Resumen de Contemplating the Trinity: text, image, and the origins of the Rothschild Canticles
This article revisits the Rothschild Canticles, specifically the Trinity cycle, through a close study of the Latin text. It identifies previously unknown sources, demonstrating the compiler’s wide frame of reference and confirming that the most recent texts date from the 1290s. Further, it argues that the Trinity painter developed a vocabulary of apophatic literalism to give visual form even to such unlikely statements as “Truly you are a hidden God” and “My center is everywhere, my circumference nowhere.” The intimate link between text and miniatures suggests that the designer of these paintings was a seasoned contemplative, almost certainly a monk. In its second section, the article considers the collaboration of compiler, artist, and scribe, proposing that the compiler himself designed the miniatures, although they were executed by a professional artist from Saint-Omer. Another perplexing feature lies in the scribe’s carelessness and failure to understand the material. The essay asks why and where such a sophisticated painter would have collaborated with a minimally competent scribe. Finally, it turns to one extremely rare text, tracing it to a hagiographic work by the eleventh-century monk Drogo, unknown outside his abbey of Bergues-Saint-Winnoc. On this ground it argues that the compiler was a monk of Saint-Winnoc, where the manuscript was produced—possibly for a canoness at the local abbey of Saint-Victor. That Bergues was not known at this time for professional book production could explain the inexpert scribal work. A postscript seeks to identify the coat of arms on fol. 1.
