Bibles en images: Visual Narrative and Translation in New York Public Library Spencer ms. 22 and Related Manuscripts [PhD diss.]

282 Pages·2012·3.53 MB·English

by  Julia A. Finch

BIBLES EN IMAGES: VISUAL NARRATIVE AND TRANSLATION IN
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY SPENCER MS 22 AND RELATED MANUSCRIPTS

by
Julia A. Finch
B.A., University of Pennsylvania, 2002
M.A., University of Pittsburgh, 2006

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of
The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences
in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

University of Pittsburgh
2011
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
THE KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS & SCIENCES

This dissertation was presented

by

Julia A. Finch

It was defended on
October 27, 2011
and approved by
Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Professor, French
Ann Sutherland Harris, Professor, History of Art and Architecture
Kellie Robertson, Associate Professor, English, University of Wisconsin-Madison
H. Anne Weis, Associate Professor, History of Art and Architecture
Dissertation Advisor: M. Alison Stones, Professor, History of Art and Architecture

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Copyright © by Julia A. Finch
2011
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BIBLES EN IMAGES: VISUAL NARRATIVE AND TRANSLATION IN
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY SPENCER MS 22 AND RELATED MANUSCRIPTS

Julia A. Finch, PhD
University of Pittsburgh, 2011

This dissertation examines New York Public Library Spencer ms. 22, a fourteenth-
century French Bible en images (narrative picture Bible), and its relationship with the picture
Bible of King Sancho VII of Navarre (Amiens, Bibliothèque municipale ms. 108), completed in
the year 1197. Previous scholarship on these manuscripts has described Spencer 22 as a copy of
Sancho’s Bible, based on the close similarity of visual narrative content and iconography found
in Spencer 22 and its predecessor. The range of aesthetic and linguistic differences between the
manuscripts, however, signifies a process more akin to translation, a term that better expresses
the relationship between Sancho’s Bible and Spencer 22, as well as the specific needs of its
patron, Jeanne II of Navarre.
I consider the production of Spencer 22 in three contexts. The first is the patronage of
Jeanne II of Navarre prior to and shortly after her coronation as Queen of Navarre in 1329. In
preserving the visual narrative content of a known royal manuscript, Spencer 22 is a visual
referent to Sancho’s Bible that aligns Jeanne II’s political interests with her Navarrese ancestor
to solidify her legitimate claim to the throne. The second context is the translation of the visual
narrative between Sancho’s Bible and Spencer 22, with a focus on Spencer 22’s materiality. The
stylistic translation of Spencer 22’s images into a format more familiar to a fourteenth-century
audience, along with the addition of written text in French, is more than a superficial change, it is
a sophisticated re-presentation of the visual narrative of Sancho’s Bible for audiences familiar
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with the interaction of text and image on the manuscript page in both religious and secular
works. Finally, and more broadly, the third context is the reception of biblical visual narrative in
fourteenth-century France. As a case study, these manuscripts and the terms visual translation
and translatio imaginis (translation of images) can help us to better understand the transfer of
text-to-image and image-to-image narrative content and the variations on literacy in fourteenth-
century France that supported these conventions for medieval readers.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE ................................................................................................................................. XIV
1.0 INTRODUCTION: SPENCER 22’S ORIGINS ........................................................ 1
1.1 SUMMARY OF SECTIONS .............................................................................. 9
2.0 THE IMAGE OF THE BIBLE IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE ........ 12
2.1 TYPES OF MEDIEVAL BIBLES ................................................................... 13
2.1.1 The Bible moralisée ..................................................................................... 14
2.1.2 The Bible historiale ...................................................................................... 15
2.1.3 The Biblia pauperum ................................................................................... 17
2.1.4 The Speculum Humanae Salvationis and medieval “mirror” literature 19
2.2 NARRATIVE PICTURE BIBLES ................................................................... 20
2.3 WHO KNEW THE BIBLE IN THE MIDDLE AGES?................................. 27
2.3.1 Clergy, Laity, and the Bible: Geographical, Educational, and Social
Distinctions ................................................................................................................. 30
2.4 WHAT WAS “THE BIBLE” IN THE MIDDLE AGES? .............................. 37
2.5 WAYS OF KNOWING THE BIBLE IN THE MIDDLE AGES: STUDY,
READING, AND SEEING ................................................................................................ 41
2.5.1 The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages ............................................... 42
2.5.2 Reading the Bible, or having it read to you .............................................. 43
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2.5.3 Seeing the Bible ........................................................................................... 45
2.5.4 The medieval popular Bible ....................................................................... 49
2.5.5 Medieval Audiences for Biblical Narratives ............................................. 50
2.6 THE WORD OF GOD IN IMAGES ................................................................ 54
3.0 SPENCER 22’S PATRONAGE AND CULTURAL CONTEXT .......................... 56
3.1 THE MANUSCRIPT ......................................................................................... 61
3.1.1 Spencer 22’s Table of Contents ................................................................. 62
3.1.2 Number of images ....................................................................................... 67
3.1.3 Visual biblical narrative in Spencer 22 ..................................................... 70
3.1.4 Page layouts in Spencer 22 ......................................................................... 73
3.1.5 French biblical texts .................................................................................... 81
3.1.6 Style and the role of the artist .................................................................... 84
3.1.6.1 The Fauvel Master and the Sub-Fauvel Master ............................... 86
3.1.7 Quality of production and materials ......................................................... 89
3.2 JEANNE II OF NAVARRE: MANUSCRIPT RECIPIENT AND
PROBABLE PATRON ...................................................................................................... 95
3.2.1 The Inventory of Clémence of Hungary ................................................. 100
3.2.2 The Hours of Jeanne of Navarre ............................................................. 103
3.2.3 Queenship in Spain: precedents for royal patronage ............................ 105
3.2.4 Coronation manuscripts ........................................................................... 108
3.2.5 Spencer 22 and Sancho’s Bible ................................................................ 109
4.0 TRANSLATIO IMAGINIS: SPENCER 22 AND THE PAMPLONA BIBLES .. 111
4.1 DEFINING TERMINOLOGY ....................................................................... 112
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4.2 SCRIBES, COPIES, AND MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPT CULTURE ....... 116
4.2.1 Why Copy? Krautheimer’s Theory on Medieval Copying ................... 121
4.2.2 The Utrecht Psalter and its “copies” ....................................................... 124
4.3 MEDIEVAL TRANSLATIO: CULTURAL CONTEXT OF THE
FOURTEENTH CENTURY ........................................................................................... 128
4.3.1 Medieval translators: linguistic contexts, interpretatio and imaginatio 133
4.3.2 Translatio and moving manuscripts: physical, political, and
geographical concerns .............................................................................................. 137
4.3.3 Why translatio imaginis? .......................................................................... 139
4.3.4 Visual translation in Sherman’s Imaging Aristotle ................................ 140
4.4 CASE STUDY I: THE JOSEPH NARRATIVE IN SANCHO’S BIBLE AND
SPENCER 22 .................................................................................................................... 146
4.5 CASE STUDY II: THE MOSES NARRATIVE IN SANCHO’S BIBLE AND
SPENCER 22 .................................................................................................................... 151
4.6 FOUR CATEGORIES OF IMAGE-TO-IMAGE COMPARISON IN
SANCHO’S BIBLE AND SPENCER 22 ........................................................................ 162
4.6.1 Unusual iconography: Adam and Eve, Synagoga, and Moses Writing 163
4.6.2 Divergences between written and visual text .......................................... 171
4.6.3 Stylistic changes that do not affect narrative ......................................... 176
4.6.4 Provocative iconography: Bathsheba ...................................................... 180
4.7 PAINT DROPLETS AS EVIDENCE OF TRANSLATION ....................... 182
4.8 CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ON TRANSLATIO ....................................... 185
5.0 SPENCER 22, BIBLICAL NARRATIVE, AND VISUAL LITERACY ............ 190
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5.1 BIBLICAL NARRATIVE IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE CONTEXTS ..... 190
5.2 DEFINING LITERACY AND NARRATIVE: SOME TERMINOLOGY ... 193
5.2.1 What is literacy? ........................................................................................ 197
5.2.2 What is narrative? ..................................................................................... 199
5.2.3 Studies on narrative communication ...................................................... 201
5.3 THE MULTISENSORY MEDIEVAL COMMUNICATION MATRIX AND
HYBRID LITERACY ...................................................................................................... 205
5.4 SEEING IMAGES, READING IMAGES ..................................................... 208
5.5 BIBLICAL NARRATIVE IN LATE ANTIQUE AND EARLY MEDIEVAL
ART ........................................................................................................................... 210
5.6 PICTORIAL VERNACULAR ....................................................................... 214
5.7 LINGUISTIC QUALITIES OF MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE PICTURES:
THE MULTILINGUAL MIDDLE AGES ..................................................................... 216
5.7.1 Linguistic qualities of Spencer 22’s pictorial narrative ......................... 219
5.7.2 How was Spencer 22 “read”?................................................................... 223
5.8 THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE .................................................................... 225
5.9 “STORIES TO WATCH”: WAYS OF MEDIEVAL LITERACY ............. 226
5.9.1 Narrative programmers, artists, audiences ............................................ 228
5.9.2 Visual narrative techniques ..................................................................... 229
5.9.3 Translating textual narrative into pictures: translatio imaginis ........... 231
5.10 PUBLIC NARRATIVES AND AUDIENCES ............................................... 233
6.0 CONCLUSION: DEFINING SPENCER 22 .......................................................... 236
6.1 FUTURE WORK ON SPENCER 22 ............................................................. 238
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6.2 VISUAL NARRATIVE IN A MEDIEVAL CULTURE OF LITERACY . 238
APPENDIX A ............................................................................................................................ 240
APPENDIX B ............................................................................................................................ 241
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 246
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