The Expanded Subject Guide of the C Miniature
The expansion of both visual imagery and verbal identification in Figure 16 offers a subtle critique of the program of Figure 15. No longer confined by the width of the text column, quadrilobe frame, or gateway setting of Figure 15, the miniature for Book III in C (Fig. 16) returns to a horizontally oriented two-register format first employed in the frontispiece of this manuscript. Like Figure 15, the upper zone of Figure 16 depicts Fortitude in the central position. Here, however, the vices opposed to Fortitude are represented in off-center places: Rashness (Oul-
Figure 18
Lady Memory and the Doors of Sight and Hearing. Richard de
Fournivall , Li bestiaires d'amour.
trecuidance) on the left and Cowardice (Couardie) on the right. The same scheme is followed on the lower register. Temperance (Attrempance) occupies the center between the vices of Self-Indulgence (Désattrempance) on the left and Insensibility (Insensibilité) on the right. In addition to the nouns identifying the personifications written on the shallow ground plane below the figures, adjectives further characterizing them are inscribed on rectangular bands above their heads. Thus, "trop hardi" above Oultrecuidance applies to one who "excede et superhabunde en oser ou en emprendre vers les choses terribles" (is foolhardy and rash in daring and in undertaking terrible things).[19] The other extreme, the "couart," lacks daring and experiences too great fear. Oresme explains in a gloss: "Et en tant comme il deffaut en oser il est appelé couart en françois" (And inasmuch as he lacks daring, he is called a coward in French).[20]Preuz is translated as "valiant" and reinforces the definition of Fortitude previously cited.
The adjectival reinforcements of the upper register help differentiate the remarkably similar figures of Oultrecuidance, Fortitude, and Couardie. The striking resemblance between the first two may well reflect Aristotle's idea that "rashness is thought liker and nearer to courage and cowardice more unlike."[21] This concept, expressed in terms of visual identity, could, without the descriptive adjectives,
obscure the more important distinction between the vice and the virtue. Since Fortitude is not distinguished from Oultrecuidance or Couardie by scale, the device used in the Book II miniatures (Figs. 11 and 12), the positions and directions of the figures are the decisive visual means of communicating their moral qualities. The notion of virtue as a mean, established by the scheme of Figures 11 and 12, is again associated with the midpoint of the picture field here occupied by Fortitude. Likewise, the vices of excess and deficiency occupy the same places on left and right as their generic predecessors, the giant and dwarf of the Book II illustrations. The scheme of a central norm and its moral opposites on each side appears to repeat the preference for a triadic organization allied to Aristotle's mnemonic theory.[22] In Oresme's discussion of Oultrecuidance and Couardie in Chapter 16 of Book III, the former is discussed first.[23] Thus the position of an image on the left of the picture field once again relates to order in the text. An extratextual device, however, reinforces the notion of Couardie's moral stance established by his pose. By moving in the opposite direction taken by Oultrecuidance and Fortitude and by raising his helmet, Couardie shows that the lack of daring makes him flee the battlefield. This witty and ingenious notion shows another instance of Oresme's inventiveness as author of the program of illustrations.
In the lower register the virtue of Attrempance occupies the central position held above by Fortitude. Unlike the latter and his opposing vices, Attrempance and the extremes on either side of her are identified by nouns but not characterized by adjectives. Perhaps the actions of the figures on the lower level were deemed to be sufficiently distinguished one from another to make their points without verbal reinforcements. For Attrempance is no longer a still, standing form, detached from any specific activity, as she is pictured in Figure 15. Instead, her moral position in respect to bodily pleasures and pains is exemplified by the vignette in which she is the central actress. In Figure 16 Attrempance is seated behind a table furnished with food and implements for eating and drinking. The picture of sobriety in her nunlike robe, the virtue sits alone sipping from a cup. Her upright posture and frontal pose also convey a detached and abstemious attitude. Without any reference to scale, the notion of the mean is, as in the upper register, expressed by the virtue's central position. The repetition of the scheme devised in the upper register helps, however, to reinforce the notion of the central mean surrounded by the two extremes. An illustration in the Morgan Avis au roys (Fig. 19) exemplifies Attrempance by representing a king seated at a table laden with food and drink and furnished with four gold vessels. He holds his finger to his lips in a gesture that conveys restraint and self-control based on reason.[24] Although Figure 16 relies on similar exemplification of the concept personified in Figure 15, the pictorial notion of the mean developed in this illustration and in the Book II miniatures of A and C appear to be original features of Oresme's programs.
The vice of Self-Indulgence, or Désattrempance, is personified and exemplified in Figure 16 by a man and a woman seated before a bountiful table. Fashionably dressed, the man reaches out with his left hand to touch the woman's arm, while
Figure 19
A French King as an Exemplar of Temperance. Avis au roys.
he prepares to attack a large portion of food he holds to his mouth. About to drink from a big bowl, his partner is shown with a smart contemporary hairdo of braided tresses. Her dress features a low-cut bodice and tight sleeves that differentiate her costume from the modest garments of Attrempance and Insensibilité. The inclusion of a male figure in the scene makes clear that "delectation charnel" includes sexual as well as gastronomic excess.[25]
The opposite vice, on the right, is associated with deficiency rather than excess. Insensibilité is a rare human defect, applying to persons deficient with regard to pleasures.[26] Indeed, Insensibility is not natural since even animals enjoy eating. Oresme terms this vice "inhuman."[27] In Figure 16 a woman in widow's garb, also seated at a table, personifies Insensibilité. Yet although she reaches for an object on the table, she neither eats nor drinks. Her headdress gives some further clue to her identity. Of a more worldly nature than the nunlike veil of Attrempance, the head covering of Insensibilité sports a central point, or horn. This unusual feature characterizes the personification in Book IV (Fig. 21) of the vice of Avarice. Also a vice of deficiency, Avarice is in medieval thought associated with usury, a practice often connected with money lending by the Jews. As a mark of their inferior status in Christian society, Jews of western Europe were forced to wear pointed hats or hoods.[28] In 1326, following the council of Avignon, a papal bull decreed that Jewish women wear a veil with horns, called a cornalia .[29] Why Insensibilité is
identified with a Jewish woman is more puzzling than the similar association of Avarice. The vices share, however, a lack of common human feeling, a failing often attributed to Jews in anti-Semitic literature. Furthermore, the Jewish dietary laws forbid the eating of certain foods favored by Christians. Such deviance from common standards of enjoyment may have further contributed to the identification of Jews with Insensibilité. Since such allusions are extratextual, the negative associations were presumably understood by readers on the basis of the horned headdress. Thus, a rare moral deficiency is associated with a small minority of contemporary society regarded as inhuman and aberrant.
In short, the illustrations for Book III in A and C are not as prominent as those for Book II, and their imagery is less innovative. Nevertheless, within the overall programs of illustration they are significant. Figure 15 introduces the motif of the crenellated wall, which stands for the stronghold of the virtues and a memory gateway. The juxtaposition of associated but sharply differentiated ethical concepts also follows Aristotelian theories of memory and rhetoric taken up in medieval sources.[30] On two levels Figure 16 carries out the mean and extremes scheme in a concise and witty manner. Thus both miniatures fulfill their functions as visual definitions and subject guides in styles appropriate to the manuscripts they illustrate.