Scientific report
Three illuminated medieval manuscripts, in a context


The project intended to study three illuminated medieval manuscripts, one from c 1380 and two from 1430s. In the application I wrote that the goal was to study the history of mentality with the help of the relation between text and image. Taking European research about medieval marginalia into account I put up a number of hypotheses: the images could be descriptive, they could be ironic and joking with the text, they could be a memory aid and it was also possible that they had no relation to the text but merely decorative.

On a more general level I wanted to comprehend the medieval world views, where the image could be seen as a prolongation of an oral comment to the text. My idea was to study some themes: politics, folklore, religion, etc. This could, according to my original plan, be seen as a part of a flow and influence between a popular and a learned culture. The method should be source pluralism, where every image was to be interpreted in a context of other sources.

My hope was to publish a book in Swedish already in 2015 and follow up with shorter texts in English.

However the whole project came to be delayed, mainly because my work method was so painstakingly slow. I learned all the images by heart, and I spent days sitting and looking at them. Eventually this led to some important disclosures.

A core manuscript was B 10, written around 1380, where I knew that the illustrator was the same as the scribe, thus  an amateur artist. I also had his name, Niklas Djärken (Nicolas Scribe). To identify this middle class person in the Swedish scarce Swedish late 14th century sources took some time – but this was a part of the plan.

The main finding, which took some time to realize, was that his images had a high degree of originality. His way of illustrating the text often was inventive, and he also chose to illustrate things nearly never shown in other medieval images, such as a miscarriage.

In fact the nearly hundred images together formed a kind of ego-document, which made the study of this manuscript to something similar to what Ginzburg and Le Roy Ladurie have done on written material.

When it comes to the next of the manuscripts, B 68, from 1433, I had not expected find much new, as this – compared with the totally neglected amateurish B 10 – was well researched and the images often had been published.

Indeed I realized that there was a layer of interpretation that no one had seen (including myself). In several images, by studying gestures and combining with the text in the law, I could proof that they implied a discussion of women’s subordination and a critique of this: a discussion which nearly never turns up in the written material but obviously existed.

This was also related to the intellectual milieu where this manuscript was produced. The owner was the Judge of the Realm (a Chief Judge in a province). He came from ha rather low status noble family, but his father had married into a family belonging to the top nobility, a family which had produced such Chief Judges during a century. His mother had a strong position, and he had a cause to connect to his mother’s family. There are also other aspects of this manuscript that has not been highlighted before, as a deep religions sentiment and identifying poor people in an unusual way.

The third big manuscript was B 172 (which I already have published a book and a long article about). By reworking the whole material again I could in some cases deepen the analysis. I had seen a homoerotic aspect (appreciative and not negative!), but now I could identify this more clearly. I could also more definitive identify the artist: Johannes Rosenrod, and explore his relation to the scribe and to the Bengt Jönsson from the high nobility who paid them both.

What happened was thus that different personalities, or groups of personalities stepped forward in a way I had not expected (which also separates this from most European manuscripts, often produced by specialist illustrators.)  The investigation became more interesting, but I also faced a problem of representativeness.

I decided to enlarge the project and study all illustrated manuscripts produced in medieval Sweden (about eighty). This step was facilitated by the fact that I joined a project (which I had helped to instigate), where the main libraries with collections of medieval manuscripts in Sweden (the Uppsala University library, and the Royal Library) worked together to make a catalogue of all these texts. My part in the project was to help them with the illustration (though I was not economically a part of the project).

The earliest illustrated manuscripts in Sweden are from the mid 13th century, then follows a period of a hundred years with a rather constant production of such, and nearly all of them consisted of the Law of the Realm (Landslagen). I also included Norway, Iceland and Denmark, where the two first mentioned countries have the same pattern: law manuscripts are totally dominating among those illuminated.

To solve this enigma I had to establish a comparison material, and I chose to study France. I excluded the Roman law and the Canonic law, and concentrated on regional laws. Perrine Mane, the main expert on profane images, helped me, and I spent two months in Paris when I met and discussed with her. She helped me to identify four such illuminated manuscripts, compared with thousands of illustrated religious and hundreds of chronicles, etc.

In Sweden a number of religious texts, as well as chronicles, etc were produced, but they were very seldom illustrated. My interpretation is that the law had a specific position, charged with status, in Sweden (and in other Nordic countries), which was the cause for this type of manuscripts came to be illustrated.

I now have a book manuscript, with about 300 pages, and I have a promise from the Royal Academy of Folk Life (Kungl. Gustav Adolfsak Ademien) studies to publish it (including catalogues over images etc). The plan is to publish the book in the end of 2017 or early 2018.

I consist of four major empirical parts: a study of all Swedish illustrated manuscript, and chapters about the three large manuscripts: B 10, B 68, B 172. To this come theoretical sections and also a number of appendices.

I have also further developed the source pluralistic method. In this case one source is in the center, illustrated manuscripts, but in the interpretation of a number of different images I have to make long digressions about gestures, clothes, politics, etc.

The book contains much more than I once presupposed, and some of the hypotheses I had have been abandoned, changed or replaced. I will still discuss popular culture in relation to the learned in the conclusion, but probably emphasize the constant more than change, though I claim that I have found a change of political climate from the late 13th century until the 1430s, and this will affect the interpretation of the long period of civil wars that followed after this decade.
 
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During the autumn 2017 a seminar about the manuscript B68 is going to take part October 12th, and this will eventuellay be published as a book. I Connection with this an article with a gender perspective havde been sent in to Historisk tidsrkfit, and it has been accepted.