0.8 Making the cognitive turn in art history: a case study

In 1172, an Augsburg priest named Wernher wrote, “A poem I begin / in love of holy Mary” [Eines liedes ich beginne / in sente Marien minne” ll. 1-2]. These are the opening lines of his Maria or Driu liet von der maget (three poems about the maiden), composed in Middle High German verse. Wernher’s roughly six thousand lines have the distinction of being the earliest vernacular life of this figure so central to Christianity throughout its history. For an edition, see Priester Wernher. Maria. Bruchstücke und Umarbeitungen , edited by Carl Wesse (Halle, 1927; 2 ^nd edition corrected by Hans Fromm, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1969). Apparently motivated by fervent devotion to the Virgin Mary, Wernher freely reshaped and expanded his Latin source, Pseudo-Matthew , which he probably consulted in a “legendary”—a collection of saints’ lives. Kurt Gärtner, “Priester Werner,” in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon. 2nd edition, Vol. 10 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), cols. 903-15, at 911. The part of Pseudo-Matthew that Wernher uses derives largely from a Latin translation of an apocryphal text written in the second century C.E. known as the Protevangelium of James . Amplification of a known story characterizes much medieval literature. The editor of Pseudo-Matthew , Jan Gijsel, concludes, however, that “Wernher displays a greater originality than at first glance one would attribute to him.” Jan Gijsel, “Die Quelle von Priester Wernhers Driu liet von der maget ,” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 130 (1978): 250-55, at 250. This article also outlines Gijsel’s reasons for identifying the version of Pseudo-Matthew used by Wernher as a member of the P family. For his discussion of the relationships among the many versions of Pseudo-Matthew and his edition of the text, see Jan Gijsel and Rita Beyers, Libri de Nativitate Mariae . CCSA 9-10 (Turnhout: Brepols 1997). As Kurt Gärtner puts it: “Wernher transformed the events related succinctly in Pseudo-Matthew into lively and colorful representations of situations; he also knew how to motivate and depict the feelings that moved his characters. . . .” Gärtner, “Priester Werner,” col. 907. The poem survives today in a richly illustrated manuscript, made about 1220, Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellónska, Ms. Berol. Germ. Oct. 109; formerly Berlin, Preussische Staatsbibliothek, Ms. Germ. Oct. 109. This manuscript has eighty-five miniatures on its ninety-one leaves, “by far the earliest illustration cycle of the life of Mary in German art,” according to Gärtner, col. 912. It contains the version of the text Wesle calls “D.” Of the eight surviving manuscripts (most of them fragmentary), only this one, produced in the area of northern Bavaria, probably in the vicinity of Regensburg, around 1220, is illustrated. Black and white illustrations inserted into Hermann Degering’s modern German rendition of the text situate the miniatures close to their positions in the manuscript. Hermann Degering, Des Priesters Wernher Drei Lieder von der Magd; nach der Fassung der Handschrift der Preussischen Staatsbibliothek metrisch übersetzt (Berlin: Volksverband der Bücherfreunde, Wegweiser Verlag, 1925). Nikolaus Henkel is preparing a facsimile. that further transformed Wernher’s text, offering reader-viewers what Nikolaus Henkel calls “an effectively synaesthetic experience-space, in which text and images are each present in their own mode of functioning, but could be experienced together and in relation to one another.” Nikolaus Henkel, “Bild und Text: Spruchbänder der ehem. Berliner Handschrift von Priester Wernhers ‘Maria’,” Scrinium Berolinense. Tilo Brandis zum 65. Geburtstag , 2 vols., edited by Peter Jörg Becker et al (Berlin, 2000), 1: 246-75, at 246. This paper explores the reader-viewer’s experience in negotiating this illuminated manuscript. The manuscript opens with two facing full-page illustrations, one of the Tree of Jesse and one of the Judgment of Solomon. The text that follows is made up of three parts that may sometimes have circulated as separate booklets rather than one manuscript, as is the case here. This paper discusses a selection of the ninety-one miniatures inserted at relevant points in the text of the manuscript. Applying the findings of neuroscience and cognitive studies These findings have stimulated the creation of a growing number of sub-fields, from cognitive psychology to evolutionary literary studies to neuroarthistory. In this paper I will use the general term “cognitive studies” rather than attempting to distinguish among them. —especially in the areas of perception, evocriticism (an approach that sees storytelling as an evolutionary adaptation), functions of mirror neurons, and cognitive blending—enables an understanding of how Wernher and the makers of this manuscript convey to reader-viewers the motivations and emotions of their characters.