Augustine and the Trinity Vision in the Vita Sancti
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
AUGUSTINE AND THE TRINITY VISION IN THE VITA SANCTI AUGUSTINI IMAGINIBUS ADORNATA Peter James Victor Slaymaker Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in the department of History, Indiana University May 2013 i Accepted by the Faculty of Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. Eric Leland Saak, Ph. D Chair Master’s Thesis Committee Jennifer Lee, Ph. D Gail Gráinne Whitchurch, Ph. D ii Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to express my thanks to my thesis committee: Dr. Eric Saak (chair), Dr. Jennifer Lee, and Dr. Gail Gráinne Whitchurch. Without their support, help and advice this thesis would not exist. Secondly, I would like to thank the staff at the Boston Public Library for their ever ready desire to help, and their willingness to retrieve documents, books and manuscripts well past those referenced here. Thirdly, I would like to thank my family and friends who have lived with the iconography of Saint Augustine since being first introduced to the Vita Sancti Augustini by Dr. Saak all those years ago. Without a doubt, they are to be credited with an unfailing ability to listen to my ramblings, proclamations and moments of clarity. iii Table of Contents List of Plates .......................................................................................................................... v Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter One: The Progression of the Trinity Image .............................................................. 7age Chapter Two: The Pictorial Description ................................................................................18 Chapter Three: The Life-Cycle Images of St. Augustine in the XIV, XV and XVI Centuries .....................................................................................................29 Chapter Four: The Manuscript, the Vision and the Patron ....................................................59 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................73 Appendices Appendix A: Plates ................................................................................................................76 Appendix B: Latin to English Translation .............................................................................87 Appendix C: French to English Translation ..........................................................................132 Bibliography ..........................................................................................................................182 Curriculum Vitae iv List of Plates Plate One: The Passion Sarcophagus, Mid-Fourth-century, Museo Pio Cristiano, The Vatican Museum, Rome .....................................................................................76 Plate Two: The Maskell Ivories, ca. 420-430, The British Museum, Department of Prehistory and Europe, London .................................................................................76 Plate Three: Unknown artist, Westphalia Altarpiece, ca.1265, Oak panel, 71 x 120cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin. ....................................................................77 Plate Four: The Morgan Bible, Thirteenth-century, The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. ..................................................................................................................77 Plate Five: Fra Angelico, The Mocking of Christ [with the Virgin and St Dominic], 1439-1442, fresco, Cell 7, Convent of San Marco, Florence ....................................78 Plate Six: Santa Croce, Gerusalemme, Fifteenth-century, Rome ..........................................78 Plate Seven: Giovanni Bellini, Man of Sorrows, Fifteenth-century, oil on canvas, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo ....................................................................................79 Plate Eight: The Emilian Miniature, Thirteenth-century, Florence .......................................79 Plate Nine: German or Röttgen Pietà, polychrome willow, 89cm, ca. 1360, Landesmuseum, Bonn ................................................................................................80 Plate Ten: Enguerrand Quarton: The Coronation of the Virgin, tempera on wood, ca.1454 Hospice de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon ............................................................80 Plate Eleven: [left] The Trinity Window (upper) Fourteenth-century, Erfurt ........................81 Plate Twelve: [right] Contemplation on the Trinity (lower), Fourteenth-century, Erfurt, ........................................................................................81 Plate Thirteen: Ottaviano Nelli, Ecstasy of Augustine before the Trinity, fresco, ca.1420-1430, Sant’ Agostino, Gubbio ..........................................................81 Plate Fourteen: Alone in the Garden where he is blessed with a Vision of the Trinity, The Historia Augustini. ..............................................................................................82 Plate Fifteen: Enraptured Beneath the Trinity, Neustift ........................................................82 v Plate Sixteen: Contemplating the Trinity, San Gimignano ....................................................83 Plate Seventeen Enraptured by the Trinity, Carlisle ..............................................................83 Plate Eighteen: The Vision of the Trinity, Fifteenth-century, Vita Sancti Augustini [VSA], Boston ........................................................................84 Plate Nineteen: Augustine Alone Cries Over the Passion of Christ, VSA ............................85 Plate Twenty: Augustine Reflects in Silence on the Various Torments of Christ, VSA ........85 Plate Twenty-One: Trinity Vision, VSA ................................................................................86 Plate Twenty-Two: Contemplates the Unity of the Trinity, VSA ..........................................86 Plate Twenty-Three: Augustine was Enraptured by the Trinity, VSA. .................................86 Plate Twenty-Four: Augustine the Widow and the Trinity, VSA...........................................86 vi Introduction Here in an enigmatic image I discern the Trinity1 St Augustine of Hippo (354-430) is often hailed as being the most influential theologian in the western Christian tradition. Moreover, he was seen to have been the founding father of what was to become the Order of Hermits of St Augustine (1256) and the Augustinian Canons (1079).2 As such, he has been the subject of countless books recounting his life from his birth to a Christian mother and pagan father, through his education, young adulthood, fatherhood and his moment of revelation and the new life that he followed.3 These books recount Augustine’s search for truth and Christian knowledge, as well as the path which lead him to establishing monasteries, and his work within the communities to his final illness, death and posthumous miracles. Augustine’s biographers, from his contemporary Possidius of Calama (d. 437) to James O’Donnell, have compiled works of impressive detail and insight based on knowledge and interpretations of Augustine’s writings, including his Confessions, The City of God, The Trinity and his sermons. His first biographer, Possidius, based his Sancti Augustini Vita on his firsthand experiences of living in close friendship with Augustine for forty years. In thirty-one chapters, Possidius captures Augustine’s life from childhood through the founding of the monastery to his illness and death, including the saint’s thoughts on household affairs, discipline and the companionship of women.4 In the Middle Ages, Possidius was followed in writing a biography of Augustine by Philip of Harvengt (d. 1 Henry Chadwick, Saint Augustine Confessions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 276. 2 See Eric L. Saak “In Search of Origins: The Foundation of the Ordo Ermitarum Sancti Augustini. in Analecta Augustiniana” Vol. L X X V. (Institutum Historicum Ord. S. Augustini. Romae, 2012). 3 See Eric L. Saak, “Lives of Augustine” forthcoming in The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, ed. Karla Pollmann et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 4See the Life of Saint Augustine written by the Bishop Possidius, Translated by Herbert Theberath Weiskotten, http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/possidius_life_of_augustine_02_text.htm, (May 2012). 1 1183), James of Voragine (d. 1298), Nicolas of Alessandria (1332), Henry of Friemar (1334) and Jordan of Quedlinburg (before 1341). None of these histories, with one exception, directly links Augustine to a vision of the Holy Trinity, even as the Trinity was the subject of one of Augustine’s own masterpieces, De Trinitate, which became the point of departure for all further discussions of the Trinity in the medieval theological tradition.5 The same is the case for the iconographic tradition and the historiography thereof. Jean Courcelle and Pierre Courcelle provided the most extensive catalogue of Augustine’s iconography to date, yet nowhere do they discuss Augustine’s vision of the Trinity.6 Indeed, iconographically Augustine’s vision of the Trinity makes its appearance only very late in the tradition, which has been ignored by contemporary scholars, as we will see next. Augustine in Iconography: History and Legend (1999, reprinted