Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Homage to the Devil: ritual, writing, seal
- 2 The self as dissemblance
- 3 Intervention of the Virgin
- 4 Sacramental action and Neoplatonic exemplarism
- Conclusion
- Works cited
- Appendix: Image charts
- Illustrations
- General index
- Index of figures
4 - Sacramental action and Neoplatonic exemplarism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 August 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Homage to the Devil: ritual, writing, seal
- 2 The self as dissemblance
- 3 Intervention of the Virgin
- 4 Sacramental action and Neoplatonic exemplarism
- Conclusion
- Works cited
- Appendix: Image charts
- Illustrations
- General index
- Index of figures
Summary
Chapter Four focuses on the new identity that the Virgin's retrieval and return of the contract make possible. Unlike the negative images that we studied in Chapter Two, this new identity is positive and requires positive activity. It will now be associated with the bishop, with the church (both as building and as the community of the faithful), with the sacraments (both technically and broadly conceived), and with a sustained performance of faith on the part of Theophilus. Together these actions permit Theophilus to undergo a “transfiguration” that transforms him from an apostate into an exemplar for others. It is as if the “intensely sacramental view of the world” that “speculation supplies” has allowed Theophilus to reach a kind of cosmological self-awareness that leads him to see and actualize his role as exemplar in the wider community. This continuation of the legend still fits broadly within the dissemblance–resemblance dynamic with which we have viewed it. But as Theophilus moves into the positive space of resemblance, especially when that space extends beyond the Virgin, we would do well to look at a more practical or more practice-based approach to the medieval challenge of accessing one's resemblance to God. Hugh of St. Victor's vision of the practical steps a monk can take to re-form his postlapsarian de-formation will help us understand the last few actions of the legend and to see them as essential to the more global meditation on the medieval self-image.
The Virgin's miracle
After the Virgin successfully returns the contract to Theophilus, one could easily conclude that the “miracle de Notre Dame” is essentially done. Of the fifty-two manuscripts that illustrate some aspect of the intervention of the Virgin, only nine supply further images of the legend after the intervention. For those images, typical of the psalters, that encapsulate the whole legend in one scene, we should not be surprised that the return of the contract can stand as a kind of token for the whole “miracle.” For those more sustained narrative sequences, like the Ingeborg Psalter, the Lambeth Apocalypse, the Taymouth Hours, or The Hague KB 71 A 24, the rationale for ending the legend at the Virgin's return of the contract is more complex and has larger implications that I would like to consider briefly.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Theophilus Legend in Medieval Text and Image , pp. 163 - 200Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2017