Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art

by Michael Camille

What do they all mean – the lascivious ape, autophagic dragons, pot-bellied heads, harp-playing asses, arse-kissing priests and somersaulting jongleurs to be found protruding from the edges of medieval buildings and in the margins of illuminated manuscripts? Michael Camille explores that riotous realm of marginal art, so often explained away as mere decoration or zany doodles, where resistance to social constraints flourished.

Medieval image-makers focused attention on the underside of society, the excluded and the ejected. Peasants, servants, prostitutes and beggars all found their place, along with knights and clerics, engaged in impudent antics in the margins of prayer-books or, as gargoyles, on the outsides of churches. Camille brings us to an understanding of how marginality functioned in medieval culture and shows us just how scandalous, subversive, and amazing the art of the time could be.

Genres: Art, History, Medieval, Art History, Nonfiction, Medieval History, Theory

176 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 1992

Reviews

[verbava · Rating 5 out of 5]

італійський юрист одофред у xiv столітті нарікав, що послав сина до парижа навчатися, а той натомість спустив усі гроші на розцяцьковування (омавплення, можна би було перекласти цю скаргу) своїх книжок: Ivit Parisius, et fecit libros suos babuinare de literis aureis.

o tempora o mores, воістину.

маргіналії манускриптів захопливі не менш, ніж маргіналії – екстер'єри – готичних соборів: ті самі горгульї й химери, ґрилуси й бабевини (точніше, grylli і babewyns, не знаю, як правильно їх перекласти), гримаси й анальний гумор. тільки у книжках усе це наочніше прив'язане до основного тексту, іноді майже буквально: майкл кеймілл наводить приклади двох ранніх маргіналій, на одній із яких святий августин тицяє пальцем у фрагмент тексту, йому приписаний, кажучи, що це не його; а на другій – зовсім в іншому сенсі – хвостик літери в нижньому рядку подовжується до стріли, якою безголовець поцілює в підставлену задницю лисого русала з яскраво підведеними губами.

(апдейт: я писала цей відгук, коли ще поганенько розбиралась у фантастичних мешканцях середньовічного світу, тож там, де «безголовець», треба читати «блемій», а там, де «русал», насправді має бути «сціопод», і це в нього не хвіст такий, а єдина нога із величезною стопою, і він не навмисне підставляє задницю під стріли, а просто ховається під стопою від спеки, як під парасолькою, чим підступний блемій і користується).

середньовічним ілюстраторам не треба було багато для натхнення: образи народжувалися з окремих фраз (кеймілл проводить паралелі між сюжетами зображень і рядками зі псалмів) і навіть поєднань літер, як підказує легенда про найнепристойніше біблійне слово conculcavit (тобто con, cul і vit в одному флаконі). утім, деякі ілюстрації – наприклад, черниць, які радісно збирають урожай фалосів на берегах «роману про розу», або чоловіків із трохи тужнішими виразами обличчя, які підносять кошики своїх екскрементів у дар прекрасній дамі на сторінках псалтиря, – складніше пояснити довколишнім текстом. зійдімося на тому, що в них там своя атмосфера. але цікаво, що релігійні манускрипти загалом містять більше непристойних картинок, ніж світські.

крім маргіналій пергаментних і камінних, кеймілл пише також про суспільні маргінеси, особливо цікаві, коли йдеться про місто і його мешканців. та й навіть розповідаючи про книжки і храми, він завжди знаходить місце для чудових детальок: як паризький єпископ заборонив повіям пожертвувати вітраж для собору; як вірили, що коли жінка, займаючись сексом із коханцем, думатиме про чоловіка, то дитина матиме його риси; як тогочасні пенітенціарії підказують, що гріх зоофілії був дуже поширений – воно й не дивно, адже люди жили поруч із тваринами; як різьбярі мусили платити за зіпсуті камені, тому, ймовірно, химери були не тільки оздобами, а й полігоном для творчих експериментів (і якщо цей останній фактоїд здасться вам менш цікавим за три попередні, вітаю, всі ми по-середньовічному тішимося з непристойностей).

[Hon Lady Selene · Rating 4 out of 5]

The edge of the water was where wisdom revealed itself; spirits were banished to the spaceless places ‘between the froth and the water’ or ‘betwixt the bark and the tree’. Similarly, temporal junctures between winter and summer, or between night and day, were dangerous moments of intersection with the Otherworld. In charms and riddles, things that were neither this nor that bore, in their defiance of classification, strong magic. Openings, entrances and doorways, both of buildings and the human body (in one Middle English medical text there is mention of a medicine corroding ‘the margynes of the skynne’), were especially important liminal zones that had to be protected.

Short and sweet - a good collection of manuscript illustrations and photos depicting outsides of churches, of particular interest St Andrew's Church in Lincolnshire with decorations of a woman holding a book and a man holding a scroll, reflecting past beliefs that engaging in Reading/Books/Rhetoric were strictly a divine right bestowed by god upon the Church and Clergy, to have the people engage in such activities was labelled as sinful, a woman who could read was stuff of the Devil.

I wish there had been more emphasis on Manicules in manuscripts as there's some funky stuff out there, but there's plenty of other good research done here, such as:

A popular joke of the Middle Ages asked which was the ‘dirtiest’ word in the Psalter – the answer was conculcavit, which combines the word for cunt (con), ass (cul) and prick (vit).

***

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a Gargoyle is ‘a grotesque spout, representing some animal or human figure, projecting from the gutter of a building (especially in Gothic architecture), in order to carry the rainwater clear of the walls’.

The late fourteenth-century English poet John Lydgate describes how ‘every hous keuered was with lead / And many gargoyl and many hidous hed’. First recorded in a building document of 1295 – ‘stones that are called gargoules’ – the word derives from the roots garge (to gurgle) and goule (throat). Many of these functional monsters are all mouth, spurting from gaping gullets both human. The gargoyle is all body and no soul – a pure projector of filth, the opposite of the angel whose body is weightless and orifice-less.

The use of animal heads as waterspouts was not an invention of the thirteenth century but can be traced back to Antiquity, part of their fascination had been their ‘function’ as pseudo-fountains, animated by the forces of nature. This is how they are explained in the Quelques extraits du roman d'Abladane, a classical Romance written by a canon of Amiens Cathedral, which describes a ‘marvel’ of the old city being two ‘gargoules’ on the city gates that spew nice or nasty substances upon people entering the city, depending on whether their intentions were good or bad.

In Joris-Karl Huysman’s The Cathedral, gargoyles are called ‘hybrid monsters, signifying the vomiting forth of sin ejected from the sanctuary; reminding the passer-by, who sees them pouring forth water from the gutter, that when seen outside the church, they are the voidance of the spirit, the cloaca of the soul’.

Émile Mâle, art historian and cryptographer of cathedrals considered anything that was not included in Vincent de Beauvais' great encyclopaedia Speculum as the meaningless product of pure fantasy: 'no symbolism can explain these monstrous creatures of the cathedrals. The bestiaries are silent. Such creatures came from the imaginations of the people. These gargoyles, resembling the vampires of cemeteries, and the dragons vanquished by ancient bishops, survived in the depths of people’s consciousness; they came from ancient fireside tales'.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read a lot of medieval history, both primary and secondary sources; dozens of articles and books about medieval European culture, religion and society; works concerning medieval cities, travel, literacy, monasticism, aristocracy, gender and art. I mention this only to provide context for my statement that Michael Camille writes perhaps the most enjoyable medieval history books I have ever read.* His books blend impeccable research with inventive prose and playful enthusiasm with sophisticated insight. Most recently, I finished Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art. This marks the fourth of Camille's books I have read and while a slender little volume, it packs the same intellectual wallop as the rest.

In Image on the Edge, Camille explores marginal art of the high Middle Ages (roughly the 11th through the 14th Centuries). By "marginal" he, of course, means the copiously illustrated margins of medieval manuscripts, but he also means the doorways and corners of Gothic cathedrals and the spandrels and misericords of medieval monasteries. To the medieval imagination, writes Camille, "edges were dangerous [and] they were also powerful places." (16) Edges, margins, boundaries, or liminal zones - points of ingress and egress on land, on buildings, on pages and on people - these are the spaces where order can and does break down. Camille examines the potency and possiblity of these in-between places with a view to deciphering the medieval way of viewing them. In a sense, Camille is his reader's tour guide to these marginal medieval images. He speaks the language and decodes the symbols for us. In doing so, he introduces us to a world that, despite an often-held misconception, did not represent a paragon of pristine order or of simple dichotomies - whatever medieval church fathers might have us believe. "We should not," advises Camille, "see medieval culture exclusively in terms of binary oppositions." (26) Dichotomous thinking certainly existed in the Middle Ages, but as in our own time, a rather large divide yawned between structured, hierarchical and prescriptive ideals and the chaotic, irreverent and descriptive reality of daily life. Marginal art, according to Camille, is where this divide could be bridged and muddied.

Despite its aspirations of order, the Middle Ages contained plethoric amiguities and ambivalences. It subscribed to paganism as well as to Catholicism. It idealized the sacred, but contended daily with the profane. "What we today may perceive as contradictory cultural codes might not have been seen as so separated during the Middle Ages," observes Camille. (13) Therefore, gracing the margins of sacred texts, we find monstrous creatures, lewd gestures, bare bottoms and shit.

As Camille elucidates again and again, these marginal images do not stand alone, apart from the text. Neither do they correspond straightforwardly as negative examples for the text. Rather they interact in punning ways with the text, usually undermining its authority by willfully misconstruing its meaning. For example, Camille explains an image from the missal illuminated by Petrus de Raimbeaucourt in 1323, in which monkeys merrily cavort around a scribe, one quite obviously mooning the monk. Camille writes:

"Petrus the pictor [painter] was probably playing a game with the scriptor [scribe] here, since the bas-de-page [bottom of the page] image of a monkey displaying its rear to the tonsured scribe was presumably inspired by an unfortunate word division seven lines above. This line ends by breaking the word culpa (sin) in a crucial place, thus it reads Liber est a cul - the book is to the bum!" (26)

This example also highlights an important aspect of book illumination in this period - the scribe and the illustrator were separate people. Increasingly throughout the period, illuminations were executed by lay craftspeople (sometimes even women) and not by clerics at all. This increased the possibility for marginal art to subvert the text or at least to regard it with something less than pious reverence. The same holds true for stone and wood carvers who created the beasties and related images that appeared in the nooks and crannies of cathedrals and other religious buildings - they were secular craftsmen hired, but not always closely supervised by the church. And Camille observes that, especially in the case of exterior cathedral ornamentation, often the images would be placed too high to be seen from the ground with the naked eye. Sculptors could use these details to exercise their own skills and convey their own meanings, regardless of what church regulators had in mind.

Indeed, Camille's research suggested to him that "such carvings were...the sole inspiration of the sculptors working outside ecclesiastical controls." (69) This relative independence gave medieval artists increasing freedom of expression; not in the modern sense in which artistic expression draws attention to the artist's subjective experience, but in the sense that the medieval artist could editorialize in a way not possible when all art production occurred under ecclesiastical purview. "[M]edieval artists," states Camille, "created marginal images from a 'reading,' or rather an intentional misreading, of the text." (41)

As is probably abundantly clear from my citations of Image on the Edge, Camille approaches medieval art history with a mindful and sophisticated blend of reader-response and post-modern critical theory. This academic rigor and responsibility coupled with his quirky and enthusiastic appreciation for alterity yields a plainly delightful book that also imparts to the interested reader that holy grail of scholastic endeavors - the frisson of intellectual excitement.

*Sadly, I suppose I should say "wrote". He died in 2002 at the age of 44.

[John Carter McKnight · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fascinating little book! Camille uses the marginal illustrations of medieval manuscripts as a window into a complex, alien world of medieval culture and its symbols.

A medievalist would gain much more from this book, but what struck me is just how foreign 12th-14th Century Europe was, in class composition, values, imagery. And yet, there are rich prospects here for the scholar of contemporary communications: echoes of trolling, selfies, gross-out humor, perversions indulged and condemned, the creative products of a time of social change, urbanization, class turmoil and disruptions of tradition.

This may not be the best first book for the non-medievalist looking for insights into the history of liminal, outsider or critical art, but it is a little gem of a book on its own, fascinating, charming, and thought-provoking.

My only criticism is that the illustrations don't do the book justice: they're all black-and-white, smallish, and not super high resolution. Detailed color examples would've added much.

[Chad D]

Exactly what you'd hope for: short, lavishly illustrated with (erm) vivid examples of the ideas, easy and interesting to read. Some of the ideas seem a bit obvious, but it was written almost thirty years ago, when they weren't obvious. Nice interplay between social margins and margins on the page.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gems in this book:

the etymology of baboon, from babeweyn, a deformed human in illustration

the fatrasie, a poetic form linking bits of psychic rubbish in strict versification, producing images reminiscent of Bosch

and grylli, human forms culminating in calligraphic tails.

If you want to revise your notion of the Middle Ages, this is a great place to begin!

[Jon Hewelt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished this one a while back but never got around to doing it.

When I was a kid I found a book called The Measly Middle Ages, part of the Horrible Histories series that later became a BBC children's show. It revealed the grosser, weirder aspects of history, and I absolutely loved it. Since, I've found fascination with anything related to the Medieval period, from Chaucer in AP English to the liturgical dramas we read in college and beyond.

A few months back I watched a Vox video on snails in Medieval manuscript marginalia that cited this book, and so I quickly put it on order.

Image on the Edge is an academic analysis of Medieval marginalia, though not necessarily regarding specific imagery (though there is mention of a few key figures). Instead, Camille focuses on marginalia's relationship to its "texts" in various parts of Medieval culture, from manuscripts to the carvings on the outsides of cathedrals. His main argument, to my understanding, is that we (both academics and laypersons) view marginalia as little more than doodles, with no greater purpose than, at most, the subversion of the central text. Noting how these images on the edge--rather than being random--related to the central (often religious) texts, Camille posits that marginalia reenforced the manuscript's message while simultaneously subverting and satirizing it, at times going so far as to directly contradict it through the use of arrows.

As an academic text, Image on the Edge is delightfully readable. I oftentimes disdain academic papers for their gratuitous use of elevated language, isolating the context to a select, smaller audience. But despite a few vocabulary words that suggest a deeper understanding of Medieval manuscripts, Camille's prose is engaging and easy to understand. And unlike so much else coming out of academia, Image on the Edge is FUN. This is due in part to the subject matter: you can't not have fun with such image captions as "monkey suckling a nun". But Camille doesn't take the subject too seriously, either. In fact, a certain points in the text he argues that previous researchers misinterpreted the purpose of marginalia because of their staunch moral biases.

There's a lot of butts in Medieval marginalia. Analyze them sure, but can they not also be appreciated (even chuckled at) for what they are?

This is a great read for Medieval fans and history buffs alike, but I would highly recommend Image on the Edge to anyone and everyone. It wasn't so long ago that scribes were doodling in the margins, and the influence on religious discourse, sequential art, and storytelling are, in my opinion, incalculable. Plus, there's pictures!

Image on the Edge is a short-ass read. And, giving it a chance, you'll soon find it's a short ass-read, as well.

[Karen Steiger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enthusiasts of medieval manuscript art can often find marginal illustrations fascinating, humorous, shocking, and baffling. Very solemn texts, such as prayer books and liturgies, often feature characters in the margin engaging in violent, sexual, or scatological behavior. Michael Camille examines these drawings as well as cathedral and monastery sculptures and architectural features to try to decipher the meaning of the marginal space. Although this is an academic text, it's written in an engaging, readable style and provides many interesting examples of medieval marginalia supplemented by b&w and color photographs. This is certainly an important text in the literature, and I think Camille brings up some fascinating ideas about the margins of the page being a liminal space where the norms of medieval society could be turned upside down in parody and low humor but never entirely undermined.

[Barb · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's got to be hard to write a book about illuminated manuscripts, and even harder to write one about the little figures in the margins because the sheer beauty of the subject cannot be conveyed in smaller than life size figures in a modern book. Camille has done that admirably, however, all the while explaining how context (monastery, cathedral, city, or court) matters and how the margins define the center as much as the centers define the margin. Think there might be a lesson in there. Hmmm. Learned some great new words: babewyn and misericord. The former what we would call grotesques, the latter a seat (usually with a babewyn on it) for monks to sit down on during the recitation of the liturgy of the hours. MisericordIa meaning mercy it's a funny joke on the word, See? Pretty much a specialist's book. I would not recommend it for general reading, although I enjoyed it thoroughly.

[Moloch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un veloce testo, corredato da molte bellissime e spassosissime immagini, sui marginalia, ovvero quelle bizzarre figurette, che si incontrano nei margini delle pagine dei codici medievali (ma l'autore le analizza anche in architettura), che sembrano uscite da un folle mondo a rovescio: scimmie che mostrano il sedere, animali che si mordono la coda, mostri semiumani, coppie che copulano, uomini che fanno la cacca o le boccacce, ecc.

Interessante e sorprendente, per chi è abituato a pensare alla società medievale come a qualcosa di immobile, rigidamente compartimentato, scoprire come invece confini (ad es. quello fra il sacro e il profano, talvolta l'osceno) che ormai, per la nostra mentalità, sono ritenuti invalicabili, o valicabili solo con grande scandalo, erano nel medioevo più indistinti, soggetti a scambi e contaminazioni.
E quindi, accantonate le spiegazioni che si tratti di divertissement senza senso o la proiezione dell'inconscio o del represso del monaco-miniatore, è molto interessante seguire il "dialogo" fra il testo scritto e i disegni nei margini, tutt'altro che casuali e insensate e tutt'altro che "ingenue" forme di una cultura "popolare" (giustamente l'autore rileva che questi codici non erano né prodotti in né destinati ad ambienti "popolari"), ma ben calcolate e coltissime: dal semplice botta e risposta fra scrittore e miniatore, dal disegno il cui soggetto si spiega come un gioco di parole o una storpiatura del testo soprastante, alla complessa combinazione di simboli che spiegano, rafforzano, illuminano per contrasto, o al contrario satireggiano il testo scritto.

3/5

http://moloch981.wordpress.com/2014/0...

[Tech Nossomy · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a mere 60+ pages (just the text) this book could be mistaken for a PhD thesis if it were not for the lack of an overarching theme or coherent framework.
It does not help that neither map nor timeline is included, nor that the subject matter is not even contextualised in for example Lower Middle Ages, High Middle Ages and Late Middle Ages, or, say, any classification of imagery. This matters because literacy developed markedly over the course of a thousand years, as well as the proliferation of books, universities and artistic traditions, which may well have affected marginal art. As a corollary, the reader has no way of knowing how comprehensive the treatment of the subject matter is, and the author may well have cherry-picked a few (in)famous examples and left it at that.

For the lack of context, the following generalisation appears in Chapter 3:
"there was also a belief that women could bear the children of demons."
This was only believed by followers of certain religious orders, yet the author continues with examples, thereby blurring how widespread certain odd beliefs were.

That Paris was the first art centre in Europe depends on one's definition of centre. Also "the modern notion of self-expression, which allows the creator to impose his or her self as the object and centre of attention, was unknown" is an utter falsehood.

Sometimes the author lugs in so many repetitions that sentences take on a different and inadvertent meaning:
"A space for ejecting the undesirable, the banished, outlawed, leprous, scabrous outcasts of society."
So if they are already outcast, where do they go? There seems to be a third space then.

In that sense, the book becomes a collection of fun little stories about the Middle Ages.

[Scarlett Butler · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good overview to the topic if a bit thin on the ground with regard to references, so some statements appear quite general. Offers many insights into the meaning of medieval marginalia, not just as doodles or illustrations but as active in producing the meanings of a text. I especially enjoyed his contextualisation of these within the world of monasticism, and the comparisons between reading and 'chewing over' the word, with the help of marginal illuminations. Overall conclusion of the book, and his comparisons with modernity, is only really explicitly explored in the last 3 pages, it is again relatively thin.

[not_the_actual_frantisek_skala · Rating 4 out of 5]

people trying to enjoy a party in 2021: *nothing*

me: "Petrus the pictor was probably playing a game with the scriptor here, since this bas-de-page image of a monkey displaying its rear to the tonsured scribe was presumably inspired by an unfortunate word division seven lines above. This line ends by breaking the word culpa (sin) in a crucial place, thus it reads Liber est a cul - the book is to the bum!"

[Niki Rowland · Rating 4 out of 5]

“In time I exist and in time I speak. What time is, I know not.”

[Samm · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible writer and art historian.

[Yuwei Cheng · Rating 5 out of 5]

very talented. Intersting topics, good demonstations, powerful arguments.
Sometimes it may be a little trivial， but the defects cannot obscure the virtues

[Chester J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

5.9
Am interesting investigation that somewhat stumbles in coming to a real point in the end or explaining its arguments fully.

[ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

read this for work but michael had me LAUGHING. medievalists can in fact be funny

[heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

too many medieval people with a scat fetish

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a delightful read-- much more scholarly than I expected. I particularly enjoyed the essay on knights and snails, which is a subject I have been interested in for awhile.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who, upon having their first experience with a real medieval manuscript was confounded when the title page had what appeared to be a projectile vomiting peacock doodled into the margins by some ancient monk, this book was very illuminating. This book offers a very interesting look at the meanings behind medieval artwork and structures, whilst also telling me what to make of the little half naked men on goats and vomiting peacocks which seemed to make a mockery of medieval manuscripts. Those monks must have gone a little stir crazy being stuck in their monastery all that time.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is good because of the subject - what do all those seemingly random doodles on the margin mean? Why is a knight fighting a snail? Why is a giant head with two legs walking around? But it suffers in my reading from vaguely rambling and disorganized writing. I don't know why one section follows another. Still, it's short, and I don't know of any other books on this neat little subject, so it's a keeper.

[curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun and insightful monograph on marginal art and architecture from the medieval period. Camille is often brilliant, occasionally irritating, but always lucid and thought-provoking. Didn't read like an academic monograph at all.

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look at marginal decoration, both at literal manuscript margins and decoration such as the carved decorations of misericords. Somewhat speculative.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was pretty neat too. The color plates are great. Had to read this one for a class, and would have appreciated the time to read it more thoroughly, but it was good nonetheless.

[m]

Academic title re-read

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book: clearly written, well researched, highly focused, and a good source for further study.

[Tammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you enjoy reading about medieval culture and art history, you will like this.

[Steve Clark]

Paperback