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This article examines the representations of beheadings in the illuminated copies printed on vellum of Vérard’s 1494 Lancelot now held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (Vélins 614-616 et 617-619) and Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna (Ink. 5.C.11) and it compares them with the illustrations of earlier Lancelot manuscripts. This rich iconographic corpus includes large engravings, either created for Vérard’s Lancelot, or reused from other editions, which are coloured or replaced by new illustrations ; and small miniatures, column-wide, more freely created and inserted in the text. Decapitation plays a key role in narrative episodes such as the defeat of the knight Caradoc, the discovery of the body of Lancelot the Older, or the murder committed by Mordred : it enlightens the past, present and future of the characters, often in a negative way. In fighting scenes, beheadings are part of a continuum in the textual and visual depictions of the violence of combat.

Design and production of an atypical illuminated manuscript : the collaborative and progressive conception of New Haven, Yale, Beinecke, MS 227 (1357).New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 227, produced in the mid-fourteenth century in Northern of France, contains the Joseph, the Estoire del saint Graal, the Merlin and its Vulgate Sequel. This codicological, paratextual and visual examination centred on the Merlin and its sequel underlines the complexity and singularity of this manuscript’s conception.Yale, MS 227 contains several types of illustrations: miniatures placed either in the text or in the lower margin of the folio, and small initials. The marginalia of this manuscript are exceptional: they are not grotesque drolleries, but are modelled, both by their format and their iconographic content, on the miniatures inserted in the text, which they seem to complete. The marginal annotations of Yale, MS 227 highlight the different stages of its production, linking text, paratext and illustrations. These elements, which refer to three distinct geographical areas, demonstrate the complexity of codex, the product of a collective and collaborative undertaking.