The "Rothschild Canticles" (Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 404): Art and mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland ca. 1300. (Volumes I and II: Text. Volume III: Appendices. Volume IV: Illustrations (Illustrations not microfilmed as part of dissertation);)

Abstract

The dissertation is a monographic study of the Rothschild Canticles (New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 404), a mystical florilegium or miscellany produced in French Flanders ca. 1300. Few manuscripts of the Middle Ages contain programs of decoration of comparable variety and inventiveness. The manuscript includes extensive cycles of imagery devoted to such subjects as the Trinity, the Virgin, the mystical union of Christ and the Sponsa, and the joys of the elect in Paradise. As a whole, the program provides a simulacrum of the process of contemplative ascent from the initial askesis to union and the visio Dei. The text consists, in part, of a unique set of meditations of which an edition is included as an Appendix. The manuscript can best be understood within the tradition of mystical texts and imagery that has its roots in the twelfth century and reaches full flower in Flanders and the Rhineland in the early fourteenth century. The dissertation explores the Rothschild Canticles' relation to mystical devotion and, in particular, to the tradition of texts and imagery intended to assist in that devotion. It concludes with a discussion of the place of metaphorical imagery in mystical meditations and the changing role of the image, both verbal and visual, in late medieval monastic devotions.