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CYNTHIA HAHN Portrayed on the Heart: Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the Tenth through the Thirteenth Century - Book Review
Art Bulletin, The, March, 2004 by Lawrence Nees
Neither the Cassian nor the Romanus miniature cycle offers a straightforward narrative, which sets them apart from the other saints' Lives considered in Portrayed on the Heart. Cassian's Life is not directly narrated by the author, Prudentius; instead, Prudentius claims (whether he meant to be believed or not) that he is describing paintings that he saw on the martyr's tomb, especially images of the strict teacher's martyrdom through a thousand pen scratches inflicted on him by his students. Romanus's Life includes a lengthy central passage in which Romanus, a professional rhetor, delivers a homily, which, as Hahn very effectively indicates, frames the martyrdom of a seven-year-old child, whose story is also the subject of illustration. The common denominator between the two illustrated Lives is not style, for the miniatures were painted by two very different hands (although apparently using the same materials, and likely working together on the book), but important rhetorical genres, ekphrasis and oratio, which were essential to education in late antiquity and even in early medieval monasteries. Cassian's Life depicts the relation between teachers and students, and the miniature of a man seated with head resting on his hands at the end of the prologue appears to accord with Prudentius's lament that he remembers being beaten, deservedly, by his teachers. (16)
That the Life of Cassian of Imola, by no means a famous saint, should have been singled out for illustration in the Bern codex is striking. None of the other Prudentius manuscripts includes such a cycle, and some special interest in the episodes seems in order. Although not elsewhere illustrated, this vivid story attracted much attention during the Carolingian period. An extended prose version based on Prudentius's poem has been plausibly associated with Hucbald of St-Amand (ca. 840-930), whose life overlaps the entire period during which the Bern manuscript might have been made. Francois Dolbeau, who published an edited version in 1977, sees the text as most likely indicative of a personal interest on the part of Hucbald, who was himself both a schoolmaster and apparently a notary, and the intended audience as students, pueri, whose hopes for salvation the author explicitly addresses. (17) The Cassian illustrations in the Bern manuscript are lively and involving, a vivid evocation of a teacher's nightmare, and perhaps of a student's dream. The illustrations, in other words, are all about education, a theme unique to this codex, produced almost certainly for "domestic" use at either St. Gall or Reichenau, both famous at the time for their schools, a possibility obscured by Hahn's highly analytical approach to the material.
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