ILLUSTRATIONS 1: THE ANTICLAUDIANUS MINATURES
I. f.160: The Catalog of Old and New Testament Contrasts
We have decided to refer to the first set of illustrations as “The Anticlaudianus miniatures” but this is actually a slight misnomer. The entire first leaf of the sequence (folio 160) has nothing to do with the Anticlaudianus but is rather an illustrated catalogue or paired figures, each “contrasting an old testament prophet with a new testament apostle.” (Fisher Library). Each figure is identified in a marginal caption above the frame and holds a ribbon of text providing a quotation. 14 of these miniatures appear across two pages divided into 6 parts. The bottom two inserts on leaf 160v are both blank, possibly indicating that the work is unfinished or else that there were fewer contrasting sets ready than the number of spaces allotted by this format. Notably, the first figure to appear is St. Peter, the abbot Hermann’s patron saint.
The miniatures function like a compilation of political cartoons, each pair drawing attention to differences and similarities between the figures depicted in the insert. Appearing to the left of the old testament prophets in leaf 160r and to their right in 160v, the new testament apostles are each haloed and carry instruments representative of their defining deeds or characteristics. The old testament prophets in contrast, unarmed with such potent items, cling and point to their ribbons of text. This uniform difference seems to illustrate a dichotomy between Jew and Christian which dates back as far as St. Paul and is codified in the antijudaic writings of Augustine and Jerome (Nirenberg 2013, 54-55; 120-129) that the Jewish people are people of the book and thus cling to the literal word of the old testament, while the virtuous Christian embodies the spirit of the word through their conduct in life.
II. f.161-2: Transition to the Anticlaudianus and Sequential Narrative
If folio 160 is like a political cartoon, then folios 161-2 resemble a full blown comic book, a condensed adaptation of Alain de Lille’s philosophical epic poem Anticlaudianus, a manuscript of which follows the illustrated portion of the composite manuscript. The entire poem is summarized over 48 scrupulously captioned miniature, every important action summarized and each figure named for clarity (Fisher Library). Only the final miniature of the sequence is distinct from the narrative, a dedication to Hermann similar to the dedication in the fifteen signs illustrations in which he is depicted kneeling and holding a book up to St Peter. Thus the series from 160r-162v begins and ends with Peter.
The format of sequential miniature narratives in manuscripts has a popular contemporary parallel in the thirteenth century of picture bibles, but these do not share the tightly gridded arrangement here, favoring heavily decorated circular inserts, full pages and looser divisions into one or two frames. One major exception is the roughly contemporary Egerton Genesis, an English picture bible divided into four panels in a more casual style (British Library). However, even this work is not nearly as rigorously arranged as our Anticlaudianus' 12-panel grid. An even more more similar arrangement can be found in an illuminated page from the St. Augustine Gospel manuscript (Stanford Libraries), but this formal affinity can only be found one one leaf of the Augustine gospel, whereas the Anticlaudianus miniatures go on in the same gridded format for four whole pages.
In addition to introducing sequential narrative narrative and action, the Anticlaudianus summary is also arranged differently on the page than the prior folio. Each side of the leaf is divided into twelve square inserts with numerals indicating that they are to be read in an ordered sequence of columns from top to bottom and left to right. No such reading order is suggested for folio 160, nor are any iconographic indicators of action or setting beyond the torsos of the pairs of figures, who are themselves generic male figures with only differences in posture, facial hair and iconic instruments (in the new testament figures) to visually distinguish one from the other. In 161-2, figures appear in full and are clearly in action, there are women and animals in scenes as well as men, more than two individuals can appear in a frame and specific settings are visually indicated. Whereas folio 161 puts names in the upper margin of each insert, in 161-2 the text captions summarizing the miniatures appear in the margins of the grid both horizontally and vertically while names are captioned beside their corresponding figure.
With the host of differences between f.160 and f.161-2 as well as the possibilty that f.160 is unfinished, one may speculate that these pages could have been originally prepared for separate manuscripts before being brought together in the composite. It is evident from the style of the illustrations as well as the paleographic similarities in the captions of the leaves that these are the work of the same studio, but it is also worth noting a general codicological similarity - the parchment used has a consistent resemblance. Given that this set of illustrated leaves was most likely prepared in the same studio by the same artist(s) at the same time, the similarities between these two uniquely gridded sequences become more significant than their differences and it seems reasonable to view them as a part of a unitary, continuous project.
III. Alain’s Anticlaudianus and Alterations
Written in the late 12th century as the opposite of Claudian’s In Rufinum in which Nature herself creates the worst man (the titular Rufinus), the Anticlaudianus envisions instead a repentant Nature undergoing the task of constructing the perfect man, free from the many faults imbued in her flawed designs outlined in Alain’s prior De Planctu Naturae. Over the nine books Nature beseeches and receives aid from various personified virtues, culminating in a visit to the trinity and an unnamed deity implied to be the titular Lady Philosophy of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. Once created, the perfect man defeats all the personified vices, weaknesses, and plagues of mankind in a battle of one against hundreds whom he slays with ease in the final book. The classicising form and content of the Parisian Alain De Lille’s narrative poem owes a considerable debt to Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy (Sheridan 31) and the genre of Latin epic on rhetorical themes “firmly established [...] in Lucan’s time.” (ibid. 37)
Produced nearly a century after the Anticlaudianus was written, the Hermann composite miniatures summarize the work in the manner of a Medieval Classics Illustrated. Also like a Classics Illustrated, some of the visual glosses in the Anticlaudianus sequence represent ambiguous passages of the poem misleadingly and even completely incorrectly, seemingly in attempt to further Christianize the naturalistic and polytheistic allegory of the poem. This visual flattening of ambiguous terms results of a major alteration to the narrative’s conclusion. In the text, the holy trinity - including the ascended Christ - and the aforementioned ambiguously Boethian goddess provide Nature with the means to create the perfect man, an earthly ideal separate from heaven and allegorically requiring the inspiration of theology and philosophy to exist on earth. In the miniatures however, Nature meets the trinity (still, oddly, including a crucified Christ) accompanied by Noys, a feminine personification of the divine mind of God. Noys/God hands Nature the ydea of Christ, which Nature then takes to Mary, thus making Nature a participant in the immaculate conception. Thus Alain’s hypothetical is made historical, and his nuanced, Platonic ideal of man separate from divine ideals is replaced with a more conventional theological allegory where Christ is the perfect man. (Newman 2003, 73-86) Ironically, this clear attempt to make the work sit more comfortably within Christian paradigms gives pagan deities an active role in the birth of Christ. In the paradigm of Alain’s intended naturalism, this version of events would render the worldly goddesses as powerful as God and Christ merely an earthly human - a totally blasphemous allegory!
IV. The Placement of the Anticlaudianus Miniatures in the Composite
Presuming that these illustrations were intended to be placed together (see II) and at this point in the composite manuscript, whether by the artist(s) themselves or by a later bookmaker, it is worth considering how the sequence may interact with the larger composite. The illustrated section is preceded by two works on on the lives of prophets and saints and a (largely biblical) genealogical chronology, and is followed by a manuscript of the Anticlaudianus. The series of miniatures over f.160-162 then seem to smoothly mark this transition. This interpretation may be evidence for an argument that the illustrated sections following, totally distinct in both their formal organization and use of media, may have been added later from a work originally separate from the rest of the composite manuscript.
Following the focus of the prior texts on biblical authorities and their chronological distance from (and relation to) each other, folio 160 appears as a playful satire on that linearity in its entertaining juxtaposition of old with new. In the frame, the meeting of old and new collapses time to invite thoughtful comparison while reinforcing the hierarchy of authority of the new era over the old that a linear timeline might not offer alone.
The formal similarity of the Anticlaudianus miniatures to the preceding biblic scene creates a smooth transition to the philosophical epic that might be more jarring had it immediately followed the religious biographical prose comprising the rest of the manuscript prior to the illustrations. Just as the miniatures themselves revise the Anticlaudianus to tie more directly to the events of the New Testament (see III), their appearance following a series of biblical miniatures connects the text to the overall motif in the composite of religious commentary and schematisation of biblical events. The visual rhetoric of f.160 attempts to uphold binary distinctions between Jew and Christian while recognising the continuity between the (Jewish) old testament and the (Christian) new testament in the history and exemplary teachers of Christianity. Through both their placement and their content (see III and above), the Anticlaudianus miniatures on f.161-2 likewise endeavor to clean up the unchristian elements of christian literature, Pagan characters and motifs rather than Jewish exemplaries being the source of anxiety.
-Nathan Chazan, November 2019