YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

VIRTUS SCRIPTORIS: STEPS TOWARDS A TYPOLOGY OF ILLUSTRATION BORROWING IN MUSIC THEORY TREATISES
In the grand circular scheme of the universe there was a place for the puteum inferni
(the pit of hell) as well, usually represented at the bottom of the diagram, as seen in
a thirteenth-century illumination from the Ymage du monde by the cleric Gossuin
(Gautier) of Metz, surving in Paris Bibliothèque Nationale, MS f.fr. 14964. 46 The
work, perhaps the first scientific encyclopedia in a vernacular language, was enormously
successful, the basis for vernacular education in the sciences for two hundred
years, and, from the early fourteenth century on, it circulated widely in prose
adaptations, from which translations were made into several languages.
Circular diagrams were drawn to illustrate the geography of the world, both seen
and imagined, in the tract called De situ universorum, preserved in Manchester, Chetham’s
Library, MS 6681. The compiler and scribe of this summa of astronomy, geography,
natural history, and theology written after 1356 or 1357 and before 1392 is
most probably the Franciscan John of Tewkesbury – also the most likely candidate
for the Quatuor principalia’s authorship. 47 The De situ is based in part on Isidore’s
Etymologies, Bartholomeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus, and includes prodigal excerpts
– including illustrations – from a variety of contemporary travel books to the
East, the lives of saints, Roger Bacon’s and Sacrobosco’s scientific works, Petrus
Comestor’s Historia scholastica, Thomas Acquinas’s Summa theologica, and so on.
At one time, the manuscript included a large diagram 48 of the cosmos, showing concentric
circles hosting rank upon rank of angels and archangels, and displaying the
puteum inferni at the bottom of the system.
Illuminators of works of literary fiction were also fond of circular shapes: on folio
25r of a fourteenth-century copy of Matfre Ermengaud’s Breviari d’amor, a poem
of spiritual love composed around 1288, now Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS f.fr.
9212, two angels set in motion the circular machine of the universe with the help of
cranks – one called amor (love), the other, meum (mine), that is, ‘my love’ – in this
case, the divine love that moves the universe.
Just like their astronomic counterpart, from which they might have derived, circular
or semi-circular diagrams in music theory treatises frequently take on the role
of visual summae of pertinent concepts. Astronomy texts perused in medieval libraries
and copied in scriptoria include, as a rule, circular diagrams illustrating the Ptolemaic
tradition infused with a more recent layer of Christian lore: the Earth is placed in the
middle and is surrounded by the concentric spheres of the four elements, the seven
46 The work was composed in three different – and gradually larger – versions, the first of which was
completed in 1246 and dedicated to Count Robert d’Artois, brother of Saint Louis (died c. 1250).
47 See note 15 above.
48 Now folded and separately kept.
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