Steven Avery
Administrator
Jessica Brantley
https://english.yale.edu/people/tenured-and-tenure-track-faculty-professors/jessica-brantley
Middle English: Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature (2007)
Jessica Brantley
Vision, Image, Text p. 315-334
https://books.google.com/books?id=QhJREAAAQBAJ&pg=PA324
https://books.google.com/books?id=QhJREAAAQBAJ&pg=PA325
https://epdf.pub/oxford-twenty-firs...o-literature-middle-english-oxford-twent.html
A painted image, in fact, can show more clearly than any text the ways in which visionary devotion joins the material and the immaterial, touchable images with ethereal words (see Fig. 6). This late thirteenth-century manuscript illumination prefacing the French Trois estaz de bones ames enshrines many layers of visualization through prayer, and serves as a diagram to show how spiritual vision might be achieved.17 In the first quadrant, a nun prays before her Dominican adviser, an earthly authority who supervises her spiritual progress. That progress begins with speech, as a supervising angel hints; his text-scroll reads ‘Si uis delere tua crimina dic miserere’ (‘If you want to erase your sins, say ‘‘have mercy’’ ’). Then, the angel directs the supplicant towards a material image situated on an altar, represented in the pages of this manuscript as an image of an image, a physical object depicting the Coronation of the Virgin. A process that begins with verbal prayer continues with silent gazing at a devotional artefact. In the next stage, the nun prostrates herself in front of a speaking vision of a less material sort: Christ leaning down from a penumbra of heavenly clouds to fill a chalice set upon the altar. The angel holds the cross, making clear how this eucharistic vision is to be understood, and Christ speaks to the nun through another text-scroll, as if to emphasize the intimacy of the occasion. He, too, calls for looking to form a part of her devotions: ‘Pro vita populi respice quanta tuli’ (See how much I bore for the life of the people’). These visions take place in the sacred liturgical space of the church, but they are not limited to that earthly space; after the initial scene, no priest is necessary to oversee this nun’s eucharistic devotion, and what she sees in the church transcends its earthly space. In the final image of this series, the Trinity manifests itself in an immaterial vision of stupendous power, one that hovers over the jewel-encrusted altar without resting on it, breaking the architectural boundaries that delimited even the previous vision. Heavenly clouds with sun and moon even venture into the woman’s human space, showing the power of meditation upon physical objects to provide her with access to divine territory. Word has become flesh–or image–in this final ecstatic experience, as the text-scroll proclaims ‘Pater uerbum spiritus sanctus hii tres unum sunt’ (‘Father, word, holy spirit: these three are one’). The series of four images shows plainly the utility of material images in a teleology that nonetheless concludes with supernatural ones. It also shows the increasingly close interaction of word and image—for earthly speech and the contemplation of physical objects prompt verbal as well as visual communication with the divine—as a crucial indicator of success in approaching God.
https://english.yale.edu/people/tenured-and-tenure-track-faculty-professors/jessica-brantley
Middle English: Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature (2007)
Jessica Brantley
Vision, Image, Text p. 315-334
https://books.google.com/books?id=QhJREAAAQBAJ&pg=PA324
https://books.google.com/books?id=QhJREAAAQBAJ&pg=PA325
https://epdf.pub/oxford-twenty-firs...o-literature-middle-english-oxford-twent.html
A painted image, in fact, can show more clearly than any text the ways in which visionary devotion joins the material and the immaterial, touchable images with ethereal words (see Fig. 6). This late thirteenth-century manuscript illumination prefacing the French Trois estaz de bones ames enshrines many layers of visualization through prayer, and serves as a diagram to show how spiritual vision might be achieved.17 In the first quadrant, a nun prays before her Dominican adviser, an earthly authority who supervises her spiritual progress. That progress begins with speech, as a supervising angel hints; his text-scroll reads ‘Si uis delere tua crimina dic miserere’ (‘If you want to erase your sins, say ‘‘have mercy’’ ’). Then, the angel directs the supplicant towards a material image situated on an altar, represented in the pages of this manuscript as an image of an image, a physical object depicting the Coronation of the Virgin. A process that begins with verbal prayer continues with silent gazing at a devotional artefact. In the next stage, the nun prostrates herself in front of a speaking vision of a less material sort: Christ leaning down from a penumbra of heavenly clouds to fill a chalice set upon the altar. The angel holds the cross, making clear how this eucharistic vision is to be understood, and Christ speaks to the nun through another text-scroll, as if to emphasize the intimacy of the occasion. He, too, calls for looking to form a part of her devotions: ‘Pro vita populi respice quanta tuli’ (See how much I bore for the life of the people’). These visions take place in the sacred liturgical space of the church, but they are not limited to that earthly space; after the initial scene, no priest is necessary to oversee this nun’s eucharistic devotion, and what she sees in the church transcends its earthly space. In the final image of this series, the Trinity manifests itself in an immaterial vision of stupendous power, one that hovers over the jewel-encrusted altar without resting on it, breaking the architectural boundaries that delimited even the previous vision. Heavenly clouds with sun and moon even venture into the woman’s human space, showing the power of meditation upon physical objects to provide her with access to divine territory. Word has become flesh–or image–in this final ecstatic experience, as the text-scroll proclaims ‘Pater uerbum spiritus sanctus hii tres unum sunt’ (‘Father, word, holy spirit: these three are one’). The series of four images shows plainly the utility of material images in a teleology that nonetheless concludes with supernatural ones. It also shows the increasingly close interaction of word and image—for earthly speech and the contemplation of physical objects prompt verbal as well as visual communication with the divine—as a crucial indicator of success in approaching God.