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The Architect's Compass in Creation Miniatures of the Later Middle Ages*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

John Block Friedman
John Block Friedman*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana
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Extract

It has long been believed that pictures of the creator marking out the universe with a compass, common in late-medieval manuscripts, were inspired by Wisdom 11.21 which says of God: ‘Omnia in mensura, et numero, et pondere disposuisti.’ Yet anyone who examines the forty-odd creation scenes with compass extant in psalters, horae, picture Bibles and other manuscript books will see quite clearly that only seven of these pictures illustrate literally the processes of weighing with scales, measuring, and numbering, as mentioned in the Book of Wisdom. The majority simply show God holding a compass with his handiwork before him, and seem to have been inspired by the opening chapters of Genesis — in which there is no compass — or by Proverbs 8.27, where God sets not a compass but a circle upon the face of the deep.

Type
Miscellany
Information
Traditio , Volume 30 , 1974 , pp. 419 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University Press 

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References

1 See Panofsky, Erwin and Saxl, Fritz, Dürers ‘Melencolia I’: Eine quellen - und typengeschichtliche Untersuchung (Leipzig-Berlin 1923) 67 ff. and in conjunction with Raymond Klibansky, the same authors' Saturn and Melancholy (Edinburgh 1964) 339-340; Blunt, Anthony, ‘Blake's “Ancient of Days”: The Symbolism of the Compasses,’ JWCI 2 (1938-1939) 53-63; Janson, H., Apes and Ape Lore (London 1952) 196, n. 93; White, Lynn Jr., ‘Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh-Century Aviator’ Technology and Culture 2 (1961) 101-102, and, most recently, Heimann, A., ‘Three Illustrations from the Bury St. Edmunds Psalter and their Prototypes,’ JWCI 29 (1966) 46-56, especially 52, where, however, she connects the compass with Isaiah 40.12. To my knowledge, only Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral (New York 1964) 35 and n. 37, sees the importance of Proverbs 8.27 for the compass creation miniatures.Google Scholar

2 My count is based on miniatures examined at the Princeton Index of Christian Art where the cut-off date is 1400, as well as several after that date which I have come upon elsewhere. Doubtless there are additional miniatures in private collections and in uncatalogued MSS. Compass creation scenes appear in Berlin Staatsbibl. Theol. Lat. Fol. 149, fol. lv; Brussels Bib. Publique 9004, fol. 1; Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum J. 48, fol. 10 b; Harvard College Typ. 201 H, fol. 1r; Chantilly, Mus. Condé 1045, fol. 1r; Dublin, Trinity Coll. Misc. E. I. 40 fol. 59v; Eton Coll. Misc. 177, fol. 1v; Hague, Kgl. Bib. 73d. 43, fol. 3; Hanover, Kestner Museum, Eadwi Codex, fol. 9v; London, B. M. Royal 2.B. vii, fol. 1r; Royal 1. E. vii, fol. 1v; Royal 15.D. iii, fol. 3v; Royal 19.D. iii, fol. 3; Add. 47682, fol. 2r; 15245, fol. 3v; 38116, fol. 8v; 15268, fol. 1v; Cotton Tiberius C.vi, fol. 7v; Yates Thompson 20, fol. 1r; Lyon, Coll. Gillet, fol. 1r; Montpellier, Bib. de la Univ. 298, fol. 300; Oxford, Bodleian 270b, fol. 1; Ashmole 1523, fol. 116v; Paris, Bib. Arsenal 647, fol. 77; B.N. Fr. 247, fol. 1; Fr. 20090, fol. 3r; Fr. 22912-13, fol. 2v; Lat. 11935, fol. 5r; Lat. 11560, fol. 96r; Lat. 12117, fol. 106r; Bib. Ste. Geneviève 1028, fol. 14; Prague Univ. Library 23.C. 24, fol. 1r; Rome, Vat. Reg. Lat. 12, fol. 68v; Toledo, Bib. del Cabildo, fol. 1v; Turin, Bib. Naz. I. I. 12, fol. 4r; Valencia, Cath. 4-25, fol. 37v; Vienna, Nat. Bib. 1179, fol. 1v; 2554, fol. 1v. What appears to be the frontispiece of an MS of Boccaccio, De Cas des Nobles Hommes et Femmes, c. 1430, was published in Pantheon 9 (1932) 39. I have been unable to discover the present whereabouts of this manuscript.Google Scholar

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18 They are Bury St. Edmunds Psalter, Vat. Reg. Lat. 12, fol. 68v; Berlin Staatsbibl. Theol. Lat. Fol. 149, fol. 1v; and B. N. Lat. 11560, 96r .Google Scholar

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21 Philo, tr. Colson, F. H. and Whitaker, G. H. (Cambridge, Mass. 1962) I. ii.7.10.Google Scholar

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23 See Moore, G. F., Judaism (Cambridge, Mass. 1962) I.165, 268.Google Scholar

24 Midrash Rabbah, tr. Freedman, H. and Simon, M. (London 1961) I. i.l. This similarity has been noted by Wolfson, H. A., Philo (Cambridge, Mass. 1948) I 243. Google Scholar

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28 Zorell, F. s.j., Lexicon Hebraicum et Aramaicum Veteris Testamenti (Rome 1950) glosses it simply as circinus.Google Scholar

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30 Collected by Darmesteter, Arsène, Les glosses françaises de Raschi dans la Bible (Paris 1909).Google Scholar

31 I have used the Latin version of Rashi's commentary by Breithaupt, J. F., R. Salomonis Jarchi, Commentarius Hebraicus in … Salomonis Proverbia (Gothae 1713-1714) II 741. The laaz is given by Darmesteter, , Les glosses 115.Google Scholar

32 Breithaupt, , Commentarius III 81 and Darmesteter, , Les glosses 123. See Breithaupt III 228 and 95 for similar treatments of Isaiah 40.22 and Job 26.10; Darmesteter, , 72. David Kimchi and Ibn Ezra also gloss the circle of Isaiah 40.22 by reference to the compass of Isaiah 44.13. See Malanimeus, Caesar, tr. R. Davidis Kimchi Commentarii in Jesaiam Prophetam (Florence 1744) 289, 327 and Friedländer, M. tr. The Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah (London 1873) I 177, 201.Google Scholar

33 The Hebrew of this passage is given by Fletcher, Harris, Milton's Rabbinical Readings (New York 1967) 96, 98, whose translation I use here. I am grateful to Miss Irene Friedman for verifying some points in the English version.Google Scholar

84 Fletcher 93-94, 95. A similar account of the creative power of the compass is given in Levi ben Gerson's commentary on Job 26.10 where he explains that the word for setting a boundary line is similar to the word compass: ‘As the compass determines the confines of the surface of the circle which comes into being through its movements.’ Lassen, Abraham L., tr. The Commentary of Levi Ben Gerson on the Book of Job (New York 1946) 161, my emphasis.Google Scholar

35 See Hirsch, S. A., ‘Presidential Address,’ in Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 7 (1911-1914) 11–13; Smalley, Beryl, ‘Hebrew Scholarship among Christians in Thirteenth-Century England as Illustrated by some Hebrew-Latin Psalters,’ Lectiones in Vetere Testamento et in Rebus Judaicis 6 (1939) and her Study of the Bible 329-355; Loewe, Raphael, ‘The Mediaeval Christian Hebraists of England,’ Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 17 (1953) 225-249; and Hailperin, , Rashi and the Christian Scholars .Google Scholar

36 To the best of my knowledge, no thorough study of Hugh of St. Cher has yet been written. See generally Jerman, Colman O.P., Hugh of St. Cher,’ Dominicana 44 (1959) 338–347. On the Correctoria and Concordantiae , see Spicq, C., Esquisse d'une histoire de l'exégèse latine au moyen äge (Paris 1944) 167-174. An interesting example of Hugh's unacknowledged borrowing from the Midrash occurs in a gloss on Genesis 3.1, where he remarks of Eve, ‘mulierem primo aggressus est in serpente qui tunc erectus erat,’ Opera Omnia in Uniuersum Vetus, & Novum Testamentum (Venice 1733) I fol. 5. In the Midrash on Genesis, tr. Freedman and Simon, we learn that ‘R. Hoshaya the Elder said: He [the serpent] stood distinguished (erect) like a reed, and he had feet.’ I xix 1 149. But ‘ministering angels descended and cut off his hands and feet,’ I xx 5 162.Google Scholar

37 See Hirsch, , ‘Presidential Address,’ 10-13. For Costessy's use of Hebrew in his Psalter commentary, Christ's College MS F. I. 17, see James, M. R., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Western Manuscripts in the Library of Christ's College, Cambridge, (Cambridge 1905) 30–33, who prints excerpts of the MS.Google Scholar

38 See Loewe, , ‘The Mediaeval Christian Hebraists,’ 232–236.Google Scholar

39 Smalley, , The Study of the Bible 103–104, 126.Google Scholar

40 Loewe, Raphael, ‘Herbert of Bosham's Commentary on Jerome's Hebrew Psalter,’ Biblia 34 (1953), 44–77, 159-192, 275-298. The information presented here comes from 54-61. See also Smalley, Beryl, ‘A Commentary on the Hebraica by Herbert of Bosham,’ RTAM 18 (1951) 29-65.Google Scholar

41 See Berthier, André, ‘Un maître orientaliste du xiiie siècle: Raymond Martin O.P.,’ A FP 6 (1936) 267–311, especially 309-310.Google Scholar

42 See Denifle, H. O.P., ed. Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis (Paris 1889) I 209–211. A manuscript of the Extractiones, Munich MS Lat. 26847, fol. 68 remarks of Thibaut de Sézanne, the probable compiler that ‘quondam erat Judaeus.’ A recent study of the Extractiones is that of Judah M. Rosenthal, ‘The Talmud on Trial,’ The Jewish Quarterly Review 47 (1956) 58-76, 145-169. In the second part of this article, Rosenthal prints the charges and the Hebrew passages quoted in them.Google Scholar