“A ‘Large Order of the Whole’: Intertextuality and Interpictoriality in the Hours of Isabella...

A "LARGE ORDER OF THE WHOLE": INTERTEXTUALITY AND INTERPICTORIALITY IN THE HOURS OF ISABELLA STUART

Richard K. Emmerson

The Hours of Isabella Stuart (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 62) is a stunning manuscript of232 decorated folios that includes, according to M. R. James, "no less than 528 figured subjects."1 Produced in the workshop of the Rohan Master, three of its miniatures, including its Man of Sorrows (Fig. 1) that introduces the Seven Requests to Our Lord (fol. 199r), have been attributed to the famous, if elusive, artist himself.2 Surprisingly, other than in usually brief discussions seeking to establish its place in the Rohan Master's reuvre, Fitzwilliam 62 has received little attention, and its extensive sequences of small images depicted within the outer decorated borders have gone unnoticed in most art historical analyses.3 They are painted in lozenge-shaped frames when accompanying a large miniature, such as the Christ in judgment placed next to the Man of Sorrows (Fig. 1 ), or in vertical rectangular frames attached to, but outside, the foliate bars that frame the central text of the book of hours (e.g., fol. 230v, Fig. 2). The subjects of these small images are occasionally connected directly with the large miniatures illustrating the texts of the hours or with the supplementary devotional texts concluding the manuscript. But most of the border images comprise cycles of miniatures that seem unrelated to the devotional texts and, unaccompanied by any explanatory captions, they have resisted interpretation. Yet they are crucial components of the design and use of the Isabella Stuart Hours and must be examined in detail and in context in order to comprehend the manuscript's unique and effective "large order of the whole."4 To do so, traditional word-image analysis in which manuscript illustrations are examined primarily in terms of their "source" texts needs to be expanded to consider how the extensive sequences of images could have been understood without accompanying descriptive, narrative, or explanatory texts. Although we need to be aware of the absent texts that first told the stories visualized by these images, our primary focus should be on their manuscript matrix in order to elucidate the structure of these fascinating pictorial narratives, their function within this complex book of hours, and their reception by the manuscript's first readers.5

This study focuses on four lengthy cycles of small miniatures placed within the decorated borders that frame Latin texts inscribed between the conclusion of the

Studies in Iconography 28 - 2007 51

© 2007 by the Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University

Figure 1. Rohan Master, Man of Sorrows; in border, Christ in judgment. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 199r. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)

52 The Hours of Isabella Stuart

Figure 2. Woman in black (Yolande of Aragon?) kneeling before prayer book and Christ in judgment. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 230v. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


opening French calendar (fols. lr-12v) and the beginning of the manuscript's next French text, the Fifteen Joys of the Virgin (fols. l 92r-198r). The Latin texts written on the intervening 180 folios and their full-page illustrative miniatures typify fifteenth-century books ofhours. 6They include gospel sequences ( fols. 13r-19v), introduced by large miniatures of the evangelists and followed by two popular prayers to the Virgin, "Obsecro te Domina" (fols. 20r-23v) and "O intemerata" (fols. 24r-28v). The Hours of the Virgin (fols. 29r-98v) according to the use of Paris, which are illustrated by scenes tracing the life of Mary, then follow, along with the Seven Psalms andLitany(fols. 99r-118v), Hours of the Cross (fols. 119r-126v) and of the Holy Spirit (fols. 127r-133v), the Passion according to John (fols. 134r-136r), various Latin prayers ( fols. 136v-14 lr), 7 the Five Joys of the Virgin and other devotions (fols. 141v-146v), and the Office oftheDead(fols. 147r-19lv). The sequence of Latin texts is then interrupted by the Fifteen Joys and another French text, the Seven Requests ( fols. 199r-203v ), and then the manuscript concludes with the Latin Suffrages (fols. 204v-23 l v).

The border images represent visionary works that were very popular and widely illustrated in the later Middle Ages: the biblical Apocalypse (i.e., the Revelation of John) and the three mid-fourteenth-century French allegorical pilgrimage poems composed by Guillaume de Deguileville, a monk of the Cistercian abbey of Chaalis. These picture cycles are particularly challenging for the interpretation of word and image relations. While recalling the well-known literary and biblical texts, the images stand apart from the verbal texts, which are briefly identified by incipits and explicits but are not otherwise inscribed in the manuscript. In recalling the absent texts, the images exemplify the type of intertextuality that Wolfgang Kemp described as operating in medieval stained-glass cycles, in which there is "movement back and forth in all directions" between word and image.8 But as this study will -show, these cycles also function as independent narratives unified by specifically visual relationships, a systematic "interpictoriality," to use Cynthia Hahn's term developed in her analysis ofhagiographic narratives.9 Fashioned within and between the cycles of border images, this interpictoriality creates pictorial narratives that are related to, but distinct from, their analogous poetic and biblical texts. In order to appreciate the cycles as coherent visual narratives in their own right, the customary approach to text and image relations, in which, as Norbert H. Ott notes, "the image is presumed to accompany the text only as a secondary element,"10 must be reversed, for the cycles of images here are primary. They are, furthermore, thematically unified into a complex visual whole that implicates in their narratives the women who were the original users of this manuscript while directing their attention to the devotional texts that accompany the narratives.


Four Women Readers

Fitzwilliam 62 was probably commissioned by Yolande of Aragon (1381-1442), daughter of King Juan I of Aragon and patron of the Rohan Master. 11 Millard Meiss, detecting the influence of the Boucicaut workshop, dated the manuscript as early as circa 1417-18.'2 If this relatively early dating is correct, then Yolande may have ordered it shortly after the death (29 April 1417) of her husband, Louis II, duke of Anjou, grandson of King Jean le Bon (John II), and a leader of the Armagnacs, the anti-Burgundian party during the chaotic second decade of the fifteenth century.13 With the death of her husband, off-and-on hostilities with England, and nearcivil war in France, Yolande must have found herself in difficult circumstances, her political power, vast holdings, and extended family endangered by enemies, both foreign and domestic. Thus, the decision to commission this lavish manuscript during this critical time may represent an urgent act of devotion and penitent petition to God, and it is possible that Yolande is the woman-cloaked in black to signify mourning--depicted kneeling before an open prayer book while Christ appears above (Fig. 2). 14 The scene is placed within the left decorated border next to an image of Christ in judgment within the book's suffrages, an appropriate place for the representation of a recently widowed patron. It was not unusual for wealthy widows to commission works of art after the deaths of their husbands, and, as Adelaide Bennett notes, women book owners were often portrayed "as participants in suffrages .... " 15

Yolande's patronage may also be implied by the manuscript's extended cycle of seven scenes (fols. 224v-226v) depicting the life ofRadegund, the sixth-century Frankish queen. 16 As royal saint and "Mother ofFrance,'' Radegund became a symbol in fifteenth-century France of spiritual leadership and political strength, "the quintessential muse of defiant political success and unshakable faith, very much like Joan of Arc."17 She thus could serve as a female model for Yolande, who was noted for her moral qualities and "universally recognized intelligence and political acumen •••• "

18 Yolande was a strong supporter of French interests during the difficult early decades of the fifteenth century. 19 For example, she protected the young son of Charles VI and Isabeu de Baviere, Charles, who became engaged in 1413 to Marie, Yolande's first daughter, and who followed Yolande and Marie to Angers and Provence in 1415, before unexpectedly becoming dauphin after the deaths of his two older brothers. Even after the death in 1417 of her husband, Yolande remained a bulwark of the French cause during the turbulent years leading to the English occupation of Paris in 1420 and the Anglo-Burgundian alliance of1423.Afterthe Burgundians attacked Paris in May 1418 and especially after the assassination of Duke John the Fearless in 1419-which the Burgundians blamed on the dauphin, who was disclaimed in 1420 by his mother and father as part of the Treaty ofTroyes-Yolande's support of her daughter's fiance was crucial. Her influence on the royal house in-


creased in 1422 when the occasionally mad Charles VI died, and the dauphin, living in exile in Bourges, became king as Charles VII. It is perhaps not surprising that Charles VII and Marie named their first daughter Radegund and that the new king played a crucial role in re-energizing the saint's cult.20 Yolande's political influence also stretched to the south. She protected her first son, Louis III, who was only thirteen when he became duke, and she administered the family's substantial holdings in Maine and Provence as well as Anjou. She further supported the young duke's military attempt to assert the family's claim to the kingdom of Naples, which was finally realized in 143 8 when her second son, Rene d' Anjou, became king ofN aples. His daughter, Margaret of Anjou, who married Henry VI in 1445, as a child lived with Yolande for eight years. Yolande's personal and political influence during the first half of the fifteenth century was thus considerable and enduring.

During these thorny years Yolande developed the already notable Anjou library by commissioning illuminated manuscripts. In addition to the Grandes Heures de Rohan (BnF, lat. 94 71 ), she may have commissioned two books of hours that became associated with Rene (BL, Egerton 1070, and BnF, lat. 1156A).21 She also borrowed the Belles Heures (New York, Cloisters Museum, MS 54.1.1) after the death of Jean de Berry in June 1416, purchasing it for 300 livres shortly after the death of her husband in April 1417.22 While it was in Yolande's possession, the Belles Heures could have been seen by the Rohan Master and, as Michael Camille notes, its extensive pictorial cycles may "have been a stimulus" for the border illustrations in the Isabella Stuart Hours.23 The association of Fitzwilliam 62 with Yolande of Aragon is thus generally accepted, although its early dating to the period of her husband's death has been questioned. Based on stylistic comparisons, Franyois Avril has suggested that it is a later work of the Rohan workshop. In his view, Yolande may have commissioned it for her younger daughter, Yolande of Anjou, upon the occasion of her marriage in 1431 to Francis, the future duke ofBrittany.24

Whatever its origins, the manuscript probably was commissioned by Yolande of Aragon and owned by the younger Yolande while she was in Brittany. There it remained upon her death in 1440 to be passed to the woman for whom the manuscript is named, Isabella Stuart (died after 1495), daughter of James I of Scotland, who married Francis I in 1442 just before he became duke.25

Noted for her piety and interest in books of hours and allegorical and didactic works, Isabella is possibly pictured in two portraits added to the manuscript.26 The miniature for the "Obsecro te Domina" (fol. 20r, Fig. 3) includes her portrait in the lower left. It was painted over traces of a picture that may have shown Yolande of Aragon kneeling before the Virgin, perhaps presented by St. Radegund.27 In the extant miniature, probably painted by a Nantes artist working for Francis I in the 1440s, Isabella is presented to the Virgin and Child by St. Catherine.28 Crowned and kneeling, Isabella holds a scroll reading "O mater dei memento mei." It flows from


Figure 3. Isabella Stuart presented by St. Catherine; in border, Christ's temptation in the desert. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 20r. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


her prayerful hands to Jesus, who sits on his mother's lap while playing with the rosary.29 The Virgin wears a blue mantle decorated with the fl.eur-de-lys, while Isabella's dress is decorated with her coat of arms, a lion rampant impaling the ermine coat of Brittany, arms added to the comers of this page and to several other pages with large miniatures. The second portrait (Fig. 4), placed within the text at the end of the "O intemerata" (fol. 28r), depicts an aristocratic lady kneeling at a prie-dieu before the Virgin and Child. This later-perhaps much later-picture by a different artist may again depict Isabella, but it is more likely a portrait of her daughter Marguerite ofBrittany.30 She must have known and perhaps used her mother's book of hour~, and she may have received it as a gift in 1455 when at the age of twelve she married her cousin, who became Francis II of Brittany in 1458.31 If so, then this manuscript may include portraits of three of its first four female readers, Yolande of Aragon in mourning (Fig. 2), Isabella Stuart presented by St. Catherine (Fig. 3), and Marguerite of Brittany before the Virgin and Child (Fig. 4).32

Four Cycles of Narrative Images

Whatever the identity of these women, their portraits associate them closely with prayer books, which provide visual models for their devotions based on the manuscript's Latin and French texts. The ways in which books of hours served to channel and transform the devotional practices of late medieval women have received much scholarly attention, most recently by Kathryn Smith, who shows how illustrations in books of hours "structured the reader's experience of the texts and, vice versa, the texts inflected one's experience of the imagery."33 The books of hours Smith studies were particularized to the religious and class interests of three fourteenth-century English women, but her analysis of the varying functions played by the numerous images decorating these manuscripts is exemplary, and it is reasonable to assume that the large miniatures in Fitzwilliam 62 similarly played instructional, devotional, and memorial roles for its particular fifteenth-century French women viewers. Less clear, however, is how they would have responded to the numerous non-devotional images comprising the manuscript's four extensive narrative cycles of border miniatures. As noted above, they depict the Apocalypse and the three pilgrimage poems of Guillaume de Deguileville. The animal, human, supernatural, cosmic, and eschatological images of John's vision are so well known that they need not be summarized here, but it is worth stressing the considerable influence of apocalyptic symbolism on late medieval literary and visual culture, as well as on social movements and religious belief.34 The biblical text was widely illustrated throughout the Middle Ages, and the large group oflate-medieval, AngloFrench illustrated Apocalypse manuscripts produced over two centuries provided the basic iconography drawn on by the Isabella Stuart Hours. 35


Figure 4. Isabella Stuart or Margaret of Brittany in prayer; in border, Pentecost. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 28r. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


It may be helpful to describe briefly Guillaume's three poems, however. The first and best-known, the Pelerinage de vie humaine written in 1330-32 and revised in the 1350s, describes how the narrator falls asleep after reading the Roman de la rose and dreams of the New Jerusalem.36 Its opening vision motivates the Pilgrim, who journeys through life from baptism to death assisted by Grace Dieu and the virtues and challenged by numerous allegorical opponents, including the vices. The second poem, composed between 1355 and 1358, is the Pelerinage de l'ame.37 Unlike Vie, it is not populated by personified abstractions but is packed with eschatological characters, angels and devils, suffering souls and blessed saints. Instead of narrating the life of the pilgrim Everyman leading to his deathbed, Arne focuses on the afterlife, tracing the release of the Soul from the body and its pilgrimage through an otherworldly landscape to its judgment and consignment in purgatory, visit to hell, and vision of heaven. The third in Guillaume 's visionary trilogy, the Pelerinage de Jesus Christ (1358), shifts its focus to the life of Christ, which is introduced and concluded by allegorical episodes such as the Parliament of Heaven, in which the Daughters of God and other personified figures debate and celebrate the plan of salvation. 38 Jesus Christ is based on gospel and apocryphal narratives as well as poetic license. Many illustrated manuscripts of Guillaume 's three poems are extant, and it is clear that the Isabella Stuart Hours sometimes draws upon an iconography that was well-established by the early fifteenth century. 39 Yet its treatment of the poems is unique in two important ways: as Camille notes, in all other manuscripts "the illustrations are contained within the text" and in no other manuscript are the poems connected to a devotional book.40

Fitzwilliam 62 is not unique, however, in including an Apocalypse cycle in a book of hours, since the contemporary Bedford Hours (BL, Add. 18850; ea. 1423) depicts an extensive cycle of Apocalypse images within its border decoration.41 This lavish manuscript was made for John of Lancaster, duke of Bedford and regent of France after the death of his brother Henry V, by the so-called Bedford Master, who may have collaborated in Paris with the Rohan Master early in their careers.42

Among its 1,250 marginal illustrations are 310 images that "comprise perhaps the most elaborate interpretive cycle of Apocalypse illustrations in medieval art. "43 They are painted in small roundels, 155 placed in side borders picturing the biblical text and another 15 5 placed in the lower border explicating its images and symbols. The images are accompanied by two French explanatory captions inscribed at the foot of each page, the first briefly paraphrasing the biblical text depicted in the side border, the second drawing on a complex exegetical scheme to elucidate the interpretive image in the lower border.44

The 139 Apocalypse miniatures in the borders of the Isabella Stuart Hours lack such complex exegesis or, indeed, any conventional interpretation.45 Significantly, neither are the 202 border scenes picturing Guillaume's three poems accompanied


by any explanatory text. The only texts linked to the four border picture cycles are French rubrics usually inscribed in the margins next to the first and last image of each cycle, where they serve as introductory and concluding verbal markers.46 For example, in the right margin of the miniature introducing the gospel reading from John (fol. 13r, Fig. 5), a rubric, partly trimmed off, states "Ci commence le pelerinage ihesu crist." It is placed next to a portrait of the poet, Guillaume, who is shown asleep leaning on his book and dreaming of Christ above. The portrait serves as what Sixten Ringbom in his study of the conventions of medieval narrative art has called a "pictorial quotation mark, an index telling the beholder that the picture deals with a dream."47 The adjacent large miniature pictures John the Evangelist writing his gospel, and the emphasis here on writing is continued in the large miniatures of the other three evangelists (fols. 14v, 16v, 18v), which thereby stress the "written" nature of the central Latin texts. But medieval exegesis also identified John with his namesake, John the Revelator, who is portrayed in a later border image (fol. 29v, Fig. 6) with his angel guide. Just as in the earlier portrait of Guillaume (Fig. 5), the visionary "author" sees his revelation above. The emphasis here is on seeing, since the image introduces the scenes visualizing the Apocalypse, as the accompanying French rubric inscribed in the left margin states.

These and the other brief French rubrics suggest that the miniatures form a "vernacular" visual narrative paralleling the sequence of Latin devotional texts written within the central frame. These 360 pages also include nineteen large, almost full-page, images that direct devotional reading, serve as visual punctuation marks to introduce the Latin texts, and encourage prayerful meditation as exemplified by the women depicted in the Isabella Stuart Hours (Figs. 2, 3, 4). In contrast, the 202 small narrative images placed in the borders of these pages do not interrupt but accompany the Latin texts. They are understood not when the manuscript's user shifts attention from receiving the verbal devotion to meditating on its illustration, but when she turns the pages to "sight read" the stories as they unfold visually, following a narrative progression through time and space in which each succeeding image progressively reveals what happens next.48 The Isabella Stuart Hours thus creates a series of complex parallel signs that require the active involvement of the manuscript's user: on the one hand, central texts written in Latin are read or heard and then actively contemplated through sustained meditation on comparatively large and traditional devotional images; on the other hand, vernacular rubrics recall popular but absent texts whose stories are recounted by small border images revealed as the viewer physically turns the decorated pages to piece together each succeeding frame into a continuous pictorial narrative. The existence of these binary ways of receiving various elements of the manuscript raises two questions that the remainder of this essay seeks to answer: Are the series of signs related to each other? And, if so, how are they to be understood?

Studies in Iconography 28-2007 61

Figure 5. John writing his gospel; in border, Guillaume dreams the Pelerinage Jesus Christ. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 13r. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


Figure 6. John's apocalyptic vision begins. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 29v. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


Intertextuality and Interpictoriality

The first question may be answered by analyzing the rich associations by which the manuscript develops general word-image and specific image-image relationships. I call these "intertextual" when the images are associated in a general way with their cotexts, the various Latin texts of the hours inscribed within each folio's central frame. These relationships may also be understood as intertextual when the border images visually allude to pre-texts, the absent biblical and poetic texts that are explicitly cited by the manuscript's marginal rubrics and introduced by the author portraits depicted within the borders. 49 As we shall see, these pre-texts are best understood as literary analogues rather than sources for the pictorial narratives. More significantly, the viewer's understanding of the cycles also depends on "interpictorial" relationships created visually by the images alone, without recourse to texts. These relationships are developed through the placement of the border images; the recurrence of visual patterns based on repeated designs, characters, objects, colors, and other features of composition; and the linking of the four cycles by means of established narrative conventions and an evolving common theme.50

To begin with the most general example of intertextuality, the cycles of border miniatures through their placement in the manuscript are linked implicitly to their cotexts, the central texts of the Isabella Stuart Hours. The arrangement of the cycles was carefully planned to parallel the hours, and the disposition of the images was designed not only to build a general association with the devotional texts but also on occasion with the large miniatures illustrating the hours. Such planning, for example, explains the order in which the pilgrimage poems are distributed in the manuscript. Instead of their customary sequence in manuscripts containing all three pilgrimage poems, which usually follow the order of their composition-that is, first Vie, then Arne, and finally Jesus Christ 51-the Isabella Stuart Hours inverts their order so that the border images are not from the first and most popular poem, Vie humaine, but from the last and least illustrated, Jesus Christ. This cycle, furthermore, commences on folio 13r, where it coincides with the beginning of the gospel sequences, introduced by the portrait of John writing at his desk (Fig. 5). As a result, Guillaume's scenes from the life of Christ frame the gospel sequences and the following two prayers, which, in appealing to Mary to intercede on behalf of the reader, allude to important events from her life, including her son's Passion.52 The border cycle recalling Guillaume 's poetic gospel, therefore, serves as a general visual gloss on these opening Latin cotexts.

This image-text intertextuality is accompanied by an interpictoriality created by the conscious selection and presentation of narrative scenes and their resulting visual relationships. These features are exemplified by the first two border images after the opening authorial portraits. The first, the Annunciation (fol. 13v, Fig. 7),


Figure 7. Annunciation. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 13v. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


depicts the biblical moment of the incarnation of the Word. Intertextually, it is also the visual incarnation of the text placed below John's portrait, "In principio erat verbum" (Fig. 5). It is further related interpictorially to the image placed across the manuscript opening, where the angel explains the miraculous conception to a deeply concerned Joseph, who requests forgiveness for doubting Mary (fol. 14r, Fig. 8). Facing the Annunciation, in which Gabriel kneels before the Virgin and holds an inscribed scroll, the miniature depicts Joseph as a pilgrim with staff and scrip kneeling before Mary. The visual similarities of these miniatures-in which Mary, holding a book, stands to the right of the composition and a figure kneels before hertypifies the manuscript's mise en page, which encourages the viewer to contemplate the border miniatures as pairs facing one another across page openings. Juxtaposed in this way, the miniatures recall Mary's double role as both Mother of God and wife of a humble, and understandably confused, husband. This thematically rich pairing stresses the dual nature of Christ as God-man-the divine incarnate in a womanwhich will characterize his status as pilgrim. More importantly for the narrative continuity of the border cycles, as we shall see below, it also introduces the concept of pilgrimage by depicting Christ's earthly father as pilgrim.

It is important to realize, furthermore, that these examples of intertextuality and interpictoriality are not coincidental but the result of carefully chosen images drawn from a visual pre-text, the by-then well-established iconography of Guillaume's poem. To produce an intertextual association between the gospel sequence and the Annunciation, for example, the Fitzwilliam designer selected a scene from Guillaume 's Jesus Christ that takes place not at the beginning of the poem but more than nine hundred lines into its allegory. 53 This careful planning becomes particularly apparent when the manuscript's border images are compared to those illustrating a Trois pelerinages manuscript now in Paris (Bihl. Sainte-Genevieve, MS 1130; ea. 1370).54 In its illustration of Jesus Christ it places nineteen column miniatures between Guillaume's opening dream and the Annunciation. These follow the poem quite closely in illustrating the need for salvation by depicting angels and personified figures such as Justice, Truth, and Mercy engaging in extensive discussions as part of the Parliament of Heaven. 55 It also includes some traditional biblical scenes, such as the Annunciation to Joachim and Anne. In other words, to accomplish the correspondence of the gospel passages of the hours with the visual depictions of the poetic life of Christ, the Fitzwilliam sequence skips over much of Guillaume 's introductory allegorical theology. To achieve the interpictorial link between the Annunciation and Joseph's kneeling before Mary (fols. 13v-14r), furthermore, the border cycle must also ignore much of the poetic pre-text that traces events after the Annunciation, again passing over numerous scenes illustrated in Jesus Christ manuscripts. The Sainte-Genevieve manuscript, for example, places ten scenes between its depictions of the two scenes that in the Isabella Stuart Hours face each other directly.56


Figure 8. Joseph kneels before Mary. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 14r. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


Altogether, the illustrated Sainte-Genevieve manuscript requires thirty-two images to reach the point in Guillaume's Jesus Christ that is depicted by the second border image in the Isabella Stuart Hours. Its border sequence radically conflates the received iconography, summarizing only the broad outlines of Guillaume 's poem leading up to Pentecost (Fig. 4) and depicting the poetic retelling of the gospels in thirty-two images compared to the earlier manuscript's 115 miniatures. This selectivity is necessary because the Fitzwilliam border cycle had to be abbreviated to fit within the relatively few folios (13r-28v) inscribed with its cotext, the gospel sequences and Marian prayers. But this purposeful selectivity also strengthens the cycle's narrative conventions, ensuring that the images focus on events that are central to their pre-text, the familiar gospel story that can be visually related in linear order. Thus most of the scenes in illustrated Jesus Christ manuscripts that represent Guillaume's complex allegory-such as the Old Adam falling from a tree-are not included in the Fitzwilliam sequence. 57 Also deleted are interruptions in the biblical storyline, such as when the poet addresses Mary directly (e.g., Sainte-Genevieve, MS 1130, fol. 170v). Similarly, images that ignore the chronological order of the gospel account-as when the Sainte-Genevieve manuscript (fols. 159r, 164r) portrays Christ as a pilgrim before the Nativity and his childhood-are eliminated. The poem that is the source of such narrative complications is, of course, present in the Sainte-Genevieve Jesus Christ, so the sometimes unusual images placed within its text columns can be understood by consulting their cotexts. But since the border images in Fitzwilliam 62 only recall an absent pre-text, they relate the gospel story through a plausible linear narrative based on coherent plotting in which one familiar image is linked visually to another by interpictorial means.58

After the conclusion of the Pelerinage Jesus Christ the marginal images do not visualize another Guillaume poem, as would be expected, but instead turn to the Apocalypse, which is introduced by John in vision (Fig. 6). These images are placed next to the canonical Hours of the Virgin, the manuscript's longest and most important textual unit (fols. 29r-98v). As a result, instead of compressing received iconography, as did the Jesus Christ cycle, the Apocalypse cycle must augment it, stretching the usual sixty-five to ninety-nine scenes typically depicted in AngloFrench illustrated Apocalypses into 139 border images.59 This substantial amplification is often accomplished by emphasizing the number symbolism that characterizes the textual patterns of Revelation, especially the number seven. For example, traditionally John's letters to the seven churches of Asia Minor are represented by a single image depicting seven angels, each standing within the portal of a church. 60

The Fitzwilliam manuscript, however, represents each of the seven letters, and it devotes not one but two miniatures to each, placing seven sets of facing-page images in its borders. Each set first shows John as he gives a letter to a messenger and then shows the messenger delivering it to the bishop of his respective church. The letter


to the Laodecians, which concludes this extended sequence of fourteen miniatures, typifies their layout and design. On folio 39v (Fig. 9) John, dressed in blue, delivers the letter to an elderly bearded messenger, while above Christ among the candlesticks holds a sword and looks down from heaven. The facing miniature (fol. 40r, Fig. 10) concludes this narrative action. The messenger next delivers the letter to a bishop who stands within a portal of a church nestled in a rocky landscape. Although the details of each set of images vary, the compositions and visual features such as col ors and props recall one another. The effect of the pairing is to stress narrative movement on earth between the prophet and ecclesiastics, while the court of heaven above remains stable and timeless. Furthermore, the interpictoriality created by such seven-fold pairings is supplemented by the visual connections they establish with scenes already depicted in the Apocalypse cycle. These include the opening vision of John (Fig. 6), which introduces him as a writer of texts inspired from abovehere not sending but receiving a message from the angel-and his vision of Christ among the candlesticks (fol. 3lv, Fig. 11), which generates visual details to be repeated throughout the depictions of the seven letters.

Apocalypse iconography is therefore not only expanded but arranged interpictorially so that the viewer can easily understand the narrative action of letters being sent and delivered seven times, even if she does not know the details of the absent biblical text. Intertextual links are also created by the placement of the Apocalypse cycle next to the Hours of the Virgin. As is typical of books of hours, each hour is introduced by a Marian scene, such as the Adoration of the Child (fol. 65r, Fig. 12), which begins Prime of the Virgin. Associating the Apocalypse with the Virgin is appropriate because Apocalypse exegesis considered Mary to be symbolized by the Woman of Revelation 12, who is described as clothed in the sun with the moon under her feet. 61 It should not be surprising, therefore, that the border cycle accompanying the Hours of the Virgin focuses on the Woman and on her conflict with the great Dragon with seven heads and ten horns. Altogether, eleven border scenes picture the Woman, the attack of the Dragon and its defeat, and the war in heaven (fols. 60r--65r), more than twice the number of images usually deployed to illustrate these scenes in the Anglo-French iconographic tradition.62 The Isabella Stuart Hours again arranges these scenes as visual pairs with repeated motifs, characters, and compositions. It thus also develops the interpictoriality of the sequence, even while the large number of scenes devoted to chapter 12 underscores the general intertextual connection between this central chapter of the Apocalypse and Mary, the subject of the cycle's cotext.

The last in the sequence of eleven images, painted to the right of the Adoration of the Child (fol. 65r, Fig. 12), exemplifies how the border images generate both interpictorial and specific intertextual links to their cotexts. The Dragon-angered by its failure to defeat the Woman and her man-child when she flees into the wilder-


Figure 9. John gives seventh letter to messenger. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 39v. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


Figure 10. Messenger delivers letter to bishop ofLaodecian church. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 40r. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


Figure 11. John's vision of Christ among the candlesticks. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 31v. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


Figure 12. Prime of the Vrrgin. Adoration of the Child; in border, the Dragon fights the Woman's seed. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 65r. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


ness, as depicted in the previous miniature (fol. 64v}-makes "war with the rest of her seed" (Rev. 12: 16). The scene is placed adjacent to the Adoration of the Child, which pictures Christ as seed of the Woman. This intertextuality is strengthened, furthermore, by interpictoriality, since the adjacent miniatures share a common blue starry background that invites their comparison and leads to the recognition of visual similarities and related contrasts. The blue cloak and gold nimbus of the Virgin depicted in the Adoration, for example, are echoed by the details of John's depiction in the border scene; the faithful privileged to adore the Child recall, again through similar clothing, those who must fight Satan in the apocalyptic future; and the humble domestic animals whose presence not only fulfills prophecy but also suggests universal adoration are contrasted with the proud and ferocious Dragon, who will ultimately be defeated by the Child. The versicle inscribed below the central image, "Deus in adiutorium meum intende," both introduces the devotional text and prepares its reader for her own daily battle against Satan, symbolized by the Dragon in the border image.

The Hours of the Virgin are inscribed through folio 98r, and its borders continue to represent the Apocalypse to its final chapter. The last of the Apocalypse scenes, however, is depicted on the next page (fol. 98v, Fig. 13). Painted in the border next to the now empty space reserved for the Latin text, it depicts the angel directing John's attention upward into heaven, where Christ seated on a rainbow displays his wounds. The only cotexts here are two rubrics, both in French. That in the left margin, inscribed in blue, notes that the accompanying image concludes the Apocalypse of John, whereas that inscribed in gold and placed below within the otherwise blank textual frame provides a kind of double incipit, noting that the "histories du pelerinage du corps humain" follow along with the Seven Psalms. 63

Thus linked, the Seven Penitential Psalms and pilgrimage scenes begin on the facing folio (fol. 99r, Fig. 14), where Guillaume is shown in bed about to experience the dream recorded by his best-known poem, Pelerinage de vie humaine. The folio's large miniature depicts the Trinity adored by angels, an uncommon choice, since the psalms are usually introduced by Christ in judgment or by David in prayer. 64 Once more, this opening should be read and viewed as a composite visual unit. Interpictorially, the depiction of the Trinity greatly enriches John's concluding vision of heaven, whereas the facing apocalyptic scene substitutes for the depiction of Christ in judgment expected to illustrate the antiphon preceding the psalms, "Ne reminiscaris."65 The two border images, furthermore, associate the dreamer Guillaume with the evangelist and visionary John, as they had been earlier associated at the beginning of the Jesus Christ sequence (Fig. 5). Intertextually, the go1d rubric inscribed on folio 98v not only designates the texts-both present cotext and absent pre-textto be illustrated by the two miniatures on the facing folio (99r), but also links the inscribed devotional text to the pictured narrative of the poem. Thus, accompanying


t fi1,c lflJ.\1Ci1 tpfr fnmr trli.

Figure 13. Conclusion of Apocalypse border sequence. Angel directs John's attention to Christ in heaven. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 98v. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


Figure 14. Beginning of Seven Penitential Psalms. Trinity; in border, Guillaume dreams his Pe/erinage de vie humaine. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 99r. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


the Penitential Psalms and later the Litany and linked to the Apocalypse, the border images depicting the Vie humaine are designed to be contemplated within penitential and apocalyptic contexts rather than within the romance context of the poetic pretext, in which Guillaume dreams after reading the Roman de la rose. The visual pilgrimage of life, in other words, is to be understood-as were actual pilgrimages in the Middle Ages-as a penitential activity.

The narrative action of the Vie humaine begins on the following folio when the Pilgrim attempts to enter the New Jerusalem but finds his way blocked by a cherubim (fol. 99v, Fig. 15). As with the beginning of Jesus Christ, the visual narrative here has passed over some crucial scenes important to the opening of the poetic narrative, particularly the mirror in which the Pilgrim first sees the New Jerusalem. Prominent in both the poem and in most of its illustrated manuscripts, the mirror, as V. A. Kolve comments, provides "the goal, the spur, the meaning of the quest."66

But unlike illustrated Vie manuscripts, in which the poem's words and illustrations are cotexts, the Isabella Stuart Hours has no accompanying text to explain such an image, although, given its significance, it likely would have been recognized by a viewer who knew the poem. Nevertheless, the border sequence provides a richer visual motivation arising from the manuscript matrix, not its absent cotext: the images of the New Jerusalem already depicted in the Apocalypse border sequence. The Pilgrim's desire to enter the New Jerusalem would likely be understood by the viewer as stimulated not by a fleeting vision in a mirror but by the previous visionary narrative repeatedly showing Christ in heaven (Fig. 13), a goal she would presumably share with the Pilgrim. But both must wait, for Guillaume's protagonist is just beginning his pilgrimage and, as the viewer would learn as she turned the manuscript's pages, must face Death before achieving the goal of his quest.

It is important to note, however, that this delayed goal is presented as achievable from the very beginning of the Vie humaine sequence. The visual narrative makes it immediately clear that the Pilgrim is not alone on the pilgrimage of life, for a miniature placed across the opening from the disappointing rejection at heaven's gate introduces the Pilgrim's allegorical guide, Grace Dieu (fol. lOOr, Fig. 16). The interpictoriality of these facing miniatures, through the placement of characters and use of color, again invites their comparison and suggests that the Grace of God becomes an alternate gateway to the New Jerusalem, the means by which the Pilgrim will attain the heavenly goal. Her appearance here, of course, conforms to the poetic pre-text, but it also develops intertextual connections with the large miniature depicting the Trinity placed adjacent to the beginning of the Vie cycle (Fig. 14). As noted earlier, the Trinity is an unusual subject to introduce the Seven Psalms, but it is a particularly effective image to accompany the beginning of a visual narrative about a Pilgrim whose guide will be the Grace of God. Divine grace is an attribute traditionally associated with the Holy Spirit, and its availability


Figure 15. Pilgrim barred from New Jerusalem. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 99v. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


Figure 16. Grace Dieu becomes Pilgrim's guide. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. lOOr. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


after the Ascension and Pentecost manifests how the third member of the Trinity acts as "comforter" for those who await Christ's return and the establishment of the New Jerusalem (John 14:16, 26). Up to this point, the border miniatures have focused especially on Christ and his relationship to his Father, paying only occasional attention to the Holy Spirit (e.g., at Pentecost in the Jesus Christ sequence, Fig. 4). With the introduction of Grace Dieu, though, the bordernarratives become fullyTrinitarian, and it is perhaps not a coincidence that one of the Latin cotexts for the Vie sequence is the Hours of the Holy Spirit (fols. 127r-133v). A few folios later, the border images further anticipate the attainment of the Pilgrim's goal interpictorially by associating the earthly City of God with its heavenly counterpart. This relationship is accomplished by a set of visual similarities shared by John's earlier vision of the New Jerusalem (fol. 96r) and the Pilgrim's first introduction to the Church (fol. 10 lr ). These two images are not paired across an opening, but they are only five folios apart, and once again their interpictoriality is remarkable. In the Apocalypse miniature, the New Jerusalem is conceived as a church shown to John by his angel guide, whereas in the Vie miniature, Grace Dieu directs the Pilgrim toward a similarly designed church, which becomes a visual foretaste of the pilgrim's ultimate goal.

As with the other cycles of miniatures, when the Vie images are scrutinized in pairs, often across a manuscript opening, their interpictoriality not only impels narrative progress but also generates striking examples of intertextuality. For example, after surviving encounters with the vices and witnessing others struggling in the Sea of the World, the Pilgrim, literally in desperate straits, sees the Ship ofReligion (fol. 134v, Fig. 17). Facing this image, the next border miniature (fol. 135r, Fig. 18) shows him being welcomed aboard by his allegorical guide, Grace Dieu. The interpictoriality of the facing scenes is quite effective. The composition not only draws attention to what remains the same--the Pilgrim's garb and staff, the Sea of the World, the Ship of Religion-but also what changes, as the ominous sky behind the desperate Pilgrim is replaced by a blue sky that mirrors the blue robe of Grace Dieu. It is important to note, moreover, that even if the details of the allegory are not always clear in the absence of the poetic text, the momentum of the visual narrative is unambiguous: the Pilgrim first sees the ship and then boards it, his resulting spiritual change signaled by the altered background. This allegorical progress is as explicit as the progress of the familiar gospel story depicted earlier in the Jesus Christ sequence, where, for example, the images of an opening first depict Christ's pilgrimage to Calvary (fol. 24v) and then, immediately across the page, his Crucifixion (fol. 25r). The codex includes many such visual examples of narrative causality and probability deployed in facing border images.

The visual narrative relating the Pilgrim's exploits as he moves through allegorical landscapes continues until folio 138v (Fig. 19). There a marginal rubric announces the end of the sequence and a miniature brings the Vie to an end by show-


Figure 17. Pilgrim sees Ship of Religion. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 134v. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


Figure 18. Grace Dieu welcomes Pilgrim onto Ship of Religion. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 135r. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


(-:' ftttc lr Jl'lf lU ll~t On lll!}.!

Figure 19. Conclusion of Vie humaine sequence. Death attacks Pilgrim. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 138v. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


ing Death attacking the Pilgrim. The next cycle of narrative images does not immediately follow, however, for Guillaume's third vision, the Pelerinage de /'time, is delayed for seventeen pages ( fols. 139r-14 7r) that are dedicated to Latin prayers and devotions illustrated by portrayals of Christ and Mary. The first, placed facing the Pilgrim's death(Fig. 19),pictures theResurrection(fol. 139r, Fig. 20). This opening exemplifies the effectiveness of the book's mise en page, which fashions a compelling interpictoriality that invites comparisons between the death of the Pilgrim and the Resurrection of his savior. Thus Christ is shown stepping from the open tomb, which recalls the open casket at the foot of the Pilgrim's deathbed on the facing page. Similarly, Christ's scepter of victory over death replaces Death's scythe. In a striking example of intertextuality, the "Creator celi" text next to the Resurrection reads: "Si mortua sum et ni peccatis sepulta potes me resuscitare et saluare quia maior est misericordia tua quam miseria seu peccata mea" [If I die and am buried without sin you can resurrect and save me, because your mercy is greater than my wretchedness and sins]. 67 In medieval belief, this is powerful assurance of salvation for the penitential reader who is reminded of her eventual death by the concluding image of the Vie sequence (Fig. 19). Theologically, it is made possible by the Passion of Christ-illustrated earlier in the Jesus Christ sequence (fol. 25r) and by the large miniature introducing the Hours of the Cross (fol. 119r}-and by his victory over death at the Resurrection (Fig. 20). Just as at the beginning of the Vie, where the Pilgrim's disappointment at the gate of the New Jerusalem (Fig. 15) is offset by the introduction of Grace Dieu (Fig. 16), so at its conclusion the death of the Pilgrim is mitigated by his savior's Resurrection.

The interlude of prayers and devotions after the conclusion of the Vie cycle delays the Ame cycle so that its beginning can coincide appropriately with its cotext, the Office of the Dead (fol. 14 7r, Fig. 21 ). This juxtaposition of text and image results from the manuscript's unusual ordering of the four narrative cycles. It successfully reinforces the intertextual connections between the Latin hours and ''vernacular" border miniatures, so that, as Camille comments, "the visual material acts as a kind of commentary to the recited text . . .. "68 Once again, the new cycle is introduced by an author portrait showing Guillaume dreaming and yet another identifying rubric in French crowded into the right margin: "Ci commence le pelerinage de lame." The accompanying large miniature for the Vespers of the Dead shows a funeral mass attended by many mourners, including women cloaked in black, who recall the image discussed earlier (Fig. 2) that may portray Yolande of Aragon. This subject traditionally introduces the Office of the Dead and here appropriately initiates the eschatological border images illustrating the judgment of the Soul after death and its otherworldly journey through purgatory and hell.

These images comprise the longest sequence based on Guillaume's pilgrimage poems.69 They continue for forty-four folios, terminating on folio 191v with the Soul's presentation to the heavenly court (fol. 191 v, Fig. 22). There the Soul sits on


Figure 20. Resurrection. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 139r. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


Figure 21. Beginning of Office of the Dead. Funeral service; in border, Guillaume dreams his Pelerinage de l'ame. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 147r. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


nnrlq.·kn nngr b: lnmr.

Figure 22. Conclusion of Pelerinage de l 'iime sequence. Pilgrim Soul presented to heavenly court. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 191v. (Photo: By kind pennission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


a bench between two apostles, facing Christ and Mary and surrounded by angels. Adjacent to the final reading from the Office of the Dead, the image is linked intertextually to its cotext, which identifies God as creator and savior of the world. It must have encouraged the viewer while reading or hearing the conclusion of the office. Two features of this image deserve further attention. First, the intimacy pictured here between Soul and supernal assembly is remarkable because usually in Ame manuscripts when the guardian angel reveals heaven to the Soul, heaven is kept at a distance and is definitely not entered-it is, instead, like Moses 's glimpse of the promised land from Mt. Pisgah. For example, in its miniature depicting heaven, the Sainte-Genevieve Arne (fol. 150r) does not include the Soul at all, not even looking on from below. Second, ending here is unusual because the poem and its illustrated manuscripts typically do not conclude with this scene, but with a more mundane-if still allegorical-image in which the Soul, guided by the angel, sees a redeemed Adam and mankind standing beneath the Tree of Knowledge.70 This scene is not included in the Isabella Stuart Hours, however. As the French rubric indicates (Fig. 22), its Pelerinage de I' iime sequence concludes here. The viewer is reassured that the Soul reaches heaven, just as the Latin cotext conveys the comforting, "Requiescant in pace. Amen." Below these words, the blue French incipit next introduces the Fifteen Joys, which is not accompanied by the "vernacular" narratives we have been studying. Instead the images in its borders now illustrate the new French cotext by depicting scenes from the life of the Virgin, concluding with her Coronation in heaven (fol. 198v).

Pilgrimage as Unifying Theme

The conclusion of the border sequence in the Isabella Stuart Hours differs from traditional Ame iconography in depicting heaven as the ultimate goal of all pilgrims. As a result, the sequence stresses that heaven is achievable for those reading and viewing this lavishly illustrated and brilliantly designed devotional manuscript. Camille found it "odd" that the Fitzwilliam Ame images end not as the poem ends, "with the vision of Adam and Eve and their descendents beneath the apple tree and the poet waking from his dream, but with pure heavenly bliss."71 Given that his dissertation studies the century-long development of Trois pelerinages iconography, it is not surprising that he expected the Ame sequence to illustrate the poem's conclusion and to reference its usual iconography. But again it is worth stressing that the Fitzwilliam border cycles are not simple "illustrations" of Guillaume's poems, which do not appear in the manuscript as cotexts. The cycles do not retell the narratives of their visionary pre-texts in a straightforward way, beginning and ending each sequence in accordance with a "source" text. Instead, they have become pictorial narratives in their own right, alluding to, but no longer dependent upon, the


word. 72 As we have seen, through a process of selection and sometimes reordering of scenes and through a rich interpictoriality, the miniatures have been designed to create a coherent visual narrative, staged by paired images, and articulated by repeated motifs and visual echoes. They are also unified by the overarching pilgrimage theme.

To achieve this effect, the literary mechanics of the poems have been suppressed and many incidents of their plots elided. Just as numerous traditional illustrations of the poetic opening of the Jesus Christ-including Adam's fall from the tree and the Parliament ofHeaven-are passed over to begin the manuscript's border miniatures with the Annunciation, so the poetic ending of Arne depicting Adam and his descendants under the tree is dropped in favor of the Soul's vision of heaven (Fig. 22). Similarly, the two ways illustrated manuscripts of the Vie humaine traditionally begin are ignored in the Fitzwilliam hours. Usually, the poet, especially in the frontispieces of fifteenth-century illustrated manuscripts, is portrayed first as reading from the Roman de la Rose in his chamber and then in bed dreaming of the New Jerusalem. This sequence is found especially in illustrated Trois pelerinages manuscripts, such as the deluxe but incomplete manuscript made for Claude de Montaigu (ea. 1450; BL, Add. 22937), whose opening rubric ties Guillaume's poem to the famous romance: "Cy commence le pelerinaige de vie humainne expose sus le roumant de la rose" (fol. lr).73 Perhaps the designer of the Fitzwilliam sequence consciously changed the opening scene in order to delete any allusion to the romance and its protagonist's erotic pilgrimage, a change that may reflect the continuing controversy surrounding the literary status and moral efficacy of the Roman de la rose. 74 But the fact that the Vie sequence also does not represent the alternate and earlier iconography of the poem's opening, which pictures the poet standing behind a pulpit while reading to his audience,75 suggests a more positive reason for the changes it made to the opening authorial scene: to extend interpictorial links beyond those established by page openings within each narrative cycle in order to tie the Vie to the other border cycles based on larger visual patterns. Thus at the beginning of the Vie (Fig. 14), Guillaume is shown inside a room with a blue starry backdrop, lying on a red bed, and dreaming in a posture reminiscent of his dreaming at the beginning of Arne (Fig. 21 ), where he also lies on a red bed in a room with a similar backdrop. The two author portraits thus further link the two visual cycles, just as the picture of Guillaume at the beginning of the Jesus Christ sequence (Fig. 5) links him to John the Revelator by alluding to the rocky landscape that characterizes miniatures showing John on Patmos. 76

The linking of the four cycles through visual similarities exemplifies the various ways in which the border miniatures create one continuous narrative. 77 Developed in stages, the narrative is integrated by the overarching pilgrimage theme, which is introduced early with the depiction of Joseph as pilgrim (Fig. 8). In addition


to achieving intertextual connections, the decision to begin the narrative cycles with the Jesus Christ miniatures also has a profound thematic purpose, for it defines what Maureen Bolton calls "the model journey of the ideal pilgrim, Jesus Christ. ... "78

The border images thus repeatedly depict Jesus as pilgrim. Such is the case for those gospel scenes where the motif would be expected, for example, when Jesus meets the disciples on the road to Emmaus (fol. 17v), an event where liturgical drama identifies Jesus as peregrinus.79 But Jesus is depicted as a pilgrim even from his very childhood. For example, early in the narrative (fol. 16r, Fig. 23), Mary presents the barefooted child, holding staff and scrip, to his Father, who looks down from heaven, a glimpse of the pilgrimage destination not only of Jesus but of all pilgrims. Thus here and throughout the pictorial narrative, Jesus models the pilgrim's life. On his journey he is often paired with Mary, who serves as his guide early in the sequence and whose hours should serve as the reader's guide in her devotions. It should be noted, furthermore, that the visual pairing of pilgrim and guide creates an interpictorial link to images in the Vie sequence. This cycle often pairs Guillaume's human Pilgrim with his allegorical guide, Grace Dieu, who, as noted above, is shown from the very beginning of the narrative leading the Pilgrim on his life's journey (Fig. 16). Their relationship recalls that established earlier between Jesus and Mary (Fig. 23) through a series of visual echoes linking the four protagonists: the two pilgrims are dressed alike, each with staff and scrip; the two guides are portrayed wearing blue, Grace Dieu's gold crown recalling Mary's gold nimbus; and each female guide towers over her male novice, directing his attention appropriately. This interpictoriality associates the two guides and thereby also the two pilgrimagesmankind's and Christ's-thematically linking the sequences of images into one coherent visual narrative.

The pilgrimage of Christ achieves its goal when he arrives "home," kneeling in glory before his Father, who receives him in heaven (fol. 28v, Fig. 24). To conclude with this scene, the border sequence has again passed over numerous allegorical and traditional scenes that in its poetic pre-text and in illustrated manuscripts of Jesus Christ follow the Ascension, such as further discussions among the personified Justice, Truth, and Mercy as well as Mary's Assumption and Coronation in heaven.80 The Isabella Stuart Hours, however, keeps its focus on Christ, as is clear from the marginal rubric that marks the conclusion of the pilgrimage of Jesus Christ. A second "pilgrimage," again biblical, but experienced now by Christ's beloved apostle, John (Fig. 6), follows. This second sequence of miniatures is linked with the preceding Pelerinage Jesus Christ, because, as the opening verse of the Apocalypse states, John's vision is "The Revelation of Jesus Christ." The Apocalypse cycle, in other words, may be understood as depicting Christ after he joins his Father in heaven as revealed to and experienced by John. Many of its scenes depict John in relation to Christ, who is shown looking down upon his apostle (Fig. 9),


Figure 23. Mary introduces Christ as child pilgrim to God the Father. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 16r. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


1fmclqxfr urn t{)hmtt

Figure 24. Conclusion of Pelerinage Jesus Christ. Christ received by God the Father in heaven. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 28v. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


raising him when he falls prostrate before his lord (fol. 32v), dictating to him (fol. 33r), or revealing himself in glory among the Elders (fol. 41v). John on earth, therefore, is associated closely to Christ in heaven, and both are repeatedly shown holding books, as when John sees Christ among the candlesticks (Fig. 11 ), where the op~n book on the apostle's lap is linked to the book in Christ's left hand. In this scene and in several others in the Apocalypse sequence, the book is an important prop. It replaces the pilgrim's staff and scrip so prominent in the other pilgrimage cycles because John is physically place-bound as a prisoner on the isle of Patmos. His pilgrimage is inspired by the heavenly book and received as a revelation that he inscribes in his book. Throughout the Apocalypse cycle he deals with several angels and messengers as well as with Christ, but he experiences his pilgrimage through what he sees, concluding with his final vision of Christ in heaven (Fig. 13).

It is significant that the Apocalypse cycle does not include scenes from John's legendary life, which in several illustrated Apocalypses and in some other manuscripts introduce and conclude his vision. 81 The introductory scenes usually show the ministry of John in Ephesus, where he baptizes Drusiana; his trial before the Roman proconsul, who sends him to Rome to face Domitian; and his being boiled in oil, which he miraculously survives to be exiled to Patmos. There John receives his vision as recorded in the Apocalypse, after which his vita concludes when he returns to Ephesus, raises Drusiana from the dead, destroys the temple of Diana, survives drinking from a poisoned cup, and dies peacefully after performing his final mass. These and other scenes are included in several Apocalypses of the Anglo-French tradition.82 But although Fitzwilliam 62 greatly expands the Apocalypse cycle to correspond with its cotext, as we have seen, the cycle does not depict the widely illustrated legendary life. This omission may be due to the artist's model, but it may also have been a conscious choice because such scenes would impede the progress of the overarching visual narrative by separating the Apocalypse scenes from those of the preceding and following cycles. Just as the traditional openings of the Pelerinage Jesus Christ and Vie humaine are eschewed and just as the Jesus Christ and A me sequences end with their pilgrims welcomed in heaven (Figs. 24, 22) rather than with the usual conclusions of their poetic pre-texts, so the Apocalypse sequence does not include an illustrated Life of John before or after its visionary scenes. This exclusion allows the Fitzwilliam sequence to move seamlessly from the Pilgrim Christ's return to his Father in heaven (Fig. 24) to John's vision of Christ in heaven among the seven candlesticks (Fig. 11 ), as we saw earlier, and again to move without interruption from John's vision of the New Jerusalem at the end of the Apocalypse (fol. 97r) to the Pilgrim's abortive attempt to enter the New Jerusalem at the beginning of the Vie humaine (Fig. 15).

John's apocalyptic revelation also shares much with Guillaume's eschatological pilgrimage of the Soul. Both are visions of the otherworld, depicting heavenly


and hellish landscapes, angels and demons, the righteous saved and the evil damned. Their similarities are evident in many border scenes, for example when John sees the apocalyptic beast and false prophet suffering in hell as fire falls from heaven (fol. 91r) and the angel guide shows the pilgrim Soul the flaming entrance of hell (fol. 182r). Angel guides, moreover, play prominent roles in both sequences. Throughout the Apocalypse, John is directed by angels, who explain his visions, give him instructions, correct his actions, or direct his gaze (Fig. 13). Similarly, the Ame sequence often shows the guardian angel leading the Soul through the otherworldly landscape, as when his attention, like John's, is directed upward by the pointing angel to the community of saints in heaven (fol. 154r, Fig. 25). Just as Grace Dieu in the Vie humaine miniatures visually recalls depictions of Mary as guide in Jesus Christ, so analogous angelic guides connect the Apocalypse andPelerinage de l 'ame sequences. The images of Guillaume's two literary dream visions are also to be read as a continuing pilgrimage. As we have seen, the Pilgrim does not reach his goal at death, but only when his soul joins the heavenly court at the end of the Pelerinage de l'ame (Fig. 22). Thus, just as the Apocalypse scenes follow from the Jesus Christ and the Vie images follow from the Apocalypse, so the Ame scenes continue the Vie miniatures. It is significant, therefore, that the marginal inscription accompanying the depiction of Death attacking the Pilgrim (Fig. 19) refers to the poem not as it was widely known, Pelerinage de vie humaine, but as Pelerinage du corps, that is, of the body. As a corporeal pilgrimage it is intimately tied to the spiritual pilgrimage that follows, and the two should be read together just as body and soul in medieval doctrine are inextricably tied until tlle soul leaves the body to begin the final stage of its pilgrimage.

Yet despite the close association of these two narratives, Fitzwilliam 62 separates them by placing several unrelated miniatures between the end of Vie (Fig. 19) and the start of Ame (Fig. 21 )~ Functionally, as we noted, they illustrate a set of prayers and devotions that delay the beginning of the Ame scenes a few folios so they can be placed next to their cotext, the Office of the Dead, thereby linking intertextually the "vernacular" border miniatures to the central Latin office. But the sequence also includes a crucial opening ( fols. 139v-140r) in which two facing miniatures each picture a woman cloaked in black kneeling at an altar and in prayer before an image of Christ (Fig. 26). These scenes are not allegorical but literal, not biblical or eschatological, but contemporary representations, not of dreaming, but of devotion in practice. The designer of the border sequences has taken this opportunity not only to illustrate the interim devotional cotexts but also to model the reader's response both explicitly to the devotional texts and images and-given the placement of these miniatures-implicitly to the border narratives. Furthermore, if the woman in prayer is indeed Yolande of Aragon mourning the death of her husband, then the placement of these two miniatures between the images depicting the


Figure 25. Guardian angel directs Soul's attention to heaven. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 154r. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


Figure 26. Woman cloaked in black (Yolande of Aragon?) kneeling before altar with image of Christ. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 62, fol. 140r. (Photo: By kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum.)


pilgrimages of the body and of the soul implies that she, too, is a pilgrim. Her life of meditation and prayer is to follow that of the model pilgrim, Christ, so that, when her body is laid to rest, her soul will continue its pilgrimage to heaven. This opening, in other words, suggests that the interim texts and miniatures not only achieve the devotional purposes of the hours and support the overarching design of the border narratives by ensuring their correspondence with appropriate cotexts of the hours, but also personalize the overarching pilgrimage theme by enmeshing the viewer in its pictorial narrative. 83

Comprehending the Border Narratives

It is impossible to know with certainty, of course, how Yolande of Aragon, her daughter Yolande of Anjou, Isabella Stuart, or her daughter Marguerite of Brittany may have understood the characters, events, and details pictured in the border miniatures. Given the complexity of other manuscripts associated with Yolande of Aragon-such as the Rohan Hours, with its marginal images based on a Bible moralisee-and what we know about the close relationships existing among artists, clerical advisors, and patrons within French aristocratic circles during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries,84 it is likely that Yolande would not only have been quite comfortable with the manuscript's visionary narratives, but also have been instrumental in the decision to depict them within the borders of the hours. The biblical and poetic works that serve as their ultimate pre-text would certainly have been known to Yolande, probably in both verbal and visual forms. Thus, although James Marrow may well be right that "the book was intended to be used with a learned advisor, such as a confessor or another teacher, who would have expounded their meaning," he also acknowledges that the narratives may have been followed without such clerical help. 85

More specifically, the Jesus Christ scenes would presumably be familiar to Yolande of Aragon-who was noted, even as a girl, for her religious and biblical knowledge-as well as to the devout Isabella Stuart. 86 These images are largely based on a pre-text that would be known from the gospels if not from Guillaume's poem, and it is worth remembering that the more allegorically obscure scenes from the poem are not represented in the Isabella Stuart Hours. However, some scenes even in this familiar sequence are not immediately clear. For example, the border image adjacent to the portrait oflsabella (Fig. 3) shows a nimbed man guiding Jesus, who as a young pilgrim is about to confront the devil in the wilderness. The guide-the Holy Spirit, usually represented by a dove-may have puzzled a viewer who did not know Guillaume's poetic version of the gospels. Nevertheless, much of this iconography is traditional, as is that of the Apocalypse, a widely illustrated biblical book during the later Middle Ages that was particularly popular with female owners. It


must have been very well known by Yolande of Aragon and her daughter, since an extensive and monumental cycle of Apocalypse scenes would have been before their eyes whenever they were in the ducal castle at Angers. Decorating the walls of a hall until given by Rene to the cathedral of Saint-Maurice, the Angers Tapestry--commissioned in 1373 by Yolande's father-in-law, Louis I-pictured the Apocalypse following the Anglo-French tradition, a visual pre-text that influenced the iconography of the marginal miniatures ofFitzwilliam 62. 87 The tapestry was so valued that it was hung in the archbishop's palace at Aries for Yolande's wedding to Louis II in 1400.88

Regarding the familiarity of Guillaume's other poems, they were extensively illustrated and circulated widely among the French nobility and especially among members of the House of Anjou.89 Louis I, for example, owned a copy of the Vie illustrated with 127 miniatures (Universitatsbibl. Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. Lat. 1969) that remained in the family's library at least until the time of Yolande's first son, Louis 111.90 Yolande's second son, Rene, ordered a copy of the Trois pelerinages (Philadelphia, Rosenbach Museum and Library, MS 241/2), which was made in Angers in 1437.91 The elder Yolande, perhaps when visiting her husband's uncle or when negotiating the purchase of the Belles Heures, may have also seen the illustrated copy of the Vie and Ame in the collection of the Duke of Berry. 92 She therefore likely knew the most popular of Guillaume's poems, Vie, quite well and may have helped her daughter follow its vivid pictorial narrative. Whether Yolande and her daughter as well as Isabella Stuart and her daughter would have also grasped all the details and understood the numerous figures depicted in the Soul's pilgrimage is less certain, but these border images would be among the most regularly seen, since their cotext, the Office of the Dead, would usually be said daily. Certainly many of the images depicting the landscape, characters, and actions of Arne-including its judgment scenes, punishments in hell, and journey through purgatory-would be intelligible as the manuscript's pages were turned in sequence, even if the poetic pre-text was not familiar. Some miniatures were perhaps too enigmatic for immediate comprehension, although deciphering them may have presented welcome challenges for their viewers steeped in Christian tradition. As Rosemond Tuve notes, effective allegory expects "that readers enjoy recognizing and realizing what they have long known,"93 and such pleasurable recognition of symbolic meaning is likely to have been a response to many of these miniatures, especially for someone like Isabella Stuart, who commissioned a manuscript of the allegorical Somme le Roi (BnF, fr. 958).94

Although we cannot be sure how these miniatures were received, they were certainly designed not only to serve intertextually as a visual border gloss on their cotexts, the central devotional readings, but also interpictorially as a continuous graphic narrative to be sight read, providing a deep structure connecting disparate elements


of the Isabella Stuart Hours.95 To achieve this continuity, the images minimize the literary distinctions between the four pre-texts they recall and emphasize similarities, articulating a visually coherent story in which narrative elements respond to and underscore each other and invite the viewer to participate in the narrative and personally extend its trajectory through the pilgrimage of her own life.96 Correspondences are maximized visually, through the repetition ofanalogous designs, associated characters, and recurrent motifs, and thematically by conceiving all four sequences as representing pilgrimages, whether set in the gospel past or in apocalyptic eternity, in the allegorical present or future afterlife. Atthe same time, the allegorical complexities of Guillaume's poems depicted in many illustratedPelerinage manuscripts and the multifaceted interpretations of the Apocalypse, evident in the exegetical roundels of the Bedford Hours, are not included. The border pictures, above all, tell an ongoing story and never, to quote Tuve's characterization of allegory gone stale, "sacrifice the sense of something happening ... to the moral meaning."97 Generally, scenes that would reduce visual comprehension of the story, complicate clarity of action, or interrupt narrative continuity are passed over. The only noteworthy exceptions are the border scenes accompanying the devotional texts and prayers that are placed between the pilgrimages of the body and soul. Yet, they also model the viewer's response to the pictorial narrative of border images (Fig. 26), just as the two large portraits of Isabella Stuart (Fig. 3) and possibly her daughter Marguerite (Fig. 4) model the responses of these early readers to the central text of the hours. They are crucial parts of the manuscript's program, reminding us of the participatory nature of art and the way it transforms the viewer's experience and shapes consciousness. 98

To conclude with the beginning, the book's first luminous folio after the calendar (Fig. 5) introduces the unity of its visual and textual elements that comprise its "large order of the whole." John is given pride of place. As the author of the opening gospel text and the Apocalypse, he is juxtaposed with the poet of the three dream visions. The juxtaposition of contemporary monastic and ancient biblical authors establishes Guillaume both as latter-day evangelist, in his poetic account of the life of Christ, and as latter-day revelator, in his vision of the afterlife. The folio's text, "In the beginning was the word," the gospel lesson from John, "acts as a preamble for the entire Book ofHours."99 The portrait of John and his text below, both identified by the blue Latin heading, thus introduces the textual elements of the Isabella Stuart Hours. The apostle is shown writing his book, inspired by the word conveyed by his symbol, the Eagle, one of the four heavenly beasts of Revelation. It is a very bookish image, and even the devil, who anticipates the demonic agents of both the Apocalypse and the Pelerinage de l'dme, is frustrated in its attempt to prevent the word's inscription. 100

In the border to the right of John the depiction of Guillaume and his sight of Christ in heaven similarly introduces the border miniatures and their overarching


pilgrimage narrative. His "text," briefly identified by the marginal French rubric, is not the verbal pre-text but the visual narrative that follows, and so the monk is pictured seeing, that is, receiving a dream vision. These two images encapsulate the unity not only of this remarkable manuscript but also of the medieval understanding of salvation history. They would have reminded the viewer that Christ is, as the Apocalypse states near its beginning and conclusion, Alpha and Omega (Rev. 1 :8; 22: 13), in the beginning the Word (John 1: 1) and in the end the glorified Savior surrounded by red seraphs in heaven who promises "Surely I come quickly" (Rev. 22:20). These images thus play a memorial as well as an introductory role. Seen on a daily basis as the opening pages of the book were turned, the images on this folio would bring to mind the visual narratives that are woven together as a unified pilgrimage and pictured within the borders throughout this complex book of hours. These narratives conclude with the Soul's presentation to the heavenly court (Fig. 22), providing both a continual model and an ultimate goal for the women who first turned the beautiful pages of this manuscript, just as the accompanying devotional cotexts and images would daily encourage these women to internalize and extend the narratives by pursuing their own pilgrimages to heaven.

NOTES

Shorter versions of this essay were read at the Columbia University Medieval Guild, October 2004; the Visions and Dreams conference, Claremont Graduate University, November 2004; Florida State University, April 2005; and the Medieval Seminar, Harvard University, December 2005. I thank the organizers of these meetings for inviting me to participate and their audiences for their comments. I owe a debt of gratitude to Pamela Sheingom for her many insightful suggestions and corrections that improved this essay and to James Marrow for his helpful comments and for generously providing images of the entire manuscript.

1. See M. R. James, Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1895), 156-74, at 157. James provides a detailed listing of these subjects.

2. Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Limbourgs and their Contemporaries (New York: Braziller, 1974), 1:263-70 passim, 306-7, and vol. 2, fig. 862. This folio is reproduced in color in John Harthan, The Book of Hours (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1977), 115. The other miniatures usually attributed to the Rohan Master are a Virgin and Child between Peter and Paul (fol. 136v, Meiss, French Painting, vol. 2, fig. 865) and a Virgin and Child standing within an elaborate architectural setting (fol. 141 v, Meiss, French Painting, vol. 2, fig. 867). For the attribution of these miniatures, see Adelheid Heimann, "Der Meister der 'Grandes Heures de Rohan' und seine Werkstatt," Stiidel-Jahrbuch 7-8 (1932): 1-61, esp. 5-6. Michael Camille, Master of Death: The Lifeless Art of Pierre Remiet, Illuminator (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), also attributes to the Rohan Master one of the small miniatures placed in the border of Fitzwilliam MS 62 (fol. 116v); see 238--40, fig. 184 (miscited on 240).

3. The exception is Michael Camille's dissertation studyingPelerinage iconography, which discusses Fitzwilliam 62 in its fifth chapter; see Michael William Camille, "The Illustrated Manuscripts of Guillaume de Deguileville's 'Pelerinages,' 1330-1426" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Cambridge, 1984), 227--46.


More recently, James Marrow's catalogue entry in The Cambridge Illuminations: Ten Centuries of Book Production in the Medieval West, ed. Paul Binski and Stella Panayotova (London: Harvey Miller, 2005), 202-4, no. 88, briefly discusses the border images, citing the shorter version of the present essay which I read to the Columbia Medieval Guild. But typically the border images are ignored, especially if they are not placed next to miniatures associated with the Rohan Master. Such scholarly inattention accounts for some mistaken conclusions, as when Meiss states that "The small miniatures in the borders of the Fitzwilliam manuscript, moreover, are not rectangular, as in most Rohan manuscripts, but rounded and inserted into the foliage ... " (French Painting, 264 ). This is definitely not the case for the vast majority of the border scenes in the Isabella Stuart Hours, which are placed within rectangular

4. I borrow the phrase from Meyer Schapiro's "On Perfection, Coherence, and Unity of Form and Content," in Art and Philosophy: A Symposium, ed. Sidney Hook (New York: New York University Press, 1966), 3-15; rpt. in Meyer Schapiro, Theory and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist, and Society (New York: George Braziller, 1994), 33-49, at 43.

5. My emphasis on the manuscript setting of the narratives is analogous to the approach taken by MarilynAronberg Lavin, The Place of Narrative: Mural Decoration in Italian Churches, 431-1600 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), which emphasizes "the disposition ofnarratives as complete entities within their architectural settings" (3).

6. On the contents of books of hours see Roger S. Wieck, Time Sanctified: The Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life (New York: Braziller, 1988).

7. "Creator celi" (136v-140r), "Suscipiat pietas" (140r-l 40v), and "Salva me Domine" (140v-14 lr). The "Creator celi" includes feminine forms, which suggests that the manuscript was made for a female owner; see ElizabethL'Estrange, "Anna peperit Mariam, ElizabethJohannem, Maria Chris tum: Images of Childbirth in Late-Medieval Manuscripts," in Manuscripts in Transition: Recycling Manuscripts, Texts and Images, ed. Brigitte Dekeyzer and Jan Van der Stock (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 340.

8. Wolfgang Kemp, The Narratives of Gothic Stained Glass, trans. Caroline Dobson Saltzwedel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 129.

9. Cynthia Hahn, "Interpictoriality in the Limoges Chasses of Stephen, Martial, and Valerie," inimage and Belief Studies in Celebration of the Eightieth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, ed. Col um Hourihane (Princeton, NJ: Index of Christian Art, Department of Art and Archaeology, in association with Princeton University Press, 1999), 109-24.

10. See Norbert H. Ott, "Word and Image as a Field of Research: Sound Methodologies or Just a Fashionable Trend? A Polemic from a European Perspective," in Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages, ed. Kathryn Starkey and Horst Wenzel (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 15-32, esp. 16.

11. See Jean Porcher, The Rohan Book of Hours (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), 5, 11-12; Marcel Thomas, "Introduction II," The Rohan Master: A Book of Hours (New York: George Braziller, 1973), 28; and Harthan, Book of Hours, 84-5.

12. Meiss, French Painting, 1 :265. See also Illuminated Manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam Museum, ed. Francis Wormald and Phyllis M. Giles (Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, 1966), 30, no. 68, which dates the manuscript to ea. 1415.

13. See "Quand le due s'appelait Louis": Louis I" et Louis JI, dues d'Anjou 1360-1417 (Angers: Archives departementales de Maine-et-Loire, 1998).

Studies in Iconography 28- 2007 101

14. See Camille, "Illustrated Manuscripts," 228. James refers to this woman as a "nun in black" (Descriptive Catalogue, 167).

15. Adelaide Bennett, "Commemoration of Saints in Suffrages: From Public Liturgy to Private Devotion," in Objects, Images, and the Word: Art in the Service of the Liturgy, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton, NJ: Index of Christian Art, Department of Art and Archaeology, in association with Princeton University Press, 2003), 54--78, at 67. On the patronage of widows see June Hall McCash, "The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women: An Overview," in The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. McCash (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 9-10.

16. See Camille, "Illustrated Manuscripts," 228.

17. Veronique P. Day, "Recycling Radegund: Identity and Ambition in the Breviary of Anne de Prye," in Excavating the Medieval Image: Manuscripts, Artists, Audiences: Essays in Honor of Sandra Hindman, ed. David S. Areford and Nina A. Rowe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 151-77, at 160. For the iconography ofRadegund's legend, see Michel Laverret, "L'iconographie de sainte Radegonde dans les manuscripts," Bulletin de la Societe des Antiquaires de I 'Ouest et des Musees de Poitiers, 5th series II (2° trimester 1988), 85-112, which, unfortunately, does not discuss the border images in Fitzwilliam 62. Their significance is discussed by Elizabeth L'Estrange in her forthcoming book, Holy Motherhood: Gender, Dynasty and Spectators hip in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), eh. 4. I thank L'Estrange for sending me the relevant prepublication chapters of her book and for helpful discussions concerning the Fitzwilliam hours.

18. Meiss, French Painting, 1 :270. See also Alfred Coville, La vie intellectuelle dans les domaines d'Anjou-Provence de 1380 a 1435 (Paris: Droz, 1941), esp. 32-3. For a study of how an illustrated manuscript can provide female "role models" for an aristocratic woman, see Anne Rudloff Stanton, "The Psalter oflsabelle, Queen of England 1308-1330: Isabelle as the Audience," Word and Image 18 (2002): 1-27.

19. For Yolande's extensive political involvement, summarized in the remainder of this paragraph, see Jehanne d'Orliac, Yolande d'Anjou, la reine des quatre royaumes (Paris: Plon, 1933).

20. See Franyois Avril, "Un portrait inedit de la reine Charlotte de Savoie," in Etudes sur la Bib/iotheque nationale ettemoignages reunis en homage a ThereseKleindienst(Paris: Bibliotheque nationale, 1985), 255-62, esp. 259; Avril focuses on a depiction of Charlotte of Savoy, daughter-in-law of Charles VII, kneeling in prayer before Radegund (BnP, fr. 5718, fol. 2r; ea. 1475).

21. See Albert Chatelet, L 'age d 'or du manuscrit a peintures en France au temps de Charles VI, et Les Heures du Marechal Boucicaut (Paris: Institut de France, 2000), 178-82; and Harthan, Book of Hours, 86-93. Although Chatelet dates both manuscripts to ea. 1415 and Meiss (French Painting, 1:266) similarly suggests that Yolande may have commissioned BnF. lat. l l 56A for the young Rene, Franyois Avril dates this manuscript to 1435-36. See Franyois Avril and Nicole Reynaud, Les manuscrits a peintures en France, 1440-1520 (Paris: Flammarion, 1993), 25. In general, Avril dates the mature work of the Rohan Master to the 1430s. Thus, although Porcher (Rohan, 6) and Meiss (French Painting, 1 :270) thought Yolande may have commissioned the Rohan Hours for Louis III or the Dauphin in the early 1420s, Avril (26) suggests that it may have been made for the planned marriage in 1431 of Charles d' Anjou and a daughter of Alain IX of Rohan. Ines Villela-Petit dates it ea. 1430 in Le gothique international: L 'art en France au temps de Charles VI (Paris: Editions Hazan, 2004), 104.

22. See Leopold Delisle, Recherches sur la Librairie de Charles V, Roi de France, 1337-1380 (Amsterdam: van Heusden, 1967), 2:239.

23. Camille, "Illustrated Manuscripts," 230.


24. Avril notes the influence of the St. Jerome frontispiece of a Bible moralisee (BnF, fr. 166)-known to be in Rene's collection in the 1430s-on the architectural design ofFitzwilliam 62, fol. 141v. See Avril and Reynaud, Manuscrits a peintures, 25-6, 115. It should be noted, however, that since the Bible was begun much earlier (ea. 1402--04), the Rohan Master may have seen the frontispiece before it was in Rene's collection. On the Jerome frontispiece and its relation to fol. 141v, see Otto Piicht, "Zur Entstehung des 'Hieronymus im Gehiius, "'Pantheon 21 (1963): 131-42, esp. 135 and fig. 2; and Gregory T. Clark, "The Influence of the Limbourg Brothers in France and the Southern Netherlands, 1400-1460," in The Limbourg Brothers: Nijmegen Masters at the French Court 1400--1416, ed. Rob Dilckers and Pieter Roelofs (Nijmegen: Ludion, 2005), 215-21, figs. 6 and 7. Christopher de Hamel, who dates Fitzwilliam 62 to 1417-18, notes the influence of the architectural border on the Rohan Hours (fol. 94v), which he dates ea. 1420; see A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, 2nd ed. (London: Phaidon Press, 1994), 195. The dating of Fitzwilliam 62 thus remains uncertain. For example, AnneMarie Legare ("La reception du Pelerinage de Vie humaine de Guillaume de Digulleville dans le milieu angevin d' apres les sources et les manuscripts conserves," in Religion et mentalites au Moyen Age: Melanges en l'honneur d'Herve Martin, ed. Sophie Cassagnes-Brouquet et al. [Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2003], 545) dates it ''vers 1415," whereas Marrow dates it to ea. 1431 (Cambridge Illuminations, ed. Binsky and Panayotova, 204).

25. Harthan, Book of Hours, 117. For Francis I, see Paul Ladouce, Portraits de la Bretagne Ducale 1212-1514 (Frehel: Editions Club 35, 1997), 136-46.

26. See Priscilla Bawcutt and Bridget Henisch, "Scots Abroad in the Fifteenth Century: The Princesses Margaret, Isabella and Eleanor," in Women in Scotland c. 1100--c. 1750, ed. Elizabeth Ewan and Maureen M. Meikle (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1999), 45-55, esp. 48-50. On other manuscripts owned by Isabella, see L'Estrange, Holy Motherhood, eh. 5.

27. See Camille, "Illustrated Manuscripts," 228, 255 n. 34, and 256 n. 35. Presumably, if the manuscript is later as Avril suggests, the original portrait depicted Yolande of Anjou rather than her mother. In either case, placing the portrait of a donor or owner at the "Obsecro te Domina" is quite common because, as Wieck notes, through this prayer "the reader addresses the Virgin directly, in plaintive tones and in the first person" (Time Sanctified, 94).

28. The extant portrait seems too late to be either Yolande of Anjou or her mother, as Marrow suggests in his notes on the manuscript's provenance (Cambridge Illuminations, ed. Binsky and Panayotova, 204). For the Nantes artist see Eberhard Konig, Franzosische Buchmalerei um 1450: Der Jouvenel-Maler, der Maler des Geefer Boccaccio und die Anfange Jean Fouquets (Berlin: Gehr. Mann, 1982), 255.

29. For a brief analysis of this miniature, see Joan Naughton, "A Minimally-intrusive Presence: Portraits in Illustrations for Prayers to the Vrrgin," in Medieval Texts and Images: Studies of Manuscripts from the Middle Ages, ed. Margaret M. Manion and Bernard J. Muir (Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1991), 113-4 and pl. 3; and L'Estrange, Holy Motherhood, eh. 5.

30. For the two portraits see Margaret R. Toynbee, "The Portraiture of Isabella Stuart, Duchess of Brittany( c. 1427-after 1494)," BurlingtonMagazine 88 (1946): 300--6. Toynbee cites (303)0ttoPiicht's opinion that the second portrait dates to ea. 1460-70 and notes that the arms pictured on the prie-dieu are of Brittany, not of Brittany impaled by the lion of Scotland, as in Isabella's arms. L'Estrange also thinks the portrait on fol. 28r may represent Marguerite; see "Anna peperit Mariam," 342.

31. See Barthelemy Pocquet du Haut-Jusse, Fran~ois II due de Bretagne et l 'Angleterre (1458-1488) (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1929), 32-4; and Ladouce, Portraits de la Bretagne Ducale, 164--6. Marguerite is shown kneeling with her mother and her sister Marie in a Somme le roi manuscript made for Isabella Stuart in 1464 (BnF, fr. 958, fol. Fv); see Avril and Reynaud, Manuscripts a peintures, 178, no. 95.


32. If this outline of the manuscript's ownership is accurate, Fitzwilliam 62 would represent several of the ways in which manuscripts passed from woman to woman in the later Middle Ages; see Brigitte Buettner, "Women and the Circulation of Books," Journal of the Early Book Society 4 (2001 ): 9-31.

33. Kathryn A. Smith, Art, Identity, and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England: Three Women and their Books of Hours (London: British Library, 2003), 4. The range of scholarship on this topic is wide; for an overview, see Sandra Penketh, "Women and Books of Hours," in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor (London: British Library, 1997), 266-81. As Jeffrey Hamburger argues, the inclusion of pictures in medieval prayer books, which is both relatively late and comparatively rare, is intimately connected with "novel habits of prayer" practiced by women and due to the "formative role" played by women patrons in the development of "prayer books with serial narrative illustration .... "See "Before the Book of Hours: The Development of the Illustrated Prayer Book in Germany," in The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female SpiritualityinLateMedievalGermany(NewYork: Zone Books, 1998), 149-95, at 150and151.Forearlier French examples see Margaret M. Manion, "Women, Art and Devotion: Three French FourteenthCentury Royal Prayer Books," in The Art of the Book: Its Place in Medieval Worship, ed. Margaret M. Manion and Bernard J. Muir (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1998), 21-66, and for later examples see Andrea Pearson, Envisioning Gender in Burgundian Devotional Art, 1350-1530: Experience, Authority, Resistance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), esp. eh. 1, "Authority and Community in Women's Books of Hours."

34. See Richard K. Emmerson, "The Apocalypse in Medieval Culture," in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 293-332.

35. See Michael Camille, "Visionary Perception and Images of the Apocalypse in the Later Middle Ages," inApocalypse, ed. Emmerson and McGinn, 280. FortheAnglo-Frenchmanuscripts see Richard K. Emmerson and Suzanne Lewis, "Census and Bibliography of Medieval Manuscripts Containing Apocalypse Illustrations, c. 800-1500," pt. 2, Traditio 41 (1985), 370-409; and Suzanne Lewis, Reading Images: Narrative Discourse and Reception in the Thirteenth-Century Illuminated Apocalypse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). For an overview of Apocalypse iconography see Peter K. Klein, "The Apocalypse in Medieval Art," in Apocalypse, ed. Emmerson and McGinn, 159-99; M. R. James, The Apocalypse in Art (London: British Academy, 1931); Frederick van der Meer, Apocalypse: Visions from the Book of Revelation in Western Art (New York: Alpine 1978); and Yves Christe, L 'Apocalypse de Jean: Sens et developpements de ses visions synthetiques, Bibliotheque des cahiers archeologiques 15 (Paris: Picard, 1996).

36. Le pelerinage de vie humaine de Guillaume de Deguileville, ed. J. J. Stiirzinger (London: Roxburghe Club, 1893); and Eugene Clasby, trans., The Pilgrimage of Human Life, Garland Library of Medieval Literature 76, ser. B (New York: Garland, 1992). On the poem's relationship to the Roman de la rose see Stephen K. Wright, "Deguileville's Pelerinage de vie humaine as 'Contrepartie Edifiante' of the Roman de la Rose," Philological Quarterly 68 (1989): 399-422; and Sylvia Huot, The Romance of the Rose and its Medieval Readers: Interpretation, Reception, Manuscript Transmission (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 207-25.

37. Le pelerinage de /'lime, ed. J. J. Stiirzinger (London: Roxburghe Club, 1895). Both poems were extremely popular into the fifteenth century, when they were translated into Dutch, English, German, Latin, and Spanish. See Richard K. Emmerson, "Translating Images: Image and Poetic Reception in French, English, and Latin Versions of Guillaume de Deguileville's Trois Pelerinages," in Poetry, Place and Gender: Studies in Medieval Culture in Honor of Helen Damico, ed. Catherine E. Karkov (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007).


38. Le Pelerinage Jhesucrist, ed. J. J. Stiirzinger (London: Roxburghe Club, 1897). On the poem's treatment of the Parliament of Heaven see Hope Traver, The Four Daughters of God: A Study of the Versions of This Allegory, with Special Reference to Those in Latin, French, and English (Bryn Mawr, PA: Bryn Mawr College Monographs, 1907), 74-8.

39. For this iconography see Camille's "Illustrated Manuscripts." For a literary study discussing this iconography see Rosemond Tuve, Allegorical Imagery: Some Mediaeval Books and Their Posterity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), 145-218, which rightly notes (193) that some of the images in Fitzwilliam 62 are based on the second recension of Vie. Susan K. Hagen, Allegorical Remembrance: A Study of The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man as a Medieval Treatise on Seeing and Remembering (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990), includes numerous images from manuscripts of the English translations ofGuillaume's Vie.

40. Camille, "Illustrated Manuscripts," 228. It should be noted, however, that one Pelerinage de Jesus Christ manuscript, BnF, fr. 14976, places grisaille illustrations in its margins; see ibid., 139-40.

41. See JanetBackhouse, The Bedford Hours (London: British Library, 1990).Another, although briefer and later, example is the early sixteenth-century French manuscript from the library of Emperor Charles V (Madrid, Bihl. Nacional, Vitr. 24-3), with eight scenes illustrating the Apocalypse; see Ana Dominguez Rodriguez, Libros de Horas del Siglo XV en la Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid: Fundaci6n Universitaria Espaiiola, 1979), no. 13, 82-105, esp. 102-3; and Emmerson and Lewis, "Census" pt. 3, Traditio 42 (1986): 469-70, no. 170. This manuscript also depicts the Three Living and the Three Dead, Dance of Death, Doomsday, and Antichrist. Such eschatological imagery is not unusual, especially in conjunction with the Office of the Dead. For example, PML, M.359, made in Paris by the Bedford Master workshop (ea. 1430-35), includes fifty-eight illustrations of the Dance ofDeath and fifteen depicting the Fifteen Signs of Doomsday; see Roger S. Wieck, Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art (New York: George Braziller, 1997), 55, no. 36.

42. See Porcher, Rohan, 8-9.

43. Richard K. Emmerson, "The Apocalypse Cycle in the Bedford Hours," Traditio 50 (1995): 173-98, at 175. See also Emmerson and Lewis, "Census" pt. 3, Traditio 42 (1986): 469, no. 169. For Apocalypse exegesis, see the essays in Apocalypse, ed. Emmerson and McGinn, 20-102.

44. As I have noted, the interpretive images and their accompanying captions develop the "four interpretive strategies by which the Apocalypse was understood and visualized in the later Middle Ages: the ecclesiological, the moral, the prophetic, and the historical" ("Apocalypse Cycle," 178).

45. For the Apocalypse cycle see Emmerson and Lewis, "Census" pt. 3, Traditio 42 (1986): 468, no. 168; and James, Apocalypse in Art, 17, 72, no. 75.

46. The hand of these rubrics is close to that of the main text, so the rubrics are likely to be contemporaneous with the manuscript's production.

47. Sixten Ringbom, "Some Pictorial Conventions for the Recounting of Thoughts and Experiences in Late Medieval Art," in Medieval Iconography and Narrative: A Symposium, ed. Flemming G. Andersen et al. (Odense: Odense University Press, 1980), 38-69, at 45.

48. These comments are influenced by Richard Brilliant's "Sight Reading," the introduction to his Visual Narratives: Storytelling in Etruscan and Roman Art (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984 ), especially his emphasis on the active role played by the observer of a visual narrative: "Unlike words, even those fixed in a written text, visual images have an almost infinite capacity for verbal extension, because viewers must become their own narrators, changing the images into some form of internalized verbal expression" (16).


49. For the concept of an image's cotext and pre-text see Mieke Bal, Reading "Rembrandt": Beyond the Word-Image Opposition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 17. For its application to an illustrated drama manuscript, see Richard K. Emmerson, "Visualizing Performance: The Miniatures of the Besan9on MS 579 Jour du Jugement, "Exemplaria 11 (1999): 245-84.

50. Cynthia Hahn traces a similar use of intertextuality and interpictoriality in hagiographic images. She notes that "A sort of intertextual reading or 'interpictorial' viewing must have been the primary interpretive activity of the audiences." See Cynthia J. Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart: Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the Tenth through the Thirteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 58.

51. The vast majority of Trois pelerinage manuscripts begin with Vie, followed by Ame and Jesus Christ, but three manuscripts shift the order to begin with Jesus Christ. See Maureen Boulton, "Digulleville's Pelerinage de Jesus Christ: A Poem of Courtly Devotion," in The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval Religious Literature, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Duncan Robertson, and Nancy Bradley Warren (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 127 and 141 n.11.

52. For translations of these prayers, see Wieck, Time Sanctified, 163-4.

53. As noted by Camille, "Illustrated Manuscripts," 232.

54. For this manuscript see Amedee Boinet, ed., Les manuscrits a peintures de la Bibliotheque SainteGenevieve de Paris, Bulletin de la Societe fran9aise de reproductions de manuscripts a peintures 5 (Paris, 1921), 96-107. Camille (Master of Death, 223, figs. 167-8) dates this manuscript somewhat later (ea. 1390), but without explanation. Forcolorreproductions of the Jesus Christ see PauleAmblard, La vie de Jesus selon Guillaume de Digulleville, moine du xive siecle (Paris: Le Pommier, 1999). The color images are also available on the Liber floridus website, http://liberfloridus.cines.fr.

55. The Parliament of Heaven in Jesus Christ and its illustration in Sainte-Genevieve 1130 are discussed by Robert L. A. Clark and Pamela Sheingom, "Reading God's Family Plan: The Process de Paradis in Illustrated Manuscripts of Medieval French Passion Plays," paper read at a conference on The Anagogical Image, the Moralized Text: The Relationship between Texts, Images, and Religious Interpretations in the Middle Ages (Angers, 4-8 July 2005). I thank the authors for allowing me to read a prepublication version of the paper.

56. Even Trois pelerinages manuscripts with limited cycles of illustrations for Jesus Christ (for example, BL, Add. 38120 [ea. 1400]) picture a few scenes before the Annunciation-such as Adam beneath the apple tree--and at least two miniatures between the Annunciation and Joseph's troubles.

57. See, for example, Sainte-Genevieve MS 1130, fol. 159v. This allegorical scene is included in the Jesus Christ frontispiece of a Trois pelerinages dated 1393 (BnF, fr. 823, fol. 169r) that names Remiet, Camille's so-called "Master of Death." For the image see Camille, Master of Death, 74, fig. 34; for the manuscript see Master of Death, 252, but note that Camille's description reverses the manuscript's textual order, mistakenly placing Jesus Christ between Vie and Ame, whereas, like Sainte-Genevieve, it follows the usual order of composition.

58. The selection of scenes in the Isabella Stuart Hours thus differs significantly from the earliest illustrated Jesus Christ manuscript (BnF, fr. 14976), which, according to Camille "does not illustrate the conventional Passion narrative ... but only the more complex and allegorical additions by the poet'' ("Illustrated Manuscripts," 140).


59. The number of images included in the 70 largely complete Anglo-French Apocalypses surveyed by Emmerson and Lewis (Traditio 41 [1985], 370-409) range from as few as 18 to as many as 182, but the vast majority (77%) include 65 to 99 images. For example, the deluxe Apocalypse made for Jean de Berry (PML, M.133; ea. 1415) includes 85 large miniatures; for the miniatures in this manuscript see Corsair, the Online Research Resource of the Pierpont Morgan Library, http://corsair. morganlibrary.org.

60. See, for example, the Cloisters Apocalypse (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, ea. 1340), fol. Sr. See Emmerson and Lewis, "Census" pt. 2, Traditio 41 (1985): 395, no. 86; and, for a facsimile, The Cloisters Apocalypse: A Fourteenth-Century Manuscript in Facsimile, with commentaries by Florens Deuchler, Jeffrey M. Hoffeld, and Helmut Nickel, 2 vols. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1971). For a similar conflation of the seven churches see Francis Muel, The Tapestry of the Apocalypse at Angers: Front and Back (Nantes: Service regional de l'Inventaire des Pays de la Loire, 1996), 19. The contemporary Berry Apocalypse (PML, M.133, fol. 3v) represents the seven churches as one round structure with seven niches containing angels.

61. Camille, for example, notes that the Berengaudus commentary identifies the Woman with Mary; see "Visionary Perception," 280-1. This identification, however, is widespread inApocalypse exegesis from as early as the sixth-century commentary by Primasius; see E. Ann Matter, "The Apocalypse in Early Medieval Exegesis," in Apocalypse, ed. Emmerson and McGinn, 38-50, esp. 44. On the variety of interpretations see Pierre Prigent, Apocalypse 12: Histoire de l 'exegese (Tubingen: Mohr, 1959). It should be noted, furthermore, that the Isabella Stuart Hours does not follow a particular exegetical strand since, as I argue here, its emphasis is upon the narrative of the vision, unlike the cycle in the Bedford Hours, which focuses on its interpretation. From an art historical point of view, the most important commentaries are the earlier Spanish Beatus and the twelfth-century Berengaudus and thirteenth-century French prose gloss. For these see John Williams, "Purpose and Imagery in the Apocalypse Commentary ofBeatus ofLiebana," and Suzanne Lewis, "Exegesis and Illustration in ThirteenthCentury English Apocalypses," both in Apocalypse, ed. Emmerson and McGinn, 21 7-33 and 259-7 5. Derk Visser, Apocalypse as Utopian Expectation (800-1500): The Apocalypse Commentary of Berengaudus of Ferrieres and the Relationship between Exegesis, Liturgy and Iconography, Studies in the History of Christian Thought 73 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), argues, unconvincingly, that the Berengaudus commentary is to be dated to the ninth rather than the twelfth century.

62 . For example, both the Cloisters Apocalypse (fols. 20r-22r) and the Berry Apocalypse (fols. 36v-40v) include five miniatures for these scenes.

63. Camille mistakenly states that this "is the only time anything concerning the marginal contents encroaches within the frame of the text" ("Illustrated Manuscripts," 231 ), but in fact an incipit for A.me is inscribed in the central text on fol. 146v.

64. See Wieck, Time Sanctified, 97-100. For a color reproduction of fol. 99r, see Cambridge Illuminations, ed. Binsky and Panayotova, 203.

65. "Remember not, 0 Lord, our offenses" (ibid., 164).

66. V. A. Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984), 52 and fig. 22. On the significance of this poetic image and its representation see Hagen, Allegorical Remembrance, 7-29 and figs . 1, 2, 4--8.

67. Camille, who mistakenly identifies this opening as fols . 137v-138r and mistranscribes portions of the Latin prayer, rightly notes that "In no other version ofV would it have been possible to link the Pilgrim's end with such an image and such a text, resurrection against death, hope against despair" ("Illustrated Manuscripts," 241).


68. Camille, "Illustrated Manuscripts," 244. He furthernotes that several well-known allegorical scenes from the later part of Arne (e.g., the green tree and dry tree) are not included "because these do not conform to the context of death and judgment required" (245).

69. The numerous depictions of Purgatory are certainly an exception to Paul Binski's argument concerning the non-representation of Purgatory in late medieval art; see Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 188-99.

70. See, for example, Sainte-Genevieve, MS 1130, fol. 155r.

71. Camille, "Illustrated Manuscripts," 245.

72. On this characteristic of pictorial narratives that have reached "the heights of advanced poetic technique," see Kemp, Narratives, 91.

73. For this manuscript see "Les Trois Pelerinages," in Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, ed. H. L. D. Ward, vol. 2 (London: British Museum, 1893), 558-85; and Emmerson, "Translating Images," in Poetry, Place and Gender, ed. Karkov, fig. 1. For an earlier frontispiece by the "Master of Death" (BnF, fr. 823, fol. lr) see Camille, Master of Death, 20, fig. 6.

74. For the so-called querelle de la rose (best known in connection with Christine de Pizan) see La Querelle de la Rose: Letters and Documents, trans. Joseph L. Baird and John R. Kane (Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Caroline Press, 1978). For an insightful study ofhow the literary debate influenced the illustration of Christine's manuscripts see Marilynn Desmond and Pamela Sheingorn, Myth, Montage, and Visuality in Late Medieval Manuscript Culture: Christine de Pizan s Epistre Othea (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 195-9.

75. As in, for example, Bod. Lib., Douce 300, fol. lr. For this manuscript see Otto Pacht and J. J. G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 50, no. 639; and Emmerson, "Translating Images," in Poetry, Place and Gender, ed. Karkov, fig. 3. The Sainte-Genevieve frontispiece (fol. 2r) combines the two traditional openings, first showing the dreamer in bed seeing the New Jerusalem in a mirror and then speaking to a large aristocratic group.

76. See, for example, the contemporary Berry Apocalypse, PML, M.133, fol. 2v.

77. The effect is similar to that achieved by a near-contemporary manuscript ofBoccaccio's Des cleres et nobles femmes (1402; BnF, fr. 12420), which was owned by Philip the Bold, the uncle of Louis II, Yolande of Aragon's husband. In Boccaccio s Des cleres et nobles femmes: Systems of Signification in an Illuminated Manuscript, College Art Association Monographs on the Fine Arts 53 (Seattle: University ofWashington Press, 1996), Brigitte Buettner shows how its illustrations create "a syntagmatic sequence based on the handling of visual objects that are only partially dependent on the text" (25), so that the cycle of miniatures "literally bridges the stories" (54). In bridging its border cycles, Fitzwilliam 62 is even more dependent upon visual correspondences, since no verbal text is present otherwise to link the cycles.

78. Boulton, "Digulleville's Pelerinage de Jesus Christ," 128.

79. See Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church (Oxford: Clarendon: 1933), 1:451-83.

80. For example, Sainte-Genevieve, MS 1130, includes eleven scenes between theAscension(fol. 223r) and Pentecost (fol. 226v) and four scenes between Pentecost and its concluding depiction of Guillaume kneeling before Christ (fol. 229r), a conclusion significantly not pictured in Fitzwilliam 62.


81. On the role of John see Lewis, Reading Images, 19-39. As Lewis notes, "The illustrated Life of John provides a characteristically medieval 'outer frame' to contain the narrator's memory that comprises its interior structure" (26).

82. For these cycles, see two mid-thirteenth-century Anglo-French Apocalypses: BnF, fr. 403, with fourteen illustrations of the life of John (fols. lr-3r, 43v-44v), facsimile in Leopold Delisle and Paul Meyer, eds., L 'Apocalypse en fran~ais au XIIIe siecle (Bibi. Nat. fr. 403), 2 vols., Societe des anciens textes franr;ais (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1900--1 ); and Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.16.2, with thirty illustrations (fols. lr-2r, 28r-31 v), facsimile in Peter Brieger, ed., The Trinity College Apocalypse: An Introduction and Description (London: Eugrammia Press, 1967). I have been unable to consult the new facsimile, Die Trinity-Apokalypse = The Trinity Apocalypse: Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS. R.16.12 (Luzem: Faksimile Verlag, 2004), but several scenes are also reproduced in color in the helpful study The Trinity Apocalypse (Trinity College Cambridge, MS. R 16.2), ed. David McKitterick (London: British Library, 2005). It includes a CD-ROM edition of the Anglo-Norman text of the life and an English translation by Ian Short. The popularity of these hagiographic scenes is also manifest by their combination in composite images used to introduce the Apocalypse; see Les Tres riches Heures du due de Berry et l 'enluminure en France au debut du XV siecle (Chantilly: Musee Conde, 2004 ), fig. 48. Sometimes only one scene---often of John boiled in oil-will represent his life as an introduction to the Apocalypse, as in the Berry Apocalypse (PML, M.133, fol. lr). Such scenes sometimes illustrate the gospel sequence from John in books of hours; see Wieck, Painted Prayers, 42-3, nos. 27-8.

83. I borrow this notion from Cynthia Hahn's discussion of Matthew Paris's depiction of the Life of St. Alban in her "Visio Dei: Changes in Medieval Visuality," in Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw, ed. Robert S. Nelson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 169-96, at 183.

84. See, for example, Margaret Manion, "Women, Art and Devotion: Three French Fourteenth-Century Royal Prayer Books," in The Art of the Book: Its Place in Medieval Worship, ed. Margaret Manion and B. J. Muir (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1998), 21--66. On the role ofadvisors in developing programs of illumination and instructions to artists see Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 52-71, esp. 54, which cites an example from a Deguileville manuscript.

85. Cambridge Illuminations, ed. Binsky and Panayotova, 203.

86. Yolande's religious knowledge was noted in 1392 during the negotiations for her marriage to Louis II; see Coville, Vie intellectuelle, 90. For Isabella, see Bawcutt and Henisch, "Scots Abroad," 50.

87. See van der Meer, Apocalypse, 178-9. For a detailed comparison of the tapestry to illustrated Apocalypses, see Margaret Manion, "The Angers Tapestries of the Apocalypse and Valois Patronage," in Prophecy, Apocalypse and the Day of Doom: Proceedings of the 2000 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Nigel Morgan (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2004), 220-38.

88. See Pierre-Marie Auzas et al., L 'Apocalypse d'Angers: Chef-d'oeuvre de la tapisserie medievale (Fribourg: Office du Livre, 1985), 29.

89. See Legare, "Reception du Pelerinage de Vie humaine," 543--61 . Legare notes that at the turn of the fifteenth century the Vie humaine "etait populaire non seulement chez les dues et Les duchesses mais aussi aupres des aristocrats de la cour d' Anjou .. . " (545).

90. See Rosemarie Bergmann, Die Pilgerfahrt zum himm/ischen Jerusalem: Ein allegorisches Gedicht des Spiitmittelalters aus der Heidelberger Bilderhandschrift Cod Pal. Lat. 1969 "Pelerinage de vie humaine" des Guillaume de Deguileville (Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 1983), esp. 33-5. On the wide pop-


ularity of Guillaume's poems among the French laity, including aristocrats, see Genevieve Hasenohr, "Religious Reading amongst the Laity in France in the Fifteenth Century," in Heresy and Literacy, 1000-1530, ed. Peter Biller andAnne Hudson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 210-4.

91. See Leaves of Gold: Manuscript Illumination from Philadelphia Collections, ed. James R. Tanis and Jennifer A. Thompson (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001 ), 205-7, no. 71.

92. BnF, fr. 829 (ea. 1404), with Jean de Berry's owner inscription, fol. 221r. See Eva Lindqvist Sandgren, The Book of Hours of Johannete Ravenelle and Parisian Book Illumination Around 1400, Figura, Nova Series 28 (Uppsala: Uppsala University Library, 2002), 71-8, 107-9, figs. 49, 56, 57, 85-93. See also Camille, "Illustrated Manuscripts," 207-18, 328-31. This manuscript, with 210 miniatures, is one of only five that, like selected scenes in the Isabella Stuart Hours, depicts the second recension of the Vie humaine.

93. Tuve, Allegorical Imagery, 162.

94. See Avril and Reynaud, Manuscripts a peintures, no. 95.

95. On narrative as deep structure see Keith Moxey, The Practice a/Theory: Poststructuralism, Cultural Politics, and Art History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 12.

96. The importance of narrative coherence in the "process of affective identification" is stressed by Jeffrey Hamburger, "The Visual and the Visionary: The Image in Late Medieval Monastic Devotion," in The Visual and the Visionary, 111--48. Discussing how thirteenth-century nuns were encouraged to "literally envisage themselves as the Bride of the Canticle," Hamburger notes that "Essential to this process is the rearrangement of the shifting and evocative imagery of the Song of Songs to form a coherent narrative in which the nuns could participate as protagonists" (124).

97. Tuve, Allegorical Imagery, 199. Commenting on illustrated Vie manuscripts, Tuve states that "The story cannot possibly be followed with any finesse through the pictures, and the allegorical significances are too precise, numerous and specialized to be elucidated from mere common knowledge" (188), but the Fitzwilliam cycle privileges the visual narrative over the poetic allegory.

98. See Hans-Georg Gadamer, "The Relevance of the Beautiful," in The Relevance of the Beautifal and Other Essays, trans. Nicholas Walker and ed. Robert Bernasconi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 3-53. As Gadamer emphasizes, "there is in principle no radical separation between the work of art and the person who experiences it" (28). See also Michael Ann Holly, Past Looking: Historical Imagination and the Rhetoric of the Image (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 25--6.

99. Wieck, Time Sanctified, 158.

100. For this motif see J. G. van Gelder, "Der Teufel stiehlt das Tintenfass," Kunsthistorische Forschungen: Otto Piicht zu seinem 70 Geburtstag, ed. Artur Rosenauer and Gerold Weber (Salzburg: Residenz Verlag, 1972), 173-88; and Sandgren, Book of Hours of Johannete Ravenelle, 127-9, figs. 111-5.

Florida State University


“A ‘Large Order of the Whole’: Intertextuality and Interpictoriality in the Hours of Isabella...

Documents

Transcript of “A ‘Large Order of the Whole’: Intertextuality and Interpictoriality in the Hours of Isabella...