0.8 Making the cognitive turn in art history: a case study  (Page 7/17)

One attraction of filling gaps in the biblical narrative through invention of new episodes, expansion of existing episodes, and character development may have been the way such material appeals to and develops what evolutionary psychologists have recognized as “our unique human level of theory of mind.” As Boyd puts it, “a fully human theory of mind requires a capacity for interpreting others not simply through outer actions and expressions, and even through inner states like goals, intentions, and desires, but uniquely also through beliefs .” Boyd, 142. There is a large literature on Theory of Mind (ToM). Boyd argues that narrative is an evolutionary adaptation in humans that develops strategic intelligence by providing experience at “infer[ring] what others know in order to explain their desires and intentions with real precision.” Boyd, 145. Filling gaps stimulates reader-viewers to engage their theory of mind. Wernher’s development of the characters of Anne and Joachim and Mary and Joseph offers opportunities for reader-viewers to employ theory of mind in interpreting the married lives of these two couples, and thus to compare and comprehend more deeply the differences between the human institution of marriage and the unique marriage of Mary and Joseph. I presented an earlier version of this paper, focused on the topic of marriage in the Cracow manuscript, at the Birkbeck Symposium “Rethinking Medieval Marriage” in May 2008. I wish to thank Isabel Davis for the invitation and the audience for their questions and comments. Illustrations also engage theory of mind: we learn to “understand social events and the sources of people’s knowledge” by “inferring others’ attention from reading the direction of their eyes, or their emotions from their expressions, or their knowledge from what they can perceive.” Boyd, 144.

I turn next, then, to the ways the marriage of Joachim and Anne is constructed for reader-viewers. Wernher describes Joachim as a model of a man, “the best man on whom the sun ever shone” [v was der besten eine / den div sunne ie uberschêin; ll. 267-68], emphasizing his mind, sense, innocence, and holiness. He worked assiduously, exercised hard, and fasted. He also enjoyed religious narrative: as a young man, “He gladly sang and read / about his creator / the powerful old stories” [gerner sanch vnd las / von sinem schephaere / div starchen alten mære; ll. 296-98]. Visual emphasis falls on his generosity and charity; a miniature shows him as a wealthy man giving away two-thirds of his income. At the age of twenty, he chose to marry, for “he did not want to corrupt himself / with any kind of dissoluteness” [erne wolte sih niht uerbosen / mit deheiner getlose; ll. 339-40]. The miniature on folio 8v (Fig. 4) is inserted into the text passage describing his bride, Anne, whom he chose from the lineage of King David. She is chaste and beautiful, cultivates the giving of alms, and keeps vigils and fasts. The narrator places strong emphasis on their physical qualities. The first poem, in fact, uses the word for "body" twelve times in its 1,230 lines, six of them referencing Anne and three more referencing Joachim. The miniature reinforces the view of marriage as a union of bodies. The priest who is conducting the marriage ceremony holds a banderole out to Joachim, standing opposite him and Anne, containing these words: “Receive this woman for your own, so that you are both one body forever” [Ze diner e enpfahe diz wip. / daz ir iemer beidiv sit ein lip]. Cognitive psychologist David McNeill has shown that words accompanied by gestures are more profoundly retained in memory. David McNeill, Gesture and Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 147-48. In the miniature, gesture enacts the priest’s words, rendering them performative. He grasps Anne’s right wrist, indicating his power over her—that is, his authority to perform this ritual of marriage. The way his arm obscures the sight of hers virtually reduces her to his puppet. As he manipulates Anne’s hand, visually emphasized in silhouette against the blue background, the banderole with the priest’s words on it encircles Joachim and elicits his responding gesture of reaching with both hands to enclose Anne’s and thus to take possession of his bride. I wish to thank Alcuin Blamires for his observation that on the iconographic level this is a feudal gesture of receiving homage. The gesture of enclosure and the phrase “one body forever” together create a normative marriage that will be sexually active, resulting in their daughter Mary. In their construction of Mary’s marriage to Joseph, within which, medieval Christians believed, she remained a virgin, the poet and the designer of this manuscript faced the challenge of shaping a relationship that would be understood by the reader-viewer as marriage while remaining within the parameters of orthodoxy.