The Instrumental Cross and the Use of the Gospel Book Troyes, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 960

Beatrice Kitzinger • Stanford University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.61302/WRMN4347

 

In approximately 909, a Breton named Matian together with his wife Digrenet donated a gospel manuscript to a church called Rosbeith. They intended it should remain there on pain of anathema, never to be taken from the church by force but provided with a dispensation for removal by students for the express purpose of writing or reading. With the exception of the date, which is recorded elsewhere in the manuscript, these specifications all appear in a short text written in distinctive, highlighted script at the close of Luke’s chapter list (f. 71):

“These little letters recount how Matian, and his wife Digrenet, gave these four books of the gospel as a gift to the church of Rosbeith for their souls. And whosoever should remove this evangelium from that church by force, may he be anathema—excepting a student [in order] to write or to read.”[1]

The location of Rosbeith is unknown, but we may surmise that it was a church attached to a larger abbey in Brittany, according to Breton nomenclature.[2] Apart from their Breton origins and evident appreciation for scholarship, the identities of Matian and Digrenet are similarly murky. The particularizing nature of the note extends only to a statement of Matian and Digrenet’s motive for the gift—“for their souls”—and a designation of the contents: “these four books of the gospel.” We know, however, that the couple was anxious about the fate of their souls at judgment, and we know that they thought the gospel manuscript at hand might help.

Matian and Digrenet’s manuscript is housed in the Bibliothèque municipale in Troyes (Médiathèque de Grand Troyes) as MS 960.[3] It has been rarely mentioned in art historical literature, but has received scholarly attention to date for two important elements that will also feature here: its three surviving evangelist portraits (Figures 2–4), which are of an identifiably Breton beast-headed type, and the presence of another colophonic inscription in the frontispiece that dates the codex to 909.[4] These factors, along with several linguistic aspects of the text, render Troyes 960 an anchor in the highly fluid corpus of western French illumination.[5] The specificity of Matian and Digrenet’s action in giving Troyes 960 “for their souls” also renders this little-known codex an anchor in the broad question of how early medieval manuscripts were designed with utility in mind, and how all components of their construction—images, text, ordering, physical build—may be instrumental in work performed with (or through) the codices toward a defined purpose.

Instrumentality in this vein is crucial to our understanding of medieval art—in terms even more fundamental than those that steer us toward greater knowledge of the practical roles of art in religious and cultural life.[6] In many cases, instrumentality may be isolated as a conceptual component of medieval art as much as it remains a simple fact of art’s historical place in the medieval Christian sphere. The sign-status of medieval artwork has been much discussed, with an emphasis on the strategies employed to navigate the fault-line between the uses and attractions of art and a pressing theological need to transcend the visible and manmade in favor of the invisible and divine.[7] The limited utility and uneasy theological standing of art is often deeply coded into the images and patterns of ornament that define the physical world of the early medieval Church by shaping its buildings, framing its rituals and giving its sacred texts and objects an interpretive cast. Troyes 960, however, stands as one of many cases that propose a counter argument. This avenue of argument explicitly articulates the utility of artwork as a means of situating Christians within the apprehensible world of the earthly Church, rather than primarily spurring them to transcend it. “Apprehension,” in this context, refers not only to the sensory experience of the sphere defined by the Church, but also to the cultivation of an awareness and understanding of that sphere’s boundaries in Christian time—its position between the past age of sacred history and the coming age beyond all history.[8] This distinct strain in medieval art prompts reflection upon artwork’s own manufactured nature and the earth-bound nature of its users without dwelling on indications of danger or inadequacy; and simultaneously carries content that evokes the relationship of the Church to other divine ages, and to theological truths surpassing time and sensory perception.[9]

The creation of an argument concerning art’s power and utility in the age of the Church coalesces in the constellation of a work’s medium and materials, its visual and verbal contents, and what we might call its “make”—that is, the disposition of its contents in combination with the work’s physicality and the components of its communication that are based on activation, such as the turning of pages, the manipulation of lids or stands, or the interaction of bodies and architecture.[10] At present we have no single term to invoke this full constellation.[11] If we load the particularities of construction, content, activation, conceived purpose and possibilities of use that make up a specific piece of art into the words “object” or “work,” we begin to approach the multivalent means by which meaning and argument are woven into medieval artistic enterprise, and the multivalent ways in which medieval artworks may be construed as “active objects.” [12] It is with these notes in mind and with a particular view toward utility and non-transcendent “apprehension” that I would like to account for the character of Matian and Digrenet’s gospel book. By focusing on this manuscript, my theme also becomes a suggestion of how a case drawn from a marginal tradition of book-making may illuminate the core of an instrumental project that defines works originating throughout the medieval corpus.

The inscription naming Matian and Digrenet verbally articulates the apprehensive spirit in which Troyes 960 was made. This apprehension is partly of a classic kind: the codex is defined with a view to its donors’ anxieties about the fate of their souls. Taken in concert with the visual program of the manuscript, the inscription also works for apprehension of the ecclesiological-artistic kind I have suggested above. The text is one component of the manuscript that orients its reader/viewer/user in time: situated in the era of the Church, anticipating Judgment. The note also begins to articulate the instrumentality of the book at hand within this timeframe, and an awareness of the manuscript’s identity as a made object. The codex is active in the context of Matian and Digrenet’s Church-time preparation for judgment, donated pro animabus suis. It is also active in other corners of the Church-time world, such as students’ writing and reading. Further, the text includes awareness of the work’s identity as an object. The book is portable and might be stolen. The contents of the book are named (iiii^or evangeliorum), as is the proper name of the compendium (evangelium). The inscription itself is described at the outset as a component of the full work: “these little letters recount….” (H[a]e[c] literule narrant…). The identity and purpose of Troyes 960’s activity is grounded in its specificity, including the object’s medium (manuscript), genre (gospel book), self-declared purpose (given for Matian and Digrenet’s souls), and its larger make. We turn now to the visual program that frames Troyes 960 as an instrument designed for the work of art within the Church.

The full program of illumination in Troyes 960 comprises three surviving evangelist portraits, and a frontispiece crucifix. (Figures 1–4) The entire beginning of Matthew, including chapter list, prologue and probable evangelist portrait, is missing: the text begins at 2:13 following the canon tables.[13] Each remaining evangelist portrait is positioned on a verso, in order that it face the Incipit of its respective gospel—a pattern so dominant in the book’s design that it was deemed preferable to contort John’s portrait rather than sacrifice its position relative to the text. The crucifix is the very first recto in the manuscript, and was notoriously abused as a paste-down (Figure 1). [14] The parchment is badly abraded and stained with adhesive, much of the colored ink is lost, and the whole page is covered in a fine layer of linen. The manuscript contains the four gospels with prologues, followed by a Capitulare evangeliorum keyed to the churches of Rome, and gospel readings for various occasions including the ordination of priests, bishops, and deacons, the vows of nuns, and the office of the dead. The remaining pages of the final quire are occupied by a variety of texts in different hands, with four pages in a Caroline script that include a fragmentary text on the behavior of the sun, the moon and the elements, a set of dictionary entries, and a neumed transcription of Christ’s lament from the cross (f. 149).

By any standard, Troyes 960 was a useful book. We cannot be certain that it was ever actually employed for liturgical readings, there being no additions beyond some fairly standard breath marks to guide us, but thanks to the Capitulare evangeliorum the idea of liturgical reading is knit into the fabric of the manuscript, constituting part of what the book required to be considered complete. The content and distribution of the manuscript’s illumination, though—the material context for Matian and Digrenet’s trust in their donation—forms the defining locus of instrumentality in Troyes 960.

The lynchpin of the program is the frontispiece, which depicts Christ on the cross, surrounded by a figure-eight mandorla. The mandorla takes an unusual form in which two lateral bulges are aligned with the transverse arm of the cross. It was originally filled with pink-orange minim, of which only traces at the bottom and on the left-hand side remain. The same ink was used for inverted triangles on Christ’s cheeks, for the border of his halo, in the folds of his loincloth, and to inscribe three lines of text surrounding the crucifix: “I[HS] XP[S]” above the cross; “E[GO] / S[UM]” flanking the upper vertical; and “A / ET W” flanking the lower.[15] No nails are visible in Christ’s hands or feet. Christ is beardless, with staring open eyes, splayed thumbs, short curly hair, soft breasts, a tightly woven loincloth, and arms extending at a sharp angle below his bulging shoulders.[16] To either side of the lower part of the cross—a thick triangular extension broken by two semicircles—appears the second, badly damaged colophonic inscription in a hand closely comparable to that of the text, which includes the date of 909.[17]

The frontispiece sets the stage for the apocalyptic context in which Matian and Digrenet conceived of their manuscript. Christ speaks his words of Revelation 1:8: “I am the Alpha and Omega.” The iconography of the frontispiece and the evangelist portraits further fill out this vivid evocation of the end of time. The evangelists appear in the form of Ezekiel’s tetramorph (Ezekiel 1:5–10), with four wings and beast heads.[18] The lobed mandorla framing the crucifix carries immediate association with the Maiestas domini compositions common in ninth-century Tours productions—a composition closely linked to Judgment.[19] Drawing on the parallel visual and conceptual traditions of a Maiestas domini and a Maiestas crucis, the frontispiece might be called a Maiestas crucifixi: a Majesty of the Crucified.[20] This hybrid composition brings out the theology of judgment that particularly links Christ’s role as Judge to his concurrent identity as the Crucified.[21] The mutually causal relationship of the First and Second Advents comes to the fore, and the image serves as both a commemoration of the origin of Christ’s eschatological role, and as an anticipation of his judging figure.[22]

The lobed mandorla in the form designed to frame the Troyes crucifix is reiterated to frame each evangelist later in the manuscript.[23] This repetition binds all the illuminations together in an extended Maiestas composition that simultaneously further integrates the evangelists into the eschatological context proposed by the frontispiece and by their own winged forms, and articulates the unity of the book as a whole.[24] It is as this unit that the manuscript (evangelium) is drafted into service for its donors in view of the apocalyptic context its illuminations set out. A suggestion of how instrumental the manuscript may be—and how bound to the context of Church-time preparation for an apocalypse that may only be imagined—is the province of two further particularities of the visual program: the form of the cross and the dress of the evangelists.

The form of the cross in Troyes 960 is a distinctive variation on a particularly Carolingian theme: the crucifixion cross rendered as a Steckkreuz with a long thorn. Most such crosses in the Carolingian context appear in ivory, with a serpent twining around the cross-thorn: the form articulates the role of the cross as a weapon in the defeat of sin and death (Figure 5).[25] The German term Steckkreuz is particularly apt as a name for this shape of the cross, as it brings out the thorn’s connotations of installation. In most Carolingian compositions, the installation described is that of the cross on Golgotha and its spearing of the serpent. However, the Steckkreuz form carries another connotation, and that is the form of metalwork cross-objects furnished with a tang for their installation in carrying-staffs (cf. Figure 7) or in a stand, or for their use as hand-crosses.[26] The Troyes cross was given a form that still more specifically—if awkwardly—echoes that of a portable cross-object: the two bulges along the tang are best read as a rendering of the balls that were commonly made part of crosses’ installation mechanism.[27]

In this reference to the instruments of the Church, the Troyes cross draws upon a specific characterization of the cross that appears in many media throughout the early medieval period. This characterization of the cross articulates the identity of the sign not solely as a commemoration of the crucifixion, not solely as an index of salvation theology, and not solely as an anticipatory herald of the Second Coming, but as these familiar and fundamental aspects of the cross-sign fused with a statement of the cross’ identity as an active object of the present day. I term this self-reflexive invocation of the cross “instrumental” for the prominence it affords the imminent nature of the cross as a present, useful, and accessible sign of the Church—as distinct from its fully concurrent identities as a sign referring back to the Golgotha sacrifice or forward to the Second Coming. The instrumental cross is “apprehensive” in the sense previously described: it positions those who use it within the full arc of Christian history, tapping into the historical source of salvation through the sensory means available within the Church, and doing so with an eye to the fulfillment of the salvation promised by the crucifixion. The instrumental cross is a steady presence in early medieval art, defined through a range of visual strategies in both three-dimensional and pictorial instantiations of the early medieval cross-sign.[28] The draftsman of Troyes 960 adopted one of the most common and most powerful of these strategies, allying the form of a pictorial cross with that of a cross-object. The explicit inclusion in a pictorial medium of attributes that invoke a physical medium—here, a ball and tang, elsewhere chains with hanging pendants, a geometric base for the cross, bosses, or elaborated terminals—renders the cross a sign of its own instrumentality within the world of the Church as much as it is a sign of Christ’s sacrifice, his triumph, or eternal life.[29] Object-crosses were instrumental in a variety of ways in the early medieval Church: they were carried in procession and adored on Good Friday and the feasts of the Cross; they were the focus of personal devotions and the communal affirmation of cult; they were planted at graves and given as gifts.[30] In all of these functions, the cross-object works to define present Christianity in its status between a past source and the promise of future redemption. Visual components of most decorated cross-objects proclaim the cross’ own status as a pivot point between these three eras. An especially clear distinction of the Church-time, instrumental cross among concurrent invocations of the historical and proleptic aspects of the cross appears in the Otto and Mathilda Cross held in Essen (Figure 6–8). This splendid case will serve both as an example clarifying what I mean by the term “instrumental cross” and as an illustration of the way in which crosses may be made to embody the multi-temporal aspects of the cross-sign.

The Otto and Mathilda Cross, dated to 985–90, is named for the portraits of Mathilda, Abbess of Essen from 973–1011, and the deceased brother Otto (d. 982) for whom she had the cross made.[31] On the obverse of the precious object with its elaborate terminals, Christ hangs dead on a smooth gold cross with a simple silhouette marked in delicate gold pearls (Figure 6). The serpent coils beneath the suppedaneum and Pilate’s titulus appears on the upper vertical arm. Christ’s cross is thus distinguished from the “Otto and Mathilda” cross-object that presents it. Studded with gemstones, the cross-object participates in a long tradition of identification between a crux gemmata and the cross as an eschatological and triumphal sign.[32] An enamel portrait of Mathilda and Otto, both grasping a cross on a staff, is set in a mediating position between the evocation of the historical cross (the crucifix) and the larger sign: the plaque is continuous with the lower vertical of Christ’s cross but given its own articulated pearled-gold border (Figure 7). The smooth reverse of the cross depicts the Lamb of God in the central roundel, holding a book and another cross-staff. The four evangelist symbols appear in the terminal roundels, and a lush acanthus vine fills the remaining interior space (Figure 8). In its full complement of elements, the imagery combines historical reference to the crucifixion with proleptic reference to the Second Coming and the hoped-for salvation promised in the Lamb’s sacrifice and the cross’ designation as the Tree of Life.[33]

The Otto and Mathilda Cross represents an early instance of a crucifix that is set onto the gemmed side of a cross.[34] Older surviving cross-objects, such as the Carolingian Ardennes Cross in Nürnberg, follow a pattern of fuller separation between a jeweled “triumphal” obverse and a reverse usually containing a figure of sacrifice in the Lamb and a vine scroll that allies the cross-sign with the Tree of Life. The pair of corpus and crux gemmata on the obverse of the Otto and Mathilda Cross fuses the visual reference to death and the visual reference to triumph. Within this tight link, however, the historical cross is nevertheless distinguishable from the eschatological cross, nested and marked out inside its frame. While the past and future identities of the cross-sign are held in close juxtaposition, united by the body of the object, their identities remain distinct.

The donor portrait amounts to an extraordinarily explicit statement of the third—present—identity for the cross: the active role envisioned for the precious, instrumental iteration of the sign given by Mathilda to her abbey at Essen. The Otto and Mathilda Cross is made to serve as the agent of presentation for the full-fledged identity of the Cross as—here, literally—a multifaceted sign. The rendering of another nested cross as the spine of the donor portrait points up the cross-object’s concurrent role as an instrument geared specifically toward achieving eternal life for the abbess and her brother. The gazes of Mathilda and Otto are fixed upon the cross-object they carry, not directed upward toward the Crucified: they have taken the material instantiation of the sign as their means of participation in the salvation theology for which the essential form stands (and which the elaborate decoration of the larger cross spells out).[35] The prospects of the siblings’ successful participation are good, judging by the scrolling tendrils sprouting from the ground beneath their feet.[36] The enamel plaque is set in a position of eternal subordination to Christ’s cross, while it is integrated formally and conceptually into the legacy of the historical object. A direct genealogy is traced from Christ’s cross to Otto and Mathilda’s via the plaque. The latter participates in the essence of the former, serving as a vehicle for individuals’ participation in the eternal life promised by the sign as a whole. Because the cross-staff held by Otto and Mathilda in the enamel is distinct and distinguishable from both Christ’s cross and the theological vision of the Cross as these are presented by the larger cross-object, and because it is depicted in active, specific connection to Otto and Mathilda themselves, the portrait of the cross in the plaque articulates the instrumental identity of the cross-sign: distinct in its ties to the present and its active function as the vehicle of specific prayers.

In Troyes 960, the very direct index of instrumentality delivered by a portrait of a cross-object’s actual handling is not provided to the cross. The form may lay no lesser claim to instrumental status because of this. Pictorial portraits of the cross in instrumental form reflect primarily upon the utility of their material substrates, regardless of whether the cross in question is depicted in use. The portrait of Otto and Mathilda grasping a cross articulates the general instrumentality of cross-staffs, but, more importantly, it articulates the particular instrumentality of “The Otto and Mathilda Cross” itself—the object commissioned by the abbess. The cross-to-cross transfer of the instrumental reference is direct in the Otto and Mathilda case, because the forms of the substrate and the instrumental sign are the same. In Troyes 960—as in many other cases of manuscripts that incorporate the instrumental cross—the idea of utility worked into the form of the cross serves to enhance the instrumental identity of the book that carries the image. The instrumental cross is the sign of its own utility as a manufactured work and, by extension, of the work that incorporates it—be that a book, a cross-object, a casket or a wall. The instrumental cross is a sign of apprehension, situating the position of the Church in time and the work that may be done vis à vis the end of time.

The utility of the Troyes cross does not reside only in the use-potential inherent in the thorned form by which the cross is installed in the space of the codex. The placement of the mostly-illegible colophon in the frontispiece is not arbitrary: it constitutes use of the instrumental cross. Ample space was available for the text outside of the crucifix’s mandorla—still evident despite the page’s cutting-down. But the base of the cross is a venerable and powerful position, as Mathilda—among many others—well understood, and the text’s position there amounts to a capitalization on the instrumental nature of the cross in the image above.[37] We do not know whether the Troyes colophon included the linguistic portraits—that is, the names—of anyone connected with the gospel manuscript: the damage to the ink is too great. The specification “Hoc evangelium,” though, is still visible in the second line to the left of the cross-thorn. An invocation of the volume itself, and an associated date, were certainly set at the base of the cross in Troyes, whether or not these particulars were originally combined with further specification of the manuscript’s production context. The codex itself was named as a specific actor at the base of the cross, reinforcing its function as an instrument of participation in the Church (with a view toward the Judgment) that we have already seen defined in the inscription naming Matian and Digrenet.

The full visual program of Troyes 960 inscribes Matian and Digrenet’s book within the eschatological context created by the extended Maiestas, in which projected context the codex’s efficacy will ideally be affirmed. The instrumental form of the cross in the Maiestas crucifixi overlays reference to the gospel book’s present sphere of activity—the Church in apprehension—upon the fundamentally visionary, anticipatory image of Judgment. The aspect of the evangelists works toward the same end. Alongside their visionary aspect as Ezekiel’s cherubim, the Troyes evangelists are also strikingly concrete figures. They are not inspired, depicted in the process of producing the gospel texts: they hold completed codices with gestures of presentation. As Marianne Besseyre first noted, the evangelists wear stolae around their necks.[38] This attribute casts them as personnel of the Church, allying their handling of gospel codices with that of a deacon or a priest.[39]

The clerical characterization of the evangelists in Troyes 960 denotes the same conception of the Church’s signs and equipment that favors the instrumental cross when a cross is required. In these images the constituents of the Church—whether ministers, liturgical implements, or repositories of the Christian narrative—are recognized as such and assigned a powerful role in salvation history. The cross stands in constant relation to its roles as the historic means of Christ’s death and a coming sign of Judgment, but its role as an instrument of present succor and liturgical participation is asserted. The gospel book stands in constant relation to its role as bearer of the Word, but its role as an instrumental codex is similarly brought to the fore. In Troyes 960, these generalizations are particularized in our knowledge of whose instrument the codex was designed to be, and what salutary purpose it was designed to serve together with the volume’s standard functions as a gospel book. The cross as active object installed within the apocalyptic space of Matian and Digrenet’s book functions as a sign of the apprehensible, a sign of the distinction and link between past, present, and future. Most importantly, it is a sign of how active an object the codex was made to be—and how active an object its donors hoped it would be—in favorably positioning participation in the present era of the Church against the advent of that age’s end.