0.8 Making the cognitive turn in art history: a case study  (Page 11/17)

Mary’s ardent defense of chastity [ll. 1560-98] puts her in direct opposition to the values of her society and angers the elders, who call a council to deal with her. Turning to precedent, the bishop suggests the model of Aaron’s rod, which God miraculously made to grow leaves and flowers as a way of communicating his will. To identify a husband for Mary, they will order each unmarried man to bring a branch to the Temple and will leave them all in the sanctuary; the one whose branch flowers will be Mary’s husband.

Now the plot introduces a further complication that keeps the reader-viewer’s interest engaged, an apparently unsuitable and quite unwilling candidate: “On the day, under the same pressure, an old man came there, for he was frightened by the command. Joseph he was called, who is also well known to us, if we want to search in the Bible Lines 1706-1707 are only in text version D. Wesle interprets “buchen” as the Bible. This kind of expansion is typical of the D reviser. It distinguishes Joseph from Joachim and Anna, who are not named in the Bible, and places him in the category of a familiar character. for his name. He was a widower, old, good, and of good repute, weak in body. He did not desire a wife” [do kom durh die selben not / uf den tach ein grise man; / so harte forhte er den ban. / Joseph was er genant, / der ist uns ouh wol erchant, / so wir an den buchen / sinen namen wellen suchen. / der was ein witewaere, / alter, gut vnd gewære, / brode sines libes. / der engerte niht wibes; ll. 1703-12]. The miniature on folio 31r (Fig. 10) portrays Joseph as shorter than the others, bearded to indicate old age, and perhaps fearful. The page design assures that the reader-viewer will attend to the size of Joseph’s branch by placing the words of the text, “He brought a little tiny switch” [er braht ein chleinez gertelin; l. 1713], directly below the miniature. Henkel (“Bild und Text,” 258) makes this observation.

The bishop ignores Joseph’s branch, but an angel tells him he is wrong to do so: “When Joseph receives it [back], you will see God’s wondrous deed with fleshly eyes” [als sie Josep enpfahet, / ir geseht div gotes togen / mit fleisklichen ogen; ll. 1860-62]. Having returned the branches to the suitors, the bishop indeed sees “with fleshly eyes” (Fig. 11; fol. 34r). As he observes the heavenly dove emerging from Joseph’s branch, he utters the words on his banderole, “See this proof of what God intends with this man” [Seht diz urchunde an / waz got welle mit disem man]. The composition of the miniature both engages reader-viewers in the discovery and complicates their response. The diagonal placement of the bishop’s body, overlapping the left border of the miniature, establishes his bodily presence in the reader-viewer’s space and urges movement of the reader-viewer’s gaze in the direction of his pointing finger and upraised glance, as well as that of the banderole with his imperative that addresses both the reader-viewer and the group of men facing him: “See this proof. . . .” But this complex interaction of text and image means that seeing the proof of divine will also leads the eye to see Joseph’s apparent unsuitability and inappropriate response. At the bottom of the facing page the reader-viewer had read that the bishop handed his branch back to him. The next words continue in the single line above the miniature on the facing page: “His beard was long and gray. He began to weep due to distress” [sîn bart was im lanch vnd gris. / weinen begunde er durh not; 1882-83]. Then he lifts up his branch and a dove flies out of it. His branch crosses the top edge of the miniature to intersect the text, passing between the words meaning “gray” and “to weep.” He begs to be allowed to enjoy his old age in peace, claiming that he has neither the youth nor the mental acuity to serve Mary well. Further, he says, he is old and “contrarious” [ungezaeme; l. 1975]. Largely as a result of Franciscan interventions, later writers, among them John Lydgate in his Life of Our Lady , attribute Joseph’s reluctance to deep and admirable humility, shaping him into the perfect spouse for the humble handmaiden of God. But Wernher’s Mary is not especially humble, and Wernher’s Joseph takes the clear and unsentimental position that he is physically unfit either to care for or to have a sexual relationship with a young woman; he doesn’t want a wife.