Speaking to the Eye

Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces

Editorial Board under the auspices of the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Hull

Adrian P. Tudor, University of Hull Anu Mänd, Tallinna Ülikool (Tallinn University) Lesley A. Coote, University of Hull Ildar H. Garipzanov, Universitetet i Oslo Sophie Cassagnes-Brouquet, Université de Toulouse-II-Le Mirail Catherine Emerson, National University of Ireland, Galway

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Volume 2 © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Speaking to the Eye

Sight and Insight through Text and Image (1150–1650)

Edited by Thérèse de Hemptinne, Veerle Fraeters,

and María Eugenia Góngora

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Speaking to the eye : sight and insight through text and image (1150-1650). -- (Medieval identities ; 2) 1. Visual communication--History--To 1500. 2. Visual communication--History--16th century. 3. Imagery (Psychology) 4. Literature, Medieval--Psychological aspects. 5. Literature, Modern--15th and 16th centuries--Psychological aspects. 6. Christian art and symbolism--Early works to 1800. 7. Art and literature. 8. Ekphrasis. I. Series II. Hemptinne, Therese de editor of compilation. III. Fraeters, Veerle, 1963- editor of compilation. IV. Gongora, Maria Eugenia editor of compilation. 302.2'22'0902-dc23

ISBN-13: 9782503534206

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.

D/2013/0095/171

ISBN: 978-2-503-53420-6

e-ISBN: 978-2-503-54046-7 Printed in the E.U. on acid-free paper © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Contents

Illustrations vii

Acknowledgements xi

The Mediating Power of Images and Texts: TheD ynamics of Sight and Insight in Medieval and Early Modern Literature and Art Veerle Fraeters and Jürgen Pieters 1

Prologue

Image of Thought: Hugh of Saint-Victor

and Richard of Saint-Victor on Thinking

Ineke van ’t Spijker 17

Part One: Spiritual Vision

Seeing and Knowing, Reading and Imagi ning in the

Liber divinorum operum by Hildegard of Bingen

María Eugenia Góngora 49

TheA ppearance of Queen Reason: Cons truction and

Pragmatics of the Imagery in Vision 9 of Hadewijch

Veerle Fraeters 65

How Gendered was Clairvoyance in the Thirteenth Century?

The Case of Simon of Aulne Jeroen Deploige 95 © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

vi Contents

Part Two: Text and Image Interactions

Visualizing the Spiritual: Images in the Life and Teachings of Henry Suso (c. 1295–1366) José van Aelst 129

Programming Women’s Prayer: Textual and Pictorial Components in Middle Dutch Psalters Youri Desplenter 153

The Cloaked Lady of Floreffe: Allegorizing Monastic History in the Fifteenth-Century Chronique de Floreffe Steven Vanderputten 173

Part Three:A gency of Pictures

Nourished by Inwardness: The BeatoC hiarito Tabernacle (c. 1340) Barbara Baert 213

The Diptych of the Lentulus Letter: Building Textual and Visual Evidence for Christ’s Appearance

Stijn Bussels 241

Groaning Paintings and Weeping Viewers:

A Gellian Perspective on Visual Persuasion

Caroline van Eck 259

Epilogue

Reading Blindly: Huygens in the Wake of Augustine

Lise Gosseye and Jürgen Pieters 287

Index 305

Illustrations

Plates

Plate 1, p. xiii. ‘Suso and the dog with the mat’, Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, K7. Anonymous coloured woodcut, Ulm, c. 1470–90.

Plate 2, p. xiv. ‘The Servant and the Passion’,Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit of Henry Suso, Strasbourg, Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, MS 2929,

v fol. 109 . Slightly before 1370.

Plate 3, p. xv. ‘The Mystical Way’,Vita of Henry Suso, Strasbourg, Bibliothèque

nationale et universitaire, MS 2929, fol. 82 . Slightly before 1370.

Plate 4, p. xvi. Pacino di Bonaguida (?), ‘Chiarito tabernacle’, Los Angeles, The

Getty Museum. c. 1340.

Plate 5, p. xvii. Netherlandish master, Diptych with the Lentullus Letter and

Christ in Profile, Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent. c. 1500.

Plate 6, p. xviii. Rogier van der Weyden, Crucifixion Triptych, detail of the right

wing, Wien, Kunsthistorisches Museum. . 1445. c

Plate 7, p. xix. Hans Memling, Christ Giving His Blessing, Pasadena, Norton

Simon Museum of Art. 1478.

Plate 8, p. xx. Giovanni Bellini, Brera Pietà , Milano, Galleria della Brera. c. 1460. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

viii ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures

Figure 1, p. 71. ‘Sapientia regina. O-initial at the beginning of the Book Ecclesiasticus’, Bible Limoges, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 8, t. II, fol. 74v. Ninth century.

Figure 2, p. 72. ‘Maria as mulier amicta sole’, Rotschild Canticles, New Haven, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, MS 404, fol. 64r. Northern France, c. 1300. Figure 3, p. 79. ‘Fides of Agen. Detail from a miniature in a psalter’, Den Haag, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, MS 76 F 5, fol. 34v. North-western France, c. 1200. Figure 4, p. 107. ‘Last Judgement; fresco detail’, Albi, Cathedral of Sainte- Cécile. c. 1474–84. Figure 5, p. 108. Pierre Jouet, Communion scene in which the host jumps out of Simon’s mouth. From La Vie du bienheureux frère Simon, convers à l’abbaye d ’A u l n e , ed. by Dorlodot, 1621. Figure 6, p. 109. Pierre Jouet, Simon seated, sustained by an angel, on a fragile

branch above a pit in which a demon is throwing black pigs. From La Vie du

bienheureux frère Simon, convers à l’abbaye d’Aulne, ed. by Dorlodot, 1621.

Figure 7, p. 110. Pierre Jouet, Simon unmasks a woman who is having an

incestuous relationship with her son. From La Vie du bienheureux frère

Simon, convers à l’abbaye d’Aulne, ed. by Dorlodot, 1621.

Figure 8, p. 114. Pierre Jouet, An apostate conversus tries to kill Simon. From La

Vie du bienheureux frère Simon, convers à l’abbaye d’Aulne, ed. by Dorlodot,

1621.

Figure 9, p. 115. Pierre Jouet, Simon reminding Innocent III at the time of the

Fourth Lateran Council of the famous vision of Our Lady’s cloak.

Figure 10, p. 133. ‘The Servant embracing Eternal Wisdom’,Vita of Henry

v Suso, Strasbourg, Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, MS 2929, fol. 8 .

Slightly before 1370.

Figure 11, p. 137. Anonymous, ‘Martyr scenes: section of a wall with 66 scenes’,

northern-side aisle of former Dominican church, Sankt Nikolaus auf der Insel, present Steinberger Inselhotel. Constance, 1300–20. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

ILLUSTRATIONS ix

Figure 12, p. 142. ‘The Apparition of a Crucified Seraph’,Vita of Henry Suso, Strasbourg, Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, MS 2929, fol. 65v. Slightly before 1370.

Figure 13, p. 158. ‘Historiated initial adjoining Psalm 68, Salvum me fac Deus: A depiction of King David, author of this Psalm as was believed, lying naked in the water and holding up his hands to God or to God’s hand’, Brussels, BRB/KBB, MS 9020/23, fol. 165v. Utrecht? 1431. Figure 14, p. 160. ‘Historiated Initials Adjoining Psalm 26 and Psalm 38’, Brussels, BRB/KBB, MS 9020/23, fols 158v and 161r. Utrecht? 1431.

Figure 15, p. 163. ‘Historiated initials accompanying Psalm 52’, Brussels, BRB/ KBB, MS 9020/23, fol. 163v. Utrecht? 1431.

Figure 16, p. 168. ‘King David praying with his psalterium beside him, an image generally found in Books of Hours where it accompanies the seven penitential psalms’, Den Haag, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, MS 135 K 40, fol. 78v. Delft,c . 1480.

Figure 17, p. 187. ‘Saint Norbertus, founder of the order of Prémontré and of

the monastic community of Floreffe’, Brussels, BRB/KBB, MS 18064–69,

v fol. 206 .

Figure 18, p. 189. ‘Simon Fau presents a copy of the to Chronique de Floreffe v

Abbot Lucas d’Eyck’, Brussels, BRB/KBB, MS 18064–69, fol. 187 .

Figure 19, p. 192. ‘The author resting, with a representation of the abbey of

Floreffe and its immediate surroundings’, Brussels, BRB/KBB, MS 18064–69,

v fol. 191 .

Figure 20, p. 197. ‘The cloaked lady of Floreffe protecting the abbot and his

monks’, Brussels, BRB/KBB, MS 18064–69, fol. 198 .

Figure 21, p. 214. Pacino di Bonaguida (?), ‘Chiarito tabernacle; detail’, Los

Angeles, The Getty Museum.c . 1340.

Figure 22, p. 219. Pacino di Bonaguida (?), ‘Chiarito tabernacle; predella’, Los Angeles, The Getty Museum.c . 1340. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

x ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 23, p. 222. ‘Apostle communion, stûma paten, silver’, İstanbul, Arkeoloji Müzesi, 565–578.

Figure 24, p. 223. ‘Apostle communion; part of a polyptych’, Città del Vaticano, Musei Vaticani. Early fourteenth century.

Figure 25, p. 224. ‘Example of fistulae’, from Thesaurus of Religious Objects, ed. by Perrin, p. 150.

Figure 26, p. 225. ‘Apse mosaic with parousia’, Roma, Santa Prudenziana. Fifth century.

Figure 27, p. 233. ‘Vera icon on parchment’, Schwerin, Staatliches Museum Schwerin. Fifteenth century. Figure 28, p. 245. Hans Burgmaier, Lentulus Letter with Christ in Profile, München, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung. Nürnberg: Johannes Weissen burger, 1512. Figure 29, p. 247. Quentin Massys, Portrait of an Old Man, Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André. Paris, c. 1517.

Figure 30, p. 252. ‘Medallion depicting the Emerald of the Vatican ordered by

Pope Paulus IV’, from Buonanni, Numismata pontificum romanorum, p. 263.

Figure 31, p. 253. Hans Memling, Portrait of a Man with a Roman Coin,

Antwerpen, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten. 1480 or later.

Figure 32, p. 262. Nicolo Cassala, copy after Titian’sDeath of Saint Peter

Martyr, Venetia, Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo. Eighteenth century.

Figure 33, p. 269. Masaccio, Santissima Trinità, Firenze, Santa Maria Novella.

c. 1430.

Figure 34, p. 271. Donatello, Feast of Herod , Firenze, Barghello. c. 1430.

Figure 35, p. 273. Veronese, Feast in the House of Levi, Venetia, Galleria

dell’Accademia. 1573.

Figure 36, p. 277. Titian, The Death of Actaeon, London, National Gallery.

1559–76.

xvi

Plate 4. (above) Pacino di Bonaguida (?), ‘Chiarito tabernacle’,

Los Angeles, e Getty Museum. c. 1340. Reproduced with permission.

Plate 5. (opposite) Netherlandish master, Diptych with the Lentullus Letter and Christ in Pro le,

Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent. c. 1500. Reproduced with permission.

Nourished by Inwardness: The Beato Chiarito Tabernacle (c. 1340)

Barbara Baert*

Though not under the form of the human body, yet was I constrained to conceive of Thee as being in space, whether infused into the world, or diffused infinitely without it. Augustine (354–430) in his desire to think God Confessions, Book VII1

he present article seeks to contribute to the study of the relationship between the visual medium, feminine spirituality, and Eucharist

devotion in the context of fourteenth-century Italy. My starting point

T will be the Beato Chiarito tabernacle in The Getty Museum of Los Angeles,

2 which is now ascribed to Pacino di Bonaguida (1302–c. 1340) (Plate 4). The

* This article is an elaboration of a lecture that I presented at the international conference at Uni

versiteit Gent: ‘Speaking to the Eye: Visual Culture and Gender in the Middle Ages and the Early

Modern Period’ (24–25 March 2006). The original Dutch text has been translated by Jan Bleyen.

1 Augustine, Confessiones, ed. by Verheijen; Szafran and others, ‘Painting on Parchment and

Panel’. With special gratitude to Christine Sciacca.

2 Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Section III, vi, 141–48;

White, Art and Architecture in Italy 1250 to 1400 , p. 402; Offner,A Discerning Eye, ed. by Ladis, pp. 89–111; Rigaux, , pp. 182–83 (Rigaux still situates the altarpiece in À la table du Seigneur

Barbara Baert ([email protected]) is professor of art history at Katholieke

Universiteit Leuven. In 2006 she founded the Iconology Research Group, an international

and interdisciplinary platform for the study of the interpretation of images (www. iconologyresearchgroup.org). Her research fields and projects concern sacred topography, visual anthropology, relics of the cross and devotion, headcults in the Middle Ages, gender, and biblical narrative such as Mary Magdalene and the Woman with the bloodflow. Her recent book is entitled Caput Joannis in Disco (1200–1500): Essay on a Man’s Head (Leiden: Brill, 2012). © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. Speaking to the Eye: SightIT MAY andNOT BEInsight DISTRIBUTED through WITHOUT Text PERMISSIONand Image OF (1150–1650) THE PUBLISHER. , ed. by Thérèse de Hemptinne, Veerle Fraeters, and María Eugenia Góngora, miscs 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 213–240

BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.MISCS-EB.1.100668 Barbara Baert 214

Figure 21. Pacino di Bonaguida (?), ‘Chiarito tabernacle; detail’, Los Angeles, The Getty Museum.c . 1340. Reproduced with permission.

tabernacle shows a gender-specific iconography, clearly demarcated in both

context and function. The implications of this have not yet been explicitly

addressed in the literature. Moreover, the whole iconography of the tabernacle

can rightfully be called mysterious. Here I will propose a number of solutions

that may allow us to disentangle this mystery.

Per visibilia ad invisibilia demonstramus

The Chiarito Beato tabernacle is a triptych. The central panel shows the figure

of Christ, surrounded by the twelve Apostles in a kneeling position. The figures

are not painted, but raised out of the gold-pumiced and engraved background

by means of what is called the technique. gesso

New York, Collection Georges Wildenstein); Krüger, ‘Medium and Imagination’, pp. 73–81, figs 29–34; Hoch, ‘New Notices from the Florentine Baroque on the Trecento Chiarito

Tabernacle’. On Pacino di Bonaguida, see: Lazzi, ‘Ancora sulla bottega di Pacino’; Szafran and others, ‘Painting on Parchment and Panel’; Lakey, ‘The Curious Case of the “Chiarito Tabernacle”’. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Nourished by Inwardness: The Beato Chiarito Tabernacle (c. 1340) 215

When the tabernacle is opened, its left side panel shows Catherina of Alexandria and the mystic marriage with the Christ child at the top.3 Below, there are a number of scenes depicted from Christ’s Passion. The right side panel shows a remarkable interpretation of the Trinity. Thepredella features scenes that refer to the Eucharist with a repeated view of a male figure in a grey habit: this is Beato Chiarito de Voglia. His vita, chronicled by the Bollandists, describes his clothing as coloris cinerii tendentis ad nigredinem.4 Chiarito was born into a rich patrician family in Florence around 1300.5 In 1342 he became a lay monk, although he remained married until his death in 1347. Chiarito was beatified in the sixteenth century. The tabernacle which so prominently portrays Chiarito was made for the Augustinian Sisterhood of Santa Maria Regina Coeli in the Via San Gallo in Florence.6 Chiarito had founded and financed this convent in 1342. Hisvita expounds on the special relationship he formed with the convent, where he regularly went to attend holy Mass.7 In 1956 Richard Offner ascribed the tabernacle to Pacino di Bonaguida (1302–c. 1340).8 This Florentine artist suppos- edly died in 1340, which led Klaus Krüger to antedate the tabernacle to that year.9 However, the foundation of the convent in 1342 would have been a more logical occasion for ordering the tabernacle. Taking into account the explicit presence of Chiarito in the iconography, I am inclined to — if Pacino did indeed die in 1340 — situate the triptych in his atelier (possibly as the work of an epigone) in the period that Chiarito was connected to the Augustinian nuns

of the Via San Gallo, which sets the date of manufacture somewhere between

1342 and 1347. However, documents about the precise circumstances of the

The backsides of the side panels were in all likelihood also painted, but that work is lost.

4 Elliot, Spiritual Marriage, p. 248, refers to Raconesi, ‘De beato chiarito: Vita et

Miracula’, pp. 160–61. These are based on the Italian Life of Antonius Maria, Acta sanctorum printed in 1653.

5 de Paoli, ‘Chiarito di Firenze, beato’.

6 Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Section III, vi, 141.

7 ‘Atque in vili vista veste dedit se totum servitio monasterii et ecclesiae vejus, ministrans

Missis et aliud quidcumque humilis caritatis obsequium ad illius commodum praestans. Adeo gratum habuit Deus illum dimittentis se animi religiosum famulatum, ut id etiam voluerit visi-

biliter demonstrare’; Raconesi, ‘De beato chiarito: Vita et Miracula’, p. 161.

8 Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Section III, vi, 141.

9 Krüger, ‘Medium and Imagination’, p. 73; Rigaux, À la table du Seigneur, p. 183, dates the tabernacle to c. 1350, but also ascribes it to Pacino di Bonaguida. 10 The pigment analyses do not contradict the hypothesis of an atelier: Wallert, ‘Pigments and Organic Colorants’. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Barbara Baert 216 ordering and completion of the tabernacle are lacking. Chiarito’s vita does mention his burial at the foot of an important tabernacle: supra altare majus at pedem tabernaculi, built for the ‘devotion of the crucified’ and placed behind the ciborium containing the holiest sacrament, which was preciously kept and protected by the nuns themselves. This implies an exceptional devotion to the sacrament and a close spiritual relationship between the sacrament, the Augustinian nuns, and Beato Chiarito himself.11 The Chiarito tabernacle is interesting for its application of a mixture of manufacturing techniques. Painting was combined with the addition of wrought gold foil, the gesso, the pumiced background and the pressbrokat figures. The great care taken in the gold work is thought to imitate contemporary goldsmithing. The combination of tempera and gold also refers to the double function of the triptych: as both a retabulum and also a precious tabernaculum. By the use of a combination of different materials and techniques, the artist distinguishes between different narrative levels.12 On the side panels, the painted parts refer to biblical history, whereas on the predella they refer to contemporary history. The central golden space ismetahistorical — it escapes the here and now and refers to a transcendental world. Finally, the combination of different materials and techniques also guides the different levels of narrative towards multiple viewing experiences for viewers of the tabernacle. The central panel with the scene in gold relief refers us to the inward, utmost

holy nature of the tabernacle. In its materiality and its radiance gold comes

closest to the transcendent. In his , Gregory the Great (590–604) Dialogues

sees the moment of transubstantiation as the moment in which the visible

13 (of nature) becomes one with the invisible (of the Divine). The relation-

11 Evidently, it cannot be established with absolute certainty whether the tabernacle of

Pacino di Bonaguida is indeed the work whereto is being referred here. Raconesi, ‘De beato

chiarito: Vita et Miracula’, p. 161: ‘complectentis antiquum ac devotum Crucifixum, existentem in dicta ecclesia post ciborium sanctissimi Sacramenti, intra capsam duplici clave firmatam, sub

custodia ipsarummet Monacharum.’

12 Krüger, ‘Medium and Imagination’, pp. 73–76.

13 Gregory the Great, Dialogorum libri quatuor , ed. by Migne, edited in Patrologia Latina,

77, cols 425–28. Gregory the Great is known for his definition of the image as the illustration

of ‘things that have happened’, the historia. On the basis of this view, some have adopted the idea

that medieval art limits the image to the status of a language for the illiterate. Although this function did indeed come to dominate the visual medium since Gregory, there undoubtedly also were important nuances which appreciated the image for its capacity of ‘spiritual seeing’. A most outstanding overview of these nuances and debates from the early Middle Ages up to the Council of Trent can be found in: Duggan, ‘Was Art Really the “Book of the Illiterate?”’. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Nourished by Inwardness: The Beato Chiarito Tabernacle (c. 1340) 217 ship between the visible and the invisible also lies at the basis of the Christian definition of the image.Per visibilia ad invisibilia demonstramus, according to St Augustine (354–430).14 The Church father here alludes to different levels of seeing and understanding. For him, reading words that one does not understand is a form of purely physical seeing. Spiritual seeing is the interpretation of words by an intellectual mediator; this is the seeing which takes place instantly in the mind.15 Images can achieve this kind of seeing provided that they possess the necessary form and matter. Gold, par excellence, has the capacity to guide and elevate the eyes through the visible towards the invisible.16 Gold stimulates reflection and brings about the integration of the material artistic image in the contemplation of God in the soul. That inward contemplation as ‘imprint in the soul’ is almost literally expressed in the technique of the Pressbrokat.

Beato Chiarito and the Eucharist The Beato Chiarito triptych is also a tabernacle. In the Middle Ages, the term tabernaculum did not merely refer to the specific wall or free-standing cabinet in which the host is kept — as we understand it today.17 It referred to a wider array of objects involved with the Eucharist. In fourteenth-century Italy, the host was usually kept in a pixis on the altar. Retro altare, an altarpiece could also be found. The Pacino di Bonaguida triptych served as such a Eucharistic

altarpiece; it had a ‘performative’ role in the rite of the Eucharist and visually

supported the . The demonstration of the host became compulsory after ostensio

the fourth Lateran Council in 1215, meaning that the priest would hold up the

host while standing with his back towards the churchgoers. Theostensio was the

18 dramatic climax in the course of the Eucharist. From the thirteenth century

14 Augustine, , ed. by Dombart and Kalb, edited in CCSL, 48, p. 856. De civitate Dei

15 There is an abundance of literature to be found on this fundamental utterance of Augustine’s and its esthetic consequences for the meaning and function of the image in Christianity as the

capacity of ‘visible invisibility’. Allow me to make a selection: Benz, ‘Christliche Mystik und

christliche Kunst’; de Lubac, Exégèse médièvale; Sternberg, ‘Vertrauter und leichter is der Blick auf das Bild’; Kessler, ‘Real Absence’, pp. 1174–86; Kessler, Spiritual Seeing.

Shelton, ‘Gold in Altarpieces of the Early Italian Renaissance’, pp. 23–37.

17 Nussbaum, Die Aufbewahrung der Eucharistie , pp. 425–27; Dünninger, ‘Zur Frage der

Hostiensepulchren und Reliquienrekondierungen in Bildwerken’.

18 Snoek, De eucharistie- en reliekenverering in de Middeleeuwen; Rubin, ‘Corpus Christi’, p. 320 on the visual component in the Eucharist. In that context also see: Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary, p. 92; Eucharistia, ed. by Brouard, p. 204. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Barbara Baert 218 onwards, devotion of the body of Christ increasingly grew into a visual event. The Chiarito tabernacle was specifically designed to emphasize and glorify that visual experience. From 1317 onwards, a compulsory Corpus Christi feast (the Thursday fol- lowing Trinity Sunday) was added to the liturgical calendar. In the same century ‘devotion of the host’ spread out to apply to other feasts. The celebration of the host became so popular and the believers’ fervent desire to ‘see’ the body of Christ grew to such magnitude, that the experience had to be restrained in the fifteenth century.19 The realization that the host was better kept sub clave, however, had already come to mind a lot earlier (by Pope Clement V in 1311).20 In female communities, especially, the cult of the host grew into such an obsession that it became the subject of mystical experiences that bordered on excess. An example in case is the prioress of the Abbey of Mont Cornillon near Liège, Juliana of Cornelion (d. 1258), who had stimulated the worship of the host after having had a vision.21 Nuns who received the host regularly went off in a swoon.22 In the chronicles of Schönensteinbach it is told that Margreth Slaffigin (fourteenth century) nourished a feverish desire to see the host, to touch it, and to taste it.23 She pursued the priest when he put the host away in the monstrance. She prayed and fasted all day until the prioress allowed her to drink the water that the priest had used to wash his fingers with after hav-

ing touched the holy sacrament. Other nuns were convinced that they saw the

Christ child himself during the elevation and the ostensio, or claimed to have

24 the power to see the host even when it was locked away.

19 Many ecclesial warnings from the fifteenth century are known to us today, issuing warnings against all too worldly host processions. Such processions were sometimes held at random

dates without much concern for Sacrament Day, which was the feast specifically scheduled for

host processions. This was especially the case in rural communities. The processions were often also very much involved with a longing for miracles and the discourse of magic; see: Caspers, De eucharistische vroomheid.

20 Braun, , pp. 348–411; , ed. by Das christliche Altargerät Thesaurus of Religious Objects

Perrin, p. 150.

21 Vita venerabilis Juliane de Cornelion et sermones , c. 1280, Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal, MS 945.

A thirteenth-century contemporary describes Beatrice of Spaalbeek’s experiences as follows: ‘Words cannot describe the intensity of the spiritual joy that she experienced in this

merging, the things she tasted and felt — it was expressed, however, in the collapse of her body’ (translated from Dutch); Vandenbroeck, Hooglied , p. 81.

23 Quoted in Hamburger, , p. 92. The Visual and the Visionary 24 Examples in Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary, p. 93. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Nourished by Inwardness: The Beato Chiarito Tabernacle (c. 1340) 219

Figure 22. Pacino di Bonaguida (?), ‘Chiarito tabernacle; predella’, Los Angeles, The Getty Museum.c . 1340. Reproduced with permission.

With its dimensions of 102 cm by 113 cm, the Chiarito tabernacle deviates from standard measurements.25 It is too small for a public function and too large to be used for private purposes. The tabernacle in all likelihood owes its irregular size to its intimate and exclusive use by the sisterhood. The tabernacle was made for the convent’s private use and in celebrating its rites. For that purpose, we can assume the triptych would be opened on certain fixed days

and hours. The golden middle

panel of the tabernacle conse-

quently forms the decorum of the

ostensio, mediating between the

onlooker and the mystery of the

transubstantiation. Mediation involves the iconographical expression of the

invisible wonder which becomes ‘visible’ in the inner experience. As a conse-

quence, the mediating tension of the tabernacle is also a tension between the

inward and the outward, between the intimate experience and group devotion.

The iconography of the middle panel is most remarkable. In his 1956 arti-

cle on Pacino di Bonaguida, Richard Offner describes this iconographical

curiosity as ‘an esoteric treatment of a doctrinal matter so it requires familiar-

26 ity with the iconography beyond the common, with theological problems’.

From the centre of Christ’s body twelve tubes emerge, and end in the mouths

of the Apostles, as if they were umbilical cords. Upon closer examination,

25 Offner, , Section III, vi, 141. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting 26 Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Section III, vi, 142. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Barbara Baert 220 however, a thirteenth ‘navel string’ can be spotted, running across the central panel on to the predella where it ends in the host that Chiarito is about to receive. The mediating function between the actuality of the sacrament and its glo- rifying meaning is literally present in the tabernacle. In dogma the host is the body of Christ, which is expressed by the connection of two pictorial worlds: the contemporary setting and timeless epiphany. On both sides of this scene miracles are shown that refer to the life of Chiarito. On the left, Chiarito wit- nesses grain growing out of the host.27 On the right, golden rays come out of the host that reach to his mouth.28 The right side wing also refers to a vision of Beato Chiarito. We see him listening to a Dominican preacher while standing discreetly next to the pulpit. Once again, the scene is visually ambiguous by its integration of a contemporary setting into an allegorical event. Blood from the crucified Trinity flows over the onlookers. The scene is probably a representation of the sermon’s con- tent. The Dominicans preached their belief in the Trinity and the redemptive sacrifice as an important exempla. The ambiguity between the allegorical and reality, however, is activated through the eyes of Beato Chiarito. That the spiritual experience of Chiarito, of which we as onlookers are a part, is visionary, is clear from the golden rays that shine out of his eyes. In spite of the discretion

with which he places himself behind the pulpit, he is the gifted visionary and

only he reveals to us the effects of belief in the Trinity, mediated and rendered

visible through the hand of the artist.

The vision of the bleeding Trinity is not mentioned in thevita , but seam-

lessly fits in with the spiritualZeitgeist wherein Beato Chiarito lived. Angela

29 de Foligno (d. 1309) had a similar vision as a religious laywoman. Clara de

30 Montefalco (d. 1308) always wore three stones in honour of the Trinity. In the

same vein, the mendicant Giovanni de la Verna (d. 1332) describes a vision of

31 the Trinity as a ‘mercy seat’, as seen in the Chiarito tabernacle. Trinity Sunday

27 ‘Dedit sacram Hostiam cum pluribus spicis, supra calicem vino exundantem’; Raconesi,

‘De beato chiarito: Vita et Miracula’, p. 161.

28 ‘Visus est ei splendidus vradius, progrediens ab Hostia sacrosanta, et pectus suum per-

cutiens’; Raconesi, ‘De beato chiarito: Vita et Miracula’, p. 161.

29 Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Section III, vi, 142.

30 Rigaux, À la table du Seigneur, p. 184; Rusconi, Il Movimento religioso femminile in

Umbria, pp. 205–16. 31 Rigaux, À la table du Seigneur, p. 184. This representation of the Mercy Seat as a varia- tion on the threeheaded body, or the three angels that meet Abraham, dates back to the twelfth © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Nourished by Inwardness: The Beato Chiarito Tabernacle (c. 1340) 221 was officialized in 1334 and, as said, the feast preceded that of Corpus Christi. Typically, for the first half of the fourteenth century, the Trinity did indeed become a part of the Eucharist, devotionally and spiritually, as well as dogmat- ically.32 The influential French lay monk Elzéar de Sabran (1285–1323), for example, actively spread the idea of the communion as a ‘direct participation in the mystery of the Holy Trinity’.33 Those who consumed the host had access to the Trinity, as both the lay monks and the mendicanti of the day believed.34 This access is anexcessus amoris, but the excessus is not granted to everyone. It requires individual meditation in the spiritual way of life. The untrained masses can attempt to comprehend the mystery of the Trinity by listening to the preaching orders. The first half of the fourteenth century was thus the stage for a social and spiritual climate wherein the lay monk was both a role model and, as the church’s spokesman, a religious authority. The Chiarito tabernacle has its own place in this climate of spirituality. In it Beato Chiarito is staged as a witness to and a spreader of contemporary ser- mons, as a visionary who interprets the effects and wonders of the sacrament. In short, Beato Chiarito is presented as a privileged man who, by means of and because of his spiritual choices, descends deeper than others into the mysteries of the Trinity and the body of Christ — someone who is therefore an example for his neighbours, the nuns for whom this altarpiece was made.

century, for instance in the travel altar of Hildesheim (1132, Victoria and Albert Museum,

London). In the thirteenth century the scheme became popular in the psalteria for psalm 109.

It takes until around 1300 for it to appear in the monumental Italian art; Braunfels, Die Heilige

Dreifäligkeit, passim. Its appearance on the Chiarito tabernacle thus should be seen as a quite

recent and innovative visual concept at the time.

32 Rigaux, À la table du Seigneur, p. 182. In 380 an anonymous Syrian author makes the

compilation Constitutiones apostolici. In it, the communion and the Trinity are linked together

(Hamman, L’Eucharistie dans l’antiquité chrétienne , passim). William of St-Thierry († 1148)

was one of the medieval advocates for a theological connection between the Eucharist and the

Trin it y.

33 On Elzéar: Vauchez, La Sainteté en Occident , p. 419; Abbé (sic) Boze, Histoire de Saint

Elzéar et de Sainte Delphine; Lives of the Saints, ed. by de Clary.

34 Whoever receives the host, also receives the Trinity, is stated by Raoul de Biberach (†

1350) in Raoul de Biberach, De septem itineribus aeternitatis, ed. by Schmidt; Rigaux, À la table du Seigneur, p. 184. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Barbara Baert 222

Figure 23. ‘Apostle communion, stûma paten, silver’, İstanbul, Arkeoloji Müzesi, 565–578. Reproduced with permission.

The Apostolic Communion In the tabernacle’s central scene, the Apostles are being ‘nourished’ by Christ, bound by the famous words ‘This is my blood; this is my body’. The Apostles are staged in a kneeling position, or genuflection.35 The scene is related to the iconography of the apostolic communion, which had its origins in the early 36 Christian East. Contrary to the traditional Last Supper, in the apostolic com-

munion Christ actively distributes bread and wine. The event is usually repre-

sented as taking place under a liturgical ciborium. The apostles are divided into

two groups and line up towards the middle to receive the communion from

Christ. The apostolic communion is the liturgical actualization of the meaning

of the Last Supper; it was a popular scene on patens such as the silver Stûma

37 paten pictured above.

On this paten the figure of Christ is duplicated. On the left, He gives the

chalice to one of the Apostles. On the right, another Apostle gives Christ a kiss

on the hand, as if to a priest. Similar compositions have been found on icons,

murals, and on textiles such as the embroidery in the Chilandar Monastery on

Mount Athos. In the West, the apostolic communion emerges as an alternative

to the Last Supper from the fourteenth century onwards. An early (or even

35 Hallinger, ‘Kultegebärde und Eucharistie’, pp. 33–40. 36 Rigaux, À la table du Seigneur, pp. 59–74; Vloberg, L’Eucharistie dans l’art, passim; Schiller, , ii: , 35–49. Ikonographie de christlicher Kunst Die Passion Jesu Christi 37 Schiller, Ikonographie de christlicher Kunst , ii, 38. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Nourished by Inwardness: The Beato Chiarito Tabernacle (c. 1340) 223

Figure 24. ‘Apostle communion; part of a polyptych’, Città del Vaticano, Musei Vaticani. Early fourteenth century. Reproduced with permission.

earliest) example is a panel from a Florentine triptych (Fig. 24) which today

38 resides in the Vatican.

The panel (Fig. 24) displays significant reminders of the Last Supper. Christ

is standing in front at a table while the Apostles line up on both sides of him

to receive the host. The setting is a contemporary chapel. The question here is

whether this type of iconography developed autonomously in Italy, perhaps

under the influence of increased spiritual preoccupations with the sacrament,

or whether eastern influences are (partly) responsible for its coming into being,

perhaps, for example, the influx of Byzantine art in Italy. In respect of that, it

must be said that a direct compositional influence can be ruled out. The clas-

sical setting of the Last Supper remains predominant in the western variant of

the apostolic communion. Apart from the western examples, every allusion to a

table is barred — even more so: as said, the scene is set in a golden void.

Taking all this into account, the middle panel of the Pacino di Bonaguida

altarpiece is exceptional for several reasons. Although the Apostles are (like

38 Schiller, Ikonographie de christlicher Kunst , ii, 49. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Barbara Baert 224

Figure 25.

‘Example of fistulae’,

from Thesaurus of

Religious Objects,

ed. by Perrin, p. 150.

Reproduced with

permission.

their eastern counterparts) kneeling down in two groups on either side of

Christ, there is no exchange whatsoever of the host and/or chalice through

His hands: Christ himself is intrinsic nourishment for the Apostles. The figures

hang floating in a transcendent golden space, and the gold panel itself appears

to be the bearer of the host. The gold on the patens is what evokes the eastern

39 prototypes of the apostolic communion.

The Apostles receive the communion directly into their mouths, through

tubes which emerge from the middle of Christ’s body, seemingly out of His navel. The tubes show some affinity with liturgical objects: thefistulae .

39 Rigaux, À la table du Seigneur, p. 184, also makes the connection with patens. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Nourished by Inwardness: The Beato Chiarito Tabernacle (c. 1340) 225

Figure 26. ‘Apse mosaic with parousia’, Roma, Santa Prudenziana. Fifth century. Reproduced with permission.

Fistulae were tubes made of silver or gold and allowed celebrants to suck the

40 wine out of the chalice. This liturgical custom is nowadays only practised

at the papal court, but was customary for most churches before the Council

of Constance (29 May 1415). The central panel could thus refer to a practice

within the convent of Santa Maria Regina in Coeli in Florence itself. From an

ecclesiastical point of view, the Apostles are considered as the actual founders of

41 the Church, because they received from Christ the mandate to preach and to

structure the Church. Thefistulae are a powerful expression of this assignment

and also the founding of the Church. Should we not regard this tabernacle as

Chiarito’s founding tabernacle? Does he not receive the blood of Christ, there-

fore, as a ‘thirteenth apostle’?

No known iconographical models for the middle panel have been found.

For that reason, I want to further explore its iconography on the basis of similar

compositions. This method allows me to discover reminiscences or reflections

of traditional iconographical conventions and their meaning. Firstly, the visual

40 Braun, , pp. 247–65, Das christliche Altargerät 41 Legner, ‘Apostel (Apostelamt)’. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Barbara Baert 226 grammar of this scene is related to that of Pentecost in its abstraction of Christ. It is known that spreading wisdom is also considered to be nourished by the Holy Spirit.42 In addition, Whitsun precedes the feast of the Trinity, which in its turn precedes Corpus Christi. Hence, the tabernacle refers to the successive feasts after the Passion and Easter, which are represented on the left side panel. Secondly, there are affinities with the iconography of theParousia : the second coming of Christ at the end of time. ThisAdventus secundus initiates the Last Judgement.43 In that iconography the Apostles are also gathered around Christ to share in His body at His second manifestation where he is seen wearing a tunic and holding a scroll; an example is the apse of the Santa Prudenziana in Rome, from the fifth century (see Fig. 26). Thus, we can gradually come to interpret the middle panel as a reflection of the Eucharistic event in the metaphorical, transcendental context of an apostolic church with an important eschatological dimension — a dimension which is ‘sensed’ in the rite for which this altarpiece was intended.44 As such, it is not coincidental that the multiple meanings of the middle panel are all based on patristic ideas and early Christian iconography. In short, the layered nature of this iconographical enigma seems — time and time again — to take us back to the earliest days of the Church.

In the first half of the fourteenth century, Italy was the stage for an impor-

tant reform movement of the apostolic principles of the Church, or the ecclesia

45 primitive. Followers of this revivalist movement wanted to live according to

the principles of the Apostolic Church. A biography that has been studied in

this connection is that of the medical practitioner and theologian Marsilius of

46 Padua (c. 1270–1342). In extremis this reform movement gave birth to the

sectarian group of Apostolici, also called minimi, pseudo-apostoli, or pauperes

47 . This radical group denied all contemporary church structures, its Christi hierarchy, and power basis, and refused to participate in the Mass. Its mem-

bers also refused to eat meat and were opposed to marriage. When two of their

Tuscan leaders, Gherardo Segarelli and Fra Dolcino, died at the stake in 1300

42 Timmers, Christelijke symboliek en icongrafie , pp. 58–59.

43 Poeschke, ‘Parusie’.

Keller, Eucharistie und Parousie, passim.

45 Olsen, ‘The Idea of the Ecclesia Primitiva’; Ditsche, ‘Die Ecclesia primitiva im Kirchenbild’. 46 Damiata, ‘Funzione e concetto della povertà evangelica in Marsilio da Padova’, p. 411 and onwards; Handelman, ‘“Ecclesia primitiva”’, p. 431 and onwards.

47 Barone, ‘Apostoliker’; Raniero, Venit perfidus heresiarca. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Nourished by Inwardness: The Beato Chiarito Tabernacle (c. 1340) 227 and 1307, respectively, the movement went through a revival for about half a century. A counter-movement arose in the first half of the fourteenth century, led by Beatus Placidus of Foligno, who died in 1398. These moderateFratres apostolorum respected church hierarchies and the liturgical customs, but shared with the Apostolici an explicit concern for the poor and also preached from town to town for the reassessment of apostolic principles. Whitsun was the feast most dear to these brethren apostles, precisely because it reflected the primary duties of the first Apostles — spreading the doctrine. It is immediately clear that the principles of the movement are not very different from those of the frates minores, mendicant orders, the Franciscans and Dominicans, or even from the ideology of lay brethren like Chiarito da Voligno. In the final analysis, all these elements were part of an apostolic exemplarism which was typical for the spirit of the age; however, they varied in the roughness of their edges. The fact that the golden Christ scene of the Chiarito tabernacle is so unique can be linked to the apostolical ideas of the period, which can hypothetically be situated in the immediate surroundings of the Augustinian nuns of Beato Chiarito.

The Nourishing Christ

Using the fistulae , the Apostles consume the blood of Christ. That blood flows into their mouths not from a cup but from Christ’s navel. Christ himself is the cup

48 of the sacrifice; he empties himself like a source of nourishment. Let us try to get

a hold on the spiritual context from whence this remarkable concept could spring.

48 A large field of text and image exists wherein Christ is metaphorised as a source of life

(fons vitae), but also as a source of mercy (fons pietatis ). The latter is the source of the cleansing and healing blood. Thefons pietatis is already mentioned by Gregory the Great (540–604), who

compares Christ with the source of mercy where we — as sinners — have to bathe in to wash away our sins. It is probable that Gregory adopted the notion from liturgical practice, as in

the seventh-century sacramentarium Gelasianum (which presents the Roman rites) the Lord is

honoured as fons pietatis which will redeem us. In iconography, the theme exists in the form of a suffering Christ who stands in the pool of blood where the sinners are bathing. Here too Christ

empties himself for the believers, and in some cases the bathers literally drink Christ’s blood as

‘medicine’, although these representations are always involved with the bleeding side wound. A late medieval hymn which honours Christ’s side wound, goes ‘O source of paradise from whose

ends four sweet little rivers flow. You totally destroy the feared demons and scare them away.

Sweet side wound, such nectar has never flown from any source, hail, be joyful, go well, medicine for the people against deadly poison’. If the fons pietatis is a variant of the Eucharist, her formula still is of an entirely different order than that of the Chiarito tabernacle. A discussion of the literary and iconographical sources for this, and a recent bibliography on this matter can be found in: Baert, ‘The Washing Wound’. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Barbara Baert 228

Through Caroline Walker Bynum’s pioneering work, we have become familiar with the idea of ‘Jesus as mother’.49 The feminization and maternalization of Christ is a three-factor process. The first factor is the conviction held in the Middle Ages that only the female sex knows what unconditional love is: mother love. In that vein, Bernard of Clairvaux (1091–1153) uses the word pairing of mater and magister.50 Contrary to the ‘teacher’, a ‘mother’ cannot but love. For that same reason, a monastery’s abbot is called ‘mother’. Unselfish love as a spiritual capacity is thus embedded in the female sex. This fascination goes back to the twelfth century. Guerric, the Abbot of Igny (d. c. 1157) describes the relationship of love to Christ in terms of motherhood.51 Motherhood was the model for the idea of absolute love, but also for comprehending the integration of love, the ‘taking in’ of love in the soul. The definition of motherhood as absolute love is related to the distinct characteristics of female biology. A second medieval conviction held that only female bodily fluids are nutritious; for example, mother’s milk was seen as a ‘blood substance’.52 Spiritual texts from the twelfth to the fifteenth century present Christ as a nourishing Christ.53 But the nourishing Christ is consubstantial with His Body as nutrient. Christ is nourishment. Thirdly, medieval people held the belief that materiality, in con- trast to the spiritual, is female, so that Christ’s humanity (as opposed to his divinity) is also female. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) argued that Christ’s 54 flesh was ‘woman’, as He had become human through Mary. ‘Truly, that flesh,

55 immaculate and inviolate, like a spouse, proceeds from a virgin womb.’ For

Hildegard, Christ’s divinity was male, while his humanity was female. Eve, who

was created out of the flesh (Adam’s rib), stands for incarnation itself and for

the felix culpa. Mechtild of Hackeborn (1241–99) saw how Christ laid His

56 hands on hers and made an imprint like that of a seal in wax. His skin and hers

49 Bynum, Jesus as Mother.

50 Bynum, , p. 117;Bernard of Clairvaux, , ed. by Migne, edited in Jesus as Mother Epistolae

PL, 182, col. 527.

51 Bynum, Jesus as Mother, pp. 120–22.

Schreiner, ‘Deine Brüste sind süsser als Wein’, pp. 87–127; Bynum, Jesus as Mother, p. 133.

53 The basic reference here still is: Bynum,Holy Feast and Holy Fast.

54 Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, p. 264.

55 Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, p. 265; Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, ed. by Migne, Book 1, chapter 4, par. 100; edited in PL, 197, col. 885B–C. 56 Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, p. 261; Bynum, Jesus as Mother, p. 210; Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mechtildianae, Book 1, chapter 1, p. 7 © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Nourished by Inwardness: The Beato Chiarito Tabernacle (c. 1340) 229 are as a convex and concave. Mechtild of Magdeburg (1207–82) went even further. For her, Mary is a pre-existent human nature, like the logos for His divine nature.57 In devotional literature the ‘female flesh’ is expressed by the concept of the tunica humanitatis. According to Margaret of Oingt (1240–1310) and Catherine of Siena (1347–80) Christ takes on the ‘tunic’ of his human nature. He, as it were, dresses Himself in the mantle of the female sex.58 Consequently, the tunica humanitatis is also an image for becoming human itself, of the Word becoming flesh. ‘Verbum caro factum est’ (John 1. 14). The maternalization of Christ brings about interaction between the Son and Mary. Juliana of Norwich (1342–1416) says that Christ is ‘mother’: the source of creation, our flesh. Mary also is a mother, but she is a shadow of the more true mother, which is Christ. The Son of Man carries us within Himself, as a mother passes herself on in the foetus that she carries. Christ is both him and her; He is one in us in his human nature, like a child that grows in the womb.59 In its function of ‘container’ for the body of Christ, the tabernacle is considered to be feminine. Thecapsa that holds the sacrament thus is a suggested womb. In his Rationale divinorum officiorum, William Durandus (c. 1230–96) says that the capsa of the holy host is literally the body of Mary.60 This probably also explains the popularity of the Annunciation on the side panels of tabernac- les, the theme par excellence for the mystery of the Incarnation and the bodily 61 engagement of God in a Son through the Virgin. Conversely, Mary was also

masculinized. In his eulogy for the Virgin, Francis of Assisi greets Mary as fol-

62 lows: ‘Hail His tabernacle, hail His mantle.’

Within the spirituality of Christ as Mother, the fourteenth century saw an

important evolution based on the Eucharist devotion. The maternal symbol-

ism of Christ further develops into a sacrifice symbolism where nursing tends

57 Bynum, , p. 265. Holy Feast and Holy Fast

58 Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, p. 265; Margaret of Oingt, Les Œuvres, ed. by

Duraffour, Gardette, and Durdilly, pp. 88–89; Catherine of Siena, , ed. by Misciatteli, Le Lettere i, Letter 30, p. 137.

59 Also see: Warren, ‘Pregnancy and Productivity’: esp. on the motherhood allegories of

Brigidda of Sweden (1303–73).

60 Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, p. 265.

61 The throned Madonna in the upper left can in a certain sense be called parsa pro toto for the Chiarito tabernacle itself. Moreover, the throne’s shape is attuned to the form of the triptych.

62 Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, p. 268. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Barbara Baert 230 to become nursing with blood rather than milk.63 This evolution was possible from the perspective of another intrinsically female principle: the contractions of labour. Bringing new life into this world is coupled with suffering, Margaret of Oingt (c. 1240–c. 1310) says.64 Gertrude of Helfta (1265–1302) and Juliana of Norwich (1342–1416) experienced their spirituality and their love for Christ through graphic descriptions of the blood flow.65 Thisimitatio Christi through suffering, combined with the maternality of Christ, heralds the image in female spirituality of sucking Christ’s blood. Christ nourishes through the wound in his side; it becomes an actual, nurturing opening, a bodily alternative for Mary’s breasts. ‘Milk and blood are interchangeable, as are Christ’s breasts and the wound of his side.’66 The best-known example in text and image is most likely that of Catherine of Siena (1347–80), who imagines being nursed from Christ’s side wound.67 ‘If bread/body/flesh with its firm boundaries, symbol- ized spiritual refreshment and, at least to some extent, Church, blood was an altogether more complex and ambivalent symbol’, Caroline Walker Bynum writes.68 Blood, the flow of life through Christ’s veins, is healing, washing, nourishing, as Catherine of Siena’s letters confirm. On the other hand, however, blood is also a taboo substance and filthy. For Gertrude of Helfta (1256–1302), blood counts as one of the most repulsive fluids of the body, but the Eucharist 69 cleanses even that, which is so filthy.

63 Bynum, Jesus as Mother, p. 151.

Margaret of Oingt, Les Œuvres, ed. by Duraffour, Gardette, and Durdilly, pp. 77–79.

65 The most recent literature on the female fascination for blood can be found in: Bildhauer,

Medieval Blood, pp. 133–67. For Julian of Norwich, esp. see the recent publication: Julian of

Norwich, The Writings of Julian of Norwich, ed. by Watson and Jenkins, passim.

66 Bynum, , p. 133. Jesus as Mother

67 See note 58, Bynum, ‘Formen weiblicher Frömmigkeit’.

68 Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, p. 64. For what follows, see pp. 64–66.

69 This ambivalence is embedded in many cultures. Unclean blood is associated with the

unclean, menstruating woman. For more on this, see: Vosselmans, La Menstruation, passim;

Buckley and Gottlieb, Blood Magic; de Miramon, ‘La Fin d’un tabou?’; Lutterbach, Sexualität im Mittelalter, pp. 84–89. In one specific case, in a heretic context, the body of Christ is com-

pared to the placenta as such. During communion, the Cathar woman Aude, suddenly sees veins

running through the host, like in a placenta — filled with disgust, she refuses to eat the host

(Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, p. 266). Although this vision is involved with the abject host, it can shed a light on a hidden language of images and reveal a number of wild, more or less ‘cen- sored’ associations around the Eucharist. Remarkably, the most recent psychoanalytic literature shows a great amount of attention for the implications of a deeply rooted archetype, namely © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Nourished by Inwardness: The Beato Chiarito Tabernacle (c. 1340) 231

Within that ambivalence, the fascination for actual bodily fluids — especially bleeding — in the fourteenth century overtook the old ‘dry’ metaphors of the body of Christ as heavenly bread which were so common in early medieval and high medieval monastic contexts.70 The Eucharist became an appropriation of Christ’s suffering, indeed animitatio Christi; this appropriation was expressed as hunger and thirst. The growing practice of blood devotion in the fourteenth century was involved with an experience of the Eucharist as a (symbolic) quenching of thirst and a relieving of hunger. Some researchers recognize socio-economic factors in this.71 In the increasingly urban societies of Europe preoccupations with regard to food supply were shifting. In the new cities such as, for instance, Florence, food supply was becoming detached from seasonal and agrarian rhythms. An increasing alienation from rural cosmology, which was bound up with the exploitation and the use of food, had an ambivalent effect. On the one hand, an individual, even lucrative, custom of fasting grew up, independent of and sometimes averse to nature’s own course.72 On the other hand, the city was still dependent on the countryside for food. Food became a precarious product, a subject of mercantile negotiations rather than the fruit of harvest, experienced first-hand as natural bounty. Thus, food (or the lack of it) became something that made the citizenry vulnerable, and — paradoxically — also became a fixation. That fixation could be channelled in

the Eucharist devotion and it often triggered new shifts of emphasis in urban

spirituality during the first half of the fourteenth century.

the role of the postnatal mother as a continuation of the placenta. In feminist psychoanalysis,

the identification of the nursing mother with the function of her internal organ during pregnancy, the placenta, is seen as a disruptive, even traumatic objectivation of the mother function

immediately after birth. This metaphor of the mother as placenta maintains (possibly burden- ing) maternalistic ‘generations of navelstrings’; Raphael-Leff, ‘The Moon Hung on a Navelstring

from the Dark’. This digression to bring to light an archetype that is in need of further research

on the subdued operations within the concept of Christ’s maternalization.

70 Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, p. 66; Longpré, ‘Eucharistie et expérience mystique’,

col. 1596.

71 Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, pp. 68–69; Miles, ‘The Virgin’s One Bare Breast’;

Lambert, ‘La Nourriture comme signe et distinction religieuse et sociale’.

72 Catharine of Siena (1347–1380) used to refuse food for weeks in a row and would only

want to eat the host; also see: Vandenbroeck, Hooglied , pp. 77–80: ‘The obsession for fasting and food definitely is involved with the pursuit for an ethereal, perfect body’. Christ is this perfect body. The identification with Christ’s body is mostly expressed in the stigmata for men (Francis of Assisi). A female exception in this respect, is Getrude of Helfta (1256–1302); Rubin,‘Corpus Christi’, pp. 318–19. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Barbara Baert 232

The Beato Chiarito Tabernacle and Gender Specificity The Chiarito tabernacle confronts us with an iconographical rare amalgam of the Passion of Christ, the Trinity, the apostolic communion and the manifestation of the body of Christ. That amalgam would soon enough come to a syn- thesis in the mind of a gifted mystic: Catherine of Siena first sees the light of day in the year that Beato Chiarito’s light of life dims out. It is a dark year in the history of man, as the Black Death struck out severely in 1347. The Chiarito tabernacle is positioned on that dramatic fault line of the fourteenth century. In this final section I want to test the search for the meaning and context of the Chiarito tabernacle against my proposal of gender specificity. I will iden- tify four perspectives for this: first, the visual and the visionary;73 second, the inward and outward interaction (image and outer-image); third, mirrors of social positions; and fourth, the body as spiritual medium. The first perspective is exemplified in the impressive exhibition catalogue of art for and/or by religious women, the Krone und Schleier of 2005;74 here, ‘topos and function’ are important themes. These ideas are concerned with gender sensitivity and gender evidence in nuns’ art which gradually intensify depend- ing on the relationship between image and place within the convent. The more intimate the space where the visual medium is to be found (with the public space of the house of prayer and the privacy of the individual cell as the outer

limits), the more striking and uncontaminated the feminine characteristics of

artworks become. An example could be the intimate drawings of the vera icon,

75 made for private use in the cell (see Fig. 27).

The Chiarito tabernacle belongs in the intermediate zone in this sense, as it

was not made for the entire external society, but not for individual use either.

The tabernacle’s in-between size suggests that it was meant for use in the ‘pri-

vate community’ of the Augustinian nuns. The tabernacle was designed and

intended for the intimate eye of the female community. Its iconography can cre-

ate a special focus on spiritual and theological preoccupations for the individual

believer, but at the same time it still has to be a mirror for the entire convent.

Those special preoccupations show a concern for theological matters and spir-

itual sensitivities, such as the Eucharist and the Trinity; they are also expressed

73 This, evidently, is an allusion to Jeffrey Hamburger’s 1998 reference work by the same

title. The book is the first standard work for the study of gender and the visual medium. 74 (As in note 67) Krone und Schleier, ed. by Hamburger and others, passim. 75 Hegner, ‘H. Heiliges Antlitz’, cat. no. 347, p. 438. Women are known to have been greatly fascinated by the vera icon; in this connection, see Baert, ‘The Gendered Visage’. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Nourished by Inwardness: The Beato Chiarito Tabernacle (c. 1340) 233

Figure 27. ‘Vera icon on parchment’, Schwerin, Staatliches Museum Schwerin. Fifteenth century. Reproduced with permission.

by means of a mixture of techniques which guide the anagogy of different view-

ing experiences. As Jeffrey Hamburger has shown in his The Visual and the

Visionary, the differentiation between physical seeing and spiritual seeing is not

a specifically female business, but it is a female capacity and a typical female

need. Mechtild of Magdeburg (1207–82) describes her relationship with the

76 visual medium thus: ‘I pierce through the image over the image.’ The Chiarito

tabernacle’s golden centre panel displays these metaphysical capacities and aims

at precisely this collective visionary experience of the female community.

Secondly, The Beato Chiarito tabernacle mediates between different worlds

— the outward world of the onlooker and the inward world of the tabernacle.

That inward world is in its turn split up in the narrative of the Passion story,

the narrative of Beato Chiarito’s visions, and the symbolism of the nourishing

Christ. Beato Chiarito personifies the mediating activity of the tabernacle, and

thus — as a mediating instance — is to be situated on the border between the outside and inside worlds. Thepredella ‘lowers the threshold’ between the real-

76 Michel, ‘“Durch die Bilde über die Bilde”’, passim. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Barbara Baert 234 ity of the daily rite of the Eucharist on the one hand, and the timelessness of the Eucharist visions on the other hand. At one point in history, those visions were moments which were part of the performative world of the Via San Gallo convent. The tabernacle captures those moments and tranforms them into a shared vision which supports the rite without constraints of time. Between the eye of the community of nuns and their tabernacle stands a man whose role is far from neutral, and who is in fact a bridge between seeing and visionary seeing. From a gender perspective all this prompts reflection about the interaction and the mediations of the sexes in spiritual experiences in the fourteenth century. Thirdly, it was certainly not at all uncommon, as a patron, to have oneself integrated in the narrative purpose of an altarpiece. Beato Chiarito, however, was not merely a patron who has portrayed himself for the benefit of his own salvation. He is the founder and patron of the Augustinian nuns of Santa Maria Regina Coeli in Florence. His transformation into a visual character within the narrativity of the Bible and the rite, transforms his persona into a vehicle for spiritual experience, into a role model or a spokesperson. The nuns were surrounded by the male instrument of the cura monialium77 and often expressed their emotions by committing their dialects to writing.78 We have to take into account their exclusion from the ministrare (distributing the host) and the 79 ordinare (proclaiming the faith). The host and preaching, the consummation of the body and the intellect belonged to the male domain. The tabernacle con-

firms this, as it deals with that male zone and emphasizes the male structure of

the Church itself by depicting the Apostles. But the tabernacle also harbours

some additional nuances.

The female domain is demarcated by the host’s flavour, and by the emo-

tive bodily language of the vision. As a lay monk, Chiarito de Voglia does not

fully possess male spiritual attainments, and thus can descend into the female

world and use their forms of expression. In other words, he belongs to both

77 Hamburger’s introduction to Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary still offers a clear

view on the consequences of the cura monialium . It provided sources and traces of women of those days, but at the same time the cura monialium filtered the original textual and visual femi-

nine residue.

78 A well-documented and well-studied case is that of Jacques de Vitry’s personal relation-

ship with the beguine Marie d’Oignies (1215); See the outstanding article by Lauwers, ‘“Noli me tangere”’.

79 Reinforced by Gregory IX in 1234; Jacques de Vitry says: Mystice autem per hoc intelligi dedit quod mulieres maioribus ecclesiae ministeriis manum apponere non debent. Non enim licet praedicare vel sacramenta ministrare, Lauwers, ‘“Noli me tangere”’, note 182, p. 243. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Nourished by Inwardness: The Beato Chiarito Tabernacle (c. 1340) 235 worlds. The polarization between the sexes is reduced, which once again makes Chiarito, the lay monk, a mediator in terms of social position. I believe further research into these male windows into the female world is possible and desir- able, especially into the phenomenon of the lay monks, whose status could blur distinctions between the sexes, or, even more pertinently, lay monks as men who exhibit some characteristics of the mulieres religiosae of the fourteenth century. Taking into account the apostolic ideals of the Chiarito tabernacle, one is able to measure the extent to which those ideals — no matter how exclusively male the apostologic church might have been80 — could preserve a woman-friendly intermediate, for example through the limited concern for hierarchy in those circles, the fixation on fasting, and the importance of theexcessus amoris. Lastly, both Miri Rubin and Caroline Walker Bynum have pointed to a ‘physicalization’ of spirituality in the fourteenth century under the influence of women, and both noted the same two types of stimuli: a maternalization of the Incarnation on the one hand, and the food objectification of the host on the other hand. The accepted explanations given for the feminine impetus of fourteenth-century spirituality amount to an assimilation of male Christological models on the basis of female biology (for example, the access to the mystery of the incarnation based on maternal symbolism),81 and on the basis of over-com- pensation through deprivation (not being allowed to touch and distribute the host, for example). The clear, physical thematization of the Eucharist within the

Trinity, the Christ of the tunica humanitatis with the peculiar ‘nourishing’ fistu-

lae combine to situate the tabernacle in this sphere of influence. It is important

to remember that one cannot speak of an exclusively feminine vision. The taber-

nacle was in all likelihood ordered by a man, Chiarito, and its contents were thus

also prompted in accordance with its patron’s wishes, although it is probable

that iconographical consultation with the Augustinian nuns took place. This,

however, does not make the Beato Chiarito tabernacle any less gender-specific.

80 I here leave aside the modern gender theology which rehabilitates Mary Magdalene’s

role as founder of the Church; Raming, Ausschluss der Frau vom priesterlichen Amt, passim.

81 Vandenbroeck, Hooglied (1998) was coloured by a psychoanalytical note, but Vandenbroeck grew towards a ‘matrixial psychoanalysis’ in Vandenbroeck, Azetta, passim. In this work, Vandenbroeck tries to fathom the archetypes of an uncontaminated female pre-language which precedes the figurative (male) culture. © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

Barbara Baert 236

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