Corine Schleif: Who are the Animals in the Geese Book?

10 Who are the Animals in the Geese Book? Carine Schleif in: Animals and Early Modern Identity, ed. Pia F. Cuneo, Farnham and Burlington 2014, pp. 209-242 One liturgical manuscript from the early modern period is named after its animals. Currently the focus of an international study, the so-called Geese Book is being used to explore ways of re-integrating multisensory arts of the past using multimedia technologies of our day from critical and analytical perspectives. This large and luxurious two-volume gradual, containing the Mass liturgy, was fashioned for the parish of St. Lorenz in Nuremberg between circa 1503 and 1510 and lives today in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, where it bears the shelf number M. 905. A full digital facsimile with a selection of recorded chants, commentary, and associated documents is now accessible on the Internet. 1 The manuscript is named and famed not for any liturgical innovations, which are only now being analyzed -also not for its 38 historiated initials and marginal medallions, which lead the users of the book through the church year using standard iconographies for scenes from salvation history-also not for the decorative acanthus ornamentation, which, executed in several bright colors as well as gold leaf, adorns the outer and lower margins of many folios. Rather, it is best known through the eponymous choir of singing geese (Fig. 10.1), pictured as one of several uniquely engaging and enigmatic paintings that dominate the lower margins on folios introducing important feast days. In these bas-de-page images, animals appear to distract and entertain. However, despite all of their apparent whimsy and comedy, most of the pictures present life-threatening dramas. The already-mentioned choir of geese is endangered by a fox who has made his way into their midst under the seemingly watchful eye of the cantor, a wolf with an erect penis, vol. 1, fol. 186r; a wild woman wielding a club confronts a female dragon who has seized her baby, whom the dragon is about to devour, vol. 2, fol. 122r; a wild man draws his bow to shoot a sleeping stag lying at his feet, vol. 1, fol. 205r; a fox stalks chickens, vol. 1, fol. 22r (Fig. 10.12); an owl holds a smaller bird in his beak, vol. 1, fol. 38v; a hawk pursues a mallard in flight, 210 10.1 Jakob Elsner, bas-depage illumination showing a wolf directing a choir of geese as a fox advances toward a goose, Geese Book, 1507, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library M. 905, vol. 1, fol. 186r ("Opening the Geese Book," online facsimile) ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY vol. l, fol.l56r; a snake struggles to free himself from a stork's bill, vol. 1, fol. 194v; a dog chases a hare, vol. 2, fol. 1r (Fig. 10.4); predatory birds (a falcon and a magpie) are lured and ensnared through the use of chicks as live bait, a clapstick, and a blind, vol. 2, fols. 145r and 205r; a man wrestles with a wounded bear, vol. 1, fol. 1r; and a dog confronts a frightened cat, vol. 2, fol. 31 v (Fig. 10.5). Almost as if taking its parallel place amid these perilous situations, yet another marginal depiction shows angels emerging from buds in the tendrils, displaying the instruments of Christ's Passion: the crown of thorns, the nails, the cross, the sponge with vinegar, and the lance, vol. 1, fol. 176r. Additionally a few marginal depictions exhibit animals and angels playing musical instruments, vol. 2, fol. 88r (Fig. 10.13), vol. 2, 91r (Fig. 10.7), and vol. 2, fol. 209r. In the only non-sacred bas-de-page devoted to human animals, a group of men are seated at a table, merrily eating and drinking (vol. 1, fol. 243v). On three occasions individual animals in isolation and without any anthropomorphizing activities inhabit the tendrils: an ape with fruit, vol. 2, fol. 21 v (Fig. 10.8), a peacock presenting his spread tail, vol. ｾＬ＠ fol. 121r, and two lapwings drinking from a fountain, vol. 2, fol. 205r. All of these scenes as well as the painted decoration in this liturgical manuscript have been attributed to the lay Nuremberg illuminator and panel painter Jakob Elsner. Carine Schleif 211 Who are the Animals Who Make (Up) the Geese Book? At the most basic and honest level, the animals in the Geese Book are the animals of whom the manuscript was made. Most scholars have until very recently perceived the active agents of manuscript production as the human beings who planned, wrote, compiled, designed, copied, illustrated, and manufactured these works. The animals whose bodies became the book or were used as utensils in its production were only considered abstractly and indifferently as sources of materials and tools. Generally in catalogues of manuscripts, the information about nonhuman animals falls under the categories of "writing support" and media. This subject/object polarity is now being challenged by the proponents of actor network theory as well as by those engaged with critical animal studies. Erica Fudge has been breaking the path in employing these approaches to Renaissance materiaU Considering the artistic cultures of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in ways that combine these sensitivities is now long overdue. In the present analysis I shall follow new inclusive grammatical conventions in referencing both human and nonhuman animals with the pronouns "who" and "whom," and when grammatically necessary ascribing male or female gender to individuals. 3 Indeed, the Geese Book was written using ink applied through quills made from domestic goose feathers, it was illustrated using brushes probably made of hair from squirrels or martens, it was written and illuminated on parchment made of the hides of calves, and it was protected in bindings covered with leather made of fine pigskin. A picture in the well-known book of the Mendel TwelveBrother House Foundation in Nuremberg shows parchment in an intermediate state that reminds viewers of its origin as animal skin (Fig. 10.2). Fritz Pyrmetter, who had moved to this retirement home for needy craftsmen by 1423, is portrayed busily plying his trade. 4 He prepares parchment by using a rasorium or lunellum to scrape the surfaces while the hide, still resembling the shape of an animal, is tied to the adjustable pegs on a stretching frame also called a herse. Prior to this step, the parchmenter would have washed, soaked in a lime bath, and rinsed the calfskin or sheepskin to cleanse it, loosen the hair, and remove fats that would otherwise allow the parchment to rot and decay-as do most parts of most living beings after their deaths. 5 10.2 Fritz Pyrmetter, fullpage miniature, c. 1425, Mendel Twelve-Brother House Book, Nuremberg, Stadtbibliothek, Amb. 317. 2° fol. 34v 212 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY Today the Geese Book is the largest complete manuscript in the collection of the Morgan Library, with each of the two volumes measuring about 66 x 45 em. The entire gradual once contained a total of 559 folios. Elisabeth Remak-Honnef and Inge Neske have undertaken a close codicological examination of the volumes and observed that a total of 11 quires are contained in the codices, most comprising bifolia; that is, pieces of parchment folded once in the center where they are bound into the book to form two leaves. 6 They have observed that the parchment is of heavy high-quality calfskin that has been so thoroughly prepared that it is nearly impossible to distinguish the hair sides from the flesh sides of the folios. In all likelihood, based on the supposition that calves were somewhat smaller at the beginning of the sixteenth century than they are today, each bifolium would have required one carefully selected calf hide. This means that about 280 calves were forced to give their skin for this gradual. These skins were once the external boundaries that held the animals' inner organs in place, that enabled their physiology to function by allowing the necessary solids, fluids, and gases to circulate and metabolic chemical exchanges to occur, and that protected the animals from the external elements. Several holes in the parchment, visible for example on folios 41, 56, and 128 of volume 1, remind us of the original importance of this membrane as well as of its vulnerability. At these sites, scar tissue was sloughed off during the preparation of the parchment. The scars had developed as the result of minor injuries to the animals during their lives. Indeed, the sentient calves' skins of the Geese Book were irritated by insect bites, were sensitive to the nuzzling and licking of their mothers, and could be wounded by the prods and whips of their human keepers. The format and dimensions of the two volumes likewise linger in reminiscence that the book was limited by the size and shape of animals. In all likelihood the makers wanted to produce two volumes in the largest size possible. The quills, used to letter the books, to execute some of the decorated initials, and to render the simplest of the tendril lines, in all likelihood originated as the sturdy wing feathers of geese. The famed Theophilus who set down instructions for various kinds of crafts already in the twelfth century had mentioned their use for writing and other purposes. 7 Indeed those who held these pens, cut and trimmed them with a pen knife, or dipped them into ink would have been more aware that they were holding a part from a bird' s anatomy than are modern viewers of the enduring lines they produced on the folios. In the many manuscript portraits of the Evangelists or of scribes and illuminators, the feather is present as an acquired attribute but is not immediately identifiable because its vane has been removed from its barrel for easier handling. It may be assumed that early modern writers and users of books were probably quite conscious of their use of animals. Already in the tenth century an anonymous Anglo-Saxon gave voice to an animal from whom a book was made when he wrote the following story in verse form: Corine Schleif 213 An enemy ended my life, deprived me of my physical strength; then he dipped me in water and drew me out again, and put me in the sun where I soon shed all my hair. After that, the knife's sharp edge bit into me. And the bird's feather often moved over my brown surface, sprinkling meaningful marks; it swallowed more wood-dye (part of the stream), and again traveled over me, leaving black tracks. Then a man bound me, he stretched skin over me and adorned me with gold; thus I am enriched by the wondrous work of smiths, wound about with shining metal. Now my clasp and my red dye and these glorious adornments bring fame far and wide to the Protector of Men, and not to the pains of hell. If only the sons of me would make use of me they would be the safer and more victorious, their hearts would be bolder, their minds more at ease, their thoughts wiser, and they would have more friends, companions and kinsmen (courageous, honorable, trusty, kind) who would gladly increase their honor and prosperity, and heap benefits upon them, ever holding them most dear. Ask what I am called, of such use to men. My name is famous, of service to men and sacred in itsel£. 8 This oft-quoted "riddle" is frequently used today as a(n allegorical) description of the making of a manuscript, but it is actually much more. 9 Rather than presenting the narrative using first person pronouns from the viewpoint of the object-the handmade book-the riddler tells the story from the standpoint of the animal still occupying his own skin, who, recognizes the participation of other species and, in the course of the vita, becomes a book. The animal, whether calf or sheep, turns into a kind of martyr for a grander cause, thus attains immortality, fame, and sanctityand maintains sapience-if not sentience-for all eternity. The climax of the tale was the ascent of the animal from the real animal to the animal as carrier of signs, both cognitive and emotive. The animal thus becomes an interspecies messenger. In the text the animal never loses personhood or the awareness of self that s/he assumed by being a sentient and sapient being. Thus the sheep, goat, or calf looks back autobiographically and makes known how his or her identity has changed as new roles were taken on and new realities were "lived." In the late Middle Ages and early modern period parchment became a particularly important and unique sign. It seems to have figured in so many contexts perhaps because skin is so very sentient, the largest sense organ of animal bodies, including human bodies. Unlike other sense perceptions, feeling is reciprocal through skin- touching and being touched is experienced through the same sensors. As such it may have been perceived as possessing more vitality and less mediacy than other signifiers. In late medieval devotional literature the faithful soul pictures itself as parchment onto which messages can be inscribed. Heinrich Suso tells of incising the letters IHS into his skin. 10 More commonly in texts from the fourteenth through the early sixteenth century, the personifications are reversed, and new pure parchment is the signifier for the Virgin. 11 Most graphically, however, notions associated with parchment were used to develop metaphors for Christ's body- specifically its exterior covering. Thus the Passion and Crucifixion could be projected onto and read out of 214 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDE NTITY the processes of book-making: wounding, pricking, scoring, stretching, inking, painting. The book's pages, once the exterior surfaces of lambs, sheep, or calves, could also then be devotionally caressed through writing, reading, and using. In such metaphoric texts, the distinctions between functions of parchments as signs for something other than themselves and as material objects that maintained subjecthood-through their active roles as living animals and within book production and reception- are blurredY Thus in manuscript cultures, whether that of large communal choirbooks like the Geese Book or that of smaller prayer books used in more intimate devotional contexts, animality was undoubtedly more frequently felt than is the animality of gloves and shoes in our own society. 13 We know that the prebendary Friedrich Rosendorn, who compiled and wrote the Geese Book, was reimbursed for 40 "skins" that he used to make one volume of another liturgical manuscript for St. Gumbertus in Ansbach. 14 This source indicates that he as a scribe was involved with his writing supports before they were cut and folded-in a state that was much closer to their animal origins. These observations about the makers and users of the Geese Book call to mind the assertions John Berger presents so persuasively. He contends that in our contemporary Western society, human understanding of nonhuman animals is almost solely reliant on visual representations of them rather than direct experience. 15 However, in the manuscript cultures of five hundred years ago, knowledge was more immediate. Who were the Real Animals in Early Sixteenth-Century Nuremberg? In her book Holy Dogs and Asses: Animals in the Christian Tradition, Laura Hobgood-Oster makes a case for the consideration of "real" animals even in historical circumstances. 16 In the following paragraphs I shall explore the real situations for a limited number of the animals, for whom we find veristically rendered-even if whimsically pictured-representations in the Geese Book. The selection is somewhat random, and I must acknowledge that the existing sources and studies of these animals are uneven, as is my treatment of them. Most stories of real animals in history still need to be written. Many dogs (Figs. 10.4, 10.5) lived in Nuremberg at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Known to scavenge when necessary for survival, dogs must have been viewed by contemporary humans as particularly troublesome in cemeteries. In the stained-glass window panel designed by Albrecht Durer for Sixtus Tucher, provost of the church of St. Lorenz immediately before the Geese Book was fashioned, the cleric stands before his open grave. Dogs were prohibited from entering the churchyard by an iron grid in the ground at the place the wall opens to admit human pedestrians. 17 Might such devices betray fears that humans could become prey? Of all anxieties articulated in the medieval bestiaries of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Corine Schleif 215 perhaps the most horrific was the human fear of being consumed by (other) animals, even after death. 18 By the early modern period dogs played numerous and important roles in human and animal society. In fact they are documented in the Nuremberg churches, where reactions to them were mixed. Evidence comes down to us of a family foundation or trust that was established to pay a guard or guards, who would drive dogs out of the churches. The matter appears to have originated in a testament from 1488, in which Sigmund Oertel the Elder put up a sum of 100 guilders, the interest from which supported the endeavor. By 1496 his son Antonius was acting as administrator, and the amount of interest was recorded as five percent per annum. According to the seventeenthcentury chronicle known as "Miillner' s Annalen," in the year 1520 the dogs were driven out of Nuremberg churches on a daily basis. 19 Gabriela Signori cites sources from other cities that forbad noble parishioners from bringing their dogs or falcons into the churches with them because they caused such a disturbance. 20 Signori points out that in some of these cases, images of these animals appeared in family heraldry, making it uncertain whether the cause of the irritation went deeper than a fear of some real mayhem wrought by the nonhumans and included anxieties that such social statements overstepped the accepted laws of decorum. Living armorial bearings could call attention to their own presence and thereby to that of their masters in ways that family escutcheons, painted or in relief, could not. Dogs and birds were visually, acoustically, tactilely, and olfactorally perceptible, and they were not subject to the ordering restrictions that governed humans or their heraldry within church spaces. 21 The famous copper engraving by Andreas Graf showing the interior of St. Lorenz in 1685 (Fig. 10.3) attests to the humans and dogs of pedigree who wished to be seen in the church at that time. Other Nuremberg sources provide evidence of the ways in which dogs who were deemed unwanted or unwantable were violently eliminated by the civic authorities at the time of the making of the Geese Book. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the city employed a hundeschlaher, also spelled hundeschlager, which can best be translated as "dog-slayer." The responsibilities of this civil servant combined those of municipal employees known variously today as dog-catchers and euthanasia technicians in the animal control agencies of American cities. In his recent book Just a Dog, Arnold Arluke expands upon and alters Claude Levi-Strauss's famous quote "Animals are good to think" to "Cruelty is good to think," meaning-not to ignore. 22 During the Renaissance, sanctioned cruelty against dogs was built into the officer's title with no rhetorical attempt to coin any euphemism. In Nuremberg this dog-slayer not only caught stray dogs and killed them but also went into the surrounding imperial forests to hunt packs of dogs who purportedly lived there and posed a threat to hunters of the urban aristocracy by competing for wild game. For sanitation purposes, the carcasses of the unwanted dogs, together with those of other large dead animals, including lambs, pigs, and cats that were collected within the city walls, were all 216 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY 10.3 Johann Andreas Graf, Interior of St. Lorenz, 55 x 43 em, engraving, 1685, collection of the author buried in a deep trench designated for the purpose. The bodies of smaller animals, chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons, and rats, which the dog-slayer was likewise required to dispose of for the city, could be buried in graves of a half meter in depth near his premises outside the walls to the south of the city. By the seventeenth century, however, chronicles report resistance from individual citizens claiming that the dog-slayers were targeting their companion animals even when they wore collars. 23 It is noteworthy that violent elimination and persecution of unwanted animals is today illegal in most European countries. The city chronicle written by Heinrich Deichsler sheds further light on the institution of the dog-slayer and his social standing at the time the Geese Corine Schleif 217 Book was fashioned. Deichsler gives a contemporary report of a remarkable wedding celebration that took place in 1506 on the occasion of the marriage of the sister of the dog-slayer. Members of nearly all other dishonorable professions were in attendance at the church and the reception: the city executioners, their assistants, grave-diggers, prostitutes, but "few pious people." Reportedly, honorable members of society, however, went to watch from a distance as the underclasses danced, ate, and drank all day outside the city. 24 Such accounts demonstrate how these persons, although remunerated for their services with public funds, were nonetheless shunned and scorned for assuming these disdainful roles. Society could easily focus its collective guilt on such individuals and therefore ban them from respectable company, forcing them to socialize exclusively among themselves. More importantly perhaps, pollution could not spread to the community as a whole if those who dealt with society's dirtier issues, like executing dangerous criminals and unwanted dogs-tasks associated with public sanitation and social healthwere kept separate. These attitudes and practices not only mirror but are structurally connected to the views and treatment of dogs themselves. By this time dogs were being bred respectively to hunt with patrician men or to sit on the laps of ladies as living objects of "conspicuous consumption." Such "uses" of dogs supported gender and class distinctions among human animals that were observed in Nuremberg at this time. Families were accepted into the ruling patrician oligarchy only after they had consistently married with the more established patrician families for some generations. By converse analogy, those dogs of mixed and indeterminate background, who hunted on their own or scavenged carrion, were considered defiled, dirty, dangerous, and therefore deemed unworthy to live. Moreover, Ambrose and subsequent medieval writers divided animals into two groups, the wild and the tame. 25 With dogs, the domestic had turned feral and posed a threat-especially when these "underdogs" acted collectively. Anxiety that the dog-slayers might likewise perpetrate their violence in directions not controlled or mandated is thus also implicit. Two dogs meticulously rendered as specific breeds appear in the Geese Book's tendrils, both without human companions. A spotted hunting hound, resembling a beagle, chases a hare (Fig. 10.4), and a lean greyhound confronts a cat (Fig. 10.5). Generally more congenial are the Nuremberg sources that associate cats with the city's churches. In fact, an account book kept by Dr. Anton Kress, provost of the St. Lorenz parish at the time that the Geese Book was made, shows that the rectory did indeed have cats. Along with expenses for such banal commodities as firewood, ordinary foods that began their existences as living fish or animals, for example pike or trout, and for such delicacies as oranges or saffron, Kress records "milk for the cats." 26 This reference is one of the earliest showing human support for cats who were members of urban households. 10.4 Jakob Elsner, Vigil of Saint Andrew, bas-de-page showing a hound chasing a hare. Geese Book, 1510, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 905, vol. 2, fol. 1r ("Opening the Geese Book," online facsimile) Carine Schleif 219 10.5 Jakob Elsner, bas-depage illumination showing a dog confronting a cat, Geese Book, 1510, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 905, vol. 2, fol. 31 v ("Opening the Geese Book," online facsimile) A relief carved in stone in a secluded place under the landing of the stairs that leads to an exterior gallery off of the south aisle of St. Lorenz, depicts a rat who appears to be eating some ill-defined morsel or perhaps some smaller animal (Fig. 10.6). We have been left with no sources that provide any meaning or purpose for this depiction of an event that must have been common when it was chiseled at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Its presence reminds us that the cats for whom Kress purchased milk may well have been working animals assigned to rodent control, in other words they were employed by the church as was the provost. We cannot know if Jacob Elsner may have been acquainted with a silver tabby who inspired the appearance of or even served as the model for the cat depicted confronted by the hunting dog in the Geese Book bas-de-page that ornaments the beginning of the Mass for the feast of the Annunciation (Fig. 10.5). According to Albertus Magnus, gray was the most common color of cats during his time. He contended that gray was the natural color of the cat; other colors were caused by dietary anomalies. 27 We cannot know if these notions were known or shared in the sixteenth century, but perhaps Elsner wished to show a common cat, who might be a real cat like those whom he knew in Nuremberg. Exotic animals, especially monkeys (Figs. 10.7, Fig. 10.8), had been of interest to Europeans throughout the Middle Ages, but during the Age of Exploration increasing numbers of captured live animals were brought from distant shores by ship. It is well documented that the agents of the Nuremberg merchants in Portugal first obtained monkeys from India and later from Brazil. These expensive colonial captives were meant to serve as pets for affluent customers in Nuremberg and Augsburg. Monkeys, together with parrots, were the most sought-after living cargo. 28 10.6 Anonymous, stone relief showing a rat devouring a morsel, c. 1400, Nuremberg, Church of St. Lorenz. Photo: Volker Schier; used with permission 10.7 Jakob Elsner, bas-de-page illumination showing a monkey playing bagpipes, Geese Book, 1510, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 905, vol. 2, 91r ("Opening the Geese Book," online facsimile) 10.8 Jakob Elsner, Mass of the Purification of the Virgin, bas-de-page showing an ape with golden fruit, Geese Book, 1510, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M.905, vol. 2, fol. 21 v ("Opening the Geese Book," online facsimile) 222 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY From Albrecht Durer's art and writings we know that this contemporary Nuremberg artist was particularly fascinated with anything and everything exotic. In the diary he wrote while in the Netherlands, Durer shows himself intrigued by monkeys as well as by exotic birds and reptiles. In December of 1520, while he was in Antwerp for the fourth time during this sojourn in the Low Countries, he records the expense of four guilders for monkeys, which he calls "mehr kiiczlein." 29 The term, usually written "Meerkatze" may have originally suggested that monkeys were catlike creatures from across the seas. Later the term refers only to small sub-Saharan monkeys sometimes called Senegal monkeys, but during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the term was used more generally to include the many kinds of small apes who were imported. Of Durer's numerous purchases on this trip, this was the second most expensive item-only a coat he had tailored for himself was more costly. His meticulous records likewise mention other living creatures: the little green parrot received by his wife Agnes as a gift in August of 1520, for whom she subsequently purchased a cage; a second parrot given to Albrecht by the same acquaintance less than two weeks later, in September of 1520; a small turtle whom Albrecht bought; and a third parrot purchased shortly before the couple's return home. 30 We cannot know how many of the creatures survived the trip back to Nuremberg with the Durers and their entourage in July of 1521. Perhaps the repeated acquisitions of parrots replaced predecessors who had died in captivity. It is safe to assume that Durer must have intended to keep the monkeys, since we know he had invested four guilders. The earliest artistic reflection of Durer's interest in monkeys occurred in 1496 when he included a Senegal monkey prominently in The TwelveYear-Old Jesus in the Temple, which formed one narrative in a series for an altarpiece painted for Friedrich the Wise in Wittenberg, today in Dresden. 31 The same species, also called in German a nonnenaffe (nun-ape), perhaps due to the wreath of white fur resembling the little crowns worn by some Cistercians and by Birgittines, is depicted in Durer's engraving Madonna with the Monkey of 1498 (Fig. 10.9). 32 In both pictures, the animal is chained, as many real monkeys were, to prohibit these expensive beings from escaping or being stolen as well as to curb any disruptive or destructive behavior. In both cases the animal powerfully locks the viewer in his gaze. According to early modern extra-missive theories of vision, any viewer, including an ape, could use his or her eyes to transfix the objects of his or her gaze. Thus, although in each of these works the monkey symbolizes evil and sinfulness that must be fettered, as well as perhaps the dangers of blindly aping and mimicking spiritual truths under the Old Covenant, the gaze of this marginal creature mesmerizes the external viewers of the narratives. One wonders if already at this date Durer had been entranced by a monkey chained to the windowsill of some patrician merchant neighbor in Nuremberg. When the curious Durer stared at the little animal had s/he inquisitively returned the gaze? 10.9 Albrecht Durer, Madonna with the Monkey, 19.1 x 12.2 em, copper engraving, 1498. Courtesy of the British Museum, London 224 10.10 Albrecht Durer, sheet of sketches with baboon, 26.4 x 39.7 em, 1521. Reproduced with permission of the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY In 1521, while Durer was in Brussels, several months after he had acquired his own monkeys, Durer produced a sheet of sketches with two landscapes and several animals (Fig. 10.10). It resides today, with monogram and date, at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Alone the ape - probably a baboon or other member of what is today known as the cercopithecidae species, called in German hundsaffe (dog-ape)-is colored and annotated. Unfortunately Durer's notes as to the size and weight of this large animal were later trimmed. We can, however, still read that the artist calls the animal an extraordinary creature. It is believed that Durer probably drew the baboon and the other animals on the sheet from life, when he visited the royal zoo in Brussels. 33 Despite the fanciful pastel tints of blue and pink, the simian face, kindly, quiet and expressive with its dog's snout and big human eyes, appeals in the same ways as those haunting all-too-human visages in the film The Planet of the Apes. Another sheet (Fig. 10.11), this one with 12 monkeys, dated 1523, survives from the period after the Durers returned to Nuremberg and is now in the Offentliche Kunstsammlung Basel. Commissioned by Felix Frey of Zurich, the sheet was sent by Durer with the following commentary in an accompanying letter: "but in regard to the dance of the monkeys which you asked me to draw, I am sending you an awkward sketch, for I have not been able to see monkeys in a long time." 34 The exaggerated poses and gestures appear to mimic a human dance, with 10.11 Albrecht Durer, Twelve Monkeys Dancing, 31 x 23 em, pen and ink drawing, 1523, Offentliche Kunstsammlung Basel. From Colin Eisler, Durer's Animals (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996) 226 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY one dominant monkey holding aloft a mirror and a piece of fruit as he dances before a small steaming caldron, leading the other 11 gathered around him in a circle. The central figure may have suggested the hegelein, the master of ceremonies who guided the dancers at wedding receptions in the Nuremberg city hall. 35 Disjunctively, the caldron, frenetic motions, and display of nudity are reminiscent of representations of a witch's Sabbath; but the individual monkeys appear both childlike and pet-like. We cannot know the appearance of the monkeys Durer purchased. They remained in the household and workshop for less than two years. Durer's wish to possess such creatures must at least in part fall in line with his appetite for experiencing the exotic and the unusual as well as his concern for determining the common and conventional, reflected in his studies of proportions for human men and women as well as for horses. The lust and curiosity for an unknown Other that so resembled the self and yet lived on another distant continent must have provided a strong desire to view the creature at close range, including its habits, movements, and temperament. On the one hand, little separates these delightful furry creatures from their counterparts, the legendary hairy wild men and wild women, who were likewise idealized and envied for their ways of life unhampered by social controls. And yet, monkeys appear in the diminutive and must have seemed strikingly childlike, free to be infantile, in need of protection, and always open to the delighted or amused gaze of their guardians. The names of these animals in early modern German, which suggested they were somehow related to cats or dogs, likewise conjured up notions of domestication and daily companionship-dependent animals, who could, full of needs and wants, gaze back at their human patrons and protectors. Thus certainly there were real apes and monkeys, some of whom lived as captives in Nuremberg around the time the Geese Book was illuminated. Elsner included two different varieties in the acanthus tendrils (Figs. 10.7, 10.8). An abundance of wild animals made their homes in the imperial forests that surrounded Nuremberg during the time the Geese Book was made and used. These included some wolves and, of course, foxes. By the early sixteenth century, the European wolf population was in great decline. Not only the victims of unending persecution but also suffering from a reduction of their habitat and competition for their sources of sustenance, wolves were still feared and hated but no longer abundant. 36 In Ullman Stromer's fourteenth-century chronicle, the famous Nuremberg patrician merchant and paper manufacturer reports on civic bounties for wolves, from which he calculates that between 16 and 32 wolves were killed in one quarter of a year in 1377 when the hunters were remunerated by the city. 37 According to later accounts, wolves were still known to inhabit the forests around Nuremberg into the mid-seventeenth century when premiums were offered for killing them and for surrendering their pelts. Purportedly the last wolf in the area was brought down in 1679. 38 Carine Schleif 227 Perhaps the most common connection between real animals and liturgy concerned chickens. A usual form of support for altar prebends was the donation of one or more chickens at prescribed dates every year. 39 These were contributed from farms or estates in the villages outside of the city. In some respects the custom harkened back to related feudal practices that required tithes or other obligations for ecclesiastical institutions. In urban communities of the late Middle Ages, agricultural products and commodities had usually been replaced by interest paid on capital deposited in a municipal treasury, which subsidized the prebend or paid clergy and choirboys to perform specially endowed liturgies on chosen feast days or saints' days. However, chickens often remained as a vestige of earlier practices. By the time of the Geese Book, this form of gift exchange had largely symbolic character-but not for the real chickens, of course. The so-called Jastnachtshennen-Shrove Tuesday hens-provided meat for festive carnival banquets. They were delivered prior to Lent, the six weeks in spring during which neither meat nor eggs were to be eaten. Needless to say, this practice obviated any outlay for the sustenance of these fowl during a period when their existence had no immediate value. Similarly the herbsthii.hner-autumn chickens-had reached a point in their lives when it seemed expedient to consume them rather than to allow them to consume food through the winter when few eggs were laid, including the four weeks of Advent when eggs were not eaten. Many of the donors who had established prebends that supported altars in the church of St. Lorenz and/ or liturgies in the Geese Book were obligated to give one or more of these fowl to the cleric who presided over the altar, lived from the income of the prebend, and celebrated the endowed festival Masses. These arrangements took the form of encumbrances on farms or estates, and they were intended to endure for all eternity. Interestingly, account records have survived for the prebend at the St. Nicholas altar in the church of St. Lorenz, which was held by Friedrich Rosendorn, the scribe who compiled the Geese Book and was occupied writing it until his death in 1507. These detailed sources show that the 10 farms or estates that were obligated to subsidize the prebend provided agricultural products that included set amounts of grain, bread, and cheese, a certain number of eggs and geese as well as a total of 15 Shrove Tuesday hens and 16 autumn chickens every year. 40 In the bas-de-page illumination for Christmas, the singers witnessed a fox chasing a rooster, with a hen perched in the tendril nearby (Fig. 10.12). Elsner's rendering of all three shows that he was well acquainted with the appearance of them as real animals. Time and space permitting, one could explore all the real animals of early sixteenth-century Nuremberg who correspond to the depicted animals in the Geese Book illuminations. For our purposes, however, the rather random selection provided above will suffice to show that such animals as inhabit the Geese Book existed as real animals who lived, worked, and died under very particular circumstances as they coexisted historically with human animals. 10.12 Jakob Elsner, Third Mass for Christmas Day, bas-de-page showing a fox stalking a rooster and a hen, Geese Book, 1510, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 905, vol. 1, fol. 22r ("Opening the Geese Book," online facsimile) Corine Schleif 229 Who are the Animals in the Geese Book Supposed to Be? Art historians and other scholars of the early modern period are accustomed to look for the sign value of images. Disguised symbolism, in which represented objects ordinarily found in everyday environments are believed to carry intentional additional (that is, "hidden") meanings beyond the banal definitions that connected them with their immediate contexts, is indeed the province of Northern Renaissance art, ever since this concept was invented in order to open discourses pertaining to conventions in fifteenth-century painting in Northern EuropeY But unlike the dog in the "Arnolfini Wedding/' the dogs and other animals in the Geese Book bas-de-page pictures are not explicable in any superficial context. Dogs have no common-sense explanation, scampering as they chase a hare (Fig. 10.4) or confront a cat (Fig. 10.5) among acanthus tendrils that frame the Mass chants and texts. The dog who appears in the domestic interior of the "Arnolfini Wedding" portrayed by Jan van Eyck could have certainly stood on the floor accompanying the couple in a bed chamber, but a sixteenth-century monkey did not usually play bagpipes (Fig. 10.7). These bas-de-page images sprang from a much older discursive context. Since at least the thirteenth century, humorous, absurd, or even obscene animal imagery frequently inhabited the margins of psalters, books of hours, and other devotional literature. Long taken as independent, decorative distraction or comic reliet this imagery has more recently been shown by Madeline Caviness and Michael Camille to be replete with meanings beyond humor for its own sake. 42 Veristically rendered in the Geese Book with all of the current conventions for optically correct projections, living animals are depicted on the flat parchment surfaces, becoming even more persuasive as mirrors of truths expressed through familiar natural nonhuman animal exemplars-wild, companion, colonized, or in combination. Even the wild folk and dragon appear to be members of the natural world. In some cases the bas-de-page depictions are closer to the traditions of medieval marginalia than others. For example, when the animals' activities, garments, or accessories belong to the sphere of the human they create jarringly imaginative fantasies approaching the bizarre and the lewd of earlier manuscripts. In the sixteenth century, the effect is perhaps more disruptive. Optically viewers are informed that because the scene is rendered realistically it could be-but the beholder knows experientially that it cannot be. This juxtaposition called attention to the rhetorical act of signifying. The use of these conventions of reproducing optical reality for scenes that do not exist in reality provided a very powerful tool. In her analysis of literary portrayals of medieval animals, Joyce Salisbury stresses that "animals are humanized and humans are animalized." 43 For the early sixteenth-century beholder, the disjuncture that animals were not human and humans were not to be animal must have stung with new potency. These pictures were meant to appeal directly to the specific audience that used the Geese Book. Unmistakably many of the whimsical depictions were 230 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY 10.13 Jakob Elsner, bas-depage showing a bear playing viol and a swine singing, Geese Book, 1510, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 905, vol. 2, fol. 88r ("Opening the Geese Book," online facsimile) self-referential. The choir of schoolboys and young clerics who sang from the two volumes were intended to identify with the animals- but not necessarily to emulate them. Scattered throughout the books are depictions of music making. The only positive model, however, is that of the music-making angels on the feast of Corpus Christi. Three other satirical antimodels would have quickly caught the attention of the singers and lingered in their memories. On the feast of St. Lawrence, the church's titular patron, the Psalm verse "Sing unto the Lord a new song, Sing unto the Lord all the Earth" (Ps. 95:1) is illustrated with a bear playing accompaniment on a viola da gamba while a swine, who having set aside his prestigious shawm, sings from a score he holds in his hand (Fig. 10.13). Indeed he intones a "new song," one written in mensural notation to indicate rhythm. It is worth remarking that according to the brief biography by Johannes Neudorfer, Elsner himself played the lute and therefore would have been well acquainted various forms of musical notation.44 On the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, the verse from Psalm 45:1 proclaims "My heart overflows with a good theme." The bagpipe-playing ape in the tendrils below (Fig. 10.7) may present a playful misreading of the Latin verb "eructavit," which could likewise refer to belching out vapors or spitting up. Bagpipes were instruments of the peasantry, sonorous in acoustic tone and lewd in visual overtone. Lasciviously the ape's gaze meets that of the viewer. His bagpipes, matching the brown tones of his own hide, appear to grow out of his groins as he steadies them between his thighs. The monkey's shoulders are covered with a short red cape that presents a carnivalesque version of a cleric's almuce of squirrel or marten pelts. The creature appears smug and confident in his sexuality. Certainly the artist was not at liberty Carine Schleif 231 to fashion the same degree of cartoon-like manipulations as were the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century illuminators. Camille called attention to the "drooping drone of the testicular bagpipe" when an illuminator showed the pipe hanging limply down the margin next to five lines of text. 45 Such images, whether intentional misreadings or mockings of the very purpose of the gradual, could also serve instructional ends. The humans were not meant to ape the ape, who was in a sense aping them. The provocative illustration showing the choir of geese (Fig. 10.1), which since the nineteenth century has been used to identify and name this book, likewise combines self-reflexivity, absurdity, and obscenity within its animalized content. Here the codex appears to exhibit an image of itself, which is both tied to its real context and alienated from it. Those peering into the large volumes were singers and would have seen themselves somehow mirrored here in this image in the lower margin. A wooden music stand much like the one pictured has stood in St. Lorenz since the fifteenth century. Of course similar allegories having like casts of animal characters- geese, wolves, foxes-abound. Often occurring in liturgical manuscripts, as misericords and elsewhere on choirstalls, these antimodels were meant primarily for those who could view them in these places-choirboys, cantors, and clergy. 46 Ambrose, in categorizing animals as either wild or domestic, had asserted that just as God controlled wild animals, humans controlled the tame. 47 Of particular influence throughout the Middle Ages was the Ethymologias by Isidore of Seville who, in his lists with definitions, first considered utilitarian animals, followed by large predators and finally by an assortment of small animals including fish and birds. 48 The bestiaries of the high Middle Ages seldom included domestic animals but rather the untamed creatures of nature full of vigorous and diverse energies. In this bas-de-page as well as several others, the domestic are confronted by the wild. In the illumination with the geese, Elsner employed several general animal topoi. The wolf is clothed in the apparel of a scholar, thus reminiscent of the admonition in Matthew 7:15 to avoid false prophets-wolves in sheep's clothing. The wolf was the animal most frequently included in courtly literature, in which he could signify a wide range of characteristics: authority, strength, danger, stubborn intransigence, inarticulateness, or muteness. The second carnivore is the wily fox, who is about to snatch a goose, or to mount a goose-in plain sight of the wolf. The fox, slightly smaller than the wolf, asserts his high status through his cunning and wit. In literature, for example in the tale of Reinecke or Reynard Fox, the figure of the fox was multivalent; he could be a sympathetic creature.49 In the Geese Book his gesture exhibits duplicity-nearness and intimacy with the intention of exploitation. The seven geese appear to react in unison to the wolf's direction; attuned to their singing they are unaware of the impending danger of the fox. Geese, inscribed as naive and gullible, were blamed for their own victimization. Pictures showing singers gathered around a single large choirbook bear uncanny similarities that help to explain the illumination's signification. 10.14 The Celebration of Christmas Mass at the Sainte Chapelle, Paris, from the Tres Riches Heures du Due de Berry (Ms. 65/1284 fol. 158r) by Jean Colombe, late fifteenth century, vellum. Courtesy of the Musee Conde, Chantilly, France I The Bridgeman Art Library Carine Schleif 233 For example, a late fifteenth-century illumination by Jean Colombe for the Christmas Mass in the Tres Riches Heures du Due de Berry shows significant body contact among choir members (Fig. 10.14). One singer places his hand on the upper arm of another, one touches another on the back, one even rests his chin on his neighbor's shoulder. 50 Such practices facilitated synchronized breathing and diction as well as unified intonation-all of utmost importance in plainchant. Thus one can easily imagine how this closely cooperative setting might be exploited by an abuser. Madeline Caviness has demonstrated the ways in which prayer books were commissioned and designed with marginal warnings for the young brides who were their intended owners.51 Might the designers of the Geese Book image have wanted the cantor to see himself in the wolf and to be warned against assuming abusive authority? Might the fashioners of the picture have wanted younger clerics who assumed positions in the choir while awaiting a clerical prebend to see a warning against the temptation to employ duplicity and intrigue in attaining an ecclesiastical position? Might the masterminds of the depiction have wished it as a warning for the young schoolboys against credulousness and gullibility, or as a cautionary allegory that they never relinquish their vigilance in the face of those who would abuse their power? An incident that had occurred in Nuremberg only three or four years before work had begun on the Geese Book provides valuable historical background. The choirboys of St. Lorenz, like choirboys elsewhere, received their general education, Latin instruction, and musical training in the church school, for which the cantor served as teacher and schoolmaster. In 1500 the oppressive authority of a new and unpopular schoolmaster led to an open rebellion of the students at the other Nuremberg parish school of St. Sebald. The pupils had armed themselves and used the school building as a stronghold. A chronicle reports that city guards stormed the premises "sword in hand" only to find that the students had escaped through the back door. 52 Resistance to authority might have likewise been the order of the day on yet another level. The Geese Book presented the newly collated and festively codified liturgy of St. Lorenz, differing in some important ways from the standard unified liturgy of the Bamberg diocese. 53 When those clerical and lay officials of Nuremberg who authorized the making of the manuscript saw the geese at the mercy of a big bad wolf and wily fox, they may have thought of themselves under the powerful sway of the bishop of Bamberg, who had persisted in imposing episcopal hegemony, not only by having missals printed that imposed a unified diocesan liturgy, which neglected Nuremberg's important saintly patrons, but also by their past practice of appointing unwanted provosts to head the parish church of St. Lorenzprovosts who were not attuned to local Nuremberg interests. Like the fox, some provosts and clerics while assuming their roles in Nuremberg persisted in collusive endeavors with the diocesan authorities. Many of the marginal animal scenes are ambiguous and ambivalent. Is the dog playful or vicious? Is the fox friend or foe? Indeed the many bas-de- 234 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY page scenes that show a chase or incidents of ensnarement are all open-ended with respect to their outcome. Who would prevail? Who would succumb? Who would heed the warnings? This consistent rhetorical strategy facilitates multiple readings and abundant identificational possibilities. Who are the animals supposed to be? Answer: potentially any viewer/reader/singer. Synthesis So how might all three categories of animals in the Geese Book come together? I would observe that all three shed light on each other. The signifying aspects of the illuminations that appealed to humans, hailing them to identify with animals as positive or negative models, likewise betray the ways that real animals lived, and were perceived, constructed, and treated by humans. Without animals the Geese Book would not exist. David Cressy and Erica Fudge assert rightfully that "there is no such thing as a purely human society." 54 Who, then, are the animals in the Geese Book? They are certainly the calves, geese, and pigs from whom it was made. Notions of identity are complex and, as Jacques Derrida has so thoughtfully suggested, they can involve sentiments of being, but also active and even aggressive pursuits. The choirboys and clergy were not to "follow after" the gullible geese or the lewd ape. 55 But they could use the quills of the geese to soar with their songs. Of course we will never know exactly whom the incorporated images were patterned aftershort-lived captive monkeys kept by neighbors, the much-feared wolves in the Nuremberg imperial forest, one of the working cats for whom Anton Kress purchased milk? Did the geese remind the schoolboys of St. Lorenz of themselves as they sang from these big books, and were they reminded of other schoolboys at St. Sebald and their abusive choirmaster? Did the wolf remind the Nuremberg clergy of the Bamberg bishop, did the duplicitous fox call those clergy to mind who had been appointed by the bishop? We will never know. But, the animals were somebody. Without the real animal actors neither the book nor the depictions nor any interpretations would have been possible. Thus in sum we might conclude that the animals in the Geese Book are the animals of which it is made, also the real animals present in and around Nuremberg and elsewhere before and after the book was made, and also the human animals who could identify with the other animals as their signifiers. Notes 1 Volker Schier and Corine Schleif, "Opening the Geese Book," at http:// geesebook.asu.edu. I wish to thank Volker Schier and Pia Cuneo for their helpful comments on early drafts of this article. 2 Erica Fudge, "A Left-Handed Blow: Writing the History of Animals," in Representing Animals, ed. Nigel Rothfels (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 1-25; Erica Fudge, "Introduction," in Renaissance Beasts (Urbana Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 1-18; Erica Fudge, "The History Carine Schleif 235 of Animals," Ruminations 1/25 (May 2006), at http://www.h-net.org/-animal/ ruminations_fudge.html. For an overview of the history, current debates, methodologies, and terminology in studies revolving around animals and society that have influenced this essay see Mieke Roscher, "Human-Animal Studies," Version: 1.0, in Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 25. 1. 2012, https:/I docupedia.de/zg/Human-Animal_Studies?oldid=81479, accessed 25 Jan. 2012. 3 For a discussion of these practices, see the posts under the string "Query: use of 'who' (rather than 'that' or 'which') for non-humans" as well as "Now ... how about 'gender'?" archived for 2012 on the H-net Animals list site at http://h-net. msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=lm&list=H-Animal. See also George Jacobs, "Extending the Circle of Compassion to Include Nonhuman Animals: The Case of the Use of Who in Dictionaries, Works on Grammar, and Publication Manuals, and by Newspapers and News Agencies," Language and Ecology (2004), at www. ecoling.net/articles. 4 Nuremberg, Stadtbibliothek, Amb. 217 2, vol. 1, fol. 34v; http://www. nuernberger-hausbuecher.de/75-Amb-2-317-34-v/data; Das Hausbuch der Mendelschen Zwolfbriiderstiftung zu Niirnberg, ed. Wilhelm Treue et al. (Munich: Brockmann, 1965), Text, 117-18; Die Nurnberger Hausbiicher: Die schonsten Handwerkerbilder aus dem Mittelalter, eds. Christine Sauer and Elisabeth Strather (Leipzig: Reprint Verlag, 2012). 5 Vera Trost, Scriptorium (Heidelberg: Universitat Heidelberg, 1989), 6-8; Michael Gullick, "From Parchmenter to Scribe: Some Observations on the Manufacture and Preparation of Medieval Parchment Based upon a Review of the Literary Evidence," in Pergament, Geschichte, Struktur, Restaurierung und Herstellung Heute, ed. Peter Ruck (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1991), 145-57. Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscripts (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 9-13. 6 Elisabeth Remak-Honnef and Inge Neske, "Object, Codicological Analysis," in Schier and Schleif, "Opening the Geese Book/' at http://geesebook.asu.edu. 7 Theophili, qui et Rugerus ... Libri III, De Diversis Artibus, ed. R. Hendrie (London: Johannes Murray, 1847), 281. 8 Kevin Crossley-Holland, The Exeter Book Riddles (London: Enitharmon Press, 2008), 46. 9 Janet Backhouse, The Lindisfarne Gospels (London: Phaidon, 1994), 27; Snyder's Medieval Art, 2nd ed., ed. Henry Luttikhuizen and Dorothy Verkerk (Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006), 146. 10 Marcus Beling, "Der Korper als Pergament der Seele: Gedachtnis, Schrift und Korperlichkeit bei Mechthild von Magdeburg und Heinrich Seuse," in Korper mit Geschichte: Der menschliche Korper als Ort der Selbst- und Weltdeutung, ed. Clemens Wischermann and Stefan Haas (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2000), 109-32. 11 Klaus Schreiner, '" ... wie Maria geleicht einem puch,' Beitrage zur Buchmetaphorik des hohen und spaten Mittelalters," Archiv fiir Geschichte des Buchwesens 11 (1971), 1437-64. 12 Sarah Noonan, "Bodies of Parchment: Representing the Passion and Reading Manuscripts in Late Medieval England" (2010), Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Paper 262, at http.//openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd/262; Michael Camille, "The Book as Flesh and Fetish in Richard de Bury's Philobiblon," in The Book and the Body, eds. Dolores Warwick Frese and Katherine O'Brien O'Keefe (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 34-77. 236 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY 13 Andrew Taylor, Textual Situations. Three Medieval Manuscripts and their Readers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 197-208. 14 Nuremberg, Staatsarchiv, Rep 165 a, Fiirstentum Ansbach, Oberamtsakten, no. 117, fol. 74; Schier and Schleif, "Opening the Geese Book," 9 videos, "Friedrich Rosendorn," at http://geesebook.asu.edu. 15 John Berger, "Why Look at Animals?" in About Looking (New York: Vintage, 1977), 3-88. 16 Urbana Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 2008. 17 Schier and Schleif, "Opening the Geese Book," 9 videos, "Sixtus Tucher," at http://geesebook.asu.edu. 18 I wish to thank my student Susan Anderson for discussions on this issue and several others that are included in this paper. See Susan Anderson, "Mirrors and Fears: Humans in the Bestiary" (MA thesis, Arizona State University, 2014). 19 Johannes Miillner, Die Annalen der Reichsstadt Nurnberg von 1623. Teil III: 1470-1544, ed. Michael Diefenbacher with the assistance of Walter Gebhardt (Nuremberg: Stadtarchiv, 2003), 459; Johann Christian Siebenkees, Materialien zur Nuernberger Geschichte, vol. 1 (Nuremberg: A.G. Schneider Kunst- und Buchhandlung, 1792), 376; M.M. Mayer, Der Nurnberger Geschichts- Kunst- und Alterthumsfreund 1 (1842), 38. 20 Riiume, Gesten, Andachtsformen: Geschlecht, Konflikt und religiose Kultur im europiiischen Mittelalter (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2005), 49. 21 For comparative and diachronic information as well as analysis of official positions on domestic animals in early modern German cities, see Barbara Rajkay, "Hunde in der Kirche, Schweine auf den Gassen," in Umweltgeschichte in der Region, eds. Rolf KieBling and Wolfgang Scheffknecht (Constance: Universitatsverlag Konstanz, 2012), 317-52. 22 Claude Levi-Strauss, Totemism (Boston MA: Beacon, 1963); Arnold Arluke, Just a Dog (Philadelphia PA: Temple University Press, 2006), 183-203. 23 Ernst Mummenhoff, "Die KettenstOcke und andere Sicherheitsmassnahmen im alten Niirnberg," Mitteilungen des Vereins fur Geschichte der Stadt Nurnberg 13 (1899), 1-52, esp. 48; Walter Bauernfeind, "Hundeschlager," in Stadtlexikon Nurnberg, eds. Michael Diefenbacher and Rudolf Endres (Nuremberg: Tiimmels, 1999), 466. 24 Die Chroniken der friinkischen Stiidte, Nurnberg, vol. 5, ed. Karl von Hegel (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1874), 705. 25 Paradise, at http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/anderson/commentaries/Amb. html-glossGen3:17,Gen3:18, accessed 26 October 2012; Joyce E. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 1994), 14. 26 Nuremberg, Stadtarchiv, B 5 II, fol. 89v. 27 "It is grey in color like that of frozen ice. This is its natural color and it has others as a result of the accidental traits in its food, especially the domestic cat." Albertus Magnus, On Animals: A Medieval Summa Zoologica, trans. and ann. Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. and Irven Michael Resnick (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), vol. 2, 1469. I wish to thank Susan Anderson for bringing this reference to my attention. Carine Schleif 237 28 Benedict Greiff, "Lucas Rem: Tagebuch aus den Jahren 1494-1541. Ein Beitrag zur Handelsgeschichte der Stadt Augsburg," Jahresbericht des Historischen KreisVereins von Schwaben und Neuburg 26 (1861), 1-110, esp. 31; Karl Otto Miller, Deutsche Handelsakten des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1962), 290, 291, 297, 298. 29 The entry reads: "Jch hab 4 goldgulden fiir mehr kaczlein geben." Rupprich understood the meaning as plural. See Durers schriftlicher Nachlass, vol. 1, ed. Hans Rupprich (Berlin: Deutscher Verein fiir Kunstwissenschaft, 1956), 164. Janson, reading the entry in the Leitschuh edition ("Ich hab vier goldgulden fiir Mehrkatzlein geben"), also took it as a plural and interpreted it to mean two. See Friedrich Leitschuh, Albrecht Durer's Tagebuch der Reise in die Niederliinde (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1884), 72; and H.W. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (London: Warburg Institute, 1952), 271. Unverfehrt believed it to refer to a single animal: see Gerd Unverfehrt, Da sah ich viel kostliche Dinge: Albrecht Durers Reise in die Niederlande (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 141. 30 Durers schriftliche Nachlass, 154, 157; Unverfehrt, Da sah ich viel kostliche Dinge, 49, 78, 83, 141, 219, 220. 31 Unverfehrt, Da sah ich viel kostliche Dinge, 141; Gisela Goldberg, "Albrecht Di.irers Wittenberger Marienaltar und die Erlanger Cranach-Zeichnungen," in Cranach: Meisterwerke aufVorrat: Die Erlanger Handzeichnungen der Universitiitsbibliothek. Bestands- und Ausstellungskatalog, ed. Andreas Tacke (Erlangen: Universitatsbibliothek, 1994), 67-80. 32 Rainer Schoch, Matthias Mende, and Anna Scherbaum, Albrecht Durer: Das graphische Werk, vol. 1 (Munich: Prestel, 2001), 70-72. 33 Campbell Dodgson, "A Sheet of Studies by Durer," in Burlington Magazine, 30 (1917), 231-32; Friedrich Winkler, Die Zeichnungen Albrecht Durers, vol. 4 (Berlin: Deutsche Verlag fiir Kunstwissenschaft, 1939), 40-41; Friedrich Winkler, Leben und Werk (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1957), 309-11; Drawings from the Clark Institute, ed. Charles Talbot et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), vol. 1, 5-7; Fritz Koreny, Albrecht Durer und die Tier- und Pflanzenstudien der Renaissance, exh. cat., Albertina, Vienna (Munich: Prestel, 1985), 166-69; Colin Eisler, Durer's Animals (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press 1996), 262. 34 Trans. in Eisler, Durer's Animals, 262. See also Winkler, Die Zeichnungen Albrecht Durers, vol. 4, no. 927; and Janson, Apes and Ape Lore, 271-72. 35 Corine Schleif and Volker Schier, Katerina's Windows (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 32. 36 Aleksander Pluskowski, Wolves and Wilderness in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006). 37 Die Chroniken der friinkischen Stiidte: Nurnberg, vol. 1 (1862), 290. 38 Georg Truckenbrodt, Nachrichten zur Geschichte der Stadt Nurnberg, vol. 2 (Nuremberg: Verlag der Stiebnerischen Buchdruckerei, 1786), 148; Johann Bernhard Fischer, Statistische und topographische Beschreibung des Burggrafentums Nurnberg unterhalb des Gebirgs, vol. 1 (Ansbach: Benedict Friederich Haueisen, 1790), 222. 39 "Herbsthuhn" in Deutsches Rechtsworterbuch, at http://www.rzuser.uniheidelberg.de/-cd2/drw/e/he/rbst/huhn/herbsthuhn.htm, accessed 15 September 2012. 238 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY 40 Nuremberg, Staatsarchiv, Reichsstadt Nbg. D Laden Akten, 1772/11. On Rosendorn and his prebend see Schier and Schleif, "Opening the Geese Book," 9 videos, "Rosendorn," at http://geesebook.asu.edu. 41 Erwin Panofsky is usually credited with the development of the notion of disguised symbolism. See his article "Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait," Burlington Magazine 64 (1934), 117- 19, 122-27. 42 Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 11-55; Madeline Caviness, "Reframing Medieval Art: Difference, Margins, Boundaries," esp. chs. 3 and 4, at http:/I nils.lib.tufts.edu/Caviness.html, accessed 20 October 2012. For a review of previous attitudes regarding the purportedly detached and decorative aspects of marginalia, see esp. Camille, Image on the Edge, 31, 161, and the literature cited. 43 Salisbury, The Beast Within. 44 Johannes Neudorfer, Nachrichten von den vornehmsten Kiinstlern und Werkleuten ... 1546, ed. Georg Lochner (Vienna, 1875), 139. 45 Camille, Image on the Edge, 32-35. 46 See, for example: Kenneth Varty, Reynard the Fox: A Study of the Fox in Medieval English Art (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1967); Malcolm Jones and Charles Tracy, "The Medieval Choir Stall Desk-End at Haddon Hall: The FoxBishop and the Geese Hangmen," Journal of the British Archaeological Association 144 (1991), 92-115. 47 Ambrose, Paradise, at http://www2.iath. virginia.edu/anderson/commentaries/ Amb.html#glossGen3:17,Gen3:18, accessed 26 October 2012; Salisbury, The Beast Within, 14. 48 Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, ed. Stephen Barney et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 247-70. 49 For bibliographies see http://www.arlima.net/qt/renart_roman.html; http:// www .arlima.net/eh/heinrich_ der_glichezaere.html; http://www .arlima.net/uz/ van_den_vos_reynaerde.html. 50 Chantilly, Musee Conde, Ms. lat. 1284, fol. 158r. For this and other examples see Edmund A. Bowles, Musikleben im 15. Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Deutscheverlag fiir Musik, 1977), 108-15. 51 Caviness, "Reframing Medieval Art," at http://nils.lib.tufts.edu/Caviness.html, esp. ch. 3, accessed 20 Oct. 2012. 52 Die Chroniken der friinkischen Stiidte, Niirnberg, vol. 5 (1874), photographic reproduction, Gottingen 1961), 619-20. 53 Volker Schier, "Tropi in ecclesia sancti laurentii in Nuremberg: Nurnberger Quellen fiir die Bamberger Tropenpraxis," in Neues Musikwissenschaftliches ]ahrbuch 7 (1998), 9-44. 54 Fudge, "Introduction," in Renaissance Beasts, 5-7. 55 Derrida plays with notions of je suis in the senses of "I am," "I am pursuing," and "I am following after." See Jacques Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I Am, trans. David Wills (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008). Corine Schleif 239 Bibliography ARCHIVAL SouRcEs AND MANUSCRIPTS Chantilly, Musee Conde, Ms. 65 fol. 158r. New York, Morgan M. 905, vols. 1, 2. Nuremberg, Staatsarchiv, Reichsstadt Nbg. D Laden Akten, 1772/II. Nuremberg, Staatsarchiv, Rep 165 a, Fiirstentum Ansbach, Oberamtsakten, no. 117, fol. 74. Nuremberg, Stadtbibliothek, Amb. 217 2, vol. 1, fol. 34v. PuBLISHED MATERIALS Albertus Magnus. On Animals: A Medieval Summa Zoologica, translated and annotated by Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. and Irven Michael Resnick. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Ambrose. Paradise. At http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/anderson/commentaries/Amb. html#glossGen3: 17,Gen3: 18. Anderson, Susan. "Mirrors and Fears: Humans in the Bestiary." MA thesis, Arizona State University, 2014. Arluke, Arnold. Just a Dog. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006. Backhouse, Janet. The Lindisfarne Gospels. London: Phaidon, 1994. Bauernfeind, Walter. "Hundeschlager." In Stadtlexikon Niirnberg, edited by Michael Diefenbacher and Rudolf Endres, 466. Nuremberg: Tiimmels, 1999. Beling, Marcus. "Der Korper als Pergament der Seele: Gedachtnis, Schrift und Korperlichkeit bei Mechthild von Magdeburg und Heinrich Seuse." In Korper mit Geschichte: Der menschliche Korper als Ort der Selbst- und Weltdeutung, edited by Clemens Wischermann and Stefan Haas, 109-32. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2000. Berger, John. "Why Look at Animals?" In About Looking, edited by John Berger, 3-88. New York: Vintage, 1977. Bowles, Edmund A. Musikleben im 15. Jahrhundert. Leipzig: Deutscheverlag fiir Musik, 1977. Camille, Michael. "The Book as Flesh and Fetish in Richard de Bury's Philobiblon." In The Book and the Body, edited by Dolores Warwick Frese and Katherine O'Brien O'Keefe, 34-77. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997. _ _ . Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Caviness, Madeline. "Reframing Medieval Art: Difference, Margins, Boundaries." At http://nils .lib. tufts.edu/Caviness.html. Clemens, Raymond and Timothy Graham. Introduction to Manuscripts. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. Die Chroniken der friinkischen Stiidte, Niirnberg, edited by Karl von Hegel. 5 vols. Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1862-74. In the series Die Chroniken der deutschen Stiidte vom 14. bis ins 16. Jahrhundert, edited by Karl von Hegel. Crossley-Holland, Kevin. The Exeter Book Riddles. London: Enitharmon Press, 2008. 240 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY Derrida, Jacques. The Animal that Therefore I Am, translated by David Wills. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Dodgson, Campbell. "A Sheet of Studies by Durer." Burlington Magazine 30 (1917): 231-32. Drawings from the Clark Institute, edited by Charles Talbot et al. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1964. Diirers schriftlicher Nachlass, edited by Hans Rupprich. Vol. 1. Berlin: Deutscher Verein fiir Kunstwissenschaft, 1956. Eisler, Colin. Durer's Animals. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996. Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, edited by Stephen Barney et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Fischer, Johann Bernhard. Statistische und topographische Beschreibung des Burggrafentums Niirnberg unterhalb des Gebirgs. Vol. 1. Ansbach: Benedict Friederich Haueisen, 1790. Fudge, Erica. "The History of Animals." Ruminations 1, 25 May 2006. At http:/I www.h-net.org/-animal/ruminations_fudge.html. Fudge, Erica. "Introduction." In Renaissance Beasts, edited by Erica Fudge, 1-18. Urbana Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Fudge, Erica. "A Left-Handed Blow: Writing the History of Animals." In Representing Animals, edited by Nigel Rothfels, 1-25. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. Goldberg, Gisela. "Albrecht Durers Wittenberger Marienaltar und die Erlanger Cranach-Zeichnungen." In Cranach: Meisterwerke aufVorrat: Die Erlanger Handzeichnungen der Universitiitsbibliothek. Bestands- und Ausstellungskatalog, edited by Andreas Tacke, 67-80. Erlangen: Universitatsbibliothek, 1994. Greiff, Benedict. "Lucas Rem: Tagebuch aus den Jahren 1494-1541. Ein Beitrag zur Handelsgeschichte der Stadt Augsburg." Jahresbericht des Historischen Kreis-Vereins von Schwaben und Neuburg 26 (1861): 1-110. Gullick, Michael. "From Parchmenter to Scribe: Some Observations on the Manufacture and Preparation of Medieval Parchment Based upon a Review of the Literary Evidence." In Pergament, Geschichte, Struktur, Restaurierung und Herstellung Heute, ed. Peter Ruck (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1991), 145-57. Das Hausbuch der Mendelschen Zwolfbriiderstiftung zu Niirnberg, edited by Wilhelm Treue et al. Munich: Bruckmann, 1965. "Herbsthuhn." In Deutsches Rechtsworterbuch. At http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg. de/-cd2/drwIe/he/rbst/huhn/herbsthuhn.htm. H-net Animal List. "Archives." At http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse. pl ?trx=lm&list=H-Animal. Hobgood-Oster, Laura. Holy Dogs and Asses: Animals in the Christian Tradition. Urbana Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 2008. Jacobs, George. "Extending the Circle of Compassion to Include Nonhuman Animals: The Case of the Use of Who in Dictionaries, Works on Grammar, and Publication Manuals, and by Newspapers and News Agencies." Language and Ecology (2004). At www.ecoling.net/articles. Carine Schleif 241 Janson, H.W. Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. London: Warburg Institute, 1952. Jones, Malcolm and Charles Tracy. "The Medieval Choir Stall Desk-End at Haddon Hall: The Fox-Bishop and the Geese Hangmen." Journal of the British Archaeological Association 144 (1991): 92-115. Koreny, Fritz. Albrecht Durer und die Tier- und Pflanzenstudien der Renaissance. Exh. cat. Albertina. Munich: Prestel, 1985. Leitschuh, Friedrich. Albrecht Durer's Tagebuch der Reise in die Niederliinde. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1884. Levi-Strauss, Claude. Totemism. Boston MA: Beacon, 1963. Mayer, M.M. Der Nurnberger Geschichts- Kunst- und Alterthumsfreund, 1 (1842). Miller, Karl Otto. Deutsche Handelsakten des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1962. Miillner, Johannes. Die Annalen der Reichsstadt Nurnberg von 1623, Teil III: 14701544, edited by Michael Diefenbacher with the assistance of Walter Gebhardt. Nuremberg: Stadtarchiv, 2003. Mummenhoff, Ernst. "Die Kettenstocke und andere Sicherheitsmassnahmen im alten Niirnberg." Mitteilungen des Vereins for Geschichte der Stadt Nurnberg 13 (1899): 1-52. Neudorfer, Johannes. Nachrichten von den vornehmsten Kunstlern und Werkleuten, edited by Georg Lochner. Vienna: Wilhelm Braumiiller, 1875. Noonan, Sarah. "Bodies of Parchment: Representing the Passion and Reading Manuscripts in Late Medieval England" (2010), Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Paper 262, at http.//openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd/262. Die Nurnberger Hausbucher: Die schonsten Handwerkerbilder aus dem Mittelalter, edited by Christine Sauer and Elisabeth Strather. Leipzig: Reprint Verlag, 2012. Panofsky, Erwin. "Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait." Burlington Magazine 64 (1934): 117-19, 122-27. Pluskowski, Aleksander. Wolves and Wilderness in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006. Rajkay, Barbara. "Hunde in der Kirche, Schweine auf den Gassen." In Umweltgeschichte in der Region, edited by Rolf KiefSling and Wolfgang Scheffknecht, 317-52. Constance: Universitatsverlag Konstanz, 2012. Remak-Honnef, Elisabeth and Inge Neske. "Opening the Geese Book: Codicological Description." At http:/Igeesebook.asu.ed u/ docs/Codicological %20description%20 English. pdf. Roscher, Mieke. "Human-Animal Studies." In Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte. At http:// docupedia.de/zg/Human-Animal_Studies. Salisbury, Joyce E. The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages. New York: Routledge, 1994. Schier, Volker. "Tropi in ecclesia sancti laurentii in nuremberg: Nurnberger Quellen fiir die Bamberger Tropenpraxis." Neues Musikwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 7 (1998): 9-44. Schier, Volker and Corine Schleif. "Opening the Geese Book." At http://geesebook. asu.edu. 242 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY Schleif, Corine, and Volker Schier. Katerina's Windows. Donation and Devotion, Art and Music as Heard and seen Through the Writings of a Birgittine Nun. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. Schoch, Rainer, Matthias Mende, and Anna Scherbaum. Albrecht Durer: Das graphische Werk. Vol. 1. Munich: Prestel, 2001. Schreiner, Klaus. "' ... wie Maria geleicht einem puch,' Beitrage zur Buchmetaphorik des hohen und spaten Mittelalters." Archiv fii.r Geschichte des Buchwesens 11 (1971): 1437-64. Siebenkees, Johann Christian. Materialien zur Nuernberger Geschichte. Vol. 1. Nuremberg: A. G. Schneider Kunst- und Buchhandlung, 1792. Signori, Gabriela. Riiume, Gesten, Andachtsformen: Geschlecht, Konflikt und religiose Kultur im europiiischen Mittelalter. Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2005. Snyder's Medieval Art. 2nd ed., edited by Henry Luttikhuizen and Dorothy Verkerk. Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006. Taylor, Andrew. Textual Situations. Three Medieval Manuscripts and their Readers. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Theophili, quiet Rugerus ... Libri III, De Diversis Artibus, edited by R. Hendrie. London: Johannes Murray, 1847. Trost, Vera. Scriptorium. Heidelberg: Universitat Heidelberg, 1989. Truckenbrodt, Georg. Nachrichten zur Geschichte der Stadt Niirnberg. Vol. 2. Nuremberg: Verlag der Stiebnerischen Buchdruckerei, 1786. Unverfehrt, Gerd. Da sah ich viel kostliche Dinge: Albrecht Diirers Reise in die Niederlande. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007. Varty, Kenneth. Reynard the Fox: A Study of the Fox in Medieval English Art. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1967. Winkler, Friedrich. Leben und Werk. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1957. __ . Die Zeichnungen Albrecht Diirers. Vol. 4. Berlin: Deutsche Verlag fi.ir Kunstwissenschaft, 1939.