Janet Marquardt-Cherry

    Tropes are additional lines of text and music interpolated within liturgical prayers. Tropers are manuscripts containing tropes and other variable material such as Sequence hymns.1 The two tropers I will discuss here also have painted illustrations for major feast days. They belong to a group of only four extant illustrated tropers and represent two completely different traditions of troper production. The earlier, German manuscript is dated ca. 1000 and located by a contemporary colophon at Prüm monastery at the western border of Germany. It is cataloged as MS. 9448 at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. It was an "in-house" product designed to record the Prüm monks' celebration of the Mass throughout the Church calendar year. The Ascension scene from the temporale in the Prüm Troper is just one example of that community's adaptation of recent pictorial traditions to fit a singular copying of the Sequence hymn from, like most of the material in the manuscript, St. Gall.2 The abbot, or whoever was in charge of the design of this manuscript, combined literary references with concepts of Christ's Ascension in order to obtain a rare emphatic "leaping" version of the independent or Western iconographic type.3

    The other manuscript, most certainly made at Canterbury, stands as a classic monument between two worlds, that of the Anglo-Saxon book-painting schools coming out of Winchester and the Normanized world of Edward the Confessor's reign. It appears to have been made as an anthology, recording for all time the music and text of every trope used in the liturgy of contemporary Canterbury around the year 1050, whether indigenous or recently imported. In this case, the illustration serves a double purpose. The iconography repeats, and enhances considerably, the uniquely Anglo-Saxon tradition of the disappearing Christ.4 But this is only the iconography. King Edward's clear preference for things Continental has crept in here as well, and whether, as has been suggested, he was involved in any way in the direct intent of the manuscript or not, there were many of his supporters/appointees whose comparable sympathetic view could account for the dichotomy we see.5 For, in direct antithesis to the iconography, the painting style was deliberately fash-

    I will focus my discussion on the relationship between the unique iconographic features in both these scenes and the relevant textual material, beginning with the earlier manuscript. In the Prüm Troper, the Ascension scene on folio 45 verso

[Fig. 1: Paris, B. N. fonds latin MS. 9448, folios 45r, 46v. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale.]

    This figure of Christ follows the so-called Hellenistic or Western tradition of Ascension scenes where Christ actively steps up into heaven rather than being carried up while appearing frontally immobile (the Eastern or Oriental type). The Hellenistic type may have originally derived from emperor's apotheosis images,7 and illustrates the Gospel of Luke, which states only that Christ parted from the apostles, as opposed to other texts which specifically refer to his being passively "taken up."8 It was copied from early Christian works by the Carolingian ateliers of the eighth and ninth centuries.9

    A decorated initial from the ninth-century Drogo Sacramentary

    In Beissel's 1906 publication on the Prüm Troper, he linked the Ascension image to part of Notker's original version of the Sequence text for the day but did not note that it was not copied exactly in that form.12 The hymn relates the idea of leaping to three distinct events in Christ's life the Nativity, the Harrowing of Hell, and the Ascension--in such lines as:

Beissel did not discuss this text in detail and therefore did not explain an important feature. Notker links Christ in a peculiar manner over and over with the name Idithun ("Huic nomen extat conveniens Idithun" [For this one the name Idithun is suitable]), referring back to Jedithun, or shortened Ethan, from the Old Testament, who was one of King David's three choirmasters and supposed author of Psalms 38, 61, and 76.14 The medieval connotation of Idithun which Notker used in the Sequence, however, actually originates with Isidore of Seville's Etymologia.15 When the scribes at Prüm copied the Sequence text, they did not copy each word of Notker's verbatim, rather they replaced some of the rather tame or more passive verbs in the original with more active, energetic verbs, carrying independent meanings (i.e., rather than "pass over" or "ascend" we find more words connoting leaping):

In fact these are the same verb stems used by Isidore in the seventh century to describe Idithun:

That this definition was known in the Middle Ages and would have been available to the monks of Prüm is suggested by the fact that the same entry appears in Johannes Balbus's Catholicon, written as late as the mid-thirteenth century.18

    The illustration was designed to stress these same features. Just as the Sequence was modified to convey more dramatically the images of Christ's strong ascent into heaven on his own power, so the painted

    Psalm 46, which is sung at both the Introit and the Offertory, gives a mood of rejoicing and activity to the day.20 It appears the first time on folio 46 recto directly across from the illustration on folio 45 verso. The figures mirror this mood with their gestures of surprise and sudden movement.

    Many of the scenes and texts in the Prüm Troper show a deliberate modification of the source texts and images. New pieces were written, old ones placed with different tropes than commonly used, scenes were often simplified to focus on one feature or the traditional iconography split in two to fit the long narrow format. From analysis of other scenes involving such figures as some of the Prüm patron saints or a very Carolingian King David in the Christmas cycle, I have come to see this manuscript as a statement of independence from a monastery that had been a primary Carolingian royal foundation with many privileges and powers but which under the Ottonians was being threatened with Henry II's economic strong-arming reform. Changing the text and creating a simpler, stronger image to fit it for the Ascension feast was only one small part of this tendency toward independence in a manuscript made in the face of Henry's oppressive monastic "inventories." I cannot go so far as to relate the resulting visualization of Christ as a strong and independent figure eschewing the control of God's hand directly to the political vision Prüm monks had of their community, but it certainly fits the general profile of the manuscript.

    The Anglo-Saxon Troper, cataloged in the British Library as the first 36 folios of Cotton MS. Caligula A.xiv, contains an image amazingly correspondent to the one in Paris 9448, even though at first glance it seems to be missing a major portion of the key persona's body. This is a prime example of the so-called disappearing Christ, named by Schapiro in his 1943 article which claimed an Anglo-Saxon invention of the type.21 We can now go beyond Schapiro's general associations and find the sources that account for this particular troper illustration and possibly the incentive for the movement in this direction of the entire group of Anglo-Saxon disappearing Christ Ascension scenes from the mid-eleventh century, which includes the ones from the Sacramentary of Robert

    I believe that the whole group can be attributed to Canterbury, an atelier with few attributions at the time when Schapiro was writing but since given a rather diverse and important role in disseminating and expanding the earlier Winchester style and iconography during the eleventh century. In fact the strong relationship between the Caligula scene and the Æthelwold Benedictional cannot be overlooked for many elements in the rest of the composition.23 We know of the dose dependency of Canterbury on Winchester, particularly in liturgical elements like those in this troper.24 Thus the "disappearing Christ" invention is localized and can be related to a specific set of influences, not just general innovative tendencies of late Anglo-Saxon art.

    If we take some of the textual sources which Schapiro suggests for the concept of the disappearing Christ and apply them directly to the Caligula Troper, we will see that, as at Prüm, the painted illustration is a gloss on or a visualization of the designers' interpretation of this feast. And again in this case, the text is right there in the manuscript, but it can only be fully understood if one looks outside it at the monks' textual models.

    The full-page Ascension scene in Caligula A.xiv also contains a profile Christ figure actively mounting a cloud toward heaven.

[Fig. 2: London, B. L., Cotton MS. Caligula A xiv, folio 18r. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.]

    The bottom half of the folio is divided from the top by three semicircular mounds, forming the background behind Mary and the twelve apostles. This three-part mountain is inscribed MONS OLIVETI. The Virgin looks up and places her right hand on her chest, while holding her left palm open to the viewer. To the right, St. Peter's right arm points sharply up with an open palm. Five more apostles are stacked behind him with two more lifted open hands. To the left of Mary appear six more apostles. Two hold books and again three arms are lifted up with open palms. These six hands, disproportionately enlarged (like many in the

    The scene is framed by a simple set of blue-green and red bands with rosettes standing out from each corner. Around the outer edges of this frame a text appears in Latin hexameter:

This sort of exhortation in the manner of a sermon, the first-person voice explaining things to the third-person viewer, is a clue to the source for the imagery evoked by the hexameter. Just as the Sequence for the Ascension in the Prüm manuscript related Christ's many leaps to other events in his life, and was in turn influenced by the seventh-century definitions of Isidore, so three Anglo-Saxon authors wrote similar exegeses on the Ascension. They were Bede (eighth century), Cynewulf (c. 800), and the unknown author of the Blickling Homilies (tenth century).26 Bede's hymn on the Ascension parallels the Sequence copied in Caligula A.xiv for the day, "Rex Omnipotens," but introduces some important elements like references to the Nativity and the Second Coming.27 It, along with Pope Gregory's famous sermon on the Ascension, have been pointed to by Cynewulf scholars as being the models for Part II of his Christ poem. Thus the poem is divided into "Advent," "Ascension," and "Doomsday."281

    Like Pope Gregory and the Blickling homilist, Cynewulf considers the question of the men or angels in white cloaks at length in relationship to the Nativity and this is the first point in the hexameter verse. Later in the poem he practically repeats Notker's Sequence verbatim when he counts the great leaps of Christ. The hexameter around the scene in the Caligula Troper has been written to correspond to these three events as well. It brings in Advent or the Nativity where it says "I will tell you about this recent ascent of Christ" and Doomsday or the Second

    It is this connection that makes Cynewulf's poem stand apart from the Gospel accounts and his models. There is one singularly rare feature which is found both in the poem and the hexameter verse: the sadness of the disciples. No other commentators deliberately ignored the Gospels' record of the disciples' return from Bethany in a state of great joy. The contrasts which Cynewulf sets up in his poem account for this emphasis on their sadness and, in turn, for the disappearing image of Christ.29 In fact, we must read the gestures of the disciples as those of grief rather than the traditional joy. The hexameter verse directs us to their depressed and sad minds. The person who wrote these verses was coordinated with whoever decided on the type of Ascension image and they were both familiar with Cynewulf's Christ poem and its emphasis on the fact that the disciples were sad precisely because they could no longer see Christ "under heaven."30

    This distinction between the sky and heaven was quite specific in Pope Gregory's model text and comes through from Cynewulf to the miniature with the sharp contrast between the green clouds of the sky and the heavenly red mass into which Christ steps. Cynewulf went on to say that Christ reappears in glory in heaven and the disciples can see him again then but are still sad because they realize he is not in their sphere anymore. That second vision or reappearance in glory in heaven (above the sky) would fit the traditional Eastern or immobile Ascension which is certainly what, by his description, Cynewulf had in mind.

    The Caligula disappearing Christ is directly referring, as Schapiro said for all these iconographic types, to the pilgrim accounts of the church on Mount Oliveti from Arculf (seventh century).31 Yet it is this manuscript which makes that reference more explicit than any other, since it has the only inscription naming the place and, something unmentioned by Schapiro, the three-part arch referring to Arculf's account of the concentric portico of the building. Of course, it shows a misunderstanding of what that meant architecturally, Arculf's "three roofed circular porticoes" were taken to be a three-arched roofed portico like the more typical Byzantine church porch or early medieval Western facades.32 The Canterbury monks need not have seen, and by their misunderstanding we can infer that they probably did not see, a copy of Arculf's travels, for