Animal Skins and the Reading Self in Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries
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Animal Skins and the Reading Self in Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries
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Overview
Bestiaries present accounts of animals whose fantastic behaviors should be imitated or avoided, depending on the given trait. In a highly original argument, Kay suggests that the association of beasts with books is here both literal and material, as nearly all surviving bestiaries are copied on parchment made of animal skin, which also resembles human skin. Using a rich array of examples, she shows how the content and materiality of bestiaries are linked due to the continual references in the texts to the skins of other animals, as well as the ways in which the pages themselves repeatedly—and at times, it would seem, deliberately—intervene in the reading process. A vital contribution to animal studies and medieval manuscript studies, this book sheds new light on the European bestiary and its profound power to shape readers’ own identities.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226436876 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 12/22/2022 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 232 |
| Sales rank: | 873,417 |
| File size: | 32 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
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Animal Skins and the Reading Self in Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries
By Sarah Kay
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2017 The University of ChicagoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-43687-6
CHAPTER 1
Book, Word, Page
Nature, like scripture, is a book authored by God. This view is formulated in various ways by the Bible, the early Fathers, and medieval theologians. It is also actualized, again with differing emphases, by bestiaries from Physiologus onward. Yet there is something paradoxical about the choice of beasts and other elements of creation to bear the weight of mediating between these two universal books. The subjects of bestiary chapters make up only a part of the book of nature; and although nonhuman animals play an important role at the beginning of the book of scripture and feature again in the apocalypse at its end, their role through most of its course is slight. Although humans are afflicted with sin, suffering, and mortality, by way of compensation they have language, history, and the book. Other animals, being proverbially "dumb," have none of these.
Augustine articulates some of these ideas in Confessions XIII.15.16. Invoking the books of both nature and scripture, Augustine aligns them with the "tunics of skin" which the first humans wore in Eden. The two books, says Augustine, are like these garments in that they envelope humans like a skin. But the tunics were given by God to men as a punishment immediately after the fall, as a sign that they were now carnal and mortal; whereas the skins of scripture and the heavens are given them as marks of God's eternal authority and the divine plan to redeem them from their fallen state.
Who but you, O God, has made for us a solid firmament of authority over us in your divine scripture? For "the heaven will fold up like a book" (Isaiah 34:4) and now "like a skin (sicut pellis) it is stretched out" above us (Psalms 103:2). Your divine scripture has more sublime authority since the death of the mortal authors through whom you provided it for us. You know, Lord, you know how you clothed human beings with skins when through sin they became mortal (Genesis 3:21). So you have stretched out the firmament of your book "like a skin" (sicut pellem). ... Indeed, by the very fact of their death the solid authority of your utterances published by them is in a sublime way "stretched out" over everything inferior. While they were alive on earth, it was not stretched out to express this supreme authority. You had not "stretched out the heaven like a skin" (sicut pellem), you had not diffused everywhere the renown of their death.
In this passage, to which I return in considering the "tunics of skin" in chapter 2, Augustine holds out the hope of redemption toward which each individual should strive by means of an act of reading, which will envelop him in a new skin in exchange for his old one. To recast these ideas using Anzieu's ideas as outlined in my introduction, Augustine is here describing these books as a psychic "skin" modeled on the earlier Skin Ego: a way of defining a new self that can be assumed through language and specifically through the skin of the page. The act of reading, even when the pages are those of a modern book, is a material experience which conjures up a second, psychic envelope: the reader feels contained within the text, divided by it from the outside world, and encircled by signification. As a surface made from skin that can be confused with the skins that contain and inscribe human individuals, the medieval page is especially well-placed to perform what, for Anzieu, is a psychical function and, for Augustine, a redemptive one. These in turn can be understood as potential dimensions of the "manuscript matrix" as conceived by Stephen Nichols: a term that groups together the materiality of the manuscript page and the complex ensemble of signifying elements upon it, within a broader manuscript culture. My own understanding of this matrix's signifying extent is presented in chapter 6.
A Space of Exception
The Western pretension that humans are superior to all other animals can be traced back to Genesis. In his commentary on its opening books, Derrida contends that Adam's act of giving the animals names was another way of depriving them of language, and interprets this scene in Eden, together with the subsequent fall, as inaugurating historical time and the domination, exploitation, and violence which have ever since characterized humans' dealings with their fellow creatures. Looking for an end to this oppression rather than at its inauguration, Agamben reflects on a Jewish depiction of the apocalypse in which the blessed are represented with human bodies and animal heads. These images undo, he argues, the arbitrary severance of "the human" from other forms of creaturely life that is engineered by the anthropological machine (see the introduction) and that constitutes historical time. Agamben could equally have cited the Last Things in the New Testament apocalypse and its iconography. Much like the Jewish images, John's visions of the Beast of the Antichrist, the Christological Lamb, or the Tetramorph — the Evangelists, called animalia ("living beings") in the Vulgate, three of them with animal heads — show human pretensions to exceptionality dissolving as history comes to an end.
Between them, these commentaries by Derrida and Agamben capture the two endpoints of secular time, providing a posthumanist perspective on the late antique and early medieval Christian belief that, as Lynn White Jr. puts it, "when Man regained the simplicity of Eden, the harmony of the cosmos would be restored." White continues: "For our regeneration God has given us two sources of spiritual knowledge: the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature. Each is filled with hidden meanings to be searched out." Posthumanist critique helps to explain why nonhuman animals could prove central to such a project. Although they are shut out from language at the outset by virtue of being spoken for but unable to speak, at the end the Lamb with the Book and the animal-headed Evangelists ensure their ultimate place of honor in the Word. Even if they are not part of the grand narrative of salvation, they nevertheless define it by the fact of their exclusion, which is therefore at the same time an inclusion. That nonhuman creatures, by virtue of their absence, are integral to the definition of human history is confirmed by their cardinal presence at its beginning and its end. This simultaneous exclusion and inclusion produces what Agamben calls a "space of exception" (spazio d'eccezione), as opposed to a clean demarcation, in the privileging of "man" over "animal."
One way of interpreting the bestiaries' focus on other animals, then, is that their strangely marginal relation to the word places them ideally to lead readers to the Word, encouraging them to contemplate the initial innocence of Eden and to prepare for judgment at the end of time. Latin Second-family texts include a chapter on Adam naming the nonhuman animals which appear, in consequence, the guarantors of man's prelapsarian access to the divine logos. By dwelling on the page not as a sign of exile (the "tunics of skin") but of their ultimate return to this lost paradise, human readers could assume it as a second skin whose animal nature would be positively valued. Balancing the book of nature with that of scripture takes different forms from one text to another, and manuscripts likewise situate themselves variously with regard to books and the Book, words and the Word, leaves of parchment and the Sacra Pagina. But the fact that they are material books about the doctrinal import of other animals for humans in a divinely ordered world means that they inevitably address — and mediate between — the terms of each of these pairs.
Bestiaries, the Bible, and Sacred History
Although Physiologus is in no sense organized as a history, its allegories are plotted against the massive arc which reaches from creation, Eden, and fall to incarnation, resurrection, and final judgment, and this continues to be true of the bestiaries that derive from it. Chapters on the Elephant liken the beast's chaste once-in-a-lifetime copulation to the restrained sexuality of Adam and Eve before the fall. In some manuscripts, Adam and Eve are pictured alongside the male and female Elephants so as to underline that what humans have lost, Elephants still retain. Chapters on the Firestones, by contrast, dwell on the unbridled desires that follow from the fall, and often contain "strong visual references to Adam and Eve"; clearly readers should avoid the way of fire and seek the Elephants' purity, their link to the paradise lost. As well as in the chapter on Adam naming the animals (SF §32), Eden is mentioned in chapters such as the Antelope (PT 771–2), the Dragon (G 603–15), or the Viper (SF §94). Even creatures with diabolical or sinful meanings — the Night Owl (nicticorax), for example — remind humans of their lost proximity to the divine. Other entries underline the theme of resurrection like the Pelican; forewarn of the last judgment, like the parable of the wise and foolish virgins in the chapter on Ants; or anticipate the community of heaven, like those on the Salamander and the Dove.
This sense of belonging in biblical history is clearly shared by vernacular bestiaries. The two oldest German adaptations of Dicta Chrysostomi are copied between translations of the books of Genesis and Exodus. One French bestiary based on B-Isidore offers itself as a substitute for the entire Bible and the history it describes. Guillaume le Clerc's Bestiaire opens with a prologue of 136 octosyllabic verses of which a full hundred narrate the events of scripture. Creation institutes a world of creatures in which all have individual natures but only men have seignorie ("lordship"). In a flamboyant occupatio, Guillaume insists that everything which then ensues would take too long to narrate, but nevertheless contrives to summarize the entire Old and New Testaments, the growth of the church, and the deaths of the martyrs. "All this would be hard to relate. But you will hear about the bestiary, as I promised you, and now I shall begin it" (GC 133–36). Guillaume's enumeration of creatures, the natures which God gave them, and their sacred meanings, is thus offered as a shortcut to sacred history; and since his book is the equivalent of the Sacra Pagina, his readers are dispensed from reading the latter. Although Guillaume is writing at a time when most bestiaries have adopted a zoologically grounded structure, he retains the counterintuitive order of Physiologus B or B-Isidore, commenting that it is designed to teach "man who wanders foolishly" (GC 350,qui eire folement) as though the reader was supposed to recognize in its seemingly erratic course his own alienation from the divine purpose.
The much longer bestiaries of the Second Latin family are concomitantly more explicit about their historical scope. Immediately before the chapter on Adam naming the animals in the manuscript edited by Willene B. Clark there is a chapter which she calls "three spiritual guides" (SF §31) which explains how humans should prepare for their appearance before the final judgment. The endpoints of sacred history are thus introduced together, side by side, though in reverse order as if to confirm that judgment is a return to Eden. The Second-family redaction also contains a new sequence of chapters on Sheep and Goats, which in most copies follows immediately after the chapter on Adam (SF §§33–36). Sometimes these chapters contain lengthy allegoreses that reproduce the animal preoccupations of the Apocalypse: celebrating the Lamb, warning against Antichrist, and preparing the final judgment (e.g., in Bodleian MS Bodley 764, "Young kids ... represent the sinners, who shall stand on the left hand of God on the Day of Judgment, in the same way that the just, represented by sheep, shall stand on His right hand"). Another deluxe copy, Aberdeen, University Library MS 24 ("Aberdeen Bestiary"), brings the themes of Genesis and Revelation together by juxtaposing an image of Christ in Majesty surrounded by the Tetramorph with one of Adam naming the animals (fos. 4v–5r). The role of animals as models for recovering paradise could not be signaled more clearly.
In Physiologus, every chapter is dominated by quotations from the Bible; the chapter on the Night Owl follows the one on the Pelican not because of any relationship between the two birds but because the two chapters begin with adjacent quotations from the same psalm (P §§6–7; Ps. 102:7 and 6). Some chapters are almost a tissue of quotations, particularly those on the Lion and the Dove (P §§1, 50). Subsequently quotation wanes, but in B-Isidore the chapter on the Dove remains dominated by passages from scripture even if that on the Lion is less so. Philippe de Thaon faced an interesting challenge in rendering these quotations into French verse, a language into which — in his day — the complete Bible had never before been translated; he tends to fall back on paraphrase more than direct translation. Even though later in the twelfth century insertions from Isidore rival and eventually outweigh quotations from scripture, biblical sacred history continues to provide the warp on which the chapters' weft is woven. Bestiary creatures are textual creatures, compiled from authorities and "read" by successive authors similarly to how they read scripture, proceeding from the literal to the allegorical level. Humans' understanding of their own part in providential history is aided by other animals that play no role in its writing but that are a part of its fabric — what part exactly is the question I consider next.
Words and Wordbooks
Physiologus's integration of animals to particular biblical passages reflects the thought of Origen and, later, of Augustine. Both these early Fathers regarded creatures as instances of visible phenomena that could point toward invisible realities. Augustine, however, insisted that they had no determinate meaning of their own, but only one deriving from their place in a particular context. In this respect, the Bishop of Hippo polemically equates animals not with words but with letters. For instance, a lion can be an image of God or the Devil, and a stone does not invariably signify Christ, rather "it means some things and then others, just as you understand the force of a letter according to the place where you see it is put." A view similar to Augustine's of the animal as in itself a meaningless material shape that acquires significance only from its place in a greater text is expressed at the time of greatest bestiary innovation by the twelfth-century divine, Hugh of Saint-Victor, speaking of the book of nature: "For the whole sensible world is like a kind of book written by the finger of God ... and each particular creature is somewhat like a figure. ... But in the same way that some illiterate if he saw an open book, would notice the figures, but would not comprehend the letters, so also the stupid and 'animal man' who 'does not perceive the things of God' [1 Cor. 2:14] may see the outward appearance of these visible creatures, but does not understand the reason within." Hugh's claim that animals are intended to be read by humans but not by other animals is echoed in a contemporary bestiary with regard to the Phoenix, since "in any case the birds are there for men, not man for the bird" (SF §64).
Yet bestiarists' fascination with the variety of creaturely behaviors certainly does not convey the impression that nonhuman animals are just letters, figures, or signs. Christopher Lucken has proposed that they are more like hieroglyphs in uniting depiction with meaning, a comparison obviously relevant to the Alexandria-produced Physiologus. A more pertinent reference for European bestiaries might be the medieval wordbook. Written by prominent masters, wordbooks were tools of vocabulary building of a kind fundamental to medieval (indeed, any) education; creatures occupy whole sections of at least two widely diffused examples; the English Second-family bestiary in Oxford, St. John's College MS 178 (ca. 1300) is compiled in a codex alongside one of these animal wordlists. Although Dicta Chrysostomi bestiaries don't manifest the same love affair with the lexicon as those with interpolations from Isidore, several copies are found in miscellanies that foreground the word in others of their contents: Rhaban Maur's treatise on the alphabet, a list of biblical animal names, or a proverb collection, alphabetically arranged. In their discursive sparseness, their uniting of name and nature, and their ordinatio, bestiaries can be seen as a moralized and illustrated form of wordbook that teaches the lexicon of the natural world. The difference between creatures which readers might actually know (Fox, Weasel, Beaver, Ape, Dove, Coot ...), ones they were less likely to have seen (Elephant, Lion, Antelope, Crocodile ...), and those they could not have (Caladrius, Siren, Onocentaur, Unicorn ...) pales into insignificance beside the all-important experience of acquiring their names together with a sense of what they are like. As Rita Copeland says of Alexander Neckam's wordbook, "In the most concrete and fundamental way, language itself constitutes its own reality in the scene of instruction."
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
List of IllustrationsConventions Used in This Book
Introduction: Skin, Suture, and Caesura
1 Book, Word, Page
2 Garments of Skin
3 Orifices and the Library
4 Cutting the Skin: Sacrifice, Sovereignty, and the Space of Exception
5 The Riddle of Recognition
6 Skin, the Inner Senses, and the Soul as “Inner Life”
Conclusion: Reading Bestiaries
Appendix
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index