Gloss

71r-132r) and BnF, lat. 2531.¹⁶ Thus, despite the fact that Bernard of Clairvaux was a Cistercian, his writings (and ideas) were clearly of interest to the Benedictine monks of Fécamp, and it is not beyond reason that they also shared his view on the perils of manuscript illumination. This fear of distraction, particularly when reading (lectio) and attempting to memorize and internalize the Word of God (meditatio), likely motivated the scribes of Fécamp to limit the inclusion of large-scale artistic programmes in the manuscripts they copied. While they still added some decoration to the books they copied, for the most part their artistic enterprises remained relatively subdued and bound to the confines of the initials – a reflection of the Fécamp community’s attempt to sustain a ‘firm concentration’ on the text without the hindrance (or help) of illustration.

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meaning of the text itself. Although the concept of a medieval gloss may be simple – a marginal or interlinear commentary added to the empty spaces on the page – in reality they prove to be a challenging research subject.¹⁸ Their complexity stems from two primary factors: the first has to do with the content of the gloss, and the second has to do with its application to the page. In the first place, glosses may contain text from a single source, such as a single commentary or the personal reflections of an individual, or they may contain texts drawn from multiple sources, and may consist of layers of annotations ‘stacked upon each other, mixed into one new text, or reworked into a new commentary’.¹⁹ The second factor has to do with the way in which the gloss has been incorporated into the layout of the page. In some cases, the scribe anticipated the addition of a gloss, and designed the layout of the page in such a way as to leave space for its inclusion (i.e. by making sure there was enough room in the margins or between the lines to include further text). When glosses are planned in this way, they are often presented in an organized manner and are usually copied by the main scribe at the same time as copying the primary text. In other cases, the addition of a gloss was not anticipated. When glosses are unplanned, they are usually squeezed into the margin of the page or between the lines in a far more haphazard manner, as the page has not been designed to accommodate them; these glosses are usually copied in a different hand than the primary text.

Due to the limited parameters of this present study, I have chosen to focus my attention on this latter component – the distinction between ‘planned’ and

‘unplanned’ glosses – and I use this distinction as a means to organize and discuss the glosses present in the Fécamp manuscripts. Having examined the books from the Fécamp corpus, it is intriguing to observe that the vast majority of books do not contain any kind of gloss, either planned or unplanned.²⁰ Out of the sixy-six manuscript examples, for instance, fifty-four books (or 82%) do not feature any kind of marginal or interlinear gloss. The margins of these books are clear without annotations, comments, or other noticeable markings. An example of this kind of

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18 For the difficulty of studying glosses, see Mariken Teeuwen, ‘The Impossible Task of Editing a Ninth-Century Commentary: the Case of Martianus Capella’, Variants: Journal of the European Society of Textual Scholarship 6 (2007), 191-208, as well as the introduction to Teeuwen’s, ‘Marginal Scholarship’, 19-20.

19 Teeuwen, ‘Marginal Scholarship’, 20.

20 I do not include glosses that were added much later (i.e. after the twelfth century).

‘clean page’ can be seen in a Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 162, a mid eleventh-century collection of works by Augustine:

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Fig. 3 – Bern, Cod. 162, fol. 4r: Typical page without glosses

Although it would have been nearly impossible to include any kind of ‘interlinear’

gloss in Bern, Cod. 162 (due to the lack of space between the lines), there is ample room in the margins for the addition of a gloss. Like most books from the Fécamp corpus, however, this volume of Augustine has been spared the glossator’s pen and the margins remain blank.

That said, there are twelve books from the Fécamp corpus (18%) that do feature some annotations. What is interesting to note – and significant in the context of this material study of lectio divina – is that out of these twelve volumes, nearly all of

them feature a ‘planned gloss’ (i.e. organized annotations added to the margin by the main scribe during the production of the manuscript).!Eleven out of the twelve books feature this type of systematic and organized gloss. These books are listed in the table below:²¹

! Table 2: Fécamp Manuscripts with ‘Planned’ Glosses

A: Shelfmark; B: Date; C: Author/Text

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Ref. A B C

1 Rouen 116 1108-1187 Genesis 2 BnF, lat. 188 1075-1150 Job 3 BnF, lat. 437 1075-1150 Gregory:

Commentary on the Psalms, Commentary on the Song of Songs, Homily on Ezechiel;

Augustine:

Extracts 4 BnF, lat. 4210 c. 1000 Smaragdus:

Expositio in regulam St Benedicti 5 BnF, lat. 5057 1108-1187 Flavius Josephus:

De bello judaico 6 BnF, lat. 5080 1100-1150 Eusebius:

Historia ecclesiastica;

Peter Alphonsi:

Dialogi 7 Rouen 1 1060-1080 Bible 8 Rouen 7 1100-1150 Bible 9 Rouen 41 1108-1187 Leviticus 10 Rouen 86 1108-1187 Matthew

11 Rouen 489 c. 1050 Theological Works

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As the table demonstrates, many of the books that feature a ‘planned gloss’ contain biblical texts. In most of these volumes, the gloss is derived from a specific set of biblical annotations known as the glossa ordinaria. This collection of glosses was gradually compiled over the course of the Middle Ages and comprises a collection of biblical commentaries composed by well-known theologians, such as the Church Fathers and Doctors of the Church (i.e. Augustine, Jerome, Gregory, and Bede).²²

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21 Many of the dates for the Fécamp manuscripts have been provided by Branch, ‘The Development of Script’. Following the earlier work of Avril, Branch dates various books to the abbacies of Fécamp leaders (hence the specific date-range for many books).

22 For the glossa ordinaria, see Lesley Smith, The Glossa Ordinaria: the Making of a Medieval Bible Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2009); E. A. Matter, ‘The Church Fathers and the Glossa Ordinaria’, in I. Dorota Backus,

One of the most popular editions of the glossa ordinaria is said to have evolved in the schools of Laon in the early twelfth century (and is often credited to Anselm of Laon).²³

Although these eleven glossed manuscripts reflect some interest in gloss traditions (particularly in terms of biblical commentary), it is nonetheless significant that the vast majority of books produced at Fécamp do not contain a gloss of any kind (82%). To investigate this phenomenon further, I would like to turn our attention back to the performative aspect of lectio divina. As discussed in the previous chapter, many medieval practitioners of divine reading describe this practice as something that requires ‘assiduous concentration’: the reader must limit any kind of distraction in both the environment and the mind, as he focuses on each line of text, reading the words slowly and carefully, and imbibing the spirit of the page.²⁴ Bernard McGinn argues that when monks read in this way they pursued a ‘special form of attentivenes to God’, a particular state of mind that was undisturbed by the distractions of the world, clear of interference, and poised to contemplate Word of God as deeply as possible.²⁵

I, therefore, suggest that the addition of a marginal or interlinear gloss on the manuscript page may have been perceived as an unwanted distraction from the focused reading of lectio divina. In a sense, the marginal notes and references were designed to prompt a type of ‘textual discussion’ on the page between the primary text (at the centre of the page) and the secondary text positioned in the margin or between the lines. When a gloss is present, the reader is invited to participate in this textual discussion by reading both the main text and the associated commentary. This process of flipping back and forth between primary text and commentary may have compromised the high-level of meditative focus typically required to sustain the

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ed., The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, Vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 83-111.

23 Andrée Alexander, ‘Anselm of Laon Unveiled: The Glosae super Iohannem and the Origins of the Glossa ordinaria on the Bible’, Mediaeval Studies 73 (2011), 217-60; and his ‘The Glossa ordinaria on the Gospel of St John: A Preliminary Survey of the Manuscripts with a Presentation of the Text and its Sources’, Revue bénédictine 118 (2008), 109-34, and 289-333.

24 The need for assiduous reading is mentioned in the following: Isidore, Sententiae, Book 3, Caput XIV, De collatione, PL, Vol. 83, col. 689B; John of Fruttuaria, Tractatus de ordine vitae et morum institutione, Caput VII, ‘Quatuor virtutes cardinales, et earum munia describuntur. Item de virtutibus theologicis’, PL, Vol. 184, Col. 575D; Boniface Ramsey, Ambrose, 163. The idea of ‘imbibing the spirit of the page’ is also mentioned in William of St Thierry, The Golden Epistle, trans. Berkeley, ‘Advice for Novices’, XXXI.121, 51-52.

25 McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, 131.

practice of lectio divina. As such, it may be suggested that there are so few glosses in the manuscripts of Fécamp, because, for the most part, the readers did not wish to be distracted from the spiritually-focused process of lectio divina.

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Fig. 4 – Rouen 116, fol. 8v: Genesis with glosses

In his Golden Epistle, William of St Thierry addresses the issue of maintaining concentration by reminding his readers to focus on ‘definite reading’ (certae lectioni), as opposed to ‘haphazard reading’ (varia lectio).²⁶!He warns that constantly varied reading

‘does not edify but makes the mind unstable’, and can affect the process of

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26 William of St Thierry, Epistola seu tractatus ad fratres de monte dei, Caput X, Officia et exercitiae cellitae, PL, Vol. 184, Cols. 327C-327D; William of St Thierry, The Golden Epistle, trans. Berkeley, ‘Advice for Novices’, XXXI.120, 51.

memorization: ‘taking into the memory lightly; it goes out from it even more lightly’.²⁷ Although William is probably referring to the reading of multiple texts over a short period of time, this kind of ‘haphazard reading’, also sounds much like reading a glossed manuscript book: the reader must constantly switch between the primary text and marginal annotations, and must take-in material from multiple different sources at the same time. Indeed, it would have been exceedingly difficult to maintain the

‘assiduous concentration’ needed to pursue lectio divina when reading a highly-glossed text.

Such arguments may help to explain why there are so few books in the Fécamp corpus that contain glosses. Just as the majority of books lack a significant degree of decoration, they also appear to lack a significant degree of glossing, which may further reflect a desire to limit distractions for the reader. Of course, it is important to also recognize that the Fécamp community was not wholly against the inclusion of decoration or glossing (as attested by the few manuscripts that feature incredibly detailed artwork in the initials or those that include the glossa ordinaria).

What I do wish to emphasize, however, is that these books are rare in the Fécamp corpus, and it is far more common to find books that present only the text, with no additions or embellishements either in the form of decoration or annotations. Given what we know about the practice of lectio divina, it is very possible that this trend in manuscript design was motivated by a desire to minimize any potential distractions that may have interfered with the reader’s spiritual concentration.

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