The Bernward Gospels. Jennifer P. Kingsley

the decoration of the Bernward Gospels, his testament goes further than those of other founders in its religious aspirations, and many of its themes—especially the evocation of models who have realized divine election as saints by means of their own merit—are reflected in the codex’s program. The document also evokes medieval ideas about gift-giving pro anima (for the soul) with its related expectations for intercessory prayers and liturgical commemoration.⁴⁰ That process was structured around the idea that mankind might gain eternal rewards by making offerings to the divine. The gift pro anima is thus fundamentally preoccupied with the donor’s salvation, and it is surely no accident that the only Christological miracle depicted in the Bernward Gospels is the Raising of Lazarus (fol. 174v; plate 15), a story that functioned in medieval commentary as a topos for Christ’s Resurrection and therefore an eschatological promise that the dead would rise again in their flesh to be judged by God at the end of time.⁴¹

      The success of the medieval gift pro anima and its salvific power depended on the earthly recipients’ commemoration of the donor and the capacity of the object to carry his memory even after death.⁴² To that purpose, the Bernward Gospels engages the praxis of memoria, the multivalent medieval term for memory that suggests equally the cognitive processes of mnemotechnics and the ritual habits of commemorative practices.⁴³ The codex draws on the cognitive and ritual processes of both in order to decorate an object of particular symbolic power: the gospels, displayed on the altar in order to be venerated as the Word of God made flesh, namely, the incarnate Christ.⁴⁴

      The dedicatory bifolium in the Bernward Gospels starts at the point where gift-giving pro anima, salvation, and memoria intersect. Placed after the codex’s prefatory material (fols. 16v–17r; plates 2 and 3), the painting serves as frontispiece and key to the manuscript’s pictorial program.⁴⁵ It is the starting point for this study and the subject of the first chapter. The painting translates a well-known medieval textual formula, the treasury list, into pictorial form. The resulting display of accumulated wealth underscores the actual and symbolic value of the pictured treasury, adding to the book’s efficacy as a gift pro anima. The painting simultaneously emphasizes the role of artworks as portals and material hosts in a process modeled on the entry of spirit into matter that takes place during the consecration of the Eucharist. The painting’s capacity to project the donor’s image into memory depends on the capacity of objects to bridge the distance between earth and heaven.

      While the dedicatory painting argues for the power of objects, and thus of the manuscript itself, to prove the donor’s merits and carry his memory, the succeeding illuminations in the Bernward Gospels help shape how he is to be remembered. Their study is at the heart of this project’s examination of the bishop’s self-presentation, and they are the subject of the second through fourth chapters. These develop two main and interconnected themes. The second chapter considers the presentation of varied forms of service. While one aspect of this theme involves the dissemination of the Word more generally, a series of paintings that illustrate the life of John the Baptist develops an argument more specific to episcopal concerns; these emphasize the merits of the vita activa that characterizes the priesthood.

      A second important theme of the Bernward Gospels is the spiritual perception of God and the desire to unite with Him, which the pictorial program develops in two related groups of miniatures that each focus on a different sense, sight and touch. Chapter 3 investigates a series of pictures in the Bernward Gospels characterized by a representational tendency that is static, frontal, hieratic, and symmetrical; these miniatures treat the nature of corporeal and spiritual sight both by representing vision and by directing the visual experience of the paintings. Chapter 4 focuses on a group of miniatures that present figures engaged in narrative action involving the tactile experience of Christ. These explore connections between the saints’ handling of Christ as a human body and the haptic experience of art itself as a Christological body.

      In the exploration of these two sensory modes, the paintings again use John the Baptist to link the patron to models of spiritual perception. Among the many roles ascribed to John the Baptist in the Middle Ages was that of visionary witness, and he appears in the Bernward Gospels as one of the group of saints who share a particular power to penetrate the mystery of Christ’s dual nature with their spiritual sight. The Bernward Gospels also presents him, highly unusually, as one of the series of figures privileged to come into direct, tactile contact with Christ. As an exemplar for both senses, the optic and the haptic, the model of the Baptist shapes Bernward’s portrait as a figure both inspired and worthy of salvation. By means of his sight and touch, the bishop approaches his hoped-for eternal reward.

      Despite its often unusual imagery, the Bernward Gospels shares some affinities with contemporary representations of both historical bishops and bishop-saints. At a time (before the Gregorian reform) when they were still relatively independent actors in both ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies, bishops pursued agendas determined by their particular historical circumstances. Yet they also shared concerns stemming from the nature of their office, their role in the Church, and their administrative responsibilities. These concerns shaped not only how bishops presented themselves but also how hagiographers constructed the memory of episcopal saints. By examining both the idiosyncratic and more conventional aspects of the episcopal image in the Bernward Gospels, this study considers how a prominent representative of the Ottonian episcopate understood and presented both himself and his office in the early Middle Ages.

1

       MEMORY

      The presentation of the Bernward Gospels as a founder’s gift to Saint Michael’s Abbey in Hildesheim underlies the commemorative nature of its program and is the apparent subject of the painted bifolium inserted between the incipit and text of Matthew’s gospel (fols. 16v–17r; plates 2–3 and fig. 4).¹ The miniature depicts Bishop Bernward on the left folio. He raises a closed book in both hands in a gesture of donation, but he does so before an altar set with a portable altar, chalice, and paten, instruments for the celebration of the Eucharist—making his gesture an act of liturgical performance. Bernward faces Mary and Christ; they appear on the right, enthroned between the archangels Michael and Gabriel, whose open arms frame the Virgin and her child like a mandorla. These four are the patron saints of the abbey church’s crypt, which Bernward consecrated in September 1015 (and where he would be buried in 1022).

      The tituli in the painting’s frames verbalize Bernward’s act primarily as one of donation, identifying Mary and Christ as the recipients of Bernward’s codex. Composed, for the most part, in leonine hexameter, the text reads, on the left folio,

      This small book of the Gospels, with a devoted mind

      the admirer of Virginity hands over to you, Holy Mary,

      Bishop Bernward, only scarcely worthy of this name,

      and of the adornment of such great episcopal vestment.

      A further dedicatory line appears in silver letters on the right folio, in the arch above the saints’ heads. It completes Bernward’s offertory statement.

      He presents [it], Christ, to you and to your holy mother.²

      The miniature’s composition adheres in many respects to the conventional characteristics