“Give and Ye Shall Receive” at the Getty

Today I had an amazing day at the Getty previewing their newest upcoming exhibition that will open just in time for the holidays on December 16, “Give and Ye Shall Receive: Gift Giving in the Middle Ages.” If you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed my mini flurry of tweets and pictures from the presentation, but here is a more in-depth look at some of the beautiful works you can see during the exhibit. I am personally super excited about going back and seeing the full array of manuscripts and pieces of manuscripts once they are officially on display. (Note: yes, the Getty knows I am posting all of these fabulous images).

The presentation was guided by Christine Sciacca, curator of manuscripts, and this exhibit specifically. She recently, as in a few days ago, went to retrieve some of the works that will be on display, and after brief introductions dove right in (because there is never enough time to really talk about manuscripts).

Gift giving in the Middle Ages functioned as a means of establishing connections, but the ubiquitous practice had far broader connotations than are immediately perceivable to a modern audience. Aside from obvious gift giving occasions, gifts were also considered a form of exchange and functioned within an economic medium. This latter definition further expanded the language of gift giving, and added nuanced understandings of how the objects operated – much of which has become ambiguous to us today. The idea of reciprocation comes to mind, and with it questions about the power relations involved, if any. However, before I turn this into a pseudo-anthropological discussion on the economy of gift exchange that perhaps strays too far from the intentions of this post, let’s return to the Getty exhibition.

A very popular gift during the medieval period was the book due to the arduous work that went into producing it (making it all the more valuable), but also the ease with which it could be customized and/or personalized. While looking at the several manuscripts and manuscript leaves today, a point I found most interesting was the disparity of the materials, from their various uses to the roles they played within the practice of gift giving. Sometimes these roles were obvious, as one book will shortly demonstrate, while at other times far more research needs to be conducted to discover how the manuscript fits into the gifting tradition.

The first item we began with was a choir book from the late 13th century. As Christine reiterated during the presentation, medieval book size was often indicative of purpose, and a choir book, generally used by multiple people simultaneously, could get rather large. As each book has its own purpose, quirks, and identifying points, one of the most intriguing things about choir books (and antiphonaries) is their combination of music, text, and images, the latter of which serve as quick reference points for the different sections. While the period of this choir book occurred well before the heyday of similar works, which is generally considered the thirteenth century, it is an extremely beautiful and well detailed manuscript.

Here is a picture of the choir book in question that was most likely created in Bologna:

First, my poor picture taking skills will hopefully drive everyone to see the actual exhibit, because this obviously doesn’t do it justice. However, on this particular page the initial C that measures about my entire hand spread out, is illustrated with the image of St. Nicholas handing gold coins to a father who is in desperate need for a dowry for this two daughters (the tiny figures features in the top windows of the house) lest he be forced to send them into prostitution. Appropriately we viewed this manuscript on December 6th, the day of St. Nicholas. Even though this has nothing to do with the Getty, should you wish to read more about St. Nicholas, or view similar representations of him providing dowries to fathers, you can read about his tradition here, his connection to Sinterklaas here, and a Nation Geographic representation here.

Choir books were often even larger than the desk sized one of the previous image as can be seen from the cut out here:

This is an initial K in a choir book from the mid fifteenth century from a cathedral in Seville, and the art tells us that is was worked on by the Master of the Cypresses (behind the female figure you can see his well known cypress trees). Among the many works attributed to this artist are over twenty mutilated choir books. Several of them are missing pages, and some have nothing but a few pages left even though the reasons for the various conditions of these manuscripts vary. Some were probably just lost over time, while some pages were taken out, or cut out, to accommodate newer versions of music. Such destructions of art appear unfathomable to us today, but at their time these manuscripts fulfilled necessary functions and changes were necessary.

The figure in the center is the female embodiment of Charity, or Caritas as she is here named in Latin. Her robes are extremely ornate in gold, with fur linings on her coat. Here she is the embodiment of her name, characteristically endowing those in need, like the beggar to her left, with a gold coin, while brandishing the cross in her right hand, very clearly linking Christ’s sacrifice to charity that must be passed forward among humans. Interestingly the cross is connected to a string that travels into Charity’s heart, and then the same string resurfaces and is affixed to the poor man to her left. While this depicts proper Christian conduct, and serves as a reminder of how we must behave to those who have less than us, I can’t help but also read it in a more cynical light where gift giving explicitly has strings attached, drawing attention to the duality inherent in gift exchanges.

The ornamented lower border, Christine mentioned, would be a running motif of this exhibition, as a reminder of the complexity of gift giving. It will be done in all gold, and should be quite the sight.

Before moving away from the choir books, to demonstrate the laborious process of using them on a regular basis, Christine showed us a picture from one of her recent trips that depicts a book stand for such incredibly large books.

This is an iphone photo I took of the photo she showed us on her tablet, so the glare and twice removed nature of it makes it difficult to see the details, but it is a very large contraption designed to hold multiple of these books, one on each of the ledge-like structures along each face, or flat surface.

The next work we looked at was part of a larger collection, and on display were four leaves of a British Book of Hours from the late fourteenth century which have finally been brought together. Several more exist, but their whereabouts are currently unknown, and efforts are underway to locate them.

These come from different sources, such as the one on the bottom left of St. Nicholas reviving a youth that comes from the Berger Collection at the Denver Art Museum.

What typically stands out from these pages most, however, is the almost overbearing presence of heraldic representations. Heraldry is not my forte, but from what I gleaned from the conversation in the room, the language of heraldry acts as a barrier to deciphering it. Each color scheme (not even taking into account how colors in manuscript inks have often changed), each symbol, and so forth, exist within their own semantic world guided by elaborate rules. For a better understanding of heraldry, should you be curious, you can visit these notes on medieval English genealogy. In short, before decoding anyone’s coat of arms, the code of how these symbols were categorized must be learned, and from them can be found provenance, and even perhaps the reasoning behind a manuscript’s creation.

The numerous coats of arms that adorn almost every single page offer innumerable pieces of information about this manuscript, but for our purposes here, I will only focus on two things. It was likely created under patronage. While it probably acted as a gift, and as was mentioned during the talk, these symbols most feasibly broadcasted a union between families, it also hinted at the economic transaction built into the system of patronage. Even if the final gift was without expectations of reciprocation, the process undertaken to create this work extends into questions of not only what it cost to produce this manuscript, but also who was in the position of giving or receiving it. Even though the idea of gifts varying across the different socioeconomic classes is almost painfully obvious, here there is an even more stratified and nuanced distinction even between those occupying the same spaces in society. Of all the pieces looked at today I think this one appears to be (at least for me) the most puzzling, especially within its role as gift.

Thus I turn to the last piece we saw, Getty Museum, MS 17, where the reason for gift giving is significantly less problematic.

This is a charming fifteenth century English psalter. The author is unknown, and it could have been gifted numerous times from inception to its last known owner. However, it was within its last venue where another important facet of manuscript gift giving comes to the forefront: medieval manuscripts did not lose their luster, nor stop functioning as gifts at the end of the Middle Ages.

In the early twentieth century American book collector and bibliophile Philip Hoffer gave this medieval psalter to his wife, Frances. On the first page of the manuscript we find the inscription testifying to this:

Should you not be able to see the writing: “Bunnie, darling / Your engagement “ring” / remember? / P.H.” This book not only carried with it its monetary value, of which there was probably plenty, but the symbolic and sentimental value similar to what it once held.

I am sure I would have to conduct much more research into these works before forming any further conclusions, or even conjectures, but as these books changed hands during the act of gift giving they performed certain roles, and meant myriad things to their owners – givers and receivers.

Once again, I cannot wait to see the display in its entirety!

But, before ending the day, we were given one more generous treat by the Getty, and Anne Woollett, curator at the Getty, and specifically of the Spectacular Rubens: The Triumph of the Eucharist, gave us a guided tour of that exhibit. Photography was not here permitted since every piece is on loan from elsewhere, so I don’t have any lovely photographs to show you, but if you are in the Los Angeles area, it really is quite a sight that must be seen.

The exhibit focuses on a very specific aspect of Ruben’s work, namely the twenty tapestries with which he was commissioned by the Infanta, Isabella. The sixteen foot tall tapestries which were originally designed to tower over each other certainly challenge our notions of space. With only four in the room it appeared the images would permeate from their respective areas and into museum halls, so one could only imagine the full effect of twenty such works across vast walls and corridors. The exact placement of these tapestries has been disputed among scholars on various occasions, but the Getty does provide an example of a convincing way in which they could logically be placed with the confines of their original housing.

As I cannot here describe in words (and pictures would really not serve much better) the vivaciousness of the works, and since I have always been fascinated with the process of creation more than the end product, I will instead leave you with a recommendation of the book with the same name as the exhibit that is far better suited at describing these massive and amazing works.

The Trobairitz Tradition

On one of my previous posts a Twitter discussions started where we began wondering whether Troubadour poetry about women was really written by women, or if the females simply performed words created by men. I am hesitant to believe one or the other and felt there was probably a mixture of authentic female voices, and those that only mimicked feminine sentiments. Despite numerous sources that referred to these poets as female, I remained skeptical as no actual proof was offered, and it appeared that the subject matter of the poems (women’s lives) informed the way the anonymous poets were regarded. Simply because feminine plight was at the center of these works did not absolutely point to a female writer, which should have been immediately apparent from one of the poems I translated by Clement Maron, “Of the Young Lady With An Old Husband,” that was clearly written by a man.

Per usual this lead to further research. Where did women stand within the Troubadour tradition? As it turns out, right in the center, playing a rather prominent role in not just reciting, but creating many of the works that have come down to us today.

(“Flower Dance” – Ermengol, Breviaire d’Amour, 12th century, Bibliotheque Royale, Escurial)

(British Library, MS Royal 16 G. V folio 3v)

During the High Middle Ages Troubadours were composers and performers of lyric poetry. Initially this form of art was prevalent in the Occitan, but then by the thirteenth century migrated to Italy and Spain. Trobairitz are female Troubadours, however this term came about late in Troubadour history, the thirteen century, and was not widely circulated. Thus most Troubadours, regardless of their sex, used the same identifier, rendering their works in many cases indistinguishable. If only writings by Trobairitz were considered female, their contribution to poetry would appear painfully barren.

Yet, this term, I think, serves another interesting purpose. I see it as a defined distinction between men and women within the Troubadour tradition, as well as delineating the same difference for us today. It is easier to generalize the term and refer to all female Troubadours as Trobairitz, which for my purposes here I will use. However, most importantly, it shows there was a need even in the Middle Ages to distinguish between the two genders when regarding their works.

(Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale MS Francais 599 folio 19)

Authorship hardly had the same meaning as it does for us today, but it appears voice was the discerning factor. Troubadour and Trobairitz poems were highly stylized which makes it difficult to argue the precise point where the authentic female voice is found, but when looking at the subjects that were typically touched on by both sexes, voice becomes very important. Courtly love, and specifically fin’ amor, a favorite of the Troubadours, parades under the guise of exulted love and reverence for the female while simultaneously encapsulating her within male ideals. This poetry was not only stylized in form, but also in content, and the female form, albeit adored, was also severally restricted.

While I am sure some women did simply mimic the men who in turn mimicked them, in some sort of thrice removed poetic rendition of love, I also believe that within the confines of this tradition women were not simply slaves to the expectations of the system, but participants in their own right, altering the pieces to better reflect their own opinions.

It has been stated that the female Troubadours, or the Trobairitz, were more realistic in their assessment of love, but I think this stemmed from a better understanding of self. If Troubadour poetry set out to idolize the female, spiritually and physically, it would follow that a woman would be most in touch with herself and her own body, less enamored by some abstract ideal that she knows to be absolutely impossible.

I would like to challenge the notion of fin’amor as an ideal love and posit it where it belongs, among men. The creation of a female ideal to be risen atop a pedestal is the medieval equivalent of modern day concepts of beauty that glorify a woman for unattainable spiritual and intellectual acumen. It was supposedly love that transcended all earthly quality, considered in line with Platonic ideals, all the while bridging the gap between lovers on a metaphysical plane. In other words, it did not celebrate women, but rather the way men wished women would be, and the qualities expressed in each song were reliant on a repertoire of topoi, further indicating the rigidity of the form and the constraints into which the subject, the woman, was placed.

Here would perhaps be an ideal place to get into the logistics of what becoming the subject of these songs meant, especially when looking at them in terms of Foucault and even more effectively, Althusser, where subjectivity and interpolation would become the living definition of these women. However, I am going to save this for perhaps a larger project, and rather jump into the female interpretation of this genre.

If it has not already, it should now become apparent that women writing these poems would be at a loss for inspiration. They understood their own shortcomings, and would not eagerly participate in idealizing their own. Thus when women spoke they had two options: to occupy the place of man and falsely attribute perfection to fellow woman, or to invert the roles and speak as women raising men onto the same pedestals. More often than not, they took the former approach in which women were further objectified by their own under the guise of pleading their cases, justifying their existence within the tradition. In other words, they acquiesced to the men’s charges of their perfection, and needed to find a means of validating them.

However, there were some that used the form for their own ends and poetry became the tool for systematically demolishing these false ideologies. However, as Audre Lorde has warned, the master’s tools can never be used to dismantle his house, only to disturb it temporarily. Even though the handful of Trobairitz did not overturn patriarchy (surprise!) they created enough of a disruption to, at the very least, draw attention to its conventions elucidating its modus operandi, and showing that these forms of expression were not what they appeared.

These small subversive acts were mainly conducted by appropriating the language of the Troubadours and using it to describe men in the same fashion they regarded women. Immediately it became apparent that there was a certain impossibility to the catalog of traits heaped upon these men, and the women’s voices sounded with the same deceitfulness as they had themselves encountered. Before this post gets too much longer, here is a sample of a surviving Trobairitz song by Beatritz de Dia – “A chantar m’er” – a song which has survived to today, and can still be replicated with its original chords (video below) as opposed to all the other poems that have since lost their accompanying melodies.

(Beatritz (Contessa) de Dia – Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale MS fr. 12473)

A chantar m’er de so qu’ieu non volria
Tant me cancur de lui cui sui amia,
Car ieu l’am mais que nuilla ren que sia;
Vas lui no.m val merces ni cortesia
Ni ma beltatz ni mos pretz ni mos sens,
C’atressi.m sui enganad’e trahia
Com degr’esser, s’ieu fos desavinens.

Meravill me com vostre cors s’orguoilla
Amics, vas me, per qu’ai razon qu’ieu.m duoilla
Non es ges dreitz c’autre’amors vos mi tuoilla
Per nuilla ren qe’us diga ni acuoilla;
E membre vos cals fo.l comenssamens
De nostre’amor! ja Dompnedieus non vuoilla
Qu’en ma colpa sia.l departimens.

Valer mi deu mos pretz e mos paratges
E ma beltatz e plus mos fis coratges,
Per qu’ieu vos man lai on es vostr’estatges
Esta chansson que me sia messatges:
Ieu vuoill saber, lo mieus bels amics gens,
Per que vos m’etz tant fers ni tant salvatges,
Non sai, si s’es orguoills o maltalens.

Mas aitan plus voill qu.us diga.l messatges
Qu’en trop d’orguoill ant gran dan maintas gens.

I must sing of that which I want not,
As I am angry with the one I love,
For I love him more than anything;
He cares not for mercy or courtliness
Not my beauty, nor my merit nor my good sense,
For I am deceived and betrayed
Exactly as I should be, if I were ugly.

I marvel at how proud you have become,
Friend, towards me, and thus I have reason to grieve.
It is not right that another lover take you from me
On account of anything said or granted to you.
And remember how it was at the beginning
Of our love! may the Lord God never wish
That my guilt be the cause of our separation.

My worth and my nobility,
My beauty and my faithful heart should help me;
That is why I send this song to your dwelling
This song that might be my messenger.
I want to know my fair and noble friend,
Why you are so cruel and harsh with me;
I don’t know if it is pride or ill will.

But I especially want the messenger to tell you
That many people suffer from too much pride.

(note: although I typically like to do my own translations, I have to admit this song was quite difficult in certain places, so here I have relied on the translation from Rosenberg et. al. but I have modified it where I thought it was appropriate – their translation is absolutely beautiful, whereas mine is more in line with my style that is mot a mot).

Two facets of this poem caught my attention. First, she loves him as she says, “more than anything,” meaning, more than is possible. He is proud and unkind, presumably having left her for another, yet she does not allow this to guide her decision of love. Despite his multiple faults, he is here seen as perfect, or as he should be, which is an echo of Troubadour poems that capture feminine ideal beauty despite that the subject may be far from fair.

Secondly, she is angry. Unrequited courtly love was supposed to garner silent, suffering patience. The courtly lover, playing his part, pined away endlessly without hope for even a glance from his love interest. He did not reproach her for her cold conduct. Here Beatritz, while lamenting her current state, conforming to the ritual of a weakened lover also overthrows these same notions, starkly pointing out how ridiculous silence and patience really are. He may be perfect, even if only in her eyes, but his knowledge of said perfection, and the ensuing pride, will be his downfall. Her song does not end with a promise of never ending affection, but with a warning.

This is but one example of a rich tradition that deserves much more exploration. Over the next few months I hope to uncover more and form deeper connections. Further, just like with my Female Scribe project that is still very much a work in progress, I want to situate this work in context with other pieces and other Trobairitz. Unfortunately the majority of these women individually are obscured, with some of the only knowledge we have of them coming from their vidas that have in most cases survived in tatters, and unlike vitas, are notoriously unreliable. However, even without absolute attribution of these works to various figures, I think this project holds great potential, so I suppose I will consider this Part I.

In the meantime, I leave you with the actual melody of the poem above:

Sources:

Bogin, Meg. The Female Troubadours.

Bruckner, Matilda T. “Fictions of the Female Voice: The Women Troubadours.”

Peraino, Judith. Giving Voice to Love: Song and Self Expression from the Troubadours to Guillaume de Machaut.

Rosenberg, Samuel, Margaret Switten, and Gerard Le Vot. Eds. Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres: An Anthology of Poems and Melodies.

Shapiro, Marianne. “The Provencal Trobairitz and the Limits of Courtly Love.”

Magisterium vocis Within Medieval Women

During the middle of the eleventh century the Gregorian Reforms were introduced as a method of expunging certain less than pious practices from the clergy. However, the reforms carried other consequences that extended into the laity, a portion of the population that included even the ranks of religious women from nuns to abbesses. While the Church was always a male oriented institution, before the reforms female members also benefitted – it was a locus of education, and provided women with a certain amount of freedom and safety unknown in the secular world. With the reform women were systematically stripped of their roles within the church, and mixed, or dual monasteries became a thing of the past, further depriving women of venues for learning, scriptoriums, substantial libraries, or even opportunities for collaboration.

(Cistercian Nuns – British Library, Yates Thompson MS 11 f. 6v)

However, the coup de grace to women’s intellectual growth was the prohibition of magisterium vocis, public preaching, which was previously an activity that afforded women the opportunity to read, interpret, and explore scripture on a larger scale. With this ability taken away from them, nunneries no longer provided many of the same benefits to society as they were once able to, and thus many patrons began withdrawing their support, preferring instead to share their wealth with monasteries that could provide services. Ironically, this type of lay intervention from the nobility and upper class was precisely what the Gregorian Reforms set out to eradicate. Yet the power of monetary intervention cannot be overstated as it was often the guiding principle behind many of the decisions these religious houses made. Consequently from the loss of power stemmed the loss o money, and the one act of removing preaching for public welfare from these venues became the agent for rapid and lengthy decline.

So, preaching was a means for women to participate in monastic life, discourse, and education, but perhaps most importantly, it gave them a voice.

Yet, this voice was heard and interpreted with various degrees of apprehension and trepidation. Without hinging upon an absolute argument that posits all women as wicked, seeing as how there were women who were respected and revered for their minds and devotion, and who wielded significant power, there was nevertheless a broad acceptance of the Mary-Eve separation. As the cult of Mary was rising during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, so was her comparison to the first female figure, Eve. Needless to say this comparison that situated the majority of women far closer to Eve than they could ever be to Mary, rendered an image of woman as temptress, weak spirited and even dull witted.

(to further emphasize woman’s role in man’s fall, the serpent in this well known depiction of Adam and Eve has a feminine head – St. John’s College MS k. 26 f. 231)

Thus women navigated a rather tricky plane as they elided a fixed categorization. Even within the church multiple debates arose in regards to what their function should be, and to what extent they could practice their calling. As restrictions further increased, “when a teaching or preaching woman [was] encountered in twelfth and thirteenth century medieval sources her ability to speak about divine matters [was] generally attributed to a charism of prophecy rather than to intelligence” (Muessig 147). In the few instances when women attempted activities relatively close to preaching and were successful in their endeavors, they were immediately relegated to categories of divinity, as their voices bore supernatural gifts. Of course the implication of “supernatural” is also “unnatural,” since the rationale needed for expounding on the meaning of scripture was not reserved for women. Even as education improved, female abilities according to male patrons continued to rely on notions of divine inspiration, and various forms of preaching became understood as prophecy to be written and interpreted by hagiographers such as in Vita Sanctae Hildegardis. In other words, as Thomas of Chobham stated, women could deliver moral lessons, but not explain their meaning in the traditional sense of preaching. Highly literate women were no more than mouth pieces to read scripture, refraining from any commentary, practicing the silence and obedience that was expected of them.

(Vita Sanctae Hildegardis Plate 197 – Hildegard receiving a vision which echos a previous plate from her Scivias)

(Hildegard receiving a vision – Frontpiece of Scivias)

If formal preaching was not allowed, and women could not overtly explicated scripture, other mediums offered the necessary avenues for alternate mechanisms of preaching. While some women, such as Hildegard von Bingen, embraced their status as prophetesses and used it to articulate their religious beliefs, Hildegard, too, found alternate routes of expression. Entertainment became an increasingly thriving method for the task, allowing moral lessons to be performed through various means. Two well documented cases of women enlisting the arts in order to preach come from thirteenth century France: Marie d’Oignies and Christina of St. Trond. While both used song as their choice channels of communication, as did Hildegard at one point, preaching was not always practiced orally, even when in an artistic format, as can be seen through the various morality plays and stories told, including the Ordo Virtutum which was perhaps the first of its kind.

Here is a brief modern interpretation of Hildegard’s “O virga ac diadema” for your musical enjoyment:

And another snippet from the Ordo Virtutum:

Despite the ever more confining world these women found themselves in, it was through creativity and resourcefulness that that they found their voices – in song, poetry, and as is of particular interest to me for a larger project, reshaping of narrative.
Sources:

Kienzle, Beverly Mayne. “Sermons and Preaching.”

King, Margot H. Two Lives of Marie d’Oignies: The life of Jacques de Vitry.

Mooney, Catherine M. “Authority and Inspiration in the Vitae and Sermons of Humility of Faenza.”

Muessig, Carolyn. “Prophecy and Song: Teaching and Preaching by Medieval Women.”

Silvas, Anna. Trans. Jutta and Hildegard: The Biographical Sources.

Thomas of Chobham. Summa de arte praedicandi. Ed. Franco Morenzoni.

Butterfly Crossing

quanto desiderat astra papilio volitans

“Give and Ye Shall Receive” at the Getty

The Trobairitz Tradition

Magisterium vocis Within Medieval Women