Daniel much later in the manuscript, but that book’s initial contains the ensnared nude with the symbolically salvific sparrow. The choice for the preface initial’s composition may reside in the text, while the visual models for the lions also reside in the monastery. Jerome describes Isaiah as having the “polished diction natural to a man of rank,” perhaps accounting for the use of the gilded tunic in the first initial and the shields in combat in the second. Perusal of the text of Isaiah 5 provides a possible textual basis for using a wine garden motif for the “song of the vineyard” in which the men of Judah are the “garden of his delight.”56 To Hugh of Saint Victor, the page of the text was a vineyard to be cared for and its fruits to be harvested.57 The inclusion of the docile lions relates also to text of Isaiah 11:7 in which the tree of Jesse, whose branches will bear fruit, and the time when “the lion will eat straw like the ox” are described.58 Thus, with the text in consideration, the nobleman and lions visualize prophecy rather than emphasize the vulnerability of the flesh in need of salvation that was exemplified by the pairing of the struggling man with marginal avian nests. The symmetrical lions are paralleled in the contemporary monastic context, which places the marginal motifs in a more decorative versus textual context and demonstrates a change in the meaning for the same model. Square glazed tiles from the excavations at Ter Duinen have been dated to pre-1262, the year of the abbey church’s dedication after thirty years of construction.59 Many tiles have been excavated from the cloister, the lay brothers’ grange, the lavatorium, and the transepts of the abbey church, which date from the thirteenth to early-fourteenth centuries. In the transepts, at least three relief tiles were found containing vine scrolls in which birds, dragons, and lions are symmetrically placed. The lions at the base of the composition resemble the form of the letter’s decoration opening the preface to Isaiah in the Henricus Bible. Ter Duinen Abbey had tile makers among its lay brothers in the thirteenth century and also included a tile-works, for which clay was supplied from Ter Duinen’s properties. Thus, materials produced at these abbeys, including tiles and manuscripts, certainly resulted in a reciprocal iconographical influence. Such relationships between two forms of the once-termed “minor” arts—the inhabited letter and the decorated tile—provide important evidence for the continuity of art production between the sister houses of Ter Duinen and Ter Doest and further extending from Bruges to Saint Omer. Claire Van Nerom’s excavation of the tiles at Ter Duinen reveals numerous motifs such as fish and cameo heads that are common to manuscript marginalia, painted initials, and line endings. In the octagonal

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37

lavatorium, heads of princes, knights on horseback (with Greek crosses on their shields), falcons, stags and hounds, and griffins and hybrids were placed together in groups of four.60 Although many of these tiles probably date to the early years of Abbot Lambert, ca. 1317, the tiles illustrate the decorative repertoire outside the immediate manuscript context. Constituting part of the visual culture of the monasteries, similar themes regarding secular nobility also permeate the margins of manuscripts belonging to noble readers. Another example of a tile motif, found in Ghent, displays mermaids and mermen with armor and shields.61 Awareness of this process of re-appropriation raises the question of how the same themes were understood by different kinds of audiences in different kinds of places. In the span of Henricus’s career at Ter Doest, the Bible may have been completed during the abbacies of either Nicholas Cleywaert (1258–1273), who was versed in law and sponsored the construction of a canal along an ancient road to Bruges with the help of the count of Flanders, or his successor, John III of Servaes (1274–1279), who also maintained the best relations with the princes of his time.62 A third possibility is the short but successful tenure of William III of Hemme (1279–85), who built a refectory and dormitory and reconstructed the church and, thus, was the patron of the physical places in which this Bible was probably read and viewed.63 The monks of the Abbey of Ter Doest had drained the land north of Bruges (close to the seaport at Damme), raised enormous herds of sheep, and had also become wealthy through the production of wool.64 Thus, the parchment for the Bible, as well as numerous other works by Henricus and the Ter Doest scriptorium, was readily available and of a high quality.65 By the end of the thirteenth century, Ter Duinen Abbey held 10,560 hectares, and it is estimated that the domain of Ter Doest was not much smaller than that.66 The Bible also could have been a gift to the abbey. Such exchanges were not unusual for Ter Doest. For example, the canons of Saint Donatian in Bruges, which included a nephew of the countess of Flanders, gave the abbey numerous manuscripts of theological literature.67 Looking at the surviving manuscripts from Ter Doest and Ter Duinen abbeys provides another way to view the significance of marginal images within the visual and literate culture of the monastery. Some of these reference works were rubricated and sometimes illuminated, echoing the broader developments in learning influenced by the university in Paris. One manuscript, Monaldus of Istria’s Summa de jure canonico, is the first handbook of penance to be alphabetized, and the collaboration of two hands of the Dampierre group is evident in the foliated initials and margins.

38

Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

DISORDER IN CANON LAW Manuscripts intended for reference became more common in the thirteenth century and varied from papal decretals, to penitential manuals, to encyclopedia—all of which were increasingly produced book forms following the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Surviving manuscripts from the Abbey of Ter Doest, now located in libraries in Bruges, number around 150; some of these originally belonged to Ter Duinen, the library of which was merged with Ter Doest in the seventeenth century. Among the twelfth-century manuscripts are a Bible, numerous copies of Jerome’s commentaries, and several writings of Bernard of Clairvaux and Gregory the Great. The inventory of thirteenth-century copies is impressive, with several manuscripts each by such authors as Bede, Isidore of Seville, Bonaventura, Ambrose, Stephen Langton, Hugh of Saint Cher, Augustine, Hugh of Saint Victor, and Peter Comestor.68 Among these is a rare illuminated copy of the Summa de jure canonico, originally compiled by the Franciscan Monaldus of Capo d’Istria (d. 1285) some time before 1274. Illuminated by the Dampierre group, a cross-section of the repertoire can be seen in the marginal figures of the Monaldus Summa, which is now in Bruges at the Grootseminarie, MS 45/144.69 Whereas such material in the past had been ordered by logic, Monaldus’s organization introduced the alphabetical arrangement—a first for a handbook of penance. Dating roughly to 1280–90, the illuminated letters and borders correlate with the dating of other manuscripts belonging to the abbey, especially the Ter Duinen Tabulae variae super jus canonicum illuminated in Bruges in 1283.70 The use of the Tabulae and Summa in a Cistercian library may contribute to what can be known about the education of monks in this period. Influenced by the universities, the approach to learning was shifting from “the old contemplative, spiritual process of the monastic lectio” to “a more aggressive ‘academic’ one in which priests and scholars sought to ‘mine’ biblical, patristic, and classical originalia for materials to use in their preaching and teaching.”71 The ordering of reference texts marked with large illuminated initials or miniatures resulted from this new relationship with the text. The profane motifs connected to the Summa’s alphabetical letters seem to contrast with the Latin letters of the canon law. Twelve of sixteen folios with large foliated or inhabited initials, ranging from four to six lines in height, contain marginal images on the frames and ascenders. According to Stones, the painters of the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur collaborated on this commission: the author portrait on the first folio is painted by the first hand, and the borders resemble those of the second

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39

Figure 9. Prologue, Monaldus of Istria, Summa de jure canonico (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 45/144), fol. 2r.

hand, who worked mainly in the Dampierre Psalter and the Yale Lancelot (fig. 9).72 Additionally, many of the 217 folios contain two-line initials with cameos of knights, ladies, and priests alternating with pen-flourished initials

40

Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

of the same letter category.73 The manuscript is 30.7 x 20.7 cm., which is modest in size compared to the Henricus Bible (44 cm.) or the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur (49 cm.) but larger than psalters and books of hours. The opening initial to the Summa contains a portrait of the author at his desk compiling his handbook of penance (fig. 9). Seated on a bench with a lectern and gesturing to a ruled exemplum, the author wears a voluminous blue robe, but his full tonsure and shaggy chin resemble the numerous images of Saint Francis depicted in BnF latin 1076. As in the majority of manuscripts with marginalia, the opening folio contains the greatest number of marginal motifs. Excluding the winged serpent at the base of the author’s bare feet, eight popular motifs occupy the horizontal and vertical margins of the bordering baguettes and pinwheels. A total of twenty marginal motifs on eleven illuminated folios constitute a typical repertoire for the group. Eight themes are based on hunting, six are based on music, and two vignettes of each decorate the opening folio. Several musical models, like the hare playing the psaltery (fol. 58v) and the bugle blown with a waving pennon (fol. 25v),74 appear as well in the psalters and the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur by the same hands. The motif of apes trapping birds is also standard to many manuscripts by the group, especially placed beneath a column of text or across the top or bottom borders framing both columns. Only one of the alphabetical initials in the remaining manuscript contains a figural composition. It occurs in the sixth quire, which is the heaviest in decoration after the first, and contains an archer and a viol player wearing gilded tunics in its margins. Similar to the initial for the book of Isaiah in the Henricus Bible, an ape carrying a shield rides the back of a winged dragon into whose mouth the ape plunges a sword. The dragon forms the shape of the letter Y for Yconomus, based on the Greek for economy (fig. 10). The letter Y does not begin words in Latin, but it was used for words based in the Greek, so the initial’s unusual shape was conducive to the repertoire’s composition. Although the text is highly abbreviated, the subject is rubricated and repeated in full three times. The ape’s shield bears the arms of Flanders, a black lion rampant on a field of gold. The arms of Flanders were like the “golden arches” of their day; the shield was a clear sign of the nobility, the count, and the jurisdiction—i.e., the economic power. Although the count of Flanders largely supported the Abbeys of Ter Duinen and Ter Doest, according to archival records, he was also the source of strife, especially financial.75 The combination of the heraldic sign (le signe) with the ape (le singe) in the textual instruction on economics was certainly significant to the monastic reader’s point of view.76

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Figure 10. “Yconomus,” Monaldus of Istria, Summa de jure canonico (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 45/144), fol. 67r.

On this same folio, the initial above the Y is a smaller H, for Honores, containing the head of an abbot. The marginal motif of the border’s upper terminal is highly recognizable and characteristic of the assistant artist—a warrior in blue chain mail and a gold tunic wielding an ax against a dragon

42

Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

with splayed, feather wings and a spiraled, reptilian tail. This is an extremely common motif, perhaps best known in a religious context to symbolize the defeat of evil. Stones uses the model to show how manuscript illuminators exchanged the same patterns from miniature to marginal contexts.77 The abbot secured in the letter contrasts to the violent force above, so the count’s shield on this page is not only a pattern but also signifies a relevant relationship to the abbey. Following a dearth of marginal figures for five quires, among which M, N, and O are missing, the marginal decoration resumes on the six-line initial S, upon which stands an ass playing lowland bagpipes (fig. 11). According to Randall’s research on sermon exempla, “Mere hearers of the word are compared to the music-loving ass which tramples on the harp.”78 In an article on “The Ass and the Harp,” the ass has an allegorical sense of being the “pagan

Figure 11. “Sacerdos,” Monaldus of Istria, Summa de jure canonico (Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 45/144), fol. 141v.

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43

mind,” or the carnal state versus a spiritual state, and bagpipes were connotative of the sexually bawdy in medieval humor. Like the ape looking in the mirror, the ass represents words falling on a blank state of mind. The text, “Sacerdos potest mitigare,” concerns the priest’s mitigation of penance. Here, the word Sacerdos is contrasted with a particularly profane motif. The use of exempla such as this tale of the ass in the context of preaching and dispensing penance to the laity underlines the choice of this image as well. In their study on the statim invenere, or “find-at-once” reference texts, Richard Rouse and Mary Rouse attribute the development of “artificial finding devices” like alphabetization not only to formalized instruction in schools but also to the new form of sermon, needed in an increasingly urban society that newly challenged orthodoxy.79 Such a sermon cited a brief passage and then elaborated on the layers of meaning to be found in it.80 The Rouses explain that the distinction between preaching to the laity and teaching in the classroom is largely artificial, “though indispensable to a theoretical discussion.” In broader educational developments, it should be kept in mind that “the masters who taught also preached, and made preaching tools; the students they taught were being prepared to spend much of their time in the pulpit.”81 Cistercian abbots were required to send selected members of their community to university, which may in part account for the acquisition of copies of ancient and new texts in the Ter Doest and Ter Duinen abbeys in the thirteenth century.82 In addition, abbots were responsible for the education of the lay-brotherhood, the novices, and the regular monks. As Clark shows, Hugh of Fouilloy’s Aviarium may have been developed and illustrated especially for the didactic duties of instructing the laity and conversi, but during the thirteenth century, the status of the conversi was in decline. At Ter Doest, for example, in 1302 and 1308 lay brothers were documented in open rebellions.83 Earlier in the thirteenth century, the abbot at Ter Duinen commented on the “presumptuousness” of the conversi and ordered the monks at Ter Doest to curb the problem.84 The presence of a penitential manual written by a Franciscan monk and illuminated with profane motifs in the Cistercian library follows a tradition that uses images to communicate Latin texts to the laity. During the thirteenth century, the needs of the collective intellectual community shaped the scholarly tools used by influential monastic libraries increasingly acquiring works of reference.85 Many marginal motifs echo the themes of sermon exempla for purposes of erudition as well as parody. As Randall argues, moreover, the marginalia often function like sermon exempla in their supportive roles as visual gloss or moral anecdote.86 Because

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Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

marginalia appear in works of reference such as encyclopedia, the ways they could operate for the reader can be explored in three different styles from the Flemish-Artesian region. These processes are examined in the fifth and sixth chapters on illustrated encyclopedia. The following chapters explore the development of the marginal repertoire in the context of manuscripts illuminated by the Dampierre group for patrons in the Flemish court.

Chapter Three

Luxury Psalters by the Dampierre Group

By the last decades of the thirteenth century, Flemish-Artesian illuminators were working with an established repertoire of marginal images, especially in the devotional manuals intended for courtly audiences. Although artists repeated models, variations in detail, composition, and juxtaposition contributed to the uniqueness of each individual commission. In the psalters of the Dampierre group, marginal images accompany each chapter of the Psalms, lending to a high density of images per quire. According to the codicological structures of quires, clusters of images and associations of themes across bifolia reveal the processes of choice and placement from the perspective of production. This method can reveal as much about artistic choices as the search for possible text and image relationships that are more often the exception than the rule.1 Since the provenance of each of the psalters in the Dampierre group is poorly documented, studying the images and their physical relationships to each other helps distinguish the customized aspects of each manuscript on its own terms. The Psalter of Guy of Dampierre was likely made for the count of Flanders some time around 1275–85. The Margaret the Black Psalter (H. P. Kraus, cat. 75, no. 88), a similar manuscript painted by another hand of the Dampierre group, has been connected to the count’s mother, the Countess “Margaret the Black” of Flanders and Hainault.2 These two luxury manuscripts are made to address a courtly audience, so the marginalia is interpreted in terms of the historical contexts of the Flemish court. Modern tracing of the manuscripts’ provenances is based on heraldry in the frames and margins. Subsequent owners have repainted some of the devices, but the combination of several intact shields points to the house of Flanders. Another psalter contains two Flemish coats of arms but fewer idiosyncratic motifs from the repertoire. Henceforth called the Franciscan Psalter, BnF latin 1076 was painted along with a Book of Hours, Marseilles, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 111, 45

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Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

by the principal painter of the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur, linked through heraldry to William of Termonde, Guy of Dampierre’s second son.3 The Franciscan Psalter’s marginal images stress piety and sainthood, pointing to the religious dedication of an as yet unidentified noble woman. Alison Stones emphasizes extreme caution in assigning patronage based on heraldry alone.4 While the specific owner of these manuscripts cannot be absolutely determined, scholars can understand an audience for illuminated books among the Flemish nobility whose secular possessions, including clothing, properties, and romances, and whose social values, regarding status, power, and inheritance, are implicated by the marginal imagery.5 In his book on the Luttrell Psalter, Michael Camille emphasizes the marginal space as a site for the “self-referentiality” of the reader, especially where heraldry is identified; Lucy Freeman Sandler agrees in her state-of-the field article that “Marginal heraldry is the ‘portraiture’ and sometimes the group portraiture of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century.”6 In the Flemish psalters, the physical clustering of marginalia in quires supports the importance of heraldry in combination with border motifs. Whether illuminated manuscripts were more objectified than actually used for reading words letter-by-letter poses a problem in defining the terms of reception, especially during the shift from public, oral recitation to private, silent reading.7 Rather than piecemeal words or parts of words as a possible connection for every image, this chapter is used to explore how images relate to one another visually and thematically during the production phase. Individual psalm verses are brought to bear when and if there appears to be a connection, but the Latin literacy of a bookmaker or a book owner remains a largely unknown factor. In focusing on the underlying support of the manuscripts, the codicology, my intervention is largely experimental but demonstrates how elements were varied and transposed to personalize the luxury commissions. Examining the sheets of parchment, the spreads of bifolia, and the gathered quires provides formal evidence for the choices of motifs and the circumstances of production. Thumbing through the bound codex, the viewer engages a variety of marginal figures with golden accents that interact with the main divisions, play off one another, and frame the text. PSALTER OF MARGARET THE BLACK, COUNTESS OF FLANDERS AND HAINAULT The attribution of the Psalter, which passed twice through H. P. Kraus booksellers, to the ownership of Margaret the Black, Countess of Flanders and Hainault, is based on its inclusion of the arms of Flanders and Hainault,

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47

since she was the only figure to rule the two neighboring counties.8 They are, respectively, or a lion rampant sable and or three chevrons sable. The marginalia reproduced in H. P. Kraus’s catalog include the typical acrobats balancing gilded objects and animals playing musical instruments, such as a hare with a psaltery, an ape with a pipe-organ, and so forth. These single marginal figures stand on or near the grotesque-head terminals of heavy baguette borders. The catalog entry emphasizes that white cameo heads in the initials opening each psalm are mainly filled with “contemporary ladies, and a few men,” which is an “especially charming feature of the psalter intended for the use of a lady.”9 Although the manuscript was rebound out of sequence in the seventeenth century, it contains several important motifs that reappear together in the Dampierre Psalter.10 Assuming that gatherings of twelve folios, like the two psalters discussed later in this chapter, possibly remain intact, two motifs—heraldry and merpeople—are clustered together. The patronage of this manuscript is underlined by the marginalia, especially in terms of heraldry. The figure of Saint Margaret, the owner’s namesake, emerges from a grotesque’s belly on fol. 196r. Granted, the saint was popular in the area and appeared often in objects made for women. Six folios earlier (fol. 190v), however, and likely in the same quire as the saint, a “noble lady with a fish tail,” or, according to Lilian Randall, a “merman as knight” holds a standard bearing the arms of Hainault.11 The combination of heraldry and merpeople occurs again in another gathering containing the arms of Flanders; this time a canine holds the arms. On fol. 40v, a red fox carries in its forepaws a standard bearing the lion rampant. On fol. 34r, possibly in the same quire, the tail of a merman forms the terminal of a border. He wears an arming cap and balances a spear on his chin like the many jongleurs in manuscripts by the Dampierre group.12 A noblewoman kneeling with a pet dog on fol. 80v was possibly used to refer to the patroness.13 This type of figure, or the patron image of a kneeling nobleman, often reflects the gender of the intended owner, if known. The arms of Flanders are also included on a shield inside the initial on fol. 103v, but the context of neighboring images is unknown. Facing each other on fols. 163v and 164r, a merman plays a harp and a mermaid dances. Twice more, mermaids appear with musical instruments—a pipe and a bagpipe (fols. 69v and 174r).14 These images are divorced from their original context in the rebound manuscript itself and in the subject listings of Randall’s index, but the possible associations of heraldry, merpeople, simians, and canines are supported by similar groupings in the quires of the Dampierre Psalter.15 What can be known of these illuminators is based on style alone. The concept of an itinerant workshop practice or apprenticeship should be kept

48

Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

in mind, since artists stemming from the same group appear in manuscripts from Bruges to Boulogne.16 The catalog entry describes the stylistic characteristics of the earlier Margaret the Black Psalter as more delicate and elegant than that of the next generation’s manuscripts. The pointed toes and elbows on slender figures contrast with the curly-haired, heavier-contoured, stubby style—both of which appear throughout the margins of the Dampierre Psalter. The style of the latter appears with that of the master of the Dampierre group in the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur, the deluxe romance connected to the Dampierre family. The master illuminator also completed a fully decorated Psalter-Hours, likely for a noblewoman dedicated to the Franciscan Order. Observing the codicological contexts of the marginalia shared, and not shared, in these three texts— the count’s psalter, a Franciscan psalter, and the romance—brings the terms of both production and reception to bear on the imagery. PSALTER OF GUY OF DAMPIERRE, COUNT OF FLANDERS The Royal Library of Belgium’s Psalter has long been associated with Guy of Dampierre, Count of Flanders, because of the inclusion of the arms of Flanders on shields in the frames of the prefatory cycle as well as on marginal figures. Some of the heraldry was painted over, and the oxidization of silver and white lead pigments has ruined others. But the general acceptance of this patronage and the dating of the manuscript are supported by the luxury quality of the tiny psalter and its relationship to manuscripts with marginalia owned by members of Guy’s family, including the psalter for his mother, Countess Margaret, and the Vulgate Arthur connected to his son, William of Termonde. Based on the arms of the count’s sons and Flemish nobles, Camille Gaspar and Frédéric Lyna dated the manuscript to 1280–97 because it lacks the arms of Countess Margaret (d. 1280) and Saint Louis in the calendar.17 Livia Stijns proposed earlier alternative dates between 1266–75, but Guy assumed his county seat in 1278 when the shield of Flanders became his.18 Since many of the blazons have been re-treated, Stones suggests that the compromise date around ca. 1275–85 should be based on style rather than heraldry.19 This range includes the significant title change in Guy of Dampierre’s biography. Joseph Destrée identified the escutcheons on the framing corners of the full-page miniatures in 1890 with only summary descriptions of the marginalia.20 Gaspar and Lyna, in the 1937 catalog, published a fair description of the marginalia and identified more shields, those of Bruges and Ghent among them.21 L. M. J. Delaissé also examined this psalter for an exhibition

Luxury Psalters by the Dampierre Group

49

catalog and notes the cycle for the full-page illuminations, but he alludes to the marginal decoration as “a masterpiece,” whose “symbolism is pleasantly whimsical,” and shows “an excellent sense of humor.”22 These scholars use the same opening, fols. 149v-150r, to illustrate one aspect of marginal humor—the topsy-turvy theme of the hunters hunted by hares.23 Despite their appreciation for the imaginative amusement, few of these scholars have supported the whole context of the psalter’s marginalia as framing an individual commission of noble rank that probably necessitated careful organization and planning. The first quire of six folios contains the traditional Flemish calendar, decorated with a cycle of the labors of the months and the zodiac scenes typical of the region and containing themes—such as sowing seeds, centaurs, and falconry—that were staples of marginalia. The next quire of six folios contains prefatory images depicting the Life of the Virgin from the Annunciation to the Massacre of the Innocents. The Annunciation to the Shepherds contains subjects that were frequently used in the margins: goats and sheep, a fox or dog, and a bagpipe player. The Flight into Egypt and Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem form a typological parallel in the lobes of the Beatus page and form a link between the prefatory cycle and the cycle of full-page miniatures opening the major psalms.24 At the seven major divisions, scenes from the Passion were tipped in the gathering, but two have been excised.25 The four corners of each of the eleven full-page miniatures contain escutcheons of Flemish nobles, resulting in forty-four surviving shields. In addition, thirteen blazons are located in the margins and in one initial. Because the full-page miniatures are tipped in the gatherings, coats of arms on these and in the prefatory quire are excluded from table 1 enumerating the occurrence of selected motifs in the twenty quires of text with marginalia. Table 1. Quires 3–22, Psalter of Guy of Dampierre, KBR MS 10607 Quire:

3 4 5

Psalm:

1

26

Arms

1

1

Mermaid

1 2

Ape

1 1

6 7

8

38 52* 1

3

1

68

80 97

109

2 1

1

1

1

1

1

1

Fox Devil

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

1

2 3

*Includes historiated initial for Psalm 51.

1

1 2

1

1

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Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

Figure 12. Psalm 52, Dampierre Psalter (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 10607), fol. 84v.

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51

The quires containing the most psalm initials, especially historiated initials to the major psalms, tend to contain more marginal images, whereas quires with longer psalms, aside from Psalm 118, are sparsely decorated (table 1). The initial B of the Beatus page is used to set the tone and is surrounded by four animals—including a lion, a nut-eating squirrel, a bill-clattering crane, and a collared dog—while two men in gold tunics fight with swords and bucklers in the bas-de-page. The historiated initials beginning the major divisions contain the martyrdoms of saints (fig. 12)—an unusual feature compared to contemporary psalter cycles, the majority of which are illustrated by scenes of King David.26 The initials are accompanied by marginal figures in the upper, lower, and side margins of the text. For example, the martyrdom of Saint John is accompanied by figures of Herod, Salome, and a harpie as Salome’s mother, which, as Madeline Caviness notes in Reframing Medieval Art, are used to illustrate negative exempla on the wiles of women.27 The quires for major Psalm divisions tend to be the most heavily illuminated, but this is not always the rule (e.g. quires 7 and 12). Throughout, the manuscript is sumptuously painted. Each verse begins on a new line with a single initial alternating in gold, blue, and red. Line-endings, which are painted, flourished, or sometimes attached to a marginal figure, fill the remainder of each verse’s line. Marginal figures do not occur on every page but rather in conjunction with the polychromatic and gilded four-line initials dividing the minor psalms. Interlaced foliage and dragons, some hybrid grotesques, fill over one hundred of these initials with gold backgrounds. Continuing the practice in the Margaret the Black Psalter and the Monaldus Summa, fifty-seven initials contain busts of types in society, such as the knight, the lady, and the priest, as well as other isolated figures, like birds and falcons.28 These busts resemble the polychrome bosses and corbels that decorated the interiors of noble and patriciate residences of the same period.29 Anthropomorphic initials for the letter I also raise the hierarchy of decoration in a whole quire. Quite often, an initial or a line-ending is composed of a mermaid and twice a merman is depicted with a musical instrument.30 Other profane elements, such as musicians, jongleurs, and nudes, were used for the I-initials in this manuscript—including a woman with a psaltery (fol. 23r) and a naked, bald, and tailed jester playing a gittern (fig. 13). Treated like full-length borders in the vertical margin, these I-initials were included in Randall’s index of marginal motifs because they are the border-oriented patterns of the repertoire.31 In Reframing Medieval Art, Caviness employs a statistical method to inventory the minutia of marginalia and to compare lavish devotional books made for male and female patrons. The hounds, hares, stringed instruments,

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Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

Figure 13. Psalm 42, Dampierre Psalter (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 10607), fol. 71r.

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53

blowing horns, and even the foliage are accounted for and measured in relation to other devotional manuscripts intended for men and those intended for women. Caviness concludes that two points can be shown: motifs of fecundity are abundant in books for brides, while female grotesques are proportionately more numerous in books for men. Caviness attributes the latter to a didactic function used to remind the reader of the “dangers of illicit heterosexual activity.”32 In particular, mermaids in men’s books imply rational restraint and literacy, for the temptation of the flesh is thwarted by an assumed “knowledge of the text (and consideration of their tails).”33 For the Dampierre Psalter, the number of boys and young men is unusually large, numbering sixty, compared to the next highest number of forty-nine in a much later psalter for Bonne of Luxembourg. The count had eight sons and eight daughters from both marriages and eventually eighteen grandsons from the first marriage alone.34 The concerns of this male patron were probably not about childbirth, as Caviness illustrates with the devotional books for women, but about hereditary interests in territorial power and ties to the nobility that informed the perception of certain kinds of marginal figures. Codicological analysis places the choice of motifs in terms of the layout of the manuscript by the arrangement of quires, or gatherings, of twelve folios each. As Jeanne of Montbaston illustrated in the margin of a Roman de la Rose, bifolia were painted separately, one side at a time.35 In the workshop, the quires were likely collated in some fashion to keep the hair side facing hair side and flesh side facing the flesh side—a nearly unwavering practice in book production: either the bifolia were already cut and loosely bound or a single sheet of parchment may have been folded and ruled, but the edges were not yet cut.36 The latter makes sense when considering the minute proportions of the manuscript (107x78 mm.), and perhaps many more devotional books can be considered in this way. To offer a view of the bifolia before collation and suggest thematic relationships among images in the psalters, the tables are designed to show each quire as two sides of a pre-folded sheet of parchment (e.g. table 2). The Paris method of folding, which divides a sheet of parchment into three by four pages, is followed rather than the Oxford method, which divides into two by six pages.37 As Léon Gilissen illustrates in the construction of gatherings, different folding directions result in different neighboring bifolia.38 Despite the method or direction of folding, in a duodecimo gathering the first two bifolia (fols. 1–12 and 2–11), the inner bifolia (fols. 3–10 and 4–9), and the central bifolia (fols. 5–8 and 6–7) are always neighbored. Another practice was to collate “quaternions,” or two bifolia connected along one edge to make four folios.39 In the tables for quires each column represents the outer, inner, and

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Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

Table 2. Distribution of marginal images on side B of quire 7, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607, fols. 62r-73v Three Quaternions (each with two bifolia)

Folio:

Outer quaternion

Inner quaternion

Central quaternion

(bifol. 1)

(bifol. 4)

(bifol. 5)

62v. bust of knight

*65r. Ps. 38, St. Martin; 66v. serpent and dog male with gittern kissing heads female dancer

73r.

70v. (bifol. 2)

Folio:

69r. (bifol. 3)

(bifol. 6)

72v.

71r. I: naked, bald, tailed 68v. gray dog jester with gittern; male dancer

63r.

64v.

67r.

*Indicates location of tipped-in full-page miniature, now missing.

central quaternions, and every row represents a folio attached to its bifolium. Lacking evidence for original folding directions, the neighboring of bifolia across the quaternion columns reflects only one of several possibilities for a pre-cut sheet of parchment. The pairs of bifolia in quaternions, however, represent a natural grouping if the illuminator approached them in any sequence, whether in the form of bifolia, quaternions, folded sheets, or loose quires. A basic example of this method’s utility can be found in the seventh quire (table 2).40 The naked, bald jester playing a gittern fills the I-initial of Psalm 42 (fig. 13) in the same quire as the major Psalm 38, the initial of which contains an image of Saint Martin sharing his cloak with a partly bandaged and crippled man (fol. 65r). The military saint appears as a youthful, noble bachelor on horseback angling his sword to divide his cloak. Formerly a chancellor to King Louis IX of France, Pope Martin IV was invested in 1281, which corresponds closely to the time frame of this manuscript’s production. The jongleur in the proximate I-initial for Iudica me dues (Judge me, O God) may parody the justice of the sword with an Englishman’s tail, or the authority of the pope’s tiara with a tall, striped cone hat. Despite the several folios between them, the themes of the two large initials were painted in the same quaternion and on the same side of parchment. The lower margins of both

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pages contain jongleurs in gilt garments, while the remaining marginalia in the quire are composed of small animals and grotesques. The tipped-in tab from the insertion of the full-page miniature that originally faced the historiated initial on fol. 65r is also found at fol. 71r containing the I-initial. Similar to the cathartic blend of fleshly bodies and avian motifs in the Henricus Bible’s initials, the contrast of a naked jongleur and a saint’s largesse seems to generate a theme of salvation.41 Both folios stand out in the quire with larger initials in which full figures of the equestrian and the minstrel, as well as gilded dancers, engage the reader’s social status and richesse. Thinking in terms of groups of folios during the making of the Dampierre Psalter, several thematic and formal connections can be found to supply meaningful contexts for the arms of Flemish nobles. As demonstrated through table 1, relationships among the motifs—particularly mermaids, apes, canines, and shields—connected in the Henricus Bible and the Margaret the Black Psalter can be suggested as templates or clusters. Although the shield with the lion rampant was common in the visual repertoires of Flemish craftsmen, its prominent placement and repetition in the margins exhibit a high degree of customization.42 Many of the quires receiving the most illumination also contain figures holding arms of Flemish nobles. Whether these figures were used to refer to particular nobles or have been reworked, the inclusion of arms can be used to intimate noble rank to the reader, making the marginal space “a site of self-referentiality,” to borrow Camille’s phrasing.43 The twelve shields in the margins of the psalms are not insignificant, so the context of neighboring imagery can supplement an understanding of these artistic choices. Looking at a listing of the marginal motifs sharing quires with shields in them makes it clear that the merpeople, the ape, and the fox continued to be staples of the customizable repertoire. The quire that drew my attention to the problem of planning contains particularly Flemish motifs treated separately in two articles by Randall. The thirteenth quire, in addition to the two quires flanking it, contains neither heraldry nor apes (tables 3a-3b).44 The nesting-eggs motif on fol. 130r and the music-playing ass on fol. 130v were not placed in context with each other (i.e., as on the same page) when Randall wrote about the political slander of the former or the sources in sermon exempla for the latter.45 In these articles, Randall links the fool hatching eggs to a pejorative slander against English royalty and the ass playing a viol to sermons by Jacques of Vitry as representing the “blank state of mind.” The nearby verse on the recto (Psalm 81:3) proclaims justice for the humble and the poor, perhaps paralleling the foolish figure’s cowl and his lack of pants. The poor, who “know nothing,” “understand nothing,” and “walk

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Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

Table 3a. Distribution of marginal images on side A of quire 13, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607, fols. 129r-139v Three Quaternions (each with two bifolia) Outer quaternion

Inner quaternion

(bifol. 1) Folio:

(bifol. 5)

129r. Ps. 80, Martyrdom of St. Stephen; St. Peter, rooster, border hybrids kissing, female serpent

132v.

132 bis r. woman with distaff hitting fox

139v.

136r. M: 2 birds; hoopoe

135v

(bifol. 2) Folio:

Central quaternion

(bifol. 4)

(bifol. 3)

(bifol. 6)

138r.

137v.

134r. seated hermit bitten by line-ending serpent

130v. ass playing viol

131r.

133v.

Table 3b. Distribution of marginal images on side B of quire 13, Psalter of Guy of Dampierre, KBR MS 10607, fols. 129v-139r Three Quaternions (each with two bifolia)

Folio:

Outer quaternion

Inner quaternion

Central quaternion

(bifol. 1)

(bifol. 4)

(bifol. 5)

129v.

132r. Q: owl; border 132 bis v. archer shooting stag

139r.

136v (bifol. 2)

Folio:

138v.

135r (bifol. 3)

(bifol. 6)

137r.

134v. man harvesting grapes in basket

130r. D: bust of youth; 131v. fool nesting eggs and holding one up to sun-disk

133r. I: female dancer on bagpiper clasps hands with border male, silver bell

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in darkness,” continue to be lamented on the verso, so the placement of the viol-playing ass here applies the sense of the sermon exemplum. The act of holding an egg up to a sun-disk could also refer to the verse on false justice, Psalm 81:2, “How long will you judge unjustly and accept the persons of the wicked?” Contemporary proverbs regarding the handling of eggs often implied hypocrisy, foolishness, and ineptitude, and Randall found a possible association of the motif with the tails of Englishmen in contemporary poetry.46 The politics of the count of Flanders were squeezed between the French and English monarchs, as well as the social factions of the Leliarts, composed mainly of patricians loyal to the fleur-de-lis of France, and the Clauwaerts, composed mainly of the artisans loyal to the lion rampant of Flanders.47 The use of a profane jibe to accompany a text of warning against false allies and on protecting his subjects was perhaps a fitting exemplum for the patron, but the quire lacks heraldry to identify the reader, except for the escutcheons on the tipped-in full page miniature. Perhaps negative associations with signs specific to the nobility were necessarily avoided in this cluster of marginal images of proverbs and fables. The immediate context of the thirteenth quire can also be considered in terms of the historiated initial for Psalm 80 and the remaining marginalia consisting of animals. In her discussion on the symbolism of the eggs, Randall does not note the physical proximity of the previous folio containing the historiated initial of the major Psalm 80 showing the Stoning of Saint Stephen.48 The stones and eggs visually echo each other and perhaps tie the visual theme of violence with the textual theme of the peccatorum, or the wicked, twice admonished in the text of Psalms 81:2–4 next to the motif. Depicted with stones in the initial, the wicked are not mentioned in the praises of Psalm 80 or echoed by that folio’s marginalia. In the margins of Psalm 80, an elderly figure with a cloak on his arm, Saint Peter, faces a rooster, the emblem of his denial, across the text. This large bird is not the only one in the quire; one bifolium contains an owl, two birds in an initial M, and a hoopoe in the margin (fols. 132r and136r). Although Psalm 83:4 describes the tabernacle as the swallow’s nest, that avian motif is found twice elsewhere in the margins of the psalter. The initial opening chapter 83 contains an owl, and in the margins an archer aims its arrow at a stag crouching on the top corner of the initial. Another motif in this quire, part of which can also be found on the opening folio of the Henricus Bible, is the housewife with a distaff beating a fox (fol. 132bis r).49 Whereas the housewife was absent from the former model, the coq is absent from this model in the psalter. If the motifs were composed on a pre-cut sheet of parchment, the chased fox would occur on the same side of the parchment as Saint Peter’s

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rooster, the ass, and the hoopoe (table 3a). As a copied model, the rooster can be connected to other themes in the quire: the repetition of birds, the fable of the fox, and the barnyard allegories for the foolish or vacant state of mind, including the nesting of eggs and the music-playing ass. Three of the most idiosyncratic motifs in the Dampierre group repertoire—the thieving fox, the musical ass, and the fool nesting eggs—fill the thirteenth quire. If these themes were not conceived on a continuous sheet of parchment, it remains possible that separate bifolia were not necessarily painted in the order of the text; therefore, clusters of images within a quire could result from associations to other specifications set for the program of illumination—including historiated initials and border elements. The collection of barnyard exempla together in a quire was directed toward the amusement and edification of the intended viewer, probably despite his level of literacy as a reader. Marginal images featuring heraldry, therefore, can be examined within quires to highlight both production and patronage contexts. The escutcheons around the first prefatory miniature of the Dampierre Psalter depicting the Annunciation contain the arms of Guy of Dampierre and three of his sons: Robert of Béthune, William of Termonde, and Baudouin of Dampierre. The arms of the count and the eldest sons appear together at Table 4a. Distribution of marginal images on side A of quire 8, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607, fols. 74r-85v Three Quaternions (each with two bifolia)

Folio:

Outer quaternion

Inner quaternion

Central quaternion

(bifol. 1)

(bifol. 4)

(bifol. 5)

74r. jongleur playing bellows with crutch

77v.

78r. A: lady head with veil; hare

85v. D: bust of lady wearing garland; peacock

82r. head terminals

81v.

(bifol. 2) Folio:

(bifol. 3)

(bifol. 6)

84r.

83v. Ps. 51, King David and devil

80r. bust of knight

75v. D: male youth profile; hare

76r

79v

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Table 4b. Distribution of marginal images on side B of quire 8, Psalter of Guy of Dampierre, KBR MS 10607, fols. 74v-85r Three Quaternions (each with two bifolia) Outer quaternion

Inner quaternion

Central quaternion

(bifol. 1)

(bifol. 4)

(bifol. 5)

Folio: 74v.

77r. border devil with 78v. fork and border canine with bagpipes

85r.

82v. (bifol. 2)

81r. (bifol. 3)

Folio: 84v. Ps. 52, Martyrdom 83r. of St. Peter; shields of Dampierre and two sons, male youth forcing spear 75r.

76v. large white dog with spear

(bifol. 6) 80v.

79r.

another important juncture in the psalter over the initial opening Psalm 52 (fig. 12).50 The initial contains the Crucifixion of Saint Peter; in the upper left margin of the page, the three gold shields with the lion rampant—the lower two cadenced with a label gules and a bend gules—appear in a triangular formation among the border’s vines. Below, a youth spears the throat of a serpent while another grotesque bites his rear end from the line-ending. The placement of the arms near Saint Peter could be used to suggest a connection to the powerful Abbey of Saint Peter’s in Ghent, an early burial site for the counts of Flanders.51 The third verse, “the children of men,” may inform the inclusion of arms above as well as the youth below. A noble reader would be well warned against the “corrupted and abominable”—two words framed by the historiated initial, the serpent line-ending, and the youth’s spear. The construction of the eighth quire around the historiated initials for Psalms 51–52 is particularly instructive for the working methods of the artist (tables 4a-4b). The small historiated initial for Psalm 51, depicting David conversing with a devil, is painted on the folio preceding Saint Peter in Psalm 52. On the other side of the bifolium are two border devils, one with horns

Figure 14. Psalms 46-47, Dampierre Psalter (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 10607), fols. 76v-77r.

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and a fork and the other with fur and bagpipes (fig. 14).52 On the facing folio (fol. 76v), a tall white canine beast with human legs and feet holds a spear upright, the throat-piercing weapon in the bas-de-page of Psalm 52 located on the previous bifolium. The three pages with the three shields and three canine devils are bound so that they are separated by the two central bifolia, but they share the same side of pre-cut parchment. The arms of Flanders were previously associated with a canine fox in the Margaret the Black Psalter. In the eighth quire of the Dampierre Psalter, the association of motifs across folios subtly implicates the patron. First the iconography of the canine devils does not echo the texts of Psalms 46–47, which are songs of praise and, if text were a factor, might otherwise suggest musicians as in the previous quire with Psalm 39.53 One can draw the association of the creatures together, in addition to the folios facing each other, based on the contemporary sermon métaphores by Ranulphe of la Houblonnière, who preached in Paris in 1272–73. In the index to his Distinctiones, the dog, wolf, fox, and molosse (large working dog) are repeatedly referred to as the diable (devil).54 Compared to the noble qualities of the horse, the dog was characterized by the weakest faults.55 The three hybrid devils in the borders of fols. 76v-77r have the canine characteristics of large cusses or molosses. To the planner or illuminator, the same number of arms and devils may cast the comital household in a negative light that was suppressed in the folded pages. Trade guilds in the towns of Flanders revolted against Guy and Robert in 1280–81, making the association possibly a subversive one.56 To the reader of the psalter, however, the bond visualized between the comital family and Saint Peter’s protection positions the three devils as potential adversaries. In the ninth quire, which follows the one just outlined, heraldry and canines are also included in the margins. Two fables of the fox precede a bifolium with the arms of Flanders held by a bearded herm with a sword (fol. 89r) and the arms of Mortaigne held by a knight fighting a lion (fol. 94r). Below the arms of Flanders the familiar jongleur of the repertoire balances a chalice and stick on his mouth. Mortaigne was frequently named in the count’s retinue, and the shield reappears in the Yale Lancelot with a jousting lady (fig. 24). Also repeated in the margins of the Yale Lancelot, the two fox fables include the fox teaching the hare how to read (fol. 86r) and the fox tricking the raven for its cheese (fol. 88r). The story of Reynard teaching the hare to read the Credo was found only in Flemish versions of the text, Van den Vos Reynaerde, in which the particular posture of the fox behind the hare reading from an open page is described.57 Drawing attention to the literacy of the nobility, both of these fables were used again in the margins of the Yale Romance to contribute to the moralistic and

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Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

Table 5a. Distribution of marginal images on side A of quire 17, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607, fols. 178r-189v Three Quaternions (each with two bifolia) Outer quaternion

Inner quaternion

Central quaternion

(bifol. 1)

(bifol. 4)

(bifol. 5)

Folio: 178r. 189v. border devil playing viol

181v.

182r. dog or fox playing bagpipes

186r. owl, female serpent, stone thrower

185v. Crane

(bifol. 2) Folio: 188r. border nude with tail, parrot 179v. line-ending mermaid with merchild, stag hybrid

(bifol. 3)

(bifol. 6)

187v.

184r. knight frightened by hare

180r. C: bust of monk; crane

183v.

Table 5b. Distribution of marginal images on side B of quire 17, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607, fols. 178v-189r Three Quaternions (each with two bifolia) Outer quaternion

Inner quaternion

Central quaternion

(bifol. 1)

(bifol. 4)

(bifol. 5)

Folio: 178v. D: bust of youth; 181r. fox vs. border male wielding axe 189r. Q: bust of elder

186v.

(bifol. 2) Folio: 188v. I: knight pierces sword in throat of border hybrid 179r.

182v. I: hybrid youth blowing trumpet 185r. border female and male with bells (bifol. 3)

(bifol. 6)

187r. border archer shooting boar, fox vs. man wielding fork

184v. L: crowned head; male youth with lance and shield vs. dragon, man with bear on leash

180v.

183r. woman balancing bowl on head

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didactic functions of that manuscript’s margins. Likewise, the ninth quire the fables and shields point to spaces made for the attention of the reader. Consisting mainly of Psalm 118, the seventeenth quire contains compositions of canines and heraldry like the margins of the eighth and ninth quires (tables 5a–5b). A youthful bachelor situated in the cusp of the upper border holds a shield with an illegible blazon and points a spear against a winged serpent (fol. 184v).58 On the lower border, a young man walks a bear on a leash. Hunting themes continue on the same side of the parchment, with two scenes of men battling foxes and another border archer aiming his arrow at a boar (fols. 178v and 187r). A similar combination occurs twice in the Yale Lancelot: a marginal boar hunt is paired beneath a border herm with a shield and spear. Records for the organized hunts of Flemish nobles, including Guy of Dampierre, document the expense of the courtly pursuit.59 Wearing arming caps or sporting curly hair, such hunters add to the numerous male youths found in the margins of the Dampierre Psalter, perhaps emphasizing the progeny of the comital family. A favorite parody of the nobility is the motif of the knight frightened by the hare, which appears on the recto of the page with the bachelor’s shield. Personifying Cowardice in the Virtues and Vices cycle (fol. 184r), the motif parodies the knight’s military acumen with the prey of the hunt.60 If the hare connoted female genitalia, and the projecting sword male genitalia, then the parody extends to the lustful relations implied in courtly love. On the previous folio (fol. 183r), in the same position as the knight and on the same side of the bifolium as the bachelor’s shield, a woman carries on her head a rounded kettle, which according to Caviness connotes fecundity.61 Another bifolium, fols. 179v-188r, includes a gilded border with a naked, tailed, bald, and bearded man twisting to face a mermaid holding a mer-baby across the fold of the bifolium. Underlined by hunting motifs, these customized borders connoting female fecundity and progeny support a reference to noble birth with a heraldic shield on fol. 184v. As Caviness suggests in devotional books made for men, warnings against lustful desires may be embodied in the mermaid, the aged, tailed nude, and the threatening rabbit, while the youthful boys with curly hair, of which there are nine in this quire, may emphasize the importance of sons. She points out, however, that the importance of progeny for Guy of Dampierre likely ceased by the mid-1270s. 62 In several cases throughout the Dampierre Psalter, a heraldic shield from the minor nobility appears near passages in the text referring to justice and keeping the law. For example, Psalm 118:33–34 concerns the obedience to laws; the initial L of Legem is reinforced with a king’s head and the shield, albeit damaged, of the bachelor cusped in the border above the letter (fol.

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184v). Next to Psalm 35:1–6, concerning both justice and iniquity, the arms of the Gruthuse of Bruges appear on another youthful bachelor defeating a serpent (fol. 58v).63 The previous Psalm 34:1–2 asks the Lord to take up the shield and buckler against those who “fight against me.” Perhaps these shields held by young bachelors were intended to represent local, noble families or Flemish towns presumed loyal to Dampierre. The allegiances of the minor nobility and towns between Guy of Dampierre and the French crown shifted so quickly and drastically from 1280 to 1300 that the possible reception of specific shields and nearby text would likely shift as well.64 If these shields indeed refer to the minor nobility within the count’s jurisdiction, the youthful bachelor is distinguished from the seignor, or lord, in these cases.65 Similarly, justice is the topic of Psalm 71 and the margin contains arms attributed the city of Ghent—a white lion rampant on a black background (fig. 15). A youthful bachelor holds the shield and rides upon a gray ass.66 Lacking chain mail or a warhorse, his youth and heraldry mock the progeny of a noble prince, or “filio Regis,” the words to which his spear points in Psalm 71:2. While the text refers to both the sons of rulers and those who are ruled, the youth on an ass may represent the castellan or lower nobility of Ghent. Ghent was the county seat of the count, but its growing trade was run by the Ghent Thirty-Nine, city aldermen who Countess Margaret had replaced in 1275 but were restored by parliament after her abdication.67 On the same bifolium as the Ghent shield, fol. 98v, an I-initial extends over the sixteen lines of text and is filled with a mermaid playing a viol (fig. 16). Connected here on one bifolium, the association of heraldic shields and merpeople shares patterns modified from the Henricus Bible and used again the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur. The bachelor riding the ass is a variation on the familiar motif of the ape with a shield. In the fifth quire, in a composition echoing those of other spear-bearers in the vertical margin, an ape wearing a hauberk stands with a spear, the pennon of which is emblazoned with an orange lion rampant on gold.68 The accompanying Psalm 24:5 concerns vindication and generations. Again, the heraldry is associated with mermaids in the same quire. On the central bifolium, a mermaid in an I-initial holds a fish and blows a bugle across the horizontal margin (fol. 42v), emblems that were shown with the only female figure in the Henricus Bible at the opening of Ruth—a female with wyvern hinds rather than a fish tail. A gilded pennon waves from the mermaid’s long bugle, but it bears no heraldry. In the bas-de-page, a ram butting against a board held by a man underlines the mermaid with an overtly sexual action.69 In addition, a mermaid playing bagpipes forms the lower

Figure 15. Psalm 71, Dampierre Psalter (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 10607), fol. 110v.

Figure 16. Psalm 65, Dampierre Psalter (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 10607), fol. 98v.

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Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

border of fol. 48v in the same quire. If the designs were laid before cutting, this border siren would have been painted on the same side of parchment as the ape with a blazon. Also in the quire is the hunt of a beaver that stops to bite its testicles. According to the bestiary, a beaver’s testicles were valued medicine and thus a danger to the beaver, so likewise “a right-minded man must sever himself from sins of all kinds and throw them in the face of the devil.”70 Collectively, the bestiary motifs draw attention to the “dangers of illicit heterosexual activity.”71 In the sixteenth quire, another shield is held by an ape astride a peacock (fol. 177r) appearing opposite a figure of Jonah as the I-initial on the same page (tables 6a-6b). The template model from the Henricus Bible is close, but in it the ape is hooded with a cowl, has wyvern hindquarters, and grabs the fish tail from the lower border (fig. 5). The armorial seals of Kokelare seem to be a likely candidate for the ape’s blazon, but when compared to the escutcheon on fol. 173v, the gold and azure torteaux and grounds are reversed. The Kokelare arms may have been significant to the count in terms of his position in Bruges

Table 6a. Distribution of marginal images on side A of quire 16, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607, fols. 165r-177v Three Quaternions (each with two bifolia) Outer quaternion

Inner quaternion

Central quaternion

(bifol. 1)

(bifol. 4)

(bifol. 5)

Folio: 165r. 177v.

168v.

169r.

*174r. Ps. 109, Martyrdom of St. Paul; man trapping birds, 5 birds in border

172v.

(bifol. 2) Folio: 176r. 166v.

(bifol. 3)

(bifol. 6)

175v. angel blowing trumpet

171r.

167r.

170v. angel playing viol, swallow feeding nest of young

*Excludes fol. 173v, Ascension of Christ, tipped-in full-page miniature.

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Table 6b. Distribution of marginal images on side B of quire 16, Dampierre Psalter, KBR MS 10607, fols. 165v-177r Three Quaternions (each with two bifolia) Outer quaternion

Inner quaternion

Central quaternion

(bifol. 1)

(bifol. 4)

(bifol. 5)

Folio: 165v. 177r. I: Jonah and fish; ape with shield astride peacock

168r.

169v. archer aiming at bird

174v.

172r.

(bifol. 2) Folio: 176v. Stag

(bifol. 3) 175r. 2 hares

166r. border knight 167v. with sword and shield, border falconer

(bifol. 6) 171v. 170r.

because both Walter IV and V were aldermen of the castellany of Bruges (1251– 79 and 1288–95 respectively).72 Here, the tip of the ape’s weapon is pointed to the word Israel in the verses of Psalm 113, emphasizing the Lord’s dominion. On the next bifolium, across the fold from a crouching stag, the arms of the Villain of Ghent, which appeared in the prefatory cycle (fol. 8v), are held by a border-knight.73 The count’s second daughter, Maria, married Simon of Chateau-Villain after she was widowed in 1278.74 That may explain the inclusion of this blazon and may assist in the dating if it was not tarnished. The connection to Ghent with two possible shields is still not clear. The significance of the arms—if they correctly identify individual nobles—rests only partly on the “whom” of the question. As noted earlier, Guy of Dampierre acquired terrestrial strength through the lucrative marriages of his many children and with his mother pursued an aggressive policy of buying new lands.75 Thus the arms, particularly if they are not overpainted, could be seen in the context of the accumulation of these domains. In the sixteenth quire, one side of the parchment contains two shields, the Jonah initial, and themes of the hunt, including hares, birds, and the stag. On the other side of the parchment, the major Psalm 109 is accompanied by winged creatures: two angels, a swallow caring for its nest, and a man trapping

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five birds with decoys beneath the historiated initial, which in turn faces the tipped-in, full-page miniature illustrating the Ascension of Christ. The continuations of themes such as these across the same side of parchment in many cases suggest that the process of illumination should be taken into account in determining the actual and perceived significance of the selected motifs. By focusing on the placement of the shields, attention is drawn to the methods of a bookmaker in designing the illumination for a noble patron as well as to the gaze of a reader in viewing the emblems. Some examples of heraldry are connected to texts on justice, law, and vindication, which are often accompanied by descriptions of the wicked, wrongful, and sinful. The association of shields with shifting positive and negative images makes the question of reception ambiguous. When pictured with apes, canines, and mermaids, are the shields employed for parodies of sin? When pictured with bachelors and saints, are they positioned as exemplars encouraging justice and dynastic progeny? Caviness distinguishes that the nobles who owned these books were not as much “patrons” as they were the “targets of their ideological working.”76 The biography of the supposed owner—who was widowed and remarried between 1263 and 1265, went on Crusade in 1270–71, and became count in 1278—may be used to provide an interpretive position for focusing primarily on the signs of military and nobility. He was known for surrounding himself and his court with luxuries, for which he was indebted to Lombard bankers as well as Edward I.77 He also frequently traveled to Paris in the 1270s accompanied by a retinue including the troubadour, Adenet le Roi. He had sixteen children, most of whom married local nobility and stayed in residence at royals courts. Did his second wife, Isabella of Luxembourg (d. 1298), commission the manuscript for him? Or did his mother, the countess (d. 1280)? In Guy’s itinerant court, how far did this little manuscript travel? Who possessed it while Guy was in prison, or after his death in 1305? The influence and expansion of the repertoire into other types of manuscripts also places the rich content of the psalter within broader developments of complex workmanship and coordination among bookmakers to customize their commissions. Through the repeated reproduction of the topsy-turvy scene of hares hunting the hunters on fol. 150r, the Dampierre Psalter has, in part, shaped scholars’ most prominent ideas about what marginal images do in terms of role reversals and permeating boundaries during the Gothic period. Repeated in a margin of the Yale Vulgate Arthur, the monde renversé theme is one idiosyncratic motif of the group’s repertoire that became popular but was, at the time, a relatively minor feature. The religious and secular concerns reflected in the inclusion of heraldry and anti-exempla, to use an

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umbrella term, may be used to provide a springboard for examining the reframing of motifs in other contexts, especially the didactic and literary works illuminated with the same repertoire. The third psalter addressed in this chapter provides another use of the repertoire’s customization in terms of production and patronage. This psalter is also used to focus on the artist of the Dampierre group who is considered to be the master painter of the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur. A FRANCISCAN PSALTER FROM THÉROUANNE Motifs from initials and marginalia of the Cistercian Henricus Bible were realigned in the initials and margins of the Dampierre Psalter, but another psalter contains a more piously themed program of decoration. Called the Franciscan Psalter in this study, BnF latin 1076 was illuminated by the principal illuminator of the Dampierre group. Stones refers to this hand as the “Master Painter” of the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur, and its traits are characterized by a finer contour and minute proportions drawn with fluid lines as opposed to the heavy contours and irregular proportions of the second hand.78 The palette is also more varied, with maroons and salmon pinks applied to the margins.79 The psalter dates to the same time as the illumination of the second volume of the Vulgate Arthur, Yale 229. Stones suggests that the master painter, having completed the BnF volume, moved on to the illumination of this psalter, while the “assistant,” or second, painter—whose hand is visible in the Dampierre Psalter—proceeded with the majority of the illumination of the Yale volume.80 The master painter is not known for depicting fables of the fox or merpeople as his assistant is but rather for using numerous centaurs in the margins and images from the “Power of Women” topos, which appear in two manuscripts: the BnF Estoire and Arras, Musée Diocesean, MS 47, a closely-linked psalter for the use of Thérouanne.81 The latter manuscript is incomplete, with a number of excised spaces for calendar illustrations, historiated initials, and marginal figures. Another book of hours for Thérouanne, Bibliothèque de Marseilles, MS 111, may have been the companion book to the Franciscan Psalter, for they are nearly the same size (193/5 x 136/5 mm.) and both contain nineteen lines of text per page.82 Heraldic shields in the margins of the Marseille Hours have not been identified; the shields contain the blazons: or au chevron d’azur and azur au chevron d’or chargé d’un autre chevron de sable surchargé de 7 billets d’or.83 These may be decorative, for another shield in the Franciscan Psalter is composed of the same color scheme but does not match any blazons listed on surviving rolls: azur a bend or a bordure engraile sable (fig. 17).84

Figure 17. Psalms 84–85, Franciscan Psalter (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 1076), fols. 105v–106r.

70 Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts

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Also in the Marseilles Hours, an image of the patroness in prayer in the initial of O intemerata (fol. 40r)—in addition to a female figure praying in the margins of twelve folios—lends to the probability of the manuscript being customized for a female patron.85 On one folio, the marginal image of a patroness in prayer occurs in the lower corner of a page, while a male patron is hoisted upon a vertical arabesque kneeling across the text from an image of Saint Francis. Standing and displaying his stigmata within a Gothic niche, supported by an atlantis, the full figure of the saint forms a jamb for the I-initial (fol. 141v).86 The same figures are repeated throughout the Franciscan Psalter. In comparison to the abundant nudes, apes, and centaurs in the BnFYale Vulgate Arthur and the Arras Psalter, the marginalia in the Franciscan Psalter seem tame, with only three centaurs, one nude warrior, and completely void of apes. The concentration of motifs in certain quires and across bifolia may be used to suggest that the viewer’s reading was expressly shaped toward meditation on Saint Francis with a particular emphasis on female saints and nuns (table 7). Religious subjects rather than profane motifs dominate the margins, further calling into question dichotomies of the sacred and profane, or the marginal and central, when gauging the agency of marginalia. Table 7. Quires 3–17, Franciscan Psalter, BnF, MS latin 1076 Quire:

3

4

5

Psalm:

1 26 38 52*

Arms

6

7

8

9 10

68

80

2 1

1

1 1

St. Francis

3

2 1

1 1

1

1

1 1

Monk Warrior

1

1 1

Nun

97†

1

Saint (m) Saint (f )

12 13 14 15 16 17

1

Patron Patroness

11

4

2

*Includes historiated initial for Psalm 51. †Includes historiated initial for Psalm 101.

2

1

1

1

1

2 1

3

9

1

1

1

3

1

1 2

1

1

4

1

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Of 189 folios in the Franciscan Psalter, gathered in quires of twelve folios, over half of the folios contain marginal figures.87 The first six folios contain the Franciscan calendar. There are nine historiated initials at the major divisions of the psalms and, unlike the Dampierre Psalter, there are no full-page miniature cycles.88 The Beatus page displays a typical collection of animal marginalia, including a hare, a bird, a pet dog, and a lion; three other figures on the borders are characteristic of this hand: a pipe organ player, a man wearing a wind-blown cape and holding a chalice, and a physician herm examining a flask. Inside the psalter, the bifolia include pairs of figures emphasizing piety or veneration—particularly in the juxtaposition of saints and supplicants across the bas-de-page of bifolia and facing folios. Two shields of Flanders in the same quire as Psalms 51–52 possibly align the reader with nobility or noble aspirations. The popes and saints listed in the calendar clearly point to the psalter’s intended Franciscan use. The marginal figures themselves could tell us as much. Chanoine Leroquais lists thirty appearances of Saint Francis—nine of them appear in the margins of the fifteenth quire.89 There are eleven images of the saint displaying the stigmata, in addition to four figures in the quire for Psalm 80 in which an image of the patron is also depicted (fig. 18).90 There are three figures of a kneeling patroness and two figures of a kneeling patron. Although there are more warriors waging battle, there are also four nuns praying and reading in the margins, underlining the devotional function of the manuscript. Several bifolia reveal that images of the supplicant, patron, or patroness were clustered with saints. In the third quire, for example, a marginal image of Christ bearing the cross accompanies the patroness on the other side of the same bifolium.91 Two male saints besides Francis, Saint John the Baptist and Saint James the Lesser, are depicted in margins near the figure of the patron. The female saints, however, are not clustered with a patroness figure but with the praying nun in two quires. One figure of Saint Clare of Assisi (fol. 160r), two figures of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (fols. 130r and 164v), and two figures of Saint Ursula (fols. 51v and 55), in addition to a virgin head reliquary (fig. 17), reflect the growth of female foundations across Flanders in the late thirteenth century. The predominance of female saints and nuns in this psalter’s margins points to a possible connection with a local religious foundation for women. The I-initials in this manuscript are more often approached like a border motif, like hybrid figures with kissing heads rather than full-frame jamb statues. On three occasions, the letter is formed by a border herm holding aloft a gilded Gothic pinnacle that resembles the monstrance with the host held by Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. The fourth quire contains three figures for the letter I. A centaur composed of a half bishop and half stag holds an altar with the host

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Figure 18. Psalm 80, Franciscan Psalter (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 1076), fol. 102r.

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aloft on fol. 32v. An I-initial containing a female wyvern wearing a hennin—a pattern in the Dampierre repertoire—is lengthened by a squirrel on top of her head, while the flower-breathing dragon in the right margin spits up a washed green leafy vine with red thistles (fol. 37r). Another anthropomorphic I-initial is on fol. 42r, where the I of Iudica has as its base a nude growing a tail attached to the border. This figure actually bends over and holds a sword, the sheath of which dangles below the border. With a shaggy beard, balding head, and angled joints, the nude struggles outside the initial rather than from within. A bird’s long beak pokes his anus. The same model was used on the first folio opening the BnF Estoire del Graal as a corner joining two borders. The arms of Flanders appear twice in the margins and in the sixth gathering on the pair of bifolia flanking the historiated initial for Psalm 51 (fols. 58v, 63v, and 64v). The first shield is held by a knight wearing a helmet with its visor down, raising a spear and pennon and riding a stag, while the second is teardrop-shaped and is held by a chain-mailed centaur. If the gathering or quaternions were painted one side at a time, the heraldry was gilded on one side of the parchment and the historiated initials were painted on the other (tables 8a-8b). In the initial for Psalm 51, David converses with a devil and a peacock stands in the margin. In Psalm 52, David converses with a fool, reflecting the traditional Flemish cycle of psalter illustration. This part of the Psalms had occasioned the

Table 8a. Distribution of marginal images on side A of quire 6, Franciscan Psalter, BnF latin 1076, fols. 55r-66v Three Quaternions (each with two bifolia) Outer quaternion

Inner quaternion

Central quaternion

(bifol. 1)

(bifol. 4)

(bifol. 5)

Folio: 55r. St. Ursula with bow and quiver 66v. nun kneeling and reading from book

58v. knight bearing banner with arms of Flanders astride stag

59r. St. Francis, dog

63r.

62v. I: ladies

(bifol. 2) Folio: 65r.

56v.

(bifol. 3)

(bifol. 6)

64v. knight-centaur 61r. I: pilgrim with shield of Flanders 57r.

60v.

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Table 8b. Distribution of marginal images on side B of quire 6, Franciscan Psalter, BnF latin 1076, fols. 55v-66r Three Quaternions (each with two bifolia) Outer quaternion

Inner quaternion

Central quaternion

(bifol. 1)

(bifol. 4)

(bifol. 5)

Folio: 55v. 66r. Ps. 52, David and the fool; atlantis under initial

58r.

59v.

63v. Ps. 51, David and devil; peacock, hare

62r.

(bifol. 2)

(bifol. 3)

(bifol. 6)

Folio: 65v.

64r.

61v.

56r.

57v.

60r.

use of the arms of Flanders and those of Dampierre’s sons in the Dampierre Psalter, where the hairy devils echoed the shields in number. One can also consider customization on the outer bifolium of the same quire, which contains Saint Ursula (fol. 55r) and a prostrate nun in a gray habit with a prayer book (fol. 66v). If the bifolium were flattened apart from the gathering, the nun appears to be praying to this female saint for intercession. In the seventh quire, on the bifolium of 69 and 76, a patroness is depicted kneeling in prayer, this time with a violet-blue over baby-pink dress and a delicate white veil. On the other side, a nun is reading a book as she kneels nearly prostrate on the border. The composition of the bifolium is similar to that of the previous quire. The cluster of two female saints, two images of the patroness, and two praying nuns in the fourth through seventh quires, surrounding two shields, illustrate both the recycling of models and the highlighting of a central psalm with idealized pious figures. The tenth quire is one of the more densely illustrated in the margins, especially with four images of Saint Francis and the historiated initial for Psalm 80, Exultate Deo, fol. 102r (fig. 18, tables 9a-9b). The clamor of bells is echoed in the upper margin with two musicians playing a vielle, tabor, and flute. Across the text block from the initial, a male patron wearing a red-lined blue cape over a gold tunic kneels in prayer. On the same side

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Table 9a. Distribution of marginal images on side A of quire 10, Franciscan Psalter, BnF latin 1076, fols. 101r-112v Three Quaternions (each with two bifolia) Outer quaternion

Inner quaternion

Central quaternion

(bifol. 1)

(bifol. 4)

(bifol. 5)

Folio: 101r. 112v. St. Francis with staff

104v. St. Francis covering face, stork

105r.

109r.

108v. St. Francis with book

(bifol. 2) Folio: 111r. 102v.

(bifol. 3)

(bifol. 6)

110v.

107r.

103r. 3 heads (2 crowns and a biretta)

106v.

Table 9b. Distribution of marginal images on side B of quire 10, Franciscan Psalter, BnF latin 1076, fols. 101v-112r Three Quaternions (each with two bifolia) Outer quaternion

Inner quaternion

Central quaternion

(bifol. 1)

(bifol. 4)

(bifol. 5)

Folio: 101v. hare pouncing on dog 112r.

104r.

105v. St. Francis kneeling, stag

109v.

108r.

(bifol. 2) Folio: 111v. St. James the Lesser with club 102r. Ps. 80, David ringing bells; male patron kneeling, viol player, angel musician

(bifol. 3)

(bifol. 6)

110r.

107v.

103v.

106r. I: knight with female bust reliquary

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of the bifolium (fol. 111v) is an image of Saint James the Lesser holding his emblem, a paddle. If the bifolium were flattened, the saint would face toward the historiated initial across the fold. The four depictions of Saint Francis occur on three of the bifolia. The center bifolium contains the I-initial of a knight-centaur holding aloft a Saint Ursula head reliquary (fig. 17). He bears a 14 mm. shield with white filigree for the engrailed border and stripes outlining the gold bend on blue ground, which, as noted before, is more likely decorative than identifiable. In his monograph article on the related book of hours, Marseilles MS 111, Joseph Billioud notes three Franciscan convents in the diocese of Thérouanne: Ypres, Hesdin, and particularly Saint Omer.92 The countesses Jeanne and Margaret established and endowed Franciscan houses and beguinages throughout the region. Margaret of Flanders and Hainault was also an active participant in the distribution across Flanders of Saint Ursula’s virgin relics that she received directly from Cologne.93 The three female saints depicted in the margins—Clare, Elizabeth of Hungary, and Ursula—came from noble birth, perhaps performing as exempla for a noble reader. Closer to the time frame of the production of this manuscript, Guy of Dampierre and his second wife, Isabelle of Luxembourg, established the Beaulieu abbey of Saint Clare at Pettegem, near Oudenarde.94 Following Isabelle’s burial at Pettegem in 1295, Guy chose to be buried there, “in which place I establish a perpetual chapelry.”95 Is it possible that this Psalter and its companion Hours were made for the countess, whom Guy calls his “dear companion,” in honor of this foundation? The nobleman, the noblewoman, the nun, and the friar who occupy the margins of the psalter are used to promote a close relationship to the Franciscan Order. There are only a few images each of the figures used to refer to a patron and patroness, evenly dispersed over the gatherings. Gathered mainly in the litany, five initial M’s contain the busts of a lady and a man, perhaps indicating a married couple. There is still not enough evidence to determine the status of the patroness, who, in her lifetime, may have been married, widowed, and/or entered into a convent, but the likelihood of such a psalter’s importance to her devotional life—in different stages of life—make this book’s marginalia continually active in its devotional function. The concentration on piety in the margins illustrates the degree of affective customization that was possible for a given project, small or large. The manuscripts discussed in this chapter are effectively luxury commissions and supposedly were tailored to the workshop’s clients. But manuscript scholars note an opening bourgeois market for illuminated psalters, as well as an increasing production for Mendicant owners.96 There are several

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psalters and books of hours by related hands that do not have specifically noble or princely connections, such as British Library, Yates Thompson MS 43, or Oxford, Douce MS 24. Their marginalia are typical, such as the hound pursuing a hare, a centaur shooting birds, and grotesque hybrids, and they are limited to the major psalms. The commonplace illuminations of these devotional books would contribute to the broader context of book production in this study, but they add little else to the evidence of commission that oscillates between the pages of court owned psalters. In this chapter, I have focused mainly on the archaeology of the gatherings. My main goal was to discern the use of heraldic arms in the margins, despite the dubiousness of attributions, in order to determine if a viewer like the count, or someone of status, would take them as fashionable, even complimentary, embellishments. Often, however, the shields are held by apes and/or juxtaposed to merpeople or canines within a gathering. Are these negative associations toward the nobility from the point of view of the artist? Rather than counting on the notion that arms may point to specific individuals, the context of heraldry as a sign system—that is, the fact that there is heraldry at all—can be examined in the tailored margins of the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur to enhance the reception of a literary text. The meanings of particular marginal images become nuanced when examined in relation to different kinds of texts and reading contexts. The reading experience intended for two different kinds of texts—the Latin psalter and the French prose—shifts from solitary, silent devotion to public, interactive entertainment. The case of gender in the romance’s margins entails both masculine and feminine roles illustrated in the narrative and perhaps reflects the values the reader(s). Sharing a destination for the court of Flanders, the marginal imagery continues to highlight significant matters of title, lineage, and inheritance.

Chapter Four

Re-Reading the BnF-Yale Romance

Two manuscripts, one held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France as MS fr. 95 and one held in the Yale University Library as MS 229, together comprise one of the best surviving examples of the deluxe Arthurian romances of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The BnF manuscript contains the Estoire del Graal, the Estoire de Merlin, and additional didactic texts, the Sept Sages and the Penitence Adam.1 In Arthurian Legends in Medieval Art, Roger and Laura Loomis emphasize the BnF Estoire to illustrate the Picardian style of illumination but describe the margins, which are characterized as “wildly delicious grotesqueries,” separately as part of the ornamentation.2 The Yale manuscript, containing the third part of Lancelot du Lac, the Queste del Graal, and the Mort Artu, was previously in a private collection, but the illuminated folios and Barbara Shailor’s guide to the illustrations are now available online. Although marginalia are absent from the textual descriptions, Shailor’s guide is an essential tool for locating the text and also includes the information on codicology, provenance, and heraldry.3 Lilian Randall includes both the BnF and the Yale manuscripts in her Images in the Margins, which remains the most thorough investigation of the marginalia in either volume.4 In her “Prolegomena” article, Alison Stones places the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur in context with contemporary cycles of illumination and with manuscripts by the same hands.5 In these studies the role of marginalia is often divorced from the content of the miniatures, yet the main images and framing motifs were painted at the same time and thus should be considered in concert with neighboring folios. Michael Camille’s section on the Yale volume includes one of the longest analyses in his seminal book, Image on the Edge. Aside from the cathedral sculpture included in the broad study, this romance is also one of the few examples he uses that dates to the thirteenth century. For every marginal image to which he points in the Yale manuscript, the painter seems to have 79

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paid some attention to the content of the illustrations despite the stock subjects chosen for both margin and miniature. Arrows being shot at rear-ends in the margins are twice used to underline illustrations of knights helping damsels—one whose sister was violated and the other a virgin. The inclusion of angels outside the liturgical scene of the Grail is used to illustrate that the margins were adaptable to embrace religious matters within a secular text.6 In fact the BnF Estoire opens with a Crucifixion scene surrounded by four marginal angels, which may be used to demonstrate Camille’s point that the sacred and profane were more symbiotic than separate, particularly in the prose cycle of King Arthur’s court. Recent critics of medieval marginality studies address the problem of defining the “center” in order for the “marginal” to serve conceptually for historic inquiry.7 Manuscript scholarship traditionally privileges a hierarchy of illumination contributing to the possible expense and complexity of any given work. The Yale Mort Artu, however, contains smaller miniatures that are both additional to the standard cycle of illustrations and relevant to important episodes in the narrative, illustrating that small augmentations nonetheless amount to stronger efforts toward customization.8 Likewise, the augmentation of marginal images within the larger visual matrix of textual access and framed illustration activates the reading experience.9 Therefore, the marginal spaces are employed to stage roles that are not merely contradictory or subversive but that also function to reaffirm, teach, and shape episodes in the narrative. The manuscript context of the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur allows for the examination of religiosity and secularity as an interwoven matrix of text, image, and cultural values framed significantly by the marginalia. AUDIENCE OF THE BNFYALE VULGATE ARTHUR The courtly household for which BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur was produced seems to have been that of William of Termonde (d. 1312), the second son of Guy of Dampierre, if we can trust the appearance of his arms on the opening page to the Queste in the Yale manuscript (fig. 19). William also commissioned the writing of a romance, La Chevalerie de Judas Macabé et ses nobles frères, of which a unique copy now in Paris could be the presentation copy (BnF fr. 15104, c. 1285), and he may have owned the lavish psalter illuminated by the Maître au menton fuyant now in Tournai Cathedral (Scaldis H 12/2).10 Four marginal scenes containing the count’s arms outnumber three appearances of his son’s arms in the Yale volume; the count’s arms also appear four times in the BnF volume in which William’s are absent (fig. 20). Lynn Ramey has recently argued for the count’s

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Figure 19. Queste del Graal, (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, MS 229), fol. 187r.

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patronage based on the illustrations and marginalia.11 As she demonstrates, the emphasis on forms of rebellion in the Yale Mort Artu is reflected in the historical climate of Guy of Dampierre’s turbulent relationships with the kings of France and England and the later Battle of the Golden Spurs at Courtrai in 1302, continuing the book’s relevance to the Flemish court well after its manufacture. Whether father or son owned this deluxe romance, the household of the Flemish court was likely receptive to the interplay of margins and illustrations that make the romance an especially important manuscript commission for its time. Camille suggests that such a volume of romance contained in its illustrations “lessons in courtesy,” possibly for the “training of the youthful aristocrat.”12 According to Stones’s analysis of the cycle in other prose Lancelot manuscripts, there are fewer bedroom scenes in the Yale manuscript’s illustrations; therefore, she proposes that it may have been commissioned for a young audience, such as the count’s grandchildren.13 The marginal subjects were nonetheless intended for a noble household that likely included a wider audience than one owner alone. According to Paul Saenger in his influential study Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading, in northern Europe during the late thirteenth century the reading habits of lay society remained largely public via the oral dictation of vernacular texts in small groups; this occurred most notably at the courts of princes. Even during the developments in prose historiography and prose romance, as Saenger states, “the nobleman was expected to listen to the feats of his predecessors or of ancient worthies.”14 Physical characteristics of the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur—such as the large folio size (490 x 340 mm. and 475 x 343 mm.) with its wide margins and large gothic textura script, not to mention its copious illustrations and slender baguettes—suggest that this romance was intended to oblige several viewers and to effect a visual sensation beyond the reading of the text. Based on the luxury of the volumes, the choices for motifs are explored in terms of the contexts of the manuscripts’ gatherings and of the romance’s didactic role in family matters. As Malcom Vale emphasizes in his study on princely courts, the definition of the household must be broadly understood to include not only immediate relatives but also servants, squires, clerks, nieces, nephews, and third cousins.15 Also important to remember is that the court was an itinerant body, with large retinues requiring anywhere from ninety to over two hundred horses—the idealized, brightly colored destrées of which abound in the illustrations of the romance. The itinerary for Guy of Dampierre for one year from June 1293 to June 1294 includes 126 destinations; some, like Paris, Lille, Courtrai, Pettegem and Wijnendael, were revisited several

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times.16 Around twenty servants accompanied him everywhere, not including his countess’s household or the households of his many children.17 The miniatures in the BnF-Yale Vulgate display the lavish court of Camelot, with arrivals and departures of damsels and knights on horses, encounters on the road and on the shore, tournaments, feasts, and battles, to list a few of the stock motifs. These idealized images of the court reflect the ideals of the courtly viewers. The marginalia often complement the imagery with hunts, jousts, ladies, knights, and shields and echo the spectacle of reading romance. Over thirty marginal scenes with hunters blowing bugles or shooting arrows reflect a favorite pastime of the noble court. In the court of Flanders, hunting occasioned huge expensive gatherings and the forests of Brabant, Hainault, and Holland were known to have the “best chases” in the Low Countries. For example, in November 1293, Guy dined with John I of Avesnes at Brussels, “in the forest . . . where they went to hunt wild boar.”18 With ninety horses in the stables and thirty-two hunting dogs and six greyhounds under the care of the huntsmen, attendant braçonniers and garçons, such large hunts were held for the enjoyment of the aristocracy on their estates.19 Hunting boar appears in the margins of the Dampierre Psalter (fol. 187r) and twice in the Yale volume (fols. 66r and 99r). As a motif with one of the smallest entries in the bestiary, the boar serves less likely as an exemplum of sin and is associated with specifically noble pursuits.20 In the upper margin above one boar motif, a large shield bearing the arms of William of Termonde is held by a herm wearing a hunter’s cap and spearing a lion in the throat. In the illustrations on the recto and verso, Lancelot is lost in an enchanted forest in which young bachelors and ladies carol and play chess (fol. 66v), stock compositions of romance that were also employed for carved ivory caskets and mirrors. Any princely court would enjoy the visual splendor presented in the BnF-Yale Vulgate, but the marginalia particularly assist in connecting the stories of King Arthur’s court to the audience of the Flemish court. While the shields of the Arthurian characters in the illustrations are fictional and usually monochromatic, the heraldry in the margins can be traced to several Flemish nobles of the late thirteenth century. As demonstrated in the psalters by the Dampierre group, the marginal shields and pennons can highlight focal points for manuscript makers as well as noble viewers.21 Carried by knights, centaurs, heralds, apes, mermen, and once a lady and a monk, these heraldic devices have the potential to function as nexuses, or sutures, between the literature and the romance’s readers. The opening page to the Queste identifies the possible primary reader from the margin with the arms of William of Termonde on the tunic of a

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knight and his destrier (fig. 19). Although the vignette is half the size of the miniature’s figures, the bend gules of a second son on the destrier would not pass unnoticed at the opening of such a piously themed text that soon introduces Galahad to knighthood by Lancelot, who significantly is his father and not the king.22 This knight is one of the two full-figure representations with heraldry in the margins of the Yale manuscript; a second appears on the lower border of the second to last page of the volume and, although the silver of the shield has oxidized, a bordure is visible and was, like the bend, a mark of cadency among family members (fol. 362r).23 Closing the Mort Artu, the illustrations of which were especially designed for the patron, the placement of the silver gilt shield at the end of the text highlights the narrative’s completion. The emphases on succession at the beginning and end of each of these texts are punctuated by the presence of cadenced heraldry. Scenes in the margins comprised of noblemen, ladies, and heraldry are often used to mirror the noble reader and to point out moral outcomes. As illustrated in the tables for the BnF and Yale volumes, these motifs regarding the nobility appear with others from the repertoire in the same or neighboring gatherings. Heraldry, foxes, and merpeople—also clustered in the Dampierre Psalter—are prevalent in the Yale volume’s margins. As with the margin of the Queste opening, scenes of courtship also appear in the framing devices of both volumes. In the BnF volume, heraldry, courtship, and images of women, in particular, are used to point to larger cultural values and anxieties expressed in the text. In the end, redressing the nude in the border illustrates how a familiar repertoire motif functions to connect the viewer to the text. The gatherings in which these motifs appear supply textual and iconographic contexts for both the illuminators’ role in customization and readers’ role in reception. TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF THE BNFYALE VULGATE ARTHUR The illustrations in these manuscripts include large miniatures that are the same width as the columns of text and are typically divided into two registers; they also include smaller miniatures and historiated initials that are set squarely into the columns of text. Two hands were active in the two manuscripts. Stones has identified their areas of participation more specifically than was possible in the Dampierre Psalter. According to her stylistic analysis, the master painter seems to have planned and organized both volumes and to have been responsible for the execution of most of the miniatures. The assistant artist worked on 35 small miniatures and historiated initials in the

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BnF volume and considerably more, 77 of 176, large miniatures in the Yale volume. In the latter, the assistant completed twenty-four of forty-six quires and in four of the quires the two artists collaborated. In the BnF volume, on the other hand, the assistant painted smaller miniatures in the same quires with the master. Thus, the assistant painter had a larger role in the Yale volume; Stones suspects the shift occurred because the master painter at that point was occupied with the Franciscan Psalter, BnF latin 1076.24 The repertoire and templates of figures developed in the margins of the manuscripts already discussed appear also in the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur. Figures are staged on the borders and sometimes between the two columns of text, and other figures terminate the baguettes; the terminal bodies are typically winged and clawed, like serpents illustrated in contemporary bestiaries. Images of women and naked men were specialties of the master painter, who also frequently placed centaurs, battles, and musicians at the intersections of borders.25 The assistant painted mermaids and tritons in the formations of the borders, incorporating heraldry of the Flemish court with which the merpeople were associated in the Dampierre Psalter. The assistant was also responsible for the Reynardian fables in the Yale volume, which according to Stones are “an unusual feature in this manuscript.”26 Three of the four Reynard scenes appear in quires following those containing Flemish heraldry (table 10). The use of the fables and other familiar animal exempla in the margins supplements the idea that

Table 10. Selected quires 3–4, 13–17, 24–25, and 44–46, Yale Lancelot, Queste, and Mort Artu, Yale MS 229 Quire:

3

Lady

3

Knight Arms

Fox

1 2

1

decor.* Merpeople

4 . . . 13 14 15 16 17 . . . 24 25 . . . 44 45 46

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

†

4

†

2

1

1

1

4

1

1

2

1

Ape

1

3

Nude Hunter

2

2 2

*Includes decorative shields and pennons. †Notes significant motif in a large miniature.

2 2

1 1

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the marginal spaces were used for didactic moralizations. For example, in the twenty-fifth quire following the opening to the Queste, the housewife chasing the fox who has stolen her coq appears beneath an illustration in which a knight learns a lesson about theft as he takes a crown not meant for him (fol. 199r). In order to illustrate the clusters of motifs most simply, the rows in tables 10–11 exclude many common categories including herms and hybrids (their blazons are counted), grotesques, musicians, acrobats, dancers, battles or duels, and animals and birds, although the inclusion of many would enhance the gendered reception—largely masculine—that Madeline Caviness has studied in contemporary devotional books.27 Centaurs, nudes, apes, and hunters are frequent in both manuscripts, as are decorative blazons with several types of border figures, so their numbers are included to show the even distribution of such models across the gatherings.28 The quires illuminated by the master painter tend to exhibit borders enclosed by symmetrically composed battles. Over forty centaurs of different types appear in thirty of the forty-nine quires making up the BnF manuscript. Heraldry appears upon several such pairs: the arms of Flanders are held by a centaur twice (fols. 78 and 268), one of whom faces another centaur with the arms of Brabant, sable a lion rampant or. A third shield of Flanders held by an ape sword-fighting against another in the upper margin is paired with a scene of courtship in the lower margin (fig. 20).29 Like the opening to the Yale Queste, this is the only folio in the manuscript on which heraldry and courtship appear together. Over twenty of the marginal shields are decorative, but there is a heavy concentration of blazons in quires 30–35 (table 11). Except for those of Flanders, the shields in the BnF manuscript are not repeated in the Yale manuscript, which shares most with the Dampierre Psalter. As places of focus, the emblems in both manuscripts show that the planner and/or artists were sensitive to the placement of heraldry in the contexts of the narrative and the intended audience. In table 11 the categories of centaurs and magisters replace those in table 10 of merpeople and foxes, which do not appear in the BnF manuscript. The centaur is a favorite hybrid of the master painter, and in combat centaurs sometimes hold shields with blazons. In the margins of quires eight and thirty-two, the magister represents the ancient philosopher Aristotle in a two-part exemplum called the Lai d’Aristote. Also twice in the margins beneath miniatures depicting scholars the magister is parodied by apes in grammar school, an image composed of a simian master wielding a birch over simian pupils (fols. 66v and 355r). Because of the sizes of these manuscripts, it is important to keep in mind two important aspects in considering a quire-based analysis. First, unlike the psalters that were decorated with marginalia for every psalm, the marginalia in

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Figure 20. L’Estoire de Merlin (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 95), fol. 249v.

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Table 11. Selected quires 8–10 and 29–36, BnF Estoire del Graal and Estoire de Merlin, BnF fr. 95 Quire:

8

9

Lady Knight Arms decor.*

1

†

Magister Centaur

1 3

†

Ape Nude Hunter

1

2

10 . . . 1

29 1 1

2

30 1? 1 1

31 1 1? 2

32

33

2 1 2

34

35

36

1

1

†

1 2

2 1 3

2 3

1 2 1 1

1

*Includes decorative shields and pennons. †Notes significant motif in a large miniature.

the romances are spread out so that few motifs are used within a given quire consisting of eight folios. Second, only half of the quires in each volume contain bifolia with illustrations on both leafs of the spread: in forty-nine quires of BnF fr. 95 twenty-four bifolia were painted on both halves, and in forty-six quires of Yale 229 twenty-six bifolia were illuminated on both halves. More often, heavily illuminated quires and their neighboring quires contain clusters of marginal motifs relating to each other as well as the principal imagery. First, the gathering contexts of the heraldry in the Yale manuscript are considered in proximity to concurrent motifs such as merpeople and courtly ladies. Next, the marginal images of women in both manuscripts are explored for uses as exemplary models underlining nearby texts and miniatures. To pursue the reception by or identification with the Dampierre-descendant household further, various sources outside the manuscript context are suggested as influences on the choice and reception of the final motif of the Mort Artu. CODICOLOGY: RECOUCHING BLAZONS IN THE MARGINS Tournaments, love stories, and especially adventures of bachelor knights make up the stock motifs of medieval romance. Knights were patrons as well as readers of romance, so adventure was an essential element used to capture “the imagination of a knightly audience sufficiently.”30 In the Yale Lancelot, several heavily illuminated gatherings contain heraldry in the margins at places in which Lancelot’s adventures required particular attention from the illuminators.

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Four blazons of Flanders (or a lion rampant sable) appear on two shields and two pennons in the margins in the Yale manuscript. The arms of the count’s eldest son, Robert of Béthune (d. 1322), who is documented as owning a Lancelot, are absent.31 The arms of William of Termonde appear three times, once twinned with those of his father (fol. 260v), on the knight and his destrier at the opening of the Queste (fig. 19), and on a shield of the herm huntsman (fol. 66r). The remaining arms of Flemish nobles with those of the count of Flanders are paired with apes, merpeople, and ladies. Adventures related in the narrative illustration as well as the text may have inspired the inclusion of the patron’s heraldry, while keeping in mind that illuminators like Jeanne of Montbaston of Paris likely completed one bifolium at a time and not necessarily in the order of the narrative. Morals and values conveyed in the literature are often parodied by the marginalia, especially in models from the Dampierre repertoire. The sixteenth quire of the Yale manuscripts repeats the jousting apes with heraldry and a mermaid, a familiar template used in the Dampierre Psalter and based in part on the patterns used in the Henricus Bible’s initials (figs. 5, 7, and 15–16).32 Jousting on palfreys in the lower border, apes hold the shields of Flanders and those often thought to be Gruthuse of Bruges (or a cross sable), although Renier of Creue, peer of the bishop of Verdun (1278–89), or even more likely Geltholf, listed with Flanders in the Wijnbergen Roll, remain other conceivable possibilities.33 The mock joust may have been used to parody the knights’ defeat in the second register, as Sir Mordred’s and Lancelot’s mounts are taken from them. In the first register Lancelot and Mordret are distracted by a vision of a magnificent stag escorted by two lions, which they fail to comprehend and hence lose their horses. Embedded in the gilded border connecting the illustration to the lower border is a mermaid playing bagpipes. As a sign of distraction from one’s course, the siren’s presence and lustful instrument potentially remind the audience of the two knights’ moral inability to achieve the vision of the Grail as well as Lancelot’s enchanted upbringing by the Lady of the Lake. The lesson to be gained from the parody of the knights’ mystical encounter and defeat is that the vices of lust and folly prohibit the ideals of chastity and knowledge expected of a Christian knight. Looking at illustrations in contemporary copies of the prose Lancelot, Carol Dover explores the significance of shields as they function as symbols of Lancelot’s quest for his family’s identity.34 Two episodes are formative to the story and are illustrated in quires four and fourteen of the Yale Lancelot (table 10). First, the Lady of the Lake gives Lancelot a white shield that remains blank until he makes his name known (fig. 21). Second, Lancelot finds his name (sorenon) inscribed at his grandfather’s tomb (fig. 22).35 With such pronounced elements

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Figure 21. Lancelot, pt. 3 (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, MS 229), fol. 29r.

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Figure 22. Lancelot, pt. 3 (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, MS 229), fol. 110v.

about identity for illustration, it is striking that there is a lack of heraldry in the margins of these very quires despite vignettes capable of displaying them. Meanwhile, the quires immediately preceding these—the third and thirteenth—contain marginal motifs directly juxtaposing heraldry and courtly ladies. The codicology of the third quire reveals that a bifolium contains a direct association between courtly ladies and heraldry. Composed of fols. 18r and 23v in the third quire, the illuminations occur on the same side of the bifolium; when spread out and reconstructed, fol. 23v was on the left and fol. 18r was on the right in a reversal of their current order. Both sides contain historiated initials, four lines in height, depicting the stock motif of a joust. The verso leaf contains a merman herald wearing a blue tunic and blowing a long trumpet with a pennon bearing the lion rampant of Flanders (fig. 23).36 On the recto side, in the upper margin above the column of text,

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Figure 23. Lancelot, pt. 3 (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, MS 229), fol. 23v.

a crenellated castle contains three ladies gazing toward the joust in the initial. Clad in gold, blue, and rose dresses, wearing three different headdresses, and enclosed in the tower, they exhibit the ideal of noble femininity. As Camille points out, they also exhibit the spectacle of the noble class in which romances were read aloud.37 Jousting was a sort of spectator sport necessitating heralds and heraldry for the benefit of onlookers.38 If the artist were approaching this bifolium spread out, and assuming it was drawn left to right, then the pennon may have suggested the castle context of the readers or vice versa. The herald has fins and a body of scales terminating in a pinwheel instead of a fish tail. Standing at the base of this border hybrid, a mitre-capped grotesque seems to mock the Church’s “truce of God” regulating the days of military training.39 Approaching associations across the bifolium spread is

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one way to view the larger visual matrix in which the illuminators worked. In completing the following quire, however, the illuminators chose not to include heraldry with favorite motifs from the repertoire. The fourth quire contains the formative story in which Lancelot receives his blank shield. The quire’s decoration is dense: one page of each of the four bifolia is illuminated, each with at least two marginal vignettes; the first miniature is a large, double-register, historiated initial; and the last of the folios contains two miniatures.40 Despite two clear opportunities to include blazons in the margins of this quire, the fields are simply gilded. On the first folio, as if advancing toward the fore edge, a knight carrying a lance and a gilded shield on his back rides a horse draped in a gilded destrée (fol. 25r). The same figure represents Lancelot, who makes his first appearances in the Yale manuscript in three of the this quire’s miniatures; the figure also resembles the later marginal knight blazoned with the arms of William of Termonde on the opening page to the Queste. In the upper margin of the last and most densely decorated folio of the quire, a youthful bachelor carrying a plain gold shield battles a lion (fig. 2). Yet, in the middle of the quire is the illustration in which Lancelot receives his gleaming white shield—enlarged, centered, and hovering against the blue ground in the upper register (fig. 21). The Lady of the Lake is represented first by the lady wearing a hairnet in the illustration and second by the border mermaid. Used only with illustrations about Lancelot, the mermaid motif is used in this manuscript possibly to recall Lancelot’s enchanted upbringing. Here, she holds a flounder like that of Ruth’s in the Henricus Bible and her tail extends to the register containing the prominent plain shield, echoing the template used by the Dampierre group (figs. 5–6 and 15–16). The simple gilded shields in the margins of this quire may show sensitivity on the part of the illuminator to the importance of this formative episode in Lancelot’s development. Another reason for the lack of heraldry in this quire may be associated with the “mediaeval slander” investigated by Randall of the fool nesting eggs found in the lower margin of the same folio as the youthful bachelor fighting a lion. While the bachelor may have been linked to the figure of Lancelot in the second column’s upper miniature, the fool nesting eggs may have been paired with the single-scene miniature containing King Arthur and Queen Guenevere at the base of the first column. Randall has shown how this egg-hatching motif connoted political slander against the “tailed” Englishmen common in Flemish poetry.41 Around the time of this manuscript’s manufacture, the count of Flanders made and broke alliances with the English king, Edward I, and the tensions with the French king were mounting, so the damaged face of King Arthur in the miniature could reflect anti-royal sentiments among Flemish readers.42

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The dissociation of heraldry and the nesting-eggs motif that occur elsewhere in manuscripts by the Dampierre group supports the slanderous connotation. In the BnF Estoire, the theme of egg-hatching is depicted next to two shawms blown by herms and lacking heraldry on their pennons (fol. 343r), while same model of twin shawms used near the end of the Yale Queste includes pennons with the arms of Guy of Dampierre and William of Termonde (fol. 260v). Identifiable coats of arms are also excluded in the quire of the Dampierre Psalter in which the nesting-eggs motif appears (tables 3a3b), so the idiosyncratic slander may have been strategically placed to carry proper insult without unflattering injury. The thirteenth quire is the most interesting based on the amplified models used by the Dampierre group. Heavily illuminated with miniatures on five pages, the margins contain hunts after a rabbit and a boar (fols. 98r and 99r). A herm carrying an uncolored shield and spearing a border serpent accompanies the latter hunt, the same template used on fol. 66r and the seventeenth quire of the Dampierre Psalter. On fol. 99v, two mermaids placed symmetrically in the lower border play viols. In the miniature, Lancelot escapes Morgan’s castle, so the sirens’ songs below may possibly serve to echo a warning regarding the dangerous enchantments of women, perhaps alluding to the Lady of the Lake, Morgan le Fay, or ultimately Guenevere. On the next folio, 100v, jousts between two tritons and between a lady and a monk involve the heraldic arms of four Flemish nobles that appeared in the escutcheons of the Dampierre Psalter’s preface cycle (fig. 24). Forming the upper borders, two mermen in chain mail point spears at each other’s throats. In the lower margin, a lady and a monk engage in a mock joust in which the monk’s spear breaks in half. The mock joust in the lower border echoes the composition of Lancelot and the damsel on horseback in the upper register of the miniature. But the parody underlines the story told in the second register and on the next folio of text. According to the text, the knight depicted lying in the litter was wounded by the aimless arrow of a woman and only the best knight of the land could heal him, here occasioning Lancelot’s return to service after Morgan’s imprisonment.43 The marginal lady’s victory in the joust, like that of the courtly lady’s in the framed vignette of the next quire, points to the destructive roles women play in the downfall of noblemen in the narrative. The shields that these jousting figures hold include Flanders, Bergen or Bergues (or a lion gules), Mortaigne (or a cross gules), and Court or Wallincourt (argent a lion gules).44 The latter appear possibly cadenced on fol. 362r at the end of the Mort Artu with the second full-figure knight in the margin. Mortaigne appears among the twenty or so individuals traveling with Guy of

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Figure 24. Lancelot, pt. 3 (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, MS 229), fol. 100v.

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Dampierre around 1280 and Bergen, near Dunkirk, was a Flemish castellan on the count’s route.45 If the artist or planner was working with the trajectory of the text, the collection of blazoned shields in the margins might also emphasize the ensuing adventure in which Lancelot sets out for the Dolorous Guard and discovers his lineage. At the end of the quire in the lower border, a falconer cups the chin of his lady, a courtly love theme that is placed in the next quire below the illustration in which Lancelot finds his sorenon. Like the third and fourth quires, heraldry and ladies in the margins precede the issues of identity and genealogy in the narrative miniatures. The fourteenth quire, like the fourth, is illuminated on one page of each bifolium. The most densely decorated folio contains the miniature illustrating Lancelot’s adventure to uncover his identity (sorenon) at a mysterious ancestral tomb (fig. 22). In a complex continuous narrative, Lancelot fights lions and pulls his grandfather’s head out of boiling water in order to access the inscription beneath the slab. Stones notes that of all the illustrations in the Yale manuscript, this folio is the only one that includes two double-register illuminations; this highlights the featured episode as one of the most important, although whether important to the planner or the patron cannot be ascertained.46 On a split border made to frame the vignette beneath the same column of text as the pivotal miniature, a lady places a green garland on the head of a kneeling suitor. The scene is a stock motif representing courtship and betrothal scenes, such as that in which Guenevere gives Lancelot a ring from the Lady of the Lake on fol. 85v. As Camille notes in his book The Medieval Art of Love, betrothal and consummation were implicit with the placement of a chaplet upon the suitor’s head.47 This innuendo for lovemaking in the border refers directly to the story of Lancelot’s grandfather, whose severed head in the illustration may be reiterated by the suitor’s crown underneath the column of text.48 In the text a hermit explains to Lancelot his ancestor’s history (fol. 112r). Corresponding to the courtship vignette, Lancelot’s grandfather fell in love—“honorably”—with his cousin’s wife, a tragedy that led to his murder and the circumstances of his strange, adventurous tomb.49 Another miniature in the fourteenth quire features a display of vermillion, blue, black, and rose shields belonging to the lost Knights of the Round Table (fol. 106v), but actual heraldry in the margins of the same quire is lacking. In the fourth and fourteenth quires, the narratives concern Lancelot’s lineage and shields are required for the illustrations. While the marginalia surrounding episodes concerning inheritance and genealogy was certainly used to frame such issues in the manuscripts for readers, in these gatherings identifiable heraldry was left alone, either emphasizing Lancelot’s lack of title or respecting the patron family’s patrimony.

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Indeed the ubiquitous sign of Flanders, the lion rampant, was a major bone of contention between the Dampierre and Avesnes lines, as John II of Avesnes claimed the blazon for himself.50 Because the Flemish nobility during this period patronized literary romance to reinforce their political positions—which in the thirteenth century were so largely dependent on the unusual matriarchal lineage and partition of Flanders and Hainault—the presence or absence of heraldry is laden with significance for the comital audience.51 The use of marginal blazons can be seen to suture the reader to the moralizations of Lancelot’s adventures, even through parody with jousting apes and ladies, but blazons are not used to connect the reader to the errant knight’s uprooted or untitled status. In turn, images of women in the margins of folios and gatherings that neighbor heraldry also frame the readers’ reception of women in the prose romance. ICONOGRAPHY: REFRAMING WOMEN IN THE MARGINS In romance, the trope of courtly love frames the gender relations defining masculinity and femininity in the court. Rather than promoting notions of chivalry, scenes of courtship and finely dressed women are positioned in the margins of the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur to serve more subversive and didactic roles than the ideal postures of the damsels and the queens of the miniatures, although female characters in Arthurian romance are never wholly good.52 Opening the Queste, the most moralistic of the Arthurian tales, the object of devotion, a fashionably dressed lady, stands over a knight who embodies the ideals of prowess, piety, and status (fig. 19).53 The lady to whom the knight kneels wears a blue cotehardie and mimics the pose of Queen Guenevere in the second register of the miniature. Does the marginal lady represent the ideal object of chivalry—personifying the spiritual goal of the most Christian knight Galahad, or a warning against the distractions of lust—embodied in the erotic but prohibitory desire of Lancelot? Tracing the use of ladies and suitors in the BnF and Yale manuscripts, particularly in proximity to heraldry, shows that the choice of imagery highlights lessons regarding the wiles of women in the text. Images of women from the margins of the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur have been reproduced in modern publications time and again as examples of both misogyny and liberation. Camille notes that in romance literature, in which women seem to play more positive roles, the popular marginal images were those that made impossible reversals and perpetuated misogynistic attitudes.54 In his account of “woman” in the margins of Gothic manuscripts, Philippe Verdier actually celebrates the space as one of freedom for women’s

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experience.55 Verdier scans the examples reproduced by Randall’s Images, rarely considering the historical contexts of different manuscripts and often quoting Latin texts without reference to specific representations. Of the five categories under which the figures are rubricated, those termed the “secular domain” and “women’s work” appear in many guises in the margins of the BnF-Yale manuscripts.56 Female figures carry signs of their domesticity, primarily distaffs that turn into weapons in the monde renversé of the margins.57 “Carnal pleasures,” like musicians and dancers, and “fantastic creatures,” on the other hand, are predominant in numerous manuscripts of the period, while the “sacred precinct” is evident in many psalters, such as the depictions of nuns and saints in the Franciscan Psalter, BnF latin 1076. Noble women are depicted in marginal jousts against knights twice and a monk once, the latter of which appears on the folio with the jousting tritons and four shields (fig. 24). In the BnF Estoire, the joust occurs between an unarmed knight on a palfrey and a woman riding on the back of a bedecked destrier. Wearing a large knotted hennin, the woman points her distaff and spindle at the knight wearing chain mail (fol. 226r).58 A second joust in the Yale Mort Artu near the end of the manuscript reverses the mounts. The composition features a lady with a distaff and spindle charging on a palfrey against a knight on a gilded destrier but also weaponless (fol. 329r). Without regard to the original manuscript contexts of these images, Verdier states that: Such tilting females, coming from the aristocracy or from lower classes, represent argumentative women and more particularly, married ladies (baillistres), dowager duchesses or countesses who, replacing their absent or incapacitated husbands, fought more fiercely against their vassals than the liege lords.59

Verdier fails to recognize that the countesses, Jeanne and Margaret of Flanders and Hainault, were the direct ancestors of the intended audience of the manuscripts in which these particular scenes appear. The region of Flanders extended as far as Saint Omer and Arras for most of the thirteenth century, and the countesses wielded enough power and reputation to occasion a biographical description by Matthew Paris.60 If indeed such mock jousts were intended to be representations of such noble women, then Verdier and others miss supporting material when they make summary assumptions about iconography. The headdresses on the three jousting women—a hairnet, a veil, and a knotted hennin—reflect attention to the fashions of the court, much like

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the image of three women in the marginal castle at the beginning of the Yale manuscript (fol. 18r).61 While mêlée-style tournaments with two teams were prohibited in the French kingdom, Vale explains that the nobility held hastiludes or behourts in which jousting could take place among counts and lords.62 Such cross-gendered spectacles would not have taken place in reality, but the humorous parody of the nobility in three margins of the manuscripts points to the abundant relationships between men and women in the romance, especially in the marginalia. If this romance was shared in a social setting among audience members of different ages and sexes, then the elaboration of the marginal motifs with women plays an active role in the shaping of the romance’s reception. Three cases in the BnF volume include heraldry in the margins at junctures in which women play significant roles in the illustration on the same folio.63 One illustration contains a bedroom scene depicting the conception of Arthur (fol. 149v). The choice of the motif on the lower border may emphasize the medieval desire for sons, personified by a youthful bachelor holding a shield bearing or three chevrons sable, traditionally the arms of Hainault. Placed beneath the scandalous circumstances of Arthur’s conception, how may this shield have been interpreted by the comital household? Other possible candidates for these arms include the knight John of Menin, an envoy of Guy of Dampierre’s to Rome in 1299, among others, so the association of bastardry between the bedroom scene and shield can only be suggested.64 Located in the tenth quire, one folio is the first containing identifiable shields in the margins. In a single-scene miniature Nascien’s duchess and her retinue stand outside the walls of a triple-façade castle portal, and in the margin below the shields held by border centaurs feature the arms of Flanders against those of Brabant, sable a lion rampant or (fig. 25).65 These ladies are shown as virtuous, returning to the castle to pray for the duke’s safe return. The use of heraldry here may relate to the courtly ladies in the miniature but also to the preceding text in which the future knights of the duke’s lineage are described. In the previous illustration, Nascian dreams about and then receives a scroll upon which nine generations, through Lancelot and Galahad, are written (fol. 76v). A similar template of ladies, a castle, and heraldry was repeated in the margins outside jousts on the bifolium, 18r-23v, in the Yale manuscript, but here the template is used to underline the bearer of the lineage of the future achiever of the Grail. The shield of Brabant may be connected to the Dampierre family through the marriage of Guy’s daughter Margaret to Duke John I of Brabant in 1273.66 Following her death in 1283 and her namesake’s, Margaret the

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Figure 25. L’Estoire del Saint Graal, (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 95), fol. 78r.

Black, in 1280, the ascription of Hainault’s and Brabant’s shields shifts to two different branches of the comital family. The inclusion of these arms together in the BnF manuscript may suggest a pre-1280 commission date. Four shields of Flanders outnumber two of Hainault’s, two of Brabant’s, and at least three damaged but formerly blazoned shields. If the shields are intact, the connection of heraldry in the margins to lineage in the illustrations in these cases implicates the contemporary conflicts regarding the history of the

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Flemish succession. Meanwhile, without further evidence of patronage, the BnF and Yale manuscripts share only the arms of Flanders in their borders, which were claimed by competing courts. The significance of arms to the original viewers of this romance may have shifted in the years during and following the manuscript’s production as well, so arguments about historical reception are conducive to studying the broader cultural values that can be associated with women in the margins. Constituting one of the most densely illuminated sections of the BnF manuscript, quires 29–36 contain motifs with both identifiable and decorative heraldry, including the arms of Flanders in a battle illustration in the thirty-sixth quire (table 11).67 The group of miniatures contains feasts, mêlées, and jousts, which occasioned the heralds and heraldry at court. In the thirty-fifth quire, Merlin arrives at court as a stag.68 He is shown as an actual stag in the miniature on fol. 262r and disguised as a tree trunk with antlers in the shivaree on the bas-de-page of the previous quire (fol. 261r); both margins contain the same bagpiper pattern in reverse. In the thirty-fifth quire, on the same bifolium as a miniature depicting scenes of a wedding and tilting (fol. 273r), a lion holds a pennon with a second heraldic device of Brabant (sable lion rampant or, fol. 280v). Used previously with the shield of Flanders near Duke Nascien’s genealogical dream in the tenth quire, the association of the lion and the arms may be used to recall the marriage of Guy’s first daughter to John I of Brabant.69 The thirty-second quire, in the Merlin section, contains two marginal scenes of courtship. On the first folio apes wield swords in the upper border—also a standard composition attributed to the master painter (fig. 20). The arms of Flanders face a damaged shield here. A scene of courtship appears in the lower margin. Both suitor and lady wear gold garments, and the chaplet is a bronze ring with copper dots. In the text above the miniature, illustrating knights at sea, Merlin tells his confessor Blaise that he has fallen in love and Blaise fears the woman’s deceitful nature.70 Like the vignette in the Yale manuscript echoing the romantic interlude of Lancelot’s grandfather, this scene of courtship is used to illustrate a passage of text in which the trouble wrought by women threatens a male character in an episode outside the miniature. Also in the thirty-second quire, on fol. 254r, the first of a two-part exemplum of Jacques of Vitry’s, called the Lai d’Aristote, is illustrated in the margin. In the exemplum, Alexander the Great’s lover, Phyllis, is forbidden to him by his tutor, Aristotle. To exact revenge, Phyllis seduces Aristotle into letting her ride him like a horse, constituting one of the most popular scenes of the “Power of Woman” topos developed in the thirteenth century. On

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fol. 254v, the seduction takes place as Phyllis wears her hair loose and offers the scholar a red and white striped garland. Wearing a biretta, the magister Aristotle turns his head away from a folio-laden desk to gaze at her. The scene is accompanied by an obscene composition to the left in which a bird aims its beak at the rear end of a jester. In the upper margin, a rabbit jumping on a hound parodies the second part of the story in which roles are reversed and Aristotle allows Phyllis to ride on top of him, which is illustrated in the eighth quire. On the same bifolium, also in the upper central margin, is the standard composition of a hound pouncing over a rabbit. The contrasting positions of the pairs of animals echo the sexual innuendo of the chaplet offerings in this quire’s two courtship scenes.71 Juxtaposed to heraldry and scenes of battle, the models of courtly love are used to emphasize the dangers of misplaced sexual desires. The inclusion of the Phyllis and Aristotle exemplum on fol. 254r seems less tied to the text than the seductress of Merlin on fol. 249v.72 Two queens are included in the castle backdrop to a battle in the illustration, and they are described in the text just above the motif. Five sections later in the text, Arthur is told that he is a coward and that Guenevere will be dissatisfied with his lack of valor.73 Even later in the text, one can quote the sentiments of the courtship in both margins: “Many a man is ruined and deceived, many a town burnt, many a country desolated, by woman.”74 The inclusion of the second episode of the exemplum in the eighth quire, however, can be understood more clearly in terms of proximate illustrations and text. Part of the Power of Women topos, the story of Phyllis and Aristotle was one of the best historical exempla of women besting the best of men. Susan Smith, in her excellent study on the topos, shows how the images on the Malterer Embroidery, intended for a convent, comprise a collection of profane themes directed toward the ideal of spiritual love.75 In a cluster of gatherings in the Graal section, quires eight through ten, the wiles of women are related through the ancient legend of Hippocrates, another early figure in the topos. The moral gained by visitors to his tomb from the philosopher’s life and death is used to teach “that no man is wise enough to resist a woman’s intrigue” (fol. 69v).76 In contrast, the tenth quire ends with Nascien’s dream of his lineage and his virtuous duchess underlined with identifiable heraldry. The second episode of the Lai d’Aristote occurs in the eighth quire in which Aristotle allows Phyllis to ride him like a horse (fol. 61v). Careful attention to the scene is evident in the lines of vermillion paint used for the reins and bridle. The use of the defeated philosopher here may have been suggested by the episode illustrated for Hippocrates in the ninth quire. In

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Figure 26. L’Estoire del Saint Graal, (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 95), fol. 66v.

the single scene miniature, Hippocrates performs a foolish stunt for the love of a Gauloise maiden (fig. 26). Bearded and half-naked, the philosopher is abandoned in a barrel hanging from the side of a tower over a crowd of onlookers. The motif later became connected to Virgil in the Power of Women topos, and the miniature in the BnF manuscript may indeed be the earliest depiction.77 The parody of the ape beaten by a master with a birch is staged on the lower border, so that the association of the folly of the ancient philosophers is literally underlined by the “travesty of Grammatica.”78 The same motif of Phyllis riding Aristotle also appears in the margin of the Benedictine psalter-hours in Arras, Musée Diocesian, MS 47, illuminated by the same artists.79 In the right margin, a nude gracefully balances on the border leaf, and he is clearly used visually to echo the naked King David in the historiated letter S. The image in the bas-de-page of Psalm 68 is close to that in

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Figure 27. Psalm 68, Psalter-Book of Hours, use of Thérouanne (Arras, Musée Diocesian, MS 47), fol. 74r.

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the BnF volume (fig. 27). The psalter’s figures have fewer folding lines drawn on their drapery, and the romance’s image has Phyllis grabbing the point of Aristotle’s hat. Both show Aristotle on all fours, on his feet, not his knees, and Phyllis riding sidesaddle. Smith relates the image to the text of Psalm 68:6, which continues on the verso of the page, “Oh God, thou knowest my foolishness, and my offenses are not hidden from thee.”80 The text in the eighth quire of the BnF Graal may be interpreted in two different ways. The words “trop grant folie” are written three lines above the scene and refer to the audacity of the characters lost in the Egyptian desert.81 So in two cases, in Latin and French manuscripts, the topos motif may be associated textually with folly. Just as likely, however, the text traces the knights’ and maiden’s journey through Egypt on the next folio and to Alexandria on its verso—suggesting other textual cues for the use of Alexander’s tutor and his exotic, Phrygian cap.82 In order to include both compositions for the Lai d’Aristote, the borders had to be stepped down further below the text columns. Such framing devices occur twice more for themes of love: in Yale 229, on fol. 110v, in which Lancelot’s grandfather falls in love (fig. 22); and in BnF fr. 95, on fol. 24v, on which a scene depicting Frau Minne is placed next to a misogynist parody. The scene of Frau Minne piercing her lover’s heart with an arrow is placed on a stepped-down border; to the left a man pushes a woman wearing a wimple and hairnet in a wheelbarrow, a form of common law punishment for gossiping or insubordinate wives.83 These motifs are the first representations of women in the manuscript, but they are placed beneath a typical battle scene and there are very few passages in this part of the text with female roles. One detail of the battle was left out of the text of the BnF Graal, however. In other copies, the story describes how Evalec’s men were killed by poisoned arrows.84 Could the model text or illustration have suggested the motif of a dangerous arrow to the illuminator? The two scenes framed in the bas-de-page seem to be used to contrast class difference in terms of dress and composition. Compositionally the “woman on top” themes are reversed. The male figure on the left wears an arming cap and a pink tunic, while the wavy-haired man kneeling in supplication wears a gold cape over a violet tunic. In the wheelbarrow, the hag wears a green hairnet, while that of the lady to the right is gilded like her dress underneath a blue cotehardie. She holds a small white pet dog in her arm while aiming the large arrow at the lover’s breast and hands. Known as Minnesklaven (slave of love), the male subject is subservient to the courtly lady, whose ideal finery and beauty engage his devotion.85 The common law punishment pictured to the left was used to comment on the decidedly non-noble

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and churlish behavior of townspeople.86 In employing these opposite motifs for women wielding power, the idealized image of courtly love contrasts with the venomous urban bourgeoisie. The marginal ladies wearing gilded finery and engaging with noble lovers are used to mimic chivalric behavior or courtly love, especially in its adulterous sense. Vignettes of courtly lovers in both manuscripts, sometimes specially bracketed in the borders, frame episodes in which women beguile noblemen. The device of heraldry in relation to these examples of women, painted across the folios of neighboring quires, has the effect of highlighting lessons in the romance about lineage and courtly love for the noble readers. The examination of marginalia as gathered in quires and painted in conjunction with principal illustrations yields emphases on sections of the prose that were perhaps salient to both male and female readers. Accordingly, the ideological context for reading this courtly romance can by supported by a codicological one. HISTORICAL CONTEXT: RECONNECTING STORIES IN THE MARGINS Rarely is the Mort Artu illuminated through the final episodes in the tale, but the Yale manuscript includes marginalia along with its specially commissioned miniatures. As Stones observes, “someone was especially interested in seeing the details of all the military activities played out in pictures, and wanted to see what happened to Arthur and his famous sword in the end, and to see as well how Lancelot fared, and who was left at the end,” all of which are related to issues of comital instruction and succession.87 Recognized as a typically courtly motif, the marginal figure on the final folio of the Mort Artu is a well-dressed nude—so to speak—unlike any others (fig. 28).88 The specific context of this naked figure wearing a crown, a dickey, a glove, and a tail is particularly meaningful, especially in that the last pages of most subdivided manuscripts are typically absent of illumination or enhancement. Concentrating on the closure of this large, sumptuous commission, the final stitch that sutures the manuscript to its readers brings to bear the historical background of the audience in light of stories closely connected to the count of Flanders and the royal courts of England and France. The final folio contains two small miniatures and a naked and crowned falconer in the upper border. Connected by its tail wrapping around its leg, the figure is embedded in the gilded, scalloped border framing the second miniature in which Sir Bohort hears the story of Lancelot. The column to

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Figure 28. Mort Artu, (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, MS 229), fol. 363r.

the left contains a miniature in which Lancelot is shrouded over his tomb.89 The naked and crowned falconer, also wearing a collar and gloves with talons in one hand, is proportionally larger than the figures in the small miniatures. Similar to the naked and tailed jongleur playing a gittern and wearing a cone tiara in the I-initial of the Dampierre Psalter (fig. 13), the sizable nude figure is a familiar border model of the repertoire. Connected to the gilded border, the placement of the figure also recalls the physical placement of the author portraits opening the Henricus Bible but embodies the exact opposite features of a scribe closing the end. This naked courtier can be placed in context with heraldry as well. The second to last decorated folio contains a knight kneeling behind a shield, blazoned possibly with the cadenced arms of Wallincourt—the second such full-figured knight with arms after William of Termonde’s on the destrier opening the Queste.90 The placement of this figure below text describing the deaths of Hector and Lancelot perhaps heightened attention for the readers who then opened the last page to see the extraordinary figure at the romance’s end. In the Bible and psalter, the incorporation of the nude into the margins seemed to have significance regarding the sin of the flesh or the naked

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soul.91 The master painter was adept at using the motif of twisting nude figures, many of whose bodies are connected to the framing border via their delineated spines, genitalia, or tails. Using at least twenty-five naked men in the borders of the BnF volume, it is clear that the master painter was active in the last quires of the Mort Artu in which his signature border nudes repeat similar models. Drinking from chalices, wielding swords, and twisting in uncomfortable positions, many have wild hair and furry faces that resemble the ancient devil sire of Merlin on fol. 113v of the BnF Estoire. A basic nude model without attributes burns in flames as a pagan statue early in the BnF Graal (fol. 32r). With their dramatic poses, the nude athletes of antique statuary may also have been used to enhance the sense of the ancient past. For example, reference to King Arthur’s palace made by Lambert of Saint Omer in the Liber floridus describes statuary depicting battles and examples of the king’s prowess.92 Listening to “the feats of his predecessors or of ancient worthies,” the nobleman could also visualize examples.93 The emphasis on the visual form of transmission illustrates the profound importance of re-telling Arthurian tales, as evidenced in the final miniature concerning the recounting of Lancelot’s life. One of the most direct models for the border figure, however, repeats that of a crowned and nude King David, depicted drowning in the S initial of Psalm 68. In the Arras Psalter the naked figure twists in the vertical margin over the scene of Phyllis and Aristotle, while the drowning King David with a crown and a beard is placed horizontally in the initial (fig. 27). Nakedness in the devotional context refers to the soul (animam) in the text. In the illustration beginning the Mort Artu, depicting the literary commission between the king Henry II and the author, Walter Map (fol. 272v), Ramey points to another connection to David, for both Henry II and Arthur were also kings whose sons rebelled. These models of kingship could have been associated with the French king, Philip the Fair, and the count’s open rebellion.94 The associations of the nude soul to the king in the devotional context are further secularized in the romance context with the addition of a tail and a falcon. The parallel between historical kings and the ancient past and contemporary kings and their courts was open to parody on various levels. In his recent book on folklore motifs in medieval art, The Secret Middle Ages, Malcolm Jones suggests that this tailed king is used to refer to the “Inglis tailed kyng,” or the English monarch, Edward I.95 The parody is worth exploring, as the nesting-eggs motif was related to this popular slander against the English. In particular, Edward favored falcons and is documented as exchanging them as diplomatic gifts.96 As mentioned in the context of the nesting eggs motif in the fourth quire, Edward’s eccentric largesse also extended to the

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unusual gift of gilded eggs around 1290, but this is not as well documented. Another story related to the court of Edward I concerns the exhumation of King Arthur’s chapel tomb and his reinterment in the abbey church at Glastonbury, which was attended by the king and Eleanor of Castile on April 19, 1278.97 Although these events in the English court may have taken place before or after the manuscript’s manufacture, knowledge of King Arthur’s body may have influenced the reception of this imagery by a contemporary audience—especially in proximity to the burial scene in the neighboring miniature. Another specific context for the patron’s reception can also be suggested through the reputation of the minstrel Adenet le Roi, who began his career with the family of Count Guy of Dampierre before moving to the court of Marie of Brabant (sister of Duke John I of Brabant) between 1274 and 1285 as well as appearing in the court of Edward I.98 In a dedication page for the French queen, Adenet is depicted with a gittern surrounded by ladies and the reclining queen.99 Adenet was also favored by Edward I and received a gold clasp from him in 1297.100 Recalling the calendar motif of a falconer for the spring month of May, falconry is associated specifically with the aristocratic sphere in the verses composed by minstrels like Adenet.101 The crown together with the falconer’s attributes at the close of the Mort Artu could have been used to refer to a performer of romances. Reference to the transmitter of the tale, Walter Map, ending the last column of text, may have also suggested a reference to tailed Englishmen. For the comital audience of this manuscript, the court minstrel, known to kings and also called the king of minstrels, may have been suggested in the context of retelling tales of Camelot. With the first miniature containing a shrouded body over a tomb, overlooked by a crowned Bohort and mourners, the naked spectacle seems to be used also to contrast death with transcendence. At the most basic level, the nude figure as the naked soul contrasts with the dead body, but the story of King Arthur ends with his translation to Avalon and the promise of his future return. Knowledge or recognition by the Flemish court of the recent historical translation may reinforce the association with the fictional king. If the extra adornment of this naked figure ensconced in gilding refers to the more mystical aspect of the narrative, however, it is told at the end of the previous quire but not illustrated. Alternatively the naked figure as an emblem of lust, embedded in signs of the secular, could be used to refer to the hero of the romance—Lancelot du Lac, to whom the last pages are dedicated for his burial and his succession by Bohort at the Joyeuse Garde. The characters of King Arthur and Lancelot, the minstrel storyteller, and the living monarchs all play roles in understanding the conflation of

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attributes and multiple associations embedded in a specially designed figure for the ending. The figure’s physical placement, scale, and adornment were significant to the planner finishing the work and to the owner or readers intimate with a variety of courtly references. Considering the romance’s production as both an aesthetic object and a social document, reception theory accounts for a wider audience than an individual book owner might allow. For example, Hand Robert Jauss puts forth the possibility that a work’s aesthetic value can be measured “in comparison with works already read,” such as both illustrated and undecorated Arthurian romances in circulation since the middle of the century. In addition, the work’s historical significance rests in not only the understanding of the first reader but also in the “chain of reception from generation to generation.”102 The marginal images of the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur are given roles that position the text in a “process of mediation” from planner and artist to patron and household, which enters the work into what Jauss calls the “changing horizon of experience.”103 Likely read aloud, the role of the reader, listener, or viewer to activate the meanings and connections between text and images in the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur changes with the gender, age, and relations of individual household members who may have had access to the manuscript. Models of knightly and ladylike deportment, parodies of social figures, and reversals in animal fables are used to comment on the text of this manuscript and, in turn, to draw particular attention to the readers’ reception and ideological framework rarely duplicated elsewhere in romance literature. Several neighboring gatherings in the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur contain heraldry in the margins and highlight the concerns of the noble audience in terms of moral behavior and conduct. Among these pages female figures play a wider range of roles than they did in the religious manuscripts discussed in chapters 2 and 3, but medieval misogyny still pervades the use of the motifs as monde renversé humor. The didactic and interactive functions of marginalia in the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur allow for an exploration of similar themes in other large format books that were considered “mirrors of knowledge.” In the following chapters, I turn to the margins of illuminated French and Latin encyclopedia to compare the significance of repertoire motifs in a new type of textual context as well as to look more closely at overlooked motifs such as hunting, fishing, hybrid combinations, bestiary animals, and common labors shared by several artistic groups practicing in the Flemish-Artesian border region.

Chapter Five

Treasured Collections

Encyclopedias written in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were part of the tradition of florilegia, or the gathering of flowers of knowledge from the past, as Lambert of Saint Omer did in his autograph manuscript of the Liber floridus.1 The medieval authors of encyclopedic works were essentially compilers who copied, collected, and recollected texts of the ancient writers, including Aristotle, Cicero, and Isidore of Seville as well as the Church Fathers and scholastic writers, such as Hugh and Richard of Saint Victor.2 During the second half of the thirteenth century, Latin encyclopedia were developed and used more widely due to the growth of university teaching. New programs of illustration for these texts were based on the same kinds of models from biblical history and the bestiary upon which these authors relied. The Mappemunde by Gautier of Metz was written in 1246, and Thomas of Cantimpré compiled the De natura rerum before 1244.3 Especially popular in the region of northeast France and Flanders was the Speculum majus by Vincent of Beauvais, who visited Tournai to compile it some time in the 1250s.4 “Translated from the Latin to Romance” in the 1270s, the Trésor by Brunetto Latini was the first vernacular encyclopedia and was based on Vincent’s Speculum, as was Jacob of Maerlant’s Spiegel Historiael written in Dutch in 1284.5 Many copies of the Speculum majus and Le Trésor were produced in northern France and Flanders soon after they were completed. The distribution of these illuminated encyclopedias in the region echoes that of surviving twelfth- and thirteenth-century copies of Lambert’s Liber floridus and the Aviarium by Hugh of Fouilloy.6 The presence of avian, fantastic or bestial images in these early reference works shows the function of images in learning such texts, just as other elements of the mise-en-page, like rubrics and historiated initials, guided the reader. Of the surviving manuscripts of the Speculum majus and Le Trésor many are illustrated and some contain marginalia, which reflects the desire of local patrons for editions of authoritative texts as well as 111

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impressive copies to enhance their collections. Although the Speculum majus served as a model for Le Trésor, similar artists, patrons, and marginal motifs for the vernacular text continue the points that were raised in previous chapters regarding the behavior, education, and literacy of the aristocracy. Returning to the Latin encyclopedia in the next chapter, the approaches to the margins by contemporary workshops in Arras and Douai can be compared in reference works intended for use by a literate, monastic audience. The range of manuscripts illuminated by the workshops in Thérouanne and Arras included the earliest vernacular encyclopedia, Le Trésor. Spending seven years of exile in France, some of the time in Arras, Brunetto wrote Le Trésor in French rather than his native Italian because “French is more pleasant and has more in common with all other languages.”7 Evidence for the ownership of the illustrated Trésors is largely lacking, but likely owners range from high nobility to “urban professional and clerical classes,” as suggested by Alison Stones.8 Miniatures containing noble patrons in prayer to Saint Anne point to a lay audience. The heraldry in a margin of one copy may have pointed to John II of Avesnes, Count of Hainault, but the blazons have been damaged or reworked.9 The copies related to this manuscript were illuminated by the inheritors of the Dampierre group in the diocese of Thérouanne who applied the repertoire of common marginal motifs—such as acrobats, animals, and apes—on the fifteen to twenty opening pages of major sections. Images of women, heraldry, and knights as well as bestiary exempla in some copies highlight concerns and lessons for the nobility in relation to the text and main images. For the sake of comparison, the marginal motifs appearing in the framed miniatures of the Li ars d’amour, de vertu, et de boneurté, compiled by the count’s brother Guy of Avesnes, bishop of Utrecht, provide contexts regarding the aspiring education and literacy of the nobility. The design of Le Trésor is based on three books: Wisdom, Ethics, and Rhetoric. The first book is the longest and contains the most subdivisions with miniatures. Called the theoretical branch of philosophy, the book of wisdom was compiled from historical materials from the Old and New Testaments, Solinus, Isidore of Seville, and similar authorities cited by Vincent of Beauvais. Two sections of Book II on ethics, incorporating the practical and logical branches, are typically subdivided with illuminated pages: the translation of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics and Brunetto’s own commentary on the Virtues and Vices, citing authorities such as Solomon, Seneca, and Cicero. A single illuminated folio opens Book III on rhetoric and politics, the first third of which is based on Cicero’s De Inventione and the remainder on the government of Italian cities.10

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At least half of the forty-six known Trésors from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were illuminated with illustrations.11 One early group of copies illuminated in Douai, near Arras, contains marginalia on the first opening folio alone. The dating of these manuscripts to ca. 1290–1310 attests to the immediate popularity of Brunetto’s encyclopedia in and around Arras.12 Stones adds to this group a copy in the Vatican Library, Vat. Lat. 3203, containing seventeen miniatures with borders. The first folio contains a tall windmill in the vertical margin and a man carrying a sack of grain below, a model used in the Bruges Speculum doctrinale (Openbare Bibliotheek MS 251) and the Valenciennes Obituary-Martyrology (Bibliothèque municipale MS 838).13 The sheer scale of the structure in the margins of the Latin and French encyclopedia seems to frame the text physically and meaningfully. In the Bruges Speculum doctrinale, the windmill decorates the book on practical knowledge, and on the first folio of the Trésor, Brunetto introduces the fact that the second and third books address the second branch of philosophy, practical application, which includes the “mechanical trades necessary to the life of men.”14 This genre scene in both encyclopedic contexts may be used to demonstrate the didactic purpose of collecting and applying knowledge, not unlike the collection of flowers of knowledge in the florilegium tradition, which Brunetto describes as “like a honeycomb collected from different flowers.”15 Implying the literary taste of his reader, Brunetto explains that the other art necessary to the life of men involves the word, the mouth, and the tongue—that is, speech.16 When not used to illustrate traditional scenes from biblical sources, most of the illuminations in encyclopedia were used to emphasize magisters teaching clerical and noble pupils. A second generation group of Trésors with marginalia throughout can be linked stylistically to the illuminators in Thérouanne.17 Of the four illuminated copies related to this group, only the London Trésor (British Library, Yates Thompson 19) was treated in Lilian Randall’s 1966 catalog for Images in the Margins. In addition to the fifteen to twenty folios with miniatures and borders, the London Trésor and another related copy, now in the National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg (MS Fr.F.v.III,4), include a fully illustrated bestiary containing over fifty miniatures. Some of these very subjects figure in the marginal repertoire, such as scenes of capturing apes, mermaids playing music, and regal lions. While the margins are typical in the selection of repetitive motifs—including musicians, dancers, acrobats, hunts, and chases—there are instances in which the content of the text or illustration informed the choice of motif. Therefore, each of these manuscripts is examined in individual terms and in the places where marginal motifs enhance the message of the text or its illustrations.

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Similar both to romance in illustration and to scholarly texts in organization, this group of interrelated Trésors represents the expansion of the marginal repertoire into the production of a new type of text. Rubrics subdivide the sections in Brunetto’s chapters, two or three of which were written per page, so it is very easy to locate divisions, especially with a list of contents included in the front matter of many copies. Of course, many interpretations of the meanings of the images in relation to the text depend upon the relative literacy of the planner or artist, much less the patron or owner; this issue remains a critical debate for art historians. In the following examination of the Thérouanne Trésors, the exchange of formal models in the margins are considered with the cycle of illustrations and with attention to the French text for more unusual motifs. The Florence Trésor (Bibliotheca Medicea Laurenziana, Ashburnham 125) is perhaps the latest copy of the group stemming from the master painter of BnF Estoire and is bound in a compendium context with other instructive manuals and histories written in the vernacular, including the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, the Sept Sages, and the Gouvernment des princes, among others. Most of the marginalia are hybrid figures throughout, but the opening folio and first gatherings contain the Dampierre group’s characteristic repertoire. The re-adaptation of marginal models from the Dampierre group repertoire, as well as the Trésor’s bestiary, to underline the principal imagery is evident in the next two examples: the Paris Trésor (BnF fr. 567), the bestiary of which is not illustrated, and the St. Petersburg Trésor, the saints and bestiary sections of which are thoroughly illustrated. The margins of the London Trésor, the bestiary of which is also illustrated, are compared to another set of didactic texts (Brussels, Royal Library, MSS 9453, 9411–26, and 9400) illustrated with miniatures by the Maître au menton fuyent working around Arras and by an assistant of the Douai group.18 In addition to teaching scenes and pseudo-religious scenes on death and the soul, these miscellanies may be seen as offering contemporary iconographic sources for marginal parodies of the noble and clerical classes. Such luxury encyclopedia must have substantially enhanced any collection of illuminated books, if not for the authoritative content alone then as a mirror of human knowledge. Brunetto described the moralizing purpose of his Treasure: “ . . . he (Brunetto) shows very well what a man must do and what his moral character must be and how he must live honestly and govern himself and his household and his belongings according to the sciences of ethics and economics.”19 Each of the manuscripts covered in this chapter offers a mirror to the purpose and enjoyment of marginal vignettes in a type of historical text that, as Richard Kaeuper in Chivalry and Violence notes, was

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inseparable from the descriptions of battles and journeys in the romances.20 These luxury compilations in the vernacular participate in the expanding literary tastes of book patrons at the turn of the fourteenth century. APES AND AUTHORS IN THE FLORENCE TRÉSOR At least two styles of illumination were employed to illustrate the compendium with the Trésor and other French texts that is housed in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, Ashburnham MS 125 (335 x 230/222 mm., 266 fols.).21 The first is stylistically similar to the Dampierre group and is also linked to the Chansonnier of Arras, containing lyrics by Adam of la Halle and Richard of Fournival (Arras, Médiathèque municipale, MS 139).22 In addition to the demonstrable repertoire on the first folio, the Florence Trésor has also been connected to the Thérouanne group via another Lancelot, a Roman d’Alexandre, and a psalter for the use of Saint Omer.23 An entirely different style appears in the opening to the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle (fol. 121r), although scribal evidence indicates that the compilation was conceived as a whole.24 The remaining texts include the Olympiade (fol. 135r), Genealogie des rois de France (fol. 135v), Sept Sages (fol. 136v), Enseignement de sapience (fol. 162bis r), Livre du gouvernment by Giles of Rome (fol. 166r), and a medicinal tract by Hippocrates (fol. 242r).25 The text on princely guidance by Giles of Rome is well-illustrated with a miniature and nine historiated initials dividing books on the government of self, family, and state.26 The opening folios of these texts contain a typical range of marginalia, including animals, isolated figures, and varied hybrid grotesques. One long-legged model—either topped by a female torso wearing a hairnet or more often a bearded male wearing a gilded cone Jewish hat—was used frequently again in a Histoire de la Guerre Sainte (Books 16–25, BnF, fr. 2754) linking the two histories closely in style.27 The decoration remains interesting for study in context with these new vernacular texts, especially in the experience of reading the historical matters and political teachings. A seperate study of the manuscript’s margins is still useful, as they extend the overlapping of repertoires into the fourteenth century with the next generation of artists and patrons. The opening page of the Florence Trésor presents a veritable template of the motifs used by the BnF-Yale painters (fig. 29), and many of them were used on the first folio and at the alphabetical divisions of the Monaldus Summa discussed in chapter 2. An inhabited letter below the dedication miniature contains the hunt with hound, hare, and squirrels in the vinescrolls. Twice lions challenge armed men, one a knight with a shield and

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Figure 29. “Here begins the Book of the Treasure,” Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, chap. 1 (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, ms. Laur. Ashb. 125), fol. 16r.

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the other a nude with a buckler. A winged hybrid above the large miniature blows a long horn, the pennon of which is also similar to the herald’s pennon in the Monaldus Summa—a gold saltire on blue ground (fol. 25v). Endlessly repeated as a motif in the Dampierre repertoire, a hunter aims his bow and arrow at the buttocks of a jester and the pipe organ is played, as usual, by a curly-haired youth delicately balanced on a border tendril. The motif of a hare playing the psaltery was also a staple to the repertoire, as it was used in the margins of the Monaldus Summa (fol. 58v) and others, but here the hare holds a shield with three dark dots on tarnished field, recalling the Kokelare arms in the Dampierre Psalter (fol. 177). Also underlining the first miniature, the educational purpose of the manuscript is pointed out with a parody of a schoolroom of apes, with an attached scene of the ape master disciplining one with a birch. The same motif was used beneath a miniature of the seven magisters in the opening miniature to the Sept Sages in BnF fr. 95 as well as to mock the figure of Hippocrates in the Estoire (fig. 26). Pigmies joust on cocks in the upper border next to a tale of ape lore. Taking advantage of the ape’s tendency toward mimicry, one trick to catching an ape was to take off and put on one’s shoes, leaving one stuck in the ground for the ape to tie itself down.28 The composition fits well to the tendrils of the pinwheel borders associated with the Thérouanne style. The outline of the Flemish proverb “a fool sits on eggs” is visible in the lower right corner, on which the scene was usually placed, but the subsequent users of this book either scraped or overused the corner of the page because it is chipped and faded. Beginning the text, the miniature itself contains a pile of treasures in the form of brown, almond-shaped stones at the feet of the author and the noble patron, which may have suggested the nesting-eggs scene. A similar juxtaposition of the nesting eggs motif and stones in the principal iconography was pointed out in the eighth quire of the Dampierre Psalter with the Martyrdom of Saint Stephen (tables 3a-3b). A comparison of the opening folios of the Florence Trésor (fig. 29) and the Monaldus Summa (fig. 9) shows how similar templates or clusters of marginalia were chosen in part as suitable for similar places on the borders, but also how the content of the main miniature was underlined by the selection of motifs. Attached to the upper border above both author portraits is a winged hybrid, perched like a gargoyle in the Trésor and bending a bow and arrow in the Summa. A battle between a knight and a lion occurs upon a horizontal tendril in the outer right margin of both opening folios. The locations for vignettes with apes are placed beneath the first column of text and within a pinwheel corner of the borders. In the Trésor, the boot trap and the ape school occupy the upper right pinwheel and the bas-de-page respectively.

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In the Summa’s bas-de-page, an ape trapping a bird constitutes another motif on trickery, while in the corner pinwheel, an ape physician holding a flask and diagnosing a stork parodies the advisory prescription of the Franciscan monk in the initial.29 Tied in these borders to contemporary authors, ape parodies mimic the compositional drawings of the learned in medieval society, especially magisters and monks, featured in the miniatures beginning the text. In places such as the first folio patterns are followed but also selected in relation to the whole of the page or the quire. By echoing the authors’ positions the apes are used to reinforce the authority of the texts as well as the manuscripts’ use for the replication of sources. Densely illustrated, the first gatherings of the Florence Trésor contain marginalia that seem to be repetitious with little relation to the text, which is related to a stagnation of development that can be observed in manuscript margins by the early fourteenth century.30 The subsequent opening folios with miniatures in the first quires of text contain motifs common to the repertoire. On fol. 20v, above a miniature with a magister and princes illustrating Chapter 19 on the establishment of kingdoms, a crippled nude is shot by an arrow; below, an ape baits a bird and hounds catch a stag. On the facing folio, opening Chapter 21 (fol. 21r), the hunting theme continues in the margins with a falconer and a composition of apes with one pushing three others in a wheelbarrow. Abandoning the typical model for the illustration of Noah’s Ark, which floats on water and contains Noah with the dove, the scene emphasizes the building of the ark to illustrate “Things that happened in the second age of the world.” The falconer may have been used to allude to the missing episode of the return of a bird to its keeper, while the more unusual image of an ape pushing a wheelbarrow containing apes may have been used to allude to the carriage of animals on board as well as the perceived folly of Noah. The latter motif follows a model used in various ways in thirteenth-century manuscripts, such as a wheelbarrow with apes in a collection of ancient texts (Arras, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 1043)31 and containing a bald-headed fool with a bauble in a mid-thirteenth century copy of Aristotle’s Physics (London, British Library, Harley MS 3487).32 Containing an uppity woman in the cart next to Frau Minne piercing the lover’s heart with an arrow in the BnF Estoire is another variation to the composition (fol. 24v). Underlining the folly of the ancients, again apes are brought into play from the marginal repertoire. A breakdown of the first three quires—each containing twelve folios— of the Florence Trésor shows that a number of bifolia were illuminated on both sides. Although the manuscript is the large scale of romances, the density of illuminations in the first gatherings allowed for many illustrations

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and the marginalia to be painted at the same time. Four folios were illuminated on the recto and verso (fols. 21r-v, 23r-v, 25r-v, and 36r-v) and including these seven bifolia were illuminated on both halves (fols. 16–23, 18–21, 24–31, 25–30, 27–28, 32–39, and 35–36). Treated much like contemporary histories or Arthurian romances, the first quires of the Florence Trésor contain numerous spears, swords, and other weapons in addition to hybrids and dogs. Across the spread of each bifolium, variety seems to be the rule. One example, however, is worth mentioning in light of the Dampierre group clusters: On the bas-de-page of fols. 25v-30r, spears with pennons echo each other—held first by a dog and then by a knight hybrid toward a nude. The upper margins of this bifolium also feature knights in combat—one a full figure and the other a hybrid. A closer examination of the bifolia may reveal more about the methods of the artists, such as the design of compositions, the application of pigments, and the sharing of models, but the interaction of the marginalia with the text seems scant. Meanwhile, the three contemporary Trésors by the Thérouanne group contain evidence of attention to the texts and illustrations at divisions made significant by the illuminators’ uses of the marginal repertoire. MAN AND BEAST IN THE PARIS TRÉSOR The Trésor in Paris, BnF fr. 567, ca. 1297 (355 x 245 mm.), contains twentyone illuminated pages in 158 folios. The bestiary is not illustrated except for one large miniature with three lions laid on three registers.33 The miniatures have burnished gold backgrounds for schoolroom scenes and illustrations of the cycle. Marginalia below and above the miniatures are punctuated with familiar figures from the repertoire, such as apes and hybrids. Motifs involving man and beast from the calendar and bestiary traditions are used on several folios to underline the textual and illustrative contents. The opening folio to the manuscript depicts lewdness or baseness on the upper and lower borders. In the upper margin, a flesh-colored ape twists to scratch his anus and to the right an ape physician examines a flask of urine, again in parody of the author depicted in the opening miniature.34 In the lower border, a half-nude male with a blue turban and wispy britches riding backward on a lion seems to be the prey of a nobleman on horseback and his huntsman with a spear. Echoing the hunting motif, small furry animals, a hare and a squirrel, are perched in the oak-leaf terminus near the fore edge of the folio. They also complement the licentiousness of the riding backward motif, which compounded with the turban on the Saracen Other provides an exotic character for the worldly scope of the Trésor.35 In the opening miniature,

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a single nobleman reading from a bifolium is seated on the ground below the magister seated at a lecturn, and thus the contrasting positions of apes and horsemen on the upper and lower borders echo the statuses of the clerical and noble figures in the miniature. In the second quire, one page (fols. 15r-15v) shares the openings of Chapters 63 and 64 on “The New Law” and “The parentage of Our Lady,” which seem to be particular places of focus in the Thérouanne group Trésors. Featuring the genealogy of Christ, the chapters are illustrated with a Jesse Tree and Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child respectively. On the recto, a lone unicorn hides in the tri-leaf border, while the miniature shows the crucified Christ held by the Virgin Mother standing on the figure of Jesse. Described in Chapter 198 of the bestiary, only a virgin could capture the unicorn; therefore, the beast points to the image of the Virgin Mary, which illustrates the capacity of the artist to connect thematically related motifs. On the verso, the same unicorn was traced exactly from one side of the page to the other so that it appears on the left side of the upper border on the recto and on the right side on the verso (fig. 30). This time, however, a partially draped, naked hunter aims his spear toward the beast. In the bas-de-page, a hound chases a stag. The miniature includes Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child in her arms and a male aristocrat kneeling at her feet. In one sense, the hunting motifs on the upper and lower borders here play a role in identifying the reader’s presumed noble status, represented by the supposed patron’s vairlined cape in the miniature. The nobleman’s supplication to the Holy Family, however, is contrasted by the exemplum of a half-naked, profane figure aiming his spear at the prone, innocent beast in the upper margin. The third quire also has two closely related margins. Chapter 86, “Here begins the first law” (fol. 18r), is illustrated with a scene of the Adoration of the Magi—the text for which continues in the next sentence on the verso. Underneath the miniature, an ape stands with a bird on his glove and talons in his other hand. The ape parodies the magi, figures of royalty for whom gifts of falcons were documented.36 A hare and a squirrel perched in the upper border also supplement the hunting theme. In the same place on the lower terminal two folios later, a lady clad in a gilded dress with long sleeves and a hairnet with a veil holds her falcon aloft (fol. 20r). In the margin above, a hound springs upon hares in the foliage. In the main miniature, a violent battle in the manner of romance miniatures illustrates Chapter 90, “How the empire of Rome returned to the Italians.”37 Blazoned shields in the nowsmeared skirmish also emphasize noble birth, both past and contemporary.38 The two marginal motifs of an ape and a woman as falconers echo each other as models and as parodies of historical princes in the illustrations.

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Figure 30. “The parentage of Our Lady,” Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, chap. 64 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 567), fol. 15v.

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Figure 31. “How nature works,” Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, chap. 99 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 567), fol. 24v.

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Two compositions involving man and beast are unusual in the margins of manuscripts by the Thérouanne group, raising questions about their possible applications to the text. Two gory animal scenes accompany the openings to Chapter 99, “How nature works in the elements” (fig. 31),39 and the second section on the Virtues and Vices (Bk. II, Chapter 50, fol. 77v). The first miniature illustrates how the nature of all things is established by the four complexions, and within a concentric disk of the elements a physician with a flask stands over a nude, sleeping Adam, which was also painted with a figure of God as Creator in the margin of fol. 3r. Near the end of the manuscript, the second miniature contains a cleric seated and speaking to two figures that are badly smeared. In contrast to the nine other scenes with a magister wearing a fur-trimmed biretta, this cleric is the only tonsured head of an authority. The marginal scenes are comparable because they are composed of man killing beast and beast killing man. Beneath the text defining the elements, a well-drawn bull complete with horns and genitalia carries a hooded man on its back; sitting on his knees, the man wields an axe over the beast. This motif derives from the traditional Flemish calendar for the labor of the month of December, and it can be related to the text of Chapter 99 in one of several ways. First, possibly a pun on the Latin for bull, the word taris is written in the last line of text just above the slaughter composition. Alternatively, the text explains the four humors followed by the four seasons, the vocabulary of which may have suggested the winter calendar illustration. The words for cold and moist appear in the definition of phlegm, for example, as well as in the definition of winter on the next page. Sanguine, or blood, is the second complexion and its hot and moist character denotes spring. In the literal sense, the letting of blood through the aorta was the first task in butchering, shown below on the lower border. By contrast, the left margin contains a man playing a pipe organ—a favorite model in the repertoire (BnF fr. 95, fol. 273r, and Florence Trésor, fig. 29). He may stand symbolically in contrast as a healthy, vivacious lad described with the elements for sanguinity. Still, another line of text that introduces the elements further enhances the choice of a slaughter scene. Brunetto notes that all things are made with the same elements, “of similar composition are the bodies of men and beasts and all animals . . . ,” equating the flesh of man and animals.40 The composition of a man on top of the beast in the margin seems unusual until the vernacular text is considered, providing a number of possible verbal connections to the visual model. On fol. 77v, opening chapter 50 of Book II on the Virtues and Vices, the miniature contains a tonsured, seated cleric and two standing figures

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whose visages are badly smeared.41 Above, a most unusual hybrid appears: a lion’s body, a dark misshapen human head, and a human arm (hand and elbow) protruding from its big teeth. The misshapen figure must reflect one of three beasts described in the bestiary: the third lion eating human flesh in the only miniature of the manuscript’s own bestiary (fol. 51r);42 the manticore, a beast described and often illustrated with a human head eating human flesh, particularly an arm; or the crocodile, which is illustrated in the London Trésor with a hairy body and an arm protruding from its jaws (fol. 49r). In Lambert of Saint Omer’s autograph manuscript for the Liber floridus, the crocodile also opens the bestiary, and to illustrate it, the body of a lion was drawn with a human face bearing a grin of teeth.43 There is not much of a textual connection to the page, however, unless the passage of text in the second column across from the miniature can be considered. “Just as man achieved lordship over other creatures, similarly a company of humans cannot be without a lord, and there can be no nobler lord than man; thus it is with every man: either he is above another or he is beneath him.”44 The crocodile and the manticore were described with human heads, and their voracious desires for human flesh perhaps represents one facet of man’s subordination to nature—also commented upon in the margin of “How nature works” with the bull slaughter. In contrast to the standard scenes of the magister in the Paris Trésor the marginal bestial motifs are brought into play with the comprehension of the text. SHIELDS AND SEXES IN THE ST. PETERSBURG TRÉSOR If the vignettes featuring heraldry in the margins have been correctly identified, the St. Petersburg Trésor, MS Fr.F.v.III,4, may have been made for a noble household ca. 1290–1320. The arms of John II of Avesnes, who became count of Hainault in 1290 in addition to Holland and Luxembourg in 1299, are suggested by Stones; another shield is repainted but may have been the arms of Luxembourg belonging to John’s wife, Phillipine (fol. 28v).45 Without depending too heavily on individual patrons, however, the inclusion of fifteen blazons in the margins certainly reflects a commission for a noble patron. Containing 149 folios (310 x 220 mm.), there are a total of 115 miniatures, including the bestiary, but many of the marginal motifs remain unstudied.46 Recently produced in facsimile with complete analyses, the manuscript can be examined in terms of the potential high-ranking noble audience more readily than those copies without heraldry.47 Models seen in the Henricus Bible, the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur, and the Dampierre Psalter are repeated in the margins of the St. Petersburg

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Trésor, and its bestiary miniatures contain motifs already in use in marginal spaces. For example, under the illustration of Noah’s Ark in Chapter 21, “Things that happened in the second age of the world,” an ape aiming an arrow at the backside of an ape mounted on a stag repeats the obscenae in the other manuscripts. Alexandra Constantinowa’s 1937 article reproduces the numerous jongleurs throughout the margins of this manuscript, but she defines the apes and hares as “disguises” for entertainers and as members of the “jugglers’ companies.”48 More important, however, the models of jongleurs appear frequently in male and female pairs: the acrobat balancing a board and the woman playing a pipe and tabor (fol. 13v); a man playing a portable organ and a woman bending backward (fol. 19v); or a woman dancing and a hooded man playing lowland bagpipes (fol. 53r). Equally important is the amount of heraldry—a total of fifteen shields that refer specifically to the noble court and, along with the marginal jongleurs and jousts, add to the luxury of this copy containing the greatest number of illustrations. Considered in context, the marginal images of male and female pairs may be seen to echo themes in the principal miniatures they accompany. The first pair occurs with a miniature illustrating the “Reign of Women,” Chapter 30, in which two women flank and crown a large, central queen. In the margin, the female playing a pipe and tabor is wearing a hairnet and gown and the sway of her hip echoes the queen’s sway in the main miniature (fol. 13v). A female dancer with a hooded bagpiper is common, and in this manuscript they flank the illustration depicting female and male lions (Chapter 174, fol. 53r). Another pair, a youth with a portable organ and a backbending female, decorate the opening to Chapter 64, the “The parentage of Our Lady,” in which donors kneel on either side in prayer to Saint Anne holding the Virgin and Child (fol. 19v). In the same miniature for the Paris Trésor, only the male supplicant is included. In this manuscript, a male wearing an arming cap kneels to the right and on the left is another male figure with curly hair wearing a hooded robe or cowl. The drawing of the head seems more faded than altered, so whether the image originally depicted a female patron cannot be discerned. Another plausible relationship, however, is that between the nobleman and noble-born clerical adviser, confessor, or relative; for example Guy of Avesnes was the bishop of Utrecht, the compiler of a didactic treatise on love, virtue, and happiness, and the brother of John II of Avesnes, Count of Hainault. Such peer-related, horizontal ties are not unimaginable during this period, but the depiction here is noteworthy for the possible patronage context of the Avesnes family. As Stones notes, it is odd that with the predominance of heraldry in the margins, no coats of arms appear with the images of the Virgin with the Jesse

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Tree and with Saint Anne—images that often feature patrons.49 Shields hang from the borders at other fairly prominent divisions, however, including the illustrations of the Kings of France, the Emperor and the Pope, the First Law, the lions in the bestiary, and the opening to Book II on Virtues and Vices. Pairs of shields, now scraped, hang from the lower border stalks of two openings: the Kings of France, Chapter 39 (fol. 15), for which the illustration is unique to the group, and the First Law, Chapter 86 (fol. 22v), the miniature of which contains a “Gnadenstuhl Trinity.”50 Blazons were also painted on shields for three jousts, including models by the master painter of the BnF Estoire such as a pair of centaurs and a combat upon other men’s shoulders. The latter bas-depage motif, in addition to a single shield hanging from a tendril in the upper border, accompanies Chapter 96 on Emperor Frederick II and Pope Innocent (fol. 26v), which ends the historical section of the Trésor with a fairly recent episode in European history. The emphasis on nobility with gilded shields and jousting youths may have made the illustration more salient to an audience such as the Avesnes. In the margins of this manuscript, like those in the BnFYale Vulgate Arthur, emphases on gender and rank seem to have been used to underline the interests of a noble reader. Meanwhile, parallels between visual models can also be seen as influencing the artistic choices. At the opening to Chapter 99, “How nature works in the elements,” apes wearing hoods and holding heraldic shields charge each other astride a stag and a ram (fol. 28v). The gules charges on the shields are damaged; if they had once been lions, they would indicate the arms of Holland and Luxembourg.51 In the upper margin, an ape baits a couple of birds with a decoy. Framed with concentric circles the miniature containing a doctor treating a man in bed opens the text on the nature of man’s four complexions. Ape parodies of physicians were common in the repertoire of these painters and were frequently depicted on the first folio—as in the St. Petersburg, Florence, and London Trésors, the Monaldus Summa, and the Yale Lancelot.52 An elaboration of ape parodies on this folio may be seen as indicating how the artist expanded upon a theme without directly repeating the same composition for the ape physician used on the first folio and the magister used inside the miniature. Heraldry also appears in the bestiary section on the lions’ page and on the last, which shares the opening for Book II of the Trésor on ethics. In the border underneath the miniature with two lions (the lioness with a bone and the male with a mane) is a shield with or a chevron gules (fol. 53r). The same shield is repeated but badly worn with another hanging from the lower border stalks on fol. 59r, opening Book II with a rubric on the Virtues and Vices and a miniature containing a tonsured cleric and tonsured students. On the foliate curl to the right an acrobat balances one sword up and

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the other down, using a Dampierre model perhaps to reinforce the opposite directions of vice and virtue. The cross-legged form of the figure also follows that of the hooded man appearing in the last two exempla of the bestiary depicted in the left column, capturing an ape’s favorite offspring and then fooling a tiger.53 The miniatures for the final subdivisions of Aristotle’s Ethics, Brunetto’s virtues and vices, and the third book on rhetoric are illustrated with schoolroom scenes. Brunetto’s second section of Book II, Chapter 50, opens with the common type of miniature containing a schoolroom administered by a tonsured cleric and contains a bas-de-page composition of two centaurs, one female wearing a veil and the other male with curly hair, jousting with shields over their torsos (fol. 77r). The shields include the blazons of Flanders differenced with a bend gules, recalling the arms of William of Termonde, facing or a saltire gules a fess sable.54 An extra opening in the middle of the second half of Book II on knowledge (Chapter 68, fol. 85v) and the last opening to Book III on rhetoric (fol. 110v) both open with the same classroom scene, except these contain a magister teaching tonsured pupils. In the bas-de-pages, two apes as falconers, one holding an owl and pointing to a stork, then two seated lions share the same pigments: the left figure of each is painted pink and the right dark brown. The magister figure is not as grand in scale or dress as the author portrait on the opening folio, the borders of which include a shield, a lion, and an ape physician as well as a gilded-antlered stag—images that are repeated beneath the magister scenes on the last opening pages. As in the Paris Trésor at the opening to Chapter 104 on “How the world is round, and how the four elements are established,” man clashes with beast in the margins.55 Despite the number of shields with blazons, two border knights in action hold only a vermillion teardrop shield and a gold buckler. The upper border knight rams a sword through a grotesque’s throat, while the lower knight points a spear with a gold pennon across the bas-de-page toward a large snail sitting on a mound of earth (fol. 30v). The text describes the how “roundness” is the strongest shape, as in the arch of a house or the capacity of a vessel. The choice of a snail for this margin may be employed to echo the miniature’s concentric circles illustrating the elements or to augment the text, but reversing the order of nature with the heavier substance of the shell on the exterior. In other contexts, however, the snail connotes vice and social disorder, so it is possible that the exclusion of heraldry in the parody may avert any slander to the intended reader. The heraldry painted in the margins of the St. Petersburg Trésor may be seen as pointing to a patron like John II of Avesnes, but the amount of miniatures and decoration certainly point to a luxury commission. Whereas

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male and female pairs underline miniatures incorporating the female sex, the shields accompany scenes depicting seated magisters or enthroned rulers, perhaps to emphasize the education of a noble reader. In addition to the damaged shields, the contents of the donor scene with Saint Anne complicate more solid efforts to attribute patronage. Therefore, the specific readership of this luxury volume remains in question. The London Trésor is a slightly later copy with a similar cycle of miniatures and its marginal motifs may also be seen as operating to engage the noble status of the patron for didactic emphases. THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY IN THE LONDON TRÉSOR Like the St. Petersburg Trésor, the London Trésor, Yates Thompson MS 19, contains a fully illuminated bestiary; however, it contains half of the opening sections—the same fifteen as those in the Paris Trésor less two of its extra illuminations (fols. 8r and 86v).56 Dating slightly earlier in style, the St. Petersburg manuscript may have served as the model for the London Trésor. Common motifs occur on three folios with a single grotesque-hybrid in the margins, four folios with musicians, and five folios with animal chases, including the pursuit of a lion, a hare, and a stag. Other recognizable models include a crippled jester with bells and a juggler with a gold dish. The remaining margins of the London Trésor were used to evoke the themes of romance, mainly highlighting knights and riders: pairs of apes joust twice, errant knights ride solo twice, and twice a knight confronts a snail and once more a dragon. The heraldry of metal devices on colored shields is not traceable, however, so a specific audience cannot be suggested. Reception of the didactic text can still be considered along with the placement of two themes about women. First, an unusual depiction of a naked woman riding a unicorn punctuates the significance of the manuscript’s most recurrent theme in the margins: riding horseback. Second, the image of the courting couple appears with resonance under the illustration for “The parentage of Our Lady.” The first folio opens with a miniature with the magister seated and teaching from a folio-laden lectern under an ornate Gothic gable. Among his students are tonsured monks, but they are eclipsed by two noblemen in the foreground—one writing and the other holding an open codex. In the margins, a viol player with a dancing dog, a bagpiper on the shoulders of a hybrid, and a rabbit are among the common motifs for an opening page. Two motifs in the lower border are often repeated in the manuscripts made in Thérouanne. A hybrid archer twists and aims a bow and arrow at a bird, which is echoed by five additional species of birds along the left border. To

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the right is a jousting combat scene: one ape fully outfitted on an ibex and carrying a shield and spear charges after another ape facing backward on a unicorn and holding a buckler and sword. The remaining riders in the London Trésor are less oriented toward parody and more demonstrative of noble ranks, signified by their dress and their mounts. In a text designed to describe the order of the world in the vernacular, the marginal positions of these riders seem fitted to the noble reader who is pictured among literate clerics and addressed by the author-magister in the first miniature. The emphasis on knighthood in the margins seems intentional, with particular attention paid to variety in forms of dress and deportment. A nobleman charges on a palfrey, barely fitting between the lower border and the text in two cases. The miniature opening Chapter 6 on “How God made all things in the beginning” contains a scene with the Creation of Adam accompanied by a stag, a lion, and possibly a ram. In contrast to the female serpent grotesques in the other margins, and squeezed onto the lower border arabesque to the same scale as the songbirds along the other borders, a youth with curly hair and holding a whip rides alone (fig. 32). The display of bachelorhood may have been used to echo the absence of Eve in the miniature, a sort of primordial and premarital state.57 Sandra Hindman’s identification of such a figure as a bacheler would play a significant role in the reception of this encyclopedia if it had been used in the context of educating noble youth. In fact the didactic purpose of Brunetto’s Trésor was formally expressed this way, “he shows very well what a man must do and what his moral character must be,” more so than in the romance’s models of historic adventure, military prowess, and chivalric behavior. In the second instance of a young knight errant, the textual support is more straightforward. A falconer on a rearing horse appears in the vertical margin of Chapter 99, “How nature works and was established by the four complexions.” The Flemish calendar scene for labor of the month of May was depicted in terms of the leisure of the nobility, especially falconry.58 In this image, the well-dressed youth wears a garland, blue stockings, and a sheathed sword. As in the Paris Trésor, the choice of a calendar scene may have been suggested by the terms used in textual descriptions of the sanguine humor or the spring season. Meanwhile the chase of a stag above and the rabbit hiding in a vine below were used to echo the hunting motif of the noble falconer. An exception to the noble class depicted in the margins occurs on the page illustrating “The things that happened in the second age of the world,” Chapter 21, a text begun with an illustration of Noah’s Ark, this time including his wife, family, and animals in the arches. Two women of base dispositions occupy the margins (fig. 33). One stands on her hands upside-down in

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Figure 32. “How God made all things in the beginning,” Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, chap. 6 (Permission The British Library, Yates Thompson MS 19), fol. 5r.

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Figure 33. “The things that happened in the second age,” Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, chap. 21 (Permission The British Library, Yates Thompson MS 19), fol. 10r.

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the vertical margin, a well-known model copied by Villard of Honnecourt and repeated in the St. Petersburg Trésor among others. On the bas-de-page, a naked woman wearing nothing but a hairnet and a tail charges on a unicorn. Both figures represent the unnatural and the licentious in medieval iconography, serving in this case together as negative exempla.59 The two figures could also have been used to refer to the passage of text concerning the genealogy from Seth through Noah. After Eve, the only mention of any wives or women at all is the reference to the two wives of Lamech and their offspring: the first builders, the first to make viols and other instruments, and the first blacksmiths, from whom descended “many evil lineages who abandoned God and his commandments” (Chapter 20).60 While this text appears on the previous verso, another immediate reference occurs at the end of the second column of text on the recto in which Lot’s escape from Sodom and Gomorra is mentioned (Chapter 22). The inclusion of female models in the margins to stand for Lot’s daughters may also serve to supplement the moral against licentious behavior. These churlish women contrast sharply with the thematic strain regarding the noble class in the remaining margins, particularly in contrast to the lady depicted in the marginal love scene opening “The parentage of Our Lady” (fig. 35). The miniatures for “The New Law” and “The parentage of Our Lady” follow slightly different compositions respectively with the Virgin standing on Jesse, holding a crucifix, and surrounded by a vine of noble-headed cameos followed on the verso by Saint Anne in twin niches elaborated with the inclusion of Elizabeth and Esmeria (Chapters 63–64). In the upper margin of the first folio, one cat chases a mouse and another has caught one (fig. 34). To the right, a hybrid archer shoots an arrow at a bird below and again the motif is paired with a mock joust. The bas-de-page features apes with swords and shields facing each other on male and female camels. Although the shields are damaged, the association of heraldry with a genealogical composition was certainly a symbiotic one highlighting the social status of the manuscript’s owner and the importance of titled lineage.61 In the bas-de-page of the second folio, two lovers embrace beneath a tree filled with birds (fig. 35). The lady holds a hawk and the man cups the woman’s chin. As in the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur, the scene of courtship depicted in conjunction with scenes about lineage may be used to show that these were intertwined concerns to the medieval nobility played out in the margins of vernacular romances and histories. In contrast to the errant knights in this manuscript, the love scene may cast marriage and progeny as courtly virtues of womanhood, or conversely from the romance tradition, the female hunter may serve to warn noble men of women’s sexual dangers.

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Figure 34. “The New Law,” Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, chap. 63 (Permission The British Library, Yates Thompson MS 19), fol. 18r.

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Figure 35. “The parentage of Our Lady,” Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, chap. 64 (Permission The British Library, Yates Thompson MS 19), fol. 18v.

Twice a bedecked knight charges with his lance against oversized snails on the lower borders of folios opening the two divisions of Part II, both of which are are rubricated des visces et des vertus: Aristotle’s Ethics and Brunetto’s own commentary on the Virtues and Vices. (fig. 36, fols. 65r and 87r). The prologue lists the four virtues prized as jewels, including prudence, temperance, courage, and justice. As the vice of cowardice had been depicted as a knight afraid of a snail, here courage against the threat could alternatively be seen as a stab at virtue, except that the natural baseness of the animal makes it unworthy prey for splendid jousting gear and thus a humorous parody of the knight in arms. The twist on the motif to open Brunetto’s commentary on the virtues and vices may underline the text: “Just as a man achieved lordship over other creatures.” On the right margin of the first opening, an archer has aimed his bow and shot an arrow toward a serpent growing from the terminal of the upper border. On the next page, folio 65v, the text translated from the beginning of Aristotle addresses the student like an archer: “Just as an archer aims his bow’s arrow towards a target, similarly each art has a final

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Figure 36. Prologue to Artistotle’s Ethics, Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, book II (Permission The British Library, Yates Thompson MS 19), fol. 65r.

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goal which guides its works.”62 The text goes on to explain the different class divisions in society, including clerics, laborers, and tradesmen, whose governor rules them for the common good. Albeit common motifs, the knight’s combat and the archer’s aim serve as visual cues drawing attention to social rank and to learning in the text. Also suggested as a possible meaning for the threatening snail is “socialclimbing.” The growth of the urban bourgeois and patrician classes resulted in struggles between the count and the towns; meanwhile the nobility was experiencing social anxieties in the face of increased monarchial power. To identify a social group posing such a humorous threat to the aristocracy, Randall locates textual slanders against the Lombard bankers and brokers who were in northern Europe and who largely financed the landed nobility and the Dampierre house in particular.63 Given the connotations toward class conflict, the choice of the theme in the context of the encyclopedia seems directly influenced by the proximate text and rubrics. Such humorous motifs that parody knighthood, including all kinds of unlikely riders and fictional foes, can be understood in multiple ways by the texts they underline.64 The same theme of combat against a snail appears in the margins for the same kind of text on the virtues and vices in Latin, which Vincent of Beauvais includes in the Speculum doctrinale (fig. 49). In a miniature in the Li ars d’amour (KBR 9543), considered in the next section, the nobleman drops his silver gilt sword at the sight of a hare and a snail to illustrate a section in a book on virtues (fig. 37).65 The use of the motif in these cases matches the textual meaning for both clerical and lay audiences. With connotations in the social realm, the snails in these cases are placed in textual contexts that define the moral behavior of the nobility. The scenes of lovers under a tree and the armed knight defeating a snail were the subjects of miniatures in another didactic text written in the early fourteenth century and illuminated by the Maître au menton fuyant in an especially commissioned new text, Li ars d’amour, de vertu, et de boneurté. Although there are few hints concerning patronage with the Trésors of the Thérouanne repertoire, the Li ars manuscripts are closely linked to the Avesnes of Hainault and Holland. The text was intended to be a didactic compendium in French for the behavior and knowledge of a courtly noble; with the illustrations the text is a close, immediate textual source for the iconographic background to popular marginal images in the marginal repertoire. In addition, two collections of fabliaux and verses were illustrated in Douai or Arras with minimal marginalia. The contexts of the illustrations in these manuscripts may be used to provide a useful assessment

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for the contemporary reception of marginalia as exempla targeted for the conduct of noble-born men and women. MINIATURES AND MARGINS IN VERNACULAR TOMES Li ars d’amour, de vertu, et de boneurté was compiled by Guy of Avesnes, bishop of Utrecht (1301–1317) and the brother of John II, the count of Hainault. Written between 1290 and 1302 and similar in content to Brunetto’s Trésor, the text resulted from studies of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics as well as Procles, Seneca, Cicero, and Thomas Aquinas, among others. Of the two illustrated copies in the Royal Library of Belgium, the first (KBR MS 9543) contains a riddle about the author in the margin, pointing to a bilingual reader of French and Flemish. In her article solving this riddle, Janet F. van der Meulen suggests that Guy and his teacher, Hendrik Bate, are pictured together as scholars with an astrolobe and an exemplum in a miniature opening the fifth book of Part II.66 The later copy (KBR MS 9548) contains the work of a different artist based in Arras and not all of the same illustrations; however, due to its rarity and localization it has been suggested that it may have belonged to someone important like a prelate of the Avesnes.67 While the miniatures of KBR 9543 made it into Randall’s Images in the Margins because the subject matter of the illustrations shares themes with the margins, the later KBR 9548 did not although its borders display only terminal figures.68 Studying miniatures in the Li ars d’amour provides an opportunity to consider popular marginal motifs as framed illustrations of a text written in the vernacular. The divisions between texts are not prominently marked on the pages for which new sections begin; rather, numbers spelled out in the running titles help to subdivide the books within the three parts. The column-width miniatures feature common compositions for the illustration of the moral lessons enumerated in the text. The first part contains four books and nineteen illustrations (fols. 12r-70v). The second part opens more significantly with an image of Christ in Majesty, enthroned in a mandorla, holding a mappa mundi, and flanked by angels with censors. The second part contains six books and fortyseven miniatures (fols. 71r-267v), and its third book contains the most illustrations of any in the manuscript, numbering twenty-eight (fols. 116r-202r).69 The third part contains two books but opens with only one illustration (fols. 268r-314). In it, a tonsured cleric reads from an exemplum on a lecturn, but he is turned away from an audience of six aristocrats with curly hair. Following an alphabetical index (fols. 1–4v) and a table of contents (fols. 5r-11r) in the front matter, the first illustration is not about the

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author but rather shows the God of Love shooting arrows at lovers (fol. 12r). Although it is a framed miniature on burnished gold background, Randall cites the image as an example of “Man and woman before Eros in tree” which appears in the margins of fourteenth-century manuscripts made in Ghent and on the first folio of the Arras Chansonnier.70 With profane love imagery occupying the first frame, the moralistic text is immediately set in relation to the interests of the laity. Part I, the art of love, presents several miniatures of the medieval family, an investigation into which has been opened by van der Meulen in her article on the reception to the “art of love” by the families of Avesnes and Dampierre.71 In the first book, the marginal riddle regarding the author is written next to a scene of the Judgment of Solomon featuring a father, mother, and swaddled baby (fol. 13v).72 Opening the second book is an unusual scene of lovers standing inside the same cloak between two trees and holding an unwound scroll (fol. 22v). The second book ends with a scene of parents disciplining their children, which is instructive regarding the purposes of learning the material presented in the text (fol. 47r). Twice in the manuscript conjugal love is illustrated with a couple in bed, the first followed by the disorderly housewife in the third book of Part I and the second featuring royalty under an ermine bed cover in the third book of Part II (fols. 53v and 131v). Becoming more popular through the fourteenth century, the motif of the housewife beating her husband (fol. 54r) shows an early appearance in this manuscript.73 Here husband and wife are seated on a bench, but her raised cudgel contrasts with the typical scenes of conversations between lovers, one of which opens the fourth book, as well as scenes of laymen with confessors and advisers with rulers. Other motifs framed in the miniatures are commonly found in the margins. In the second book of Part I on the art of love, hunting is represented by a young man on horseback with a falcon (fol. 25v).74 Bestiary themes are included in the fourth book of Part I; for example, a tigress fooled by a mirror appears as a spotted doe (fol. 60r) and a wolf chases a lamb (fol. 59v). In the third book of Part II on the virtues and vices, bestiality is illustrated by a lion hybrid emitting a human head from its mouth and a human torso from its back (fol. 187v). Twice a man confronts a beast (fols. 23v and 122r): the first confrontation contains an oversized serpent attacking a nobleman and the second contains a knight defeating the serpent. On the same folio depicting the nobleman and the serpent, a second miniature shows the same nobleman with instruments of leisure, illustrating the manners of men according to their age. On the ground are balls and a paddle and the nobleman kneels holding a type of gaming stick and a bow. Near the end

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of the manuscript, at the base of the text, a two-column width miniature is the only illustration for the sixth book of Part II. Showing the pleasures of man (les delectations bones), eleven wavy-haired men engage in tumbling, a medieval form of stickball (with the same paddle as that on the ground in the other illustration), feasting, and rolling dice (fol. 251v). Many of these motifs, whether falconry, games, combats, or hybrids, appear frequently in the margins of contemporary manuscripts, so their functions as illustration in this manuscript carry with them explanations for social and behavioral expectations. A closely related series of miniatures opens the third book of Part II, containing the most illustrations and addressing the virtues and vices one by one. The image of a knight fleeing from a hare and a snail was used to illustrate “things to fear and not to fear with force” (fig. 37). The didactic iconography of the marginal image, after all, had been connected to vice in both Latin and French texts by different painters and is here connected to a contemporary text ordered by a bishop.75 The knight throws his hands up, dropping his buckler and a scythe, at the sight of both a hare and a snail. In the miniatures of the preceding and two following folios, identifiable arms are figured in combat scenes. In the battle scene of the facing page, three bendlets appear on the shield (fol. 116v). In the next quire, illustrating a lesson on strength (fol. 118v), the arms of Hainault with three chevrons are included. The arms of Flanders are figured in a combat between knights in the miniature on fol. 121r. In this passage of imagery on these quires (fols. 110–117 and 118–125), the popular vice of cowardice was collated with the heraldry and lessons on military strength to emphasize moral fortitude for the warrior class. Scholars have provided numerous explanations for the significance of the snail motif in the marginalia of the thirteenth century, ranging from the natural garden nuisance espoused by Champfleury to the social derision of the Lombard bankers in the region located by Randall in popular literature.76 Associated with the virtues and vices rubrics in the London Trésor, the motif is used by another artist to supplement the same text in the Latin encyclopedia, the Bruges Speculum doctrinale (see fig. 49). Frightened by a hare in the Dampierre Psalter (fol. 184r), the cowardly knight appears on the recto of the same page as a youthful bachelor with a shield involved in a boar hunt, appearing in the seventeenth quire with a mermaid, a nude male, and two foxes attacked by simpler men (tables 5a-5b). In the devotional context the motif may appear parody the prowess of the patron but may also appear more closely the text of Psalm 118:31, Domine ne confundus me (put me not to shame). The context of the motif in Yale 229, with a knight on horseback confronting a snail on a dung heap (fol. 169r), on

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Figure 37. Li ars d’amour, de vertu, et de boneurté (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 9543), fol. 117r.

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the other hand, appears on the same bifolium as a bestiary motif associated with discipline in times of war: the falcon eating its prey (fol. 174v).77 The confrontation against the snail accompanies a miniature illustrating King Arthur threatening a squire and sounding his horn; the avian composition appears on the lower border next to a miniature illustrating Lancelot’s dementia in the woods. These various manifestations of cowardice operate in each case to amplify the ignoble versus noble behaviors espoused by the text and images they accompany. Two more manuscripts associated with the Douai group and the Maître au menton fuyent contain the snail motif in margins near miniatures concerning the literacy and the soul of laity. The Recueil ascetique, Brussels, KBR MS 9400, is a vernacular text of 109 folios and was painted by hands connected to the Douai group. Twice hybrid men hold shields, the first containing the arms that Gaspar and Lyna used to trace provenance to Flanders: de gueules a quatre cotices d’argent.78 Mass is said in the nearby miniature for “Twelve Sacraments for the Soul.” Next to another miniature of a noble woman at mass (fol. 88v), illustrating the “Credo in French,” a man with a cudgel fights a snail in the margin (fig. 38). On the following folio, the “Morals of Philosophers” is illustrated by an image of Cicero and Cato as magisters; in the margin a plain shield is held by a hybrid knight (fol. 90v).79 The association of the snail motif and shields in this section of a didactic text again seems to be used to reiterate the moral aspirations and spiritual guidance encouraged toward the literacy of the secular nobility. In KBR MS 9411–26, a Recueil de poésies morales, fabliaux, dits, et contes, was painted by the Maître au menton fuyant and the assistant. On fol. 105r, Adam of Suel as a magister and a nobleman holding gloves gesticulate in conversation and in the bas-de-page a man with a sword flees from a snail (fig. 39).80 In the same gathering on the previous folio, another marginal image shows a man taking an axe against a snail, while the miniature shows a verse on the soul in which a physician or magister narrates, while the figure lying in bed emits a naked figure out of his mouth to a hovering angel. These illustrations emphasize the confession and counsel of a nobleman as superior to the violent, irrational vices embodied in the margins. The circumstances for the production of this kind of text and the other didactic collections such as Le Trésor allow the smallest motifs to play a role in gauging the reception of such self-reflexive imagery. The different contexts in which these motifs were used in vernacular texts illustrates a common thread among them in that their functions were didactic and aimed toward the education of the nobility who read them. The early use of the snail motif in the stone relief of the choir of Notre Dame at Chartres reflects the moralistic view of the clergy; the motif ’s recurrence in

Figure 38. Recueil ascétique, (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 9400), fol. 88v-89r.

Figure 39. Recueil de poésies morales, fabliaux, dits, et contes (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS, 941126), fol. 105r.

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texts on the virtues and vices enhances the exemplum for the noble reader.81 In the case of these compilations and collections, the parody of the nobility directed to a noble audience can be used to empower the reader with the moral, historical, and philosophical truths that can be found in the French text without the conduit of Latin literacy.

Chapter Six

Opening Books, Underlining Authorities

The Speculum majus as a text has long been a staple to medieval art history, although, oddly enough, the illuminated manuscripts themselves were largely neglected. Emile Mâle, in The Gothic Image, approached Gothic art in France through the lenses of the “Mirrors” of Vincent of Beauvais. “If Aquinas was the most powerful thinker of the Middle Ages, Vincent of Beauvais was certainly the most comprehensive.”1 Looking at the nascent naturalism of the margins under the rubric of the “Mirror of Nature,” Mâle echoes Saint Bernard of Clairvaux’s disgust at “these unclean monkeys, these savage lions, and monstrous centaurs” within the church walls and concludes, “It is evident that the flora and fauna of medieval art, natural or fantastic, has in most cases a value that is purely decorative.”2 The illuminated copies of the Speculum majus in the present chapter show instead how marginalia were used to perform suturing functions for the reader with typical motifs and variations on popular themes. Vincent’s Speculum majus was written for the edification of the French king Louis IX. Soon after its completion, copies were illuminated for monasteries in the dioceses of Thérouanne, Tournai, and Arras. Although the illuminated manuscripts of the Speculum majus recently have received some long overdue attention, the marginalia of the Flemish-Artesian region’s copies remain discounted for their supposed lack of any relationship to the text.3 Three centers of manuscript production in particular—Saint Omer, Arras, and Douai—illuminated multi-volume encyclopedias with historiated initials and borders with marginal imagery. The Dampierre group, broadened in its later generation and influence to become the Thérouanne group; the Maître au menton fuyant, likely based in Arras; and the Douai group, which introduces a variety of motifs to the marginal repertoire, each were involved in illuminating parts of the Speculum majus for regional monastic patrons.4 The three styles may be used to illustrate the different ways illuminators 145

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employed standardized motifs to facilitate citing the authorities and to guide the reader toward learning exempla, metaphors, or allegorical senses outside the text. The manuscripts of the Speculum majus are typically incomplete because the text was three times the size of the Bible. In fact, Vincent designed the Speculum majus to be broken up, since a whole multi-volume set would result in an extraordinary expense for any one library or book owner.5 Divided into the mirrors of history, nature, and doctrine, each mirror contains thirty-two books of thirty to fifty folios each. Split into volumes, each contains 300–400 folios and measures over forty centimeters in height. Unlike the columnwidth miniatures in the Trésors, historiated initials are used to open each book of the Latin text. Although the three parts of the Speculum majus examined in this study come from different centers on the Franco-Flemish border, the marginal images in each distinguish the page from the repeated initials that open each book. Some divisions have illustrations with biblical or historical subjects, but most initials contain magisters with birettas and tonsured monks often gesticulating or reading over a group of seated students, but magisters also perform the roles of author, narrator, advisor, and doctor.6 Of the three parts constituting the Speculum majus, the Speculum historiale was more frequently illustrated. One volume, MS 131, now in the city library in Boulogne-sur-Mer, was illuminated in Saint Omer, Thérouanne, and is linked stylistically to the Dampierre group.7 This volume contains nineteen historiated initials with burnished gold backgrounds and animated borders dividing the books over the course of 420 folios (fig. 40). According to the colophon, this Speculum historiale was destined in 1297 for Eustache of Lille, the abbot of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Bertin near Saint Omer (1294–97).8 The text and illuminations, but not the marginalia, were copied almost exactly in the early fourteenth century in Boulogne-sur-Mer, MS 130.9 The later manuscript includes a second volume, suggesting that MS 131 also originally contained two volumes. The text in the second volume of MS 130 contains Vincent’s compilations of exempla, such as those by Hélinand of Froidmont and the lives of saints.10 Rather than proverbs and fables, however, the marginalia in these volumes echo themes popular in contemporary romances and chansonniers. Decorated with hunting scenes and duels on the borders, this history text is illustrated primarily with emperors dressed as contemporary royalty. There are only two known illuminated sets of the Speculum naturale, of which one, consisting of three volumes, is housed in the former Prémonstratensian Abbey of Bonne-Espérence in Vellereille-les-Brayeux east of Arras where it was illuminated (figs. 41, 44–46).11 Alison Stones identifies the

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Figure 40. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, book 13 (Bibliothèque municipale de Boulogne-sur-Mer (France), MS 131), fol. 285v.

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artist with manuscripts illuminated by the Maître au menton fuyant who was responsible for all of the eighteen illuminated folios in two of the volumes, including a prologue for each and opening nine books in the first volume (MS 4, 369 folios) and seven books in the second volume (MS 5, 250 folios).12 Divided according to the days and particular events of creation, each book opens with a historiated initial containing illustrations of the natural world against red or blue patterned backgrounds. Figures of a magister wearing a biretta or God with a halo and beard narrate the Creation scenes, perhaps interchanging the Classical Latin teacher and the Christian authority of Christ.13 In these volumes, the marginalia are neatly arranged along the bas-de-page with one figure under each column of text and occasionally a songbird on the ivy-leaf terminal. Hybrid combinations of human heads and animal bodies are more frequently represented than other motifs. The third and last part of the majus, composed separately by Vincent of Beauvais around 1250, is the Speculum doctrinale. The only surviving illuminated copy of this text belonged to the former Cistercian Abbey of Ter Duinen and dates roughly to the last two decades of the thirteenth century (figs. 42, 47– 51). Containing 340 folios, nine are illuminated with initials containing masters and students to begin the Apologia and to divide books 1–8 on letters and morals. It was illuminated in Douai, in the diocese of Arras, where other large-scale liturgical and vernacular prose manuscripts were illuminated by the same painters for Cistercian patrons.14 Compared to the courtly demeanors and fluid lines of the Parisian style visible in the other works, the style of this group appears to be simplified and sketchy, with stocky figures and unfinished contours. But the marginalia are not limited to one or two motifs and feature instead over five vignettes per page. The motifs are also more playful and are often inter-related, with scenes from everyday life, visual puns, and bestial exempla. Since encyclopedias were primarily copies of past authorities, they were useful reference tools for the art of rhetoric practiced by masters, teachers, and preachers alike. Vincent’s examples of natural, historical, and doctrinal matters were intended to be committed to memory in order to compose or to speak with written authority.15 Despite the different needs for the illustrations of each Mirror, the opening of each was used to emphasize the citation of the text. In the opening initial of the Apologia to the Boulogne Speculum historiale, Vincent is depicted in his Dominican tonsure and habit. He sits in a chair-desk and copies a book that is set upon an oversized classical column—perhaps emphasizing the ancient sources upon which his text was based. In the initial for the beginning of the Prologue to the Vellereille Speculum naturale, the author is depicted as a magister wearing a biretta and reads from an exemplum on a lectern attached to his basilica-shaped bench (fig. 41). The first sentence of text emphasizes

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Figure 41. Prologue, Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale (Vellereille-les-Brayeux, Abbaye de Bonne-Espérance (Belgium), MS 5, Books 26–32), fol. 1r.

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Figure 42. “Apologia,” Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum doctrinale (Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 251), fol. 1r.

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recollection (memoriæ), speaking (labilitas), and writing (scripta). The Bruges Speculum doctrinale opens with the cloistered novitiate or chapter house, over which presides a tonsured monk teaching and pointing to an exemplum on the lectern (fig. 42). In The Book of Memory, Mary Carruthers explains that for medieval authors text-making, writing, or speaking involved the placing or gathering together of divided bits. In short, authorities that were read were also digested and could then be ruminated into a composition.16 Vincent cited his sources parenthetically so as not to lose the sources in the margins, as was the practice in the twelfth century, and the scribes highlighted the names of those authorities in red rubrics.17 When it came to recalling things, mental games were not considered childish but served to aid in meditation and preaching. The game of bowls in the margins of the Vellereille Speculum naturale and the Bruges Speculum doctrinale perhaps served as reminders to do so, especially in juxtaposition to the magisters in the initials (fig. 41).18 By contrast, the same game in the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur twice accompanies images of women’s deception,19 thus illustrating how the same motif indicating a rhetorical device operates for two different contexts. Only one quotidian vignette is repeated in the encyclopedia of the three regional styles: the scene of fishing. According to Lilian Randall’s index of images in the margins, the scene of a man fishing in a stream was not common in the late thirteenth century.20 In terms of the context of an encyclopedia’s use, there are several ways to interpret the motif. The common notion of the devil as a “fisher of men” may have been employed to contribute a general, moral anecdote to support the didactic sense of the text. In French, the words pécheur (sinner) and pêcheur (fisherman) are near homonyms, according a role for the vernacular in the margins of the Latin text. In the context of the monastic library, a scene of fishing could also refer to the reader’s action of referencing and remembering the authorities cited. According to Carruthers, metaphors of hunting and fishing were often cited in treatises on the art of memory. “Hunting for words” and “fishing for thoughts” were ways to search the inventory of one’s memory bank.21 Birds were another ubiquitous motif used in the treatises on memory: “Birds, like memories, need to be hunted down.”22 In Brunetto Latini’s copy of Aristotle’s Ethics, the archer aiming his bow and arrow illustrates that every art has purpose guiding its works (fig. 36).23 The margins of all three parts of the Speculum majus include birds perched on the initials and borders. Bows and arrows being aimed at different prey, more often birds and stags than buttocks, were common enough to any repertoire, but the function of the

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encyclopedic text itself may be used to suggest that the decoration was particularly meaningful in this context. The provenances of the Speculum majus manuscripts in monastic libraries contribute to understanding the educational purpose of marginalia in the cloister versus the leisure context. BOULOGNE SPECULUM HISTORIALE The role of kingship is emphasized in fifteen of the eighteen initials for the Boulogne-sur-Mer copy of the Speculum historiale (Bibliothèque municipale de Boulogne-sur-Mer, MS 131). Crowned rulers seem to supply the appropriate iconography for a mirror of world history that was originally written for the education of the reigning monarch, Louis IX, but this particular copy was made for the abbot of Saint Bertin, Eustache of Lille. Embossed against the gold backgrounds, the rulers either stand in a niche or sit enthroned before advisers or their households. The fishing scene in this manuscript occurs in the bas-de-page between a twisting ape and a hunter and beneath the enthroned Diocletian addressing two men to open book 13 (fig. 40). In the letter M of book 8, the ruler Tyberius consults a magister and illustrates the type of relationship the advising cleric was supposed to hold with the court (fol. 146r). The lessons of ancient kings are pictured primarily as conversations with kings, whose historical exempla are framed both by the authority of the letter and by the didactic function of the borders surrounding the text. Five initials contain narrative scenes (fols. 54v, 77v, 174r, 202r, and 231v). For three books, the stories are elaborated in the lower margin (fols. 77v, 95r, and 105bis v), and these scenes were copied in the next generation’s copy, Boulogne-sur-Mer MS 130. In the first pair of the historiated initials, the Finding of Moses is followed by the dream of Astiages regarding his daughter’s progeny (books 3–4). The lower border contains a crowned and swaddled Cyrus protected by a dog; the man with the swaddled, crowned baby and its mother to the right echo the previous initial’s composition with Moses as a baby. Emphasis on succession continues in the narrative margins of the next pair of folios for books 5 and 6. First, the reign of Alexander the Great begins with his succession to Philip of Macedonia in the I-initial, and the battle with Persians ensues below with blazons on the shields of the knights and a herald (fol. 95r).24 Then upon the death of Alexander, the empire is divided among four rulers standing two-by-two in the I-initial (fol. 105bis v). In the bas-de-page, Alexander’s deathbed is depicted along with several onlookers, a composition echoing those in historiated initials used previously in Astiages’s dream and later in the larger scale composition

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illustrating Claudius’s succession (fol. 202, book 10).25 Likely engaged in contemporary politics at the crossroads of Flanders, England, and France, the owner of this manuscript may have seen these illustrations and their marginal extensions as emphasizing the terms of progeny and succession necessary to the secular rulers. In the Boulogne Speculum historiale, the device for using narrative marginalia to enhance the scenes in the historiated initials was applied to the margins of a sumptuously decorated bible, Saint Omer, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 5, also illuminated by the Thérouanne group. As Stones notes, the similar narrative enhancement makes the Boulogne copy of the Speculum historiale highly individualized.26 Other divisions in the manuscript contain otherwise basic models in the repertoire. Scenes of a royal audience were standard to the repertory of illuminators and did not require specific knowledge of the text. Many of the marginal images were also chosen from standardized models.27 Especially numerous are the marginal scenes of hunting—including combinations of hare, stag, hound, and hunter—that decorate the lower border of eleven folios. Fighting with a sword and buckler occurs on six folios, two of which are duels, and the latter three depict a man battling a grotesque hybrid. Apes appear five times in the borders of this volume, twice snaring birds, twice eating fruit, and once wielding a sword (fig. 40). These motifs are perhaps the most common of the major workshops in northern Europe, but Carruthers argues for their utility in what she calls “memory-work,” which is especially appropriate for the authorities Vincent quoted on history. In distinguishing the page with what Richard Rouse and Mary Rouse term “artificial finding devices,” the repetitive can perform additional functions for the reader of the manuscript.28 As metaphors of hunting were often cited in treatises on the art of memory, the motif of the bow and arrow had metaphorical meanings in the context of Dominican education, which was the intention of Vincent of Beauvais. Hugh of Saint Cher’s quote, “First the bow is bent in study, then the arrow is released in preaching,” emphasizes the role of learning and memorization before composition and speech.29 In the illustrations of the Boulogne historiale, the rulers more frequently speak to an audience in the initials, enacting their authority through past examples of rulership. The marginalia underlined the function of the Speculum as a source for the consultation of authorities in and on history, whose examples could be gathered in and recalled from memory. In the margins of the Boulogne Speculum historiale, the model pattern for the eleven hunting scenes displays a choice of four figures, represented together on fol. 146r: a hare, a stag, a hound, and a hunter (some blowing bugles

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rather than aiming bows). Four of the vignettes contain three figures (fols. 1r, 8v, 259v, 337v), three contain two (fols. 28v, 174r, 285v), and three contain only one of the figures (fols. 231v, 389r, 436r). In addition, folios at the beginning and end of the volume both contain apes trapping birds below the first column (fols. 28v and 436r). The artist betrays his use of a model on fol. 28v. The margin of the page below the arabesque tendrils contains a preliminary sketch of a dog pouncing to the right. In the twelve depictions of a hound, this is one of two facing right instead of left. The second hound facing right is the one that suckles Cyrus in the bas-de-page of fol. 77v. The Boulogne Speculum historiale was copied three decades later from within the same abbey. A different artistic hand was responsible for each of the two volumes of MS 130 (books 1–18 and 19–32).30 Evidence of the first artist on fol. 183v, which was left unpainted, shows that marginal motifs were drawn alongside the miniatures and borders before gilding or coloring (fig. 43). The modeling upon the older work is faithful to the narrative scenes, but the marginalia are more attenuated and decorative: spiky

Figure 43. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, book 10 (Bibliothèque municipale de Boulogne-sur-Mer (France), MS 130), fol. 183v.

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hybrids echo the form of spiky border tendrils and hares populate most of the borders. The narrative marginalia follow the older manuscript’s models fairly closely; for the battle against the Persians, however, the shields and pennon are decorated with plain colors of vermillion, pink, and green rather than with blazons (fol. 83r). On the other hand, models such as the hound chasing the stag are copied exactly (e.g. fol. 8v in MS 131 and fol. 5v in MS 130). A well-known center of learning, the abbey of Saint Bertin served as a conduit for the Anglo-Norman ecclesiastics, who in turn took the cult into England.31 According to archival records, numerous authors and compilers visited the sizable library, so the encyclopedia may have been consulted or viewed by any number of clerics. In his various roles as the caretaker of the Benedictine community or as an adviser to local princes, Abbot Eustache was supplied with at least two sumptuous volumes of historical exempla. Latin texts in these monastic library collections, such as the Speculum historiale, served as models for vernacular texts as well, such as the Spiegel Historiael written in Dutch by Jacob of Maerlant, who was educated in Bruges at Saint Donation. Possibly made for Count Floris V of Holland, one sumptuous manuscript of this verse history was illustrated in Ghent with a few margins containing mermen, hunters, and prey, as well as heraldry in the miniatures.32 Whether written for an abbot or a count, the difference between the Latin authorities and vernacular verses did not alter the importance of recalling similar examples in history. The marginal images in the Boulogne Speculum historiale may be used to illustrate that although many of the repertoire figures were repeated, seeming somewhat stagnant, the hunts and chases may have provided encouragement to the memory work expected of a reference book in the way that Carruthers proposes. Alternatively, the popular pastimes of the nobility may simply have been used to echo the secular world illustrated in the miniatures. Educational curricula certainly influenced the needs for consultation and memory resulting in a two-fold basis for the aesthetic elaboration in the borders: the prestige of a deluxe edition of a relatively new text in the abbacy’s acquisitions and the practical application of repeated motifs to arrive at exempla, metaphors, or the literary and allegorical senses for citation and oration. In turning to another section of the Speculum, on nature, the unnatural combinations of hybrids and the memory motifs of hunts and duels by the Maître au menton fuyant illustrate another approach to the borders of a reference work with complementary ties to the illustrations in the initials and the words in the rubrics.

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VELLEREILLE SPECULUM NATURALE A pair of volumes of the Speculum naturale has recently come to light in the collection of the former Prémonstratensian Abbey of Bonne-Espérance in Vellereille-les-Brayeux, MS 4, books 16–25 (XVII-XXV)33 and MS 5, books 26–32.34 Organized according to the days of Creation, the initials illustrate the latter books for the fifth day showing the creation of the birds and fish; for the sixth day including the creation of different kinds of animals, serpents, man, and the nature of his soul; and for the seventh day expanding on questions of the Universe, sin, life, and geography. Figures of authority in the initials recite the order of events; they vary evenly between a tonsured monk, a magister, and God as Creator.35 Although the margins in this manuscript contain a number of hybrid creatures and conflicts, as well as other typical motifs, the marginalia do exhibit subtle relationships to the iconography in the historiated initials and sometimes the running title or rubrics. The two volumes both open formally with prologues, rubricated with Apologia toti’ operis. They each open with a magister narrating about the four elements in the first and consulting an exemplum in the second. The first prologue depicts him pointing at fire, earth, and water. In the lower margin, human hybrids play the psaltery and the harp. The second opening depicts the scholar at a desk, with one hand resting on his chin and the other on the open bifolium on the lectern (fig. 41). Below, a bird is perched on the vine tendril over game of bowls on the lower border. On the subject of the seventh day, De universo, a figure of the Creator explains the realms of the universe, which are embodied by an angel, two men, a lion, and a dog (book 29, fig. 44). The marginalia include a songbird, an owl perched in the corner, and originally the fishing scene below. Symbolically the owl was considered evil, underlining the negative exemplum of the fisherman now excised from the margin. Created on the fifth day, birds and the fish are subjects of previous initials opening books 16–17 (XVIIXVIII). On the sixth day at books 18–19 (XIX-XX), illustrations of wild and domestic animals include a lion and a dog, which are repeated in the seventh day’s initial about the Universe.36 The contents of the margins with birds and fish seem to complement the spectrum of beings presented in these initials.37 Also possibly accounting for the fishing motif is the subject of the following book 30 concerning man’s sinful nature, if the Latin peccator (sinner) is suggestive of the piscator (fisherman). Complementary relationships between the margins and the historiated initials occur elsewhere in the manuscript; these were overlooked in Christel Meier’s article on the initials.38 Under the initial depicting the creation of

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Figure 44. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale, book 29 (Vellereille-les-Brayeux, Abbaye de Bonne-Espérance (Belgium), MS 5, Books 26-32), fol. 146r.

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the domestic animals, including a horse, hound, and pet dog, a cat chasing a mouse in the margin supplements the domestic menagerie above (book 28, fol. 19). This natural hunting motif had a long tradition in the earliest marginalia of manuscript illumination in the Book of Kells. Running after the cat and mouse, a harpy with the veiled head of a lady and the body of a bird might suggest the feminine wiles of lay women.39 In the next book’s initial, the lion, stag, and hare represent the wild beasts; hounds below bound across the border after a small rabbit, again enhancing the menagerie of hunted prey. Below the book opening with the Creation of Eve (book 23, fol. 266r), a male centaur plays the tabor while the female dances, perhaps embodying corporeal lust with their animal hinds.40 The last book of the Vellereille Speculum naturale summarizes the geography of the world (book 32, fig. 45), illustrated by God enthroned and holding an orb with the tripartite mappa mundi. In the marginal composition, the artist clearly understood the encyclopedic sense of the illustration, for the lower border contains a bat-winged dragon (the only serpent of its kind in the manuscript) and an unusual hybrid in the form of an elephant. Since Africa and Asia stood outside the margins of medieval Europe, the elephant famed by Isidore of Seville is attempted with the long trunk holding a fish. The design was so uncommon that it was practiced on the opposite folio (fig. 46).41 The two hybrids may represent the myth of the red pigment, “dragonsblood.” Romantically named and widely used in book-decoration, the color was described in medieval encyclopedias as a pigment formed not merely from dragons but from the mingling of the blood of elephants and dragons that have killed each other in battle.42 The description of Africa and Asia in the map and in the text may have suggested the exotic source of the artist’s pigment. Another folio’s marginal grotesques exhibit a careful reading of the rubricated running title at the top of the folio for book 26. In the historiated initial, a man sleeps on a bed while a magister gesticulates in oral recitation. On the lower border, two hybrids face each other. One, a knight in profile with the body of a hound charges at a frontally-faced visage with wide open eyes and a kettle for a crown. The running title specifies that the book is about dreaming and waking (De somno et vigilia), illustrated by the sleeping figure in the initial. Supplementing the content of the text and illustration, the contrast between the darkened profile and the whole face on the marginal hybrids is clearly intended for a reader’s use and reception.43 Hybrids and grotesques engaging in conflict from opposite sides of the page are characteristic of many of the other opening folios in this Speculum naturale. Of the eighteen openings, ten pairs of hybrids decorate the lower

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Figure 45. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale, book 32 (Vellereille-les-Brayeux, Abbaye de Bonne-Espérance (Belgium), MS 5, Books 26-32), fol. 330v.

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Figure 46. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale, book 32, cont. (Vellereille-lesBrayeux, Abbaye de Bonne-Espérance (Belgium), MS 5, Books 26-32), fol. 331r.

borders; there are also three single hybrids next to other figures on the eight remaining folios, which include common motifs such as chases, games, rams, and an ape shot in the rear. Carruthers addresses hybrids and violent compositions in particular, arguing that their unexpected juxtapositions were used to provide mnemonic devices. Although the subject of the image may have nothing to do with the content of the text, the composition provided a dynamic template upon which bits of information—like syllables of a word or parenthetical citations—could be attached and retained in the memory.44 The varied compositions of hybrids bring to mind the “placing together of divided bits” advocated by Hugh of Saint Victor.45 These few examples are cited to show that the subject of the text may have been recalled according to such memory devices as the construction of hybrids, hunting scenes, and duels.46

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The career of the Maître au menton fuyant remains to be explored in more detail now that Stones has identified a number of the manuscripts dating from the 1290s to 1325 with which the master and his assistants were involved.47 In particular, the psalter in Tournai Cathedral (Scaldis H 12/2) may have been intended for William of Termonde, and its margins contain the bawdiest acrobatic apes with genitalia in addition to the hybrid figures whose models were repeated in this Speculum naturale.48 The interactions with the text and supplements to the principal illuminations that the marginalia are allowed to carry in this text remain to be gauged in future studies against the devotional and vernacular prose texts for which the Maître au menton fuyant was responsible. Likewise, the work of the nearby Douai group, discussed in the next section on the Bruges Speculum doctrinale, also included devotional, liturgical, and vernacular texts, but the Douai artist’s marginal motifs display a greater range and variety of iconographic sources that also need exploration in future studies. Rather than attempting a comprehensive review of the group’s marginal repertoire, the Bruges Speculum doctrinale provides an unusual text containing a range of marginalia that function most clearly as exempla for a monastic context. BRUGES SPECULUM DOCTRINALE In the third part of the Speculum majus, the “mirror of doctrine,” Vincent of Beauvais organizes the realm of human knowledge according to scholarly, practical and moral criteria. In this sense, it was especially useful to preachers and teachers. Yet the only illuminated copy surviving from the thirteenth century belonged to the Cistercian Abbey of Ter Duinen (Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 251). On the last page of text, “Beate Marie de Thosane” is inscribed, tracing its later acquisition by the daughter monastery of Ter Doest.49 Some of the intended owners of other liturgical manuscripts in this style have been traced to Cistercian cloisters. The same painters, likely based in Douai, also illuminated an Obituary-Martyrology given by a lay woman to the Cistercian convent of Notre-Dame-des-Prés in Douai (now in Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 838),50 as well as a psalter-hours for Saint-Amé (now in Brussels, Royal Library, MS 9391). In addition to Stones’s discussion of a windmill in the Douai group’s repertoire, many of the marginal subjects need further comparison in relation to their liturgical and devotional contexts.51 For the margins of the Speculum docrinale specifically, the iconographic sources are sought in the functional context of the citation of written authorities. In the Bruges Speculum doctrinale, illuminated folios divide nine books on letters and morals comprising the first half of the Speculum doctrinale.

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Each opening page features around five or six figural compositions staged on the upper, vertical, and lower borders. By contrast, the other two regional groups had limited their compositions to the lower borders. Instructions to the artist in French may have directed the contents of the historiated initial to the effect of “Paint a master and students here.”52 The marginal images, on the other hand, were painted without such written instruction. Although some of these marginal vignettes are composed of conventional motifs shared among several groups of artists, others exhibit innovative variations in relation to one another. From one illuminated division to the next, the combined use of marginal parodies and metaphors and variations of motifs about literacy and knowledge provides a basis for insight into the reception of a Latin encyclopedia. The keeper of manuscripts at the Openbare Bibliotheek in Bruges, Ludo Vandamme, distinguishes that the images in the scenes in the historiated initials of the Bruges Speculum doctrinale illustrate the life of leraar and leerling (teachers and learning), while volksleven (folk life) is depicted in the margins.53 The historiated initials contain figures of magisters and monks reading, speaking, and teaching, and the marginalia are made to carry vivid references to these actions alongside the genre scenes. Although other volumes of the Speculum majus open with conventional portraits of the author writing, this volume opens with the cloistered schoolroom, over which presides a tonsured monk pointing to an exemplum on the lectern (fig. 42). This is one of two types of scenes.54 First, five initials contain a tonsured monk or a magister, and sometimes both, as in the first book’s initial with a game of bowls in the margin (fol. 24r). They stand and gesture over smallerscale tonsured novices seated on the ground and reading books. The second type of composition in four consecutive initials consists of a seated magister gesturing to a group representing a segment of medieval society, including farmers, princes, a family, and a nobleman. The relationships between the marginal genre scenes and the social groups in these cases are clear, but there also exists an interplay of imagery across the margins, rubrics, and text that deserves continued investigation in other manuscripts beyond this study’s introduction. On several openings, the marginalia reflect the social station of the audience presented in the initial, perhaps prompting the volksleven motifs. The historiated initial opening book 6 on economics, for example, contains a family with two small children; in the lower margin is the fisherman, whose pole is echoed by batons of a ball player and a beater of a beast (fol. 222v).55 Fables incorporating bugs, such as those of Odo of Cheriton on “The Flea” or “The Heretic and the Fly,” may be referred to in the upper

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border by an unusual composition of a spider chased by a walking, bearded, hairy head wearing a simplified abbot’s mitre or a Jewish cone-hat.56 These fables employ the annoyance of bugs on one’s face and their escapism for different lessons on God as maker of all visible things or on sinners who run from the Church. In the initial to book 4 on practical knowledge, farmers stand before the magister. On the upper border, two figures of women in the margins are brought into play as quotidian humor on laborers: one beats a stork from her washing and another plays a sheaf with a rake as if it were a violin. On the lower border, an image of a man carrying a sack of grain to a large windmill in the vertical margin appears in the Valenciennes ObituaryMartyrology, also for a Cistercian audience, and in the Vatican Library copy of Le Trésor also on practical knowledge.57 The manuscript opens with an Apologus, stating the whole of the work, and a table of the eighteen books in four columns (fols. 7v-23v).58 Whereas the mirror of nature was divided into parts based on the days of Creation, the mirror of human knowledge is explained as raising man’s intellect from the original sin that debased him. As if setting the stage for reading the marginalia, a figure of authority is parodied in the lower margin of the first folio (fig. 42): a furry hybrid with a mitre blesses a nude figure with an arm stretching from his nose. An unusual motif, the form of the blessing abbot hybrid seems to echo Alan of Lille’s sentiment that authority “has a wax nose, which means that it can be bent into taking different meanings.”59 Facing the blessing “wax nose” is a classic nude, twisting and gesturing at his buttocks and the names of the Church Fathers. As the first page is turned, the hand gestures of both bas-de-page figures seem to alert the reader’s attention to the reappearance of genitalia and oration throughout the margins. The folios opening the first section on letters, including books on philosophy, grammar, and logic, contain marginalia related to the use of texts and speech. The opening of the book on grammar includes two figures reading exempla in the margins, like the students in the initial, and a violent duel takes place below (book 2, fig. 47). There are two scenes of sowing seeds: the traditional calendar scene in the lower left and a man loosening soil with a rake in the upper border between the words of the running title, De arte Gramatica. In medieval education, the learning of grammar was often related to the sowing of seeds. As if tainting the garden (i.e., snail as a garden pest), a naked man wearing a snail shell walks backward in the lower right corner. The naked backside could have been used simply to parody to the Cistercian habit of not wearing pants.60 Together, Michael Camille’s interpretations of exposed buttocks and of the snail as a hermaphrodite and Ruth Melinkoff’s interpretation of backward (or blind) movement amount to a negatively charged image for the

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Figure 47. “De arte gramatica,” Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum doctrinale, book 2 (Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 251), fol. 54v.

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Figure 48. “Dyaletica,” Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum doctrinale, book 3 (Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 251), fol. 112v.

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medieval reader.61 This figure may also have been used to echo the metaphors of one authority on the subjects of rhetoric, letters, and morals: Alan of Lille. In his Plaint of Nature (De planctu Natura), he likened the abuse of grammar to homosexual relations, stating, “Sodomy upsets the correct state of verbs, predicates, and noun declensions.”62 This backward figure with its rear end exposed disturbs the laws of nature, just as “solecism” disturbs the laws of grammar.63 Twice each, the terms for solecism and barbarism are defined in the text beginning De arte Gramatica as things to be avoided in writing. Also in the text artificial, or crafted, form is emphasized for “noble” language, perhaps echoed by the duel in the lower margin. The association of sodomy with the perversion of language was a tradition in medieval Latin texts that used solecism to allegorize social, rhetorical, and dialectic transgressions.64 In the following book, Dyaletica (Logic), the trope of sowing seeds in the earth is carried to another level (book 3, fig. 48). Whereas the previous book’s upper margin contained a man with a rake, this time on the upper border, a naked man wearing a gilded crown shoves his genitals into the mound of earth. The motif’s models conflate two conventional compositions for Job on the dung heap and the drowning King David, while the action itself implies progeny. An expanded parody, the sequence of the images about “sowing seeds” on the upper borders of the folios was used to pair visually the subjects of the books—Grammar and Logic—together. Meanwhile, in the lower right corner where the male-snail stood, a hybrid man hammers an axe into the mouth of a grotesque. Art historians recognize this composition as that of a sculptor carving a grotesque for a cathedral. Alan of Lille used the hammer and anvil as a metaphor to connect the perverse relations of sexual acts that “issue no seeds” to incorrect verbal expression—or the abuse of grammar expounded in the text.65 Parodies on speech continue across the lower border of the opening folio to the fifth book on moral problems, De monostica (fig. 49). On the right side, a jester wearing trousers where genitalia were originally drawn plays a harp echoing the profane scenes of entertainment on the lower border. To the right a man and some youths watch a puppet show and in the center is a dog dancing to the pipe and tabor. To the left a wingless serpent called a “blindworm,” with its eyes closed and head tonsured, chants from a lectern to an absent audience.66 The contrast between the scenes seems to mock the canons who chanted Latin in the choir with the use of vernacular tales performed outside the church. In the upper border between the running titles on practical ethics (the previous book 4) and morals (book 5), a man beats a snail with a cudgel.67 The book on morals was intended “to teach man how to subdue his passions.” The first line of the text next to the initials opens the subject of the book on virtutibus et vicijs (virtues and vices). As in the Trésors, the text is clearly

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Figure 49. “De monostica,” Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum doctrinale, book 5 (Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 251), fol. 191r.

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highlighted by the parody on cowardice. In the initial, a magister wearing a biretta instructs a prince wearing a crown, holding gloves, and accompanied by his clerk. Because the vice of cowardice was more often directed toward the noble class, the presence of a ruler in the historiated initial may have suggested the use of an exemplum that connoted class conflict. In the margins of the last two books in this volume on politics and litigation (books 7–8), an animal, either a fox or a cat wearing a cowl, twice reads from an open exemplum (fig. 50).68 Next to a game of frog-in-themiddle, the bare end of a jester performs as the reading animal’s lectern. This motif echoes the position of the naked male-snail, bent over and in the lower right corner (fig.47). Directly over the motif, the word molesta may directly relate the image to the medieval metaphor for solecism. The figure pushes his genitalia into the text as an interface, or literal pointer, between writing and speaking. Anti-Semitism, as noted in the fable of the Heretic and the Fly, may also have informed the reading of this parody on reading. In the margin of the following opening to the book on politics and litigation, the reading animal stands to the left and apes trap a bird below.

Figure 50. “De politica,” Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum doctrinale, book 7 (Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 251), fol. 254v.

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Figure 51. “De causis et litibus,” Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum doctrinale, book 8 (Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 251), fol. 299v.

In the upper margin, next to the running title on politics ending in the first column and over the initial beginning the section on litigation, a popular parody on rhetoric is itself parodied (fig. 51). The trope from the story of Reynard and the Cock involves the fowl using flattery to trick the fox into letting him go. As in the Dampierre group model, the whole scene includes a rooster in the fox’s mouth and the farm wife chasing it with her distaff aloft. Here, the coq is drawn as a literal pun on the French word for a phallus, which is positioned instead in the fox’s mouth.69 Another question of reception arises when a viewer sees the same motif—a fox with a coq—exemplified in the Henricus Bible (fig. 1) and parodied in the Bruges Speculum doctrinale. Would the chance viewer of both manuscripts distinguish the uses of exempla in the different types of texts as exegesis or

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commentary? Or would they have been read similarly in the Cistercian house as parodies against Franciscans? The association of phallic imagery with the fox, on the one hand, is certainly gendered since the housewife must recover her stolen coq, but on the other hand, is used like other genitals to emphasize the fox’s famed rhetoric in fables. In relation to the contexts of the book on politics and law on the same folio and of the whole manuscript’s marginalia, the parody on the conventional fable mainly highlights the craft of speech employed in consulting an encyclopedia. For this single surviving illustrated copy of the Speculum doctrinale, the encyclopedic function of the text was meant to allow the readers to employ and enjoy the varied motifs of everyday life and exemplary parody. The introduction of phalluses and buttocks to parody aspects of reading and speech especially implicate the literacy of the manuscript’s readers. Scenes of fighting, hunting, hybrid combats, and figural pointers in each of the encyclopedia reiterate the manuscript’s function for the citation of authorities. The monastic contexts of these reference works make the issue of preaching with exempla problematic, but the marginalia is no less didactic. The Benedictine and Cistercian abbeys alike were faced with the education of their novitiate and lay brotherhood, in addition to the curatorial duties and political diplomacies of an abbot, which allow the didactic role of marginalia to prevail in various reading and consulting scenarios. The workshops addressed in this chapter approached marginalia in different ways for a relatively new text lacking well-known cycles of illustration. Each of the Latin encyclopedia contains a different degree of interaction with the text: the Boulogne Speculum historiale contains margins related to the narrative function of the historiated text, the Vellereille Speculum naturale contains margins complementary to the content of the initials and the words in the rubrics, and the Bruges Speculum doctrinale contains margins with various references within and without the text. For each opening of a book in Vincent’s Speculum majus, the initial frames the didactic function of the text, while the marginalia are meant to add variation and specialization that could be used to assist in the referencing of the textual divisions, whether in the library’s tomes or in the reader’s memory.

Chapter Seven

Conclusion

The marginal repertoires developed in the northern French and Flemish counties during the late thirteenth century were applied to a spectrum of traditional and new types of medieval texts. The difficult question for art historians is: was the planner or painter literate enough in Latin or in French to pick up on and comment visually upon the text? For marginalia especially, there is no absolute answer to the question and opinion is dependent on studying each case individually. Different kinds of manuscripts require different approaches. The text is brought in when and if there appears to be a connection, which sometimes proves to be extremely informative and other times a questionable stretch. Some related text and image examples may point to the role of a planner, libraire, or master illustrator. Conversely, observing the obedience to visual models focuses attention on the patterns and variations of the repertoire to account for artistic choices. As part of the larger visual matrix of individual bifolia and gatherings, the contents of the illustrations and historiated initials also affected the choices for border motifs. Consequently, the subject of the motif and its placement in relation to the text and illustration certainly affected the response from the viewer who engaged with each folio. The relationships of marginal images to the principal images, the text, and the gatherings constitute the artistic side of reception and production, yet the audience plays an important role in the process of reading and seeing to generate meaning. Medieval sources about potential clients, cloistered or castled, are diverse and fragmentary: provenances provided by colophons or heraldry, abbreviated inventories of possessions, letters between dignitaries, and household expense accounts, to name a few.1 Each of the illuminated manuscripts made for one of these clients contains a unique fingerprint in the marginal embellishment forming an interface of concerns between the point of planning and the point of reading. Therefore, the salience of motifs—be 171

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they mermaids or monks, shields or shooters, or foxes or birds—depends greatly on the reading context, of which little can be truly known. The refectory, chapel, or scriptorium of the monastery certainly differed from the feast and audience halls of the secular court; of course, either space was never wholly absent of its own noble or religious members. Also during the late thirteenth century, the ongoing transition from an oral reading culture to a silent one, or from public to private, makes knowledge of how manuscripts and their marginalia were actually used uncertain. Smaller scale psalters and books of hours containing numerous marginal images were intended for individual, private devotional practices. Larger scale romances and encyclopedia required different modes of reading by more broadly defined audiences for whom the marginal images played roles that either entertained social values or facilitated memory work. Both Latin and French texts illuminated with marginalia in the late thirteenth century contain clearly demonstrable text and image relationships that are often tied to the literary or moral interests of the possible readers. The caveat remains that there may exist equal or many more cases, even within the same manuscript, lacking any conceivable relationship. The deluge of marginalia into all kinds of books—a development explained in the previous chapters—leads to a repetitive stagnation by the mid-fourteenth century, a point that Lilian Randall observes in her survey, Images in the Margins.2 The approach to marginalia in the “manuscript age of reproduction” must accommodate for the factor of decorative adornment, but as studies like Madeline Caviness’s Reframing Medieval Art show, the density of illumination and choices for figures were factors that exercised considerable influence on the reading experience of the text. Like Caviness, Michael Camille also considers the margins as spaces of active agency in which images were used to twist, prod, and evoke viewer responses. In his Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, Hans Robert Jauss especially argues for the non-static experience of the work of art as entering into the matrix of already shifting ideologies. The variety and adaptability of marginal images contribute to the historical moment of each manuscript that involves the text, the illustration, and the reader within the interactive experience of the book. The intersection of the marginal repertoire in a variety of reading contexts during the late thirteenth century reflects a growing, diverse clientele for bookmakers and thus broader developments of literacy, learning, and reception. The transmission of marginal motifs from manuscript to manuscript and from workshop to workshop is a complex web, as books traveled as frequently as painters did in the area from Bruges and Saint Omer to Arras and Tournai. While matters of organizing methods and artistic literacy cannot

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always be firmly established, consideration of all of the folios’ contents can help ascertain the choices made for marginal motifs and those that enhanced the reading experience. Gauging the significance of these illuminated texts to the intended audiences can be explored through the amount and expense of each book’s illustrations as well as through the density and variations of the framing marginalia. Through a contextual analysis of the marginal imagery in each manuscript, the examination of religious manuscripts linked with vernacular and encyclopedic texts by style, iconography, or patron is integral to understanding the duplicity and multiplicity of marginalia. The breadth of manuscript types and the ability to trace motifs and similar conjunctions of motifs from book to book strengthen the analyses presented in the case studies of individual manuscripts. The context of the stylistically and iconographically related Dampierre group provides the widest early repertoire, the widest range of manuscripts, and the widest influence in northern France and Flanders. In the Henricus Bible and the Monaldus Summa, the physical relationships of the marginal images to the decorated initials show how the Dampierre group tied marginalia as exempla or anti-exempla to textual elements assumed to be read by a literate reader in the Cistercian monastery. The key examples in the Monaldus Summa contrast profane motifs with Latin terms. As an antagonistic counterpart to the text, the ass plays bagpipes on the initial for the word Sacerdos (fig. 11). The association of the arms of the count of Flanders with an ape in the Y of Yconomus (Economics)—a signe held by a singe—is another example that was repeated in many subsequent manuscripts (fig. 10). The significance of heraldry as a sign in the contexts of the related psalters and vernacular histories illuminated in Thérouanne places such manuscripts directly between the makers and the intended readers. In order to conduct detailed codicological analyses and to explore the placement of marginalia within each manuscript, many details of the pages were excluded to highlight the relevance of both idiosyncratic and certain prevalent motifs. The experimental method that I used to analyze the Dampierre Psalter, according to pre-cut sides of parchment and subsequent quire collations, still needs further testing to determine whether such practices were common. Recent experiments with making parchment from goatskins suggested the method’s practicality for the preparation of such a small book.3 The evidence for the production of quires in bound books can be drawn from the codicological examination of pricking patterns, pigment distribution, figural scale, and pattern repetition. Using this method may also contribute to understanding the puzzling distribution of artistic or scribal hands within such manuscripts and to the examination of other

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petite manuscripts with dense marginalia.4 Should future tests support the usefulness of this method, the use of book publishing software could provide a hypertext model into which folio photographs could be reconstructed into bifolia and quire sequences. There is still much work to be done along these lines on the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur. The prose text and the rich imagery together may be used to offer a range of perspectives for picturing the culture of the medieval nobility.5 Demonstrated in several manuscripts, the marginal imagery by the Dampierre group provides a range of examples in which associations are connected to readers, and in the romance attention to the familial, the political, and the moral was underlined in significant ways, especially through marginal figures of women and heraldry. As shown by the Rouses’ model of Richard and Jeanne of Montbaston, the time it took to illuminate a manuscript quire by quire can account for clusters of images in the margins and the division of labor. While marginal motifs in the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur were meant to interact with the principal imagery and text on some folios, the motifs can also be associated with one another in neighboring bifolia and quires. These clusters in the bound manuscript generate further questions about the planning, reading, and purpose of a deluxe romance for the noble household. In the historiography of marginalia, iconographic sources like bestiaries and historical exempla are cited, but contemporary illustrated manuscript sources also need to be included as informing the meaningful reception of certain motifs, particularly by the monastic audiences whose houses owned reference works. The presence of copies of Lambert of Saint Omer’s Liber floridus or Hugh of Fouilloy’s Aviarium in the libraries of the region contributes to the general pool of iconographic sources. In addition, the preserved contents of the Ter Duinen and Ter Doest libraries in Bruges provide a treasure trove of textual authorities who are cited by thirteenth century authors. The illustrated compilations of history, nature, and human thought by Vincent of Beauvais and Brunetto Latini were developed from such textual and visual sources for the purpose of educating princely courts. The illustrated copies of these contemporary authors in northern France and Flanders can be included among manuscripts subject to the development of marginal illumination. The emergence of marginalia in encyclopedia, along with religious and secular books from the same workshops, corresponds with the new developments in organizing knowledge.6 The margins could be used to organize responses to these texts in ways that supplement the texts’ didactic functions. Mary Carruthers explores the devices of hunting, fishing, violence, games, and hybrid constructions as they pervaded the margins of all kinds of manuscripts

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and were included in treatises on memory. The use of such themes in illustrated Latin manuscripts intended for consultation and memory supports her conclusions. Meanwhile the development of vernacular histories and didactic compilations, illustrated with column-width miniatures with gold backgrounds like those in romances, contain marginalia implying a noble audience’s interests and reading literacy. Sources for marginal motifs found within the compiled texts and the illustration cycles point to the presumed literacy of the noble book owner. The example of the verncacular manuscripts of Li ars d’amour, written by a multi-lingual scholar and bishop of noble lineage, cites Latin authorities such as Aristotle’s Ethics and also provides literal explanations for popular marginal subjects illustrated in the miniatures.7 Despite the different ways in which the Latin or vernacular encyclopedia were consulted, to organize authorial texts or to narrate historical feats, recurring motifs aid in framing the significance of the text for the individual reader. In her state of the field essay in Studies in Iconography, Lucy Freeman Sandler observed that “Most investigations of marginal imagery have been limited in scope to one or another aspect—genric, parodic, scatological, monstrous—and conclusions about meaning have often been excessively categorical as a result.”8 Indeed, much of the groundwork has been laid by these studies and the continued discussion about the contexts of marginal images such as the fool sitting on eggs or blazoned shields proves further that there should be allowance for “contradictory and overlapping meanings,” as Sandler suggests.9 In looking at all of the images in whole books, the focus on a regionally localized group of manuscripts with shared marginalia provides a contextual basis for considering such variations in use and meaning. During the mid-thirteenth century, marginalia emerged in a shifting space of linguistic change in which vernacular texts were penned by authors and Latin texts were recited by the laity. In addition, around the same time as the northern French and Flemish development in illumination, marginalia appear in Hebrew texts in Spain, books of hours in Oxford, and Aristotle’s Physics in Paris.10 Looking at the quire structures of these manuscripts and the varied repertoires employed in them promises much more to reveal in terms of artistic practices and functional contexts. Meanwhile, the workshops in the dioceses of Thérouanne, Arras, Liège, Brabant, and Bruges continued to provide marginalia with such varied and edifying roles in a cross-section of book types that more in-depth examinations of these manuscripts are still warranted. Codicology and reception theories are both valuable methods for understanding the effect of the whole book in its historical moment. Readers in the modern age of the computer and the Internet are not far removed from

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the experience of adopting a new, widespread, visceral, and visual technology to access information and entertainment. In the latter half of the thirteenth century the democratization of the technology of illuminated manuscripts was comparably swift. Marginalia embellishing so many book types of the period distinguish each manuscript from those produced before it or those produced after it. Therefore, the tiny marginal images demanded attention from makers and readers alike. Jousting, hunting, playing, praying, dancing, and seducing, marginal subjects can illuminate the manuscripts’ historical contexts from transmission and production to reception and ideology. The borders serve as a rich framework through which that history permeates.

Notes

NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE 1. On the state of the field, see Lucy Freeman Sandler, “The Study of Marginal Imagery: Past, Present, and Future,” Studies in Iconography 18 (1997): 1–49. Some recent case studies include Anne Rudloff Stanton The Queen Mary Psalter: A Study of Affect and Audience, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 91, pt. 6 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2001); John Higgitt, The Murthly Hours: Devotion, Literacy and Luxury in Paris, England and the Gaelic West (London: British Library and University of Toronto Press in association with the National Library of Scotland, 2000); Michael Camille, Mirror in Parchment: The Luttrell Psalter and the Making of Medieval England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); and Adelaide Bennett, “A Thirteenth-Century French Book of Hours for Marie,” The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 54 (1996): 21–37. 2. In her indispensable study, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966), Lilian Randall calls the late thirteenth century a “first phase” of experimentation and developing repertoires. In her breakdown of the 226 manuscripts in the study, she lists 167 Continental examples with marginalia and 60 from the English side of the Channel. In categories such as romances, historical works, encyclopedia, and poetry, only a few were illuminated in England; over 40 originated in northern France or Flanders, over half of which date to the late thirteenth century, 12–13. 3. Randall, Images in the Margins, 9–10. 4. See Maurits Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures from the 8th to the mid-16th Century: The Medieval World on Parchment, trans. Karen Bowen and Dirk Imhof (Leuven: Uitgeverij Davidsfonds, 1999), chap. 3, 113 ff. For dioceses, see É. de Moreau, Histoire de l’Église en Belgique: Circonscriptions Ecclésiastiques Chapitres, Abbayes, Couvents avant 1559, vol. 1 (Brussels: L’Édition Universelle, S. A., 1948), map IA. For counties, see Theo Luykx, Het Grafelijk Geslacht Dampierre en zijn Strijd tegen Filips de Schone (Leuven:

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5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Davidsfonds, 1951), 2; and M. G. A. Vale, The Princely Court: Medieval Courts and Culture in North-west Europe, 1270–1380 (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 380–81, map 2. Jonathan J. G. Alexander, The Decorated Letter (New York: G. Braziller, 1978), 16, 18. Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992), 22. Labeled “Folly crosses the philosophical text,” a bald-headed man is pushed in a wheelbarrow over the initial containing the author wearing a cone hat and gesturing to the sky (British Library, Harley MS 3487, fol. 22v), 23, fig. 7. Other manuscripts with marginal vignettes dating to the 1260s include Cambrai, Bibliothèque municipale, MSS 189–190 (1266), Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arsenal MS 3191 (1268), and the Isabelle Psalter (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam MS 300), according to Alison Stones, “The Illustrations of the French Prose Lancelot in Belgium, Flanders and Paris, 1250–1340” (Ph.D., University of London, 1971), 83. The developments in medieval book production for various needs and audiences constitute the chapters of the survey by Christopher de Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts (Oxford: Phaidon, 1986), 11–13. Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts, 1285–1385, 2 vols., A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, ed. Jonathan J. G. Alexander (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), cat. nos. 9, 16a, and 48. Sandler lists two chronicles and a genealogy dating to the thirteenth century, but the only Arthurian Romance listed is MS Royal 20.D.iv, which was illuminated originally in Arras but repainted by the Bohun master in the 1360s, cat. no. 136. Several Parisian ateliers begin to add marginalia around 1250–60 but limited the decoration to hounds, hares, and duels, as illustrated in Robert Branner, Manuscript Painting in Paris during the Reign of St. Louis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), plates VII, X, and fig. 6. Jonathan J. G. Alexander, “Art History, Literary History, and the Study of Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts,” Studies in Iconography 18 (1997): 56. For a recent study on the audiences of divergent material in individual manuscripts, see Andrew Taylor, Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). The readership is evidenced by the textual choices of Plato and the Song of Roland in one manuscript, a trilingual compendium of lais, fables, hunting treatises, and amour courtois in another, and a third legal compendium written in Italy and illuminated with marginalia in England. Taylor argues that several sorts of reception can be expected, respectively: “minstrel recitation, chant, or refectory reading for Digby 23(2), silent reading and fantasization for Harley 978, and scholarly consultation for Digby 23(1) and Royal 10.E.4,” 9. See R. W. Scheller, Exemplum: Model-Book Drawings and the Practice of Artistic Transmission in the Middle Ages (ca. 900-ca.1470), trans. Michael Hoyle

Notes to Chapter One

11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

179

(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2001); Alison Stones, “Secular Manuscript Illumination in France,” in Medieval Manuscripts and Textual Criticism, ed. Christopher Kleinhenz (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, Dept. of Romance Languages, 1977), 96. Ross Woodrow and the University of Newcastle, Australia, provide an on-line digital version of Villard of Honnecourt’s folios, Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt (2000), http:// www.newcastle.edu.au/school/fine-art/publications/villard/index.htm. Randall, Images in the Margins, 19–20. This phrase is modified from the title of the 1936 essay, Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968). In Benjamin’s view, the decline of the individual “aura” of artwork that accompanied commercial forms of popular culture collapsed the hierarchy between the model and the copy. Recent surveys of manuscript production show how the commercial market was expanding during the thirteenth century with university and secular interests in addition to devotional needs, for which marginalia was not exclusive. See de Hamel, History of Illuminated Manuscripts, 127–130, 149–50; and Mary A. Rouse and Richard H. Rouse, Manuscripts and their Makers: Commercial Book Producers in Medieval Paris, 1200–1500 (Turnhout, Belgium: Harvey Miller, 2000). As noted by a recent study on the marginalia in early modern printed books, the appearance of a manuscript layout lent authenticity and authority to the printed copies. William W. E. Slights Managing Readers: Printed Marginalia in English Renaissance Books (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001). Slights examines the marginalia of Bibles, history books, and polemics to gauge the ways they were “made to manage readers’ responses,” engaging such issues as “generic differentiation among kinds of annotated books, textual authority, and the historical development of the reading experience,” 7. Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures, 113–71. Judith H. Oliver, Gothic Manuscript Illumination in the Diocese of Liège (c. 1250–c. 1330), Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts from the Low Countries, ed. Maurits Smeyers, 2 vols. (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters, 1988). Kerstin B. E. Carlvant, “Thirteenth-Century Illumination in Bruges and Ghent” (Ph.D., Columbia University, 1978). The groundwork in Stones’s dissertation, “French Prose Lancelot,” and subsequent research is published in Alison Stones, Gothic Manuscripts: c. 1260– 1320, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in France (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, forthcoming). Alison Stones, “Sacred and Profane Arts: Secular and Liturgical Book Illumination in the Thirteenth Century,” in The Epic in Medieval Society: Aesthetic and Moral Values, ed. Harald Scholler (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1977), 109. Jonathan J. G. Alexander, “Preliminary marginal drawings in medieval manuscripts,” in Artistes, Artisans et Production Artistique au Moyen Âge, ed.

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19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

Notes to Chapter One Xavier Barral Altet, Colloque international: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université de Rennes, 2–6 mai 1983 (Paris: Picard, 1990), 307– 19, and Alison Stones, “Indications écrites et modèles picturaux, guides aux peintres de manuscrits enluminés aux environs de 1300,” in Ibid., 321–49, discuss much of the evidence surviving in individual manuscripts. Camille, Image on the Edge, 42–43. Alexander, “Preliminary marginal drawings,” 307. In reference to Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley MS 264, Keith Busby, Codex and Context: Reading Old French Verse Narrative in Manuscript (Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi, 2002), 314. Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), 53; and Rouse and Rouse, Manuscripts and their Makers, 1: 13. For a case study of these itinerant painters and shifting styles, see Alison Stones, “Stylistic Associations, Evolution, and Collaboration: Charting the Bute Painter’s Career,” The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 23 (1994): 11–29. Busby, Codex and Context, 314–15; Stones, “Sacred and Profane Arts,” 109. Alison Stones, “A Note on the ‘Maître au menton fuyant,’” in Als Ich Can: In Memorium, Professor Maurits Smeyers, Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts, vols. 11–12, Low Countries Series 8, ed. Bert Cardon (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters, 2002), addresses a number of the manuscripts produced by the associated groups in the diocese of Arras, 1248. One psalter, called the Tournai Psalter (Tournai Cathedral, Scaldis H 12/2), is outstanding for its graphic simians, numerous shields, and a binding illuminated with eight narrative panels. Alison Stones elaborates on the interchange between Arras and Douai in “The Illustrated Chrétien Manuscripts and their Artistic Context,” in The Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes, eds. Terry Nixon, Keith Busby, Alison Stones and Lori Walters (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), 252–53. Related religious manuscripts include the Martyrology at Valenciennes, MS 838, and the Book of Hours, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 9391, both of which are addressed in A. Bräm, “Ein Buchmalereiatelier in Arras um 1274,” Wallraf-Richartz Jahrbuch 54 (1993): 77–104. The group also must be explored in light of the Antiphonal at the Walters Art Gallery, MSS 759– 762, which is thoroughly outlined in the catalog by Lilian M. C. Randall, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery: Belgium, 1250–1530 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997), vol. 3, pt. I: nos. 219A-D. Sandler, “Study of Marginal Imagery,” 1–49; Jean Wirth, “Les marges à drôleries des manuscrits gothiques: problèmes de méthode,” in History and Images: Towards a New Iconology, ed. Axel Bolvig and Phillip Lindley (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 277–300. Emile Mâle, The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century (1913; New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 62–63.

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29. For example, Camille Gaspar and Frédéric Lyna, Les principaux manuscrits à peintures de la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique (1937; amplified reprint by C. Van den Bergen-Patens et al., Brussels: Bibliothèque Royale, 1984); and M. R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Second Series of Fifty Manuscripts (nos. 51–100) in the Collection of Henry Yates Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902). 30. See especially “On the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Art” (1947) and “From Mozarabic to Romanesque in Silos” (1939), reprinted in Romanesque Art, Selected Papers (New York: Braziller, 1977), 1–27 and 28–101. Several recent reflections on Schapiro have seriously considered his social claims. Michael Camille, “‘How New York Stole the Idea of Romanesque Art’: Medieval, Modern and Postmodern in Meyer Schapiro,” Oxford Art Journal 17, no. 1 (1994): 65–75; Thomas E. Crow, The Intelligence of Art, Bettie Allison Rand Lectures in Art History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999): 1–23; and challenges to the manuscript models and patronage context have recently been made by John Williams, “Meyer Schapiro in Silos: Pursuing an Iconography of Style,” Art Bulletin 85, no. 3 (2003): 442–68. 31. Jonathan J. G. Alexander, “Iconography and Ideology: Uncovering Social Meanings in Western Medieval Christian Art,” Studies in Iconography 15 (1993): 4–5. The shift in approach is apparent in the title of the recent study on devotional books by Madeline H. Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art: Difference, Margins, Boundaries (Boston: Tufts University, 2001), http://nils.lib. tufts.edu/Caviness/. 32. Randall, Images in the Margins, 19. 33. L. M. J. Delaissé, “Towards a History of the Medieval Book,” in Codicologica, ed. J. P. Gumbert, M. J. M. de Haan, and A. Grujis (Leiden: 1976): 75–83. 34. Rouse and Rouse, Manuscripts and their Makers, 1: 13–15. 35. The interchange of motifs and meanings in medieval media is studied by A. M. Koldeweij, “A Barefaced Roman de la Rose (Paris B.N., ms. fr. 25526) and Some Late Medieval Mass-Produced Badges of a Sexual Nature,” in Flanders in a European Perspective, ed. Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon (Leuven: 1995): 499–516. In her study on the reception of the Roman de la Rose, Sylvia Huot sees the imagery and the quire construction as an unfolding, circular, visual gloss to the poem, in The Romance of the Rose and its Medieval Readers: Interpretation, Reception, Manuscript Transmission (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Rouse and Rouse argue that Jeanne of Montbaston was not a literary critic, Manuscripts and their Makers, 1: 258–259. In her recent discussion of medieval phallic imagery, Ruth Mellinkoff cites neither of the manuscript studies, in Averting Demons: The Protective Power of Medieval Visual Motifs and Themes, (Los Angeles: Ruth Mellinkoff Publications, 2004), 1: 134–135.

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36. Rouse and Rouse, Manuscripts and their Makers, 2: figs. 22–23. 37. Ibid., 1: 259. 38. Michelle Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms (Malibu, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum in association with the British Library, 1994), 21. Unless otherwise indicated, this guide is used for technical terms. 39. Camille, Image on the Edge, 42. 40. Lilian M. C. Randall, “Exempla as a Source of Gothic Marginal Illumination,” Art Bulletin 39, no. 1 (1957): 97–107. 41. Lilian M. C. Randall, “The Snail in Gothic Marginal Warfare,” Speculum 37, no. 3 (1962): 360–62. Seventy representations of the motif in twentynine manuscripts, ca. 1290–1325, are surveyed. 42. Lilian M. C. Randall, “A Mediaeval Slander,” Art Bulletin 42, no. 1 (1960): 33–35. 43. Wirth argues that there is no textual evidence for anti-English sentiments in laying eggs, although the notion or slander of “tailed” Englishmen was particularly common, in “Les marges à drôleries,” 289. In the household accounts for 1290, on the other hand, it is notable that King Edward I gave his court 450 gilded eggs for Easter. Venetia Newall, An Egg at Easter: A Folklore Study (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1971), 219. 44. Phillippe Verdier, “Woman in the Marginalia of Manuscripts and Related Works,” in The Role of Women in the Middle Ages: Papers of the 6th Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies at the State University of New York, Binghamton, 1972, ed. R. T. Morewedge (Binghamton: 1975), 121–187; Karl P. Wentersdorf, “The Symbolic Significance of Figurae Scatologicae in Gothic Manuscripts,” in Word, Picture, and Spectacle, ed. Clifford Davidson, Early Drama, Art, and Music Monograph Series, 5 (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michican University, 1984), 1–19. 45. Sandler, “Study of Marginal Imagery,” 43. 46. Ibid., 36. 47. Ibid., 23. 48. Studies previous to Michael Camille’s monograph, Mirror in Parchment, on the Luttrell Psalter (London, British Library, Additional MS 42130) include Janet Backhouse, The Luttrell Psalter (New York: New Amsterdam, 1989); Lucy Freeman Sandler, “The Word in the Text and the Image on the Margin: The Case of the Luttrell Psalter,” The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 54 (1996): 87–100. Studies on the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters 54.1.2) include Lilian M. C. Randall, “Games and the Passion in Pucelle’s Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux,” Speculum 47 (1972): 248–53; Madeline H. Caviness, “Patron or Matron? A Capetian Bride and a Vade Mecum for Her Marriage Bed,” Speculum 68 (1993): 333–62; and Joan A. Holladay, “The Education of Jeanne d’Evreux:

Notes to Chapter One

49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54.

55. 56. 57.

58.

59.

60.

61.

62. 63. 64.

65.

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Personal Piety and Dynastic Salvation in her Book of Hours at the Cloisters,” Art History 17 (1994): 585–611. Camille, Mirror in Parchment, 13. Sandler, “Study of Marginal Imagery,” 26–27. Schapiro, Romanesque Art, 42; Camille, Image on the Edge, 43. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Review of Image on the Edge, by Michael Camille Art Bulletin 75, no. 2 (1993): 319–26. A survey of the historical contexts for this motif in English choirs can be found in my article, Elizabeth B. Moore, “Marital Virtue and Sexual Satire: The Disorderly Marriage on English Misericords,” Les Arts Profanes du Moyen Age (Paris) 6 (Autumn 1997): 262–84. Sandler, “Study of Marginal Imagery,” 35. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (1968; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, chap. 3. Caviness, “Patron or Matron?,” 343 passim. The marginalia of the Dampierre Psalter and Tournai Psalter are counted in the data of Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, chap. 3, table 3. An account of the same motifs in the deluxe romances, histories, and encyclopedia is still needed. Lucy Freeman Sandler, “A Bawdy Betrothal in the Ormesby Psalter,” in Tribute to Lotte Brand Philip: Art Historian and Detective, ed. W. W. Clark et al. (New York: Abaris Books, 1985), 154–59. Wirth, “Les marges à drolleries,” 283–85. See also for this motif, Randall, “Games and the Passion,” 248–53, and Richard H. Randall, Jr., “Frog in the Middle,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 16, no. 10 (1958): 269–92. Wirth, “Les marges à drolleries,” 286. This is explained through a critique of “oblique” references in the Alexander Romance (Bodley MS 264) studied by S. K. Davenport, “Illustrations Direct and Oblique in the Margins of an Alexander Romance at Oxford,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 34 (1971): 83–95. Wirth, “Les marges à drolleries,” 290, 299. Also, the point is made on moralizations of Reynard the Fox preaching to the geese, who would represent sinners to a Dominican, but Dominican followers to a Franciscan, 287. Ibid., 298. Alexander, “Iconography and Ideology,” 6. See the recent study by Erin Jordan, Women Power, and Religious Patronage in the Middle Ages, The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave, 2006) 117–21, app.1. A transcription of Matthew Paris’ description of Margaret as “a doughty lady” is available in Rouse and Rouse, Manuscripts and their Makers, 1: 83, 2: 189, app. 4A.

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66. Based on the genealogy table in Michel de Waha and Jean Dugnoille, “De Avesnes en Holland vóór 1299,” in 1299: Een Graaf, Drie Graafschappen; de vereniging van Holland, Zeeland, en Henegouwen, ed. D. de Boer et al. (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000), 29. 67. Based on the genealogy table in Luykx, Het Grafelijk Geslacht Dampierre, 112–15. 68. H. P. Kraus, “A Psalter Written and Illuminated for Margaret the Black of Constantinople, Countess of Flanders and Hainaut,” in Choice Manuscripts and Books, Bindings and Autographs, cat.75 (New York: H. P. Kraus, 1960), no. 88, 95–97; henceforth called the “Margaret the Black Psalter.” 69. Stones, “Maître au menton fuyant,” 1257–58. The painters connected to projects with the Maître au menton fuyant were active around Arras, Tournai, Cambrai and Douai. 70. Alison Stones “The Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229: Prolegomena to a Comparative Analysis,” in Word and Image in Arthurian Literature, ed. Keith Busby (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996): 231. 71. Gabrielle Spiegel, Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 14. 72. Ibid., 54. 73. Jozef Janssens and Martine Meuwese, Jacob van Maerlant, Spiegel Historiael: De Miniaturen uit het Handschrift Den Haag, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, KA XX (Leuven: Davidsfonds/Clauwaert, 1997), 9–10. 74. Sandra Hindman, Sealed in Parchment: Rereadings of Knighthood in the Illuminated Manuscripts of Chretian de Troyes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 2. 75. Sylvia Huot, Review of Sealed in Parchment, by Sandra Hindman, Studies in Iconography 17 (1996): 417–420. 76. In The Princely Court, Vale confirms that much of the confusion arises from differing accounts in French and Dutch, each with their own biases, 2. 77. Ibid., 117. 78. Ibid., 84–85. 79. David Nicholas, Medieval Flanders (London, New York: Longman, 1992), 145–47; Stones, “Secular Manuscript Illumination,” 85; and M. le Chanoine Dehaisnes, Documents et Extraits Divers concernant l’Histoire de l’Art dans la Flandre, l’Artois et le Hainaut avant le XVe siècle (Lille: L. Quarré, 1886), 56–169. 80. See my entry on this manuscript in Bert Cardon et al., Medieval Mastery: Book Illumination from Charlemagne to Charles the Bold, 800–1475 (Leuven: Uitgeverij Davidsfonds and Brepols Publishers, 2002), cat. no. 38. For a detailed list of motifs, see Willem van den Bossche, “Le ‘Viel Rentier’ d’Audenarde et la Codicologie,” Scriptorium 23 (1969): 39–51.

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81. Instead, Vale referred to the mural program in Westminster; see Paul Binski, The Painted Chamber at Westminster (London: The Society of Antiquaries, 1986). 82. The Bijloke Museum in Ghent has several examples of ceramic knights, c. 1323–26. Gent: Duizend Jaar Kunst en Cultuur, ed. A. de Schryver (Ghent: Centrum voor Kunst en Cultuur, 1975), Afb. 16, cat. nos. 420–21. 83. A more detailed example of this interchange is found in my article, Elizabeth B. Moore, “The Urban Fabric and Framework of Ghent in the Margins of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Douce 5–6,” in Als Ich Can: Liber Amicorum in Memory of Professor Maurits Smeyers, ed. Bert Cardon et al., Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts, Low Countries Series 8, vols. 11–12 (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters, 2002), 983–1006. 84. De Hamel, History of Illuminated Manuscripts, 150. 85. Joyce Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 35. 86. Sandler, “Study of Marginal Imagery,” 43.

NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO 1. In 1624, the abbeys of Ter Duinen and Ter Doest merged. 125 manuscripts from the abbey of Ter Doest and now in the Openbare Bibliotheek in Bruges are listed in the exhibition catalog by Valerie Logghe, Schatten uit de Biekorf: middeleeuwse handschriften uit Ter Doest (Brugge: Stadsdrukkerij, 1994), 27–33. Twenty-three manuscripts from Ter Doest are in the Grootseminarie, based on provenances given by A. de Poorter, Catalogue des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Publique de la Ville de Bruges (Gehrbloux, Paris: J. Ducolot, Societe d’Edition les Belles Lettres, 1934). For the contents of both libraries and the close connection to Bruges, see G. I. Lieftinck, De librijen en scriptoria der Westvlaamse Cisterciënser-abdijen Ter Duinen en Ter Doest in de 12e en 13e eeuw en de betrekkingen tot het atelier van de kapittelschool van Sint Donatiaan te Brugge, vol. 15, no. 2, Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België: Klasse der Letteren (Brussel: Paleis der Academiën, 1953). 2. Alexander, Decorated Letter, 18; Otto Pächt, Book Illumination in the Middle Ages: An Introduction (London, Oxford, New York: Harvey Miller Publishers and Oxford University Press, 1986), 45. 3. Carlvant discusses the emergence of extenders as part of the page layout, a mid-thirteenth century development out of Paris, “Thirteenth-Century Illumination,” 41. E. J. Beer’s study on Bibles from Tournai and Arras focuses on the Dominican Bible in Lille, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 1, of 1264, “Liller Bibelcodices, Tournai und die Scriptorien der Stadt Arras,” Aachener Kunstblatter 43 (1972): 190–226. 4. Walter Cahn, “The Structure of Cistercian Bibles,” in Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture, ed. Meredith Parsons Lillich, Cistercian Studies 89

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5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

(Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1987), 81–82. Carolingian and Romanesque monasteries may have owned at least two or three Bibles, according to Christopher de Hamel, The Book: A History of the Bible (London; New York: Phaidon, 2001), 94. Some examples were not known to Randall at the time or contained few relevant subjects; Images in the Margins, 15. For example, the margins of Openbare Bibliotheek MS 373, a collection of Tabulae, contain only a bird, stag and hare, and a duel (fols. 1r, 82r, 94v). And, Bruges, Grootseminarie MS 54/100, called the Spermalie Breviary, contains three decorated folios with marginalia, including three Cistercian nuns, a hybrid abbot, a duel, a squirrel eating, an ape eating, a bagpipe player, and a jongleur balancing a sword (fols. 12r, 220r, 223r). One folio in a missal for St. Peter’s Abbey in Ghent (Bijloke Abbey, MS 60–1, fol. 167) contains minute figures attached to the three decorated initials: a green grotesque, an ape, and a nude. The colophons are on fol. 218v of MS 4/1, fol. 231r of MS 5/191, and fol. 334r of Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 6 (430x310 mm.). Kerstin B. E. Carlvant, Vlaamse kunst op perkament: Handschriften en miniaturen te Brugge van de 12de tot de 16de eeuw (Bruges: Gruuthusemuseum, 1981), no. 79, 171–73, plates 68–70. D. Anselm Hoste, De Handschriften van Ter Doest (Steenbrugge: Sint-Pietersabdij, 1993), 226–7, 138–9, plates 26–27. See also, Maurits Smeyers, “Een Cisterciënzervoorschrift en zijn toepassing,” in Bernardus en de Cistercienzërfamilie in België (Leuven: 1990): 81– 95; and Alison Stones, The Minnesota Vincent of Beauvais and Cistercian 13th c. Book Decoration, The James Ford Bell Lectures, no. 14 (Minneapolis: 1977), 9. Carlvant, “Thirteenth-Century Illumination,” 72, n. 1, lists the works transcribed by Henricus. Lieftinck’s paleographic study traces Henricus’s hand to ownership marks in Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MSS 45 and 61, which were donated to the abbey by the canons of Saint Donation in Bruges, De librijen en scriptoria, 46–47. In The Cistercians in Medieval Art (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1998), James France specifies that Henricus was connected to the workshop of the Counts of Flanders at Bruges, 129. The colophon is in Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 13 (fol. 180v), fig. 82. France notes that monks’ heads and those of lay brothers were also pictured in the tiles of the Ter Duinen abbey. Carlvant, “Thirteenth-Century Illumination,” 72; Logghe, Schatten uit de Biekorf, 27. Carlvant notes that the original set may have contained four volumes, and it is the second that is missing, Vlaamse kunst op perkament, 171, n. 1. The folios for divisions are listed in the catalog entry in de Poorter, Catalogue des Manuscrits, 24–25. Stones, Minnesota Vincent of Beauvais, 18–19.

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12. Sonia Scott-Fleming, The Analysis of Pen Flourishing in Thirteenth-Century Manuscripts (Leiden, New York: E.J. Brill, 1989), synopsis. 13. On determining importance by the size according to lines of text, a fifteenth-century Sienese writer on sermons notes, “Thus, each division will become clearly apparent to the reader,” according to Alexander, Decorated Letter, 21, n. 40. I follow the example of Conrad Rudolph’s analysis of the Moralia in Job in Dijon, which begins with technical aspects and traces the development of the artist’s conception of the letters, Violence and Daily Life: Reading, Art, and Polemics in the Cîteaux Moralia in Job (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 34. The more complex initials pause and engage the reader’s contemplation of spiritual struggle, 35. The violent monsters and daily life compositions are used to engage the literality or the sense of the text, 62. 14. Definitions for zoo-anthropomorphic (conflated human and animal forms), anthropomorphic (human form), and inhabited (figures among foliage) are based on Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts, 126, 11, and 72. 15. Margaret T. Gibson, The Bible in the Latin West, Medieval Book, vol. 1 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1993), 9–10. 16. Schapiro, “On the Aesthetic Attitude,” 9. 17. De Hamel, History of the Bible, 20. 18. Jonathan J. G. Alexander, “Italian Renaissance Portraits,” Lowrie J. Daly, S. J., Lecture, at the Thirtieth Annual Saint Louis Conference on Manuscript Studies, Vatican Film Library, Saint Louis University, 11 October 2003. For the distinction of magister, the term is borrowed from Jan Ziolkowski, “Mastering Authority and Authorizing Matters in the Long Twelfth-Century,” Medieval Academy of America, Plenary Lecture, at the 40th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 6, 2005. 19. Willene B. Clark, The Medieval Book of Birds: Hugh of Fouilloy’s Aviarium, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies 80 (Binghamton: State University of New York, 1992), 239–241, fig. 23, 53. In bestiaries, hoopoes are described as having an odd crest and are depicted as any other bird with odd feathers on its head or back, 37. Two traits are described: one that was foul and enjoyed dung (“loves sorrow which causes death of spirit”), and another that cared well for its parents with shelter. The double meaning in this particular bird’s background may contribute to the idea that multiple senses could be learned with such exempla. Beryl Rowland, “The Art of Memory and the Bestiary,” in Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages: The Bestiary and Its Legacy, ed. Willene B. Clark and Meradith T. McMunn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 17. 20. For the “Woman and fox” motif, see Randall, Images in the Margins, 228. For the text of two popular French poems, see Kenneth Varty, Reynard the Fox: A Study of the Fox in Medieval English Art (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1967), 34–36.

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21. Wirth, “Les marges à drôleries,” 287. 22. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux wrote of three types of fox: “flatterers, detractors, and seducers of the spirit,” cited in France, Cistercians in Medieval Art, 215. 23. De Hamel, History of the Bible, 95–96. 24. Camille, Image on the Edge, 21–22. 25. Randall, “Exempla as a Source,” 104–105. The reflection in the mirror, the scared rabbit, and the dream of a blind man refer to a “blank state of mind,” according to Helen Adolf, “The Ass and the Harp,” Speculum 25 (1950): 53. 26. By contrast, the Dominican Bible in Lille, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 1, is contemporary and contains scenes in quatrefoils illustrating the fall of man. Hunting in the margins of Genesis, a nude with a pipe and tabor at Kings I, and dragons composing most of the borders can be counted. Beer, “Liller Bibelcodices,” fig. 1. 27. The hair and beard are similar to a conversus depicted in a Beaulieu manuscript, reproduced in France, Cistercians in Medieval Art, 131, fig. 83. Regarding the brown cowls used for images of Cistercians, France notes that the rule for dress specifies undyed, not white, fabric, 78–80. 28. Randall, Images in the Margins, plate 86, figs. 410–414. 29. The prophet with a scroll is perched on a later initial (5/191, fol. 199v), illustrated in Lieftinck, De librijen en scriptoria, fig. 15. The initial O contains a “Pushmipullu” dragon, coined by Lucy Freeman Sandler, “Reflections on the Construction of Hybrids in English Gothic Marginal Illustration,” in Art the Ape of Nature: Studies in Honor of H. W. Janson, ed. Moshe Barasch and Lucy Freeman Sandler (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1981), 59. 30. For Apocalypse imagery, see Brunsdon Yapp, Birds in Medieval Manuscripts (New York: Schocken Books, 1982, 1981), plates 14–15. 31. Both texts include De pastoribus by Hugh of Fouilloy. The Ter Duinen Aviary (Bruges, Grootseminarie, MS 89/54) was listed in the inventory for the Ter Doest library after 1624. Logghe, Schatten uit de Biekorf, 27–33. ExDyson Perrins, MS 26, is now Getty, MS XV, 3. Clark, Medieval Book of Birds, cat. no. 28, 290–292. As Clark states, the lower folio corners are well thumbed in enough aviaries to assume that they were well used in their original monastic environments, 26. 32. Yapp, Birds in Medieval Manuscripts, 14, plates 14–15. The bestiary of Jacques of Vitry employs the crane for virtues and vices. See Claude Bremond, “Le bestiaire de Jacques de Vitry,” in L’animal exemplaire au Moyen Âge, Ve-XVe siècles, ed. Jacques Berlioz and Marie Anne Polo de Beaulieu (Rennes: University Press of Rennes, 1999), 113. 33. H. W. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1952), 178. 34. Willene B. Clark, “The Illustrated Medieval Aviary and the Lay-Brotherhood,” Gesta 21 (1982): 67.

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35. Carlvant, “Thirteenth-Century Illumination,” 47 and 73; Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures, 139. Carlvant notes that themes like “magnificent Tritons” can be traced to Arras, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 561–Boulogne-sur-Mer, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 4. 36. Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 168, 169, 170, 173. Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, figs. 1–36. For the initials and marginal figures in the Book of Kells (Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS 58), see Heather Pulliam, “‘Therefore do I speak to them in parables’: Meaning in the Margins of the Book of Kells,” in Making and Meaning in Insular Art, ed. Rachel Moss (Dublin: Four Courts Press, forthcoming). I am grateful to Dr. Pulliam for an advance copy of this essay. 37. A similar template of an abbot and a dragon used by Bruges artists is found in the Spermalie Breviary, Grootseminarie, MS 54/100, fol. 12. 38. These terms are based on those discussed by Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, chap. 3. The fecund motifs of the Ruth initial also include foliage from the tail and loudness through the trumpet. 39. Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, chap. 3. 40. Stones, “Secular Manuscript Illumination,” 91, figs. 11–12. According to Randall’s index in Images in the Margins, an ape steps on the tail of a crowned merman in the “Feischi Psalter,” a later Psalter-Hours for Dominican use, from the Ghent school of the early fourteenth century, Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery MS 85, 1300–10 (fol. 81v), 188. Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery, vol. 3, pt. I: no. 221, 65–67, fig. 427. On fols. 115r-116v, the arms of Flanders appear opposite a lady. This manuscript also includes a housewife chasing a fox (fol. 91v) and an ass playing a harp (fol. 85r), motifs of the repertoire recycled in close proximity. 41. Carlvant labels these as “drolerie-motieven” from the secular world in Vlaamse kunst op perkament, 172. As Rudolph notes in his analysis, the class or station of the figures was not really at issue in the Cîteaux Moralia as much as the figures were drawn to convey the larger “sense” of the text being reflected, Violence and Daily Life, 44. But, in late thirteenth century Flanders, class or station may have been at issue with noble patronage, including the income from abbots and novices of noble birth. 42. Suzannah Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 18. Biernoff distinguishes between the terms “flesh” and “body,” neither of which fit comfortably in a dualistic construct with “soul” and “spirit.” With a more complex model in mind, exploration of the bodies in the margins of monastic manuscripts can use more analysis. 43. Clark, “Illustrated Medieval Aviary,” 71. 44. Ibid., 67. Biblical verses are based on the Douai version of the Vulgate. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid.

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47. Regarding the censorship, Michael Camille argues that when such physical interaction with the image occurred, at any point in the manuscript’s history, associations with the demonic were essentially averted, “Obscenity under Erasure: Censorship in Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts,” in Obscenity: Social Control and Artistic Creation in the European Middle Ages, ed. Jan M. Ziolkowski (Leiden: Brill, 1998): 148. According to Mellinkoff ’s recent iconographic study, Averting Demons, the incorporation of nude figures may have been intended for apotropaic functions, averting like with like, or flesh with flesh, 1: 129. 48. Michael Camille, “Glossing the Flesh: Scopophilia and the Margins of the Medieval Book,” in The Margins of the Text, ed. D.C. Greetham, Editorial Theory and Literary Criticism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997): 257. 49. Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, 34–37 and 114–20. 50. Camille, “Glossing the Flesh,” 257. 51. Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, chap. 4. 52. Wentersdorf, “Figurae Scatologicae,” 2. 53. Carlvant points to the book of Numbers, which opens with the initial L in which a heavily robed man, bearded and horned as Moses, is accompanied by an angel and two hybrids (MS 4/1, fol. 109r), illustrated in Vlaamse kunst op perkament, 172. 54. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore, 166. 55. Ibid., 165. 56. Hoste, De Handschriften van Ter Doest, 138, also points to Daniel in a den with seven lions in a Bible from Cîteaux (Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 132). Hoste suggests that illuminators from Artois and Picardy in Bruges were employed on the drolleries, rather than Henricus himself, 139. 57. In the twelfth century, Hugh of Saint Victor viewed “the page is a vineyard and a garden,” and the visual motifs surrounding the texts of this period were more vegetable and foliate than corporeal. Alexander, Decorated Letter, 18. 58. The phrase is also repeated in the description of heaven at the end of Isaiah, 65:25. 59. Claire Van Nerom, “‘Cistercian Tiles,’ Relief Tiles and Related Inlaid Design at the Abbey of Les Dunes (West Flanders, Belgium),” in Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture, ed. Meredith Parsons Lillich, Cistercian Studies 134 (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1993), 4:49–50, figs. 3–7. 60. Claire Van Nerom, “Le Pavement du lavatorium de Coxyde et ses similitudes avec St. Omer,” Cîteaux: commentarii cistercienses 35 (1984): 285–318. 61. In the ceramics collection of the Bijloke Museum, Ghent, Belgium. 62. Nicolas Huyghebaert et al., Monasticon Belge: Province de Flandre Occidentale, 3: 2 (Liège: Centre National de Recherches d’Histoire Religieuse,

Notes to Chapter Two

63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69.

70.

71. 72.

191

1966), 334–35. Abbot Nicolas was versed in law (jurisprudential clarus), but sources to not distinguish whether he acquired his learning through the monastery or before he took the robe, 390. Jean III Servaes (Jean d’Oostberg) was abbot of Ter Doest 1274–1279, then accepted the post at Ter Duinen where he died in 1297 or 1299. He may have transported manuscripts between scriptoria, including the Abbey of Saint Bertin where, in 1277, Jean complied for an annual rent. In 1273 Margaret of Flanders had already given twenty bonniers of land and the isle of Wulpen, and confirmed gifts in 1276. Floris V, count of Holland and married to one of the Dampierre daughters, Beatrice, donated the grange of Monsterhoek and exempted the monks from paying taxes. Ibid., 336. Ibid., 327. An allegorical illustration of Christ and the abbot as shepherds caring for sheep and goats illustrates the text on De pastoribus by Hugh of Fouilloy in the Ter Duinen Aviary (Grootseminarie MS 89/54, fol. 115r). Clark, Medieval Book of Birds, 272, fig. 23. Huyghebaert, Monasticon Belge, 334, n. 2. Carlvant, “Thirteenth-Century Illumination,” 334–6; Lieftinck, De librijen en scriptoria, apps. B and C. Logghe, Schatten uit de Biekorf, 27–33. An ex-libris from Ter Duinen, when it entered the library of Ter Doest, provides the provenance. Carlvant, Vlaamse kunst op perkament, cat. no. 80, 173. The manuscript consists of eighteen quires of twelve folios each, the first beginning on fol. 2r. There is a second copy of the Summa with modest illumination by the Tweede-Ghent group dated to 1286 (Douai, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 639), “Thirteenth-Century Illumination,” 117. Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek MS 373, fol. 80r. A. de Poorter, Catalogue des manuscrits, (1934), 413. Ter Duinen’s scriptorium also had a “signature” method of foliation that was alphabetical. A bookmark survives that provides a key for the symbols next to the letters, as well as an A-G scale on the other side that could be held alongside a text, and its vertical placement down the page was noted in the index. Mary A. Rouse and Richard H. Rouse, Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manuscripts (Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 227–8. Charles F. Briggs, “Late Medieval Texts and Tabulae: The Case of Giles of Rome, De Regimine Principum,” Manuscripta 37, no. 3 (1993): 253. Of the two hands involved in the illumination of the Monaldus Summa and the BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur, one worked on the Psalter of Guy of Dampierre and the other is prominent in BnF fr. 95, BnF latin 1076, and Marseille BM MS 111. Stones, “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” 229–30, n. 127. See also Carlvant, “Thirteenth-Century Illumination,” 68, n. 1.

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73. Like the Dampierre Psalter, c. 1275–85, this is one of the earliest manuscripts with smaller initials filled with busts. Carlvant, “Thirteenth-Century Illumination,” 227. 74. The bugler counts for both music and hunting with a falcon also perched by the foliate initial. A pennon on the bugle carries a coat of arms (gold saltire on blue ground with four white circles), but they have not been identified in surviving rolls. In the Yale Romance, the same motif bears the arms of Flanders on fol. 23v (see fig. 23). 75. Several recorded examples of the burdens placed by Guy of Dampierre upon the Cistercian monasteries in this study, dating to 1294, 1297, and 1302, are examples in Huyghebaert et al., Monasticon Belge, passim. See also Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, 158. 76. Camille, Image on the Edge, 12–13. 77. Stones, “Sacred and Profane Arts,” 109. 78. Randall, “Exempla as a Source,” 104. 79. Rouse and Rouse, Authentic Witnesses, 192. 80. Ibid., 210. 81. Ibid., 211. The Rouses point to the example of Peter of Capua, who was both a master and a cardinal and likened his career to Rachel and Leah, “respectively the contemplative and the active life.” 82. Rouse and Rouse, Authentic Witnesses, 204. 83. James S. Donnelly, The Decline of the Cistercian Lay-Brotherhood, History Series no. 3 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1949). William of Saeftingen from Ter Doest was famous for striking the count, Robert of Artois, in 1302, 59. 84. Ibid., 35. 85. Rouse and Rouse, Authentic Witnesses, 194. 86. Randall, “Exempla as a Source,” 97.

NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE 1. Sandler, “Case of the Luttrell Psalter,” 87–100; Paula Gerson, “Margins for Eros,” Romance Languages 5 (1993): 47–53; and Paul F. Gehl, “Texts and Textures: Dirty Pictures and Other Things in Medieval Manuscripts,” Corona 3 (1983): 68–77. Among others, these scholars have found specific relationships between text and adjacent marginal imagery in fourteenthcentury devotional manuscripts. 2. Kraus, “Psalter for Margaret the Black,” 95–97. I thank Alison Stones and Christopher de Hamel for their assistance in attempting to locate the manuscript, which was last sold at Sotheby’s in 1988, 21.vi.88, lot 73. 3. Francois Avril, “Manuscrits,” in L’Art au temps des rois maudits: Philippe le Bel et ses fils, 1285–1328, ed. Jean Favier, Elisabeth Lalou, and Jean-Rene Gaborit (Paris: Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, 1998), 397, no. 209A209B.

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4. Stones, “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” 231. 5. Hindman, Sealed in Parchment, 46–47; Huot, The Romance of the Rose, 273–322. 6. Camille, Mirror in Parchment, 65; Sandler, “Study of Marginal Imagery,” 23. 7. Paul Saenger, Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1997), 265. 8. The psalter measures 110x80 mm. Based on the historiated initials for Psalms 19 and 26, which are reproduced, the program of illumination seems to follow the traditional scenes of David Kraus, “Psalter for Margaret the Black,” 95–97. For a description of the countess, see Rouse and Rouse, Manuscripts and their Makers, 2: app. 4A. 9. Kraus, “Psalter for Margaret the Black,” 97. 10. Over thirty psalms are missing, Ibid. 95. I have not been able to examine this manuscript in person. If the quires were broken apart, an examination of the text would be necessary to suggest any reconstruction. 11. Ibid., 96; Randall, Images in the Margins, s.v. “Merman as knight with standard, arms of Hainaut,” 188. 12. Randall, Images in the Margins, fig. 503. If the calendar is a smaller quire of six, and if the intact quires are composed of twelve folios, then these images would occur together in the fourth quire. 13. Ibid., s.v. “Patroness, Margaret of Flanders and Hainaut, kneeling,” with pet dog, 195. 14. Ibid., s.v. “Merman with harp, mermaid dancing,” 188. 15. Kraus, “Psalter for Margaret the Black,” 95. 16. Carlvant, “Thirteenth-Century Illumination,” 77, n. 2, compares the Tabulae decretalium in Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 373, whose scribe also came from Bruges to the Psalter for Margaret (Kraus cat. 75, no. 88), a psalter-hours (Berkeley, University of California, MS 28), and Aschaffenburg, Hofbibliothek MS 5. Stones, “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” 256, n. 127, adds about a dozen others to this group. In an earlier article, “Secular Manuscript Illumination,” Stones posits the group as “two artists of different training employed in the same workshop,” 91. 17. 245 folios, 107(115) x 78 mm. A full description is available in Gaspar and Lyna, Les principaux manuscrits, no. 95. 18. Livia Stijns’s dates are based on the arms of John of Namur (b. 1266) on fol. 8v, and Baudouin of Dampierre (d.1275 [sic]) on fol. 7v, “Het Psalter Van Gwijde Van Dampierre: Een Kostbaar Handschrift uit de Koninklijke Bibliotheek te Brussel,” De Vlaamse Gids 37, no. 2 (1953): 86. According to Luykx’s genealogy table, however, Baudouin died in 1296, Het Grafelijk Geslacht Dampierre, 112–115. Gaspar and Lyna date the psalter to 1280– 97, due to absence of the arms of Countess Margaret (d. 1280) and of John of Dampierre (d. 1291), Les principaux manuscrits, 1: 220–221. The lack

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19.

20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

31.

Notes to Chapter Three of arms for John of Dampierre, Guy’s third son, may be due to his positions as chancellor of Flanders, bishop of Metz, and archbishop of Liège, according to Luykx, Het Grafelijk Geslacht Dampierre, 112–113. Stones notes that the heavy over painting of the shields masks accurate dating. Rather, 1275–1285 is a position that links it stylistically to BnF fr.412 and BnF fr. 15106, both dated around 1285, in “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” n. 126. For example, on fol. 8v, the gilding of the arms of the Gruthuse of Bruges is brighter than those of John of Namur (b. 1266), the first son of Guy of Dampierre’s second marriage to Isabella of Luxembourg. Also on this page are the arms of the family Villain of Ghent and those of the Ghistelles. The arms of Flanders appear pure through the verso. Joseph Destrée, “Le Psautier de Guy de Dampierre, XIIIe siècle,” in Messager des Science Historiques, Archives des Arts et de la Bibliographie de Belgique (Ghent: 1890): 377–390; (1891): 81–88, 129–32. The second installment includes a whimsical description of various marginalia, followed by an outline of the armory in the full-page miniatures. Gaspar and Lyna, Les principaux manuscrits, 1: 219–228, 2: no. 95, 43–45, plate 45. L. M. J. Delaissé, Medieval Miniatures from the Department of Manuscripts, the Royal Library of Belgium (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1965), 53. This opening has been the signature reproduction of the psalter, so much so that the page is darker and more brittle than the rest of the manuscript. See also Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures, 139, fig. 43. Delaissé, Medieval Miniatures, 52. The tip-ins remain in the gutter (quires 7–8), and the remaining full-page illuminations result in gatherings of thirteen folios (quires 5, 10, 14 and 16). Only one full page illumination has text written on the other side, fol. 128r, which is the only quire of the Psalms text with six folios. Günter Haseloff, in Die Psalterillustration im 13. Jahrhundert (Kiel: 1938), lists six other manuscripts for the use of Saint Omer, 122–123, table 19. Caviness, Reframing the Margins, fig. 3.31. For this opening, see also my entry in Cardon, Medieval Mastery, cat. no. 37. Carlvant, “Thirteenth-Century Illumination,” 227. The Lapidarium at Saint Bavo’s Abbey, Ghent, preserves many examples of polychrome corbel heads depicting ladies with wimples and veils and men with crowns and chaplets. Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, claims a lack of mermen in the manuscripts that she examined in chap. 3, “Hedging in Men and Women.” In the Dampierre Psalter, however, there are two: fol. 35v (line-ending, playing flute and tabor) and fol. 151v (initial I, with trumpet and cane). The initials are not included in the list of “lettrines” in Gaspar and Lyna, Les principaux manuscrits, but listed as “bordures” like all the marginalia and

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32.

33.

34.

35. 36.

37.

38.

39. 40.

41.

42.

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included as “les principales scenes humoristiques qui ornent les baguettes marginales” (italics mine), 44–45. Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, table 3. Like Randall, Caviness divorces the motifs from their codicological context, so some connections pass under the systematic radar. For example, the housewife chasing a fox is accounted for in the category of “fecundity–spindle” rather than “weapon,” “fable,” or “fox.” Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, chap. 3. Caviness adds in chap.4, “as far as we know medieval art never produced a wholly erotic spectacle of the nude, so it might not have occupied an imaginary field outside the grotesque,” i.e. considered “ugly,” as stated by Giles of Rome. Luykx, Het Grafelijk Geslacht Dampierre, 97. Caviness argues that Guy was over sixty with many children entering marriages, and as his wife was likely reaching menopause, the marginal images of women were positioned as negative to encourage chastity, in Reframing Medieval Art, chap. 3, n. 20. Rouse and Rouse, Manuscripts and Their Makers, 1: 259. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators, 40; de Hamel, History of Illuminated Manuscripts, 89–91. Christopher de Hamel explains that the quires may have been given to scribes loosely folded, either pre-cut and held with a bit of string; for a surviving un-cut quaternion, see Scribes and Illuminators (Toronto, Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1992), fig. 19; see also The British Library Guide to Manuscript Illumination: History and Techniques (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 40–41, 45. James Douglas Farquar, “The Manuscript as a Book,” in Pen to Press: Illustrated Manuscripts and Printed Books in the First Century of Printing, ed. S. Hindman and J. D. Farquar (College Park: University of Maryland, 1977), 30–33. Léon Gilissen, Prolégomènes à la Codicologie: Recherches sur la Construction des Cahiers et la Mise en Page des Manuscrits Médiévaux (Ghent: Éditions Scientifiques Story-Scienta S.P.R.L., 1977), figs. 6–16. Ibid., figs. 1–4. In tables illustrating individual quires, initials and their contents are followed by a semi-colon, then the marginal subjects are separated by commas. For greater simplicity, initials with interlace, serpents, or small, attached heads are usually excluded. Where human heads are mentioned, they fill the field of the initial. The act of subversion through parody may reflect the patron’s cynicism about the papal court of Boniface VIII in letters pleading the case for the Flemish in 1298–99. Vale, The Princely Court, 21–22. Other manuscripts, like the Franciscan Psalter (BnF latin 1076), the “Feischi Psalter” (Walters Art Gallery MS 85), or a Breviary for Saint Peter’s Abbey in Ghent (British Library, Add. MS 29253), contain the arms of Flanders in

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43. 44.

45.

46. 47.

48. 49. 50.

51.

52.

53. 54.

55.

Notes to Chapter Three an initial or margin, but these do not necessarily confirm provenance as the coats of arms themselves were copied as patterns in other media. Camille, Image on the Edge, 100; Mirror in Parchment, 65. The full-page miniature on the last folio of quire 12 (fol. 128v), composed of six folios, does contain arms on the corners, and unusually, this miniature was painted on a text folio rather than tipped in on stronger parchment. The shields are suggested as belonging to van Beest, Bavinckove or Moorslede, and Graeve or Melden, Gaspar and Lyna, Les principaux manuscrits, 2: 45. Randall, “Mediaeval Slander,” 25–38; “Exempla as a Source,” 97–107. See also Bremond, “Le bestiaire de Jacques de Vitry,” 114, in which the ass illustrates the devil. Also the essays by Marie Anne Polo de Beaulieu, “Du bon usage de l’animal dans les recueils médiévaux d’exempla,” in L’animal exemplaire au Moyen Âge, Ve-XVe siècles, ed. Jacques Berlioz and Marie Anne Polo de Beaulieu (Rennes: University Press of Rennes, 1999), 151–69, and Franco Morenzoni, “Les animaux exemplaires dans les recueils de Distinctiones bibliques alphabétiques du XIIIe siècle,” in Ibid.,178–84, also provide good examples of original sermon terminology. Randall, “Mediaeval Slander,” 38. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, 190. For a detailed account of the Battle of the Golden Spurs between the Leliaerts and Clauwaerts, see J. F. Verbruggen and Rolf Falter, 1302: Opstand in Vlaanderen (Tielt: Lannoo, 2001). Randall, Images in the Margins, 209. Ibid., 228. Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, 24. At the end of the psalter, the arms of Flanders also appear in a decorated letter of the closing prayers (fols. 204v). A centaur on the lower border of fol. 216r holds an uncolored shield with the lion rampant. In Picardy and Flanders local nobles founded numerous collegiate churches to serve as a necropolis for the family, noted especially by Hindman in her discussion of divisible patrimony sent as dowries for inheritors entering the church, in Sealed in Parchment, 41. Haseloff, Die Psalterillustration, 110–111. The Dampierre Psalter has this in common with the “Jacobuspsalters” group in Haseloff, table 9, which includes BnF latin 1076 and one for the use of Saint Bertin (Arras, Grand Seminaire), in which the initials are excised. Wirth, “Les marges à drôleries,” 286, makes a point about over-interpreting the symbolism of musical scenes in the Psalms as they are so common. Polo de Beaulieu, “Du bon usage de l’animal,” 169–70. In the same collection of sermons, the serpent and birds of prey are also related to the devil’s entrapment. At the same time, the dog is twice related to man, as are the falcon, owl, and fish. The “sinner” is named in stories about the ass, dog, gazelle, wolf, and the ape. The lion and wolf are also called thieves. Morenzoni, “Les animaux exemplaires,” 185–86. The prevalence of the dog and the horse in collections of Distinctiones reflects the quantitative and

Notes to Chapter Three

56. 57.

58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69.

70. 71. 72.

73.

197

qualitative importance of the two animals in medieval society of the thirteenth century. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, 181. Randall, Images in the Margins, figs. 193–195. It should be noted that fig. 193 is from the Dampierre Psalter, not fig. 194, which is from the Margaret the Black Psalter; discussed and reproduced in Paul Wackers, “Medieval French and Dutch Renardian Epics: Between Literature and Society,” in Reynard the Fox: Social Engagement and Cultural Metamorphoses in the Beast Epic from the Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Elaine C. Block and Kenneth Varty (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000), 68, fig. 4.2. If the red underneath frames a chevron in the oxidized silver, perhaps they belong to Gistel like those on fol. 8v. Gaspar and Lyna, Les principaux manuscrits, 1: 222 and 225. Vale, The Princely Court, 179–84, and app. 6. Adolf highlights the appearance of this motif in the Tristan, “Ass and Harp,” 53–54. Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, chap. 4. Ibid. Like the appearance of this shield in the escutcheon of the prefatory Nativity scene (fol. 8v), this shield appears to be brushed with a different gilt. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, 183–84, 189–90. Hindman, Sealed in Parchment, distinguishes five views of knighthood. The image of the chain mailed seignor emphasizes the senior inheritor, shown in seals on horseback with a shield, 119. The adoption of shields by newer nobility and castellans made the equestrian distinction necessary. In comparison, depicted with shield and weapon and usually with curly hair, the bachelor emphasizes youth and adventure before marriage. Gaspar and Lyna, Les principaux manuscrits, 1: 224. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, 180. Unidentified by Gaspar and Lyna, Les principaux manuscrits, 1: 224. Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, fig. 3.32. For the goat and he-goat (bouc) as exemplars, see Bremond, “Le bestiaire de Jacques de Vitry,” 116. For sermons in north France, see Polo de Beaulieu, “Du bon usage de l’animal,” 165, and Morenzoni, “Les animaux exemplaires,” 174. Ann Payne, Medieval Beasts (London: The British Library, 1990), 32. Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, table 3. Gaspar and Lyna, op. cit., 223. Ernest Warlop, The Flemish Nobility before 1300, (Kortrijk: Desmet-Huysman, 1975), pt. II, 1: 908, no. 119, s.v. “Koekelare-West Flanders, arr. Diksmunde.” The shield has a darker lower half and lighter upper half. The arms of the family of Villain of Ghent need further investigation: Plain, a chief, sometimes charged, typically compose the armorial and equestrian seals of the castellans of Ghent. Ibid., 835, no. 89.

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74. Luykx, Het Grafelijk Geslacht Dampierre, 112. 75. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, 159. See also Vale, The Princely Court, table 17, for a list of nobles in the household residence of Guy of Dampierre. 76. Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, chap. 4. 77. Mary D. Stanger, “Literary Patronage at the Medieval Court of Flanders,” French Studies 11 (1957): 222–23. 78. Stones, “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” 227. 79. The fourth quire illustrates the application of color in illuminating a quire’s margins: a particular salmon pink is used for lion, squirrel, and stag on one side of the parchment. 80. Ibid., 229, n. 123. 81. Randall, Images in the Margins, 20. Stones, “French Prose Lancelot,” 439; Haseloff, Die Psalterillustration, classifies the cycle of historiated initials as “Jacobuspsalter,” 110–111. 82. Another psalter listed with this group is BnF, Smith Lesouef MS 20, which has borders with figures on ten historiated initial pages, Stones, “French Prose Lancelot,” 440–3. Stones is also unable to trace the two arms listed by Joseph Billioud, “Très Anciennes Heures de Thérouanne à la Bibliothèque de Marseille,” in Les Trésors des Bilbliothèques de France, ed. Émile Dacier (Paris: Les Éditions d’Art et d’Histoire, 1935), 175. Descriptions of 88 motifs are listed in Victor Leroquais, Les psautiers manuscrits latins des bibliothèques publiques de France, (Mâcon: Protat, 1940–1), 2: 63–66. See also Jean Porcher, Les manuscrits a peintures en France du XIIIe au XVIe siecle (Paris: Bibliotheque nationale, 1955), no. 72. 83. Fols. 8v and 33r. Billioud, “Très Anciennes Heures de Thérouanne,” 175. 84. Brian Timms, Studies in Heraldry, s.v. “The Arms” (2005), http://perso. numericable.fr/~briantimms/era/armsrollsblazons.htm. 85. Billioud, “Très Anciennes Heures de Thérouanne,” 174; Avril, “Manuscrits,” 308. 86. Billioud, “Très Anciennes Heures de Thérouanne,” 171, plates 62–64; it is possible that the inscription on fol. 136r is in same quire with fol. 141r, 175–176. 87. The Franciscan Psalter measures 193x136 mm., with a text block of 116x70 mm. and unit of ruling at 6 mm., which is exactly the same size as Marseilles 111, Avril, “Manuscrits,” 308. The quires were determined mainly by locating the central cord; several catchwords remain (112v, 142v, 168v) and erased signatures are visible. Fols. 184v and 186–88 have prayers in French added in a sixteenth-century hand, as well as devotional etchings including Saint Francis and Saint Claire of Assisi. 88. Leroquais, Les psautiers, 2: 63. 89. Ibid., 65. In additon, fol. 116. 90. Saint Elizabeth appears with Saint Clare and Saint Francis in the “Feischi Psalter” (Walters Art Gallery MS 45), Randall, Images in the Margins, fig. 611.

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91. Randall, Images in the Margins, fig. 259. This first figure of the patroness is damaged, mainly on the face, which is rubbed, and on the hands, which were redrawn. 92. Billioud, “Très Anciennes Heures de Thérouanne,” 175, 183. Billioud favors the use of Saint Omer over Rome based on the Picardian dialect. 93. Joan Holladay, “Relics, Reliquaries, and Religious Women: Visualizing the Holy Virgins of Cologne,” Studies in Iconography 18 (1997): 95. 94. Vale, The Princely Court, 229. 95. Ibid., 230. 96. Carlvant, “Thirteenth-Century Illumination,” 328; Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures, 137; Oliver, Manuscript Illumination in Liège, 101.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR 1. These texts are unusual additions to a romance. For the historiography, see Stones, “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” 204. A recent catalogue entry for BnF, fr. 95, is in Avril, “Manuscrits,” 307, no. 208. 2. Roger Sherman Loomis and Laura Hibbard Loomis, Arthurian Legends in Medieval Art (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1938), 95. At the time, the Yale volume was in the collection of Sir Thomas Phillips (no. 130) and inaccessible through photographs. 3. Barbara Shailor, s.v. “MS 229” (New Haven: Yale University, Beinecke Library, 1984), http://webtext.library.yale.edu/beinflat/pre1600.ms229. htm. In Digital Images Online, http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/ (New Haven: Yale University, Beinecke Library, 2005), s.v. “MS 229” and select “additional images.” Stones expands the possibilities for heraldic identification in “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” 232. Identified by Gaspar and Lyna in Les pricipaux manuscrits, many of the shields correspond to those of nobles documented in the Flemish court, 45. 4. Randall, Images in the Margins, passim. 5. Stones, “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” 203–60. 6. Camille, Image on the Edge, 100–108, figs. 50, 54, 55, and 56. For a discussion of stock motifs, see Stones, “Secular Manuscript Illumination,” 95–96. 7. For example, see William Tronzo, review of The Metamorphosis of Marginal Images: from Antiquity to Present Time, eds. Nurith Kenaan-Kedar and Asher Ovadiah (The Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts, Tel Aviv University, 2001), The Medieval Review (June 1, 2004). 8. I thank Alison Stones for an advance copy of her next article on the manuscript, “The Illustrations of the Mort Artu in Yale 229: Formats, Choices, and Comparisons,” in The Mort Artu in Yale 229, ed. Elizabeth Willingham (Turnhout: Brepols, following). 9. The “spontaneous experience of the reader” is the element missing from the formal, or aesthetic, and Marxist, or socio-political, approaches to literary

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10. 11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21.

22.

23. 24.

Notes to Chapter Four history, in Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti, Theory and History of Literature, vol. 2 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 19. Stones, “Maître au menton fuyant,” 1258. I am grateful to Lynn Ramey for an advance copy of her forthcoming article, “Images of Rebellion: The Social and Political Context of the Images of Yale 229 La Mort Roi Artus,” in The Mort Artu in Yale 229, ed. Elizabeth Willingham (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming). Camille, Image on the Edge, 100 and 105. Stones, “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” nn. 36 and 129. As noted by Stones, William (Guillaume) would have had children at the time this manuscript was made. The argument, however, presumes that bedroom scenes were considered inappropriate to medieval viewers, and accounts less for the illumination of BnF fr. 95, which contains many more nudes and women misbehaving in the margins. Paul Saenger. Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford, Califronia: Stanford University Press, 1997), 265. Vale, The Princely Court, 147; see also David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 149 and 155. Vale, The Princely Court, 326, table 16. Ibid., 329, table 18. Another interesting letter transcribed by Vale is one from Guy of Dampierre, written ca. 1299 concerning his huntsman, or veneur, Gillion Roussel, Ibid., 362, app. 6. Ibid., 183 The boar is not included in the bestiary by Brunetto Latini, but it is included as one of six bestiary motifs in the illustrations of La Chevalerie de Judas Macabé, which is also linked specifically to William of Termonde. Meradith T. McMunn, “Bestiary Influences in Two Thirteenth-Century Romances,” in Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages: The Bestiary and Its Legacy, ed. Willene B. Clark and Meradith T. McMunn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 135. Camille adds, “Arms are always emblems of power, so where they appear in any medieval manuscript will be places of particular focus,” in Mirror in Parchment, 65. Ramey emphasizes the lord and vassal relationships depicted in the miniatures of the Mort Artu, perhaps reflecting those of the contemporary royalty and nobility, “Images of Rebellion,” forthcoming. Dictionary of Heraldry (London: Brockhampton Press, 1997), 51. The color upon color rule does not always apply for bordures. In her dissertation, Stones states that the assistant in the BnF volume does not appear in the Yale volume, “French Prose Lancelot,” 174. In the later prolegomena article, she indicates that the assistant is the same in both, yet

Notes to Chapter Four

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37. 38. 39. 40.

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more responsible for the latter, “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” 227. Nevertheless, it is difficult to distinguish one hand from another without more experience, and Stones shows that on several folios of Yale 229 it is very difficult to tell (e.g. bifolium 169r-174v and fol. 175r in quire 22). Randall, Images in the Margins, 20. Stones, “French Prose Lancelot,” 174. Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, chap. 3. Centaurs do not appear in the selected quires in the Yale manuscript for table 10. Stones, “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” 233. Other shields held by centaurs have not been identified (fols. 199v, 242v, 291). Richard Barber, “Chivalry, Cistercianism and the Grail,” in A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, ed. Carol R. Dover (Woodbridge, UK and Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2003), 4. Stones, “Secular Manuscript Illumination,” 85. In addition, the inventory of the Count of Hainaut, John II of Avesnes, includes a large romance “ki parolle de Nasciien, de Mellin et de Lancelot du Lach.” Stones illustrates the template of heraldry, apes, and fish body in the Dampierre Psalter and the Yale Lancelot, “Secular Manuscript Illumination,” 91, figs. 11–12. Stones, “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” 232. Both names are in the Wijnbergen Roll (546 and 1254), the latter listed under Flanders. Timms, Studies in Heraldry, s.v. “Wijnbergen Roll.” Whether opposing arms reflect the count’s retinue or known rivals remains to be explored in the historical record, which would certainly affect interpretations of parody or flattery in the manuscript’s post-history. Carol Dover, “‘Imagines Historiarum’: Text and Image in the French Prose Lancelot,” in Word and Image in Arthurian Literature, ed. Keith Busby (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1996), 84. Elspeth Kennedy, “The Making of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle,” in A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, ed. Carol R. Dover (Woodbridge, UK and Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer), 15. Camille illustrates how a similar pennon on a trumpet in the Luttrell Psalter activates associations for the reader in the context of the bear baiting and hunting horns on the same folio, Mirror in Parchment, 65, fig. 17. Camille, Image on the Edge, 100, fig. 54. Barber, “Cistercianism and the Grail,” 3. Ibid., 6. In addition to two miniatures, three three-line initials containing heads (two women and Lancelot) substitute the initials that are typically composed of red and blue bifurcated backgrounds and white filigree designs. Shailor identifies these as the head of the damsel who brings news of Lancelot, Lancelot himself, and Lancelot’s guide, “MS 229,” 25.

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41. Wirth argues against Randall’s textual sources and apparent play on words (couvé and coué), but as Randall emphasizes, this theme is particular to the Flemish manuscripts, in “Les marges à drolleries,” 289; Randall, “Mediaeval Slander,” 35. The cowl in combination with the naked backside may refer to the Cistercian habit of not wearing pants. France, Cistercians in Medieval Art, 77. Considered in connection with the collection of eggs at monasteries during Lent, the motif also points to the possibility of religious parody. Randall, “Mediaeval Slander,” 29. 42. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, 185–90. Ramey emphasizes that the images of anti-royal rebellion can be linked to current problems of the count, the patriciate, and the French king, “Images of Rebellion,” 10. Based on the text of a prose genealogy of the counts of Boulogne, vassals of the counts of Flanders, Hindman notes that the founder of the house of Flanders was “Arthur, King of Britain,” and states, “Arthur becomes a kind of antitype for the King of France, to whom the Counts of Flanders owed homage,” Sealed in Parchment, 123. In addition, Edward I gave his court 450 gilded eggs for Easter, according to household accounts in 1290, so the motif may be a more direct parody for the primary audience; Venetia Newall, An Egg at Easter: A Folklore Study (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1971), 219. 43. H. O. Sommer, The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romance (New York: AMS Press, 1979), 5: 223, line 38. 44. For the blazon, or a cross gules, Stones adds Jean of Velaines (Bar 1270), Bergheim, Val d’Isere, and Crainhem; to the arms of “Court,” argent a lion gules, is added “Wallincourt,” in “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” 232. The arms of Bergen or Bergues appear in an escutcheon of fol. 11v in the Dampierre Psalter and are listed in the Vermandois Roll (228) and ChiffletPrinet Roll; Mortaigne’s appear in an escutcheon of fol. 9v in the Dampierre Psalter and the Vermandois Roll (802); and Court or Wallincourt’s appear in another escutcheon of fol. 11v in the Dampierre Psalter and as Waulaincourt in the Vermandois Roll (314). Appearing on fol. 362r, the latter arms with an additional bordure gules is listed for Walincourt in the Wijnbergen Roll (820). Timms, Studies in Heraldry s.v. “Wijnbergen Roll.” 45. Vale, The Princely Court, 147. Warlop lists Gilbert V as “le chatelain de Bergues” in 1281, Flemish Nobility, 2: 653–657, no. 20. 46. Stones, “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” 209. 47. Michael Camille, The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire (New York: Abrams, 1998), 54. 48. Stones, “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” 210. 49. Sommer, Vulgate Version, 5: 244–47. 50. Hindman emphasizes the controversy of ca. 1280, when John II of Avesnes also claimed the blazon of Flanders, Sealed in Parchment, 126–127. See also Thérèse de Hemptinne, “Holland, Zeeland en Henegouwen onder het huis van Avesnes (1299–1345: Het successverhaal van een personele unie?,” in

Notes to Chapter Four

51.

52.

53.

54. 55. 56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61.

62. 63.

64.

65.

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1299: Een Graaf, Drie Graafschappen; de vereniging van Holland, Zeeland, en Henegouwen, ed. D. E. H. de Boer, E. H. P. Cordfunke, and H. Sarfatij (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000), 38–39. Ramey, “Images of Rebellion,” forthcoming. For the importance of King Arthur to the Flemish court, see Olivier Collet, “Littérature, histoire, pouvoir et mécenat: La Cour de Flandre au XIIIe siècle,” Médiévales: Langue, Textes, Histoire 38 (2000): 87–110; Albert Derolez, “King Arthur in Flanders,” in Festschrift Rudolf Stamm zu Seinem Sechzigsten Begurtstag, ed. Eduard Kolb and Jorg Hasler (Bern and Munich: Francke Verlag, 1969), 239–47; and Stanger, “Literary Patronage,” 214–29. See also Spiegel, Romancing the Past, 53–54, and Hindman, Sealed in Parchment, 7. E. Jane Burns, in her analysis of the social definitions and key icons of courtly attire, argues that garments were employed to negotiate issues of gender and desire, class and subversion, Courtly Love Undressed: Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 1–3, 53. Richard W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 209. Both artists collaborated in this quire, Stones, “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” 227. Camille, Image on the Edge, 127. Verdier, “Woman in the Marginalia,” 121–87. Ibid.,161–63. Randall, Images in the Margins, figs. 4–6. A bifolium (fols. 248–255) with small miniatures in this quire is worth noting. On one side Cain kills Abel, and on the other Bohort and Lionel joust and saved from each other with a bolt of fire from heaven. Ibid., fig. 708. Verdier, “Woman in the Marginalia,” 136. Rouse and Rouse, Manuscripts and their Makers, 2: app. 4A. These ladies may also have been used to recall the description of the three most beautiful women listed in an earlier account of Lancelot’s childhood. See Kennedy, “Making of the Cycle,” 14–15. Vale, The Princely Court, 188. One single-scene miniature not discussed here depicts a courtly gathering in which a queen and a falconer accompany two kings (fol. 291r). In the upper border centaurs with indistinguishable shields battle, while on the lower border knights wield large swords, one knight cutting into his own leg. Vale, The Princely Court, 22; Warlop, Flemish Nobility, 2: 983, no. 144. The arms appear on the pennon of an ape opposite another on fol. 238v in the thirtieth quire. According to the Wijnbergen Roll, Milly is also a possibility. Stones, “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” 233. Stones suggests that with fewer bedroom scenes the Yale Lancelot was intended for a younger audience, so

204

66.

67.

68. 69.

70.

71.

72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

80.

Notes to Chapter Four the audience for the BnF Estoire, by default, may belong to an older generation(?), 205, n. 36. The three architectural styles of the façade may reflect a model illustration for the three tombs that the duchess visits before returning to the castle, but this detail is excluded from the text. Sommer, Vulgate Version, 1: 207–208. Luykx, Het Grafelijk Geslacht Dampierre, 112. Vale, The Princely Court, uses the Ordinace of the household of John of Brabant, son of Duke John I, as he resided in the court of Edward I, to illustrate a smaller scale household for a young prince, 49–50. The shield of Flanders appears in the miniature on fol. 281v. In the thirtyfirst quire, two shields held by jousting centaurs are without identifiable blazons (fol. 242v); on the recto, a shield held by a man wearing a large red cone hat (a Crusader knight?) holds a previously blazoned shield against a lion. In the thirty-fourth quire, the arms of Flanders appear without gold ground, held next to a nibbling ape and over a single-scene miniature documenting the writing of the adventures (fol. 268r). Jousting centaurs (fol. 291r) with unidentified shields re-appear in the thirty-seventh quire. Sommer, Vulgate Version, 2: 283, line 4. Luykx, Het Grafelijk Geslacht Dampierre, 112. Vale, The Princely Court, uses the Ordinace of the household of John of Brabant, son of Duke John I, as he resided in the court of Edward I, to illustrate a smaller scale household for a young prince, 49–50. Sommer, Vulgate Version, 2: 256, line 21. This female character is known variously as Vivian, Ninian, or Nimue, as well as the Lady of the Lake. I extend my thanks to Susan Aronstein at the University of Wyoming for her assistance in translating parts of the text of the BnF manuscript. Sandler emphasizes in her study of the “bawdy betrothal” in the Ormesby Psalter how the interaction of figural scenes with animal motifs on the same page enhances their significance, in “Bawdy Betrothal,” 154–59. Sommer, Vulgate Version, 2: 268, line 37. Ibid., 2: 271, lines 20–30. Ibid., 2: 289, lines 26–27. Susan Smith, The Power of Women: A Topos in Medieval Art and Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 153–54. Sommer, Vulgate Version, 1: 183, line 2. While Smith cites the textual source for Hippocrates in the Saint Graal, this early illustration is not noted, Power of Women, 156. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore, 167. Randall notes three other illustrations in “Exempla as a Source,” 106, n. 72. The manuscripts include Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 3516; a Speculum Beatae Mariae Virginis, formerly in the Chester Beatty Collection; and Yates Thompson, MS 8 (fol. 187r). Smith, Power of Women, 122, figs. 3 and 21.

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81. Sommer, Vulgate Version, 1: 164, line 25. 82. Knowledge of the life of Saint Catherine of Alexandria may also have informed the choice of this motif, as she was known to be triumphant over the philosophers. David Hugh Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 3rd ed. (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), s.v. “Catherine of Alexandria.” 83. Randall, Images in the Margins, fig. 403. Camille, Medieval Art of Love, 41. The latter motif is reversed on another page, but isolated, in the same volume (fol. 209v). The “ducking stool” is illustrated in the Rutland Psalter, fig. 731. For the same motif, Randall lists Douai, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 193, a psalter for the Dominican use of Saint-Omer, early 14th c. Camille illustrates British Library, Harley MS 3487, fol. 22v, of Aristotle’s Physics as “Folly crosses the philosophical text,” Image on the Edge, fig. 7. 84. Sommer, Vulgate Version, 1: 58, line 12. Alternatively, if the word corre or coure is used above for this abbreviated section of the text, then there might exist some sort of play on the French for courtship and the hunt, as well as courir, to ride, as well as colloquially, to spread rumors. 85. Camille, Medieval Art of Love, 41. 86. Burns, Courtly Love Undressed, 31–32. 87. Stones, “Illustrations of the Mort Artu in Yale 229,” forthcoming. 88. One small crowned nude with a spear and blank shield appears in the upper corner of a border on fol. 295r in the thirty-seventh quire. 89. Stones, “Illustrations of BN, fr. 95 and Yale 229,” 227. 90. Largely illegible, the shield may contain argent a lion rampant and bordure gules listed in the Wijnbergen Roll (820). Timms, Studies in Heraldry, s.v. “Wijnbergen Roll.” 91. Ruth Mellinkoff notes the varied uses of nudity in religious scenes, including Adam and Eve, souls resurrected in the Last Judgment, and sinless saints, in Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages, California Studies in the History of Art (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 203. 92. Delorez, “King Arthur in Flanders,” 241. 93. Saenger, Space Between Words, 265. 94. Ramey, “Images of Rebellion,” forthcoming. 95. Malcom Jones cites the Robert of Brunne’s Chronicle, c. 1330, in The Secret Middle Ages (Sutton Publishing, 2002), 67. 96. For example, around 1290, the count of Holland, Floris V, sent Edward I the gift of a falcon. Vale, The Princely Court, 371, app. 9. 97. W. A. Nitze, “The Exhumation of King Arthur at Glastonbury,” Speculum 9, no. 4 (1934): 360. 98. Rouse and Rouse, discuss the biography of Adenet le Roi in Manuscripts and their Makers, chap. 4.

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99. The frontispiece is located in Paris, BnF Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 3142, fol. 1r. Ibid., 2: fig. 53. 100. Ibid., 1: 100. 101. Baudouin van den Abeele, La fauconnerie dans les letters françaises du XIIe au XIVe siècle, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia 18 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990), 336. 102. Jauss, Aesthetic of Reception, 20. 103. Ibid., 19.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE 1. Carlvant, “Thirteenth-Century Illumination,” 61–66. 2. The sources cited by Vincent of Beauvais are discussed in Astrik L. Gabriel, The Educational Ideas of Vincent of Beauvais, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1962), 8; and Michel Lemoine, “L’Oeuvre Encyclopédique de Vincent de Beauvais,” Cahiers d’Histoire Mondiale 9, no. 3 (1966): 577. 3. An illustrated De Natura rerum from the thirteenth century is in Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 320. M. Michèle Mulchahey, “First the bow is bent in study:” Dominican Education before 1350, Studies and Texts 132 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1998), 467. For the culmination of such texts in later illumination, see Lucy Freeman Sandler and James Le Palmer, Omne Bonum: A Fourteenth-Century Encyclopedia of Universal Knowledge: British Library MSS Royal 6 E VI-6 E VII (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 1996). 4. Alison Stones, “Prolegomena to a Corpus of Vincent of Beauvais Illustrations,” in Vincent de Beauvais: intentions et receptions d’une oeuvre encyclopédique au Moyen Âge, ed. Monique Paulmier-Foucart, Serge Lusignan and Alain Nadeau (Montreal: Bellarmin, 1990), 301–2. 5. For the marginal motifs in the Spiegel Historiael, see Janssens and Meuwese, Spiegel Historiael, fols. 3v-4r, 12r, 29r, 49v, 67r, 95v, and 208r. 6. Clark, Medieval Book of Birds, passim; Albert Derolez, The Autograph Manuscript of the Liber Floridus: A Key to the Encyclopedia of Lambert of SaintOmer, vol. 4, Corpus Christianorum, Autographa Medii Aevi (Turnholt: Brepols, 1998), 11, 185–90, app. 1. 7. Paul Barrette and Spurgeon Baldwin, eds., The Book of the Treasure, Garland Library of Medieval Literature, vol. 90 (New York: Garland, 1993), viii, 2. 8. Stones, “Maître au menton fuyant,” 1258. 9. In the inventory made upon the count’s death in 1304, a Trésor is not specifically listed, albeit most of the entries are more descriptive than titular. Dehaisnes, Documents et Extraits Divers, 154–158. 10. Barrette and Baldwin, Book of the Treasure, ix-x, 2–3. 11. Julia Bolton Holloway, Brunetto Latini: An Analytic Bibliography (London, Wolfeboro, NH: Grant & Cutler, 1986), 20–25. The article by Patricia M.

Notes to Chapter Five

12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26.

207

Gathercole, “Illuminations on the Manuscripts of Brunetto Latini,” Italica 43 (1966): 345–52, summarizes some of the subject matter in fourteen manuscripts dating from thirteenth to sixteenth centuries and in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The group includes Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 10228; BnF fr. 1110; and Arras, Médiathèque municipale, MS 182/1060. Alison Stones, “A Note on the North French Manuscripts of Brunetto Latini’s Trésor,” in Festschrift for Lucy Freeman Sandler, eds. K. Smith and C. Krinsky (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming). I am grateful to Dr. Stones for an advance copy of this essay. Ibid. Barrette and Baldwin, Book of the Treasure, 4. Ibid., 1. Ibid., 4. A table of illustrations comparing both groups, “Chapter Headings and Sigla after Carmody,” can be found in Alison Stones, “The Illustrated Manuscripts of Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, to c. 1320,” in The City and the Book II: The Manuscript, the Illumination, ed. Julia Bolton Holloway (Florence, 2002), http://www.florin.ms/beth5.html. Stones, “Maître au menton fuyant,” 1247. The name is coined according to the characteristic noted by Gaspar and Lyna for KBR MSS 9400, 9411–26, and 9543, in Les principaux manuscrits, nos. 87, 89, and 90. Opening to Book III, Barrette and Baldwin, Book of the Treasure, 279. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence, 31. Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana (Florence: Nardini Editore, 1986) Tav. 75, 124. See my entry for this manuscript in Cardon, Medieval Mastery, 205, no. 39. Stones, “French Prose Lancelot,” 169–170, 178. This group includes Oxford Univeristy, Ashmole MS 828, Brussels, Royal Library MS, 11040, and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS Smith Lesouëf 20. Ronald N. Walpole, The Old French Johannes translation of the Pseudo-Turpin chronicle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 319–36, provides a good description for the whole manuscript, including the Trésor section. Ibid., 320. Giles of Rome, Li Livres du Gouvernement des Rois: A XIIIth Century French Version of Egido Colonna’s Treatise De Regimine Principum (1899; New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1966). An Augustinian friar and professor of theology at the university of Paris, Giles borrowed heavily from Aristotle’s moral philosophical works to write this lengthy instruction manual for rulers dedicated it to Philip the Fair in 1280. The eventual popularity of this text corresponds with the growth in didactic literature about lordship and governance, even among the lesser nobility. Briggs, “Late Medieval Texts and

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27.

28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38.

39. 40. 41.

42.

43.

Notes to Chapter Five Tabulae,” 253–275. The text is used to comment on the education of princely behaviors and on the “freak” nature of female hybrids representing irrational impulses by Caviness, in Reframing Medieval Art, chap. 3, nn. 2–3. See William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, trans. Emily Atwater Babcock and A.C. Krey, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943). Janson, Apes and Ape Lore, 172. On the ape as physician, see David A. Sprunger, “Parodic Animal Physicians from the Margins of Medieval Manuscripts,” in Animals in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays, ed. Nona C. Flores, Garland Medieval Casebooks (New York and London: Garland, 1996), 67–81. In the Yale Lancelot, the same motif appears beneath the first-column illustration of monks bidding Lancelot adieu before his tomb adventure (see fig. 22). Randall, Images in the Margins, 10. Ibid., 65. “Folly crosses the philisophical text,” Camille, Image on the Edge, 23, fig. 7. Catalogue des Manuscrits Francais, Ancien Fonds (Paris: 1868), 1: 56. Sprunger, “Parodic Animal Physicians,” 67. Ruth Mellinkoff, “Riding Backwards: The Theme of Humiliation and the Symbol of Evil,” Viator 4 (1973): 153–76. See also Lynn Tarte Ramey, Christian, Saracen and Genre in Medieval French Literature, Studies in Medieval History and Culture (New York & London: Routledge, 2001), 3. Van den Abeele, La fauconnerie dans les lettres, 250. For example, around 1290, the count of Holland, Floris V, sent Edward I the gift of a falcon. Vale, The Princely Court, 3771, app. 9. Barrette and Baldwin, Book of the Treasure, bk. 1, chap. 90, 50. Stones has discerned the blazons in the badly smeared miniature, but they are not yet identified. These are “or a double-headed eagle sable, gules a lion argent [white], and barruly or and gules a bend sable charged with cockle-shells argent [white],” Stones, “North French Manuscripts,” forthcoming. Barrette and Baldwin, Book of the Treasure, bk. 1, chap. 99, 60. Ibid., bk. 1, chap. 99, 60. The pointing hand in the margin highlights the text “German and French.” Ibid., bk. 2, chap. 50, 192. The last two opening folios in this manuscript are treated on separate bifolia, with the miniature ending the column of text on the verso page and the decorated initial, borders, and a marginal figure decorate the following recto. A much smaller lion, not following the three models opening the bestiary, appears in the margin of one of the last opening folios (fol. 87r). The crocodile is described in chap. 131, the first in the bestiary; the lion is described in chap. 174; the manticore is in chap. 192. Albert Derolez, The Autograph Manuscript of the Liber Floridus: A Key to the Encyclopedia of Lambert of Saint-Omer, Corpus Christianorum, Autographa

Notes to Chapter Five

44. 45.

46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57.

209

Medii Aevi, vol. 4 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1998), plate 22, fol. 61v of Ghent, University Library, MS 92. Barrette and Baldwin, Book of the Treasure, 192. Stones supplies new information on the damaged shields in “North French Manuscripts,” forthcoming. The arms of Holland are or a lion gules. The other shield has barry argent (white) and azur a bend gules overall; the arms of Luxembourg would have the same background, but a lion gules overall, which presumes the bend is a repaint. The shield for Luxembourg is in Jirí Louda and Michael Maclagan, Heraldry of the Royal Families of Europe (New York: C.N. Potter : Distributed by Crown Publishers, 1981), table 33. Stones is still skeptical because the other shields do not easily fit and, like these, have been partially erased and repainted. The arms on fol. 149v provide the fifteenth-century provenance of Chåtillon-Coligny. A. de Laborde, Les Principaux Manuscrits a Peintures Conserves dans L’Ancienne Bibliotheque Imperiale Publique de Saint-Petersbourg, Publications de la Societe Francaise de Reproductions de Manuscrits a Peintures (Paris: La Societe Francaise de Reproductions de Manuscrits a Peintures, 1936), 25– 26, cat. no. 21. Tamara Pavlovna Voronova and A. Sterligov, Western European Illuminated Manuscripts of the 8th to the 16th centuries in the National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg: France, Spain, England, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands (St. Petersburg: Parkstone Press, Aurora, 1996), nos. 56–71. This differs from the 1937 article on the manuscript, reporting 89 miniatures, 60 of them in the bestiary, plus eighteen “large grotesques,” in Alexandra Constantinowa, “Li Tresors of Brunetto Latini,” Art Bulletin 19 (1937): 203–219. Brunetto Latini, Li livres dou tresor, trans. Jaume Turró (Barcelona: M. Moleiro, eds., 2000). Constantinowa, “Li Tresors,” 217. Stones, “North French Manuscripts,” forthcoming. Stones, “Illustrated Manuscripts of Brunetto Latini,” 27. Stones, “North French Manuscripts,” forthcoming. Illustrated in Voronova and Sterligov, Western European Manuscripts, fig. 56. Sprunger, “Parodic Animal Physicians,” 73. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore, 172. Illustrated in Voronova and Sterligov, Western European Manuscripts, fig. 60. Stones, “North French Manuscripts,” forthcoming. Barrette and Baldwin, Book of the Treasure, 64. Stones, “North French Manuscripts,” forthcoming. M. R. James’s catalog entry on the manuscript (162 fols., 310 x 212 mm.) includes the textual divisions as well as good descriptions of the miniatures and borders, in Descriptive Catalogue of the Second Series, 145–150, no. 74. Fol. 65 is numbered twice in the manuscript. Hindman, Sealed in Parchment, 77.

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58. Van den Abeele, La fauconnerie dans les lettres, frontispiece (Dampierre Psalter, KBR 10607, fol. 3). 59. Camille, Image on the Edge, 28. 60. Barrette and Baldwin, Book of the Treasure, bk. II, chap. 2, 144. 61. Camille, Mirror in Parchment, 65. 62. Barrette and Baldwin, Book of the Treasure, 146. 63. Based on seventy occurrences of the theme in twenty-nine manuscripts, ca. 1280–1320. Randall, “Snail in Warfare,” 358. Randall also cites the midthirteenth century Image du Monde by Gautier de Metz, where in the “sixth root of Accide, pusillanimity is typified by fear before a snail,” 361. 64. Alexander, “Iconography and Ideology,” 33. 65. Randall, “Snail in Warfare,” 361. 66. Van der Meulen, “Avesnes en Dampierre of ‘De kunst der liefde’: Over boeken, bisschoppen en Henegouwse ambities,” in 1299: Een Graaf, Drie Graafschappen; de vereniging van Holland, Zeeland, en Henegouwen, ed. D. E. H. de Boer, E. H. P. Cordfunke, and H. Sarfatij (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000), 61–64, figs. 3 and 6. The authorship of Ars d’amour is found in a riddle on fol. 13v of MS 9543, ending the second chapter: “si vous savez dire en thiois,” which indicates a Flemish reader. Van der Meulen also rejects a previous attribution to Jan van Arkel as dating too late. 67. Stones, “Maître au menton fuyant,” 1261. Stones calls this bishop Guillaume, but in van der Meulen, “Avesnes en Dampierre,” 58–59, and in the genealogy chart in de Waha and Dugnoille, “De Avesnes en Holland vóór 1299,” 12, the bishop is Gwijde, Flemish for Guy. 68. Stones, “French Prose Lancelot,” lists the subjects of the miniatures but not the marginalia, 247–250. Border figures, including birds, dragons, and hybrids occur on just less than half of the illuminated folios. Stones, “Maître au menton fuyant,” 1263. The fabliaux compilation is included in Randall, Images in the Margins, (MS 9411–26, figs. 271, 348, 385), while the aesthetics volume was not (MS 9400). 69. Within the end of this section, however, fols 178v-183v contain li quars (fourth book) in the running title, followed by fols. 184v-201v containing li tiers (third book) in the running title. Either the six folios were misplaced, which would re-order three illustrations, or the scribe misnumbered the running titles. 70. Randall, Images in the Margins, fig. 396. See my discussion of the motif in the Ghent Tweede manuscripts, Moore, “Fabric and Framework of Ghent,” 1002, and my entry on the latter manuscript, Cardon, Medieval Mastery, 205, no. 39. 71. Van der Meulen, “Avesnes en Dampierre,” 48–50. 72. Ibid., fig. 3. 73. Ibid., fig. 4. 74. Van den Abeele, La fauconnerie dans les lettres, 104.

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75. Randall, “Snail in Warfare,” 361. Alexander, “Iconography and Ideology, 33.” Alexander does not use supporting textual evidence for the early-fourteenth century context of the motif, arguing that the images are ideological and that it was “the nature of the ideology to be hidden.” 76. Randall, “Snail in Warfare,” 360. 77. Van den Abeele, La fauconnerie dans les lettres, 250. 78. Gaspar and Lyna, Les pricipaux manuscrits, 209. It seems fake with color on color: red ground with four maroon stripes each outlined in white. 79. Ibid., this marginal image is not noted. 80. Randall, Images in the Margins, fig. 385. 81. Michael Camille, Gothic Art, Glorious Visions (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 144, fig. 104. More work on the text of these recueils needs to be done before a more holistic approach can be used; although the marginalia are limited in variety, the texts will be useful for iconography

NOTES TO CHAPTER SIX 1. Chap. 2, bks. 1–4, in Mâle, The Gothic Image, 23–24. 2. Ibid., 49. 3. For a discussion of the historiated initials of manuscripts in this chapter, see Christel Meier, “Bilder der Wissenschaft: Die Illustration des ‘Speculum maius’ von Vincenz von Beauvais im enzyklopadischen Kontext,” Fruhmittelalterliche Studien, Jahrbuch des Instituts für Frühmittelalterforschung der Universität Münster 33 (1999): 260–67 and 275–79; Stones, “Vincent of Beauvais Illustrations,” 304, n. 7; and Alison Stones, “A Note on some rediscovered Vincent of Beauvais volumes,” Vincent of Beauvais Newsletter 26 (2001): 10–13. 4. Stones, “North French Manuscripts,” forthcoming. 5. Vincent specified the organizational purpose to Louis IX. B. L. Ullman, “A Project for a New Edition of Vincent de Beauvais,” Speculum 8 (1933): 317. A good bibliography on the Speculum majus is found in Johannes Benedictus Voorbij, Het ‘Speculum Historiale’ van Vincent van Beauvais: een studie van zijn ontstaansgeschiedenis (Groningen: Rijksuniversiteit, 1991), xv-xxxi. See also Hans Voorbij, Vincent of Beauvais O.P. (Utrecht University, The Netherlands, 2001), http://www.cs.uu.nl/groups/IK/archives/vb_home. htm. 6. The use of this twelfth-century Latin term is based on the discussion of such teachers in medieval learning treatises by Ziolkowski, “Mastering Authority,” n. 11. In “Bilder der Wissenschaft,” Meier draws the distinction between a Lehrerfigur (teacher) and the Schöpfer (Creator), 261. 7. Stones compares the illuminated copies of the Speculum historiale in the appendices of “Vincent of Beauvais Illustrations,” 304, 315–329. The description of MS 131, however, is incomplete (fols. 231v, 361v, 411v, and

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8.

9.

10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

436r contain figures on the borders). Book 5 opens on fol. 95r with a battle scene in the border and two kings in the historiated initial I. In addition, the ape in the lower border of fol. 54v is eating a gold ball, not carrying “babies in bag,” 323, app. B. Stones observes that the artists associated with the manuscript reserved historiated initials for Latin texts and framed miniatures for romances, Ibid., 311. Fol. 388v contains the colophon, in capital letters alternating blue and red. The abbot’s full name is Eustache Gomer der Lille, also Eustasius de Insula. For the groups of manuscripts associated with the early fourteenth-century artists, see Alison Stones, “Notes on Three Illuminated Alexander Manuscripts,” in The Medieval Alexander Legend and Romance Epic: Essays in Honor of David J. A. Ross, ed. Peter Noble, Lucie Polak, and Claire Isoz (Millwood, NY: Kraus International, 1982), n. 31. For more on these texts, see Mulchahey, Dominican Education before 1350, 469. In the same collection, a third volume of the Speculum naturale and two volumes of the Speculum historiale are decorated with penwork flourishing. The second surviving illuminated copy of the Speculum naturale, Laon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 426, dates to the early fourteenth century and contains books 11–18, discussed in Meier, “Bilder der Wissenschaft,” 267–70, figs. 57–59, and Stones, “Maître au menton fuyant,” 1248, ill. 2. The volume can be paired with BnF, MS lat. 6248C, with books 19–27, as noted in Stones, “Re-discovered Vincent of Beauvais Volumes,” 10. Stones, “Maître au menton fuyant,” 1248. Ziolkowski, “Mastering Authority,” n. 8. The illuminators have been connected to a number of Cistercian patrons, whose manuscripts are datable to the last quarter of the thirteenth century. They also illuminated copies of the Trésor by Latini, in which the first folio only contains marginalia. In a recent essay, Stones doubts the attribution of this workshop to Arras put forth by A. Bräm, “Ein Buchmalereiatelier in Arras,” 77–104, and she places the artists more firmly in Douai, in “North French Mansucripts,” forthcoming. Gabriel, Educational Ideas of Vincent of Beauvais, 9. “The memory bits culled from works read and digested are ruminated into a composition—that is basically what an ‘author’ does with ‘authorities.’” Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 189. Carruthers distinguishes the term author from auctor, “an auctor is simply one whose writings are full of ‘authorities,’” whereas an author acquires authority only by having his works remembered and copied by later generations. A. J. Minnis further notes that Vincent uses actor for his opinions or those of “modern doctors,” Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic literary attitudes in

Notes to Chapter Six

17. 18.

19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

26.

27. 28. 29.

213

the later Middle Ages (1984; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 157. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 157. The citations in the Bruges Speculum doctrinale are underlined in red ink instead of rubricated text. Contributor to the exhibition catalog, Rijkdom bedreigd, ed. René de Herdt and Patrick Viaene (Brussels: Gemeentekrediet, 1990), Ludo Vandamme emphasizes the realism of games and illustrates fol. 24r with the game of bowls on the lower border; the figures in opposing positions are similar to the magister and monk in the initial directly above, 192. The juxtaposition of the magister and the game of bowls was also made in the Estoire del Graal in the margin over the foolish Aristotle (BnF fr. 95, fol. 61v); in another case of female deception, the game underlines the episode of Guenevere’s poisoned apples in the Mort Artu (Yale 229, fol. 293r). Randall, Images in the Margins, s.v. “Man fishing,” under which only two manuscripts date to the last quarter of the thirteenth century; the later generation of artists, ca. 1330, in the Ghent-Tweede school, elaborated on the theme at length. See my article, Moore, “Fabric and Framework of Ghent,” 989–90. Since these manuscripts were not known to Randall, this study adds the Latin encyclopedic context to the significance of the repertoire. Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 246. Ibid. Barrette and Baldwin, Book of the Treasure, 146. The shields include: or three chevrons gules (d’Ivry) and or three bendlets sable (also on the pennon, Denisy or Denisi) against or a lion rampant gules (Bergues, Bergen) and or a dragon sable. Names are cited according to the blazons listed in Timms, Studies in Heraldry, s.v. “The Arms.” This folio is not included in Stones’s list of illustrations, “Vincent of Beauvais Illustrations,” 323, app. B. Stones, “Vincent of Beauvais Illustrations,” 324, app. B. This scene was standard to the Alexander cycles of illuminations. The large-beaked bird to the right may be based on a caladrius, a bird that was fabled to turn its face away from death, but here faces the left scene. In the copied manuscript, MS 130, the bird resembles a stork but still faces the scene (fol. 92v). Payne, Medieval Beasts, 66–67. The illuminated bible, Saint Omer MS 5, contains typologies between the historiated initials and margins, Stones, “Vincent of Beauvais Illustrations,” 313. Stones, “Secular Manuscript Illumination,” 95. The development of “artificial finding devices,” page layout, and alphabetization is discussed in Rouse and Rouse, Authentic Witnesses, 191–219. The quote from Hugh of Saint Cher’s Postilla super Genesim is the title of the recent study on Dominican education by Mulchahey, Dominican Education before 1350. The library at Ter Doest had at least four copies of Hugh

214

30. 31. 32. 33.

34.

35.

36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

Notes to Chapter Six of Saint Cher’s works, so the Benedictine abbey may have owned such resources as well. Logghe, Schatten uit de Biekorf, 28. Stones, “Vincent of Beauvais Illustrations,” 317–18. Farmer, Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 54. See Janssens and Meuwese, Spiegel Historiael, 9–10, fols. 95v and 208r. Mermen as hunters decorate borders on fols. 12r and 49v. Although the Roman numerals in the running titles of recto folios number the books of this volume of the Speculum naturale, the numbers conflict with those in the 1624 edition published by Baltazaris Belieri, reprinted as Vincentius Bellovacensis, Speculum Quadruplex sive Speculum Maius: naturale, doctrinale, morale, historiale (1624; Graz-Austria: Akademische Drucku. Verlagsanstalt, 1964). For the location of book numbers and titles, I follow the printed text in books 16–21 and 23–25, also used in the list of subtitles by Lemoine, “L’Oeuvre Encyclopédique,” 571–79. For this volume, the numbers of the books are followed in parentheses by the Roman numerals in the manuscript’s running title. Also in Bonne-Espérance, books 9–15 make up another volume of the Speculum naturale, and like it, books 1–7 and 24–31 of the Speculum historiale set contain only pen-flourished initials. Photographs of the illuminated volumes, with the books numbered to facilitate finding the text in the 1624 printed edition, are available in the on-line photo library at the Royal Institute for the Study and Conservation of Belgium’s Artistic Heritage (Brussels: KIKIRPA, 2001), http://www.kikirpa.be/www2/Site_irpa/En/Doc/Photonline.htm, s.v. “Speculum naturale.” There are six monks, six magisters, and five figures of God, who holds a small figure of Eve in the first, a closed book in three of the initials, and the mappa mundi in the last. The remaining historiated initial depicts the angel and devil fighting over one’s soul; the marginalia on this folio have been rubbed out (fol. 53v, book 27). Meier, “Bilder der Wissenschaft,” 266 and 262. Several figures in this manuscript have been excised and rubbed out. One figure rubbed out in the initial may have been a hybrid devil, for the text discusses the “parts” of the animal corpus here. As Camille explains in “Obscenity under Erasure,” the offense of some figures so struck a reader to obliterate them and make them absent, fig. 7. Meier, “Bilder der Wissenschaft,” 252. For the sexual connotations of small, furry animals and harpies, see Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, chap. 3. Ibid. For other cases of drawings and instructions in the margins of manuscripts, see Alexander, “Preliminary marginal drawings,” 307–19. Botanists suggest that it comes from the sap of the shrub Pterocarpus draco. Vladimir Baranov, “Materials and Techniques of Manuscript Production,”

Notes to Chapter Six

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

215

chap. 2 in “Medieval Manuscript Manual” (Budapest: Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University), http://www.ceu.hu/medstud/ manual/MMM/pigments.html. See my catalog entry for this manuscript in Cardon, Medieval Mastery, 209, no. 41. Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 134, 137, and 142. Ibid., 133–35. See Sandler, “Construction of Hybrids, 51–65. Stones, “Maître au menton fuyant,”1263. Ibid., 1257–58; Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, includes this psalter’s marginal images in table 3. De Herdt., Rijkdom bedreigd, 192. See also catalog entries by Carlvant, Vlaamse kunst op perkament, 121–22; Logghe, Schatten uit de Biekorf, 22; and Hoste, De Handschriften van Ter Doest, 43–45, plates 11–13, and 183; and see W. P. Dezutter, “Vincentius van Beauvais, Speculum Doctrinale,” Het Brugs Ommeland 21 (1981): 326–28. Randall, Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery, vol. 3, pt. 1: 32, cat. nos. 219A and C. Stones, “North French Manuscripts,” forthcoming. The Book of Hours, KBR MS 9391, includes two themes of women with distaffs and bugs on fol. 96r; and the “apes with wheelbarrow” and the “laying eggs” motifs echo the Dampierre group repertoire. Randall, Images in the Margins, fig. 399. Alexander, “Preliminary marginal drawings,” 307. De Herdt, Rijkdom bedreigd, 192. The initials are addressed by Meier, “Bilder der Wissenschaft,” 275–79. Since the Bruges manuscript has a numbered introduction, the Roman numerals for books in the running title are one more than those in the 1624 edition of the Speculum Quadruplex, which are used here for locating the rubrics and text. John C. Jacobs, ed., The Fables of Odo of Cheriton (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1985), 132 and 82. Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 838, and Vaticani latini MS 3203, fol. 1r. The former is illustrated in Hoste, De Handschriften van Ter Doest, 45. De Poorter, Catalogue des Manuscrits, 2: 292. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 265, n. 100. France, Cistercians in Medieval Art, 77. Ruth Mellinkoff, “Riding Backwards: The Theme of Humiliation and the Symbol of Evil,” Viator 4 (1973): 153–76. Jan M. Ziolkowski, Alan of Lille’s Grammar of Sex (Medieval Academy of America, 1985), 15. Ibid., 14.

216

Notes to Chapter Seven

64. In Mervellous Signals: Poetics and Sign Theory in the Middle Ages (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), Eugene Vance argues that Dante’s attribution of sodomy to Brunetto was not based on sexual perversion but rather was used for the graver misuse of language and violence against social order, 242. 65. Ziolkowski, Grammar of Sex, 27–29. “He hammers on an anvil which issues no seeds. The very hammer itself shudders in horror of its anvil,” 30. 66. The term is used by Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art, chap. 3. 67. Randall, “Snail in Warfare,” 358. 68. At the Misericordia Internationale session at the 38th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 2003, participants in the Iconographic Roundtable suggested that this white animal could refer to the cat, Tibert, but I use fox since the animal with the coq in the upper margin looks similar to the reading animals. In Images in the Margin, Randall lists s.v., “Fox with book” but not the same for “Cat with. . . .” The artist made changes in detail from the traditional models, so substituting or perceiving a cat may shift the significance for the viewer. The anti-Semitism of the cat may also play a role, as a “sign” addressed by Sara Lipton, “Jews, heretics, and the sign of the cat in the Bible moralisée,” Word & Image 8, no. 4 (1992): 362–81. 69. Varty, Reynard the Fox, 31–33. This literal pun reflects the Continental use of the motif, which depicts the fox with a rooster, while the English images use the goose as the fowl.

NOTES TO CHAPTER SEVEN 1. For the thirteenth century, Dehaisnes, Documents et Extraits Divers, 56–250; Vale, The Princely Court, apps. 1–11. 2. Randall, Images in the Margins, 10. 3. I am grateful to my co-author, Tim Spence, for inspiring and making this project possible, “‘The medium is the message’: The Craft of Parchment Making,” Exhibition Lecture, “The Art of the Book,” Museum of Art and Archeology, University of Missouri-Columbia (March 13, 2003). 4. I begin to make codicological inquiries into one psalter-hours made in Ghent during the 1320s in Moore, “Fabric and Framework of Ghent,” 983–1006. See also K. B. Elisabet Carlvant, Collaboration in a FourteenthCentury Psalter: The Franciscan Iconographer and the Two Flemish Illuminators of MS 3384,8oˇ in the Copenhagen Royal Library (Steenbrugge: Sint Pietersabdij, 1982). 5. The 2000 NEH Seminar on Yale 229, “The Arthurian Illustrated Manuscript and the Culture of the High Middle Ages,” at Yale University and instructed by Howard Bloch, drew together historians, literary historians, and art historians to examine the language of the text, the representations

Notes to Chapter Seven

6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

217

of the idealized court, and the relationship between the two. The results of the seminar are forthcoming in Elizabeth Willingham, ed., The Mort Artu in Yale 229, (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming). In “Glossing the Flesh,” Camille argues this point regarding nudes, heads, and bodies in the margins, 251–52. Alexander notes that despite definitive textual sources, images carry ideological workings with them which are not so explicit, in “Iconography and Ideology,” 33. Sandler, “The Study of Marginal Imagery,” 43. Ibid. Marc Michael Epstein, Dreams of Subversion in Medieval Jewish Art and Literature (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997); Claire Donovan, The de Brailes Hours: Shaping the Book of Hours in Thirteenth-Century Oxford (London: The British Library, 1991); and for the spectrum of illustrated encyclopedia, see Roland Schaer, dir., Tous les saviors du monde: Encyclopédies et bibliothèques, de Sumer au XXIe siècle (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Flammarion, 1996), in particular MarieHélène Tesnière, “De l’Écriture, ‘jardin de la Sagesse,’ au Livre des merveilles du monde: six modèles d’esprit encyclopédique medieval,” 57–98.

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Index

Numbers in italics indicate pages with figures.

A abbot, 27, 41 acrobat. See jongleur Adam, 122, 123, 129, 130, 205n. 91 Adenet le Roi, 68, 109, 205n. 98 Alan of Lille, De planctu Natura, 163, 166 Alexander the Great, 101, 105, 152; romance of, 5, 183n. 60, 213n. 25 Alexander, Jonathan, 7, 15, 21 Ambrose, Saint, 3, 25–27, 38 angel, 7, 66 table 6a, 67, 76 table 9b, 80, 137, 141, 156, 157, 214n. 35 Anne, Saint, 112, 120, 121, 125–26, 128, 132, 134 ape, 3, 14, 25, 30, 33–35, 34, 39, 40, 41, 47, 49 table 1, 55, 64, 66–68, 67 table 6b, 71, 78, 83, table 10, 86, 87, 88 table 11, 89, 91, 93, 97, 101, 103, 112–13, 116, 117–20, 125–29, 132, 133, 147, 152–54, 160–1,168, 173, 186n. 5, 189n. 40, 196n. 54, 201n. 32, 203n. 64, 204n. 67, 208n. 29, 212n. 7, 215n. 51 Aristotle: Ethics, 112, 127, 134, 137, 151, 175; Physics, 2, 118, 175; mounted by Phyllis, 86, 101–3, 104, 105, 108, 213n. 19 arms, coats of. See heraldry

Arras Chansonnier (Arras, Medithèque municipale, MS 139), 115, 138 Arras Psalter (Arras, Musée Diocesian, MS 47), 69, 71, 103, 104, 108 Arras: diocese of, 2, 16–17, 19, 98, 145, 148, 180n. 24; manuscript illumination in, 5–6, 16, 145–46, 112–14, 136–37, 185n. 3, 212n. 14 Arthur, King, 10, 11, 26, 80, 83, 93, 99, 102, 106, 108–9, 141 Arthurian romance, 16, 79, 97, 110, 119, 178n. 8 Artois: court of, 2; manuscript illumination in, 21, 190n. 56 ass, 10, 42, 42–43, 55–58, 56 table 3a, 64, 65, 173, 189n. 40, 196n. 45, 196n. 54 author portrait, 3, 23, 26, 38, 39, 107, 116, 117, 127, 149, 150, 162

B bachelor, 11, 17, 50, 54, 63–64, 65, 68, 83, 87, 88, 91, 93, 99, 129, 130, 134, 139, 140, 197n. 65 bagpipes, 27, 32, 42, 43, 47, 49, 56 table 3b, 59 table 4b, 61–62 table 5a, 64, 89, 101, 125, 128, 150, 168

233

234 battle scene, 5, 7, 16, 72, 83, 85, 93, 101–2, 105, 108, 115, 120, 139, 152, 155 beaver, 66 Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint, 7, 24, 33, 38, 145, 197n. 22 bestiary, 29, 66, 83, 111–14, 119, 124–27, 138, 141, 188n. 32, 200n. 20 Bible, 2, 22, 26, 38, 146, 179n. 12. See also Henricus Bible bifolia, -um, 9–10, 45–46, 53–54, 56–59, 61–67, 71–77, 88–89, 91–93, 96, 99, 101–2, 118–20, 156, 171, 174, 201n. 24, 203n. 57, tables 2–6b, 8a-9b bird, 2, 14, 22, 25–29, 36, 39, 40, 51, 56 table 3a, 57–58, 66 table 6, 67– 68, 72, 78, 86, 102, 118, 120, 126, 128–29, 132, 133–35, 147, 148, 149–50, 151, 153– 54, 156, 159, 168, 172, 186n. 5, 196n. 54, 210n. 68 blazon. See heraldry BnF Estoire, 69, 79–80, 88 table 11, 94, 98, 118, 126 BnF Graal, 88 table 11, 99, 100, 102, 103, 105. 108, 213n. 19 BnF Merlin, 79, 87, 88 table 11, 101 BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur (Paris, BnF, MS fr. 95; New Haven, Yale MS 229), 6, 10, 16, 19, 26, 38, 40, 46, 48, 64, 68–9, 71, 78, 79–88, 97, 110, 124, 126, 132, 151, 174, 191n. 72, 216n. 5, tables 10–11. See also BnF Estoire, BnF Graal, BnF Merlin, Yale Lancelot, Yale Mort Artu, Yale Queste boar, 62 table 5b, 63, 83, 94, 139, 200n. 20 Bohort, 106, 109, 203n. 57 book of hours, 6, 40, 78, 172, 175. See also Brussels, KBR, MS 9391; Marseilles, MS 111 Book of Kells. See Dublin Boulogne Speculum historiale. See Boulognesur-Mer, MS 131 Boulogne-sur-Mer, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 131 (Boulogne Speculum

Index historiale), 146, 147, 152–55; MS 130 (Speculum historiale), 146, 152, 154, 154 Brabant, 83, 86, 100; arms of, 99, 100, 101. See also John I of Brabant Bruges Speculum doctrinale. See Bruges, Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 251 Bruges, 2, 4, 6, 21, 36–38, 48, 66, 185n. 1 Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie MSS 4/1 and 5/191 (Henricus Bible), 2, 3, 6, 21–22, 23, 24–33, 28, 30, 31, 34, 35, 35–38, 40, 55, 57, 64, 66, 69, 89, 93, 107, 124, 169, 173; MS 45/144 (Monaldus Summa), 6, 21–22, 35, 37–38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 51, 115, 117, 173, 191n. 72; Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 6 (Henricus Bible), 21, 24; MS 251 (Bruges Speculum doctrinale), 113, 139, 148, 150, 151, 161–69, 164, 165, 167, 168, 169 Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie MSS 4/1 and 5/191 (Henricus Bible), 2, 3, 6, 21–22, 23, 24–33, 28, 30, 31, 34, 35, 35–38, 40, 55, 57, 64, 66, 69, 89, 93, 107, 124, 169, 173; MS 45/144 (Monaldus Summa), 6, 21–22, 35, 37–38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 51, 115, 117, 173, 191n. 72; Openbare Bibliotheek, MS 6 (Henricus Bible), 21, 24; MS 251 (Bruges Speculum doctrinale), 113, 139, 148, 150, 151, 161–69, 164, 165, 167, 168, 169 Brunetto Latini, Le Trésor, 6, 16, 111–15, 116, 123, 127, 129, 134, 137, 151, 174, 200n. 20, 216n. 64 Brussels, KBR, MS 1175 (Viel Rentier d’Oudenaarde), 17; MS 9391 (Book of Hours), 161, 180n. 26, 215n. 51; MS 9400 (Recueil ascetique), 142; MS 9411–26 (Recueil de poesies moral), 142; MS 9543 (Li ars d’amour),

Index 140; MS 10607 (Dampierre Psalter), 6, 10, 16, 29, 32, 39, 45, 47–48, 50, 52, 53, 55, 58, 60, 61,63, 65, 68–69, 72, 75, 83–86, 89, 94, 109, 117, 124, 139, 173, 183n. 57, 191n. 72–73, 201n. 32, 202n. 44, tables 1–6b bull, 121, 123–24

C calendar scene, 5, 49, 69, 109, 119, 122, 123, 129, 163, 164 Camille, Michael, 2, 9, 12–13, 33, 46, 55, 79–80, 82, 92, 96–97, 172 Carruthers, Mary, 151, 153, 155, 160, 174 cat, 132, 133, 158, 168, 216n. 68 Caviness, Madeline, 13–15, 51, 53, 63, 68, 86, 172 centaur, 3, 26, 49, 69, 71–72, 74 table 8a, 77–78, 83, 85–86, 88 table 11, 99, 100, 119, 126–27, 145, 158, 196n. 50, 201n. 28–29, 203n. 63, 204n. 67 Christ, 14, 29, 49, 67 table 6a, 68, 72, 120, 137, 142, 148, 191n. 65 Cistercian, 6, 21–22, 24, 26–28, 34, 43, 148, 161, 163, 170, 173, 202n. 41, 212n. 14 Cîteaux Moralia in Job. See Dijon Clare of Assisi, Saint, 72, 77, 198n. 90 cleric, 12–13, 112, 123, 126–27, 129, 135, 136–37, 150, 152, 155, 169 codicology, 6–9, 12–14, 46, 53, 79, 88, 91, 173 compendia, -um, 6, 114–15, 136, 178n. 9 coq, 57, 86, 169, 170. See also rooster courtly love, 63, 96–97, 102, 106 Courtrai, 18, 82 courtship, 81, 84, 86, 87, 91, 96–97, 101– 2, 132, 134, 138, 205n. 84 cowardice, 10, 63, 134, 139, 140, 141, 168 crane, 29, 51, 62 table 5a, 188n. 32 Creation, 129, 148, 156, 158, 163 Credo, 61, 141, 142

235 crocodile, 124, 208n. 42

D Dampierre group, 2, 4, 6, 16, 19, 21, 24, 27, 29, 32, 35, 37–38, 44, 45, 47–48, 58, 69, 74, 83, 89, 93– 94, 112, 114–15, 119, 145–46, 169, 173–74 Dampierre Psalter. See Brussels, KBR, MS 10607 dancer, 7, 25, 54 table 2, 55–56 table 3b, 81, 86, 98, 113, 125 dancing, 14, 47, 128, 158, 166 Daniel, 28, 32, 36, 190n. 56 David, 51, 58 table 4a, 59, 73, 74, 75 table 8b, 76 table 9b, 103, 104, 108, 166 destrier, 16, 81, 84, 89, 98, 107, 134 devil, 49 table 1, 58–59 tables 4a-b, 60, 61, 62 table 5a, 74–75 table 8b, 196n. 45, 196n. 54, 108, 151, 214n. 35, 214n. 37 Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 168, 169, 170, 173 (Moralia in Job), 30, 33, 187n. 13, 189n. 36 dog, 47, 49, 51, 54 table 2, 59, 61–62 table 5a, 72, 74 table 8a, 76 table 9b, 83, 105, 119, 128, 134, 152, 154, 156, 157, 158, 166, 196n. 54–55. See also hound Douai group, 6, 114, 141, 145, 161, 212n.14 Douai, manuscript illumination in, 5–6, 16, 112–13, 136, 145, 148 dragon, 32–33, 36, 40–41, 41, 51, 62 table 5b, 74, 128, 158, 159, 188n. 29, 189n. 37, 210n. 68. See also grotesque, serpent Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS 58 (Book of Kells), 30, 189n. 36 duel, 7, 86, 146, 153, 155, 160, 163, 164, 166, 178n. 8, 186n. 5

E Edward I (king of England), 68, 93, 108–9, 182n. 43, 202n. 42, 204n. 66, 205n. 96, 208n. 36

236

Index

Edward II (king of England), 16 eggs, 10, 11, 55–8, 56 table 3b, 93–4, 108– 9, 116, 175, 182n. 43, 202n. 41–42, 117, 215n. 51 elephant, 158, 159, 160 Elizabeth of Hungary, Saint, 72, 77, 198n. 90 encyclopedia, 2, 5–6, 9, 22, 38, 111–14, 129, 136, 139, 145, 148, 151, 155, 158, 162, 170, 172, 174– 75, 177n. 2, 217n. 10 Eve, 129, 132, 158, 205n. 91, 214n. 35 exempla, 68, 143, 146, 155; animal, 83, 85, 110, 120, 148, 169; sermon, 10, 26, 42–43, 57–58, 102

fox, 3, 10, 26, 32, 47, 49 table 1, 55–58, 56 table 3a, 61–62 table 5a, 63, 85 table 10, 86, 139, 168, 169, 168–70, 172, 188n. 22, 195n. 32, 216n. 68–69. See also Reynard the Fox Francis, Saint, 40, 71 table 7, 70, 72, 74–76 tables 8–9, 77 Franciscan Psalter. See Paris, BnF, MS latin 1076 Franciscan, 39, 43, 72, 77, 118, 170, 183n. 61 Frau Minne, 105, 118

F

Galahad, 84, 97, 99 games, 5, 139, 160, 174; bowls, 149, 151, 156, 162, 213n. 18–19; “frog in the middle,” 14, 168, 168 gathering. See quire genealogy, 89, 96–97, 120, 132, 178n. 8, 202n. 42 genitalia, 14, 28, 33, 63, 108, 123, 150, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166, 168, 168 Ghent, 4, 17, 37, 48, 59, 64, 67, 138, 155; St. Michael’s, 18; St. Peter’s Abbey, 59, 61, 186n. 5, 189n. 42, 195n. 42; Thirty-Nine, 64; Villain of, 67, 194n. 19 gittern, 51, 52, 54 table 2, 90, 107, 109 goat, 3, 26, 197n. 69 God, as Creator, 123, 130, 148, 156, 157, 158, 159, 163, 214 n. 35; of Love, 138 grammar, 86, 163, 166; grammatica, 103, 163, 166 grotesque, 13, 50, 53, 92, 115, 130, 135, 150, 165. See also hybrid, serpent Gruthuse of Bruges, 64, 89, 194n. 19 Guenevere, 11, 81, 93–94, 96–97, 102, 213n. 19 Guy of Avesnes, bishop of Utrecht, 112, 125, 137 Guy of Dampierre, Count of Flanders, 6, 15, 19, 48, 58, 63–64, 67, 77,

G fable, 26, 57–58, 61, 63, 85, 110, 162–63, 168, 178n. 9 fabliaux, 8, 136, 141 falcon, 28, 37, 107, 120, 134, 141, 192n. 74, 51, 196n. 54; falconer, 67 table 6b, 96, 106–9, 118, 120, 127, 129, 138, 203n. 63; falconry, 49, 129, 139 fish, 31, 31–32, 36, 64, 66–67 table 6b, 90, 156, 158 196n. 54; fishing, 147, 151–52, 156, 157, 159, 160, 162 Flanders: arms of, 18, 41, 46–48, 50, 57, 61, 72, 74 table 8a, 75, 86, 87, 89, 91, 92, 94, 95, 97, 99–101, 127, 139, 173, 195n. 42, 196n. 50, 202n. 50, 204n. 67; county of, 2, 15, 17–18, 61, 72, 77, 98, 111, 174; court (household) of, 10, 15–16, 45, 57, 59, 78, 83, 89, 93, 97, 106, 196n. 51, 202n. 42; manuscript illumination in, 4–6, 21, 40, 111, 141, 173, 177n. 2. See also Guy of Dampierre, count of Florence Trésor (Florence, Biblioteca Medici Laurenziana, MS Ashburnham 125), 40, 114–19, 116 Floris V, count of Holland, 15–16, 155, 191n. 62, 205n. 96, 208n. 36

Index

237 82, 94, 99, 109, 192n. 75, 198n. 75, 200n. 18

H Hainault: arms of, 46–47, 99–100, 139; county of, 2, 15, 47, 83, 97, 136. See also John of Avesnes, count of hare, 3, 14, 26, 40, 47, 49, 51, 58 table 4a, 61–62 table 5a, 63, 67 table 6b, 68, 72, 75 table 8b, 76 table 9b, 78, 91, 115, 116, 117, 119–20, 125, 128, 136, 139, 140, 147, 153, 155, 158, 178n. 8, 186n. 5. See also rabbit harp, 30, 42, 47, 156, 166 167 Henricus Bible. See Bruges, Archief Grooteseminarie MSS 4/1, 5/191 Henricus, scribe, 2, 22, 37, 186n. 7–8, 190n. 56 heraldry, 10, 12, 16, 18, 34–35, 40, 41, 45–49 table 1, 50, 55, 57–58, 61, 63–64, 65, 66–69, 70, 74, 78, 79, 81, 83–86, 85 table 10, 88 table 11, 89, 91–97, 95, 99–102, 106–7, 110, 112, 117, 124–8, 132, 133, 139, 152, 155, 171, 173–74, 201n. 32 herm, 22, 26–27, 41, 61, 63, 70, 72, 83, 86, 89, 94 Hippocrates, 102–3, 103, 115, 117, 204n. 77 Histoire de la Guerre Sainte. See Paris, BnF, MS fr. 2754 historiated initial, 7–8, 17, 21, 50, 51, 55, 57–59, 68–69, 72, 73, 74–75, 77, 84, 91, 92, 93, 103, 104, 111, 115, 145–46, 147, 148, 150, 152–53, 154, 156, 157, 158, 159, 162, 164, 165, 167, 168, 169, 170–71, 212n. 8, 213n. 26 hoopoe, 3, 26, 56 table 3a, 57–58, 187n. 19 horse, 11, 17–18, 37, 54, 61, 64, 81, 82–83, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93–94, 95, 101– 2, 119–20, 128–29, 130, 135, 138–39, 158, 196n. 55

hound, 13–14, 37, 51, 78, 83, 102, 115, 116, 118, 120, 121, 153–55, 158, 178n. 8. See also dog Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux. See New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art household, 13, 17, 61, 80, 82–83, 88, 99, 110, 114, 124, 171, 174, 204n. 66 housewife, 10, 26, 32, 57, 86, 138, 170, 195n. 32 Hugh of Fouilloy, Aviarium, 27–29, 32–33, 36, 43; De pastoribus, 111, 160, 174, 188n. 31, 191n. 65 Hugh of Saint Cher, 38, 153, 213n. 29 Hugh of Saint Victor, 36, 38, 57, 160 hunter, 49, 63, 68, 83, 85 table 10, 86, 88 table 11, 89, 117, 120, 132, 152–53, 155, 200n. 18 hunting, 7, 13–14, 17, 40, 63, 66–67, 83, 94, 113, 115, 118–20, 129, 138–39, 146, 151, 153, 155, 158, 160, 170, 178n.9, 40, 192n. 74, 205n. 84 hybrid, 3, 22, 26, 29–32, 30, 31, 37, 39, 51, 72, 78, 86, 114–15, 116, 117, 119, 124, 128, 130, 132, 138– 39, 141, 164, 165, 208n. 26

I I-initial, 23, 24, 27–32, 30, 31, 51, 52, 54– 5, 64, 65, 66, 70, 71–2, 74, 77, 107, 152, 194n. 30, 212n. 7 initial: foliate, 24, 28–29, 31, 38; inhabited, 2, 3, 8, 21, 23, 24, 28, 34, 35, 38, 41, 116; pen-flourished, 24, 39; with bust or cameo, 11, 36, 39, 41, 47, 51, 192n. 73, 195n. 40, 201n. 40; zoo-anthropomorphic, 2, 21, 24, 30, 31, 51, 65. See also I-initial, historiated initial Isaiah, 25, 33, 35, 36

J Jacob of Maerlant, Spiegel Historiael. See The Hague Jacques of Vitry, 26, 55, 101, 188n. 32

238 James, Saint (the Lesser), 72, 76 table 9b, 77 Jauss, Hans Robert, 110, 172 Jeanne, Countess of Flanders, 15, 77, 98 Jerome, Saint, 25, 27, 36, 38 Jesse Tree, 36, 120, 125, 132 jester. See jongleur John I of Avesnes, Count of Hainault, 15, 83 John I of Brabant, 99, 101, 109, 204n. 66 John II of Avesnes, Count of Hainault, Luxembourg, and Holland, 15, 19, 97, 112, 124–25, 137, 201n. 31, 201n. 50 John, Saint, 51, 72 Jonah, 25, 29, 30, 31–32, 66–67 table 6b jongleur, 2, 3, 7, 25, 27, 29, 47, 51, 52, 54–55, 58 table 4a, 61, 86, 102, 107, 112–13, 125–26, 128, 168 joust, 32–33, 34, 35, 83, 87, 89, 91–92, 92, 94, 95, 97–99, 100, 101, 111, 116, 117, 125–29, 132, 133 juggler. See jongleur

K knight, 5, 10, 16–18, 39, 47, 51, 54 table 2, 58 table 4a, 61–2 table 5a-b, 63, 67 table 6b, 67, 74, 74 table 8a, 76 table 9b, 77, 80, 81, 83–85 table 10, 86, 87, 88 table 11, 89, 92, 93, 93–94, 97–99, 101, 105, 107, 110, 112, 115, 116, 117, 119, 127–9, 130, 132, 134, 135, 136, 138–9, 141, 152, 158, 185n. 82, 197n. 65. See also Lancelot, warrior Kokelare, arms of, 66, 117

Index Lai d’Aristote, 86, 101–2, 105 Lambert of Saint Omer, Liber floridus, 108, 111, 124, 174 Lancelot, 11, 81, 83–84, 88–89, 90, 91, 93–94, 95, 96–97, 99, 101, 105–9, 107, 141 Les Dunes, Abbey of. See Ter Duinen, Abbey of Li ars d’amour. See Brussels, KBR MS 9543 libraire, 5, 8–9, 22, 171 lion, 3, 11, 23, 26–27, 35, 35–36, 39, 51, 61, 72, 83, 89, 91, 93, 96, 101, 113, 115, 116, 117, 119, 124– 29, 145, 156, 157, 158, 196n. 54, 204n. 67, 208n. 42 literacy, 2, 5, 8, 15, 18, 46, 53, 58, 61, 112, 114, 141, 143, 162, 170, 172, 175 London Trésor. See London, BL Yates Thompson MS 19 London, British Library, Additional MS 42130 (Luttrell Psalter), 12, 46, 182n. 48; Additional MS 62925 (Rutland Psalter), 2, 205n. 83; Harley MS 3487 (Aristotle’s Physics), 118, 178n. 6; Yates Thompson MS 19 (London Trésor), 113–14, 124, 126, 128–29, 130, 131, 132–39, 133, 134, 135; Yates Thompson MS 43 (Psalter-Hours), 78 Louis IX (king of France), 15–16, 54, 145, 152 Luttrell Psalter. See London, BL, Additional MS 42130

M L La Chevalerie de Judas Maccabee et ses nobles freres. See Paris, BnF, MS fr. 15104 Lady of the Lake, 32, 89, 90, 93–94, 96, 204n. 70 lady, 12, 39, 47, 51, 58 table 4a, 74 table 8a, 61, 77, 81, 83–85 table 10, 87, 88 table 11, 89, 91, 91–94, 95, 96–99, 100, 101, 105–6, 120, 132, 134, 158, 189n. 40, 194n. 29, 203n. 61. See also women

magister, 26, 86, 88 table 11, 102, 104, 113, 116, 117–18, 120, 122, 123–24, 127–29, 141, 142, 146, 148, 149, 151–52, 156, 158, 162–63, 164, 165, 167, 168, 187n. 18, 213n. 18–19, 214n. 35 Maître au menton fuyent, 6, 80, 114, 136, 141, 145, 148, 155, 161, 184n. 69 Mâle, Emile, 7, 145 manticore, 124, 208n. 42

Index manuscripts. See under Arras; Boulogne-surMer; Bruges; Brussels; Dijon; Dublin; Florence; London; Marseilles; New Haven; New York; Oxford; Paris; St. Omer; St. Petersburg; Tournai; Valenciennes; Vatican Library; Vellereille-les-Brayeux; The Hague mappa mundi, 137, 158, 214n. 35 Margaret the Black Psalter. See New York, H. P. Kraus Margaret the Black, Countess of Flanders and Hainault, 15–16, 45–46, 48, 64, 77, 98–99, 183n. 65, 191n. 62 Margaret, Saint, 47 Marseilles Hours, (Marseilles, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 111), 45, 69, 77 Martin, Saint, 54 table 2 memory, 13, 148, 151, 153, 155, 160, 170, 172, 175, 212n. 16 Merlin, 87, 101–2, 108 mermaid, 7, 32, 37, 47, 48 table 1, 51, 53, 55, 62 table 5a, 63–64, 65, 68, 85, 89, 90, 93–94, 113, 139, 172 merman, 29–31, 37, 47, 51, 83, 85, 91, 94, 95, 155, 189n. 40, 214n. 32 merpeople, 47, 55, 64, 69, 78, 85 table 10, 86, 88–89 “mirror of knowledge,” 6, 16, 110, 114, 145–46, 148, 152, 161, 163. See also encyclopedia, reference work Monaldus of Istria, 6, 21, 38 Monaldus Summa. See Bruges, Archief Grootseminarie, MS 45/144 monk, 7–8, 22, 23, 25, 27, 29, 37–38, 43, 62 table 5a, 71 table 7, 83, 91, 94, 95, 98, 118, 128, 146, 151, 156, 162, 169, 172, 186n. 8, 213n. 18, 214n. 35 Montbaston, Jeanne and Robert of, 8–9, 53, 89, 174 Mortaigne, arms of, 61, 94, 202n. 44 Moses, 25, 33, 152 mouse, 132, 133, 158

239 musical instruments. See bagpipes, gittern, harp, pipe and tabor, pipe organ, psaltery, trumpet, viol

N Nascien, 99, 101–2 nesting eggs. See eggs New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 229 (Vulgate Arthur). See BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur, Yale Lancelot, Yale Mort Artu, Yale Queste New York, H.P. Kraus, cat. 75, no. 88 (Margaret the Black Psalter), 45, 48, 51, 55, 61, 184n. 68, 197n. 57; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters 54.1.2 (Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux), 12, 14, 182n. 48 Noah, 118, 125, 129, 131, 132 nude, 2, 7, 24–25, 28, 30, 30–36, 52, 61, 62 table 5a, 63, 71, 74, 85 table 10, 86, 88 table 11, 103, 104, 107, 106–9, 116, 117–19, 121, 123, 139, 150, 163, 164, 165, 168, 190n. 47, 195n. 33, 200n. 13, 205n. 88, 205n. 91, 217n. 6 nun, 7–8, 71 table 7, 72, 74 table 8a, 75, 77, 98, 186n. 5

O obscenity, 13, 102, 125, 214n. 37 Ormesby Psalter. See Oxford, Douce MS 366 owl, 28, 127, 156, 157 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce MS 24 (Psalter), 78; Douce MS 366 (Ormesby Psalter), 14, 204n. 71

P palfrey, 89, 98, 129 Paris Trésor. See Paris, BnF, MS fr. 567 Paris, 2, 4, 8, 18, 22, 37, 53, 61, 68, 82, 89, 148, 175, 178n. 8 Paris, BnF, MS fr. 95, see BnF Estoire, BnF Graal, BnF Merlin, BnF-Yale Vulgate Arthur; MS fr. 567 (Paris

240 Trésor), 114, 119–25, 121, 122, 127–29; MS fr. 2754 (Histoire de la Guerre Sainte), 115; MS fr. 15104 (La Chevalerie de Judas Maccabee et ses nobles freres), 16, 80, 200n. 20; MS latin 1076 (Franciscan Psalter), 45–46, 48, 69–72, 70, 71 table 7, 73, 74–6 tables 8–9, 85, 98, 198n. 87 patron, image of, 47, 71 table 7, 72, 73, 75–76 table 9b, 77, 112, 120, 121, 125–26 patronage, 2, 6, 12, 15–17, 37, 46–47, 51, 57–58, 68, 82, 88, 96–97, 109–12, 114–15, 124–25, 128, 136, 145, 148 peacock, 28, 32, 58 table 4a, 66 table 6a, 74 table 8a pelican, 28–29, 32 Peter, Saint, 56 table 3a, 57, 59 table 4b Pettegem, 77, 82 Phyllis, 101–3, 104, 105, 108 pipe and tabor, 73, 125, 166, 167 pipe organ, 47, 72, 116, 117, 121, 123 Power of Women topos, 69, 102 prophet, 23, 24–25, 27, 29, 188n. 29 prose, 10, 16–17, 78, 80, 82, 89, 97, 106, 148, 161, 174, 202n. 42 psalter, 5–6, 9, 40, 45–51, 53, 68–69, 74, 77–78, 80, 83, 88, 98, 107, 115, 172–73. See also Dampierre Psalter, Franciscan Psalter, Arras Psalter, Tournai Psalter psaltery, 40, 51, 117, 156

Q quaternion, 53–54, tables 2–6b, 74, tables 8a-9b quire, 6, 8–10, 40, 42, 45–47, 49, 51, 53– 55, 57–59, 61–67, 71–72, 75, 85–86, 88–89, 91, 93–94, 96, 99, 101–2, 105–6, 108–9, 117– 20, 139, 173–75, tables 1–11

R rabbit, 10, 63, 94, 102, 128–29, 158, 188n. 25. See also hare

Index Randall, Lilian, 4, 10, 14, 22, 42–43, 47, 55, 57, 79, 93, 113, 136–39, 151 reference work, 6, 12, 16, 18, 37–38, 43– 44, 111–12, 155, 170. See also encyclopedia Reynard the Fox, 26, 61, 85, 169, 183n. 61 rhetoric, 112, 127, 148, 166, 169–70 Robert of Béthune, Count of Flanders, 17, 58, 61, 89 romance, 2, 5–6, 9, 12–13, 16–18, 26, 32, 46, 78–80, 82–83, 88, 92, 97, 99, 106, 108–10, 114–15, 118–20, 128–29, 132, 146, 172, 174–75, 177n. 2 rooster, 3, 26, 56 table 3b, 57–58, 116, 169, 216n. 69. See also coq Rouse, Richard and Mary Rouse, 8–9, 43, 153, 174 Ruth, 25, 31, 31–32, 64, 93 Rutland Psalter. See London, BL, Additional MS 62925

S Saint Omer, 6, 28, 77, 145–46, 172 Saint Omer, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 5 (Bible), 28, 153 saint, 6–7, 25–7, 36, 46–7, 51, 71 table 7, 72, 75, 98, 114, 146, 205n. 91. See also individual saints by name scatology, 12, 175 senses, 25–26, 42, 146, 155, 187n. 13, 187n. 19, 189n. 41 Sept Sages, 79, 114–15, 117 serpent, 40, 50, 56 table 3a, 59, 62 table 5a, 63–64, 85, 94, 134, 135, 138, 156, 166, 167, 195n. 40, 196n. 54. See also dragon, grotesque shield. See heraldry snail, 10, 127–28, 134, 135, 136, 139, 140, 141, 142, 163, 164, 166, 167, 168 sparrow, 28, 29, 32–33, 36 squirrel, 3, 26, 51, 74, 115, 116, 119–20 St. Petersburg Trésor (National Library of Russia, MS Fr.F.v.III,4), 113– 14, 124–28

Index stag, 3, 26, 39, 56 table 3b, 57, 62 table 5a, 67 table 6b, 70, 74 table 8a, 76 table 9b, 89, 101, 118, 120, 121, 125–9, 153, 155, 158, 186n. 5 Stephen, Saint, 56 table 3a, 57, 117 Stones, Alison, 5–6, 16, 32, 42, 46, 69, 79, 82, 84–85, 96, 106, 112–13, 124–25, 146, 153, 161 stork, 29–30, 39, 90, 91, 127, 131 swallow, 29, 57, 66 table 6a, 67

T tail, on human, 10, 31, 51, 52, 53–54 table 2, 57 table 5a, 63, 74, 93, 106– 9, 107, 131, 132 Ter Doest, Abbey of, 21, 36–38, 40, 43, 161, 174, 185n. 1, 213n. 29 Ter Duinen, Abbey of, 21–22, 28, 34, 36–38, 40, 43, 148, 161, 174, 185n. 1, 186n. 8, 191n. 70 The Hague, Royal Library, MS KA.XX (Spiegel Historiael), 16, 111, 155 Thérouanne group, 115, 117, 119–20, 123, 145, 153 Thérouanne: diocese of, 2, 6, 21, 69, 77, 112, 145; manuscript illumination in, 2, 5–6, 112–14, 128 Tournai Psalter (Tournai Cathedral, Scaldis H 12/2), 16, 80, 161, 180n. 24, 183n. 57 Tournai: diocese of, 2, 21, 111, 145; manuscript illumination in, 5, 172, 184n. 69, 185n. 3 trumpet, 31, 62 table 5b, 66 table 6a, 91, 92, 116

U unicorn, 120, 121, 128–9, 131, 132 Ursula, Saint, 52, 70, 74 table 8a, 75, 77

241 Vellereille Speculum naturale (Vellereilleles-Brayeux, Abbaye de BonneEspérance, MSS 4–5), 146, 148, 149, 151, 156–61, 157, 159, 160 vice, 26, 89, 127. See also Virtues and Vices, cowardice Viel Rentier d’Oudenaarde. See Brussels, KBR, MS 1175 Villard of Honnecourt, 132, 179n. 10 Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum majus, 6, 16, 111–12, 136, 145–46, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 161, 170, 174, 206n. 2 viol, 11, 39, 40, 55–56 table 3a, 62 table 5a, 64, 65, 66 table 6a, 73, 76 table 9b, 81, 94, 128, 132 Virtues and Vices, 63, 112, 123, 126–27, 134, 135, 136, 139, 143, 166, 188n. 32

W warrior, 41, 41, 70, 71 table 7, 72. See also knight wheelbarrow, 105, 118, 178n. 6 William of Termonde, 16, 46, 48, 58, 80, 83, 89, 93–94, 107, 127, 161, 200n. 13 windmill, 113, 161, 163 Wirth, Jean, 14, 26 women, 12–14, 47, 51, 53, 56 table 3a, 62 table 5b, 63, 85, 88, 94, 97–99, 101–2, 105–6, 112, 118, 120, 125, 128–29, 131, 132, 151, 158, 163, 174, 195n. 34, 215n. 51; noble woman, 31, 47–48, 77, 98, 137–38, 141, 142. See also lady

Y V Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 838 (Obituary-Martyrology), 113, 161, 163 Vatican Library, Vatican Library, Vat. Lat. MS 3203 (Vatican Trésor), 113, 163

Yale Lancelot, 11, 32, 39, 61, 63, 79, 82, 85 table 10, 88–89, 90, 91, 92, 95, 115, 126, 208n. 29 Yale Mort Artu, 79–80, 82, 85 table 10, 94, 98, 106–9, 107 Yale Queste, 16, 79–80, 81, 83–85 table 10, 86, 89, 93–94, 97, 107