Linda C. Sokolowski

    While there is no reason to believe that medieval interpretations of medieval works are more correct than our own, such interpretations can often assist and enhance our own understanding of medieval works because they have been developed by those who share, or at least are closer to, the author's culture. Our most obvious source of more or less contemporary interpretations is the written commentary. But just as useful are medieval manuscript illuminations because these often serve functions other than the purely decorative. since an illuminator or his patron must select the scenes and episodes he will picture, and because his selection will emphasize the depicted episodes over others, illuminations often serve as guides for readers, focusing their attention on the particular aspects of a work and sometimes going so far as to suggest interpretations of the work or parts of it.

    In particular, fourteenth-century illuminations of Dante's Commedia provide us with much insight into the medieval understanding of this work, not just because of the large number of illuminated manuscripts but primarily because of the high degree of consistency these manuscripts show in the subjects they depict. As Peter Brieger has noted, the canon of scenes to be illustrated was set by the mid-fourteenth century, with few deviations into and even after the fifteenth century.2 This relative uniformity of scene and subject among fourteenth-century illuminations suggests a relative unanimity of interpretation,

    On the most basic level, illuminations of the Commedia clarify the medieval understanding of the primary subject of the work. Though Dante himself characterized the poem's literal subject as "the state of souls after death,"3 the illuminations focus the reader's attention on the journey of the pilgrim rather than on the souls encountered along his way. Even those manuscripts which illuminate every page or every canto of the work rarely exclude the pilgrim and his guide from any miniature or initial, and often the two travelers have a prominent position in the picture. This focus on the pilgrim and his guide is even more noticeable in manuscripts which illuminate only the beginning of each of the three canticles, rather than each of the 100 cantos, of the Commedia. From time to time, an illumination of this type may depict the realm of the canticle. The historiated initial that begins Purgatorio in Laurenziana MS Pluteus 40.12, for example, portrays a praying soul enclosed in flames, while in Parma, Biblioteca Palatina MS 3285, Purgatorio begins with a praying soul in a six-sided baptismal font, with two figures presumably the pilgrim and his guide looking on from behind.4 But more often than not, illuminations of the canticles both miniatures and historiated initials depict the pilgrim alone or with his guide. The beginning of Inferno usually portrays the author or presents a narrative scene of the pilgrim lost in the wood, encountering the beasts, or meeting Virgil. Purgatorio sometimes begins with a portrayal of the pilgrim and his guide on the shores of Purgatory, Dante kneeling before Cato, or Virgil washing Dante's face. But most often the second canticle opens with a picture of the "little

    That medieval readers were encouraged to understand the text in this way is indicated not only by the pilgrim's constant presence in the illuminations but also by particular pictorial details used to distinguish the pilgrim from his guide. Most manuscripts depict Virgil and Beatrice in the pose of a guide, pointing the way. But Virgil in particular is also distinguished in his role as guide by the ducal nature of his garments, often red or lined in ermine, and by features suggesting age, such as a beard of white hair. By contrast, the pilgrim is beardless or wears a shorter or darker beard than Virgil; sometimes he is shown in a short robe, while Virgil wears a full-length robe. Such details mark the pilgrim as an

    This is not a startling reading of Dante's poem, but it does raise another question about medieval understanding of the Commedia's illuminations: Who is the pilgrim meant to be? Just who is taking this journey and being educated? The first-person narrative of the poem itself suggests that the pilgrim is the author himself, Dante. But as some have noted, fourteenth-century illuminators do not seem to identify the pilgrim as the author, because they do not give him the physiognomic features commonly attributed to Dante.7 Instead of portraying the pilgrim with the aquiline nose and squarish jaw associated with Dante since the fifteenth century, fourteenth-century illuminations tend to give the pilgrim a rather "generic" face, roundish and without distinguishing features. The absence of facial features identifying the pilgrim specifically with Dante has led at least one commentator to suppose that fourteenth-century illuminators were not interested in presenting the pilgrim as Dante, or the journey as Dante's; rather the illuminators were interested in the allegorical level, in presenting the pilgrim as Everyman and the journey as the journey of any soul.8 The problem with this view of the illuminators' aim is that such an interpretation cannot be justified by the text itself, in which a first-person protagonist narrates his own experiences, is recognized by specific, identifiable

    It is, of course, possible that illuminators are trying to "correct" this identification of the pilgrim. Perhaps the apparent allegorical depiction of the pilgrim is meant to encourage the reader to see the Everyman figure in the man specifically identified as Dante by the text. But how then do we account for those few illuminations which label a "generic" pilgrim either with a "D" or with "Dante," as in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canonici MS it. 108 and in Holkham Hall, Library of the Earl of Leicester, MS 514?9 More important, how do we account for the many more illuminations which do not explicitly label the pilgrim but nonetheless identify him lather directly with the author? In Laurenziana MS Tempiano I, for example, Paradiso begins with a miniature of Christ in glory, surrounded by saints; off to the side, in the bottom left corner, the pilgrim without Dante' s supposed features sits writing in a book, Beatrice in front of him evidently dictating.10 This depiction follows the poem, in which the pilgrim is encouraged many times to take note of what he sees or hears, and report it to the world.11 Are we to believe that Everyman is supposed to keep a record? Laurenziana MS Pluteus 40.13 provides a more significant example, since it presents the author at the very beginning of the work, depicting Dante in the initial "N" of Inferno at his desk in the manner of the evangelists. In the historiated initial of Purgatorio in this same manuscript, the pilgrim-

    The answer, I suggest, is no. We are expected to interpret the pilgrim-figure wherever he appears and however he appears as Dante. The pilgrim-figure never appears in an illumination without his guide, and all the guides are specifically identified as Virgil, Beatrice, and Bernard from their very first appearance in the poem.12 Yet neither Virgil nor Beatrice, the guides appearing most often in the illuminations, are given distinguishing facial features by most fourteenth-century illuminators. The Virgil-figure could be any man of authority; the Beatrice-figure, any beautiful woman. If the undifferentiated features of the pilgrim imply that this figure is supposed to be Everyman, what are the undifferentiated features of the guide-figures meant to represent? Is each of them "Any Guide"? Furthermore, the illuminations do not represent the guide-figures with iconographical features which might identify them with the allegorical meanings that commentators,

    One illumination in particular provides compelling evidence for this view: the depiction of Dante and Virgil in a small boat or ship traveling to Purgatorio is perhaps the most popular in the entire Commedia, appearing more often than any other single illumination of any of the canticles. Its popularity is attested to by its use in Purgatorio in the Tempiano I manuscript. The illumination here presents a narrative sequence of four scenes: the pilgrim and Virgil in their boat, the two meeting Cato (from Canto I), the two standing on the shore awaiting the arrival of the ship of souls (Canto II), and the two approaching the Gate of Purgatory (Canto IX).13 The use of the boat image here stands out because it is the only scene in the sequence of four which does not accurately reflect the work itself, for the travelers arrive in Purgatory not by sailing, but by climbing through the center of the earth (Inf. XXXIV, 70-139). Yet the illuminator opts to depict the pilgrim and his guide traveling over the water, even though he had alternatives which would preserve the literal accuracy of his sequence. Many narrative-style illuminations depicting more than one scene include the meeting with Cato and may include the ship of souls and/or the arrival at the Gate of Purgatory. But most do not include the pilgrim and his guide in their ship, choosing instead a picture of Virgil washing Dante's face (Purg. II, 121-29) or a picture of Dante and Virgil

    The illumination is intriguing because it does something no other manuscript illumination I have seen or read of does: it inaccurately reads the text even while remaining true to both the letter and spirit of the text. The scene is drawn from the opening lines of Purgatorio:

Per correr miglior acque alza le vele omai la navicella del mio ingegno, che lascia dietro a sé mar sì crudele. (Purg. I, 1-3)

To course over better waters, the little ship of my wit now raises its sails and leaves behind it a sea so cruel.

In the illumination, the pilgrim and his guide appear in their ship, presumably "coursing over better waters" as they move from Hell to Purgatory. But in the work, as already noted, Dante and Virgil do not reach Purgatory by sea. Normally, according to Dante, the saved soul, released from its body, is transported by boat from the mouth of the Rubicon to the purgatorial island (Purg. II). But Dante and Virgil reach the island by climbing up Satan's legs and

    More important, the textual source of the illumination raises another problem with the interpretation of the pilgrim-figure as

    If the pilgrim of the Purgatorio illumination is Dante, the pilgrim of other illuminations must also be Dante, since this figure does not deviate in appearance from one canticle to another, except in those manuscripts whose later illuminations were completed years after the illuminations of an earlier canticle. But the conflation of the author's composition process and the pilgrim's journey in the Purgatorio illumination should remind us that there are many ways to make a journey, and that Dante-author, like Dante-pilgrim, is making one; in writing his Commedia, the author is in a sense reliving the journey he once made as a pilgrim. But that pilgrim's experience is analogous to that of Everyman, and the Purgatorio illumination also reminds us that Everyman cannot be divorced from the pilgrim-figure. We cannot altogether discount the analogy between the "ship of Dante's wit" and the ship of saved souls, for both are bound for Purgatory and all the travelers are pilgrims still en route to their ultimate goal in Paradise. Furthermore, Dante himself would not have opened the second canticle with the ship metaphor unless he had wanted us to see this analogy between his own journey and that of the saved souls, who are making the voyage Everyman hopes to make. It matters very little if the analogy does not extend to all particulars.

    The same can be said for those illuminations which overlook Dante's supposed facial features and make him seem to be an Everyman; it matters very little if the pilgrim-figure agrees in all particulars with the author's actual appearance. The figure represents the protagonist of the text, is the visual analogy of the verbal creation. And this alone makes him Dante. But just as the pilgrim of Dante's text should be seen both as a specific individual and as allegorically meaningful, so should the pilgrim of the illuminations. In this is the particular genius of fourteenth-century illuminations of the Commedia. In choosing scenes and settings from the literal level of the text, the illuminators identify the pilgrim as Dante; but in giving the pilgrim generic facial features, they do not restrict the reader's ability to see the analogies between his own experience and Dante's. When these illuminations focus attention on the pilgrim and his journey, they invite readers to see the journey as Dante's and Dante's alone, a unique experience which nonetheless has much to teach readers about their analogous though not always similar journeys to God.

University of Wisconsin