Category: Manuscript Studies

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What’s in a Line?: Harley’s Horn and the significance of mise-en-page, Part 1

class noir image
A classic noir image. You know what kind of movie you’re looking at based not on narrative or dialogue, but on the camera angle, lighting effects, costume, and colour — all visual cues of mise-en-scène.

The study of medieval poetics and literature has begun to benefit immensely from the boom in manuscript studies. We’ve seen, even in past entries on this blog, how the layout of a poem in a manuscript can affect the way it is read. It is worth considering as well how the layout of a manuscript page can affect the way we interpret a text even before we begin reading it. In the same way directors signal and elicit particular responses from viewers of film or theatre with mise-en-scène, a scribe attuned to the potential of mise-en-page (also ordinatio) employs different page layouts to ask readers to begin understanding a text in a generic fashion a priori to any close engagement with the text.

A sterling example of the power of mise-en-page is London MS Harley 2253, which offers a smorgasbord of literary treasures from medieval England matched by few manuscripts. A number of scholars have observed how certain choices related to layout point to ways of reading the manuscript. Kerby-Fulton, for instance, observes the speech-markers in Gilote et Johanne, making a text “ready for performance” (54). The mise-en-page in the Harley MS serves as a visual entrée for many of these texts (after all, we are often told that we eat first with our eyes, not our stomachs), asking a reader to consider how they will read before they begin to do so. Because its contents are varied, the manuscript gives us the chance to see how one scribe employed mise-en-page with different types of texts. Of these various genres, languages, and layouts in that manuscript, one text, King Horn, stands as an anomaly of both genre and layout that can go some way in suggesting how layout can influence our reading of a text.

This is not to suggest that the Harley scribe was absolutely consistent, but he was consistent enough to show that his choices in layout were not dictated by whim. For instance, the vast majority of texts with a rhyme scheme of abab or abababcc (with a bob) were written out in a long-line form, with two verses to a line. Poems with an aabb scheme were, with the sole exception of King Horn, written in short lines, usually in two or three columns to a page.

BL Harley MS 2253, fol. 73r, showing at top a two-column aaabcccb poem and at bottom a single column abab poem in long lines.

Tail-rhyme poems of various sorts are also usually written in short lines, with a verse to a line (e.g. 71v-72). Poems with more complex rhyme schemes, such as that on fol. 76 (abababddb) or fol. 63v. (aabaabbaab) are written in a block of text, with virgules separating verses. Prose texts are written out in blocks as one would expect, and such is the case with the Anglo-Norman biblical material following Horn in the manuscript. On the rare occasion where space has apparently become an issue, as on fols. 82v-83 Maximian, the scribe does change layout to suit his needs, switching from a three-column layout to prose form with virgules separating verses at the top of 83r.

Harley Manuscript King Horn

BL Harley MS 2253, fol. 83r, showing at top the final lines of Maximian, written in prose form with verses separated by virgules. Below that is Mayden moder milde, abababab, and finally, King Horn, aabb, two verses to a line.

While there is much to say about the various genres and rhyme schemes and their respective mise-en-page, suffice it to say here then that there was a method to the scribe’s ostensible madness. Elizabeth Solopova has given a useful overview of several features of mise-en-page, but she frequently stops short of offering reasons for selecting particular layouts, except to observe the dominance of the rhyming couplet as a guiding principle in line arrangements (e.g. 381). In her assessment, there is much consistency in layout throughout the manuscript. So why does Horn, a poem written in aabb rhyming couplets and the longest text in the manuscript, appear in long lines with two verses to a line, violating the principles of ordinatio that the scribe had been follows elsewhere?

It might seem a trivial question, but it is one that can be explored to give us some sense of how one of the earliest poems of the “romance genre” was thought of by its audiences. Come by next week to read my take on the connection between Horn‘s genre and its layout.

Andrew W. Klein
PhD Candidate
Department of English
University of Notre Dame
aklein3@nd.edu
awklein.com

Works Cited

Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn. Opening Up Middle English Manuscripts (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2012).

Solopova, Elizabeth. “Layout, Punctuation, and Stanza Patterns in the English Verse” in Studies in the Harley Manuscript, ed. Susanna Fein (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000).

 

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Buried Alive?

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Late medieval anchorhold at All Saints Church, King’s Lynn, Norfolk, England; photo by Megan J. Hall.

Have you heard of medieval anchoresses? Most people haven’t. Anchoritism was a fascinating (and odd) phenomenon that happened all across Western Europe and has roots in the early Christian desert hermit tradition. An anchoress was a laywoman who wanted to withdraw from secular life and live instead in solitude, enclosed in a small room attached to an exterior wall of a church or castle, devoting the rest of her earthly life to Christian devotion and such works of service as she could perform from her cell (embroidering liturgical cloths is one example). She would have required a patron or an income from landholdings or other source to support her needs, such as food, water, and clothing. Among women this phenomenon was first documented in England in the twelfth century and became an increasingly popular choice that continued well into the sixteenth. Several handbooks were written for these women, at first in Latin and then in English. Arguably the most famous is the Ancrene Wisse, composed in the early thirteenth century, of which an impressive seventeen manuscripts survive.

This lifestyle choice seems very strange to us today. Who among us would choose to confine herself to a one-room cell for the rest of her life? Wouldn’t you get claustrophobic, or addled by cabin fever, or die from lack of exposure to sunlight? Wouldn’t you just get bored? Not to mention the deeper and off-putting mythologies that have grown up about anchoresses: rites of the dead were said over them at enclosure, they were bricked into their cells, they dug their graves in their cell floors with their hands a little bit every day, they never saw anyone, and their cells were always on the north side of the church so they’d suffer more from cold (they were just that penitential).

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A bishop blesses an anchorite as she enters her cell; Pontifical, England, 1st quarter of the 15th century; London, British Library, Lansdowne MS 451, fol. 76v.

Perhaps the most chilling myth is that anchoresses were all walled up in their cells, like Fortunato in Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.” In fact, while sometimes the exterior door of the cell was bricked in, that was not always the case. Further, the ceremony happened with great solemnity and was a voluntary commitment on the part of the anchoress. Various medieval pontificals, service books for Church bishops, record these rites. The office in the fifteenth-century pontifical of Bishop Lacy calls for the door of the cell to be built up. Others, like the sixteenth-century pontifical of Archbishop Bainbridge directs the anchoress’s door to be firmly shut from the outside. The image above, from an early fifteenth-century Pontifical held at the British Library, accompanies an enclosure rite that begins “Ordo ad recludendum reclusum et anaco/ritam,” or “Ordo [a book containing the rites, sacraments, and other liturgical offices of the Church] for enclosure of a recluse and anchorite.” The bishop makes the sign of the cross above an anchoress entering her cell before enclosing her.

As part of the research for my dissertation-in-progress, a study of lay English women’s literacy in the thirteenth century, I’m visiting a number of medieval English churches that hosted anchorholds (or are rumored to have done so) and chronicling it on my blog. Two of the sites still retain their medieval anchorholds, one pictured at the top of the post and the other below. Interestingly, both have exterior doors.

The Church of St. Mary and St. Cuthbert, Chester-le-Street, Durham: the late medieval anchorhold is pictured at the far left, sporting a door and a window; photo by Megan Hall
The Church of St. Mary and St. Cuthbert, Chester-le-Street, Durham, England: the late medieval anchorhold is pictured at the far left, sporting a door and a window. Photo by Megan J. Hall.

There is, of course, much more to be said about the exterior fabric of these cells and what has changed over the course of five or six hundred years than is room for here. Nonetheless, the evidence demonstrates that anchoresses’ access to the world was a more complex matter than myth would have you believe.

Megan J. Hall, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of English, University of Notre Dame

Sources

The Pontifical of Bishop Lacy: Exeter, Cathedral Library of the Dean and Chapter, MS 3513

The Pontifical of Archbishop Bainbridge: Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS F. vi. 1

F. M. Steele, “Ceremony of Enclosing Anchorites,” in Anchoresses of the West (London, 1903), pp. 47-51.

Rotha Mary Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of England (London, Methuen 1914).

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St. Christopher’s Surprising Pedigree

St. Christopher carrying the Christ child; book of hours, England, 1316-1331; New York, Pierpont Morgan MS G.50 f. 5v

St. Christopher is a saint with an exciting etymological pedigree. The name Christopher is actually a brief description of one of the most famous stories about him: he is the Christ-bearer, from the Greek words Χριστός (Christ) and φέρειν (to bear or carry). Christopher, the story goes, was a new convert to Christianity and, as an ascetic spiritual exercise, undertook to wait by a river ford, carrying travelers across on his back. One day, a young child came along and requested passage.

Christopher carrying the Christ child; Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, in the English translation by John Trevisa, England, first quarter of the 15th century; BL, Harley MS 614, f. 5r

As he carried the child across, the boy seemed to increase in weight until it seemed to Christopher that he carried the entire weight of the world on his back. This anomaly was explained when, on being challenged, the boy revealed that he was in fact the Christ child, and the weighty importance of his burden – responsible for both the creation and redemption of indeed the whole world – meant that this physical weight was a true reflection of its spiritual and symbolic importance. Depictions of Christopher, therefore, are easily recognizable, in depicting this famous story and rendering visible the pun of his name. Christopher is almost always shown stooped over, fording a river while carrying a small child on his back.

St. Christopher carrying the Christ child; prayer roll, Yorkshire, c. 1500; New York, Pierpont Morgan MS G.39, f. 12r

While this iconography is the most frequent and prevalent representation of Christopher, it is not, however, fully consistent with how the saint is represented in some of the earliest medieval descriptions of his story. Christopher is perhaps able to bear such a weighty burden because he is no ordinary man, but a giant in strength and stature. He was a convert to Christianity, coming from a country somewhere in the mysterious east – a region that, in medieval chronicles, romances, and travel writings, was frequently asserted to be the home of wonders and so-called “monstrous races,” mysterious peoples with strange customs and bizarre bodies: cannibals, men with ears like fans or faces in the center of their chests.

The marvels of India including, in the top center, three cynocephali conversing; Livres des Merveilles du Monde, France, c. 1460; New York, Pierpont Morgan MS M.461, f. 41v

Among these strange peoples were the cynocephali, the dog-headed men, and it was to this race that Christopher was sometimes said to belong. In Mandeville’s Travels, one of the best-known of the travel narratives in the English traditions, a race of dog-headed men are described who are a fascinating combination of the fierce and the cultured: “Men and wymmen of that contre [country] hath houndes hedes [heads] and they ben resonable and they worshipeth an oxe for her [their] god and they gon [go about] alle naked save a lytel cloth byfore her [their] privyteis and they ben good men to fiȝt [fight] and they beren [carry] a great targe [shield] with wham [which] they coveryn alle her [their] body and a sper [spear] in her honde [hand].”

Armed cynocephalus and, on the left, a member of a cannibal race being mauled by a dog; John Mandeville, Travels, England, c. 1410-1420; BL, Royal MS 17 C. xxxviii, f. 43r

Despite their bestial appearance, they have “reason” and an apparently well-developed religion (although one, to Christian sensibilities, misguided). Largely naked, they are still human enough to wear loincloths and carry weapons – and when they defeat an enemy in battle, they take the prisoner to their king, “a gret lord and devout in his faith,” who wears a prayer necklace the author compares to a rosary.

Initial ‘C’ decorated with a cynocephalus; Odo of Asti, Expositio in psalmos, Northern Italy, 1100-1149; New York, Pierpont Morgan MS G.51, f. 23v

Such a religiously-minded race, indisputably and terrifyingly “other,” but strongly mirroring the familiar,  seems an appropriate match for St. Christopher. Being physically strong himself, one version of Christopher’s story goes, he decided to seek out and serve the strongest king he could find. But a powerful human king still stood in fear of the name of the devil, and when Christopher then sought out Satan as clearly the more powerful lord, he was likewise disappointed to find his new master frightened by the Christian symbolism of the cross. So finally he decides to serve Christ instead, as clearly the most powerful. In this version of the story, Christopher is cast in the role of a virtuous outsider, and his bestial appearance makes him an even more powerful spiritual exemplar, while the conclusion of the tale reassures the faithful of Christianity’s superiority, obvious even to someone not quite fully human.

Pentecost including, at bottom center, a cynocephalus among those representing the far-flung nations of the world; Gospel book, Van, Turkey, 1461; New York, Pierpont Morgan MS M.749, f. 9r

Nicole Eddy
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame