Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T18:49:54.389Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Augustinian Heart: Late Medieval Images of Augustine as a Monastic Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2015

ANIK LAFERRIÈRE*
Affiliation:
Keble College, Oxford E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

This study focuses on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century images, commissioned by the Ordo Eremitarum Sancti Augustini, of Augustine in rapture at the Trinity, revealing a wounded heart. This imagery begins an iconographical trend within the order that portrays Augustine as the Doctor of Love and departs from the image initiated by Possidius of Augustine as the rational thinker and bishop. A comparison with contemporaneous images of Francis receiving the stigmata reveals a new understanding of the relationship of the body to fourteenth- and fifteenth-century mendicant piety, and the importance of the iconisation of the body in the Hermits' understanding of Augustine.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Oberman, Heiko A., ‘The shape of late medieval thought: the birthpangs of the modern era’, in Trinkaus, Charles and Oberman, Heiko A. (eds), The pursuit of holiness in late medieval and Renaissance religion, Leiden 1974Google Scholar; Masters of the Reformation: the emergence of a new intellectual climate in Europe, Cambridge 1981Google Scholar; and Luther: man between God and the Devil, trans. Walliser-Schwarzbart, Eileen, New Haven 1989Google Scholar.

2 Trapp, A. Damasusosa, ‘Hiltalinger's Augustinian quotations’, Augustiniana iv (1954), 412–49Google Scholar, and Augustinian theology of the 14th century’, Augustiniana vi (1956), 146274Google Scholar.

3 Zumkeller, Adolarosa, Das Mönchtum des Heiligen Augustinus, Würzburg 1950Google Scholar, and Theology and history of the Augustinian school in the Middle Ages, Villanova, Pa 1996Google Scholar.

4 For a discussion of the divergence between the terms Augustinianism and the Augustinian order see Courtenay, William J., Schools and scholars in fourteenth century England, Princeton 1987, 310Google Scholar.

5 Ibid. 313.

6 McGrath, Alister E., ‘“Augustinianism”? A critical assessment of the so-called “medieval Augustinian tradition” on justification’, Augustiniana xxxi (1981)Google Scholar, 266.

7 Steinmetz, David, Luther and Staupitz an essay in the intellectual origins of the Protestant Reformation, Durham, NC 1980, 1415Google Scholar.

8 Pelikan, Jaroslav, The growth of medieval theology (600-1300), Chicago 1978Google Scholar, 3.

9 Courtenay, Schools and scholars, 307.

10 Zumkeller, Das Mönchtum des Heiligen Augustinus, and Augustinian school.

11 See Eric Leland Saak, ‘Religio Augustini: Jordan of Quedlinburg and the Augustinian tradition in late medieval Germany’, unpubl. PhD diss. Arizona 1993; The reception of Augustine in the later Middle Ages’, in Backus, Irena (ed.), The reception of the Church Fathers in the West: from the Carolingians to the Maurists, Leiden 1997, 367404Google Scholar; High way to heaven: the Augustinian platform between reform and reformation, 1292-1524, Leiden 2002Google Scholar; and Creating Augustine: interpreting Augustine and Augustinianism in the later Middle Ages, Oxford 2012Google Scholar.

12 For the papal bull decreeing the legitimisation and unification of their order see Alexander, iv, ‘Licet Ecclesiae Catholicae’, ed. Meijer, A. de, Augustiniana vi (1956), 913Google Scholar.

13 For a description of the groups unified under the bull see ‘Licet Ecclesiae Catholicae’. For scholarly discussions of these groups see Andrews, Frances, The other friars: the Carmelites, Augustinians, Sack and Pied friars in the Middle Ages, Cambridge 2006Google Scholar, 69; Gutiérrez, Davidosa, The Augustinians in the Middle Ages, 1256–1356, trans. Ennis, Arthur J.osa, Villanova, Pa 1984, 2439Google Scholar; Gwynn, Aubreysj, The English Austin friars in the time of Wyclif, London 1940Google Scholar, 11; and Saak, High way to heaven, pp. lxxxix, 5.

14 For discussions of these conflicts see Saak, High way to heaven, pp. lxxxix, 9–11, 163–74; Roberts, H. Ernest, Notes on the medieval monasteries and minsters of England and Wales, London 1949, 68Google Scholar; Gwynn, The English Austin Friars, 43; Gill, Meredith Jane, Augustine in the Italian Renaissance: art and philosophy from Petrarch to Michelangelo, Cambridge 2005Google Scholar, 95; and Courtenay, Schools and scholars, 83–4.

15 Examples of this are Cooper, Donal, ‘St Augustine's ecstasy before the Trinity in the art of the hermits, c. 1360–1440’, in Bourdua, Louise and Dunlop, Anne (eds), Art and the Augustinian order in early Renaissance Italy, Aldershot 2007Google Scholar; Courcelle, Jeanne and Courcelle, Pierre-Paul, L'Iconographie de Saint Augustin: les cycles du XIVe siècle, Paris 1965Google Scholar; L'Iconographie de Saint Augustin: les cycles du XVe siècle, Paris 1969Google Scholar; and L'Iconographie de Saint Augustin: les cycles du XVIe et XVIIe siècles, Paris 1965Google Scholar; Dale, Sharon, ‘I veri figli di Agostino e gli affreschi della chiesa di S. Agostino a Gubbio’, in Arte e spiritualità negli Ordini mendicanti: gli agostiniani e il Cappellone di S. Nicola a Tolentino, Rome 1992, 151–64Google Scholar; Gill, Augustine in the Italian Renaissance; and Radan, George T., ‘The Lecceto frescoes: the Augustinian cycle’, in Schnaubelt, Joseph C. and Fleteren, F. Van (eds), Augustine in iconography, history and legend, New York 1999Google Scholar, 431–46.

16 Cooper, ‘St Augustine's ecstasy’, 188.

17 Henry Thorde, Franz von Assisi und die Anfänge der Kunst der Renaissance in Italien, Berlin1885.

18 Bourdua, Louise, ‘13th–14th century Italian mendicant orders and art’, in Cavaciocchi, S. (ed.), Economia e arte secc. XIII–XVIII: atti della trentateesima dettimana di studi istituto internazionale di storia economica ‘F. Datini’, Florence 2002, 473–88Google Scholar; Cannon, J., ‘Giotto and art for the friars: revolutions spiritual and artistic’, in Derbes, A. and Sandona, M. (eds), The Cambridge companion to Giotto, Cambridge 2004Google Scholar, 103–34, and The creation, meaning and audience of the early Sienese polyptych: evidence from the friars’, in , E.Borsook, and Gioffredi, F. Superbi (eds), Italian altarpieces, 1250-1550, Oxford 1994, 4179Google Scholar.

19 An example is Miklòs Boskovits's question asking whether it were possible that Augustinian churches might have no distinct qualities: Introduction to the 1992 Tolentino conference’, in Arte e spiritualità negli ordini mendicanti: gli agostiniani e il cappellone di S. Nicola a Tolentino, Rome 1992, 13Google Scholar. Bourdua and Dunlop's Art and the Augustinian order seeks to redress this balance, but infers a theological unity on the part of the Augustinians that is indemonstrable. Anne Dunlop claims that the status of Giles of Rome as the doctor fundatissimus of the order implies an intellectual consistency amongst its members, which can then be seen in their iconography: ‘Introduction: the Augustinians, the mendicant orders, and early Renaissance art’, in Bourdua and Dunlop Art and the Augustinian order, 8. This imagery from the Augustinian hermits has largely gone unstudied: its absence from Georges Kaftal's seminal volume on the iconography of saints in Tuscany is a notable example: ‘The iconography of local saints in Tuscan painting from the thirteenth to the end of the fifteenth century’, unpubl. PhD diss. Oxford 1946.

20 See D. Blume and D. Hansen, ‘Agostino pater e praeceptor di un nuovo ordine religioso (considerazioni sulla propaganda illustrata degli eremeti agostiniani)’, in Gli Agostiniani e il cappellone di S. Nicola a Tolentino, 79-91.

21 Saak, Creating Augustine, ch. iv.

22 Ibid. 63.

23 Cooper, ‘St Augustine's ecstasy’, 188; Saak, Creating Augustine, 157.

24 Saak, Creating Augustine, 156.

25 Idem, ‘Art and the Augustinian order in early Renaissance Italy’ (review of Bourdua and Dunlop, Art and the Augustinian order), Catholic Historical Review xciv/4 (2008), 818.

26 Cooper, ‘St Augustine's ecstasy’, 190. For a description of the Semitecolo cross see Rettini, S. and Puppi, L., La Chiesa degli eremitani di Padova, Vicenza 1970Google Scholar, 43.

27 For a discussion of the garb traditionally associated with the Augustinians see Cordelia Warr, ‘Hermits, habits and history: the dress of the Augustinian hermits’, in Bourdua and Dunlop, Art and the Augustinian order, 17–28, esp. p. 20.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid. This can be seen in the Vitae Augustini written by the Hermits in the fourteenth century, which tend to represent Augustine as being converted to ascetic Christianity at his baptism in order to emphasise Augustine's monastic achievements: Initium sive Processus Ordinis Heremitarum Sancti Augustini, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence, ms Plut. 90 Sup. 48, fos 57v–62v; Henry of Friemar, Tractatus de origine et progressu Ordinis Fratrum Eremitarum Sancti Augustini, Bibliothèque publique, Verdun, ms 41, saec. xiv, fos 144r–150r; Nicholas of Alessandria, Sermo de beato Augustino, Clementinum, Prague, Metropolitan chapter library, ms Metr. Kap. 812, fos 35v–40r.

30 Cooper, ‘St Augustine's ecstasy’, 192.

31 Fargnoli, N., ‘La chiesa di San Salvatore nel trecento’, in Alessi, C. (ed.), Lecceto e gli eremi agostiniani in terra di Siena, Milan 1990Google Scholar, 208 n.74.

32 Radan, ‘The Lecceto frescoes’, 443.

33 Cooper, ‘St Augustine's ecstasy’, 186.

34 Courcelle and Courcelle, Les Cycles du XIVe siècle, 97.

35 Saak, Creating Augustine, 165.

36 Gill, Augustine in the Italian Renaissance, 70–2.

37 Dale, ‘I veri figli di Agostino’, 154.

38 Cooper, ‘St Augustine's ecstasy’, 186.

39 See ibid. 184.

40 See Augustine, Confessions, ed. O'Donnell, James J., Oxford 1908Google ScholarPubMed, and Possidius, ‘Sancti Aurelii Augustini, hipponensis episcopi, Opera omnia’, PL xxxii.33–66.

41 Courcelle and Courcelle, Les Cycles du XIVe siècle. This is confirmed in Dale, ‘I veri figli di Agostino’, 157 n. 35, and J. Schnaubelt and F. Van Fleteren, ‘Literary sources for the iconography of Saint Augustine’, in Schnaubelt and Vann Fleteren Augustine in iconography, 25.

42 Cooper, ‘St Augustine's ecstasy’, 197. See de Voragine, Jacobus, The golden legend, trans. Ryan, W. G., Princeton 1993, ii. 117, 121Google Scholar.

43 Cooper, ‘St Augustine's ecstasy’, 198.

44 Hamburger, Jeffrey, The Rothschild canticles: art and mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland circa 1300, New Haven 1990Google Scholar, 72. A similar inscription (‘Vulnerasti cor meum de charitate tua’) has been found on a damaged fresco at Lecceto: Radan, ‘The Lecceto frescoes’, 443. This has similarly been linked to the Song of Songs.

45 Cooper, ‘St Augustine's ecstasy’, 199. See Jacobus de Voragine, The golden legend, ii.117.

46 Bonaventura, Legenda maior xiii.5, trans. Fehey, Benenofm, in Habig, Marion A. (ed.), St Francis of Assisi: writings and early biographies: English omnibus of the sources for the life of St Francis, 4th rev. edn, Chicago 1991Google Scholar, cited in Belting, Hans, ‘Saint Francis and the body as image: an anthropological approach’, in Hourihane, Colum (ed.), Looking beyond: visions, dreams and insights in medieval art and history, New Haven 2010Google Scholar, 3.

47 Belting, ‘St Francis’, 4.

48 See Bynum, Caroline Walker, Fragmentation and redemption: essays on gender and the human body in medieval religion, New York 1991Google Scholar, and Christian materiality: an essay on religion in late medieval Europe, New York 2011Google Scholar.

49 Scribner, Robert W., ‘Popular piety and modes of visual perception in late-medieval and Reformation Germany’, Journal of Religious History xv/4 (1989), 448–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Vauchez, André, ‘Les Images saints: répresentations iconographiques et manifestations du sacré’, in Vauchez, André (ed.), Saints, prophètes et visionnaires: le pouvoir surnaturel au moyen âge, Paris 1999, 7991Google Scholar.

51 Dumoutet, Edouard, Le Désir de voir l'hostie et les origines de la dévotion au Saint-Sacrement, Paris 1926Google Scholar, ch. i.

52 Bynum, Christian materiality, 20.

53 Rubin, Miri, Corpus Christi: the eucharist in late medieval culture, Cambridge 1991Google Scholar.

54 Vincent, Nicholas, The holy blood: King Henry III and the Westminster blood relic, Cambridge 2001Google Scholar.

55 Elliott, Dyan, Spiritual marriage, Princeton 1993Google Scholar; Hewson, M. Anthony, Giles of Rome and the medieval theory of conception: a study of the ‘De formatione corporis humani in utero’, London 1975Google Scholar.

56 Siraisi, Nancy G., Medieval & early Renaissance medicine: an introduction to knowledge and practice, Chicago 1990CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Green, Monica Helen, The Trotula: a medieval compendium of women's medicine, Philadelphia 2001CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jacquart, Danielle, Claude Alexandre Thomasset and Matthew Adamson, Sexuality and medicine in the Middle Ages, Cambridge 1988Google Scholar.

57 Kay, Sarah and Rubin, Miri, Framing medieval bodies, Manchester 1994Google Scholar; Walker Bynum, Caroline, ‘Why all the fuss about the body? A medievalist's perspective’, Critical Inquiry xxii/1 (1995), 133CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Bynum, Fragmentation and redemption, 182.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid. 184, 235.

61 Ibid. 185.

62 Ibid. 235.

63 Ibid. 116.

64 Webb, Heather, The medieval heart, New Haven 2010, 62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Bonaventure, Vita di San Francesco, ed. Battelli, G., Florence 1926, 207–8Google Scholar.

66 Jager, Eric, The book of the heart, Chicago 2000Google Scholar; Webb, The medieval heart; Hamburger, Jeffrey, Nuns as artists: the visual culture of a medieval convent, Berkeley 1997Google Scholar.

67 Webb, The medieval heart, 8.

68 Ibid. 63.

69 Hamburger, Nuns as artists: see the chapters on ‘Wounding sight’ and ‘The house of the heart’. The transformative power of vision is underlined also in Bierfnoff, Suzannah, Sight and embodiment in the Middle Ages, New York 2002CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Park, Katherine, Secrets of women: gender, generation and the origins of human dissection, New York 2006Google Scholar.

70 Belting, Hans, An anthropology of images: picture, medium, body, trans. Dunlap, Thomas, Princeton 2001Google Scholar, 17.