Visual and Verbal Embellishments in MS C

As noted earlier, the revisions of Figure 20 in the C miniature (Figs. 21 and 21a) present certain departures from the precedent set up between Figures 15 and 16. In Figure 21 the single-level treatment of the two subjects of the model (Fig. 20) is modified to a two-register format, in which the virtues retain the mean, central position and the vices are relegated to the sides. Thus, in Figure 21 the reader might expect on the upper level depictions of Liberalité in the center and the vice of Too Much on the left and Too Little on the right. A similar pattern for Le Magnanime would logically follow below. Although such expectations are fulfilled in the upper register of Figure 21, in the lower zone they are not. Two possible explanations may underlie the abandonment of Le Magnanime. The first concerns the difficulty of representing the two associated vices. Oresme discusses the concept of excess, Vanity or Vainglory, called "chaymes , fumeus et presumptueus," and the vice of deficiency, Small-Mindedness, or pusillanime .^[14] The problems of finding intelligible visual equivalents for these vices are substantial, but not impossible, for someone of Oresme's ingenuity.

Perhaps a political motivation inspired the rejection of the representation of Le Magnanime. In Figure 20 the personification wears the crown of the Holy Roman Empire. In tribute, a second ruler removes his crown. It is possible that Charles V opposed this visual homage to the emperor. During the visit in 1377 and 1378 to France of his uncle, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, Charles V asserted in various rituals that he was not subordinate to his relative. Furthermore, it was a commonplace of the political propaganda of Charles V's reign that the king of France was emperor in his own kingdom.^[15] Thus, Charles V may have objected to the treatment of Le Magnanime as the Holy Roman Emperor in Figure 20 and may have suggested that this depiction of the subject be changed in the revised program of C .

In fact, the negative reception of the first version may have inspired the tremendous visual and verbal embellishment of the second. The increased didacticism of the program results in a proliferation of information that threatens the intelligibility of the illustration. Lengthy inscriptions are one source of the overall clutter, such as those that not only name but characterize Liberalité and three associated vices. Furthermore, individual scenes depicting additional figures and objects augment the particular virtue and vices. This tendency to show these moral or immoral forces in scenes from everyday life continues the examples of Figures 15 and 16.

In the center of the upper register stands Liberalité wearing appropriate nunlike garb, signs of her spiritual and sexually neutral status (Fig. 21). Her ability to strike the mean in the giving and spending of money or material goods is described by two phrases on either side of her: "donner par raison" (give as directed by reason) and "prendre selon raison" (take according to reason). Her gift of a gold vessel to the man kneeling on her right signifies her generosity and reinforces the verbal message. But she also is willing to accept the gift of a stag's head offered to her by

the identically clad figure kneeling on her left. This spectacular tribute probably alludes to the climactic stage in the medieval hunt ceremony: the presentation of the stag's head to the highest-ranking person.^[16] In contrast to the nunlike garments of Liberalité, her mundane male companions wear fashionable costume: short, close-fitting tunics with hoods, low belts, hose, and long, pointed shoes.

The vice of excess in expenditures, on the upper left, is called Prodigalité or Fole Largesce. Like Fortitude, Prodigalité is a male personification. His sphere of operation is visually described as masculine: acquiring money and spending it on hunting. Prodigalité's weaknesses are characterized as "donner sanz raison" (giving without reason) and "despendre oultre mise" (spending without measure). The vice is surrounded by three figures. On the far left, a figure sounds a horn. Next to him, another man seems to take away Prodigalité's cloak. On the other side, a third figure presents Prodigalité with two small hinds. The latter figure, along with the man with the horn—who probably sounds a call to join in the sport—suggests a further allusion to hunting and an example of "spending without reason." The gift of the two small animals contrasts with the large stag's head offered to Liberalité. The first is an inappropriate gift typical of Prodigalité, who "exceeds in giving and not taking, and falls short in taking."^[17] Indeed, Oresme is so concerned with the failings of this vice that he includes prodigalité and prodige in the glossary of difficult words.^[18] The visual references to hunting in the scenes of Prodigalité and Liberalité are consistent with a medieval tradition of opposing the sport as a wasteful pursuit.^[19]

The third scene of the upper register represents Avarice, the vice of deficiency opposed to Prodigalité. To be more precise, Avarice is one of two vices that Oresme terms Illiberalité, or lack of generosity.^[20] Oresme explains in a gloss that Illiberalité is a word rarely used in French or Latin; for this reason he probably decided to avoid it in the visual definitions of Figure 21.^[21] Instead, he uses two more familiar terms, Avarice and Convoitise. The former is defined and depicted above; the latter, below. Avarice represents a more serious defect than Prodigalité, which can be remedied by age, experience, and lack of funds. Avarice's faults consist of taking too much ("prendre oultre raison") and giving too little ("retenir oultre raison"). Personified as a female figure, she stands behind a table on which rest three piles of gold coins. Her gesture of grasping in her right hand the coins received from a kneeling man exemplifies her first fault, while her upraised left palm indicates that she rejects the request of the boy on her right to part with her holdings. His plight is also conveyed by the pleading gestures of his hands.

Like Insensibilité, her counterpart in Book III (Fig. 16), Avarice wears a widow's headdress. Here it is germane to recall Oresme's remark in a gloss that women are generally stingier than men and the aged are more so than the young.^[22] Avarice's head covering also sports a horn even more clearly than that of Insensibilité. As noted above, in the Middle Ages Jews were engaged in usury.^[23] Moreover, in western Europe Jewish women took part in financial transactions. Since the text cites usurers among people in "operacions illiberales" (occupations incompatible with generosity), the association of Avarice with the Jews is a natural one.^[24] The extratextual visual allusion shows not only the extent of anti-Semitic attitudes and

psychological stereotypes but also techniques of providing visual cues that update and enliven familiar concepts.

The other aspect of Illiberalité is represented as a male in the lower register of Figure 21. Convoitise (Covetousness) is almost a twin of Prodigalité, below whom he stands. The inscription on both sides of Convoitise describes one aspect of his character: taking beyond what is reasonable ("prendre oultre raison"). Like Avarice, his grasping quality is indicated by his hands, which stretch out to grasp the coins offered by two elegantly clad men. An even longer inscription, somewhat confusingly placed between the figures and the table, defines another side of his failings: giving and spending without reason and for a bad purpose ("donner et despendre sanz raison et a mauvais fin"). The richly laden table on the right probably refers to a wasteful form of expenditure, the counterpart of the greed depicted on the left. The love of bodily pleasures, or "délectacions corporelles," exemplified by the food heaped on the table recalls the vice of Désattrempance in Figure 16. It is not surprising, then, that the self-indulgence of Convoitise is linked with extravagant expenditure in both Aristotle's text and Oresme's translation.^[25] Oresme's choice of Convoitise as the sole subject of the lower register of Figure 21 leads to various difficulties in interpreting the illustration. It is not easy to connect the three scenes of the upper register with the single scene on the left and the table on the right of the lower. While it is possible that the empty center alludes to the absence of virtue in Convoitise, there is no verbal or visual reinforcement of such a notion. It is true, however, that the placement of Convoitise on the left, his frontal position, and his contemporary dress align him morally and visually with Prodigalité. Indeed, the similar appearance of the two personifications may allude to the presence of these qualities in one person. Yet the absence of a second figure on the right and the separation from Convoitise of the inscription are confusing. The relation between Avarice and Convoitise as parts of a single vice does not come across either. The departure from the triadic scheme in the lower register thus leads to puzzling gaps in the illustration. Neither Figure 20 nor 21 is among the most exciting images in their cycles. If the first seems cryptic and somewhat conventional, the second errs on the side of discursiveness. In the parlance of the Ethics , one attempts "too little," the other, "too much." Charles V's negative reaction to Figure 20 may have inspired Oresme to expand the subject guides in Figure 21 and to abandon alternative schemes of visual order that so effectively link text and image. Perhaps Oresme intended to rely on these lengthy inscriptions as talking points for an oral explication regarding norms of expenditure: this was a subject he deemed particularly relevant to the appropriate conduct of his primary audience.