allegra iafrate warburg

OF STARS AND MEN:

MATTHEW PARIS AND THE ILLUSTRATIONS

OF MS ASHMOLE 304*

Allegra Iafrate

This paper focuses on the body of illustrations which currently are or oncewere part of the present Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, of which

Matthew Paris was both the scribe and the illustrator.1 The manuscript, as itappears today after the partial loss of some of its sections,2 constitutes a collectionof six fortune-telling tracts, or sortes—a prognostication typology which circulatedwidely in both Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, in the Mediterranean areaand beyond. My aim is to present the illustrations systematically, wherever possibleto trace the iconographical and typological models used for them, and to discussand comment on some specific features.

The tradition of illustrated sortes

Sortes books are often attributed to famous authors, who supposedly composedthem. Sometimes, these authors correspond to the judices or ‘judges’ who usuallyenunciate their lines of prognostication. The judges may be people, animals orobjects; and there may also be intermediate auctoritates, who redirect users to a finaljudex for the requested answer. A typical feature of these books is, in fact, theirdynamic aspect: they were not simply read, but rather engaged with interactively.3

* I wish to thank Katy Bernard, Dieter Blume,Charles Burnett, Willene Clark, Rémy Cordonnier,Maria Monica Donato, Herbert Kessler, KristenLippincott, Matan Rubinstein, Anna Santoni, CesareSantus, Paul Taylor and Silvia Urbini for their valuable advice.

1. F. Wormald, ‘More Matthew Paris Drawings’,Walpole Society Journal, xxxi, 1942–43, pp. 109–12,first called attention to the codex, attributing it to the chronicler of St Albans; his intuition was furthersupported by R. Vaughan, ‘The Handwriting ofMatthew Paris’, Transactions of the Cambridge Biblio-graphical Society, i, 1953, pp. 376–94; and S. Lewis,The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora, Alder-shot 1987, pp. 387–89, where she dates the drawings c. 1249–53. The present article represents the last ofa series of studies of Ashmole 304 and will deal mostlywith its figurative aspects. For related philological andtypological issues see A. Iafrate, ‘“Si sequeris casum,casus frangit tibi nasum”: La raccolta delle sorti delMS Ashmole 304’, Aevum, lxxxv, 2011, pp. 457–88;eadem, ‘The Workshop of Fortune: St Albans and the

Sortes Manuscripts’, Scriptorium, xlvi, 2012, pp. 55–87; eadem, ‘Pythagoras’ Index: Denoting Authorshipin Sortes Books’, Micrologus [forthcoming]. Colourreproductions of Ashmole 304 and of its descriptus,MS Digby 46, are available for consultation on theBodleian Library website, Medieval and RenaissanceManuscripts section.

2. The manuscript probably originally includedalso a complete set of prognostication tables of the‘Victorious and the Vanquished’ and two geomantictracts; Iafrate, ‘Workshop of Fortune’ (as in n. 1), pls11–18; C. S. F. Burnett, ‘The Eadwine Psalter and the Western Tradition of the Onomancy in Pseudo-Aristotle’s Secret of Secrets’, Archives d’histoire doctrinaleet littéraire du moyen âge, lv, 1988, pp. 143–67.

3. See C. S. F. Burnett, ‘What is the Experi-mentarius of Bernardus Silvestris? A PreliminarySurvey of the Material’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale etlittéraire du moyen age, xliv, 1977 (repr. with the samepagination as art. XVII in idem, Magic and Divinationin the Middle Ages: Texts and Techniques in the Islamicand Christian World, Aldershot 1996), pp. 79–125 (93 n. 33).

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4. Iafrate, ‘Workshop of Fortune’ (as in n. 1), p.82; Burnett, ‘Experimentarius’ (as in n. 3), p. 92. Theconditions for consulting the sortes varied but mightinclude, e.g., prayers, alms, or a specified period offasting; they might also depend on favour able plan-etary conjunctions. These sets of ‘complications’restrained people from consulting a sortilegus too often.

5. Traces of this dialogic dimension can be foundin most redirecting tables and circles; see, e.g., MSAshmole 304, fols 3r-v, 4r, 33v–38v, 42v, 43r, 52v.

6. See the list of texts provided below, pp. 143–44:I (Experimentarius); III and V (Prenostica Pitagorice con -sideracionis and Quaestiones Albedaci; on repercussionsof these dual versions see below at nn. 51 and 63).

7. See below, p. 143, for the version in Cambridge,Magdalene College MS Pepys 911. It is notable alsothat all these texts seem to show traces of an Occitanphase, as discussed below (n. 80).

8. There are not many studies regarding the illus-trations of medieval Western sortes, while the topic hasbeen quite well investigated for the Renaissance, forwhich period many texts still survive. See Y. M. Brett,‘Astronomical and Astrological Illustration in PrintedBooks of the Later Renaissance with Special Referenceto Libri delle Sorti’, M.Phil. diss., Warburg Institute,University of London 1975; Lodovico Dolce, Terzettiper le ‘Sorti’, Poesia oracolare nell’officina di FrancescoMarcolini, ed. P. Procaccioli, Treviso and Rome 2006;

The use of the sortes entailed a dramatic dimension. Consultation was basedon a codified ritual, probably a residue of the ancient oracle or temple practicesfrom which sortes derive—a feature which, in the High Middle Ages, must haveenhanced the sense of magic and mystery related to the use of these texts. Therewere usually two actors: the cliens or quaerens, who posed a question; and the sorti-legus, who owned the book and was responsible for activating the interrogationprocess. The cliens could—provided that the time and the stars were favourable andthat other requirements had been met4—choose from a fixed list of questions, allrelated to everyday problems (involving marriage, money, travelling, prison and soon). He had next to obtain a random number, for which the books provided avariety of possible methods such as dice and numbered wheels. Then, after muchpage-turning, he and the sortilegus would arrive at a line of response which was,indeed, consistent with the question posed. The dramatisation of the consultationprocess must have helped to corroborate the divination method, which was basedon a simple but unacknowledged Pythagorian algorithm. We catch glimpses of thisinteractive component in the explanatory rules found in some sortes manuscripts,as well as in dialogic instructions such as ‘quere’, ‘responde’, ‘vade ad …’, ‘punctavestra fuerunt …’, ‘quere in libro …’ (Fig. 1).5 The actual and lively use of thesetexts accounts, in part, for the destruction of many exemplars and, in the case ofAshmole 304, it may also help to explain the loss of several pages.

It is typical of sortes that the texts were handed down with accumulative modifications. Over time, this could result in duplications, which explains why Ashmole 304 contains two different metrical versions of both the Experimentariusof Bernardus Silvestris and the Prenostica Pitagorice consideracionis.6 Of the othertracts in the manuscript, the Prenostica Socratis Basilei circulated also in a longerversion with more judges and, later on, the auctoritates of the redirecting tableswere partially substituted, to improve the process. The Divinacio Ciceronalis, too, isknown to me in two different forms, the adaptations of the same text with variantsfound in Ashmole 304 and one of its copies.7

As regards illustrations, the state of research depends partially on the situationof the surviving material and, for most of the Middle Ages, a specific tradition ofillustrated sortes would seem to be lacking. Books of sortes are far more prevalentfrom the fifteenth century onwards, when they began to circulate also in print.8

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It has been shown that among the sortes books produced in Germany in thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries, most of the illustrated examples date back onlyto the fifteenth century.9 The images seem to gain inspiration from fixed sets ofstandard motifs, such as cycles of famous men, animals and particularly birds,and astrological figures. Turning to Italy, one of the first examples of illustrated

Francesco Marcolini, Le sorti intitolate giardino d’ipensieri, anastatic reproduction of the 1540 edition, ed. P. Procaccioli, Treviso and Rome 2007; Studi per le ‘Sorti’: Gioco, immagini, poesia oracolare a Venezia nelCinquecento, ed. P. Procaccioli, Treviso and Rome 2007.A specific tradition of illustrated divination booksseems to exist also in the Persian-Arabic tradition( falnama), but neither the typology of the illustrationsnor the interrogation process correspond to theirWestern counterparts; see S. Bagci, ‘Images for Fore-telling: Two Topkapi Falnamas’, in Dreaming Across

Boundaries: The Interpretation of Dreams in IslamicLands, ed. L. Marlow, Boston 2008, pp. 235–69; andM. Farhad and S. Bagci, Falnama: The Book of Omens,London 2010.

9. J. D. F. Sotzmann, ‘Die Loosbücher des Mittel-alters’, in two parts: Serapeum, xi, 1850, pp. 49–80;ibid., xii, 1851, pp. 305–16, 337–42. See, e.g., EinLosbuch Konrad Bollstatters: aus CGM 312 der Bayer -ischen Staatsbibliothek München, ed. K. Schneider,Wiesbaden 1973 (facs. reproduction of a manuscriptmade between 1450 and 1475).

ALLEGRA IAFRATE 141

1. Matthew Paris, The Twelve Patriarchs, Sons of Jacob, above a list of dialogic instructions. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 52v


sortes is the manuscript prepared as a gift for Braccio da Montone by the Umbrianhumanist Lorenzo Gualtieri, also known as Spirito, with the artistic collaborationof Pietro Perugino and possibly also the young Raphael; this work was publishedin Perugia in 1482 and thereafter enjoyed an enduring popularity throughoutEurope.10 Aby Warburg, who first called attention to it, discussed a variety of tech-niques of divination performed with dice, precious stones and amulets, comparingSpirito’s manuscript with two incunabula: the geomantic text known as the Jeu de dodéchedrion (Perugia 1482, erroneously attributed to Jean de Meun) and arepertory of engraved antique gems (Milan 1500).11 More recently, iconographicsimilarities have been noticed with a manuscript now in Heidelberg, made in 1430by a Bavarian workshop, in which prophets, wise men, planets and animals aredepicted.12 It can be detected that the same repertoire of standard elements foundin Spirito’s book persists in later texts such as Sigismondo Fanti’s Triompho diFortuna (Venice 1527), although its illustrations are more exuberant.

It would be hard, however, to delineate a precise chain of transmission for mostof the models throughout the history of the genre. Many of the regularities are dueto the fact that these texts tend to be intrinsically repetitive. Portraits of famousmen, animals and birds, and depictions of stars or planets, were naturally promptedby the very presence of those elements in the books: their origin is definitely polygenetic. Moreover, the wide circulation and huge popularity of these books,eased in the later period by the invention of printing, had the effect of limitinginnovations, since artists were obliged to conform to a recognisable body ofsomehow canonised types of illustrations.

Matthew Paris’s manuscript and its copies represent a peculiar case study inthis scenario, because they constitute a discrete, although limited, tradition ofillustrated sortes texts. From an art-historical point of view, Ashmole 304 is parti-cularly interesting, as it presents the earliest extant example of illustrated sortes.13

Moreover, two later examples are both closely related to it: Cambridge, MagdaleneCollege MS Pepys 911, dating from the end of the thirteenth century;14 and Oxford,

142 MATTHEW PARIS

10. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana MS It.IX.87 (6226). See S. Urbini, Il libro delle sorti di LorenzoSpirito Gualtieri, Modena 2006.

11. See A. Warburg, Mnemosyne: l’atlante delleimmagini, ed. M. Warnke, with the collaboration of C.Brink, Italian edn by M. Ghelardi, Turin 2002, table23A; and Urbini (as in n. 10), p. 44. On the Jeu dedodéchedrion see K. Bernard, ‘Compter, dire et figurer,édition et commentaires de textes divinatoires etmagiques en óccitan médieval’ (Ph.D. diss.), Univer-sité Michel de Montaigne, Bordeaux 2007, particu-larly the chapter on ‘Le Dodechedron occitan (Paris,BNF, fr. 14771)’, pp. 611–43. See also eadem, Les livresde sorts occitans (in press); and ‘Jouer sur les mots etjouer avec les mots, des aspects ludiques de l’artdivinatoire des livres de sorts: exemples occitans’,Inter studia, v, 2009, pp. 54–65 (n. 23).

12. Urbini (as in n. 10), p. 43. The Bavarian sortesmanuscript, now Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek

MS Pal. Ger. 7, was one of those studied by Sotzmann(as in n. 9).

13. Otherwise, the earliest notable and unrelatedexample I am aware of is Vienna, ÖsterreichischeNationalbibliothek MS lat. 2352, produced for KingWenceslaus of Bohemia around 1392. This is a collec-tion of several astrological works, including AlphonseX’s Tabulae astronomicae and excerpts from MichaelScot’s Liber Introductorius. It contains a sortes text underthe rubric ‘Ars vaticinandi ope punctorum’, prefacedby a full-page miniature of the Wheel of Fortune andembellished with fine illustrations of 16 kings depictedin roundels, representing the judices of the tract (fols86r, 92v–95r; images available online in the WarburgInstitute Iconographic Database). For a descriptionsee Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Wien, TabulaeCodicum Manu Scriptorum praeter Graecos et Orientales.In Biblio theca Palatina Vindobonensi asservatorum, 10vols, Vienna 1864–90, ii, 1868, p. 61.


Bodleian Library MS Digby 46, dating to the third quarter of the fourteenthcentury.15 I have discussed the philological relationship among Ashmole 304, Pepys911 and Digby 46 in a separate study,16 of which the following is a summary of myconclusions. Five out of the six tracts in both Ashmole 304 and Pepys 911 werecopied from a common, lost antegraph. Their recensions of the sixth tract, knownas Divinacio Ciceronalis, derive from two parallel and independent versions of thesame work. As for the images, Pepys 911 reproduces most of those extant inAshmole 304 with great skill and lavish rendering; yet its illuminator did not copyall of them. Digby 46 is a descriptus of Ashmole 304 in both text and images. Theillustrations are not of the highest quality, but the set of figures is complete andthe result, whenever we can compare it, is quite close to its original model. For this reason, it is safer to base our analysis on Digby 46 in order to reconstruct theoriginal body of illustrations of Ashmole 304, although, as far as some iconographicdetails are concerned, it is important to refer to Pepys 911 also.

The illustrated sortes of Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304

Let us proceed with the list of texts and their illustrations in the Ashmole manu-script, mainly consisting in the depiction of one or more auctoritates, and in thedecoration of the redirecting tables, circles or diagrams of the text.

I. Experimentarius Bernardini Silvestri

Lost: Bernardus Silvestris sitting with a scrollfol. 2v: Hermann holding an astrolabe with Euclid holding an armillary sphere

and looking at the sky with a dioptra (Fig. 3)fol. 3v: a redirecting table with the seven towers representing the seven planetsLost: a second portrait of Bernardus Silvestris, as a preface to the second,

metrical version, of the Experimentarius

II. Prenostica Socratis Basilei

fol. 31v: Socrates writing at his desk with Plato standing behind him talking(Fig. 6)

fol. 32r: a redirecting table decorated with gryphonsfols 32v–39r: thirteen redirecting circles, one per page, each divided into twelve

sections and decorated with plants, fruits, spices, animals (Fig. 8), birds(Fig. 9) and cities

III. Prenostica Pitagorice consideracionis

fol. 42r: Pythagoras at his desk, ready to writefols 43v–52r: thirty-six birds, four per page (Figs 10–21)

14. For a description of Pepys 911 see Catalogue ofthe Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, v,part 1, compiled by R. McKitterick and R. Beadle, pp.5–8.

15. See Bodleian Library Quarto Catalogues, 9, DigbyManuscripts, descriptions by W. D. Macray, ed. R. W.Hunt and A. G. Watson, Oxford 1999, p. 42, no. 177.

16. Iafrate, ‘Workshop of Fortune’ (as in n. 1).

ALLEGRA IAFRATE 143


IV. Sortes duodecim Patriarcharum

fol. 52v: a set of portraits of the twelve sons of Jacob (Fig. 1)

V. Quaestiones Albedaci

Lost: Anaxagoras writing (cf. Fig. 7)

VI. Divinacio Ciceronalis

Lost: Cicero holding a scrollLost: twenty birds and twenty astrological figures enclosed in roundels (cf.

Figs 22–29)

In addition, the codex was endowed with two (or possibly three) illustrated volvelle,rotatable discs of paper or parchment which were used as devices for obtainingrandom numbers, necessary to start each interrogation process. On one there wasan image of Socrates, on another Pythagoras.17

Author portraits

Since these texts claimed to be sources of truthful answers, it was important tosupport their authority, a goal usually achieved by attributing their authorship to a renowned auctoritas. Figures such as Socrates, Pythagoras, Bernardus Silvestris,Anaxagoras, Cicero and the twelve Patriarchs granted an aura of authenticity andindirectly legitimised the use of these otherwise prohibited texts.18 Matthew pref-aced each tract with a framed portrait of its author, using for his depictions thecanonical attributes which identify scribes, authors or Evangelists in medievaliconographies: they are shown either writing or reading, and with a quill and scroll,ink and scraper, or slate pencil and wax table. Notably, he also chose to character -ise them as exotic types: details of their apparel, like their headgear, unmistakablydefine them as ‘oriental’, bearers of a different kind of knowledge.19This is true forEuclid (Fig. 3), Socrates (Fig. 6) and Pythagoras, who each wear a phrygian cap,an attribute long employed to define foreigners which had descended from classicalillustrations, partly through Byzantine models. Similarly, the Patriarchs (Fig. 1) arerecognisable as Jews by their hats: round and pointed caps, both attested in Englandas Jewish headdress.20

These author portraits recall, in some ways, those depicted in MS Bodl. 614,a mid-twelfth-century miscellaneous manuscript produced in England, whichcollects works by Pseudo-Bede, William of Conches, Hyginus, Aratus and Isidorus,together with several anonymous computistical and astronomical texts. It includesa prefatory calendar section with depictions of four scholars enclosed in square

144 MATTHEW PARIS

17. For a detailed explanation of the mechanismof these volvelle see Iafrate, ‘Workshop of Fortune’ (asin n. 1), pp. 76–79.

18. On the characterisation of the authors of themanuscript, both textually and visually, see Iafrate,‘Pythagoras’ index’ (as in n. 1).

19. M. Camille, ‘The Dissenting Image: A Postcardfrom Matthew Paris’, in Criticism and Dissent in the

Middle Ages, ed. R. Copeland, Cambridge 1996, pp.115–50 (127).

20. On the representation of Jewish headgear inmedieval England see R. Mellinkoff, ‘The Round,Cap-Shaped Hats Depicted on Jews in BM CottonClaudius B. iv’, Anglo-Saxon England, ii, 1973, pp.155–65.


frames: one holds a book, another has a phrygian cap and a scroll, a third is repre-sented with the moon and the last measures the sun (Fig. 2).21 Also in this manu-script is one of the oldest representations known of a man holding an astrolabe.22

Although not identical with Matthew’s, illustrations like these can be consideredas possible visual models for his figurative program: computistic miscellanies werecertainly much consulted in a monastic scriptorium and we know that the chroni-cler of St Albans prefaced all his major works with decorated paschal tables andcalendars. For the sake of variety he probably referred to a plurality of scribalmodels, as may be concluded from the differing poses of his author portraits (strictprofile, three-quarters profile and frontal) and the many types of writing mediadepicted, some of them clearly out of date (like the scroll of Bernardus or Cicero’swax tablet). By comparison with traditional scribal portraits, none of these figuresis represented within an architectonic setting; rather, their simple square framesare typical of Matthew’s more formal and dignified illustrations.

Matthew’s choice of dedicating full-page representations to five of the authorsis unusual in a secular context, being an honour more often reserved for thecomposers of sacred texts.23 Only the representation of the Patriarchs (Fig. 1)—

21. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodl. 614, fols1v–2r; illustrated on the Bodleian Library website. Onthe manuscript see F. Saxl and H. Meier, Catalogue ofAstrological and Mythological Illuminated Manuscriptsof the Latin Middle Ages, iii, Manuscripts in EnglishLibraries, ed. H. Bober, 2 vols, London 1953, pp. 313–16.

22. Ibid., fol. 35v. On early representations of astro-labes see J. D. Udovitch, ‘Three Astronomers in aThirteenth Century Psalter’, Marsyas, xvii, 1975, pp.79–83.

23. K. Weizmann, Ancient Book Illumination,Cambridge, MA 1959, pp. 116–27; J. M. Kubiski,‘Uomini illustri: The Revival of the Author Portrait in

ALLEGRA IAFRATE 145

2. Portraits of auctoritates in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodl. 614 (English, c. 1120-40), fols 1v–2r


a group portrait, one could say—employs a different spatial solution: the figuresare shown engaged in conversation with one other and depicted as bust portraitsin two parallel registers, six to each level. This horizontal layout could have beenprompted by panel paintings decorating architectural structures, in which thedisposition of figures would be arranged horizontally. Matthew himself, in hisGesta abbatum, mentions that a series of twelve Patriarchs and twelve Apostles, oneither side of central figures of Christ in Majesty with Ecclesia and Synagoga,adorned the beam which surmounts the altar of St Alban’s church.24 We have,however, no means of checking this lost painting, or even of knowing whether the figures were standing or represented as busts. Instead, given the presence ofsimilar schemes in other manuscripts of the time,25 we should probably look forprecedents in the same medium. As one possibility, some manuscripts of thecomedies of Terence include introductory pages displaying an aedicula with theactors’ masks, usually arrayed in horizontal shelves, which could have constituteda possible model for the distribution of the bust portraits of the Patriarchs.26

(I) Hermann and Euclid (Fig. 3)

The image of Hermann and Euclid at the beginning of the Experimentarius hastended to mislead philological discussions regarding the tract—in which neitherEuclid nor anyone named Hermann is mentioned. The figure on the right of theimage, holding an ‘astrolabium’ and labelled as ‘Hermannus’, was first tentativelyidentified as representing Hermann of Carinthia and in turn connected withBernardus Silvestris, whose author portrait once prefaced this section. That sugges- tion has since been doubted, with Herman ‘Contractus’ of Reichenau proposedas a more likely referrent.27

It may be observed that even if sortes, as a prognostication genre, do notrequire any practical knowledge of the positions of the celestial bodies on the partof the user, nevertheless in the explanatory procedures of these tracts there areoften references to vocabulary drawn from the astrological lexicon, sometimesfully employed in long, pseudo-astrological introductions which create a fictitiousaura of authoritative recourse to these divination works. We can hypothesise, then,that Hermann and Euclid may in some way serve here as personifications of

146 MATTHEW PARIS

Renaissance Florence’, Ph.D. diss., University ofWashington 1993.

24. ‘in … trabe, series duodecim Patriarcharum etduodecim Apostolorum, et in medio, Majestas, cumEcclesia et Synagoga, figuratur’. Thomas Walsingham,Gesta abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani regnante Ricardosecundo, eiusdem ecclesiae praecentore compilata, ed. H. T.Riley, 3 vols, Millwood 1965, i, p. 287.

25. For instance, a similar, although not identical,arrangement is found in the illustration of Oxford,Bodleian Library MS Douce 211, a 14th-centurycodex of the Bible historiale with a French translationof the Historia Scholastica by Peter Comestor. At fol.74v, the sons of Jacob are disposed in a table dividedin squares, four on each row, prefacing the beginningof the Exodus section of the work.

26. The masks are arranged as if on three shelvesin Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. F.2.13, fol. 3r,a 12th-century Terence manuscript from St AlbansAbbey. Closer to Matthew’s Patriarchs are the masksdeployed on busts in Biblioteca Apostolica VaticanaMS Vat. Lat. 3305, fols 49v, 97v.

27. M. Brini Savorelli, ‘Un manuale di geomanziapresentato da Bernardo Silvestre da Tours (XII secolo):l’Experimentarius’, Rivista critica di storia della filosofia,iii, 1959, pp. 283–342 (286). But cf. Burnett, ‘Experi-mentarius’ (as in n. 3), pp. 79–80, who suggests that itrepresents Hermannus Contractus of Reichenau; thesame identification is given by Lewis (as in n. 1), p.386, fig. 229 and p. 388.


ALLEGRA IAFRATE 147

28. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek MSMed. Gr. 1 (c. 513 AD), fols 4v and 5v.

29. Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit MSVoss. Lat. Q.38, fol. 1v. L. W. Jones, The Miniatures of

3. Matthew Paris, Euclid and Hermann. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 2v

4. Plato and Philosophia, prefacing William of Conches’s Dragmaticon philosophie. Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer MS Bodmer 188 (c. 1230), fol. 10v

Geometry and Astronomy, visually embodying the two disciplines necessary tounderstand the sky and the movements of the stars. The practice of prefacing bothscientific tracts and literary works with portraits of their authors, sometimesaccompanied by personifications of abstract concepts, had been common sinceclassical times. The tradition had continued, as in the portraits of Dioscoridespictured with Euresis, and again with Epinoia, in the Vienna Dioscorides of theearly sixth century;28 later examples include Terence shown with the personifiedPrologue to his comedies in a tenth-century manuscript from the Loire valley;29


a drawing of Aratus with his Muse in a manuscript of c. 1000 AD from Limoges;30

and the established tradition of representations of Boethius with Philosophia, whichcertainly inspired images like the double portrait of Plato and Philosophia prefacingWilliam of Conches’s Dragmaticon philosophie in Cologny (Fig. 4).31

Nor should we forget that one of the requirements for anyone starting thesortes interrogation process was to consider when would be a favourable momentto do so, with respect to the position of the planets. It is possible that Hermannand Euclid visually represent that operation. Euclid had represented an auctoritasin the field of science even before his Elementa came to be employed, in universitycurricula during the thirteenth century, as a fundamental and propaedeutic text forthe study of all mathematical sciences. Partial versions of the Elementa had beencirculating in Europe from the end of the ninth century, and Euclid himself hadalready begun to be regarded as a father of the discipline after the first translationof the work, which dates to the first half of the twelfth century. It would betempting to think that Matthew’s portrait depicts Euclid and his translator, aspractitioners of scientia. Hermann of Carinthia was active in Spain in the regionof the river Ebro, where he is attested in 1141 together with Robert of Ketton. Hewas certainly familiar with Euclid’s Elements and a version of it forms part of theHeptateuchon which the two scholars prepared for Thierry of Chartres; the workof translating it, however, is thought to have been Robert’s. Hermann of Carinthiahimself is known for having translated several Arabic treatises on astronomy, butnone on the astrolabe.32 On the other hand Hermann ‘Contractus’, the eleventh-century scholar from Reichenau, is credited with writing De mensura astrolabii.33

I would suggest, however, that the astrolabe in Matthew’s image should notnecessarily be interpreted as an identifying attribute for the figure who holds it.Interestingly, the instrument is identified by a rubric, as if Matthew were stressingits importance as an item of technical equipment. In other early drawings (apartfrom those in treatises dedicated specifically to the astrolabe), an astrolabe simplydesignates an astrologer, as in Matthew’s illustration in the Dublin Vie de SeintAlban (1240–50), showing the Pelagians disputing with Germanus of Auxerre and

the Manuscripts of Terence Prior to the Thirteenth Century,2 vols, Princeton 1930–31, p. 31; D. H. Wright, ‘TheOrganisation of the Lost Late Antique IllustratedTerence’, in Medieval Manuscripts of the Latin Classics:Production and Use, ed. C. A. Chavannes-Mazel andM. M. Smith, Los Altos Hills and London 1996, pp.41–56.

30. Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS735C, fol. 11v. This section of the codex is believed tohave been copied in the Limoges area, probably in themilieu of the annalist Adémar de Chabannes.

31. Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer MSBodmer 188 (c. 1230), fol. 10v; underneath the imageshown here is a double portrait of the author with his pupil, Geoffrey Plantagenet (1113–51), Duke ofNormandy and Count of Anjou, to whom the work isdedicated.

32. C. S. F. Burnett, ‘The Translating Activity inMedieval Spain’, in Handbuch der Orientalistik, xii, TheLegacy of Muslim Spain, ed. S. K. Jayyusi, Leiden1992, pp. 1036–58 (1043–44 and 1053 n. 57, withfurther literature), repr. with the same pagination asart. IV in idem, Magic and Divination (as in n. 3). Anumber of great Arabic scholars, such as Abraham ibnEzra (1086–1164) and Juda Halevi (d. 1141), lived inthe same area of Spain, and it is likely that Hermannof Carinthia had access to their libraries where hecould have found useful material, such as the astro-nomical tables of Al-Khwarizmi. For Abraham ibnEzra see J. Bolte, ‘Zur Geschichte der Losbücher’,appendix to his editon of Georg Wickram, Werke, iv,Stuttgart 1903, pp. 276–348 (291).

33. Brini Savorelli (as in n. 27), p. 286; Burnett,‘Experimentarius’ (as in n. 3), pp. 79–80, suggests thetract was probably addressed to Berengarius.

148 MATTHEW PARIS


Lupus of Troyes: there, it is depicted only to denote scientific learning.34 Another,very comparable early representation prefaces the calendar section of the Psalterof Queen Blanche of Castile (first quarter of the thirteenth century) (Fig. 5).35

That image shows an unnamed astrologer holding both the instruments seen inMatthew’s drawing: an identically shaped astrolabe, as well as a dioptra; theastrologer’s pose is comparable to Euclid’s in Ashmole 304; and the scene is set

34. Dublin, Trinity College MS 117, fol. 54v. SeeN. Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, Oxford 1982, 2 vols, i, pp. 130–33.

35. Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal MS 1186, fol.1r; discussed by Udovitch (as in n. 22). There is anearlier representation of an astrolabe in MS Bodl. 614,fol. 35v (see above, n. 22).

ALLEGRA IAFRATE 149

5. Astrologer, prefatory image to the calendar in the Psalter of Blanche of Castile,Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal MS 1186 (c. 1220), fol. 1v


beneath a similar patch of sky with a crenellated edge. Matthew could have knownBlanche’s Psalter: the daughter of Eleanor of England and Alphonso VIII of Castile,she was closely linked to both the English and Spanish courts before her marriageto Louis VIII of France in 1200. She is mentioned several times in the Chronica,where Matthew also dedicated a touching and praising obituary to her.36 It is notnecessary, however, to posit his direct knowledge of the illustration, since therecurring shape of the astrolabe and the similar poses of the figures depicted maysimply imply that it was a widespread and common iconography at the time,frequently employed for scientific representations.

(II) Socrates and Plato (Fig. 6)

This double portrait of Plato and Socrates has achieved a certain fame since itsappearance as a postcard in the Bodleian bookshop.37 The image shows Socratessitting at a scriptorium, about to begin writing, while Plato stands behind his high-backed chair talking into his ear, tapping on his shoulder and pointing to the tableon the next page. The identity of the two figures cannot be mistaken, since eachof them is rubricated with his name. The sortes book Prenostica Socratis Basilei,which the image prefaces, is a collection of resolutions attributed to Socrates, whichexplains why he is shown in the act of composition.38 It has been shown thatMatthew employed two different iconographical topoi. He drew inspiration fromrepresentations of the angel inspiring the Evangelist Matthew—derived, in turn,from images of the Muse speaking to poets.39 And he depicted Plato as a royal orpapal advisor, speaking behind the throne or cathedra, a scene which often recursin Matthew’s illustrations and immediately identifies Plato as a counsellor to anauthoritative figure.40 His decision to do so is explained if we consider that Socratesis here defined as basileus, or ‘king’. The unusual title probably came about becausethese sortes constituted a translation of an Arabic tract known as Qurʿat al-muluk,or ‘the lots of the kings’—referring to the series of nine sovereigns who acted asjudges in an ancient system of regal decision-making: these resolutions were thekings’ responses to entreaties of their people, submitted to them through a formof lottery.41 The judgements were sometimes attributed to Caliph al-Mamun, so

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36. Chronica Maiora, ed. H. R. Luard, 6 vols,London 1872–82, v, p. 354 (obituary); numerous othermentions of Blanche of Castille are scattered through -out volumes ii–vi of this work.

37. It was noticed, for instance, by Jacques Derrida,who made the postcard into an ideological manifestoand used it as the title of a monograph published in1979: The Postcard: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond.The interesting point for the French philosopher was the fact that Socrates was depicted in the act ofwriting. For a full account of this episode and a generalcritique of Derrida’s approach see Camille (as in n.19), p. 117.

38. Camille (as in n. 19), p. 136.39. On author portraits including those of the

Evangelists writing see F. Pontani, ‘A Byzantine

Portrait of Homer’, this Journal, lxviii, pp. 1–26, esp.7–23. For an image showing Aratus with his Muse seeabove, n. 30.

40. Cf. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS16, fol. 186v; Dublin, Trinity College MS 177, fol. 34v.Camille (as in n. 19), pp. 124–28, considered thatPlato’s gesture—pointing at the table of the followingpage and speaking, even before Socrates has startedwriting—was particularly significant in terms of thehermeneutics of communication, the issue aroundwhich his interpretation of the image is centered.

41. For the tradition of Arabic sortes books see J. G.Wetzstein, ed. G. Weil, Die Königslose, published inMitteilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen,xxi, 1929, pp. 1–69.


the work was also known as Al-qurʿa al-maʾmuniyya. It is possible that the translator(or the revisor) of the Latin version extended the same royal qualification toSocrates, whose name had probably been substituted as more familiar to the newaudience.

What is striking is the presence of Plato. As for Hermann and Euclid, theinsertion of Socrates’s pupil in the scene should be considered as Matthew’s ownchoice, since Plato is neither mentioned in the title of the book, nor does he appearin the text. The image comprises an interesting piece of evidence about Matthew’sinventive method, and his ability to create fresh depictions without real icono-graphic precedents, by grafting literary sources on a fixed typology of illustration.The results still impress us and they are typical of Matthew, who often enlivenedtraditional schemes by his use of unusual contexts. A good example is his depictionin the Chronica Majora of the death of Enguerrand of Coucy, who fell off his horseand ended up stabbing himself with his own sword. Matthew employed the Superbiamotif from Prudentius’s Psychomachia, in this way narrating the scene while infer-ring implicitly that Enguerrand died because of his pride. Similarly, he used the

ALLEGRA IAFRATE 151

6. Matthew Paris, Socrates and Plato. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 31v


Discordia type in his illustration of a fight in London between two peasants.42 Hissystem had the dual merits of infusing new lymph into traditional typologies whilereinforcing the messages the new illustrations had to convey. These considerationsare relevant in the specific case of the image in the Ashmole manuscript. We cannotbe precise about Matthew’s literary source, since Plato and Socrates were rela-tively well known and mentioned by several authors, starting with St Augustine,whose works were frequently read at St Albans.43 It is reasonable to say, however,that Plato’s presence is similar to that of an iconographic attribute: like the scab-bard visible at Socrates’s side, Plato is meant to strengthen Socrates’s role as a king.

Through his iconographical mixing of the counselling scene with the imageryof divine inspiration, then, Matthew was trying to give Socrates a double legiti-mation: he wanted him to be both king, accompanied by his advisor, and authorof the prognostics, therefore inspired.

(V) Anaxagoras

The portrait of Anaxagoras is, at firstsight, quite puzzling. Even if we do not have Matthew’s original miniature,there is no reason to doubt that thescribe of Digby 46 copied it, includingthe rubric, from Ashmole 304 (Fig. 7). The first question, then, is why aseries of predictions entitled QuaestionesAlbedaci should be prefaced by anauthor portrait of Anaxagoras.44 Asecond question arises in consideringhow he was chosen, since his interestsin celestial matters are never discussedin much depth in thirteenth-centuryWestern sources.

Usually, when sortes books havebeen credited to pseudo-authors it canbe shown by their editors, translatorsor revisors that the figures concernedeither were, or were thought to be,somehow connected with the subjectmatters of prognostication, predesti-nation, magic, astrology or esoteric wisdom. Most of the auctoritates did, in fact,have some distinct relationship with one or more of these topics.45 Conversely,Anaxagoras is seldom and only marginally associated to that field in most Western

152 MATTHEW PARIS

42. Lewis (as in n. 1), pp. 228, 240–41; Cambridge,Corpus Christi College MS 16, fols 177v and 58r.

43. See R. M. Thomson, Manuscripts from St AlbansAbbey, 1066–1235, Woodbridge 1982, pp. 5, 76–77.

44. Cf. MS Digby 46, table, fols 66v–67r.45. Cicero and Bernardus Silvestris both addressed

the issues of predestination and divination, albeit fromquite different perspectives than those credited to them

7. Anaxagoras. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Digby 46, fol. 67v


sources of the time. St Augustine, John of Salisbury, Vincent of Beauvais and Johnof Wales all mention him, but from what they report it would be hard to connectthe presocratic philosopher with the sky and its mysteries.46 To my knowledge theonly source which could have provided enough material to make such a connec-tion was Diogenes Laertius, a compilation of whose works had been circulating inGreek since at least the twelfth century. It is known that a few adaptations, nowlost, had been translated into Latin before the thirteenth century,47 including apartial translation made in Sicily by Henricus Aristippus (1105/10–62), a copy ofwhich could have been brought to England by his English patron.48 It is then quitepossible that Diogenes Laertius’s life of Anaxagoras was familiar to Matthew Paris,also because we know that the St Albans library held other works by Aristippus.49

No early edition has survived, but there are several references to Anaxagoras’s deepinterest in the heavens in the oldest extant version of the text, the De vita et moribusphilosophorum, which circulated as a work of Walter Burley (c. 1275–1344/5).50

It is precisely this kind of anecdotal knowledge which could have prompted anassociation between Anaxagoras and the sortes.

As for why Anaxagoras was illustrated, rather than Albedacus who is namedas the author of these sortes, we can almost certainly conclude that this modificationwas due to Matthew Paris, who was in charge of the illustration process. Thecriteria for adapting these texts to an audience, in fact, may have varied according

in MS Ashmole 304; but, in any case, both of themcould easily, even if erroneously, have been associatedwith this field. Bernardus Silvestris, for instance, wrotethe Cosmographia, a long poem on the creation of the world, which includes a long section on the skyand the stars, and also the Mathematicus, which dealtwith the problem of free will. Cicero had written theSomnium Scipionis, with its famous passage on celes-tial contemplation, had translated Aratus’s work onconstellations, and was also known for being theauthor of De Divinatione, which our Divinacio clearlyechoes. Pythagoras and Socrates had the reputationof being not only wise men but also magicians. As forthe Patriarchs, they could have been seen as super-visory and moral protectors of the sortes, thanks to theirbiblical authority. Additionally Robert Grosseteste, in1242, translated into Latin a Greek apocryphal workknown as Testamenta Duodecim Patriarcharum, whichbecame extremely popular and was considered to bea collection of Jewish prophecies attributed to the sonsof Jacob. It is likely, then, that whoever used these sortesduring the 13th century thought of the Patriarchs alsoin terms of prophets.

46. For a useful if not exhaustive general survey of the sources of ancient philosophical knowledge inthe Middle Ages see G. Piaia, ‘Vestigia Philosophorum’:il Medioevo e la storiografia filosofica, Rimini 1983 (forAnaxagoras see pp. 24–25, 30, 52, 54, 83, 92–93 and130).

47. See the introduction by H. S. Long to DiogenesLaertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. and tr. R.

D. Hicks (1st edn Cambridge, MA 1925), 2 vols,Cambridge, MA 1972, p. xxvi.

48. This translation of Diogenes Laertius ismentioned by Henricus Aristippus in the preface tohis edition of Plato’s Phaedo and Meno, which isaddressed to the Englishman Robert. See V. Rose,‘Die Glücke im Diogenes Laërtius und der Alte Übersetzer’, Hermes, iv, 1866, pp. 367–97; C. Haskinsand D. P. Lockwood, ‘The Sicilian Translators of theTwelfth Century and the First Latin Version ofPtolemy’s Almagest’, Harvard Studies in ClassicalPhilology, xxi, 1910, pp. 75–102. See also J. T. Muckle,‘Greek Works Translated Directly into Latin before1350’, part 2, Mediaeval Studies, v, 1943; J. B. Dillon,entry on Aristippus in Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia,ed. C. Kleinhenz, 2 vols, New York 2004, i, pp. 53–54(with further references).

49. Thomson (as in n. 43), p. 111.50. Gualteri Burlaei Liber de Vita et Moribus Philo -

sophorum, mit einer Altspanischen Übersetzung derEskurialbibliothek, ed. H. Knust, Tubingen 1886, p. 80:‘Hic cum admodum dives esset, possessionibus dere-lictis, studendi gracia diuturnum peregrinacionemassumpsit. Et cum a quodam criminaretur, dicente:“Non est tibi cure patrie”, extenso brachio et ostensocelo, ait: “Immo michi admodum patria cure est”’.Ibid., p. 82: ‘…Interrogatus aliquando, ad quid factusfuisset, “Ad contemplacionem” inquit “solis et luneet celi”’. Ibid., p. 84: ‘…Hic studiosus fuit valde etmulta de motu celi et cursu siderum et natura rerumscripsit’.

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06_Iafrate:JWCI 26/11/13 15:27 3

to circumstance. Despite the scarce knowledge of Anaxagoras’s works generallyduring the Middle Ages, we might posit that Matthew inserted this visual referenceto a philosopher who, in the specific context of the St Albans abbey, could wellhave been known in relation with celestial matters. Moreover, we might speculatethat Matthew considered the Greek Anaxagoras a more likely author; for it cannothave escaped his notice that the text of these sortes is essentially identical (in all but versification) to that attributed to another ancient Greek philosopher—thePrenostica Pitagorice consideracionis, which also appears in this manuscript.51 Never-theless, Albedacus, Albedatus or Almendatus, vates persarum, who often recurs asan author of medieval prognostication texts,52 survives in Ashmole 403 at textuallevel, probably forgotten, as an indirect trace of the frequent process of modifi-cations and continuous adaptations which characterise sortes books.

Redirecting diagrams and tables

All of the redirecting tables extant in the codex were painstakingly executed toassist the cliens. Even the plainest examples make use of different text colours todistinguish different columns, while others feature architectural elements, typicalof computus tables of the period.53

The most interesting redirecting diagrams, however, are the thirteen spereillustrating the Prenostica Socratis basilei (Figs 8–9).54 Each circle is inscribed in arectangle and divided into twelve sectors, containing instructions for the cliens. Atthe centre is a smaller circle enclosing an image relevant to the title of the diagram,such as a bird, fruit, foliage, a city or a vase of spices; these correspond with furtherdrawings around the spera, providing the cliens with a visual key to recognise itstheme.55 While comparable spere occur in other Western manuscripts of this text,there are no other known examples where they are decorated, except for MSSDigby 46 and Pepys 911.

This kind of diagram—a circle enclosing a smaller circle, enclosed in a rectan-gular frame—was very common in the Middle Ages and was used, for example, torepresent the year, surrounded by the four seasons in the corners; the world, withthe four winds blowing, again from the corners; Jesus and the Evangelists; or theso-called ‘dove diagrams’ in some manuscripts of Hugh of Fouilloy’s Aviarium.56

154 MATTHEW PARIS

51. See above at n. 6.52. See, e.g., Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lyell

36, fol. 66v; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de FranceMS lat. 7486, fol. 46r; Erfurt, UniversitätsbibliothekMS Amplon. Oct. 88, fols 1–5, 107–10; Munich, Bayer -ische Staatsbibliothek Clm 398, fols 106–14.

53. MS Ashmole 304, fols 3r–4v (columnar), 32r

(architectural, very similar to others seen in Matthew’sworks, such as Cambridge, Corpus Christi CollegeMS 26, fol. vir). On the use of these architecturalframings see F. E. Wallis, ‘Images of Order in Medi evalComputus’, in Ideas of Order in the Middle Ages, ed. W.Ginsberg, New York 1990 (conference proceedings:Acta, xv, 1988), pp. 45–68.

54. Altogether there are 13, but it should be notedthat, for the general mechanism of the sortes, thereshould be only 12: Matthew, by mistake, duplicatedthe last spera civitatis.

55. For the five spere civitatis and when illustratingthe seven towers of the planets (Ashmole 304, fol. 3r),Matthew depicted the cities exactly as he did in hismaps and itineraria. For a recent work on the maps ofMatthew Paris see S. Sansone, Tra cartografia politicae immaginario figurativo: Matthew Paris e l’Iter deLondinio in terram sanctam, Rome 2009.

56. For the ‘dove diagrams’ see, e.g., Oxford,Bodleian Library MS Lyell 71, fol. 4r; M. Carruthers,The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in MedievalCulture, pp. 305–07.


The scheme has several points of contact with cosmological diagrams, especiallysynthetic representations of the sun enclosed by the points of the zodiac arrangedin a circle: in that form it has ancient origins, being found in Roman mosaics. Inmedieval manuscripts, the figuration often retained its association with the cycleof seasons, the passing of time, the winds and the horizon, the universe and soon,57 although it also adapted to vehiculate new meanings, providing a convenientpresentational framework for different illustrative necessities.58

Traditionally, the central clipeus was filled with the bust of a figure—usually apersonified cosmological or natural power (such as Annus, Mundus, Aeternitas andSol), following a schematic Roman convention which was perpetuated during theMiddle Ages for scientific diagrams. In the case of Matthew’s redirecting spere,however, only one encloses the bust of a man, wearing a round cap (Fig. 8). Thesurrounding images, appropriately for this ‘spera bestiarii’, depict beasts of variousspecies. Although this is just a tentative hypothesis, I believe that Matthew intendedto depict Adam surrounded by animals. The figure’s typically Jewish headgear isidentical to that he employed for some of the twelve Patriarchs (Fig. 1).59 It is not

57. J. Baltrusaitis, ‘L’image du monde céleste duIX au XII siècle’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, xix, 1938,pp. 137–48.

58. B. Obrist, ‘Wind Diagrams and MedievalCosmology’, Speculum, lxxii, 1997, pp. 33–84 (48).

59. On Jewish headwear see above, n. 20.

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8. Matthew Paris, Spera bestiarum. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 34v


uncommon in medieval bestiaries, moreover, to find the first progenitor, aloneand clothed, naming the wild beasts.60

Birds

The manuscript was rich in the depiction of animals and particularly birds, whichrecurred in three tracts with different roles, as we see by comparison with Digby46 and Pepys 911.

(II) Birds in redirecting diagrams

Those birds extant in the Ashmole manuscript’s Prenostica Socratis Basilei decoratethree of the redirecting circles just described: the so-called ‘spere volatilium’, wherethe cliens would find the name of the particular bird and associated instructionswhich, in turn, would direct him to the final judge of his question (Fig. 9).

(III) Birds as judices

Especially interesting are the thirty-six birds presented as judges in the PrenosticaPitagorice consideracionis (fols 43v–52r) (see Figs 10–21). Each of Matthew’s draw-ings is accompanied by a rubric, unlike the other two tracts where it is impossibleto connect the representation of a single bird with its name. To date, these imageshave been neither studied nor published.61 Nevertheless, despite the fact that notall the birds have been drawn with the same degree of attention, in general, mostof them are depicted with care and their colouring and distinctive features areconveyed with light washes. The dove, duck, peacock, raven, bat, eagle, hawk andseveral others have been represented with some precision and are, therefore,perfectly recognisable.62The remainder, however, present a problem. Many of therubrics betray a foreign linguistic origin since, as I have demonstrated elsewhere,they derive ultimately from a Hebrew fortune-telling tract known as Sefer GoralotSaʿadia Gaʾon, which provides a list of thirty-six birds named in Hebrew. At somepoint, that text must have been translated, rubrics included. Some of the names,however, were simply transliterated in the Latin alphabet, without providing aLatin equivalent, no doubt because the word was too specific and therefore hardto translate.63 In these cases, there is no clear correspondence between the rubric

156 MATTHEW PARIS

60. Several bestiaries include images of Adamnaming the animals, as described by Isidore in hisEtymologia, xii.2.1–8, xii.7.1-9. See, e.g., the AberdeenBestiary (English, c. 1200), Aberdeen, UniversityLibrary MS 24, fol. 5r; the Peterborough Bestiary(English, 1304–21), Cambridge, Corpus ChristiCollege MS 53, fol. 195v (wears a hat); and London,British Library [hereafter: BL] MS Sloane 3544(English, second or third quarter of the 13th century),fol. 15v. The iconographical scheme probably derivesfrom classical representations of Orpheus: see, e.g., amosaic from Jerusalem in the Archaeological Museumin Istanbul, in which Orpheus, represented with aphrygian cap and a lyre, is shown surrounded by wildanimals, satyrs and a hawk; a Roman floor mosaic in

Palermo, Museo archeologico regionale, has Orpheusin similar attire, surrounded by birds and animals.

61. R. Vaughan, Matthew Paris, London 1958, p.230, may have unwittingly discouraged furtherresearch through his description of these images as ‘anumber of rather poor outline drawings of birds’.

62. These drawings are found on fols 43v, 44r (Fig.10), 45v (Fig. 11), 47r-v (Figs 14–15), 49r, 49v (Fig. 17).

63. Iafrate, ‘ “Si sequeris casum …” ’ (as in n. 1), pp.477–83. Despite the fact that several stages in the chainof copying often transformed the original Hebrewword into something different, by referring to bothversions of this text (see above, n. 6), I was able toreconstruct a possible list and to match Matthew’srubrics with names of birds provided in the Sefer


and the drawing, since the illustrator did not know the meaning of the originalword. For example, in the case of the ‘effroa’—which is a direct transliteration ofthe Hebrew term ʾefroah ̣, meaning a young chicken—Matthew’s representationresembles a hoopoe (Fig. 13), as does his ‘agauf’ on the facing recto (Fig. 14). Thisstrongly suggests that the bird representations did not belong to an original figu-rative programme for the text but were added at some later point. The ‘qore’ orpartridge is rendered in the manuscript as ‘coccinus’, which does not correspondto any known bird.64 As its name may have suggested, however, the bird depictedis coloured in red (Fig. 10).

Animal and bird representations in the Middle Ages are indissolubly linked tothe tradition of bestiaries. More specifically, the most important source for birdimagery was the so-called Dicta Chrisostomi de naturis bestiarum, probably writtenin France around 1100 and found in thirty manuscripts, nine of which are illus-trated. There was also the Aviarium by Hugh of Fouilloy, written between the 1130s

Goralot. Usually, whenever the rubric is in Latin, thename of the bird corresponds to the actual meaning ofthe Hebrew word.

64. Ibid., p. 481. The term ‘coccinus’ may denote akind of cuckoo (usually: cucullus), or even perhaps a bird used in cooking. By contrast, in the version of

this text ascribed to Albedacus, ‘qore’ is simply trans -literated as ‘chore’ (for the text versions see above atn. 6). Probably, the translator did not know the worddenotes a partridge, but nevertheless inserted a Latinequivalent which seemed similar to him.

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9. Matthew Paris, Spera volatilium. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 35v


and 1140s, which proved immensely popular until around the end of the thirteenthcentury.65 The ninety-six surviving manuscripts of the Aviarium (forty-nine ofthem illustrated) fall into five recognisable groups, of which the so-called Parisgroup is often accompanied by bestiaries and includes extra chapters on the ibisand coot.66 The full set of illustrations has images of around thirty birds.67

Even if we have no clear evidence that Matthew used the figures of an Aviariumas models for those in Ashmole 304, some of his illustrations are at least reminis-cent of birds found in other western European manuscripts.68The ‘arbe’ (Fig. 12),for instance, is clearly modelled on the type of a stork bending its neck; the ‘coz’(Fig. 19), with a fish in its beak, resembles a heron; the ‘haziza’ and the ‘sanafa’(Figs 16, 20), both shown killing a snake, could be inspired by the ibis, which wassaid to feed its chick on snake eggs, or by the pelican, which fights against snakes;69

‘caaz’ could have suggested ‘caladrius’ and the bird depicted (Fig. 21) is not unlikethe caladrius in a Flemish Aviarium;70 the ‘diquifat’, with its horns or ears (Fig. 20),could suggest a horned bubo owl; the ‘batharana’ (Fig. 15) could also be an owl,even though they are more often represented full-faced. These depictions do not,however, match an existing or known repertoire; my impression is that Matthewwas simply trying to avoid monotony by varying the elements at his disposal,possibly inserting, but without consistency, features derived from existing types.

One interesting point regarding the images produced for bestiaries or aviariesis that they often circulated unbound or were inserted into model-books, becausesome workshops or scriptoria used the same drawings for numerous differentpurposes, such as heraldry. A well known case is the combined aviary and bestiaryheld in the Houghton Library of Harvard University, which belongs to the Parisgroup and contains Hugh’s treatise as well as a version of the Dicta Chrisostomi.This manuscript is now considered to have been produced in Paris by a workshop

158 MATTHEW PARIS

65. Hugh of Fouilloy was a French Augustinianfriar and founding prior of St.-Nicolas-de-Reigny, nearAmiens. He composed the Aviarum with the intent ofproviding lay brothers with moralising lessons throughallegorising examples of birds. On the Aviarum tradi-tion see W. B. Clark, The Medieval Book of Birds: Hughof Fouilloy’s ‘Aviarium’, Binghamton, NY 1992; seealso R. Scheller, ‘Exemplum’: Model-Book Drawingsand the Practise of Artistic Tradition in the Middle Ages (c.900–ca. 1470), Amsterdam 1995, pp. 189–90. The workhas come down to us under several other titles, suchas De columba deargentata, Libellus quidam ad Rainierumconversum cognomine Corde Benignum, De avibus, Detribus columbis, and De natura avium. Hugh probablyintended the text to be illustrated and numerous illu-minated copies are extant: there are 42 fully illustratedmanuscripts, 13 which display only the diagrams, andnine which have spaces left for pictures; see Clark, p.27. Production of Aviarum manuscripts had decreasedsharply by the end of the 13th century; ibid., p. 23.

66. Ibid., pp. 52–61, on the illustrative and textualfeatures of the Paris group.

67. Ibid., pp. 32–33. The full set of illustrationscomprised: the author in the act of writing; the laybrother Rainier to whom the work was dedicated,depicted as a falconer on a horse; a dove and a hawk;a dove diagram, three doves; a hawk diagram; a palm;a turtledove diagram; a cedar tree with Thibault ofHeilly, founding benefactor of St-Laurent-au-Boiswhere the work was composed; sparrows on a branch;a pelican reviving its chicks; nycticorax (night heron);raven; cockerel; ostrich; vulture; crane; kite; swallow;stork; blackbird; owl; jay; duck; goose; heron; caladrius(a mythical white bird); phoenix on its pyre; partridge;quail; hoopoe; swan; peacock; eagle.

68. For these birds and their Hebrew derivationssee Iafrate, ‘“Si sequeris casum…”’ (as in n. 1), p. 481.

69. W. B. Clarke, A Medieval Book of Beasts.TheSecond Family Bestiary: Commentary, Art, Text and Tran-slation, Woodbridge 2006, pp. 172 (ibis), 177 (pelican).

70. I thank Rémy Cordonnier for this observation.See Bruges, Grootseminarie MS 89/54, p. 77 (imageavailable online via ‘The Medieval Bestiary’ webresource); Flanders, c. 1190–1200, Aviarium of Hughof Fouilloy.


ALLEGRA IAFRATE 159

10. Matthew Paris, coccinus and anser (goose), judices for the Prenostica Pitagorice consideracionis. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 44r

11. Matthew Paris, [arqua] and pavo (peacock), judices for the Prenostica Pitagorice consideracionis. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 45v


160 MATTHEW PARIS

12. Matthew Paris, coturnix (quail) and arbe, judices for the Prenostica Pitagorice consideracionis. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 46ar

13. Matthew Paris, ala and effroa, judices for the Prenostica Pitagorice consideracionis. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 46v


ALLEGRA IAFRATE 161

14. Matthew Paris, corvus (crow) and agauf, judices for the Prenostica Pitagorice consideracionis. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 47r

15. Matthew Paris, batharana and vespertilio (bat), judices for the Prenostica Pitagorice consideracionis. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 47v


162 MATTHEW PARIS

16. Matthew Paris, [peret] and haziza, judices for the Prenostica Pitagorice consideracionis. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 48v

17. Matthew Paris, aquila (eagle) and ozina, judices for the Prenostica Pitagorice consideracionis. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 49v


ALLEGRA IAFRATE 163

18. Matthew Paris, daa and saaf, judices for the Prenostica Pitagorice consideracionis. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 50r

19. Matthew Paris, coz and salac, judices for the Prenostica Pitagorice consideracionis. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 50v


164 MATTHEW PARIS

20. Matthew Paris, anafa and diquifat, judices for the Prenostica Pitagorice consideracionis. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 51v

21. Matthew Paris, caaz and arfarperet, judices for the Prenostica Pitagorice consideracionis. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 304, fol. 52r


ALLEGRA IAFRATE 165

of Dominicans, active between the 1230s and 1240s,71 and there are indications ofits having been employed as some sort of model-book for other illustrated manu-scripts.72 Of special significance to us are the marks it bears of the ‘punch-transfer’process, by which an artist could reproduce an image by delineating its silhouettewith small punches, then following the slight traces left on the parchment putunderneath.73 The technique is known to have been used quite often in bestiary-illustrating and there is also evidence of such a practice in Ashmole 304: punchmarks can be found on some of the ornithological drawings, and on some of theanimals decorating the redirecting circles in the Prognostica Socratis Basileus. It isnot possible to be conclusive about whether the punches were made by Matthewhimself or by a later artist; but he might have been responsible for one particularexample of their use. The figure of the eagle in the Prenostica Pitagorice consideracionis(Fig. 17) is almost exactly the same as the figure of the ‘saaf ’ on the precedingverso (Fig. 18), except that the two birds face in opposite directions and havedifferently coloured plumage. The outline of the ‘saaf’ is punched through, whichcould suggest that the operation was carried out in order to copy its shape to theeagle. If so, the punching would most likely have been done during the actualprocess of drawing this series of birds and not afterwards.

Considered within the broader context of Matthew’s art, the images of birdsand animals in Ashmole 304 raises the question of the accuracy of their rendering.Matthew was often quite careful in composing his animals from actual observation,even if he then quoted his sources as being Pliny, Isidorus or Horace, as any goodchronicler of the time would have done.74 On the other hand, as discussed above,he may have drawn inspiration from aviaries and bestiaries—and naturalism israrely a category applicable to medieval bestiaries. The issue is, then, clearly deli-cate. In seeking an answer, I would like to propose that the issue of ‘realism’ inMatthew Paris depends very much on circumstance and on the purpose of theimage. Two examples are instructive in this regard.

71. Harvard University, Houghton Library MSTyp. 101. W. B. Clark, ‘The Aviary-Bestiary at theHoughton Library, Harvard’, in Beasts and Birds in theMiddle Ages, ed. eadem and M. T. McMunn, Philadel-phia 1989, pp. 26–52 (30–32), disputed earlier scholar-ship which held that the manuscript was English.

72. All the illustrations, for instance, are collectedtogether at the beginning of the manuscript, instead ofbeing paired with their corresponding entries in thetext. Moreover, several frames are depicted aroundthe images of single birds: circles, ovals and squares,as if one could choose to vary them depending on thegeneral layout. Finally, the quality of the parchment isnot particularly high, the colours are faded, the repre-sentations themselves are often damaged or completelyruined, and a hole left by a compass point is oftenfound at the centre of the bird image. See Scheller (asin n. 65), p. 189; and Clark, ‘The Aviary-Bestiary’ (asin n. 71), pp. 29–30.

73. See Clark, ‘The Aviary-Bestiary’ (as in n. 71),p. 34; and for the ‘punch-transfer’ technique see D.

Miner, ‘More about Medieval Pouncing’, in Homageto a Bookman: Essays on Manuscripts, Books and Printingwritten for Hans P. Kraus on his 60th Birthday, Berlin1967, pp. 83–107. The employment of this techniquein manuscripts may have been more common in somescriptoria than others. Often it is confined only todetails or small elements, leading to the suggestionthat it was scarcely used in scriptoria and was more atechnique employed for fabric patterns, enamels andengravings on wood or leather. There are, however,examples to be found in manuscripts made at St-Germain de-Prés in the 11th century and at Bury StEdmunds in the 12th century, which demonstrate thatthe technique was used in those scriptoria to transferdrawings from manuscript to manuscript. At least atthat early stage it should not be considered as a formof mechanisation but rather as a sort of shortcut.

74. See, e.g., Cambridge, Corpus Christi CollegeMS 16, fol. iir.


As the first instance, it is well known that Matthew’s drawing in the Chronicamajora of the famous elephant given by the king of France to Henry III, togetherwith its keeper, was made with the intent of precisely rendering its size.75 Theelephant is represented with great attention to detail and a good degree of pictorialrealism, both in its proportions and in its physical features. Another drawing of thebeast, in the Liber additamentorum, was likely a sketch or a trial for the represen-tation in the Chronica, since in this first version Matthew adds a separate sketchfor the trunk curling inwards, as shown in the later image.76

In another instance, Matthew recorded precise information about unusualflocks of birds which invaded orchards in 1252. Based on his detailed textualdescription, modern ornithologists have concluded with confidence that the birdswere crossbills, even though the accompanying small marginal sketch, showing abird with a berry in its beak, looks nothing like that species.77 Nevertheless, it doesseem likely that the sketch was intended as a pictorial rubric for the chronicleentry.78 The little bird was, then, what the chronicler meant it to be, albeit not anaccurate pictorial record of a crossbill.

In the case of the birds in the Ashmole manuscript, the question of ‘realism’should, again, be judged in accordance with the circumstances of his project.Matthew could not have drawn a precise correspondence between the rubrics andthe birds, even if he had wanted to, given the substantial obscurity of most of theterms. He drew the birds with which he was more familiar, which are perfectlyrecognisable. For the others, he employed the same or a slightly variant model forpairs of different birds (‘saaf’/eagle, ‘effroa’/‘agauf’, ‘haziza’/‘sanafa’); and he alsoinvented plausible bird types, by simply varying positions, size, and attributes suchas colour of the plumage and length and shape of the beaks.

(VI) Birds as auctoritates

The third group of birds in the manuscript once decorated the Divinacio Cicero -nalis, as intermediate auctoritates. Unfortunately, the folios which held them are alllost. We can, however, reconstruct the original series through comparison withDigby 46 (folios 78r–79v) and, to some extent, with reference to the set in Pepys911 (folios 47r–48v). Both manuscripts have images of twenty birds enclosed incircles, which redirect the user of the book to twenty astrological figures shownfacing them: the pairings are disposed in two parallel columns and arranged overfour pages, five per page (Figs 22–29). As in the Prenostica Pitagorice consideracionis,most of the ornithological names are in Latin but some are in another language,probably because they could not be translated; and, again, where the term denoted

166 MATTHEW PARIS

75. Ibid., fol. ivr, with Matthew’s explanation: ‘perquantitatem hominis hic protracti considerari potestquantitas bestie hic figurate’. On this elephant see M.Evans, ‘An Illustrated Fragment of Peraldus’s Summaof Vice: Harleian MS 3244’, this Journal, xlv, 1982,pp. 14–68 (41–42) and pl. 9; the image with the keeperis shown as pl. 9d. See also Lewis (as in n. 1), pp. 214–15.

76. London, BL MS Cotton Nero D.I, fol. 169v.See Lewis, ibid.; Evans, pl. 9c.

77. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 16,fol. 252r. W. B. Yapp, ‘Birds in English MedievalManuscripts’, Journal of Medieval History, v, 1979, pp.315–49 (320).

78. This point is argued convincingly by Lewis (asin n. 1), p. 298.


a known bird the depiction corresponds, but otherwise we find random insertionsof other birds. The full listing of birds in this section is very similar between thetwo manuscripts:79

[Digby 46] pavo (peacock), columba (dove), perdix (partridge), pinzan, turbo,hirundo (swallow), passer (sparrow), pica (magpie), tudon, gallus (cockerel), ancipiter(hawk), corvuus (crow), asturtius, ganga, spicula, caranus, restite, alcolchi, hupupa(hoopoe), bubo (owl).

[Pepys 911] pavo (peacock), columba (dove), perdix (partridge), pinzan, turbo,yrundo (swallow), passer (sparrow), pica (magpie), tudo, gallus (cockerel), accipiter(hawk), corvus (crow), astrucius, ganga, pica (magpie), caranus, resey, alcolchi,huppupa (hoopoe), dugo.

Some of the foreign terms can be equated with bird names in Spanish, French or Catalan, thus reflecting a romance intermediary, most likely of Occitan origin:pinzón (Sp.), pinson (Fr.), pinsà (Cat.) means ‘finch’; tudó (Cat.) means ‘woodpigeon’; ganga (Sp., Fr. and Cat.) is a bird of the sandgrouse family.80 The sand-grouse is found in Europe only in desert areas of the Iberian Peninsula and insouthwest France (Provence); it is found also quite common in the Middle East,and throughout Africa. Other names cannot be easily matched with specific birds.Whatever the original term for the ‘alcolchi’, the structure of the word suggests anagglutination of the Arabic article al, which seems to point, once more, to theIberian Peninsula.

Astrological figures

Despite the fact that sortes were technically not astrological tracts, their compilersoften employed astrological terminology or drew upon astrological (or pseudo-astrological) references, so creating an aura of scientific reliability around thesetexts. It must have been part of the game to enhance the mystery and the powerfulcharge of the sortes, by drawing on material which had been freshly translated fromthe Arabic and only recently introduced in Europe, even if the results were notprecise and betrayed substantial ignorance in astrological matters.

While the iconographic details of the birds in the Divinacio Ciceronalis sectionsof Digby 46 and Pepys 911 are too vague and inconsistent to yield useful conclu-sions about Matthew’s original drawings, the astrological iconographies are defi-nitely relevant, also because the series in Pepys 911 is the oldest of this kind knownin England.81 In both manuscripts the series of twenty figures is composed of theseven planets (Sun, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury), a dragon-like

79. As can be seen by comparing Figs 22–25 andFigs 26–29, the drawings differ between Digby 46 andPepys 911.

80. An Occitan linguistic mediation is quite poss -ible, given the numerous examples of Occitan sortes.On this topic see the studies by Bernard (as in n. 11).In my article ‘“Si sequeris casum…”’ (as in n. 1), I

proposed that given its structure, the Divinacio Cicero -nalis could be a work of Jewish origins, most likelyre-elaborated in Spain. I now consider that the Latinversion in Ashmole 304 probably constitutes a trans-lation of a work originally written in Occitan.

81. N. Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, Oxford1982, 2 vols, ii, pp. 191–92.

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168 MATTHEW PARIS

22 (fol. 78r).

22, 23. Bodleian Library MS Digby 46, fol. 78r-v, intermediate auctoritates in the Divinacio Ciceronalis

23 (fol. 78v).


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24 (fol. 79r).

25 (fol. 79v).

24, 25. Bodleian Library MS Digby 46, fol. 79r-v, intermediate auctoritates in the Divinacio Ciceronalis


170 MATTHEW PARIS

26, 27. Cambridge, Magdalene College MS Pepys 911, fol. 47r-v, intermediate auctoritates in the Divinacio Ciceronalis

PHOTOGRAPHS: REPRODUCED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE PEPYS LIBRARY, MAGDALENE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

26 (fol. 47r).

27 (fol. 47v).


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28, 29. Cambridge, Magdalene College MS Pepys 911, fol. 48r-v, intermediate auctoritates in the Divinacio Ciceronalis

PHOTOGRAPHS: REPRODUCED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE PEPYS LIBRARY, MAGDALENE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

29 (fol. 48v).

28 (fol. 48r).


creature labelled ‘Serpens’ and the signs of the Zodiac. A first remark should bemade about the Serpens. The figure probably illustrates the constellation of Draco,which was also known as Serpens and was often rendered as a snake or dragon-likecreature.82 Possibly, the composer of these sortes, needing a set of twenty author-itative judges, inserted the Serpens between the planets and the zodiac signs. Theconstellation of Draco was, in fact, sometimes used to represent the entire northernhemisphere, being situated right at the centre.83

It is no simple matter to recover the original display of astrological figuresthrough comparison, because the illustrations of the Divinacio Ciceronalis differ,slightly but consistently, between Digby 46 and Pepys 911 (Figs 22–29). The firstpoint is that most of the figures are oriented in opposite directions in the twomanuscripts. Yet Leo and Capricorn are oriented in the same way in both, whichrules out the hypothesis that one set was reproduced, at some point, using thepunch-transfer technique. The second point is that different iconographies wereemployed for the Moon, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Serpens, Virgo, Lyra, Aquariusand Pisces.84

These variations might be linked to the different text versions of the DivinacioCiceronalis as presented in the three manuscripts. We should bear in mind thatsortes may have circulated in unbound or independent fascicles, so there mighthave been more than one version of the various tracts available to the copyists.85

In the case of the Divinacio Ciceronalis, Digby 46 follows the text extant in Ashmole304, but the scribe of Pepys 911 must have copied this tract from another source.The question is whether the sources were already illustrated. If so, each versioncould have employed a slightly variant repertoire, which in turn could explain whythe two series do not match perfectly. As noted above, the birds represented inthis tract also differ between Pepys 911 to Digby 46, a fact which renders it easierto imagine two distinct, slightly different sets of images, instead of constant andpersonal alterations carried out by a single copyist. The alternative possibility isthat Matthew provided an original set but one (or both) of the two copyists alteredthe repertoire while reproducing it. If we had to judge from the quality of the work,

172 MATTHEW PARIS

82. Ever since its description by W. H. Black, ADescriptive, Analytical, and Critical Catalogue of theManuscripts bequeathed unto the University of Oxford by Elias Ashmole …, Oxford 1845, p. 216, this last sortestext has been referred to as ‘Prenostica quorum judicessunt Planetae, Serpentarius et duodecim signa zodiaci’.Yet there is no reference to the Serpentarius, that is,the constellation of Ophiuchus, in any part of the textor the rubrics. Probably, Black took the snake as avisual short-cut for the constellation of the snake-bearer.

83. See, e.g., the illustrations for Ps.-Bede, De signiscoeli, in Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale MS 448, fol.64r; and in Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana MSLat. VIII, 22 (2760), fol. 4r, where the diagram repre-senting the zodiac circle encompasses the Draco interarctos, meant here as the whole northern hemisphere;

or, also, a similar scheme, with the sole Draco, in theDe ordine ac positione stellarum, Austin, University ofTexas, Harry Ransom Humanities Research CenterMS HRC 029, fol. 25v. The celestial Draco, whosehead and tail rest on the ecliptic, was sometimesthought to be the cause of eclipses.

84. For a more precise description of the differ-ences in iconography see Iafrate, ‘The Workshop ofFortune’ (as in n. 1).

85. This could also account for the different orderin which the tracts are disposed in Pepys 911. SeeIafrate, ibid.; and Catalogue of the Pepys Library (as inn. 14), pp. 5–7. The illuminator of Pepys 911, though,usually turned to Matthew’s copy for the illustrations,suggesting that at least some of his sources did nothave illustrations.


the illuminator of Pepys 911 would have been more at ease with such a task, givenhis greater artistic competence. Yet it is not implausible to suppose that the copyistof Digby 46, instead, carried out a conscious general update of iconographicalmodels: perhaps to favour an audience whose taste, in terms of astrological imagery,could have mutated by the fourteenth century. It is, in short, difficult to be certainabout what happened but, nevertheless, a number of useful observations can bemade.

We know, in general, that ready-made illustrative repertoires (model-books,copy-books) were often used in monastic scriptoria for the decorations of Psalters,Books of Hours, calendars, or even depictive series such as the months or thezodiac signs.86 It is possible that a full set of roundels similar to ours existed andcirculated in this way. The well-organised page-layout also resembles the kind foundin thirteenth-century magic treatises such as the Lapidario or the Picatrix, producedrespectively in 1256 and in 1253. Indeed, one might well imagine that an artist giventhe task of illustrating this series of paired correspondences could be prompted torefer to or adapt a contemporary pictorial source or a well established typology tofill his needs.

To begin with, we should note that the astrological illustrations display anarray of features which do not seem to depend directly on the classically derivedtraditions of Ptolemy, or on the numerous Aratus manuscripts. The constellationsare a case in point. In both manuscripts Taurus is represented with a whole body,for instance (Figs 23, 27), which is not strictly ‘Aratean’ (although sometimes it isto be found also in that tradition) but appears quite frequently in calendar manu-scripts. Also, the appearance of the Gemini as courtly pages holding a shield (Figs24, 28) seems to derive from non-scientific, secular works, where it may occur inthe calendar sections of decorated Psalters or other courtly or lay texts fromsouthern France such as the Breviari d’Amor of Matfre Ermengaud (late thirteenthcentury), which included an astrological section.87 Similarly, the disposition ofPisces as two crossed fish in Digby 46 (Fig. 25) is uncharacteristic for astronomicalmanuscripts and the most fruitful comparisons are with encyclopedic compendiaor, rarely, calendar illustrations.88

Even the planetary series show scanty or merely generic and indirect pointsof contact with the Aratean tradition. For example, the presence of the nimbus,seen in both images of Sol (Figs 22, 26), suggests a figurative tradition of whichthey represent abbreviated versions: the tradition would have been passed downuninterrupted from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, certainly through the mediationof Aratean manuscripts but also becoming extremely widespread.89

86. See Time in the Medieval World, Occupations ofthe Months and Signs of the Zodiac in the Index of Chris-tian Art, ed. C. Hourihane, Princeton, NJ 2007.

87. Psalters: e.g., New York, Pierpont MorganLibrary MS M.385, fol. 3v. Breviari d’Amor: London,BL Harley MS 4940 (Toulouse, 1350–70), fol. 29v,and Royal MS 19 C I (Occitan, first quarter of the14th century), fol. 37r.

88. Compendia: e.g., London, BL Harley MS 4940,fols 30v, 31r; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de FranceMS fr. 9219, fol. 28r, and MS fr. 858, fol. 30v. The onlycalendrical example I could find is in the St AlbansPsalter: Hildesheim, Domsbibliothek St GodehardMS 1, p. 4.

89. The flaming torch held by Sol in Pepys 911 isrendered in Digby 46 more confusingly, but the

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Definitely puzzling is Luna in Pepys 911 (Fig. 26). The crescent on her head(which appears also in Digby 46) and stick in her hand were common featuresthroughout most of the tradition: these probably derived from an impoverished orsimplified model parallel to that of Sol. It is not easy, however, to make out whatis meant by the bowl-shaped attribute, which creates the impression that Luna isgrinding something in a mortar. I have found no parallel to match this image. Mysuggestion is that the crescent was for some reason duplicated. Usually, Luna isrepresented with the crescent on her head (cf. Fig. 22) but also, less commonly,as a girl holding it in her hand. Or, sometimes she holds the moon represented asa face, or a crescent, or a face emerging from a crescent.90 It is not impossible tothink that, if a copyist knew both traditions, he could have superimposed them,and that over time the hollow shape of the crescent became mistaken for somesort of vessel.91

Saturn, who cuts off men’s lives, is represented with a scythe in Pepys 911 anda sickle in Digby 46 (Figs 22, 26). The sickle had continued to be a standard andwidespread element in the iconography of this planet ever since antiquity. It is notalways associated with the planet-god in extant representations from the Arateantradition (although some important examples remain) but survived in parallel withthem, thanks in part to mythographic accounts.92 Matthew Paris himself, whenparaphrasing Ovid’s Fasti (I.234) in the Chronica majora, refers to Saturn as a reaperas both plants and people.93

Jupiter is depicted almost without attributes in Pepys 911, even if his sittingpose could evoke his authoritative status (Fig. 26). In Digby 46, instead, he isrepresented with two red flowers (Fig. 22). These can be explained on the basis ofMichael Scot’s Liber introductorius, which includes the description: ‘Jupiter is repre-sented as follows: he has … a robe like a judge embroidered with silk, a lily in onehand and a rose in the other’.94 It is thought that versions of Scot’s treatise were

174 MATTHEW PARIS

attribute is not uncommon; Matthew drew Sol withtwo flaming torches in MS Bodl. 614, fol. 23r.

90. For Luna holding a crescent moon see, e.g., the12th-century illustration of Igynus’s De Astronomia inBaltimore, Walters Art Gallery MS 734, fol. 20v. Lunaholds the moon as a face emerging from a bowl-likesemi-circle in BL MS Harley 4940, fol. 37r.

91. Nevertheless, it is perhaps worth mentioningan alternative, albeit less likely scenario. It is conceiv-able that the source of the illustration did not, in fact,depend on an iconographic misunderstanding of animage of Luna. We would then have to posit that thefigure represented, who could also be a man, derivesultimately from the body of medieval legends whichrelated the presence of a man on the moon, havingbeen banished from the earth for his sinful behaviour.According to different versions he could be Cain, orJudas (with a bundle of thorns), or a man caughtstealing cabbages on Christmas Eve, or the Jewish manof Numbers 15.32–36 who worked on the Sabbathcollecting sticks; see S. L. Montgomery, ‘The Moonand the Western Imagination’, Tucson, AZ 1999, p. 67.

92. The oldest surviving medieval image of Saturnwith a sickle is, however, in a manuscript of German-icus’s Aratea: Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijks universiteitMS Voss. Lat. Q.79, fol. 93v. See R. Klibansky, withE. Panofsky and F. Saxl, Saturn und Melancholie,Frankfurt am Main 1990, pl. 15.

93. ‘Saturnus utique in suo dominabatur domi-cilio, qui est omnium planetarum tristissimus, undeab Ovidio dicitur Falcifer, quia metit virentia et vividamortificat’. Chronica Maiora (as in n. 36), v, p. 537.

94. ‘Sic figuratur Jupiter. Habet … vestes ut iudicisde palio frixatas, lilium in manu, in alia rosam’. Citedfrom F. Saxl, ed. S. Settis, La fede negli astri: dall’anti-chità al Rinascimento, Turin 1985, p. 145 (Munich,Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm. 10268, fol. 84v). Onthe Liber introductorius see recently D. Blume, ‘MichaelScot, Giotto and the Construction of New Images ofthe Planets’, in Images of the Pagan Gods: Papers of aConference in Memory of Jean Seznec, ed. R. Duits andF. Quiviger, London and Turin 2009, pp. 129–50; andS. Ackermann, Sternstunden am Kaiserhof: MichaelScotus und sein ‘Buch von den Bildern und Zeichen des


in circulation from around 1235.95 If the illustrations of Digby 46 were copiedfrom those in Ashmole 304, then the possibility is presented of Matthew Parishaving had access to an early, perhaps even illustrated manuscript of the Liberintroductorius—in which case the image would derive from one of the first visualreceptions of Scot’s text. Matthew was certainly very well informed about Fred-erick II’s court, where the work was written. The two flowers held by the planet godin Digby 46 are both red: they are no more a lily and a rose, which suggests thatthey derive from a time when Jupiter with the flowers was already a standardisedmodel and not an iconographic novelty.

As for Mars, in both manuscripts he is represented as a knight: in Digby 46armed with sword and shield, in Pepys 911 with shield and bannered lance (Figs22, 26). It is would be hard to trace the derivation of the weapons; they were prob-ably quite casual choices, depending on the way the illuminator imagined a knightof his time. Mars is described by Matthew as a warrior in the Chronica Majora;96

he had long been represented as one, recognisable as such because of his helmet,even in the very synthetic Aratean clipei. He maintained these features, which areto be found also in illustrations for Scot’s text and for the Liber Astrologiae byGeorgius Fendulus.97

Venus is shown with an arrow (Figs 23, 27), a figuration which recurs later inthe Middle Ages and also during the Renaissance (in the body of illustrations forLorenzo Spirito’s sortes, for instance). It probably developed by way of a simpli-fied, impoverished version of a more detailed original conception. In one of theillustrations of the early fourteenth-century Manesse Codex, ‘Frau Minne’, thatis to say, Venus, can be seen on the helmet of one of the knights: she holds a torchand an arrow, symbols of her burning passion.98 The ultimate model could havebeen a literary work, such as Ovid’s descriptions of Venus accompanied by littleEros with the arrow. Another possibility is that the arrow represents a misunder-standing of the spica, an attribute of the constellation of Virgo.99

Himmels’, Frankfurt am Mein 2009. For illustrationsof Jupiter see, e.g., Münich, Bayerische Staatsbiblio-thek, Clm 10268, fol. 85r; Vienna, ÖsterreichischeNational biblio thek MS 2353, fol. 27v, and MS 2378,fol. 12v.

95. G. M. Edwards, ‘The Two Redactions ofMichael Scot’s Liber Introductorius’, Traditio, xli, 1985,pp. 329–40.

96. The description occurs in a long marginal glossin the Chronica Majora about the city of Rome; seeLewis (as in n. 1), p. 344 n. 49.

97. V. Clark, The Illustrated ‘Abridged’ AstrologicalTreatises of Albumasar: Medieval Astrological Imagery inthe West, Ann Arbor 1979. See also Blume, Regenten desHimmels (as in n. 94), pp. 34–46; and the full-colourfacsimile edition of the illustrations of the Liber Astro -logiae from Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de FranceMS lat. 7330, published by M. T. Gousset and J.-P.Verdet, Paris 1989; for that manuscript see also A.García Avilés, ‘Imágenes de los decanos en el Liber

astrologiae de Fendulus (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale,ms. Lat. 7330)’, Locus Amoenus, i, 1995, pp. 34–46.

98. Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek MS Pal.Ger. 848, fol. 76r.

99. Clark (as in n. 97), p. 124. The Virgo figure in Digby 46, fol. 79r (Fig. 24), for instance, holds an object which could either be some sort of thick-stemmed tripartite flower or, again, could be seen asan interpretation of the spica. Curiously, it is not toodifferent from the heraldic fleur-de-lys held by Virgoin the calendrical series in New York, Pierpont MorganLibrary MS M.385, fol. 5r (c. 1220–47); it is possiblethat such a symbol reminded artists of the tripartiteshape of the original attribute, while also perhaps hint -ing at a courtly or noble context, in a kind of elegantgame of allusions. The figuration of the constellationof Virgo was often confused with or superimposed onthat of Venus, who holds an arrow in the Libro delleSorti by Lorenzo Gualtieri: Venice, Biblioteca Nazio -nale Marciana MS It. IX.87 ( 6226).

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The illustrations of Mercury in the two manuscripts are completely different.In Pepys 911 he wears a petasus and carries a purse, his attribute as the Roman godof commerce (Fig. 27). Usually, representations show Mercury with two smallwings on his forehead (Aratean tradition), sometimes fully winged (Albricus andmythographic tradition),100 as a learned man or as a bishop (Scot, Fendulus) or,later, as a peasant with a flabellum, accompanied by a rooster (encyclopaedic tradi-tion, Breviari d’Amor).101 In Digby 46, Mercury is a fully-winged messenger,carrying a sealed document and the coat of arms of his household (Fig. 23). Theseattributes update his traditional appearance; the charter, in particular, is reminis-cent of Matthew’s illustrations in the margins of his historical works.102

For our small repertoire, then, the figures do not seem closely associated withthe Aratean tradition. Less conservative in its represention of apparel—and actuallyquite fast in adapting it to lay taste—the figurative tradition on which these imagesdraw is more detailed from an iconographic point of view, more closely related tomythographic sources, and notably receptive to secular influences. Moreover, sideby side with this typology of sources, our series also shows points of contact withMichael Scot’s illustrations, perhaps filtered through an encyclopedic traditionsuch as that of the Breviari d’Amor from southern France.

Concluding remarks

As we have seen, it is difficult to speak about a specific tradition of illustrated sortesfor the Middle Ages. In fact, comparatively few of these manuscripts even hadillustrations: more often they simply transmitted the texts. The exceptions prob-ably depended, largely, on the context of production. Where an artist was available,in a monastic scriptorium or at court, it would have been easier to have such amanuscript illustrated. I would propose that this may well have been what happenedin the case of Ashmole 304. Matthew Paris had both the skill and the means toprovide a cycle of images. I believe that the collection of sortes he had to work withwas not already illustrated, except perhaps for some decoration of the two versionsof the Divinacio Ciceronalis, of which, as we have seen, the images could have derivedfrom an already established set, although we cannot be certain about that. Theastrological figures betray dependence on calendar material, with the insertion ofspecific details—related in one case strictly to Michael Scot’s Liber introductoriusand in others probably to mythographic, written sources, merged into encyclo -paedic collections.

The picture presented is one of Matthew putting together a figurative cycle, todecorate a compilation of texts which lacked a particular or established illustrative

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100. J. Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods: TheMythological Tradition and Its Place in RenaissanceHumanism and Art, New York 1953 (1st edn London1940), pp. 167–83. For an updated bibliography onAlbricus see S. Vervacke, ‘Autour des “dieux d’Al-bricus” et de leur usage’, in Images of the Pagan Gods(as in n. 94), pp. 151–76. As far as I know, the fully-winged Mercury is linked only to the mythographic

tradition of Albricus. This tradition draws on textualdescriptions and one could tentatively suggest thatbehind such figuration, at some point, there mighthave been a textual description wrongly interpreted.

101. E.g., BL, Royal MS 19 C I, fol. 41v (peasantwith a hinged caduceus, winged calves and cockerel).

102. E.g., Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS16, fol. 40r.


tradition. In doing so, he inserted several elements which were not even presentat the textual level, according to his personal taste (Euclid and Hermann, Plato,Anaxagoras). Inventing figurative programmes was, after all, one of Matthew’sparticular skills: most of his corpus, from the hagiographical cycles to the marginalillustrations of the Chronica Majora, consists in depictions of episodes which owemore to the brilliant capers of his creativity rather than to fixed typologies. As forthose and other projects, Matthew drew on the vast basin of visual material whichwas available to him; we have seen that in Ashmole 304 he employed familiarmodels (for example, for scribes or evangelists) and iconographies (such as thecounsellor speaking behind the cathedra), as well as referring loosely to his ownexemplars (MS Bodley 614), images in circulation at the time (like the astrologerfiguration), common diagrams and astrological repertoires. As for the bird series,it seems that he was not copying from an established set: certainly, some familiaritywith aviaries and bestiaries is suggested by his depictions of foreign-named birds,several of which resemble standard aviary types (the ‘arbe’ as a stork, for instance),and the manuscript also shows evidence of technical shortcuts employed in scriptoria for bestiary-making; yet Matthew’s approach to such material is charac-terised by the utmost combinatory freedom. And, despite this process of sourceimage-merging, he was able to unify the body of illustrations of this beautifulmanuscript both stylistically and formally, creating a veritable unicum.

Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa

ALLEGRA IAFRATE 177


allegra iafrate warburg

Documents

illustrations of ms

matthew paris drawings

whichmatthew paris

art of matthew paris

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bodleian library ms

handwriting ofmatthew

ms digby