The Froissart Harley: Caricature on the Margins?

Miniature of a joust between Pierre de Courtenay and Sire de Clary with marginalia of a stag with wings and a sow with a conical hat on stilts on the left-hand side. Netherlands (Bruges), Late 15th century, Harley MS 4379 f. 19v.

The Froissart Harley, Harley MS 4379, is a manuscript filled with popular conceptions of the medieval period: knights, jousting, courtiers, war, queens and kings. Harley MS 4379 consists of the fourth volume of Froissart’s Chronicle, which recounts the events of the Hundred Years’ War. The manuscript was produced between 1470 and 1472 at the behest of Philippe de Commynes, one of the most powerful members of Charles the Bold’s court.

Detail of miniature of a joust between Pierre de Courtenay and Sire de Clary. Netherlands (Bruges), Late 15th century, Harley MS 4379 f. 19v.

Froissart’s Chronicle explores courtly life, the sphere of the nobility, but his work also teaches noble listeners: it includes emblematic examples of good, contemporary rulers, meant to advise a young lord in the proper governance of his subjects.

Detail of a miniature of tents and mounted knights, with marginal illumination, including a rabbit and snail jousting on the shoulders of monkeys. Netherlands (Bruges) Late 15th century, Harley MS 4379, f. 23v.

Although the text itself instructed its readership in proper chivalric behavior, the illustrations and marginalia enliven dry discussions of events such as siege warfare and provide images to connect to the chapter text. One particularly interesting feature of Harley MS 4379 centers on the depictions of animal marginalia and how they relate to the text.

Detail of a marginal painting of a winged stag. Netherlands (Bruges), Late 15th century, Harley MS 4379, f. 19v.

Any medieval reader would have comprehended allegorical associations with animals. One notable example of such symbolism occurs in the hunting scene in Fit 3 of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. While Gawain remains in Bertilak’s castle with Bertilak’s wife, his host hunts for three days: the first day he hunts deer, the second a boar, and the third a fox. The alternating hunting scenes and bedroom scenes narrated in Fit 3 parallel one another, underlining the analogous relationship between his lady’s attempts to trick Gawain and the Bertilak’s attempts to catch his prey.

Detail of a marginal painting of a rabbit and a snail jousting on the shoulders of monkeys. Netherlands (Bruges), Late 15th century, Harley MS 4379 f. 23v. Knights jousting against snails are a common occurrence in medieval manuscripts, but no satisfactory explanation has been supplied as to why!

However, the animal symbolism in the Froissart Harley differs from the hunting scenes in Gawain in an obvious fashion. While Gawain’s animals are meant to reinforce Gawain’s perilous situation, the marginalia in the Froissart Harley seem to caricature their own text. Regarding the rabbit and snail jousting, neither animal symbolically represents the jousting knights in the center miniature, nor do these two animals have a broader meaning in medieval bestiaries concerning jousting. These marginalia are meant to represent and enhance the text they accompany, but this point is problematic when considering the Burgundian approach to chivalry, the milieu out of which this manuscript emerged. Burgundians valued chivalric ideals above all else, as is shown by the great status granted to those of the Order of the Golden Fleece, a knightly order created by the dukes of Burgundy. Associating a rabbit and a snail with the jousters of Inglevert, perhaps the most vibrant and epic tournament in Froissart’s Chronicle, most likely would not have pleased a Burgundian audience.

Detail of a marginalia painting: a sow with a conical hat on stilts, playing a harp. Netherlands (Bruges), Late 15th century, Harley MS 4379 f. 19v.

Nor does the Master of the Froissart Harley spare courtly women in his caricatures. On the margin of folio 19v, the illustrator places a sow on stilts wearing a conical hat, playing the harp. This sow draws attention to the miniature of female courtiers, all wearing conical hats on watching the tournament in the middle of the page. Again, this characterization is paradoxical in a Burgundian context: pigs typically represented uncleanliness and greed, unfortunate traits for a woman trying to navigate the vicissitudes of court.

Detail of a miniature of courtiers watching a joust. Netherlands (Bruges), Late 15th century, Harley MS 4379, f. 23v.

Sean Sapp
PhD Candidate
Department of History
University of Notre Dame

This post is part of an ongoing series on Multimedia Reading Practices and Marginalia: Medieval and Early Modern

Further Reading:

Froissart’s Chronicle trans. John Jolliffe (New York: Random House, 1968).

Susan Crane, Animal Encounters: Contacts and Concepts in Medieval Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).

Laetitia Le Guay, Les princes de Bourgogne lecteurs de Froissart : les rapports entre le texte et l’image dans les manuscrits enluminés du livre IV des Chroniques (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998).

Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick, Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe (Los Angeles: Getty Pulications, 2003).

Willene B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-family Bestiary: Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (Boyden Press, 2013).

http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/09/knight-v-snail.html

Alien manuscript. . . or ancient writing system

Commentarii notarum tironianarum (f. 1-42v). Psalmi notis tironianis scripti (f. 43-57).
Source: gallica.bnf.fr
; Bn lat. 190, f. 44r

Medieval manuscripts pose many intriguing writing systems. Some, like Yale University’s Voynich Manuscript have foiled even the best attempts to unravel them. Others, like this strange looking text from the Bibliothèque nationale de France may seem to have come from another galaxy, but it can actually be identified from its rubric letters XXII PSALM[US] D[AVI]D, the twenty-second Psalm! (Psalm twenty-three in modern bibles)

Although it looks like the lost script of ancient aliens, this strange writing system is actually a medieval form of abbreviated writing known as Tironian Notae. Tradition ascribes the invention of these strange squiggles to the Roman Senator Cicero’s freedman and secretary, Tiro. Tiro, so it is claimed, developed this way of writing to help him take down his employer’s verbose dictation more quickly. This system of shorthand is attested in the ancient world, but was adapted and used extensively among the esoteric intellectuals at the courts of Charlemagne and his Frankish successors. Large numbers of manuscripts written partially or sometimes entirely in Tironian notes survive from this period (roughly 750-900 CE). Carolingian court scholars and bureaucrats seem to have been attracted to this writing system’s facility for writing everyday documents, but entire books were composed in it. They even adapted the script by adding new symbols to quickly write Christian words like “Prophet” or “Holy Spirit.”

Commentarii notarum tironianarum
Source: gallica.bnf.fr
; Bn lat. 8779, f. 47r

Very few everyday records have survived in Tironian script. One type of texts that do survive, however, are textbooks used to teach the Tironian system to new scribes. Large texts like the Psalter above written entirely in Tironian Notae gave students the opportunity to practice deciphering the script, while dictionaries and word lists like the one below presented the vocabulary in groups based on shared roots. A careful examination of one set of words below demonstrates the way the Tironian shorthand was based on variations to a common root. The set of four symbols shown below stood for the Latin words:

Commentarii notarum tironianarum

‘aereum,’
‘aeraceum,’
‘aerosum,’
‘aerugo.’

Although knowledge and use of Tironian shorthand disappeared rapidly during the decline of Carolingian court culture in the tenth century, aspects of the system were preserved in part by incorporation into the standard long-hand forms of writing Latin. The Tyronian note looking like ‘7’ was frequently employed in normal Latin writing to represent the word ‘et’ (‘and’). In England especially, Tironian ‘7’ was so popular for writing the Latin word for the conjunction that scribes even used it for the native English word meaning the same in Anglo-Saxon and Middle English texts.

Although the vitality and importance of this ancient writing system were quickly forgotten, books like this Paris manuscript are tangible reminders that what we might consider the “dark ages” was actually a time of sophisticated learning and culture which preserved and extended a form of literacy so sophisticated it looks alien to us.

Benjamin Wright
PhD Candidate
Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame

This post is part of our ongoing series on the Mysteries of Medieval Codicology.

Read to Yourself, Please: Oral and Silent Medieval Reading Practices

When we think about reading, we usually imagine reading silently to ourselves—unless we’re reading to children, or sharing an especially funny or interesting blog post with a friend! (Feel free to do this). But in the early medieval period, the reverse held true: oral reading was more common than silent reading. For example, in Augustine’s Confessions, Augustine visits his friend and mentor Ambrose, and is surprised by Ambrose’s eccentric habit of reading silently:

“When he read, his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still. Anyone could approach him freely, and guests were not commonly announced, so that often, when we came to visit him, we found him reading like this in silence, for he never read aloud” (Confessions [Paris, 1959], 6.3).

King Solomon reading the Scriptures, MS Additional 11639, f. 116r, France, 1277-1286, courtesy of the British Library

Oral reading was a public, social event. One person would read aloud to the group, and the group could give him or her feedback, comment on the text, and discuss afterwards.

Litigants reading from a scroll before a seated judge, MS Additional 37473, f. 2r, Italy, last quarter of the 13th century, courtesy of the British Library

In the twelfth century, however, reading practices started to change. Silent reading became more popular, eventually becoming the most common way of reading in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Blessed Benedictine Cardinal reading and contemplating alone, MS Additional 18197, f. F, c. 1460-c. 1490, courtesy of the British Library

As a private, portable experience, silent reading opened a whole new kind of learning. You could now learn on your own, without hearing others’ feedback or criticism. You could spend as long as you wanted on a particular section and re-read it as often as you wanted. You could have two manuscripts in front of you and cross-reference them, or check the citations in one manuscript against a copy of the cited text.

Silent reading influenced the way manuscripts were arranged. Because texts were read visually, not heard, manuscripts frequently included a table of contents, subheadings, and other similar organizational markers (ordinatio). The new interest in structure and cross-referencing helped shape scholastic writings. Scholastic authors wrote (in)famously dense, complex works for an audience that could re-read long sentences and check manuscripts against each other.

Ordinatio of Arundel 479, ff. 39v-40r, Italy, 1471, courtesy of the British Library

Silent reading also contributed to heterodoxy—private readers could access heretical works without the censorship or criticism that might take place in a group reading.  Similarly, private reading triggered a small revival in fifteenth-century French pornographic manuscripts. (Imagine trying to read a medieval Shades of Grey in front of a group!)

The privacy of silent reading also transformed devotional and spiritual experiences. It allowed the reader’s mind to briefly wander but return to the spiritual texts, discovering the hidden and mystical meanings in an intensely personal way. Monastic orders in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries emphasized silent contemplation and meditation which began with private reading. These new practices contributed to new ways of thinking about the self and one’s relationship to God, ideas that culminated in the Protestant Reformation.

A Benedictine monk prays to Christ after contemplating Scripture, MS Additional 11639, England, c. 1265, courtesy of the British Library

While oral reading never really disappeared, the medieval rise of silent reading transformed reading and devotional practices. Ultimately, it contributed to modern ways of thinking about God, the community, and the self.

Caitlin Smith
PhD Candidate
Department of English
University of Notre Dame

This post is part of our ongoing series on Multimedia Reading Practices and Marginalia: Medieval and Early Modern.