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The Making of L'abreujamen De Las Estorias (Egerton MS. 1500)

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The Making of L'abreujamen De Las Estorias (Egerton MS. 1500) The Making of L’Abreujamen de las estorias (Egerton MS. 1500) Federico Botana L’Abreujamen de las estorias (British Library, Egerton MS. 1500) is one of the most remarkable diagrammatic chronicles produced in the late Middle Ages.1 It is illustrated with more than 1600 small busts (referred to as ‘heads’ in the manuscript),2 a cycle of sixteen scenes of the Crusades, and a few maps and diagrams.3 These illustrations are integrated into a complex layout combining genealogical schemata with synchronic tables (fig. 1). The layout is an essential element of the Abreujamen: it allows the reader to grasp events happening simultaneously in the various kingdoms of the then-known world, and to visualize the lines of succession of their rulers. The Abreujamen was produced in Avignon between 1321 and 1324.4 It consists of an Occitan version of the Latin Compendium gestarum rerum (Compendium of Things Past) written by Paolino Veneto (Franciscan friar, inquisitor, diplomat, apostolic penitentiary, and bishop).5 The Abreujamen presents the history of mankind from the creation of the world to the times of Clement V (1305-14) and emperor Henry VII (1308-13). An interpolation occurring on the penultimate folio includes the date 1322, providing a solid terminus post quem for the last sections of the text of the Abreujamen. I am indebted to my colleagues at Reading and to the manuscript departments of the British Library, the Bibliothèque Municipale at Avignon, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. Abbreviations: AvBM = Avignon, Bibliothèque Municipale; BnF = Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France; BNMV = Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana; MS. L1 = London, BL Egerton MS. 1500; MS. L2 = London, BL Add. MS. 17920; MS. M = BNMV, MS. Zanetti Lat. 399 (=1610); MS. P1 = Paris, BnF MS. lat. 4939. 1 On diagrammatic chronicles, see G. Melville, ‘Geschichte in graphischer Gestalt. Beobachtungen zu einer spätmittelalterlichen Darstellungsweise’, in H. Patze (ed.), Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstsein im späten Mittelalter (Thorbecke, 1987), pp. 57-154; A. Worm, ‘Diagrammatic Chronicles’, in G. Dunphy (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Medieval Chronicle, 2 vols (Leiden, 2010), vol. i, pp. 522-32. On the text of the Abreujamen, see A. Vernet, ‘Une Version provençale de la “Chronologia magna” de Paulin de Venise’, Bibliotheque de l’École des Chartes, civ (1943), pp. 115-36. 2 MS. L1, ff. 1r-2v. 3 On the illustrations, see B. Degenhart and A. Schmitt, ‘Marino Sanudo und Paolino Veneto: Zwei Literaten des 14. Jahrhunderts in ihrer Wirkung auf Buchillustrierung und Kartographie in Venedig, Avignon und Neapel’, Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, xiv (1973), pp. 1-137 (pp. 25, 35, 39, 78, 90); F. Botana, ‘The Pagan Gods in L’Abreujamen de las estorias (London, British Library Egerton MS. 1500): History and Allegory’ (article, forthcoming). 4 On manuscript production in papal Avignon, see F. Ehrle, Historia Bibliothecae Romanorum Pontificum tum Bonifatianae tum Avenionensis (Rome, 1890); and especially F. Manzari, La miniatura ad Avignone al tempo dei papi, 1310-1410 (Modena, 2006). 5 On Paolino, see G. Golubovich, Biblioteca bio-bibliografica della Terra Santa e dell’ Oriente francescano (Rome, 1906), pp. 74-102; A. Ghinato, Fr. Paolino da Venezia O.F.M. (Rome, 1951); I. Heullant-Donat, ‘Ab origine mundi. Fra Elemosina et Paolino da Venezia’, 3 vols (Ph.D. thesis, Université de Paris X Nanterre, 1994), vol. i, pp. 38-51; eadem, ‘Entrer dans l’histoire. Paolino da Venezia et les prologues de ses chroniques universelles’, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome. Moyen-Age, Temps Modernes, cv:1 (1993), pp. 381-442 (pp. 385-92); C. Léglu, Multilingualism and Mother Tongue in Medieval French, Occitan, and Catalan Narratives (University Park, PA, 2010), pp. 56-62; ‘A Genealogy of the Kings of England in Papal Avignon: British Library Eg. MS.1500’, eBLJ (2013), art. 18 (http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2013articles/article18.html); and Histories and Genealogies in Late Medieval Avignon: ‘L’Abreujamens de las Estorias’ (book, forthcoming). 1 eBLJ 2013, Article 16 The Making of L’Abreujamen de las estorias (Egerton MS. 1500) Eg. MS. 1500, ff. 4v-5r. 1500, ff. MS. Eg. Fig. 1. Fig. 2 eBLJ 2013, Article 16 The Making of L’Abreujamen de las estorias (Egerton MS. 1500) This article is an account of the production of the Abreujamen based on internal evidence. The research presented below has been conducted as part of the project ‘Manuscript Egerton 1500: Histories and Genealogies’.6 This work has involved the participation of two literary scholars, Catherine Léglu (Principal Investigator) and Alexander Ibarz, who have produced substantial new research on the text and the contents of the Abreujamen.7 As an art historian, I have focused on the study of its layout and illustrations. Eg. MS. 1500 is a mine of information: it has preserved numerous written instructions for rubricators and illuminators, and its illustrations present varying degrees of completion.8 Instructions and half-finished miniatures, as I shall argue in this article, attest to the successive stages of production of the Abreujamen. Moreover, when considered together with documentary evidence, they contribute to a more accurate dating of the manuscript. Yet when it comes to early manuscripts of the Compendium, there is an even richer source of evidence: Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS. Zanetti Lat. 399 (= 1610), produced under the supervision of Paolino between c. 1320 and 1323 (fig. 2). Study of MS. Zanetti Lat. 399 reveals how the complex layout of the Compendium was conceived and reproduced in Eg. MS. 1500. And, above all, it helps us to understand Paolino’s involvement in the production of the Abreujamen, as well as the working methods of this extraordinary author. Paolino Veneto and his works ‘This Venetian animal’ and ‘this fatuous Venetian’: this is how his literary rival, Giovanni Boccaccio, refers to Paolino in his zibaldone (commonplace book).9 Known today simply as Paolino Veneto, Paulinus of Venice or Paolino Minorita, this friar led an interesting life.10 A good number of original documents have survived attesting to his career and travels.11 He was born probably between 1275 and 1280, we can assume to an important Venetian family, given his rapid ascent within the Franciscan order.12 Between 1305 and 1307, he was Inquisitor in the Marchia Tarvisina (the Franciscan Province of north-east Italy).13 A testimony given in 1307 to an inquiry into the conduct of the inquisitors at Treviso offers a fascinating insight into Paolino’s character – or at least, into how he was perceived by his fellow friars: according to rumours, he allegedly spent the exorbitant sum of 300 libre on garments for himself in a period of only fifteenth months; he was not only excessively delicate in his attire, but also 6 Financed by the Leverhulme Trust and based at the University of Reading, Department of Modern Languages and European Studies (May 2011- April 2013). 7 Alexander Ibarz, ‘The Provenance of the Abreujamens de las estorias (London, British Library, Egerton MS. 1500) and the Identification of Scribal Hands (c. 1323)’, eBLJ (2013), art. 17 (http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2013articles/ article17.html); Catherine Léglu, ‘A Genealogy of the Kings of England’ (as in n. 5, above). A full transcription of the text of L’Abreujamen will be published in the Concordance de l’Occitan médieval (Brepols). 8 On instructions and other internal evidence of production of medieval manuscripts, see J. J. G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work (New Haven, 1992); and especially, J. Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, 2 vols (University Park, PA, 2000). 9 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS. Banco Rari 50, f. 181r: ‘Iste Venetus bestia in hoc opere suo non videtur curasse de varietatibus nominum regum ...’; f. 184: ‘iste venetus bergolus non intellexit monarce officium’; f. 187v: ‘vide hic manifeste qualiter iste Venetus bergolus nullo modo respixit quid dixerit’. Boccaccio recurrently refers to Paolino as bergolus; see V. Branca, ‘Boccaccio e i veneziani “bergoli”’, Lingua Nostra, iii:3 (1941), pp. 49- 52; A. M. Costantini, ‘Studi sullo zibaldone Magliabechiano, III: La polemica con Fra Paolino da Venezia,’ Studi sul Boccaccio, x (1977-78), pp. 255-75. 10 See n. 5, above. 11 See Ghinato, Fr. Paolino. 12 Ghinato, Fr. Paolino, pp. 15-25. 13 On the Marchia Tarvisina, see E. Fontana, ‘Formazione biblica e culturale dei “lectores” dell’ordine francescano: ricerche nell’ambito della provincia della Marca Trevigiana (secoli XIII-XIV)’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Padua, 2008). 3 eBLJ 2013, Article 16 The Making of L’Abreujamen de las estorias (Egerton MS. 1500) BNMV, MS. Zanetti Lat. 399, ff. 2v-3r (photograph: permission by 399, ff. Zanetti Lat. of Nazionale Marciana). MS. the Biblioteca BNMV, Fig. 2. Fig. 4 eBLJ 2013, Article 16 The Making of L’Abreujamen de las estorias (Egerton MS. 1500) in his eating and drinking habits; even worse, whilst staying at Conegliano, he enjoyed the company of two ioculatores, who played music for him every summer afternoon and evening.14 In brief, Paolino was apparently not respecting the Franciscan vow of poverty.15 Paolino’s career was influenced by two powerful men: Robert of Anjou, king of Naples, and pope John XXII. Paolino probably met Robert for the first time in 1315, when he was in Naples conducting a diplomatic mission on behalf of the Venetian Republic.16 In January 1321, he was serving again as a Venetian envoy to the Angevin
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