Portuguese Studies on Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts

218 Pages·2015·2.04 MB·English

by  Maria Adelaide Miranda

Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales
TEXTES ET ÉTUDES DU MOYEN ÂGE, 76
PORTUGUESE STUDIES ON MEDIEVAL
ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS
Edited by
Maria Adelaide MIRANDA and
Alicia MIGUÉLEZ CAVERO
FÉDÉRATION INTERNATIONALE DES INSTITUTS D’ÉTUDES MÉDIÉVALES
Présidents honoraires :
L.E. BOYLE (†) (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana e Commissio Leonina,
1987-1999)
L. HOLTZ (Institut de Recherche et d’histoire des Textes, Paris, 1999-)
Président :
J. HAMESSE (Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve)
Vice-Président :
G. DINKOVA BRUUN (Pontifi cal Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto)
Membres du Comité :
O.R. CONSTABLE (†) (University of Notre Dame)
M. HOENEN (Universität Basel)
M.J. MUÑOZ JIMÉNEZ (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
R.H. PICH (Pontifi cia Universidade Católica do Río Grande do Sul, Porto
Alegre)
Secrétaire :
P. CAÑIZARES (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Éditeur responsable :
A. GÓMEZ RABAL (Institución Milá y Fontanals, CSIC, Barcelona)
Coordinateur du Diplôme Européen d’Études Médiévales :
G. SPINOSA (Università degli Studi di Cassino)
Président de l’Association des Anciens Étudiants du Diplôme :
M. PAVÓN RAMÍREZ (Roma)
Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales
TEXTES ET ÉTUDES DU MOYEN ÂGE, 76
PORTUGUESE STUDIES ON MEDIEVAL
ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS
Edited by
Maria Adelaide MIRANDA and
Alicia MIGUÉLEZ CAVERO
Barcelona - Madrid
2014
Volume publié avec l’aide de la Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE – PEER REVIEW PROCESS
Remy Cordonnier José Meirinhos
Institut de Recherche Historiques du Gabinete de Filosofi a Medieval
Septentrion (Lille III - CNRS) Universidade de Porto
Bibliothèque d’agglomération de Saint-Omer
Concepción Cosmen Alonso Augusto Aires Nascimento
Departamento de Patrimonio Artístico y Centro de Estudios Clássicos
Documental Universidade de Lisboa
University of León Academia das Ciências de Lisboa
Claude Coupry Sandra Sáenz-López Pérez
Laboratoire de Dynamique, Interactions et Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales
Réactivité (LADIR), UMR 7075 CNRS; Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 Científi cas, Madrid
Brenda Dunn-Lardau Dominique Vanwijnsberghe
Département d’études littéraires Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique
Université du Québec à Montreal Bruxelles
Mercedes López-Mayán Miguel Ángel Villegas
Department of Document Studies, Departamento de Historia del Arte
Linguistics and Geography Universidad de Granada
Università La Sapienza, Roma
Henrique Leitão Fernando Villasenor Sebastián
Centro Interuniversitario de Historia das Departamento de Historia
Ciências e a Tecnologia Universidad de Cantabria
Universidade de Lisboa
ISBN: 978-2-503-55473-0
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior permission of the publisher.
© 2014 Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales.
Departamento de Filología Latina, Despacho A-309, Facultad de
Filología. Edifi cio A, Ciudad Universitaria – 28040 Madrid – Espagne
CONTENTS

Preface VII
Introduction IX
List of Contributors XIII
M.A. MIRANDA, M.J. MELO, Secrets et découvertes, en couleur,
dans les manuscrits enluminés 1
R. CASTRO, M.J. MELO, M.A. MIRANDA, The secrets behind the
colour of The Book of Birds 31
A. MIGUÉLEZ CAVERO, Mapping the History of a Map. Fortunes
and Misfortunes of the Lorvão Beatus World Map 57
M.A. BILOTTA, Un manuscrit des Décrétales de Grégoire IX à
l’usage de l’université de Toulouse conservé dans les Archives
Nationales de la Torre do Tombo à Lisbonne: quelques aspects
iconographiques 81
C. FERNANDES BARREIRA, Le Compendium theologicae veritatis
de l’abbaye d’Alcobaça 105
L. RIBEIRO, The Children of Mercury: the Image of the Artist
and the Scientist in Medieval Astrological Texts and Icono-
graphy 131
A. LEMOS, R. ARAÚJO, C. CASANOVA, M.J. MELO, V.S. F. MURALHA,
Regards croisés des historiens de l’art et des chimistes sur deux
livres d’Heures de la Bibliothèque nationale du Portugal, les mss
IL15 et IL19 145
L. U. AFONSO, T. MOITA, Tradition and modernity in Portuguese
Hebrew book art of the late 15th century 169
Index of Manuscripts 191
Index of Antique and Medieval Authors 195

PREFACE
Organizing knowledge around dispersed, heterogeneous and highly
incomplete collections of manuscripts and documents is challenging
work, requiring intellectual breadth, fl exibility and determination. It is
precisely the challenge, on a national scale, that was created by Portugal’s
earthquake of 1755, which destroyed an inestimable core of the country’s
medieval cultural and archival heritage. Taking stock of what remains
has been a daunting task, which is still unfi nished, despite the card fi les,
inventories, and serial and thematic catalogues assembled by Portuguese
scholars, as well as the intrepid work of Paul Oskar Kristeller (Iter
Italicum) and Francis Stegmüller (Repertorium biblicum). For illuminated
manuscripts, inventories were drawn up in the fi rst half of the twentieth
century by Gabriel Pereira and C.A. Ferreira who signaled the manuscripts
in the Biblioteca Nacional and Biblioteca da Ajuda in Lisbon. Much more
recently two scholars have created an invaluable short-entry inventory of
the 700 manuscripts and 320 fragments remaining in the public libraries
in Portugal: Teresa Duarte Ferreira and Isabel Vilares Cepeda, Inventário
dos códices iluminados até 1500. Vol. 1, Distrito de Lisboa, Lisbon, 1994;
Vol. 2, Distritos de Aveiro, Beja, Braga, Bragança, Coimbra, Evora, Leira,
Partalegre, Porto, Setúbal, Viana do Castelo e Viseu. Apêndice - Distrito de
Lisboa, Lisbon, 2001. Nearly every entry is accompanied by a photograph,
allowing the reader to assess the proposed dating and localization. The
publications and exhibitions at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian have
given glimpses into its holdings, notably the The Image of Time, which
commemorated the millennium in the year 2000. The scientifi c catalogue
of its manuscripts, directed by François Avril, is still awaiting publication.
One of the few medieval Portuguese libraries preserved at least in
part is that of the infl uential Cistercian abbey of Santa Maria d’Alcobaça,
one of the last daughter houses to be founded from Clairvaux during the
lifetime of Saint Bernard. A three volume catalogue of the remaining
manuscripts was published in 1988 by Thomas Amos, and in 1996 Adelaide
Miranda, the general editor of the present volume, deposited her thesis on
the Romanesque manuscripts of Alcobaça and Santa Cruz: A iluminura
românica em Santa Cruz de Coimbra e Santa Maria de Alcobaça: subsídios
para o estudo da iluminura em Portugal. Her impressive work has identifi ed
manuscripts given by Clairvaux to its daughter house and illustrated how
VIII PREFACE
Portuguese monks copied manuscripts at Clairvaux for their library,
imitating both the script and decoration of the mother house. Since then,
Adelaide Miranda has published widely, trained medievalists, organized
international colloquia and piloted research projects in the historical and
technical analysis of medieval manuscripts, kindling scientifi c interest in
the illuminated book in Portugal both at home and abroad.
The studies brought together in this volume refl ect the wide spectrum
of current interests, including new technical studies of pigments in
manuscripts in the fundo Alcobaça and three copies of Hugh of Fouilloy’s
Book of Birds, inquiries concerning a mismounted mappamundi in the
Lorvão Apocalypse, a study of two southern French legal manuscripts, the
image of the artist in astrological iconography, problems raised by two
books of hours in the Biblioteca Nacional, and penwork decoration in
fi fteenth-century Hebrew manuscripts. Published in French and English
by Brepols, this volume will help bring Portuguese studies in manuscript
illumination to the attention of the scholarly world.
PATRICIA STIRNEMANN
INTRODUCTION
The development of studies on Medieval illuminated manuscripts
in Portugal has been short but intense. They have aimed to assimilate,
in a very short period of time, the importance of carrying out inter and
transdisciplinary approaches which produce a better understanding and a
wider knowledge of medieval illuminated manuscripts.
In this sense, the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century was decisive
for the development of this kind of studies. On the one hand, this moment
marked the awakening of the studies of Medieval Iconography, which led
studies on illuminated manuscripts to give attention simultaneously to
both textual content and visual tradition. This new phase resulted in the
creation of a database named Imago1. In addition to conducting research
and cataloguing illuminated manuscripts, this database also showed the
importance of the inextricable relationship between text and image in the
whole context of the codex. It also hit the mark in what internationalisation
is concerned, as it has enabled researchers to establish comparisons
between images of various international funds, contributing to the creation
of a global network of medieval images in context.
On the other hand, the turning of the twenty-fi rst century has also
been associated to the starting of interdisciplinary studies on the use
and meaning of colour in Medieval book illumination. The cooperation
established by art historians and scientists from the fi elds of chemistry,
conservation-restoration, and computer science has resulted in various
funded interdisciplinary projects that have addressed the study of colour
and pigment in manuscripts, which remain as the only approaches of this
1 See http://imago.fcsh.unl.pt/?loc=1. This image database was the main output of
the research project funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology
(POCTI/EAT/45922/2002), coordinated by Prof. J. C. Vieira Da Silva and carried out
by a research team of the Faculty for Social Sciences and Humanities of the Nova
University. On this database see M.A. MIRANDA, «Da investigação à catalogação dos
manuscritos dos fundos portugueses. Problemas e métodos de uma base de dados em
iconografía», in S. MADDALO, M. TORQUATI (coord..), La catalogazione dei manoscritti
miniati come strumento di conoscenza. Esperienze, metodologia, prospettive, Atti del
Convegno internazionale di studi: Viterbo, 4-5 marzo 2009, Istituto Storico Italiano
per il Medio Evo, Roma 2010, pp. 55-65 (Nuovi Studi Storici, 87).
X INTRODUCTION
kind to have been deployed in the Iberian Peninsula to date2. The approach
taken, a combination of art history and molecular analysis, has yielded
fruitful conclusions about the nature of the dyes used in Portuguese
manuscripts, such as the lapis lazuli that was traded in from Afghanistan,
or the deep red obtained from an insect that populates a variety of shrub
which is specifi c of India. These results have enjoyed wide scientifi c impact
and recognition and have been presented at a number of venues, besides a
number of articles published in international journals3.
In the most recent years a group of young researchers has given a
new impetus to the study of Book Illumination in Portugal, promoting
national and international research that focuses on understanding the
illuminated manuscript in both their aesthetics and material dimensions,
as well as the relationship between text and image. The developement of
interdisciplinary research has contributed to address new issues raised by
the need of more comprehensive and wide studies around the illuminated
manuscript.
The results of these most recent approaches were presented at the
Annual Conference of the FIDEM (Fédération Internationale des Instituts
d’Études Médiévales), organised in Porto in 2013, which come now to light
through the publication of this volume in the Brepols TEMA collection,
thanks also to the generous support of the Gulbenkian Foundation. Every
article has passed a peer review process, which counted on the wise advise
2 These projects were coordinated by Profs. Maria Adelaide Miranda and Maria
João Melo and all of them were funded through national competitive calls by the
Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology: An interdisciplinary approach to
the study of color in Portuguese manuscript illuminations (POCTI/EAT/33782/2000);
The identity of Portuguese medieval manuscript illumination in the European context
(PTDC/EAT/65445/2006); Colour in medieval illuminated manuscripts: between
beauty and meaning (PTDC/EAT-EAT/104930/2008).
3 The main achievements and outputs of these projects were presented at the
International Conference Medieval Colours: Between Beauty and Meaning, which
took place in Lisbon in 2011. The contributions were later published in M.A. MIRANDA,
M.J. MELO, M. CLARKE (eds.), Medieval Colours: between beauty and meaning.
Revista de História da Arte, Special Issue nº 1, Série W, 2011. These fi ndings were also
broadcast among a non-specialist audience, with two publications deserving a special
mention: a secondary school-level handbook on the subject «Discovering colour in
medieval manuscript illumination» (online version at http://www.dcr.fct.unl.pt/step-
by-step), and a multimedia installation that illustrated the manuscript-production
process, including their origins, materials, and techniques.