Alison Stones, “Altering the Painted Page Reception and Change in Some French Liturgical and Civic Manuscripts, Thirteenth –Fourteenth Centuries”, in: Manuscripts changing hands, ed. Corine Schleif & Volker Schier, p. 101-130 (2016)

One might suppose that luxury liturgical books, site-specific in their text and often also in their illustration, might remain untouched by later owners, venerated as the sacred word and venerable in their pedigree. But such was not always the case.

The very core of illustrated missals – the imposing full-page Crucifixion and Christ in Majesty images that usually prefaced the Canon of the Mass – were precisely those that could be co-opted and copied into quite different textual contexts in order to validate and sanctify those other texts, and additions of other kinds were often added by later owners, changing the function of the book.

This paper examines the disparate fates of some liturgical and civic books made for use in the suffragan sees of the
ecclesiastical Provinces of Reims, Bordeaux and Narbonne in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries through the offices of later owners, some known by name and date, others anonymous and their activities undated.

The purposes served by these books varied from case to case, sometimes conforming to common patterns of adaptation, at other times representing special instances, no d oubt due to particular circumstances. A condition
common to all of them is the change of status and function of the book and its images that a change of ownership brought with it.

Three liturgical books made for use at Cambrai (Province of Reims) and their later histories

Mss 189 and 190 in the Médiathèque municipale de Cambrai are a pair of Gospel and Epistle Books, whose colophon on fol. 184 of Ms. 190 indicates that they were written in 1266 by Johannes Phylomena for the bishop of Cambrai, his name indicated only by the letter N (fig. 1). (1)

1 First situated stylistically by Ellen Judith Beer: Das Scriptorium des Johannes Philomena und seine Illuminatoren, in: Scriptorium 23 (1969), pp. 24–38, pl. 4aa, 4ab, 6a, these volumes are the core of a very large group of books produced in Cambrai, summarized most recently in Alison Stones: Manuscripts Illuminated in France, Gothic Manuscripts 1260 –1320, London and Turnhout, 2013, pp. 254–257, Cat. III–43.

“In nomine sancte et individue trinitatis expliciunt epistole tocius anni. Domini venerabilis. N. dei gratia Cameracensis episcopi et Johannes Phylomena scripsit has. Anno incarnationis domini.MoCCoLXoVIo.” In 1266 the bishop was in fact Nicolas de Fontaines (9 April 1249 –1272 or 1273),2 so N is both his name and the common abbreviation for “nomen”, used where the incumbent’s name will change with his successors. These liturgical books contain no other reference to Nicolas, but more about him is known from other sources: his seal shows a stylized and somewhat retardataire frontal portrait (fig. 2),3 and his head, mitred, with symmetrically curling hair and prominently splayed ears, is on his coin (fig. 3).

2 Detlev Schwennicke (Ed.): Europäische Stammtafeln, Neue Folge XVIII-117, Marburg 1978; André Josèph Ghislain Le Glay: Camerum christianum, Lille and Paris n.d., pp. 42–45; Denis Sammarthani (Ed.): Gallia christiana in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa…, 16 vols., Paris 1715–1785, reprint Westmead, England 1970, III, cols. 37–39.
3 Germain Demay: Inventaire des sceaux de la Flandre, recueillis dans les dépôts d’archives, musées et collections particulières du Département du Nord, 2 vols., Paris 1873, reprint Munich 1980, F 5835 (dated 1250) and on the reverse a kneeling figure below the Virgin and Child, Demay F 5835bis, both also reproduced in René Faille: L’iconographie des
évêques de Cambrai, Cambrai 1974, p. 160, no. 51.

His tomb, as reproduced in Cambrai, MM 1049, fol. 77 and Musée de Cambrai coll. Delloy, liasse 16, consisted of a tomb chest with heraldic shields beneath arches, surmounted by a recumbent effigy (known by inscription only) with a canopy at the head and an epitaph carved on the tomb-slab (fig. 4).4

A lead plaque also containing an epitaph, found inside the tomb in 1822, is at the Musée de Cambrai.5 Cambrai 189 and 190 are distinguished for their historiated initials, crammed with lively action, ending in dragon terminals whose wings spread out into the margins and whose tails form “windmill sails” (fig. 5) or decorative initials simulating metalwork techniques of “émail de plique” and “émail brun”. In one instance the margin is used to depict a narrative –
Christ and the disciples walking in Galilee (Ms. 189, fol. 62v) (fig. 6 ), a practice unparalleled in French illumination in 1266.6

4. The inscription is transcribed on both copies of the tomb (Faille: L’iconographie, 1974 [see fn. 3], p. 161). The crude effigy shown in Faille’s reproduction was no doubt drawn by Faille as it is not present in either of the originals cited.
5 Ibid.
6 The only other marginal scene at about the same date or most likely a little later is a scene of ball-players in the Isabelle Psalter in Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum 300, fol. 174. See the facsimile by Sydney Carlyle Cockerell: A Psalter and Hours Executed before 1270 for a Lady Connected with St. Louis, Probably His Sister Isabelle of France, Founder of
the Abbey of Longchamp, now in the Collection of Henry Yates Thompson, London. See also Harvey Joseph Stahl: Picturing Kingship, History and Painting in the Psalter of Saint Louis, University Park, PA, 2008, pp. 51– 53. Whether the book was made for the sister of Louis IX is debatable.

There is one interesting coat of arms, azure billety or a lion, borne on the shield and housing of the equestrian knight on fol. 30r of Ms. 190 (fig. 7 ). This is most likely to be the arms of the Brienne family, Kings of Jerusalem (1210–1228), Emperors of Constantinople (1229–1237) and from 1250 also Counts of Eu.

It is possible that the manuscript was commissioned for the bishop by the Count of Eu, who in 1266 was Alphonse de Brienne, known as d’Acre, and Chamberlain of France. His birth date is uncertain; he was married in 1250 to Marie de Lusignan, Countess of Eu, died of the plague in Tunis on 25 August 1270, the same day as Louis IX, and was buried at Saint-Denis.7

7. Père Anselme de Sainte-Marie: Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la Maison royale de France, 3rd. ed., 9 vols., Paris 1726 –1733, reprint Paris and New York 1967, (hereafter referred to as Anselme), VI, 134; Schwennicke (Ed.): Europäische Stammtafeln, 1978 (see fn. 2), III/4, 683. His arms are documented in several 13th century armorials, notably as borne by his son Jean in Wijnberghen (Paul Adam-Even and Léon Jéquier: Un armorial français du XIIIe siècle. L’armorial Wijnberghen, in: Archives héraldiques suisses 65 [1951], pp. 49–62, 101–108; 66 [1952], pp. 28– 36, 64–68, 103–111; 68 [1954], pp. 55–80, no. 320). The arms of Eu, coupled with those of Guines, occur again in the Somme le roi (Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal 6329), made in 1311 for Jeanne de Guines, widow of Jean II (III) d’Eu, Alphonse’s grandson; and he is also in the Armorial Le Breton no. 216 (Emmanuel de Boos et al. [Eds.]: L’Armorial Le Breton, Paris 2004, no. 216); for Arsenal 6329 see Stones: Manuscripts, 2013 (see fn. 1), Cat. III-36 with reference to previous literature.

Just possibly the arms in Cambrai 190 refer to another branch of the Brienne family, the sires de Ramerupt et de Venisy, whose line died out with Erard (1255 – after 1278), but he would have been rather young to have been making such a commission in 1266.8

8 Anselme (see fn. 7), VI, 139f.; Schwennicke (Ed.): Europäische Stammtafeln, 1978 (see fn. 2) III 686. There are possible heraldic allusions to another branch of the Brienne family in the Psalter-Hours, Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal 280, a manuscript also made in the entourage of Johannes Phylomena (Stones, ibid., pp. 264 –267, Cat. III-46), where the cloth covering
the altar at which kneels Saint Francis as he receives the stigmata is painted blue with white fleur-de-lis and lion motifs (p. 27); and a cantor wearing a blue cope with gold crescents and lions, and white crosslets, is depicted on p. 340. Jean de Brienne, vicomte de Baumontau-Maine (Sarthe) († 1305) bore azure semy of fleurs de lis or a lion, but these ‘arms’ do not quite correspond to the heraldic sources and may simply be decorative motifs.

The Gospels volume made for Nicolas de Fontaine had an important afterlife. It was used by subsequent bishops as the book on which to swear their oath of office, a requirement introduced by Pope Urban V (1362–1370), and the oath was inscribed on fol. 197v (fig. 8). The inventory of 1401 lists Mss 189 –190 and says the volumes were given by Nicolas de Fontaines (4 G 4552* fol. 11v); the inventories of 1461 (4 G 4553* fol. 29v–30r) and 1541 (4 G 4556* fol. 57v) list two evangeliaries and two epistolaries, without the name of the donor.

They came to the Bibliothèque Municipale, Cambrai, with the holdings of Cambrai Cathedral after the Revolution.9
These, then, were books that stayed at home, their function evolving from generation to generation.

The third Cambrai book from the entourage of Johannes Phylomena is the Pontifical of Cambrai now in Toledo Cathedral Archives, Ms. 56.19.10 Two major artists and assistants did the illustration. The major painter is closely related to the Johannes Phylomena artist of Cambrai 189 –190 but his best work is quite superior in quality (fig. 9). He worked with two assistants, one painting in a similar style, the other recognizable as the Bute Master (fig. 10), a painter named for his work in the Psalter once in the collection of the Marquis of Bute and now at the J. Paul Getty Museum, MS Getty 92 MK 92 (Ms. 46).11

9. Old nos. 184 –185, new nos. 189 –190. Auguste Molinier: Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France. Départements, tome XVII, Cambrai and Paris 1891, p. 58.
10 Stones: Manuscripts, 2013 (see fn. 1) Cat. III-49, with previous literature, notably José Janini and Ramón Gonzálvez: Catálogo de los manuscritos litúrgicos de la Catedral de Toledo, Toledo 1977, no. 216, pl. 19.
11 Stones: Manuscripts, 2013 (see fn. 1) Cat. III-52; Alison Stones: Stylistic Associations, Evolution, and Collaboration. Charting the Bute Painter’s Career, in: The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 23 (1995) pp. 11–29. For its recent chequered history see Sam Fogg: The Provenance of the Bute Manuscript, in: James Henry Marrow, Richard Alan Linenthal, and Willliam Noel (Eds.): The Medieval Book. Glosses from Friends and Colleagues of Christopher de Hamel, ‘t Goy-Houten 2010, pp. 316 –323.

Despite the absence of a confirming colophon, for paleographical reasons the Pontifical was most likely also written by Johannes Phylomena. It was certainly made for use in Cambrai because of the presence of the Ordo for the Synod of Cambrai accompanied by an illustration showing the synod in action (fig. 11). It was probably
made for the synod of 1277 and no doubt for Enguerrand de Créquy, successor to Nicolas de Fontaines and bishop of Cambrai from 1273 to 1285.

Enguerrand de Créquy was most likely also the patron of a manuscript of a very different type, illustrated by another artist altogether: the Terrier de l’évêque (fig. 12).12

12 Arne Hjorth: La partie cambrésienne du polyptyque dit ‘Terrier l’évêque de Cambrai’, I. Le manuscrit et la langue, Romanica Gothoburgensia 12, Stockholm 1971. See also Stones: Manuscripts, 2013 (see fn.1) Cat. III-54.

Enguerrand, like Nicolas, is also known from his seal, a much more up-to-date affair (fig. 13) and of course the episcopal actions depicted in the illustrations of the Pontifical would have been both general and self-referential.

Additions were made to the text of the Pontifical, as in Cambrai 190, by a later bishop, indicative of its continued use at Cambrai into the fourteenth century. On fol. 188 were entered Benedictions for the Use of the Sainte Chapelle, Paris, for the Feasts of the Crown of Thorns, the Translation of the Relics of Saint Louis, and the Translation of the Head of Saint
Louis (fig. 14). They were most likely added for the ceremony of the transation of the Head to the Sainte-Chapelle in 1306, which was attended by Cambrai bishop Philippe de Marigny who began his career as secretary to Philippe le Bel then entered the church as canon of Cambrai and its bishop from 1306 to 1309 when he was appointed Archbishop of Sens, holding that office until his death in 1316.13 Alternatively these texts could have been added by Bishops Guillaume d’Auxonne (1336 –1342) or Robert de Genève (1368 –1372) who were canons of Paris before being transferred to Cambrai.14

13 Le Glay: Cameracum (see fn. 2), p. 47; Sammarthani (Ed.): Gallia christiana (see fn. 2) III, col. 41; Pius Bonifacius Gams: Series episcoporum, ecclesiae catholicae occidentalis ab initio usque ad annum MCXCVII, Regensburg 1873, reprint Stuttgart 1982, p. 630.
14 Le Glay: Cameracum (see fn. 2), pp. 46 f., Sammarthani (Ed.): Gallia christiana (see fn. 2) III, cols. 42 f. and 45f.

By the early fifteenth century the manuscript was in Avignon where in 1404 it was valued at 50 scuti by the Avignon goldsmith Guillaume de Felhisort who held it in pawn for 4 scuti to one Robert de Furno. Shortly thereafter it was purchased from the monastery of Saint Martial by Alfonso Carillo while a student in Avignon.15 When did it move from Cambrai to Avignon? There are several possibilities. It could have been seized as papal spoil from the estate of one of the Cambrai bishops who died in Avignon: Guillaume d’Auxonne, Bishop of Cambrai 1336 –1344 then of Autun, died
in Avignon 1345;16 and Pierre d’André, Bishop of Cambrai in 1349, died in 1368 in Avignon.17 Or it could have arrived there in the possession of Bishop Robert de Genève who left Cambrai in 1372 on being created cardinal; in 1378 he was elected antipope as Clement VII and died in Avignon in 1394.18

15 Two notes on the front flysheet record these events: 1) “Istud pontificale completum existimatum quinquaginta scutis auri qui fuit traditus Guillelmo de Felhisort fabro avinionensi in pigno pro quatuor scutorum aurei et debeo ego Robertus de Furno ipsum redimere huic ad unum mensem. Datum xxvii ianuarii anno domini MCCCC quarto.” 2) “Istud pontificale est domini Alfonsi Carrillo cardinali sancti Eustachii quod emit in Avinione tempore quo studebat ibidem et fuit monasterii sancti Marcialis datum per priorem et conventum cuidam monacho pro certa quantitate sibi debita ratione vestiarii temporis retroacti quod de eorum consensu vendidit.” Trans. by Jeanne Krochalis: 1) “This complete pontifical, valued at 50 scuti of gold, which was given in pledge by Guilaume de Felhisort, smith of Avignon, for four gold scuti, and I, Robert de Furno, promise him to redeem it in one month. Dated 26 January in the year of our Lord 1404.” 2) “This pontifical belongs to Alfonso Carrilius, cardinal of Saint-Eustache, which he bought in Avignon, at the time when he studied there, and it had belonged to the monastery of Saint-Martial, given by the prior and convent to a certain monk for a certain quantity (of money, presumably) owed to him for a garment which at an earlier time he had sold with their consent.”
16 Daniel Williman: Records of the Papal Right of Spoil, Paris 1976, no. 422.
17 Ibid., no. 836.
18 Sammarthani (Ed.): Gallia christiana (see fn. 2) III, cols. 45f. There appears to be no record of Robert’s possessions at his death.

At all events, the Pontifical’s fourteenth-century purchaser Alfonso Carillo himself enjoyed a distinguished ecclesiastical career as cardinal and Bishop of Osma (1411–1424), then of Siguenza (1424–1434). He was succeeded as Bishop of Siguenza at his death by his nephew, Alfonso Carrillo de Acuñtia (1434–1446), who was transferred to Toledo as Archbishop in 1446 and remained there until his death in 1482. The Pontifical presumably moved to Toledo with the latter and remained there, listed in the cathedral inventories as nos. 36.10, 30.22, and 56.19. In its new incarnation in Avignon and Toledo the Pontifical of Cambrai also took on a different function. It was devised for site-specific use at Cambrai itself, although Alfonso the student would no doubt have found it a useful text from which to learn about episcopal rites in general and how they could be adapted to particular places. But with the change in its ownership and its concomitant monetary evaluation, pawning and resale, it had also become a commodity, an object of value, characteristics it clearly retained through its acquisition in Toledo up to the present day.

Reusing liturgical images: some cases from north and south

Among the most striking instances of images reused during the late Middle Ages are the paired Crucifixion and Christ in Majesty pages in missals. Several distinguished examples have survived from thirteenth- and fourteenth-century France. Large in scale and painted over a double opening on facing pages, these pictures represented the sacrifice of Christ and the presence of God, and as such were highly appropriate to preface the Canon of the Mass. Often they were inserts, the circumstances of which are not usually known. So, for instance, the Missal of Moussoulens, a parish church in the Diocese of Carcassonne (Province of Narbonne), contains two once splendid miniatures which came from another book, a missal made for a Dominican who is depicted in prayer beneath each miniature (figs. 15 and 16 ).19 The rest of the Dominican missal for which these pages were originally made appears not to have survived. In the north, two splendid miniatures are all that survive from a Missal attributable to Amiens (Province of Reims) c. 1300 now in Copenhagen (fig. 17 ). They were repainted in part in the fifteenth century when a foliate border was added in the margins and faces of men and women were placed on the corners of the frames; whether the repainting occurred at the time the leaves were added to the missal of which they are now part (on folios 111v and 112) is unclear, nor is it known when the leaves were inserted.20

19 Most recently in Maria-Alessandra Bilotta (Ed.): Le Parement d’autel des Cordeliers de Toulouse. Anatomie d’un chef-d’oeuvre du XIVe siècle, Toulouse and Paris 2012, pp. 110f., no. 6, by Alison Stones.
20 The missal itself was purchased on 8 March 1388 for the Confrérie de saint Pierre et saint Paul in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, Paris, by Guillem Coignart and Rengaut Pion. It then came to the Collège de Clermont (137 no. 416), to the Jesuit College in Paris (no. 288) and finally to the Thott collection (VII 288 no. 146). Christian Molbech: I Nyt Aftenblad, Copenhagen (1825), p. 46; Carl Bruun: Aarsberetninger og Meddelelser fra det Store Kongelige Bibliothek, Copenhagen 1890, pp. 111–113; Henri Omont: Note sur un missel de la confrérie de St Pierre et St Paul en l’église du saint sépulcre de Paris, in: Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de Paris 16 (1889), p. 117; Nordisk Tidsskrift för Bok- och Biblioteksväsen 4 (1917), p. 83; Ellen Jørgensen: Catalogus codicum latinorum medii aevi Biblithecae Regiae Hafniensis, Copenhagen 1926, pp. 204–206.

The Crucifixion page in a Missal of Soissons of c. 1300 that passed through Sotheby’s on 18 June 1996, lot 61 and 2 December 1998, lot 2, underwent similar treatment, with a foliate border
and female head-terminal added in the fifteenth century (fig. 18).

Small wonder that such powerful images as the Crucifixion and Christ in Majesty were sometimes co-opted for other purposes, endowing a new context with borrowed meaning. As swearing pages in civic documents the Crucifixion and Christ in Majesty embodied the presence and protection of the divinity. Whereas in the context of the missal these images were kissed by the priest, usually through the intermediary of a small kissing cross in the bottom margin of a full-page version, as on the Copenhagen pages above (fig. 17 ), the corresponding images in civic documents were often the very pages on which the hands of town councillors were placed as they swore their oaths of office. The Customaries of south-western France, from Cahors, Agen, Limoges, and elsewhere, are examples where once-beautiful pictures have become defaced by the pious hands of elected consuls touching the sacred images to affirm their loyalty to the deity in heaven and to their community on earth.21

Henri Gilles’ study of southern customaries shows that the swearing of consular oaths on the Gospels was for long considered the critical element in the induction process and was specifically referred to, for instance, as swearing “super sancta Evangelia” from the twelfth century in Toulouse.22 By the third quarter of the thirteenth century, however, images of the Crucifixion and Christ in Majesty had themselves come to be the vehicles for the laying on of the hands in the swearing process rather than the Gospel text pages which were also included, on the same or following pages as the miniatures, or later in the volume.23 To the important documents first gathered together by Gilles may now be added two more customaries with Christological images and a third document that contains what was most likely also
a swearing image.

21 The pioneering studies are Antoine du Bourg: Etudes sur les coutumes communales du Sud-Ouest de la France, Paris 1882, and Henri Gilles: Les livres juratoires des consulats languedociens, in: Cahiers de Fanjeaux 31 (1996), pp. 333 –354. See also Alison Stones: Le Sacré et le Profane dans quelques manuscrits français du XIIIe et début XIVe siècles, in: Christian Heck (Ed.): Thèmes religieux et thèmes profanes dans l’image médiévale. transferts, emprunts, oppositions. Actes du Colloque du RILMA, Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, INHA, mai 2011, Répertoire iconographique de la littérature du moyen âge, Les Études du RILMA I, Turnhout 2013, pp. 195–218.
22 Gilles: Livres juratoires, 1996 (see fn. 21), p. 352, n. 9.
23 Gilles cites many customaries that contain Gospel passages – often mis-identified – but lack images (Venerque; Montauban, Livre des serments; Castelnaudary; Limoux, Narbonne (AA 106, 107, 110); Moissac, Livre de la Charte; Cordes, Libre ferrat; Albi). It is of course possible, even likely, that images have been removed.

The Customary of Lézat-sur-Lèze (Ariège) (Province of Narbonne)

Written in Latin in or shortly after 1299, the manuscript (now in a Private Collection in Switzerland) contains a Customary of the city of Lézat-surLèze (Ariège, Province of Narbonne) granted in 1299 by Abbot Guillaume
Hunauld of Saint-Pierre et Saint-Antoine de Lézat; an Act establishing the co-lordship of the city between the Abbot and the Count of Foix in 1241; and an added Arbitration passed between the Abbey and the consuls of Lézat on 6 June, 1327.24 These texts are preceded by a quire of 10 leaves, the first two originally blank and filled with notes about oaths and customary law in Latin and Occitan in the fourteenth century, one dated 1343 and another dated 1362, a calendar of the abbey including the feast of its dedication on 18 January (fols. 3 –8v). Originally dedicated to Saint Peter,
the relics of Saint Anthony allegedly came to the abbey in the twelfth century and his name as dedicee of the abbey was added to that of Saint Peter.

On fol. 9 are inscriptions of 1372, 1373, 1379, and fols. 9v–10r contain Gospel extracts accompanied by small square miniatures of the Crucifixion and Christ in Majesty, both considerably defaced, datable c. 1300 (fig. 19). These miniatures are similar in style to several missal leaves made for use in Narbonne.25

24 This manuscript was kindly drawn to my attention by Ariane Bergeron-Foote while it was for sale at Les Enluminures where I was able to consult it in September 2012. The present observations are based in large part on the detailed description and bibliography drawn together by Mme Bergeron-Foote who was the first to publish the manuscript.
I thank its present owners for permission to reproduce the photographs here. For the background, see particularly Charles Le Palenc and Paul Dognon: Lézat, sa coutume, son consulat, Toulouse 1899, reprint Nimes, 2007, no mention of this manuscript; the edition based on another copy then in a private collection and currently untraced); F.E. (sic) Martin [Eugène Martin-Chabot]: L’affaire de Pierre de Dalbs, abbé de Saint-Pierre de Lézat, in: Le Moyen Age 4 (1900), pp. 38–56; Félix Pasquier: Servage, paréages et autres institutions à Lézat et à Saint-Ybars, au comté de Foix, XIe–XVIe siècles, Foix 1920 (offprint from: Bulletin périodique de la Société ariégeoise des sciences, lettres et arts et de la Société des Etudes du Couserans 15 [1917–1921], nos 6 et 7), pp. 145–169; Paul Ouliac: Formation du droit de la France méridionale, in: Boletin de la Faculdade de Direito (Coimbre) 1961, pp. 5–18; Anne-Marie Magnou and Paul Ourliac: Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Lézat, (Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, vol. 17–18), Paris 1984 –1987.
25 Stones: Manuscripts, 2013 (see fn. 1), Cat. no. VII-13. One of these leaves (now in a Private Collection in London) includes Saints Justus and Pastor, patrons of Narbonne Cathedral, in the Crucifixion miniature.

These were the swearing pages, combining Gospel passages with images on the same folios, perhaps an indication of the modest resources expended, where full-page miniatures were dispensed with and the conjunction of swearing images and swearing text was emphasized instead.

It remains unclear as to whether this was the consuls’ copy or that of the abbot. The existence in the nineteenth century of another copy (published by Palenc and Dogon and now lost) suggests that each party owned a copy.
In the surviving manuscript, the customs, in Latin, follow on fols. 11– 28v, followed by a copy of the Act of 1241 establishing co-lordship for the town of Lézat between the Abbot of Saint-Pierre de Lézat and the Count of Foix.

Périgueux, AD 2 E 1835/7-1 (Province of Bordeaux)

The Rent-Book in the Fonds de Taillefer de Moriac at the Archives départementales de la Dordogne in Périgueux, 2 E 1835/7-1 is notable as an early survival of a civic document in Occitan, and particularly in the patois of the Périgord.26 It contains late fourteenth-century copies of lists of the rents paid in 1203 to Vital de Cozens, knight (militus), and to the house of Taillefer. Included on fols. 7–8v are passages from the Gospels, combined with an image as at Lézat, but this time only the single image of Christ on the cross with sun and moon, within a medallion around which is written the opening passage of John’s Gospel (fig. 20). The Gospel texts continue on fol. 7v with Matthew and on fol. 8v with Luke, ending incomplete so that Mark is missing.

The present structure of the book is not original, and catchwords show that entire quires are now missing. Fol. 7, containing the passage from John’s Gospel and the Crucifixion is conjoined with fol. 6 as the middle bifolium of a quire of 4 in the present state of the manuscript, but the script of the Gospel passages and the Crucifixion image are attributable to the early fourteenth century whereas the rent lists, copied by another scribe, are somewhat earlier. This suggests that the Gospels and image were added on folios originally left blank, and points towards a change in the function of the rent-book in that period. Amiet and Avril suggested that the Gospel passages and Crucifixion image came from a Book of Hours of the early fourteenth century, for Avril one of local manufacture.27 But the Crucifixion is not normally the illustration that accompanies the Gospel passages in Books of Hours, but rather portraits of the Evangelists, usually shown writing their Gospels and accompanied by their symbols.28

26 François Bordes: Richesses du Patrimoine écrit, Archives départementales de la Dordogne, Périgueux 1992, pp. 24 f., identified as a fragment from a Book of Hours. Unpublished notes by Chanoine Pierre Lespine are in the Fonds Périgord vol. 63, fols. 93–94, and unpublished notes by Louis Grillon are among the Grillon papers at the AD de
la Dordogne, Périgueux, kindly drawn to my attention by Bernard Reviriego. Grillon cites a note on fol. 2 of the manuscript, signed DeM. indicating that the booklet had been paginated in its incomplete state after having been re-sewn in 1817. The Costuma of Agen, BM 42, is also a text in Occitan, probably dating c. 1271 and c. 1279, see
http://www.divvaroom.com/book/bnsa/MS0042/ [last access 01/02/2013]; the pages are unfortunately cropped in these views. See also Stones: Manuscripts, 2013 (see fn. 1), Cat. VIII-14. Louis Grillon noted local parallels in the Périgord region for the presence of words in Occitan in the cartularies of Dalon and Chancelade, see Louis Grillon: Le
Cartulaire de l’abbaye Notre-Dame de Dalon, Périgueux 2004, and Idem: Le Cartulaire de l’Abbaye Notre-Dame de Chancelade, Périgueux 2000. I thank Maïté Etchechoury and Bernard Reviriego for their kind reception in the AD de la Dordogne.
27 As reported by Bernard Reviriego.
28 Victor-Marie Leroquais: Les livres d’heures manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale, 2 vols., Paris 1927, esp. vol. I, p. xii, xiv, xliii; Supplément. Acquisitions récentes et donation Smith-Lesouëf, Mâcon 1943; and the unpublished notebooks, Paris, BNF nal 3159– 3164.

Louis Grillon was the first to propose that the Gospel pages in the Cozens-Taillefer book constituted a swearing component.29

29. Grillon’s notes cite analogies with the censiers of Clareuil, Magnac, and La Tour.

By endowing the rent-book with the Gospel texts and at least one of the images associated with oath-taking, the rent component was aligned with what had become by the thirteenth century in the south-west a common structure for the production and function of civic documents.

Narbonne (Metropolitan)

The 8e Thalamus of Narbonne, Archives départementales de l’Aude, AA 108, contains another variant on the use of devotional images as swearing pages. On fol. 1r and v are images of the Crucifixion and Christ in Majesty surrounded by the Evangelist symbols (figs. 21 and 22).30 The images are not on facing pages but on a single leaf, of which the recto side is considerably more defaced than the verso, although both show clear signs of use.

Furthermore, the depictions of the Evangelists refer to, and anticipate, the passages from the Gospels that follow later in the volume,31 while the fullpage monumental format of the two miniatures links the 8e Thalamus with the earlier illustrated customaries of Agen, Cahors, and Limoges, and with the later customary of Beaumont de Lomagne, which also contain full-page swearing images.32

30. The 8e Thalamus was kindly drawn to my attention by Jacqueline Caille. I am grateful to Sylvie Caucanas, Directeur des Archives départementales de l’Aude for supplying images and to M. le Maire de Narbonne for permission to reproduce them here. See Germain Mouynès: Ville de Narbone. Inventaire des archives communales antérieures à 1790. Série AA (Actes constitutifs et politiques de la commune), Narbonne 1877, p. 130; Gilles: Livres juratoires, 1996 (see fn. 21), pp. 340, 349; Trésors de nos communes. Catalogue de l’exposition réalisée par les archives départementales de l’Aude présentée à Carcassonne de 27 mars au 15 juin 2012, Carcassonne 2012, pp. 26–28, by Jacqueline Caille. A date in the early fifteenth century was proposed by François Avril (personal communication).
31 The Gospel passages are in the middle of the volume in its present state, a placing that is also the case in the Te igitur of Cahors and the Livre des serments of Montauban. See Gilles: Livres juratoires, 1996 (see fn. 21), p. 340.
32 Gilles: Livres juratoires, 1996 (see fn. 21), pl. 6, 7 and 8, pp. 347–350. Two consuls kneel before the Virgin and Child in Cahors and at Beaumont the Crucifixion and Christ in Majesty miniatures each have two consults in prayer. For the Cartulary of Beaumont de Lomgagne see http://www.beaumont-de-lomagne.fr/juratoire/menu_juratoire.php [last access 01/02/2013]; for Agen see the references in n. 26 above and for Cahors and Limoges see also Stones: Manuscripts, 2013 (see fn. 1) Cat. VIII-8 and 9, with reference to earlier literature.

Whereas the Cahors and Beaumont manuscripts both include praying consuls in their full-page images, directly linking the images to the civic purpose of the customs that follow, the 8e Thalamus includes not the consuls themselves but the coat of arms of the city of Narbonne (gules a key or on the dexter side and a two-bar cross patty argent on the sinister side, a chief azure 3 fleurs de lis argent), placed at the feet of Christ in Majesty, signifying the appropriation of the image to the particular context of the site-specific texts that follow.

Paris, BNF fr. 2163, Gautier de Coinci, Miracles de Nostre Dame (Province of Sens?)

A pair of full-page miniatures was appended, probably as an original component of the book, to this copy of Gautier de Coinci’s Miracles de Nostre Dame (figs. 23 and 24). It is Ms. M in the stemma established by A. Ducrot-Granderye, who considered it not only a reliable text, but the one that comes closest to Gautier’s lost original.33 The colophon says it was written by Guillaume, monk of Morigny (OSB, Diocese of Orléans, Province of Sens), in 1266 – a generation after the death of Gautier in 1238.

It is also notable among Gautier manuscripts for being the only surviving copy to open with a bifolio of full-page devotional images like those discussed above in the context of customaries, but with a difference: an image of the
Virgin and Child was substituted for the Crucifixion facing Christ in Majesty, and a tiny clerical figure is included at the feet of Christ on the Majesty page. Just as the Crucifixion and Christ in Majesty were appropriate for missals and by extension as the swearing miniatures in customaries, here too the choice of devotional images was appropriate to the text that follows, authenticating it and embodying the devotions to the Virgin Mary which the poems and songs of Gautier present in the following pages.34

33 Arlette P. Ducrot-Granderye: Études sur les Miracles Nostre Dame de Gautier de Coincy. Description et classement sommaire des manuscrits. Notice Biographique. Edition des miracles ‘D’un chevalier a cui sa volenté fu contee por fait après sa mort’, et ‘Coment Nostre Dame desfendi la cité de Constantinoble’ d’après tous les manuscrits connus, (Annales academiae scientiarum fennicae Series B. 25), Helsinki 1932, reprint Geneva 1980, pp. 36–41. See also Kathy M. Krause and Alison Stones (Eds.): Gautier de Coinci. Miracles, Music, and Manuscripts, (Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern
Europe 130), Turnhout 2006.
34 See Krause and Stones: Gautier de Coinci, 2006 (see fn. 33), pp. 22 n 2, 25, 66, 67 fig. 1, 68 fig. 2, 72, 73, 74 n 12, 97, 137, 258 n 12, 260 n 16, 347, 351, 353, 367, 369, 374, 393 n 72, 397, 408.

The tiny cleric is both Gautier himself and any monk who used the book, a self-referential detail that recalls too the presence of citizens at the feet of the Virgin and Child in the Cahors Customary, the shield of Narbonne in the 8e Thalamus and the presence of the bishop in the Pontifical of Cambrai.

Where was BNF fr. 2163 made? Morigny itself, Guillaume’s monastery, offers nothing in the way of comparisons, either for Guillaume’s writing or for the striking images that precede it. The question still remains unresolved but the images clearly link this book to a broader context for the inclusion and use of monumental devotional images.35

35 See Krause and Stones: Gautier de Coinci, 2006 (see fn. 33), p. 72.

These books attest to varying destinies, different histories, complex patterns of appropriation and change, but they retained their status as objects of veneration even as their images were transformed by repainting or transposed to new contexts by later hands. The imposing images of the Deity – Christ crucified, Christ in Majesty, the Virgin and Child – first created for a liturgical and sacred context, could be not only physically transposed to devotional and civic books, but carried with them resonances of their primary function of witness and testimony to the presence of God. Not only did these images attest to God’s presence in the Mass, but by appropriation they could also bear witness to that same presence, whether at the devotions of Gautier de Coinci’s readers or, to a still greater degree, at the solemn swearing of city councillors. Civic hands on the sacred images, like the lips of the priest, confirmed and validated the Divine Presence and thereby sanctified the images’ new text and its context. Powerful images indeed!