Thirteenth-Century Illuminated Miniatures and the Date of the Florence Manuscript

Author(s): Rebecca A. Baltzer

Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society , Spring, 1972, Vol. 25, No. 1
(Spring, 1972), pp. 1-18
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological
Society

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 Thirteenth-Century Illuminated Miniatures
and the Date of the Florence Manuscript*

BY REBECCA A. BALTZER

THE MUSICAL MANUSCRIPT Pluteus 29, I in the Biblioteca Mediceo-

Laurenziana was aptly described by Friedrich Ludwig as both the
most beautiful and the most extensive extant source of the polyphonic
music of the so-called Notre Dame school of Paris.' Long recognized as
one of the two or three most important repositories of I3th-century
music, the Florence MS has, in spite of its full-page miniature and thirteen
historiated initials, gone largely unnoticed by art historians. Yet F de-
serves fresh consideration as an artistic entity both for its own sake and
for the new light such study sheds upon its musical position and im-
portance.
It was Leopold Delisle in 1885 who provided the first significant mod-
ern report on F.2 In his description, he noted that although the volume
had entered the collection of Piero de' Medici in the 15th century, it was
unquestionably of French origin, the script and illumination leaving no
room for doubt on this point. In the comment most significant for con-
sideration of the MS here, he stated that "its appearance is quite similar
to that of volumes copied and illuminated among us during the time of
Philip the Fair."3 He offered no further support of this one-sentence opin-
ion, which for more than half a century afterward was repeated unchal-
lenged in musicological literature. His remark has remained the sole rea-

* A more visually oriented version of this paper was presented at the 36th Annual
Meeting of the American Musicological Society in Toronto, November 7, 1970. I
wish to thank the Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana for allowing me to examine MS
Pluteus 29, I and for the color slides made by Dr. G. B. Pineider of Florence, from
which the illustrations accompanying this article were made.
1 Friedrich Ludwig, Repertorium organorum recentioris et motetorum vetustissimi
still, I, I (Halle, 191o), 57, where his catalogue raisonni of the MS begins. The
standard manuscript sigla to be followed here are: F = Florence, Biblioteca Mediceo-
Laurenziana, Pluteus 29, i; facsimile by Luther Dittmer, 2 vols. (Brooklyn, 1966-67).
Wi = 'Wolfenbiittel, Herzog-August Bibliothek 677 (olim Helmstedt 628); facsimile
by J. H. Baxter, An Old St. Andrews Music Book (London, I93'). W2 = Wolfen-
biittel, Herzog-August Bibliothek 20o6 (olim Helmstedt io99); facsimile by Luther
Dittmer (Brooklyn, i960). In the Florence facsimile, the lack of sharp focus un-
fortunately obliterates the detail in the illuminations.
2 The portion of Delisle's presidential address dealing with this manuscript is in
the Annuaire-Bulletin de la Societe de l'Histoire de France, XXII (I885), o10-I39-
3 Ibid., p. 102. Delisle may have been somewhat prompted by Angelo Maria
Bandini's assignment of the MS to the i4th century in his Catalogus codicum latin-
orum bibliothecae Mediceae Laurentianae (Florence, 1761-78), Vol. II, cols. I-4.

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 2 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

son for the customary dating of F between 1285 and 1314,

such a date is quite late for a musical repertory which falls la
the first third of the I3th century-and which century witne
rapid succession of stylistic and notational changes in polyph
In a posthumous article of 193o, Ludwig reported show
graphs of the miniatures in F to the art historian Georg Vit
agreed that French provenance could not be doubted. Vitzth
ently offered no comment on the date of the manuscript, ho
Ludwig said nothing more on this point.5
In 1942, a footnote in Willi Apel's Notation of Polyphonic
ported that he and Professor E. K. Rand of Harvard agreed
features of the script suggested "a mid-I3th-century date fo
WI and Fl, that is to say, only a few decades later than the p
sented by their contents."6 Jacques Handschin also voiced d
with Delisle's date in the first part of his article on the Sum
which appeared in 1949. Quite typically, however, Handschi
came as a parenthetical aside that was developed no further:
I can not agree with classifying F, among the other Notre D
scripts, in the second half of the I3th century, as it is distinc
In a footnote in the 1951 continuation of the article, he added
a German paleographer believed that WI was probably later
one generation and that F was "probably written" in "the m
I3th century."s Thus we have two opinions that on pal
grounds, F was produced around mid-century-opinions t
clearly substantiated by comparing its illuminations with th
artistically distinguished I3th-century manuscripts from the
First, however, let us consider the iconography of the min
their relation to the musical contents before taking up the m
tistic style.

In its present state F numbers 476 parchment folios plus the opening
unnumbered leaf, measuring 232 x 157 mm. The eleven fascicles com-
prise a total of twenty-seven extant gatherings, with at least four and pos-
4 Delisle did ascertain that the latest "occasional" text in the MS refers to events
of 1236: the monophonic conductus Aurelianis civitas on fols. 439V-4o deals with the
massacre of some students at Orleans. It reflects a Parisian point of view, voicing
relief that such atrocities do not happen in Paris. See Delisle, op. cit., p. 136.
5 Friedrich Ludwig, "Ober den Entstehungsort der grossen 'Notre Dame-Hand-
schriften,'" in Studien zur Musikgeschichte: Festschrift fiir Guido Adler zum 75.
Geburtstag (Vienna, 1930), p. 46. See also Vitzthum's still useful Die Pariser Mini-
aturmalerei von der Zeit des heiligen Ludwig bis zu Philipp von Valois und ihr
Verh'ltnis zur Malerei in Nordwesteuropa (Leipzig, 1907).
6Willi Apel, The Notation of Polyphonic Music 9oo-z6oo (Cambridge, Mass.,
1942), p. zoo. Also in subsequent eds.
7Jacques Handschin, "The Summer Canon and Its Background," Musica disci-
plina, III (1949), 73.
8 Musica disciplina, V (i951), I 13, fn. 2.

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 THIRTEENTH-CENTURY ILLUMINATED MINIATURES 3

sibly more gatherings now missing." Each fascicle contains composit

all of the same type and same number of voice-parts (with occasional
ceptions), beginning with four-voice compositions and ending with m
ophonic pieces. The manuscript opens with strictly liturgical works (p
marily Graduals and Alleluias for the Mass and Responsories for Ves
and Matins) following the order of the church year; hence the mistak
but understandable appellation "Antiphonarium Mediceum" given to
volume. The later fascicles contain non-liturgical but largely sacred wo
conductus, motets, and monophonic rondellus compositions. F thus i
cludes all the major types of polyphonic music which flourished in t
second half of the I2th and first half of the I3th centuries.
The one full-page miniature forms a frontispiece on the verso of t
opening folio, where it stands opposite Perotin's liturgical quadruplu
Viderunt omnes, the Christmas Gradual. This miniature is the well-kno
representation of the Boethian division of music into musica munda
musica humana, and musica instrumentalis.o0 In each of the three dou
panels, Musica herself sits enthroned like a commanding queen on the l
on the right the three types of music are depicted by the heavens a
firmament, four dancing men, and a vielle player surrounded by seve
other instruments (see Fig. I for the middle and lower right panels).
The second fascicle contains three-part liturgical compositions for
Mass and Office, beginning with the third Responsory of Christmas Matin
Descendit de celis (fol. i4). Thus the initial "D" appropriately portr
the Annunciation to the Virgin, the Nativity, and the Annunciation
the Shepherds (Fig. 3)-
Fascicle 3 (fol. 65) is devoted to the Magnus liber organi de an
foanario11 and begins with the organum Iudea et Iherusalem, the Chri
mas Vesper Responsory. The initial "I," which runs the length of the

9 In the I3th-century foliation (which goes through fol. 355), fols. 48-64, 94, x
200, and 255-56 are missing, and gaps of unknown length occur after fols. 398
414, since they were not numbered before the loss. Hence a gathering is missing f
both fascicles 2 and 5, and at least one from both fascicles 8 and 9 (see Ludw
Repertorium, pp. 59ff.). The Laurenziana has added a new consecutive foliat
beginning with the frontispiece and running to fol. 441' (= 476') in the lower rig
corner of each recto leaf, a fact not mentioned by Dittmer, though the numberi
is visible in the facsimile on plates that do not trim the margins (for example, f
381, renumbered 346). However, in view of the fact that the old foliation is
fectly legible, gives clear indication where material is missing, and is universa
used in all literature on the MS as well as in the facsimile, I urge that this renum
ing be left to the Laurenziana's internal purposes and not adopted in the schola
literature. The two foliations of WI have caused difficulties enough.
10 Discussed in Book I, Chapter 2 of Boethius' De institutione musica, ed.
Friedlein (Leipzig, 1867), and translated in Oliver Strunk's Source Readings i
Music History (New York, 1950), pp. 79ff. A color reproduction of this miniat
in F occurs as Tafel I in Heinrich Besseler's Die Musik des Mittelalters und der
Renaissance (Potsdam, 1931).
11 As titled by Anonymous IV; see E. de Coussemaker, Scriptorum de musi
medii aevi (Paris, 1864-67), I, 342a, and Fritz Reckow, Der Musiktraktat
Anonymus 4 (Wiesbaden, 1967), Part I, p. 46.

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4 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Figure I. Musica humana and musica in- Figure 2. Sleeping Jesse and King David.
strumentalis. F, verso of opening folio.F, fol. 65 (fascicle 3).

margin, contains the Tree of Jesse, representing the genealogy of Christ

given by Matthew's Gospel. Shown here are the sleeping Jesse at the bot-
tom, succeeded by his son King David (Fig. 2), David's son King Solo-
mon, and then through a bit of genealogical foreshortening, the Virgin
Mary and Christ.12
The fourth fascicle continues the Magnus liber with organa for the
Graduals and Alleluias of the Mass, beginning again (on fol. 99) with the
Christmas Gradual Viderunt onnes. The Christmas theme continues in
the historiated "V," which shows the Adoration of the Magi, the Flight
into Egypt, and the Massacre of the Holy Innocents.
12 This theme of the stirps or radix lesse is of course popular in conductus and
motet texts as well as in stained glass and manuscript painting of the period.

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 14w is We-x:-ii~?;

filli i

oil

torn::

Figure 3. Annunciation to the Virgin, Nativity, and Annunciation to the Shepherds.

F, fol. 14 (fascicle 2).

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6 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

The clausula collections in fascicle 5 (fol. I47) open with sections for
the Christmas Responsories ludea et Iherusalem and (at the bottom) Des-
cendit de celis. The clerics looking up at four heavenly creatures in the
initial "E" may, on the most direct level, simply illustrate the visible words
"Et Iherusalem super vos," the angels representing the heavenly Jerusalem.
However, the scene better depicts the text of the whole responsory, es-
pecially its verse:
ludea et Iherusalem nolite timere: Cras egredienmini et dominus erit vobis-
cum.

V. Constantes estote videbitis auxiliunm domini super vos.

Judea and Jerusalem, do not fear: tomorrow you will be

and the Lord will be with you.
V. Be steadfast and you will see the help of the Lord abo
In this case the angels would represent the visible help
Fascicle 6 (fol. 201) contains three-voice conductus an
Perotin's famous Salvatoris hodie, the text of which rel
the Circumcision.'3 The initial again concerns the life o
the Presentation in the Temple and his baptism by Joh
ing which an angel holds his robe.
The enormous collection of two-voice conductus in
nearly I20 folios (fols. 263-38ov.), and its seven gather
historiated initials. It may well be that these four initi
bitrarily breaking up a large collection of pieces into
stead initiate separate small collections gathered togeth
sources, each group marked by a new initial.14
The first conductus in the fascicle (fol. 263), Fraud
a meditation on the Incarnation, and its opening strophe s
corruption of original sin, then of the brightness of a
has come to obliterate it. Related to the beginning of t
half of the initial "F" shows Adam and Eve eating the
with the tempting serpent coiled around a tree; below
Michael with raised sword presides over the Expulsion
The next historiated initial, an "A" on folio 299, rep
theme: the three Marys and the angel at the empty tom
of Mary Magdalene with the resurrected Christ, the
The opening of this poem, Austro terris influente, sp
south winds which revive men after the grip of deadly
sion, the rebirth represented by the Resurrection seem
13 The texts of many of these non-liturgical pieces in fascicl
Guido Maria Dreves in Vols. XX and XXI of Analecta hymnica
1895). For Salvatoris hodie, see Vol. XX, p. I32.
14 I am indebted to Professor Janet Knapp of Vassar College
She points out that each such group begins with relatively well
in several sources and concludes with compositions that are mo
case of several small collections of pieces gathered together int
they are not separated by historiated initials) occurs in the clau

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 THIRTEENTH-CENTURY ILLUMINATED MINIATURES 7

:i! ii~~i:! :i!iiii? i~ ~ i ::: :i-:. ii i:ii; i:-:-~ii-:--:ii: iii i:::i:: :: iil i

iiI ii i
i;i,I!I :-i iii9 ii::~i~
? wl ......
iiii~iii~ i~iiiiiiiii

,! : ?????'??' ? ..-i- :::.. _ ....::::-::::::::::; :?:: - .

? :':_ *.:i : -i iii ii i
?i ::. .....
. . ......
. ...... iii !!i

iii;!i~iii
ee x.[. .
-Al
:::- i-ii :? iiAbi. AOL~i

.. ....

Figure 4. The Se

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8 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

A historiated "D" on folio 336 introduces a polemical conductus,

Deduc Sion uberrimas, condemning the corruption found among the
clergy of the Church. The first strophe urges Zion to weep copious tears
because the scepter of authority has been surrendered, and madness rules.
The seated woman in the initial apparently represents the weeping Zion,
who beholds in the scene below a bishop anointing a kneeling cleric.
The last initial in fascicle 7 (fol. 349) starts a syllabic conductus,
Artium dignitas, lamenting the poet's belief that the dignity of the once-
flourishing arts has been cheapened by the moderns, who substitute rhe-
torical tricks for true learning.15 The initial "A" portrays the Seven Lib-
eral Arts: the Trivium of Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic on top, and the
Quadrivium of Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy below
(Fig. 4). Grammar sits writing at a desk, while Rhetoric gesticulates in
a dispute with Logic; Arithmetic counts on her fingers to Music, Geom-
etry holds a compass and a sphere, and Astronomy points to a heavenly
orb.

Fascicle 8 contains three-part conductus-motets, the top two parts be-

ing written in score over a single text. On folio 381 the initial introducing
the penitential text of Ad veniam perveniam depicts the Ascension, with
Christ's feet disappearing above the heads of the Apostles and the Virgin,
and Pentecost, with the Dove radiating the Holy Spirit upon the assem-
bled Apostles.16
The ninth fascicle comprises primarily two-part motets, beginning on
folio 399 with Mens fidem seminat on the tenor In odorem, a fragment
from the Alleluia Dilexit Andream for St. Andrew. The very abstract
text begins with the observation that understanding produces faith, faith
generates hope, and charity drives out fear. Of the four figures in the
initial (Fig. 5), the one on the upper right is evidently Christ, because of
his cruciform nimbus; presumably the woman below him is the Virgin.
On the upper left, the haloed saint carrying a cross is probably St. An-
drew, but I can suggest no identity for the bishop below, who holds a
staff and a book.

Fascicle io is made up of monophonic conductus, and the first piece

(fol. 415) observes that man is born to work-Homo natus ad laborem.

15 The group of forty-three pieces that begins with Artium dignitas is remarkable
in that the first thirteen works (plus one later piece) all occur together in the
MS Oxford, Bodleian Rawlinson C 510o (texts only), adding support to the idea
that each initial in fascicle 7 starts a separate collection. On the Oxford MS see
Eduard Gr6ninger, Repertoire-Untersuchungen zum mehrstimmnigen Notre Dame-
Conductus, Kolner Beitrige zur Musikforschung, Vol. II (Regensburg, 1939), pp-
i26ff., and 25ff.
16 Since there is no evident connection between the motet text (or its tenor
Tamquam, from a Christmas Responsory) and the illustration, it could be that
the Easter initial earlier on fol. 299, the second initial in fascicle 7, prompted a
return to the Christological sequence here (after two interruptions), when nothing
else suggested itself.

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 THIRTEENTH-CENTURY ILLUMINATED MINIATURES 9

The initial shows him doing exactly that, plowing a field while su
vised by a lady (Fig. 6). I shall return to the significance of the la
gray bird with spreading wings perched above them.
The eleventh and last fascicle, beginning on folio 463, contains m
phonic Latin rondellus compositions. The "D" initial of the text De
principio shows a group of five dancing clerics similar to those repr
ing musica humana on the opening folio.17
The I3th century saw a tremendous increase in book production
the Paris region, partly because of the growing demands of the U
sity and partly because of the needs of the royal court. The deman
so great that after about the first third of the century, the copyi
decorating of books seem to have been largely in the hands of lay p
sionals rather than monks or other clergy. Parisian tax rolls provid
dence of this trend as early as i239, for they begin to list lay illum
who had workshops on the Left Bank in the University area.18
The lay illuminator, whether head of his own atelier or a memb
someone else's, apparently had a rather standard repertory of sub
particularly when illustrating liturgical books. When he was called
to illuminate something out of the ordinary, we may presume th
artist first checked his repertory to see if anything "traditional" w
serve.'i Whenever possible, the illuminator of F seems to have fol
this procedure of borrowing traditional scenes to illustrate the te
hand, especially a liturgical text. That his choice was sometimes n
tirely appropriate is shown in the case of the conductus Austro ter
fluente (fol. 299). The two Easter scenes in this initial have been u
illustrate a poem actually related to the Christmas season, since it
subject is the Incarnation. Only the first strophe of three is visible
recto side of the folio; had the artist continued reading on the vers
he would have found the idea of rebirth related specifically to the
ity, in the sense of the New Birth of Christ rescuing men from old
and old law.20

17 These pieces and the subject of the initial are discussed in Yvonne Rokseth,
"Danses clericales du XIIIe siecle," M6langes z945 des Publications de la Faculte
des lettres de Strasbourg (Paris, '947), pp. io4-6. A good, full-page enlargement of
this initial is included in Jacques Chailley's "La danse religieuse au moyen age,"
Arts liberaux et philosophie au moyen age: Actes du quatrieme congres international
de philosophie mddie'vale (Montreal and Paris, 1969), p. 378.
18 Robert Branner, "Manuscript Makers in Mid-Thirteenth Century Paris," Art
Bulletin, XLVIII (1966), 65-67.
19 The only three historiated initials in W2 are all examples of this approach;
the clerics singing before an open book on fols. 31, 92, and 145 form the standard
13th-century Psalter illustration for Psalm 97 (Cantate domino canticum novum).
The same idea is borrowed for the first initial in the Montpellier MS (Facult? de
medecine, H 196) as well as the initial beginning fascicle 8; see Vol. I, fols. I and
350 of the edition by Yvonne Rokseth, Polyphonies du XIIIe siecle (Paris, 1935-39).
For numerous examples in psalters, see Giinther Haseloff, Die Psalterillustration im
z3. Jahrhundert (n.p., 1938).
20 However, the fact that so many of the fascicles begin with pieces related

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IO JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

? t

atit

77 !.. 4...
i~, ?4i,??: f . ..~'?.....
- !

Figure 5. Initial for Mens fidem seminat / In odorem. F, fol. 399 (fascicle 9).

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 THIRTEENTH-CENTURY ILLUMINATED MINIATURES I I

MWa

. .C . .. . .... .
i?,A Ai ii:?
.. ............. . ,?.?,.......i iiii~ ~m .!.,ii.?, ...j.....

*At

Figure 6. Initial for Homo natus ad laborem. F, foL 415 (fascicle io).

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 12 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

A more peculiar case involves the large bird in the initial f

natus ad laborem on folio 415 (Fig. 6). The text in F, which beg
natus ad laborem / tui status tue morem / sortis considera, say
about a bird. But the text given in Analecta hymnica under th
taken from British Museum MS Egerton 274 and attributed to P
Chancellor, begins: Homo natus ad laborem / et avis ad vola
[is] born to work, and a bird to fly." My only explanation is t
artist either thought he was illustrating this latter text or sim
a prototype that did so.22
But whatever the source of his scenes, the artist is frequently
ing the procedure of merely illustrating the beginning words of
he did not have a suitable prototype handy, he was forced to m
scene from what he read. A somewhat special case is the full-pa
ture, whose subject of the Boethian division of music probably
suggestion from an educated man-the patron or his intermediar
it seems unlikely that a lay illuminator would think of this conc
own, it is probable that anyone who had received the traditional
introduction to the seven liberal arts, musician or not, would be
with the idea, aware of both its symbolic significance and its
suitability as the frontispiece to this comprehensive musical col

To say that a manuscript resembles ones from the reign of P

Fair is to invite comparison with works of the most well-know
illuminator of the 13th century: Master HonorS. Contemporar
reveal that by at least 1292 he was head of an atelier in the Un
area of the Left Bank, that he illuminated some books for the K
that he must have been dead by 1318, since his son-in-law was h
atelier then. Illuminations in more than a dozen manuscripts h
attributed to Honore directly or to his workshop, including th
Breviary of Philip the Fair (B. N. lat. 1023), done probably in I

to the Christmas season may have led the artist to undertake an abbrev
interrupted) cycle of the life of Christ, since he could not well keep
the Nativity scene.
21 Vol. XXI, p. 197.
22 Though it is not listed in the index, the text of the F version of Ho
is also edited in Vol. XXI of Analecta hymnica on p. 115, for which in
I must thank Harriet Franklin of Brown University. Ludwig (Repertori
was of the opinion that the Egerton version might be an imitation of
widely copied text set in F, which makes it all the more interesting that
apparently illustrated the wrong poem. A variant version of the text i
from the 13th-century Darmstadt MS 2777, where it follows the rubri
dicta cancellarii Parisiensis," is given by F. W. E. Roth in Romanische Fors
VI (1891), 444-
23For an excellent discussion of this concept, see David S. Cham
"Philosophy of Music in the Consolatio of Boethius," Speculum, XLV (19
24Eric G. Millar, The Parisian Miniaturist Honors (New York, 1959), p
The eight color plates in Millar's book are useful for the ensuing discu
and, as a rule, will not be cited further.

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 THIRTEENTH-CENTURY ILLUMINATED MINIATURES 13

The earliest known work of HonorS, a copy of the Decretals of Gra

tian now in the Municipal Library of Tours (MS 558), was finished by
1288. When the first folio is compared with illuminated pages in F, o
difference is immediately apparent. The small and somewhat tentativ
protrusions from the historiated initials in F (see Figs. 3 and 5) have i
Honore's work sprouted leaves and grown round the whole margin
the page.25 This change did not proceed in a straight line during the se
ond half of the I3th century; but generally, the tendrils first sprout buds,
as seen in most initials in F (Fig. 6, for example) and in a Parisian psalte
of ca. I250.26 Then they become more angular and sharp, as in W2, foli
92, and in the so-called "third" Gospel-Lectionary of the Ste. Chapelle,
from the I260's;27 and finally in works such as Honore's in the last quart
of the century, they produce spiky leaves.28
The type of diapered ground evident above the arches in the full-pag
miniature of F (see Fig. I, lower half) is prominent in the second of t
great Parisian moralized Bibles,2 made shortly before mid-century; it
also seen in a Vie de St. Denis made in I25o at the Abbey of St. Denis.3
By the time of the earliest portions of the Montpellier MS (ca. I280), th
cross-hatched pattern has become much more marked; Honore even us
a heavy lozenge design with fleurs-de-lis.a3
One of the watershed points in I3th-century French illumination is

25 The initial in F which comes closest to this procedure is that for Artiu
dignitas on fol. 349, the whole of which is not shown in Fig. 4; the tail of th
"A" not only covers the length of the left margin but also extends a cross-pie
along the entire bottom margin. Two similar ones (without the cross-piece) i
which the protrusion becomes a feathered body and ends in an animal head (se
Fig. 4) are those on fols. 299 and 381. A somewhat different type of long ste
makes up the tail of the "F" on fol. 263.
26 Paris, B. N. lat. 1075. See Table 12, item 2, in Haseloff, Die Psalterillustration
pp. I14-I5, and the initials illustrated in Tafel i6.
27 B. N. lat. 17326. Part of fol. 99 is reproduced in Jean Porcher, Medieval
French Miniatures (New York, 1959), P. 48. See also Robert Branner, "Tw
Parisian Capella Books in Bari," Gesta, VIII (1969), p. 18, where an initial from
fol. 13 is reproduced.
28 Other examples contemporary with Honore can be seen in fascicle 7 (fols.
270-349v) of the Montpellier MS (see fn. 19 above). Rokseth (Vol. IV, p. 3
assigned the copying of this fascicle to the end of the i3th century.
29Now divided between Oxford, Bodleian MS Bodley 27ob; Paris, B. N. lat.
II560; and British Museum, Harley 1526-27. Facsimile in A. de Laborde, La Bib
moralise'e illustreie, 5 vols. (Paris, 1911-27).
30 Paris, B. N. nouv. acq. fr. o098, fol. 58, a seated Madonna and Child. The
thirty miniatures are published by Henri Omont in Vie et Histoire de Saint Den
(Paris, 1905). While the illuminations in this MS are not of the first rank, the fact
that it is precisely dated 1250 (from an inscription in the MS itself) is importan
for this study. See L6opold Delisle, "Notice sur un livre a peintures, execute e
1250 dans l'abbaye de Saint-Denis," Bibliothbque de l'Ecole des Chartes, XXXVI
(1877), 444-76.
31 See Honore's copy of the Sonrme le Roy (London, Collection of Dr. E. G.
Millar), fol. 97v, reproduced as Plate 6 in Millar's The Parisian Miniaturist Honor
The well-known frontispiece to the Breviary of Philip the Fair (B. N. lat. 102
fol. 7') exhibits the same feature; see Millar's Plate 2.

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 14 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

the magnificient St. Louis Psalter,32 done sometime between 1253 an

I270, probably in the late fifties or early sixties. Thus it is a near or e
direct contemporary of the Florence MS, but its more progressive sty
aside from its sumptuousness--is undeniable. The St. Louis Psalter sh
what the King could command: the best available talent of his time,
sulting in a stylistic pace-setter in French illumination that lasted u
another superior talent, Master Honore, appeared on the scene in the
I28O's. As we have already begun to see, in almost every detail F obser
the stylistic fashions set in manuscripts dating from shortly before a
just at mid-century; on the other hand, the innovative St. Louis Psal
and later manuscripts that follow its lead represent a more refined, m
nered "court style," while the end-of-century works by Honor6 reve
further distinctive developments.
The trefoil arch forming an architectural canopy in F on the openi
folio and on folios 263, 299, 381, 415, and 463 (see Figs. I and 6) has b
come both more prominent and more Gothic in Honore's hands. T
turning point can readily be seen in the St. Louis Psalter, in whose fu
page miniatures the spires, gabled arches, and elegant rosettes reflect
new rayonnaznnt Gothic style of architecture, most visible in Paris in
Ste. Chapelle, completely built during the I240'S, and the slightly lat
transepts of Notre Dame itself.33 Manuscripts stylistically older than
St. Louis Psalter typically have a less elegant architectural canopy of to
ers and pinnacles over rounded arches; the rounded arches in F clearl
belong to this earlier type.34 Honore, in contrast, consistently uses t
more vertical and pointed ray onnant elements, even in small initials.
The most telling stylistic differences, however, concern the handli
of hair and facial types and the treatment of drapery and the figur
themselves. Faces in manuscripts of the second quarter of the 13th c
tury tend to have strong foreheads and small chins, with features car
fully drawn in; each face is modeled with a rosy flesh-tone, and ofte
there is a touch of red to the lips and cheeks.35. In the Vie de St. Denis
1250, the flesh color has disappeared, leaving only the touch of red o
cheeks and lips. The hair is very distinctive, drawn in tight, carefully
ranged curls and straight parallel lines back from the forehead, like a

32 Paris, B. N. lat. 10525.

"3 Color plates of fols. 7, I3, 42, and 46 of the St. Louis Psalter are in Jacq
Dupont and Cesare Gnudi, Gothic Painting (New York, 1954), PP- 34-37.
34 Examples of this older style can be seen in the Bible moralisee mentioned
fn. 29 above and in three other manuscripts from mid-century: B. N. lat. 104
a Parisian psalter (a color plate of fol. io is in Porcher's Medieval French Min
tures); the series of Old Testament miniatures now M 38 in the Pierpont Mor
Library (see Sydney C. Cockerell, Old Testament Miniatures . . . [New Yo
1969]); and the Vie de St. Denis already mentioned.
35 See for instance those in Paris, Arsenal I186, the so-called Psalter of Blanche
of Castile, from the early I230's. Several folios are reproduced in Dupont and Gnu
Gothic Painting and Porcher's Medieval French Miniatures.

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 THIRTEENTH-CENTURY ILLUMINATED MINIATURES 15

clapped on the head.86 The heads in F are unmistakably similar, with

lack of facial color, the touch of rouge, the way in which the eyes ar
drawn full round but are left open at the outer corners, and espec
the treatment of the hair (see Figs. i, 3, and 6).
But in the St. Louis Psalter, hair is penned in a more casual and ske
manner; the strokes are not so rigidly parallel. Though there is still
facial color, the heads and features are generally smaller, in a fash
which continues through the third quarter of the century. In the en
century works of Honore and his shop, the hair is in large, straggly
the faces are distinctively modeled, and the eyes are completely rou
topped by sharply arched eyebrows.
Figure and drapery styles again take a new turn in the St. Louis P
ter. Bodies become longer and thinner, more elegant and mannered
pose, with small heads and softer folds of drapery, a trend which b
two or three decades earlier in cathedral sculpture. In one respect t
full-page miniature in F seems somewhat forward-looking, since the
ing men (Fig. i) do have more elongated figures and small heads. But
actual handling of the drapery in F sides with that in the older ma
scripts. It is not modeled in light and dark shades of the same color,
is in the later and more painterly works of Honor6; the color is flat
the modeling is instead accomplished chiefly by penned-in black line
in stained glass (see especially Fig. 3).
The way these black lines thicken and loop in some of the figur
F, notably those of Grammar in Figure 4, the sleeping Jesse in Figu
and Joseph and the center shepherd in Figure 3, shows remnants of
Muldenfaltenstil or hairpin looped style, characteristic of drapery t
ment in all the figural arts from the end of the 12th through roughly t
first quarter of the I3th century. The technique is still evident in
drapery folds of the Vie de St. Denis, though it is used there in a m
painterly way. Nonetheless, the Muldenstil is definitely old-fashione
mid-century illumination, and I know of no later Parisian manuscr
sources which use it.37
All in all, we must conclude that it is impossible to consider the F
ence manuscript and those of Master Honore as artistic contempora
there is a rather wide stylistic gulf between them, though entirely w
a 13th-century context. If I had to pinpoint a date for F within ten y
I would say that it falls somewhere between 1245 and 1255-

This comprehensive musical collection was evidently meant as so

thing of a luxury book. The manuscript's immaculate freshness is stri

36 This is especially clear in the upper half of fol. 5o, the baptism of Clovis;
Plate 22 in the Omont edition cited in fn. 30. The hair style is quite close t
on the first folio of the Florence MS.
37The Muldenstil persists in "peripheral" manuscripts after mid-century
they have other qualities that distinguish them as non-Parisian works.

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 16 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

it bears none of the signs of well-thumbed use. That it was never intended
to be a performing copy is clearly revealed in the motet fascicles, where
the upper voice-parts often begin on the recto side of a folio, but the
complete tenor appears only on the verso side, making performance im-
practical if not impossible. There are also occasional copyist's mistakes of
the sort that would have been quickly noticed and corrected by per-
formers."

Both the excellent condition of the manuscript and the well-planned

organization of its musical contents suggest an individual rather than an
institutional patron. Acknowledging the comparative modesty of the il-
luminations and the fact that the musical texts are all Latin and primarily
sacred-there being no French motets on themes of courtly love-we
may speculate further that the patron was not a member of the nobility
or royal house. He was more likely a well-educated and well-off member
of the Church's hierarchy who had some association with and apprecia-
tion of such music, knowledge of which may have been acquired in the
University of Paris as well as in the Church.31
There remains a 2oo-year interval during which we have no record
of F's location at all, a fact linked to our ignorance of the patron. An in-
scription on the verso of the last folio tells us that the manuscript was a
liber Petri de Medicis Cos(mae) fil(ii). Two inventories of the private
library of Piero de' Medici (1416-69) are extant, one made in 145640 and
the other in i464.41 Besides the expected Latin and Greek classics, in the
1456 list there appear three libri di musicha, one described as grande, in
membrane; another as grande, in papiro; and the third, the most likely
candidate for our manuscript, as uno libro di nmusicha, piccholo.42 Its iden-
tity is confirmed in the Latin inventory of 1464, where it is listed as a
Liber nnmusice parvus in membranis, coperta sericea rubea fibulis argenteis,
i.e., a small parchment volume with a red cover and silver clasp-an ac-
curate description.43

38 For instance, a necessary tenor note obviously omitted, ornamental initials

misplaced, pitches a third too high or low because the scribe failed to change the
clef, and sometimes even short phrases left out of one voice-part that can be found
in a concordant version.
39 It is worth emphasizing that only musicians with special training in the system
and notation of the rhythmic modes would be equipped to perform this repertory.
However, I am convinced that not only theoretical music but also practical poly-
phonic composition was being taught and written in the University of Paris before
mid-century, the evidence for which I cannot put forward here.
40 Printed in Enea Piccolomini, "Ricerche intorno alle condizioni e alle vicende
della libreria medicea privata dal 1494 al 150o8," Arcbivio storico italiano, Series III,
Vol. XXI (1875), 106-I12.
41 Included in Eugene Miintz, Les collections des Medicis au XVe sidcle: le
nmusde, la bibliotheque, le mobilier (Paris, 1888), pp. 44-49.
42 Piccolomini, op. cit., p. ix i.
43 Miintz, op. cit., p. 49. Its listed value is flor(ini) 5. The other items in the
library range from I to I5o florins, the latter being the value assigned to a breviarium
pulcherrimum. The majority of the volumes are valued between io and 5o florins.

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 THIRTEENTH-CENTURY ILLUMINATED MINIATURES 17

The book-collecting zeal of Cosimo de' Medici and his sons Piero
Giovanni is well known; so avid were Piero and his brother during
decade from 1450 to 1460 that they had a genuine competition t
which could assemble the better library.44 Not only family member
friends but also employees of the Medici Bank throughout Europe a
as book agents. Though little of this type of material has been publi
it is possible that a careful search of the records and accounts in the Med
Archives would produce information on the acquisition of specific b
and manuscripts-such as whether our manuscript was bought in
North, and from whom, or had already found its way to Italy. Any
information, besides narrowing that 2oo-year gap, could help eithe
confirm or to alter our current beliefs concerning the social and perf
ing situation of this highly specialized repertory.
From a strictly musical point of view, a mid- 13th-century date for th
Florence manuscript suggests that the notational clarifications of m
rhythm-the ideas concerning propriety and perfection of ligatures
vocated by John of Garland and others45--had as yet made little imp
The first preserved version of John's treatise on polyphony46 may
been written as early as ca. 1240; it is possible, of course, that the sou
from which F was copied were older than that. But the new ideas d
make a definite impact on the modal notation of W2, which in sine li
discant often contains specifically Garlandian clarifications of mod
ambiguous spots; from the style of its initials, I would date this M
more than fifteen to twenty years after F. Thus if one accepts the d
of mid-century for F and between about I260 and I275 for W2, we
thereby an indication of when the notational refinements advocate
the theorists begin to appear with some regularity in the musical sources
In conclusion, F must still be regarded as the central source of No

44 Dorothy Robathan, "Libraries of the Italian Renaissance," in J. W. Thomps

The Medieval Library (Chicago, 1939), P- 547.
45See Fritz Reckow, "Proprietas und perfectio," Acta musicologica, XXX
(1967), I 5-43.
46 Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 5325, fols. I2vff., edited in pa
Coussemaker, Scriptorum de musica, I, I75ff.
S47This dating of F and W2 incidentally lends support to the thesis of
Frobenius that Franco of Cologne's Ars cantus mensurabilis, which advoca
fully mensural rather than modal notation, is no earlier than ca. I280. Whe
consider the change from partly to fully mensural notation that took place i
Montpellier MS between the "old corpus" (fascicles 2-6, dated ca. I280 by Rok
and the seventh fascicle (from the end of the century, i.e., after Franco's treat
we begin to see a much closer correlation between the theorists' notational
and the musical repertory manuscripts: the central manuscripts throughou
latter half of the i3th century seem to have been copied fairly close on the
of the changes discussed by the leading theorists. (I exclude such peripher
produced sources as WI from this development.) This, after all, is exactly
we should expect, for the major theorists were undoubtedly musical practitioner
saw a means of doing something a little more logically and thereafter advoca
in their teachings and treatises. See Wolf Frobenius, "Zur Datierung von Fra
Ars cantus mensurabilis," Archiv fiir Musikwissenschaft, XXVII (1970), 122-2

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18 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Dame music, one that was produced in Paris during the reign
Philip the Fair, but of his grandfather St. Louis; one that is not sep
from its repertory by a puzzling chronological gulf, but one which
ing at the end of the so-called third Notre Dame generation of
posers,48 forms a fitting capstone to the accomplishments of a who
sical epoch. And such a conclusion has its own kind of propriety an
fection, too.49

University of Texas, Austin

48The generation after Perotin's, active ca. 1220-ca. 1250. See Ernest San
"Duple Rhythm and Alternate Third Mode in the I3th Century," this JOU
XV (1962), 285, fn. 168.
49Simultaneously but independently, Professor Robert Branner of Col
University has recently been engaged upon a study of the Parisian atelier
illuminated the Florence MS. I am indebted to him for some valuable sugg
concerning details of this article and also for allowing me to read his forth
paper, "The Johannes Grusch Atelier and the Continental Origins of the W
of Devon Painter," to appear in the Art Bulletin for March, 1972. Professor B
provides a working list of more than twenty MSS, including F, attributable
Grusch atelier, which was active between ca. 1235 and ca. 1270. I am hap
report that we arrived at substantially the same conclusion about the date of

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