The Bas-de-Page Miniature: Of Marginal Interest

Medieval literature plays out first and foremost, textually, artistically, musically, and otherwise, in the manuscripts that transmit the texts. The codices are often the sole equivalents we possess from the Middle Ages to printed books, audio-recordings, live performances, musical notation, illustrations, or most of the other media we take so much for granted nowadays. When those handwritten objects contain artwork, it should be vetted with the greatest care. In addition to its own inherent value and importance, it holds importance for its relationship to the text. Literary critics may use the written word to achieve interpretative liftoff, regarding the art as no more than an auxiliary element in the interpretative context. Art historians may do the opposite.

To a degree, both are right. The two sets of experts contribute essential perspectives to an understanding and appreciation of what the codices furnish us. In some cases, medieval art and written work may be meticulously aligned. Often, but not always,

the interpretation of the words dictates the pictures that are supplied. In other instances, the art leads a life of its own—text and image are on the same page literally but not metaphorically. That is the situation with the miniature accompanying our poem from the early thirteenth century.

In the case of Our Lady’s Tumbler, the original text has motivated many modern literary imitations. Do we dare go so far as to call them knockoffs or even rip-offs? Be that as it may, some of these copies have been inspired directly by the medieval poem, while many more have been tied to it only unconsciously and indirectly. Alongside the literature, pictorial representations of the tale have also existed since the Middle Ages. Still, the precariousness of the early evidence for illustration must be underlined.

Fig. 1.14 The jongleur before the Virgin and Child. An angelic hand delivers a towel from the heavens while a vielle lies at the Virgin’s feet. Miniature, thirteenth century. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France,

As we have seen, a fivesome of medieval manuscripts transmits the text of the medieval French version. Of the five, just one contains a miniature by way of embellishment (see Fig. 1.14). The persistence of this single illustration hung on a thread in multiple ways. For a start, more than two dozen other paintings that should precede this specimen have gone missing by being sliced out of the manuscript at some point in its mysteriously checkered past, becoming nondigital clip art. It is the lucky survivor.

If only it could talk, to tell its story as in the Book of Job: “I only am escaped alone to tell thee.” Another fragility of the artwork owes to its placement on the folio. It differs from most in its codex, and in fact from those in any whatsoever, by being unusually misaligned. It sits in what would otherwise have been the unwritten-on and unornamented void below the left column of text on the folio side, which in French is termed bas-de-page, designating the lower edge of a side of parchment. In illuminated manuscripts, embellishments and marginal illustrations often appear in this area, but only atypically would a miniature in a contained frame be put there in the border. This placement was avoided for a good practical reason: by being set at the foot of a page, a piece of this kind is subjected to increased wear and tear from handling and from trimming. (It has no margin of safety.) By being enclosed, such a painting stands out from unenclosed marginalia, which are far more commonly found in this location. The nonstandard placement was probably not prearranged.

Rather, the item may have been an afterthought supplied only after the text had been written. The inference that this artwork was a late addition is fortified by the stylistic separateness of the portrayal. The brushwork was done by a different hand than that involved in all the other extant pictures from this codex.

The artist has been associated with the one who participated in producing a copy of Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval and its Continuations that may have been created in Arras. In this town in the northernmost region of France, an extremely famous miracle connected with two entertainers and involving a statue of the Virgin Mary was reputed to have taken place. Although the episode is not mentioned in our poem, it may help to explain why the miniature contains a depiction of the vielle. An artist, patron, or both would naturally have associated and conflated the tumbler-minstrel with the renowned pair of local jongleurs, promoted by a municipal confraternity.

If the composition is viewed as a stage setting, the instrument is placed lower stage left. It lies at the bottom of a line that runs to the semiotically all-important position of upper stage right, where a supernal forearm extends a fabric toward the bowed acrobat. Is the fiddle meant to recall the professionals of the other stories?

Within the text of the poem, the seminudity of the tumbler is provocative. In contrast, the illustrator painted the performer as anything but half-naked—the athlete is portrayed fully clothed. Indeed, the lithe figure even has his long garment cinched demurely at the waist and is shod in mid-calf boots. Were these touches the results of a purposeful prudery, to avoid showing even a lay brother in substantial undress, or do they demonstrate the irresistible attraction of the other story set at Arras, in which a minstrel would have been clad in his normal attire when sounding his fiddle?

The process by which this illuminator worked is unascertainable. We cannot divine whether the medieval artist read or was read the text, had no direct exposure to it but at least was clued in about the gist of the narrative by being given a short and sweet summary, or was directed by a scribe or manuscript compiler to depict

this scene without being told the tale in full. The placement of the miniature—very nearly at the foot of the page as it has now been trimmed—may have been motivated by the simple reality that the space was free, or it might equally have been prompted by the suitability of the position on the folio side to the standing that the performer would have had in society at the time, reflecting the ignoble societal associations that acrobats and dancers endured at the time when the illustration was painted. Within the artwork, the tumbler himself has his head positioned level with his own backside.

He stands curved back upon himself, below the plinth on which the statue of the Virgin and Child begins. Thus, the representation conveys abasement both literal and

figurative.

In Romanesque statuary, we find jongleurs pictured in privileged places on façades, portals, and capitals throughout Europe, or at least from Germany and the south. In the Gothic period, only slightly later, the entertainers seem to have cascaded to lower orders, and slipped as well to a back seat within the iconographic hierarchy. Their images are now placed in subservient locations. For instance, they are depicted on the underside of the folding seats known as misericords, wooden carvings found in choir stalls, to say nothing of their place in miniatures and marginalia in manuscripts.

Just as a lay convert has baser status than does a choir monk, so too the location of the image on the folio could be construed as signifying its humbler value.

The English adjective humble derives from the Latin humus, for soil or ground. By setting the miniature at the farthest point from the top of the page, the artist or the person overseeing him may have intended to humiliate—put down—the humble tumbler. Strikingly, the angel, Virgin, and Child are positioned far above him. The tumbler is located before the statue of Mary and the infant Jesus on the altar, with his head at the height of his buttocks. This could be called making a rumpus, even though the last noun owes no etymological debt to the word rump. His head is cocked downward and groundward, and his line of sight is directed at his own hindquarters, rather than at the carving above him. Talk about low-profile! If the lower classes are supposed to aim at an ascent to the upper, what are we to make of a man who is the opposite of a social climber, with his head not far from the floor?

Matters are made only worse by the fact that the ground is in a crypt, itself the lowest space within the building.

Humbleness is one of the tumbler’s conspicuous traits. A nineteenth-century interpreter averred point-blank that the tale had been composed “to debase pride and exalt humility.” It is much likelier that the protagonist’s physical posture makes his meekness plain to see than that it conveys a message that we should damn the acrobat or dancer for ungodliness. The condemnatory alternative meaning can be found in an exemplum that compares a sinner with a jongleur who ambulates on his palms with his feet turned heavenward. Whereas human beings should do their best to keep their heavy-lidded eyes open on the supernal realms, entertainers

subvert normal human bearing and do the opposite. In their upside-down stance, performers effectively trample what is heavenly, while fixing their heads and gaze, along with their hands, on the earthly.

Another perspective is to view this liminal location as sitting outside the official realm of control over the elite and sacred. Instead, this position at the threshold sets the illustration within a space reserved for the least hoity-toity, popular or folk culture. In a sense, the miniature resides in a no-man’s zone. The bas-de-page is seldom occupied by miniatures, but often by marginal art. It can become a veritable freak show, depicting drolleries and grotesques such as fools, wild men, monkeys, monsters, and minstrels. One common form of marginalia that may offer a glimpse of real-life performances portrays two entertainers who show the bread and butter of their trade: a musician strums an instrument alongside a male or female acrobat who performs a somersault, flip, or handstand. These representations are always parked in the lowest register of the folio sides (see Figs. 1.15, 1.16 and 1.17). In codicological terms, art in this ribbon of parchment is comparable to carvings in wood or stone, such as misericords, chimeras, and gargoyles, that lay somewhat outside the controlled formulation of iconography. Consequently, the imagery is itself marginalized and is put beneath the text, in value as in position. The placement could bring home visually and symbolically the story’s revolutionary outlook on lay and monastic relations—to wit, the jongleur holds a questionable ranking even within the laity but with the help of Mary’s reaction to his sincere devotion, he turns out to be superior spiritually to the monks. Then again, such an interpretation could conceivably be overthinking.

The miniature could have been put in the bas-de-page not through premeditation but through poor planning or mismanagement, which unwittingly saved it from damage when the other miniatures preceding it were excised.

The image may be easier to appreciate closely in a black-and-white facsimile made in the early twentieth century, because in the meantime some degradation has taken place: part of the bas-de-page has been trimmed off (see Fig. 1.18). Occupying the bottom left quarter of the frame, the miniature shows the tumbler performing acrobatics by arching backward in a hoop. The depiction could offer the freeze-frame view of a gymnast in the middle of a backflip. A performer is captured in a similar circular pose, with his hands clasping his lower legs above the ankles, in a portion of a sculpted limestone pilaster that is now in The Cloisters (see Fig. 1.19). Then again, and perhaps likelier, the miniature need not be a split-second of seeming stillness that has been isolated from lightning-fast motion. It could portray a specific pose the acrobat has struck. It could show him not midway into a backward flip, but rather in the gymnastic position known today as a bridge. He is recurved, like the tusk of a wild boar or an elephant. Frozen in this posture like an (athletic) insect trapped in amber, he has bent backwards until both his soles and his palms rest upon the ground.

Literally as well as metaphorically, he is no backslider. Instead, he is well grounded, levelheaded, and down-to-earth.

Fig. 1.15 Musician and tumbler. Miniature by Petrus de Raimbaucourt, 1323. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 78 D 40, fol. 108r. Image courtesy of Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague. All rights reserved.

Fig. 1.16 Musician and tumbler. Miniature, late thirteenth century. Lausanne, Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire de Lausanne, U 964, fol. 343v. Image courtesy of the Virtual Manuscript

Library of Switzerland, www.e-codices.unifr.ch, CC BY-NC.

Fig. 1.17 Musicians, dancers, and tumblers. Miniature by Jehan de Grise, 1338–1344. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodl. 264, fol. 90r. Image courtesy of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. All

rights reserved.

Fig. 1.18 The jongleur before the Virgin and Child. Miniature, thirteenth century. Paris, Bibliothѐque nationale de France, MS Arsenal 3516, fol. 127r. Monochrome facsimile, published in Alice Kemp-Welch, trans., Of the Tumbler of Our Lady & Other Miracles (London: Chatto & Windus,

1908), frontispiece.

Fig. 1.19 Portion of a pilaster with an acrobat, ca. 1150–1170, Lyonnais. Limestone, 30.8 × 21 × 26.7 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In medieval manuscripts, text and image can be foils to each other. They can affirm in two separate media one and the same message; contrarily, they can set in conflict a couple of different perspectives. In this case, the kineticism of the acrobat in motion contrasts with the sedate stability of the text. By the same token, the mobility of the devotion that the lay brother performs is opposed to the static state of the monks as they stand rooted to their spots, singing the songs of the liturgical office in the choir somewhere above him. Yet the tumbler’s movement is not wobbly: his flipping back and forth is not like the flip-flopping in policy and backpedaling in rhetoric that are belittled in politics. He is at the midpoint of a happily steep learning curve.

Paradoxically, the tumbler’s half-inverted stance calls to mind the likeness that Bernard of Clairvaux drew between the monks of his order, on the one hand, and jongleurs and tumblers on the other. The impressively athletic posture in which the performer has been caught has a sheer devotional aspect. We cannot forget that, after all, he bends over backward both literally and figuratively to please none other than the Virgin. If he is an athlete, he is (however unconventionally and even raffishly) an athlete of Christ. If he is masculine, his masculinity has no more machismo than does Jesus when hanging on the cross. At the same time, his pose approaches being Dantesque or infernal in its unnaturalness. Despite having no permanent deformity, he has misshapen himself temporarily. One commonplace, built upon Ovid’s Metamorphoses, held that human beings were unique among the creatures of this world in their posture. They were formed to stand erect so that they could train their sight easily upon heaven. This natural inclination seems twisted in the stance of the tumbler, which is against the grain. As a result, he bears a resemblance to one of the

monstrous races that captivated the imaginations of teratologists in the Middle Ages.

Take, for example, the creatures called Blemmyes, who were believed to lack heads but instead to possess eyes and mouths in their stomachs (see Fig. 1.20).

Fig. 1.20 Alexander the Great encounters Blemmyes. Miniature, ca. 1445. London, British Library, Royal 15 E. vi, fol. 21v.

The miniature reflects knowledge on someone’s part of the text it accompanies, but even so it does not match it in a facile, one-to-one correspondence. The upper right quarter depicts a likeness of the Virgin. In Western European fashion, she is crowned in her guise as Queen of Heaven. Yet she is unhaloed. Seemingly seated, she has no visible throne or chair. She clings to a strapping infant Jesus, who sits on her left thigh. With nimbus but crownless, Jesus is here God made man rather than the king of the universe. Both Mary and Jesus lack the frontality of much sculpture from the twelfth century. Rather, they gaze sideways from us as viewers, toward a figure

with a nimbus who floats down from a cloudlike projection at the center top of the miniature. Angelic but wingless, this being holds out and downward in his helping hands a thick towellike cloth with many rumples. This mega-serviette, probably of linen, is to be used for either wiping or ventilating the jongleur. Many later artists envisaged the item as a part of the headcloth, veil, sleeve, or hem of any garment worn by Mother of God herself (see Fig. 1.21). Here it is incontrovertibly a separate item.

Both the Virgin and Child have their right forearms raised to the other figure. She is draped in a red mantle, and her right hand is splayed open fully. Jesus holds the ring finger and pinkie of his right hand curled down against his palm while extending the thumb, index, and middle finger in blessing. In his left hand, the child clutches an unidentified object.

Fig. 1.21 The Virgin wipes sweat from the juggler’s brow. Illustration by Henry Morin, 1928.

Published in Anatole France, Abeille / Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame / Les Pains noirs, ed. R. L. Graeme Ritchie (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1928), 133.

The scene’s construction conforms with other depictions of miraculous Marian images. The artist takes care to convey that the miracle is enacted not by the statue itself but by divine potency. The image that the tumbler honors is shown to remain a representation on the altar as the wonder takes place. But the staging as portrayed in the bas-de-page departs from these other portrayals in not showing a life-size Virgin who intervenes. In contrast, the figure emerging from the heavenly stratocumulus at the top looks to be a divine emissary of another sort, anything but hands-off. In the world of medieval miracles about Mary, no sky is completely overcast: every cloud, even the blackest thunderhead, has an angelic silver lining.

The predominant background in the miniature is a dark blue. The color makes good sense: in medieval art, no one likes better than the Mother of God to come out of the

blue to mediate salvation. Against the cobalt stands out what could almost be called a wallpaper of symbolism. These signs strongly resemble the rice symbol in Japanese

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