Imagined Exegesis: Text and Picture in the Exegetical Works of Rupert of Deutz, Honorius Augustodunensis, and Gerhoch of Reichersberg

Abstract

Probably not long before the middle of the thirteenth century, Richard of Fournival, cleric, physician, and author, sent to an unnamed lady the autograph copy of his richly illustrated Bestiaire d'amours. In the prologue, Richard goes to some lengths to explain and justify the inclusion of pictures: hearing (oir) and vision (veir) are the doors through which collective knowledge is transmitted to the individual mind and memory (memoire), and word (parole) and picture (peinture) are the paths to these doors. Either one or the other route could have been chosen — in principle, they represent equivalent alternatives — but Richard is sending both words and pictures, because he wants to make doubly sure that the lady will indeed remember, that is to say, make his love the object of her own memory. The common denominator for word and picture is ‘image,’ and that is the notion on which the illustrator of one of the fourteenth-century copies of the Bestiaire based his introduction to the corresponding modes of reception: on folio 86v he depicted a reader who imagines what he reads (fig. 1); battle-ready warriors of romance stand before this seated figure in the privacy of his own room (indicated by the drapes), before his mind's eye, as it were, conjured up by the words of the text.