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Drawing on inherited traditional symbolism, apocalyptic iconography, and monastic exegesis, this essay explores how the representation of the Vision of the Last Days in Hildegards Scivias, and, in particular, the image of Antichrist, may have been understood by Hildegard, her monastic magister, Volmar, and other members of her earliest audience. Focusing on the miniature included in the lost Rupertsberg manuscript of Scivias as the best witness to Hildegards original designs, the essay argues that the vision, its visual rendering, Hildegards description of it, and the commentary on it spoken by the Voice from Heaven are qualitatively and temporally distinct aspects of Hildegards visionary experience. In a concluding analysis, the frontispiece of the Rupertsberg manuscript, which depicts Hildegard in vision, is shown to distinguish four stages in her visionary experience.

(1999). Visualizing Performance: The Miniatures of the Besancon MS 579 Jour du Jugement. Exemplaria: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 245-284.

From emperors and queens to artists and world travelers, from popes and scholars to saints and heretics, Key Figures in Medieval Europe brings together in one volume the most important people who lived in medieval Europe between 500 and 1500. Gathered from the biographical entries from the on-going series, the Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages, these A-Z biographical entries discuss the lives of over 575 individuals who have had a historical impact in such areas as politics, religion, or the arts. Individuals from places such as medieval England, France, Germany, Iberia, Italy, and Scandinavia are included as well as those from the Jewish and Islamic worlds. A thematic outline is included that lists people not only by categories, but also by regions. For a full list of entries, contributors, and more, visit the Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages website.

The Bedford Hours (British Library MS Additional 18850) has been called one of “the very finest examples of French art of the earlier half of the fifteenth century….” Its lavish use of gold and bright colors, its beautifully conceived calendar pages and large miniatures, its connection with the marriage of John of Lancaster, the duke of Bedford, to Anne of Burgundy, and its fascinating history as a manuscript have received much attention. Scholars, however, have virtually ignored the almost 1,250 marginal illustrations that decorate the manuscript's 289 folios. These tiny pictures are generally woven into the ivy-leaf border, painted within roundels of approximately one inch in diameter. Thematically related, they are usually placed two to a folio side, one within the left or right border, and one within the lower border. The roundels, furthermore, are accompanied by one-line Old French texts. These are always placed together below the lower border and are arranged so that the first text, written in blue, identifies the roundel within the side border, whereas the second text, written in gold, explains the roundel painted within the lower border.

Macaulay's edition of CA, however useful for the study of the text of the poem, "masks the complexity of the manuscript presentation of the text and thus . . . the variety of ways in which Gower was received by his contemporaries and later-fifteenth-century readers" (p. 146). Emmerson sets out to remedy this fault by studying the manuscripts more closely, to see particularly how they "encouraged different readings of the Confessio Amantis and different representations of Gower as auctor" (p. 147). He focuses on two aspects of their layout: their arrangement of the Latin apparatus that accompanies the English text and their placement of the first two illuminations. In the first part of his essay he summarizes recent studies of the functions of the Latin apparatus, in five categories, adding the running titles and table of contents to the four categories described by Pearsall (1989). The manuscripts differ in the placement of the passages that Macaulay called "Latin summaries" and that Emmerson refers to as "Latin prose commentary," some placing them in the margin, some in the text column, and some omitting them altogether; and in the color of the ink (red or black) used for the apparatus generally. In the table at the end of his essay, Emmerson identifies the relevant features of each of the twenty illuminated manuscripts of the poem. He notes that one color ink is generally chosen for all of the Latin throughout and he observes that the placement of the "commentary" varies according to recension. He postulates two large groups: the "revised first recension," "second-recension," and "third recension" copies place the Latin commentary in the margins and write all Latin in black; the "unrevised" and "intermediate first recension" copies plus some "transitional" copies of the "second recension" place the commentary in the text column and present the Latin in red. The manuscripts also fall into two groups according to the placement of the two introductory miniatures, though rather less perfectly. There are two versions of the miniature of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, one showing just the statue (which occurs only in copies of the "unrevised" version of the "first recension") and the more familiar one showing Nebuchadnezzar himself in bed which appears in all other copies and which must therefore represent the "original design" (p. 167). The manuscripts of the "third recension" uniformly place the miniature at the beginning of the Prologue, while most "first recension" copies reduce it in size and place it later in the text, near the beginning of the account of the dream. (The "second recension" is mixed.) Similarly, the illumination showing Amans kneeling before Genius appears at the beginning of Book 1 in all copies of "recension three

Srednjovjekovni kršćani, premda zabrinuti zbog protjecanja vremena, s pouzdanjem su čekali Kristov drugi dolazak. Kako kaže cistercitski otac Guerric iz Ignyja: "Apsolutno sam siguran da će se on na kraju pojaviti i pokazati da me nije prevario; stoga ću ga, unatoč odgađanja što ga određuje, i dalje pouzdano čekati jer će on sigurno doći i neće zakasniti nijedan dan." (Guerric iz Ignyja, Liturgical Sermons I, Cistercian Fathers Series 8 /Shannon, 1971/, str. 3.) Žar što ga osjećamo u ovoj prvoj Guerricovoj propovijedi o dobu adventa iznenadit će neke čitatelje, jer su protestantski kršćani učeni da je adventna nada u srednjem vijeku nestala. No to je daleko od istine., Medieval Christians, although troubled by the passage of time, confi¬dently awaited the second advent of Christ. As the twelfth-century Cistercian father Guerric of Igny states, “I am absolutely sure that in the end he will appear and will prove not to have deceived me; so in spite of the delay he imposes I shall go on waiting for him confidently, because he certainly will come and will not be later than the most timely day.” The fervor of these words from Guerric’s first sermon for the advent season may surprise some readers, for typically, Protestant Christians have been taught that the advent hope was lost during the Middle Ages. Nothing could be further from the truth.