Peggy McCracken - Miracles, Mimesis, And the Efficacy of Images

8/3/2019 Peggy McCracken - Miracles, Mimesis, And the Efficacy of Images

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PEGGY MCCRACKEN

Miracles, Mimesis, and theEfficacy of Images

Miracle stories are full of portraits, statues, and even apparitions of theVirgin Mary, and nowhere more than in Gautier de Coinci's thirteenthcentury collection, the Miracles de Nostre Dame. Gautier's stories include many images of the Virgin, both portraits and statues, and several describe miracles accomplished after a petitioner prays before aportrait or statue of her: the moment of intercession is amoment of

miraculous mimesis. God performs miracles for the sake of his virginmother, but in Gautier's collection, God also performs miracles for her

"ymage," her image, a portrait or a statue. In one of Gautier's miracles,a blind Saracen comes to pray for his sight before a portrait of the Virgin because he has heard "that the great God of the Christians who islord and father of all, would perform great miracles for the image of hissweet mother."1 He asks to regain his sight, and when his petition isgranted he converts to Christianity.

This miracle suggests that images themselves have intercessorypower. But where is such power located? Does the Saracen pray to theimage or to the Virgin Mary whom the image represents? And how dowe understand the fact that the petitioner who seems toworship an image is a Saracen, and even a blind Saracen? Does he simply misunderstand the meaning and function of the religious image? Saracens are often represented as idolaters in Old French texts, so this character's

willingness to trust an image may suggest an idolatry that is replaced,through the miracle, by an understanding of the spiritual presence thatthe Christian image represents. Most important, though, the Saracen'sprayers to the image are effective. He prays before the image, and al

1. Gautier de Coinci, Les miracles de Nostre Dame, 4 vols., ed. Frederic Koenig(Geneva: Droz, 1955-70), 4: 396,11. 495-500.

YFS 110, Meaning and Its Objects, ed. Margaret Burland, David LaGuardia, andAndrea Tarnowski, ? 2006 by Yale University.

47


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48 Yale French Studiesthough the miracle is attributed to God, not to the image itself, the miracle-working painting iswhat drew the Saracen to the shrine and led to

his conversion.The story of the blind Saracen's conversion seems to suggest that

there is a lesson to learn about the efficacy of images. The representation of the miracle-working image and of its efficacy seems to questionthe difference between the image itself and what it represents, betweenabsence and presence, and between the material and the spiritual. Andthis kind of questioning can be seen to subtend Gautier's miracle collection. Miracle stories insist on the Virgin's absence from the world ofthe living at the same time that they insist on her miraculous presence.

This presence is articulated in the apparitions and dream visionsthrough which she appears to her petitioners, but also through material images of the Virgin, what Gautier calls "ymages," the statues andportraits that enact miracles. In other words, the miraculous efficacyof the Virgin is coterminous with mimesis?miracles are enacted by arepresentation of the Virgin's body.

The Virgin did not leave a material body on earth, according toCatholic belief, since she was translated body and soul into heaven after her death; there are therefore no relics of her body. However, material bodies and relics are featured inGautier's collection in stories aboutSainte L?ocade, a virgin martyr whose relics were housed at the monastery at Vic, where Gautier was prior. In one of Gautier's stories, SainteL?ocade's body is stolen from her church along with an image of theVirgin. The saint's body is later found in a river, where it intentionallyfell to escape from its captors. The will of the saint is enacted throughher dead body: she does not wish to be removed from her church, andshe effectively resists the illicit translation of her body.In a story about Sainte L?ocade that precedes the collection ofMarian stories, the desire for the sainted body is expressed more explicitly.

Gautier recounts that Hildef onsus, the Archbishop of Toledo, regularlycelebrated Sainte L?ocade's feast day by assembling a great number ofsick people who are cured by the saint. One year the King of Spain and

many great nobles join the assembly, and the archbishop celebrates arich mass. While he prays at Sainte L?ocade's tomb, amiracle occurs:the tomb opens and Sainte L?ocade is revealed. Her beauty illuminatesthe entire church and a sweet odor fills the air. Only the archbishopdares to touch her?he embraces her and sings a song of praise. Whenhe sees that the saint is slipping from his arms as the tomb closes, hecries out for a knife; he does not want to lose the saint to her tomb with


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PEGGY MCCRACKEN 49out keeping some thing ("aucune chose") that he can encase in gold andsilver (Gautier 2:11,11. 152-59). In the midst of the outcries and songsof praise provoked by the miracle only the King of Spain hears the archbishop's plea, and he brings him the knife he requests. Just as the tombis closing, the archbishop reaches in and cuts off "what he can get" ["Entrencha ce qu'en puet avoir"] (Gautier 2:12,1.173). The archbishop im

mediately encases in gold and silver "what he had of his friend" (1.187),and puts it in his treasury, along with the knife.

This narrative recounts the devout desire for relics, but when readin the context of Gautier's Marian miracles, itmay also invite an interrogation of the status of the archbishop's relic, "what he had of hisfriend," as a representation of the saint's body. It is not a copy of thebody, or even a rendering of the body. In narrative terms it is a

metonymy of the saint's body: its holy origin is what it is. There is avast theological corpus on relics, how to know if they're real, how andwhy they can perform miracles, but this story is about getting a relic,not about using it: the narrative ends when the relic and the knife are

locked up in the treasury. At the same time, though, Sainte L?ocade'smiraculous body is already a relic, if one that is usually unseen inside

its tomb. The story emphasizes that the opening of the tomb and thesight of the uncorrupted body of the saint are in themselves miraculous, and if the miraculous revelation of Sainte L?ocade in her tombpermits the archbishop to possess and, presumably, to display part ofher body as ametonymy of the saint, the material effect of the miracleis the representation of the body: the miracle enacts or allows the enduring re-presentation of the uncorrupted body in the visible relic. Theresult of the miracle ismimetic, and at two levels: the representationof the entire saint in a fragment of her body, and the representation ofthe miracle in the story that recounts it. In the context of Gautier's collection, this story points to a devout desire for the visible representation of the body, and it emphasizes the coincidence ofmiracles and bodies.

Gautier's story refers to the display of the relic "in a vessel of goldor silver" (2:11,159), and although it does not suggest that the containeris amimetic one, the display of relics in representational statues wasin fact a practice that was targeted in earlier questioning about the placeof images in Christian worship. In the late tenth century, Bernard of

Anger mocked the statue that housed the relics of Gerald of Aurillac asworthy of Jove orMars, and condemned what he perceived as the worship of idols:


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50 Yale French StudiesFor where worship is rightly due only to the true, supreme godhead, itis evidently both wrong and absurd to make statues of stone, wood orcopper, excepting the crucifix of Our Lord. For it is customary every

where in the Holy church to have His image either carved ormoulded,in order that we be moved to commemorate Our Lord's Passion. But

when it comes to a visible record of the saints, the true testimony of abook or their shadowy figures painted upon the wall are all that oughtto be shown. For images of the saints should under no circumstances bepermitted, except in the case of an abuse of ancient date and a deeprooted and unalterable custom.2

Here Bernard echoes the views of the late eighth-century Libri Carolina which rejects the veneration of images except that of the crossand relics.3 He is skeptical about the efficacy of reliquary statues, evengoing so far as to call the statue an idol, though he later revises his judg

ment and promotes the legitimacy of the local custom of making statues of the saints, claiming that such practices do not subvert proper religious practices.4

In their m?tonymie and mimetic representations of the saint, relicsestablish an association between images and the spiritual.5 That association is fully present in Gautier de Coinci's miracle collection, wherethe spiritual efficacy of images of the Virgin is promoted inmany stories. Moreover, in Gautier's stories the moment of the miracle is infact amoment inwhich attention is called tomimesis. That is, the mo

ment of the miracle corresponds to an action by or upon an image of theVirgin.

InGautier's miracles the difference between the image and the person it represents is not always clear, as in the miracle inwhich the blind

2. Bernard of Anger, Liber Miraculorum, cited and translated by Ellert Dahl, "Heavenly Images: The Statue of St. Foy of Conques and the Signification of the Medieval 'CultImage' in the West," Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 8 (1978):177.

3. Peter Brown, "A Dark Age Crisis: Aspects of the Iconoclastic Controversy," inSociety and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), 251-301, esp. 259-62; Jean Wirth, L'image m?di?vale: naissance etd?veloppements, VI-XVe si?cle (Paris: Klinksieck, 1989), 111-54, and on Sainte Foy,185-88.

4. Jean Taralon, "Lamajest? d'or de Sainte-Foy du tr?sor de Conques, "Revue de l'art40-41 (1978): 10.5. Carlo Ginzburg, "Repr?sentation: le mot, l'id?e, la chose," Annales E.S.C 46

(1991 ): 1226. See also Patricia Cox Miller, "The Little Blue Flower is Red': Relics and thePoetizing of the Body," Journal of Early Christian Studies 8/2 (2000): 213-46, for an account of the rhetorical and poetic figures, particularly ekphrasis, through which relics

were made to signify in early Christianity.


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PEGGY MCCRACKEN 51

Saracen prays to an image of the Virgin Mary because he has heard "thatthe great God of the Christians . . .would perform great miracles forthe image of his sweet Mother." This miracle is recounted as part of along narrative ("De l'ymage Nostre Dame de Sardanei") about a

wealthy woman who retires from the world and becomes celebrated forthe retreat she founds outside of Damascus. A monk from Constantinople visits her on his way to Jerusalem, and the nun asks him to bringback an image of the Virgin Mary for her to venerate. The monk forgetsthis errand, but as he is leaving Jerusalem, a voice reminds him to goback and purchase a picture of the Virgin. He goes to amarket wherethere are many images, chooses a small one because it is easy to carry,and leaves the city. The image miraculously protects him from banditson his journey, and the monk "often gazes on the wooden image. Hesees and understands that Our Lord does miracles for the sake of thisimage" (Gautier 4: 384-5,11. 180-83). He decides that he cannot give

up the miracle-working picture, and will take itwith him to Constantinople. During his sea journey a storm threatens his ship, and whenthe image calms the waters, the monk interprets his rescue from danger as a divine reprimand, and he takes the image to the nun after all. Itis installed in a chapel, and the monk requests permission to stay in theholy place to serve and honor the Mother of God "who had already doneso many miracles for her icon and for her image" (Gautier 4: 392, 11.372-3). The image becomes well known for itsmiraculous powers, andthe blind Saracen is among those who come to pray before it. The miraculous portrait exudes a healing oil, and in order to honor the image ofhis mother, God causes it to grow two little breasts, from which theholy oil continues to flow.

This miracle is explicitly didactic and it ends with the exhortationthat to love the mother of God is to honor her image, but it also introduces some confusion about who is honored through the adoration ofthe statue. The miracle claims that God does miracles for the sakeof his mother's image, and that the mother of God herself performs

miracles for the sake of her own image. It is perhaps significant thatthe monk comes from Constantinople, and that Gautier uses the term"ycoine" (icon) to describe the image, a term that occurs rarely in therest of the collection. Gautier may very well be referring to the importance of icons in Byzantium, but that would not entirely explain the

power that the image itself seems to deploy, especially since we encounter quite a few other representations of miracle-working imagesin Gautier's collection.


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52 Yale French StudiesAlthough the well-known eighth-century debates about iconoclasm predate Gautier de Coinci's miracle collection by five centuries,

questions about the spiritual value of images continue to appear intheological writings even in Gautier's time. Images could be possessedand revered, but that reverence should be directed toward what the images represent, not toward the images themselves.6 Bernard of Clairvaux and his followers warn against the excessive ornamentation ofchurches, and the potential vanity of religious art,7 and Abelard asks

whether pictures of God, the angels, and the saints are idolatrous.8 Decrees from the eighth-century Council of Nicaea are quoted by Gratianin the twelfth century, and Ragne Bugge cites a late thirteenth-centuryexample of the admonitory distich that will be repeated in treatises onimages up to the seventeenth century:

Hoc Deus est, quod imago docet, sed non Deus ipsa:Hanc recolas, sed mente colas, quod cernis in ilia.

The image teaches of God, but is not itself God. You should revere theimage, but worship with your mind He whom you recognize in it. ("Effigiem Christi," 131, 127)

We do not find analogous warnings about images in Gautier's text.Christians (and sometimes pagans) are described as adoring an image

(adorer), honoring an image (honorer), or serving an image (servir), andof course penitents pray before images. Gautier frequently notes thatGod acts for the sake of an image of his mother, or that the Virgin actsin response to a prayer to her image. Idolatry does not seem to be an explicit danger for penitents who pray to the Virgin's image or for the

many religious men and women whose devotion to the Virgin's imageis rewarded in the miracle stories. However, the status of the image itself does seem to be debated in miracle stories that feature a Jew or aSaracen as protagonists. In Gautier's collection Jews and Saracens explicitly question the power and efficacy of images, and they learn Christian truth through the miraculous actions of images.

In one of several antisemitic stories in Gautier's collection ("De latavlete en coi l'ymage de lamere Dieu estoit painte"), a Jew visits a

Christian acquaintance and sees a small painting of the Virgin Mary.6. Ragne Bugge, "Effigiem Christi, qui transis, semper honora: Verses Condemning

the Cult of Sacred Images in Art and Literature," Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 6 (1975): 127.

7. See discussion inWirth, L'image m?di?vale, 202-4.8. Bugge, "Effigiem Christi," 138.


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PEGGY MCCRACKEN 53He asks whom the painting represents, and when the Christian repliesthat it is the Mother of God, the Jew bursts out with a condemnationof the image:

"You would do just as well to honor and venerate and kneel before anold pillar or a piece of wood as before this one you speak about. Fie!"said the wretch, "it is a great shame and a great dishonor that any man

would believe that the great God would be born from this little Maryidol." (Gautier 2: 102,11. 32-39)

The Jew then snatches the tablet and throws it into a privy. The Jew isimmediately destroyed, the Christian retrieves the image and cleans it,and the image begins to exude holy oil.9

The idea that the painting of the Virgin Mary might be seen as anidol is suggested by the Jew's ridicule of the Christian's devotion to theimage.10 He calls the painting a "mar?ole" [little Mary], a reference thatalso seems to have had the secondary meaning of "image," "idol."11

The Jew doesn't distinguish between the image and the person that theimage represents when he asks who would believe that God had beenborn from "this little Mary,

" and the function of the "mar?ole" as a representation of the mother of God is emphasized in the text: "the Motherof God, whose image itwas, did not want to suffer such an insult" (Gautier 2:103,11.47-8). The lesson of the miracle (though it is not one thatcan be learned by its protagonist, since he is killed because he did notalready know it) is that images are different from what they represent,but images are powerful.

Prohibitions against the representation of human figures in Judaismand Islam are often ignored by Christian writers, who represent Muslims and Jews as idolaters, especially in literary texts. By contrast, Gautier seems to represent a suspicion about images associated with Judaism and Islam and to emphasize that conversion to Christianity isalso a conversion to away of thinking about the efficacy of images. Indeed, one of the explicit lessons of Gautier's miracles seems to be howto understand images. In "De l'ymage Nostre Dame," a Saracen pos

9. Ellert Dahan, "Les juifs dans lesMiracles de Gautier de Coinci," Archives juives16 (1908): 45-47. However, for a different view, see also William C. Jordan, The French

Monarchy and the Jews: From Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 45-7.

10. Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making inMedieval Art(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 47.

11. A. J.Greimas, Dictionnaire de l'ancien fran?ais jusqu'au milieu du XlVe si?cle(Paris: Larousse, 1969), "mar?ole."


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54 Yale French Studiessesses a painting of the Virgin and cherishes it because of its bright colors and because of the Virgin's beauty. This Saracen venerates the image, he will allow no one else to touch it, and he will not allow anythingimpure to come near it. He understands that the image represents the

Virgin Mary, but he does not understand the virgin birth:As God willed it, one day when he came before the image he looked atit for a long time and he pondered whether it could be true that shewhose image this was could be the mother of God. He marveled and wastroubled in his heart. "By faith," he said, "it would be amarvel if the

God who created everything humbled himself somuch formen that hebecame an earthly man! But this could not happen in any way, it seemstome, that he could beman and God at the same time. And on the otherhand, if it happened that God became aman formen, Idon't know howit can be that he could be born from a virgin. It is a fact that a womancannot conceive without the seed of a man anymore than a piece of

wood can. If Iknew that itwas true that God was born from a virgin, Iwould be converted right away. (Gautier 3: 24-25,11. 25-51)

At these words, the painted image of the Virgin miraculously grows twobeautiful breasts that begin to exude oil, as if from a fountain.

The mechanics of this miracle are fairly obvious: the Saracen (weassume aMuslim) does not believe, he sees amiraculous event, and heis converted. The effect of the miracle is to demonstrate that the mirac

ulous is associated with the body of the Virgin, and to allow the Saracen to believe in the miraculous nature of the birth of Christ. However,the story also asks questions about mimesis: not only is the Saracenconverted by amiraculous image, he seems explicitly to question thestatus of the image itself in his doubts about whether a virgin can conceive without aman's seed any more than a piece of wood can. The image he treasures is a piece of wood, a brightly colored painting on a

wooden tablet, and the miraculous transformation of the image into a"lactating" Virgin echoes precisely the miracle that the Saracen cannot understand: the transformation of the virgin body into amaternalbody "without aman's seed. " So the miracle that the Saracen witnessesis like the miracle that he questioned and wished to understand. It is asecondary miracle, to the extent that it is a copy, a displaced repetition,and the breasts on the image exude oil, not milk. But the miraculousimage also points to an original miracle (the virgin birth). So not onlyis the image itself a representation of the Virgin, the miraculous "lactation" of the image is also a representation of the miraculous maternity of the Virgin.


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PEGGY MCCRACKEN 55The terms of the Saracen's skepticism about the virgin birth may beseen to question not only Christian doctrine, but also the status of im

ages in Christianity. And the word "fust" is surely significant in thiscontext: "Fame ne puet, c'en est la some, / Concevoir sanz semenced'orne / Ne plus c'une piece de fust" [awoman cannot conceive without the seed of aman anymore than a piece of wood can]. In the contextof other miracles recounted by Gautier, the Saracen seems to emphasize the inanimate nature of images, and the idea that images are made:they arematerial, not spiritual. In Le jeu de Saint Nicolas, another thirteenth-century text concerned with images and miracles, a pagan kingasks aChristian ifhe really believes in a statue of Saint Nicolas, a "pieceof wood" (fust) in the pagan's view (11.30-31). In Gautier's collection,the Jewwho threw the Virgin's picture in the privy also questioned howthe Christian could venerate a piece of wood (though there, Gautieruses the word "estache" rather than "fust"). Jews and Saracens are seento emphasize the inanimate, wooden nature of material representations of the Virgin Mary, and Gautier seems indirectly to respond tosuch skepticism about the efficacy of images in a story about awoodenstatue of the Virgin that moves.

In "De l'ymage Nostre Dame qui se desfendi dou quarrel," the inhabitants of a fortified city build a church to honor the Virgin and placea statue of her in the church. When the city is besieged by a neighboring prince who wishes to steal its wealth, the people of the city bringthe statue of the Virgin to the city gate. An archer uses the statue as ashield and inflicts much damage on the enemy. When one of the attacking archers tries to kill the city's defender with an arrow from hiscrossbow, the statue of the Virgin raises a leg and intercepts the arrow,saving the archer who protects her church.

[The archer] immediately draws an arrow and sends itwith such forcethat itwould have killed him right away ifGod and the image had notbeen there. Even though she was made ofwood, by thewill of Our Lady,she extended her knee just as if she had been a (living) woman, and received the arrow in her knee. (Gautier 3:46,11. 112-21 )Gautier's narration often includes extensive word play and here therepetition of "fust" emphasizes the "being" of the statue: it ismade of

wood (fust), it acts as if itwere (fust) awoman to save the knight whowould have been killed if the Virgin's image had not been present (nefust).

Gautier de Coinci is not the only writer who represents efficacious


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56 Yale French Studiesimages of the Virgin in recording the miracles she performs. However,Gautier's miracles emphasize the images in away not found in other

miracle collections, in part simply because Gautier's stories are longerand more detailed than most verse collections and because his collection includes somany stories about images. Gautier also develops thestories, adding a psychological depth and context to the protagoniststhat are not found in other miracle collections. And finally, the story ofSainte L?ocade and the relic-seeking archbishop who cuts off a bit ofher body introduces the notion of material continuity at the beginningof the miracle collection, and points to the difference between thesaintly virgin L?ocade, whose intact and sweet-smelling body demonstrates her sanctity, and the Virgin Mary, whose absent body is represented in statues and paintings. InGautier's collection, representationsof the Virgin serve as a visible focus for prayer, much in the way that arelic would. Images of the Virgin offer a visible representation of herspiritual presence in the lives of her petitioners. That is, Gautier's miracle stories rewrite the bodily materiality of saints like Sainte L?ocadeas the Virgin Mary's material embodiment in images.

The material body is very much at stake inmedieval thinking aboutidentity, as Caroline Bynum has shown.12 In contrast to the wellknown Christian renunciation of the body, Bynum emphasizes the extent to which medieval people thought about identity in terms of

material continuity and acknowledges the ways in which medievalpeople?both theologians and pious people?thought about the bodyas the self. In other words, many medieval people, like many modernpeople, thought of the body as an integral part of individual identity.Bynum points to the way that medieval philosophical discussion seemsto find it almost impossible to envision the survival of the soul without material continuity, and she identifies relics as a primary exampleof the way in which material continuity is related to identity: peoplebehaved as if the body fragments preserved in relics were the saintsthemselves, and the assimilation of the material and the spiritualsometimes caused anxiety about idolatry.13 Patricia Cox Miller has argued that the emergence of the cult of relics in early Christianity corresponds to an aesthetic transformative process through which humanremains became efficacious relics,- that is,material remains were trans

12. "Continuity, Survival and Resurrection," in Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books,1991), 141-83.

13. Ibid., 247-54, 263.


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PEGGY MCCRACKEN 57formed into spiritual objects by embedding them in rhetoric and art.14Miracle stories, and particularly those recounted inGautier de Coinci's

Miracles de Nostre Dame may be seen to operate a similar poetic strategy, one that rewrites bodily materiality as amaterial embodiment inimages. That is, Gautier substitutes images for relics, a logical move,since there are no bodily relics of the Virgin, and one that ultimatelypromotes the spiritual efficacy ofmaterial images. And it does not seemcoincidental that the stories that most explicitly teach lessons aboutthe efficacy of images are stories about Jews and Saracens.

Gautier seems to reject the common representation ofMuslims andJews as idolaters while maintaining their characterization as those whodo not properly understand the efficacy of images. My goal is not to suggest that Gautier de Coinci represents Jews and Muslims as aniconicbecause he has an enlightened perspective on religious diversity. Skepticism about images is always refuted by miracles that demonstrate

Christian truth, and sometimes with violent consequences for the nonbeliever, as in Gautier's story about the Jew who desecrated the Virgin

Mary's portrait. But in Gautier's stories, the roles of Jewish and Muslim characters are somewhat different from those they play in othertexts. Gautier uses them to offer a lesson about the efficacy of Christian images, not about the inefficacy of pagan idols, and the lessonabout the efficacy of Christian images is ultimately a lesson about theimportance of material images in spiritual devotion.

Stories that recount miracles accomplished by representations ofthe Virgin valorize the veneration of the material image. Les miraclesde Nostre Dame emphasizes the value of the material image in devotional practices, and the collection further emphasizes the miraculousefficacy of images. Miracles are often lessons in Gautier's stories, andperhaps the most prominent lesson of the collection is about the spiritual efficacy ofmaterial images. The repeated questioning of the valueof the image by Jews and Saracens creates a narrative context inwhichthe miraculous intercessory properties of statues and paintings aredemonstrated. Miracle stories that represent the Virgin's body describethe miracles accomplished by the Virgin's intercession, but they alsodescribe the miraculous manifestation of the material body itself: thestatue that raises a leg to block an arrow, the portrait that lactates. The

mimetic body, like the body it represents, is a site of the miraculous,and it is in its very materiality that the miraculous is grounded.

14. Miller, "The Little Blue Flower is Red,'" 213-36.

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Peggy McCracken - Miracles, Mimesis, And the Efficacy of Images

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