Magdalen's skull: allegory and iconography in 'Heptameron' 32

Renaissance Quarterly, Spring, 1994 by Francois Rigolot

FEW READERS of Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron will easily forget the sinister scene in novella 32, where a young, beautiful but unfaithful woman is forced by her vengeful husband to drink out of her dead lover's skull. Although equally cruel analogues could be found in Boccaccio's Decameron, Marguerite's strikingly macabre scene seems to be unique in Renaissance literature.(2) Representations of human skeletons are, of course, plentiful in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century iconography, a period often characterized by its obsession with death.(3) Certainly Marguerite may have been influenced by the pervading vanitas and memento mori motifs. At the same time, the whole scene could be viewed as a staged perversion of relic worship, a practice much frowned upon in evangelical circles favored by Marguerite.

A French gentleman named Bernage is sent on a diplomatic mission by King Charles VIII of France to Germany. One night, as he is enjoying the hospitality of a German lord, Bernage learns that his host has punished his wife for being unfaithful in the most dreadful manner. The vengeful husband explains to his guest:

And since my wife's crime seemed to me to be so heinous that a similar death would hardly suffice, I imposed a punishment which I think she finds more painful than death. I decided to lock her up in the very room where she used to go to wallow in her pleasures, and keep her there in the company of the man she loved more than she had ever loved me. In a cupboard in the room I hung her lover's skeleton like some precious object in a private gallery. And so that she would never forget him even when eating and drinking, I made her sit [in front of me] at table and had her served from the man's skull instead of a cup, so that she would have before her both the living and the dead.(4)

In this case, the veneration of the lover's "relics" (from the Latin reliquiae, what is left [of the saints' bodies]), becomes the worst possible punishment, even worse than death ("pire que la mort," 245) as it is pointed out several times within the narrative as well as in the summary provided by the 1559 edition.(5)

At the beginning of the novella Oisille, the old dowager who serves as narrator of the story, insists upon the extraordinary beauty of the German lady as she unexpectedly emerges at night, dressed in black and her head shaved, from behind a tapestry: "When the food was brought onto the table, he [Bernage] saw emerge from behind a tapestry the most beautiful woman it was possible ever to bhold, though her hair was cropped and the rest of her body clad in black in the German style" (331).(6) The description is repeated a few lines later when Bernage sits, spellbound, silently contemplating the most beautiful woman he has ever seen: "The Seigneur de Bernage looked at her closely. She seemed to him to be one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen, except that her face was very pale and her expression very sad" (331).(7) After completing his mission in Germany, Bernage returns to the French court and recounts the whole story to the King. As he listens to his envoy's report, Charles VIII is so enthralled by the German lady's beauty that he decides to send his favorite painter, Jean Perreal alias Jean de Paris, to the gentleman's castle to make her portrait and recapture her "living likeness": "On his return to the court he [Bernage] recounted the whole story to his master the King, who found upon inquiry that it was even as it had been told him. And having heard [tell] also of the lady's great beauty, he [the King] sent his painter, Jean de Paris, to bring back her living likeness" (334).(8)

At various narrative levels of the novella, iconography thus plays an important role in presenting and preserving the image of the beautiful contrite adulteress and, as we shall see, accords with the topos of the model penitent sinner, the peccatrix poenitens. Both Bernage and the King are moved, not only by the lady's repentance but undoubtedly by her striking beauty, paradoxically enhanced by her shaven head and her lover's skull.(9) Traditionally, in art and literature the image of the penitent sinner was associated with the character of Mary Magdalen, one of the most popular saints in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.(10) With the beginning of the Reformation Mary Magdalen was still widely accepted as a saint by most Protestant denominations, even though debates raged among Christian humanists about her true identity.(11) Contrary to most other popular saints, she figured as a character in the gospels; she had known, loved, and followed Jesus up to his last walk to Calvary; she had come to be accepted as the great example of the penitent sinner, absolved from sin through faith in her Saviour.(12)

Mary Magdalen was also a favorite subject for painters who wanted to depict an exemplary figure of repentance.(13) As the prostitute converted by Christ's love in the gospels "Beata Dilectrix Christi," she was represented either as a beautiful woman holding a jar of ointment (the figure of the so-called "Myrophore": "Madalena con il vaso di unguenti," "Magdalena mit der Salbenbuchse") or, more frequently during the Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation, as a repentant sinner holding a skull ("Maria Magdalena poenitens," "Magna Peccatrix," "Die Busserin, die bussende Magdalena, die reuige Sunderin").(14) In the second instance, as an attribute of the penitent saint, the skull was used as a "symbol of the transitory nature of life on earth" because it suggested "the useless vanity of earthly things."(15) More specifically, the Hebrew and Latin words for skull (Golgotha, calvarium) served as powerful reminders of the place where Christ had been crucified. At the foot of the Cross, which was also thought to mark the place of Adam's burial, the first sinner's skull had become the holy cup meant to gather the New Adam's precious blood. The striking image of the penitent woman drinking out of her lover's skull may have been suggested to Marguerite by the dramatic representation of Adam's skull turned into chalice on the Gologtha.(16)