Medieval Apocalyptic Art

The Hours of Isabella Stuart (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 62) is a stunning manuscript of232 decorated folios that includes, according to M. R. James, "no less than 528 figured subjects." 1 Produced in the workshop of the Rohan Master, three of its miniatures, including its Man of Sorrows ( ) that introduces the Seven Requests to Our Lord (fol. 199r), have been attributed to the famous, if elusive, artist himself. 2 Surprisingly, other than in usually brief discussions seeking to establish its place in the Rohan Master's reuvre, Fitzwilliam 62 has received little attention, and its extensive sequences of small images depicted within the outer decorated borders have gone unnoticed in most art historical analyses. 3 They are painted in lozenge-shaped frames when accompanying a large miniature, such as the Christ in judgment placed next to the Man of Sorrows , or in vertical rectangular frames attached to, but outside, the foliate bars that frame the central text of the book of hours (e.g., fol. 230v, ). The subjects of these small images are occasionally connected directly with the large miniatures illustrating the texts of the hours or with the supplementary devotional texts concluding the manuscript. But most of the border images comprise cycles of miniatures that seem unrelated to the devotional texts and, unaccompanied by any explanatory captions, they have resisted interpretation. Yet they are crucial components of the design and use of the Isabella Stuart Hours and must be examined in detail and in context in order to comprehend the manuscript's unique and effective "large order of the whole." 4 To do so, traditional word-image analysis in which manuscript illustrations are examined primarily in terms of their "source" texts needs to be expanded to consider how the extensive sequences of images could have been understood without accompanying descriptive, narrative, or explanatory texts. Although we need to be aware of the absent texts that first told the stories visualized by these images, our primary focus should be on their manuscript matrix in order to elucidate the structure of these fascinating pictorial narratives, their function within this complex book of hours, and their reception by the manuscript's first readers. This study focuses on four lengthy cycles of small miniatures placed within the decorated borders that frame Latin texts inscribed between the conclusion of the Studies in Iconography 28 -2007 © 2007 by the Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University

Mention: Due to copyright issues the published version is not uploadable. Instead, I make available here a draft version, not meant to be cited. Those interested in the published version please contact me by e-mail.

Abstract: "Montague Rhodes James wrote in 1931 in his introduction to his lectures on the Apocalypse in Art: ‘Those Christians of the early centuries who read the Apocalypse most and to whom it meant most were not of those who either wrote much or made great works of art. And those who could pay for beautiful sarcophagi or
handsome paintings on the walls of their burial places were not of those to whom the Apocalypse appealed.’ He concludes that for this reason, it is senseless to look for any ‘apocalyptic’ artworks until the appearance of the tentative illustrations in certain manuscripts of the eighth century or even better the real great Last Judgments from the eleventh-twelfth centuries on. But – going a step further: is there any reason at all to speak about
‘apocalyptic’ art? Could there ever be anything apocalyptic in art? This paper aims to show, that there is good reason to speak about an apocalyptic category in art history, and that its origins are to be found in the Book of Revelation. Exactly those Apocalypse-reading early Christians have prepared its later triumphal entrance into all the fields of artistic creation, by picking and consolidating those symbols and images, which eventually built up the thrilling apocalyptic iconography. As a result two kinds of apocalyptic tradition have formed over the times from the motifs of John’s Book of Revelation: one plastic-figurative line represented by the Last Judgments, and
another dramatic-narrative line of eschatological Antichrist- and Armageddon-stories, the former being representative in the Eastern churches and medieval times, while the latter are predominant in the art and culture of Western Christianity."

Mémoire présenté par :
Erwan MOREAU
en vue de l'obtention du diplôme de :
MASTER 2 RECHERCHE
Domaine : Sciences humaines et sociales
Mention : Ethnologie-Sociologie
Spécialité : SOCIOLOGIE
Préparé sous la direction de M. Jean Bruno RENARD, professeur de Sociologie
Juin 2014
Mention obtenue : très bien


Abstract (French) :

Le synonyme le plus proche du terme "monstre" est l'expression « contre-nature » (Aristote, Saint Augustin, Canguilhem, Lascault, Cuny Le Callet, Valton, etc.). Sentence paradoxale s'il en est quand on sait qu'au niveau biologique, il est entendu que rien de ce que produit la Nature ne peut voir le jour indépendamment du respect de ses lois et qu'il est le propre de l'imagination de pouvoir y créer des exceptions.

Mais parallèlement à la Nature, objet de la biologie et de la physique, se trouve une autre « nature » : la « connaissance ordinaire » (Aristote employait pour sa part le terme de « cours ordinaire », « ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ » en parlant du statut contre-nature du monstre), cette « chose que l'organisme construit dans le but de créer un ordre dans le flux de l'expérience »

Ainsi, tout monstre peut être traduit comme étant ce qui apparaît contraire à une  « connaissance ordinaire », à une réalité sensible, dans son acception la plus large, c'est-à-dire orientée vers l'esthétique (le plus couramment rattaché à une vision anthropocentrée) et/ou vers l'éthique (intolérance idéologique).

Aussi par le partage des affects que met en œuvre une communauté d'esprits (religieuse, laïque, révolutionnaire, impérialiste, etc.), des éléments « contre-nature » peuvent apparaître à un niveau macrosociologique. Éléments émergeant de l'esprit gnostique et de son succédané l'esprit dogmatique, chacun ayant pour spécificité de mettre en exergue le dualisme entre bien et mal, connaissance et ignorance les entraînant ainsi vers l'ère de la déliquescence, de la décadence, en somme vers les temps eschatologiques et leurs abominations monstrueuses.


Abstract (English) :

The best synonym for the word ‘monster’ is the expression ‘unnatural’’ (Aristote, Saint Augustin, Canguilhem, Lascault, Cuny Le Callet, Valton, etc.). That is a paradoxical sentence - if any - when we know that biologically speaking nothing produced by Nature can exist regardless of the respect of its laws. It is among the characteristics of imagination to create exceptions.

But parallel to the Nature as objet of biology and physic is another kind of ‘nature’: the ‘ordinary knowledge’. (Artistote named it the ‘ordinary course’ (ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ) to mention the unnatural aspect of monster), this ‘thing that is produced by the organism to create an order within the experience’s flow’.

Then any monster can be understood as what appears in contrary to an ‘ordinary knowledge’, a ‘sensitive reality’ in every sense, that is to say aesthetics- (mostly associated to an anthropocentred vision) and/or ethicspositioned (ideological intolerance).

And the sharing of affections made by a minds’ community (religious, lay, revolutionary or imperialist, etc.) can reveal some ‘unnatural’ elements at the level of macrosociology. Elements that are emerging from the Gnostic spirit and its substitute: the dogmatic spirit. Each specifically brings out the dualism between good and evil, knowledge and ignorance that leads towards the decay, decline age - in other words towards eschatological times and their monstrous abominations.