Once Upon a Time…
I have seen the movie The Red Violin at least a few times. Released in 1998, the film traces the life story of an exquisite and antique violin, from its creation in Italy in 1681 at the tail end of the Renaissance, to an auction house in modern day Montreal, where it fetches an enormous sum from a prestigious collector. Across the centuries, the violin is transported to four countries and accompanies four human lives. The film mingles fictitious and real historical events with a haunting clarity.
As a museum person, I look at objects and artifacts as if they, too, have had multiple lives and contain multiple stories within. A creative writer, such as the screenplay writer for The Red Violin, is at liberty to invent such a history as a work of fiction, and these stories are made to grow and twist and turn and reveal secrets long forgotten. It took me several days after watching The Red Violin for the second or third time to get over the fact that, in real life, it would be near impossible to record the history of most objects with the sort of fly-on-the-wall detail that fictive objects can boast. Which isn’t to say that the stories aren’t there. I once did a research project on a bejeweled book cover, The Upper Cover of the Lindau Gospels, for an assignment at The Morgan Library and Museum in New York City, and I’ve often wondered how this exquisitely crafted book cover’s story might be told.
Before I begin this story, I am reminded of a criticism the writer Edmund Wilson made of his poet-friend Elinor Wylie’s novel, The Venetian Glass Nephew. Wilson did not care for the tale. In a review for the New Republic, Wilson wrote that the novel had “mingled the fictitious with the real in a manner hardly allowable.” The story, Wilson claimed, was absurd, bordering on licentious. Elinor Wylie’s unholy alliance, mingling the fictitious with the real, ruffled the cranky critic’s feathers. I try to keep this in mind as I begin my tale…
Once upon a time, there was a Holy Roman Emperor who was known as Charles the Bald. Charles was in fact only partly bald, and the irksome moniker only served to highlight the astute differences between himself and his namesake and grandfather, Charles I, King of the Franks, also known throughout the lands as Charlemagne: Charles the Great. To be frank, there was a shadow cast upon the reign of the grandson from Day 1. This shadow was long enough to threaten total annihilation of any silhouette Charles the Bald hoped to impart. Charlemagne’s shadow threatened to underscore any and all achievements the grandson may one day feel bold enough to boast about. If he was interested in boasting, that is. Charles the Bald had to find his niche and he had to find it fast. Life expectancy in Europe in the 9th century being what it was.
And so it was to the arts where Charles the Bald, Holy Roman Emperor, turned his sights. His grandfather had united all of western Europe for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire. He had established the Carolingian Empire; he had sparked the Carolingian Renaissance. Charles the Bald could hardly compete with Charles the Great. Some grandsons of great emperors would choose a path of hedonistic luxury under such circumstances. Genghis Kahn’s grandsons, in fact, did exactly that, and would squander the riches of the hard-won Mongol Empire in just 30 years. With Europe safely united, at least for the time being, under the umbrella of the Carolingian Empire, Charles the Bald chose art over the polis. He would beautify his grandfather’s empire with gold, with jewels, and with exquisitely crafted words.
Printing had not yet reached 9th-century Europe (China was many centuries ahead of the West in this, and many other, innovations), and so manuscripts and books (known as codices in medieval days) were laboriously hand-written in monasteries and abbeys across the land. One foggy pre-dawn morning, high upon the Alps at Lake Constance and with a night chill still hanging in the air and dampening the cloaks of every God-fearing Benedictine monk who called The Abbey of Noble Canonesses of Our Lady Under the Lindens home, an illuminated manuscript entitled The Lindau Gospels was finally completed. It had taken over 20 years, and the lives of many monks, to write and illustrate and illuminate the Lindau Gospels. It was, to a man, the work of a lifetime. No rejoicing or book-sharing or ooooh-ing or ahhhhh-ing could take place, however, until a proper book cover was affixed to the illuminated pages of the codex. An upper cover and a lower cover, each requiring exquisite artistry and holy intention, would complete the book for all of eternity.
We have already established that Charles the grandson could not, in any way, improve upon his grandfather’s political masterworks. Having dedicated himself a patron of the arts, he endowed his very own Court School of Charles the Bald, embracing whole-heartedly the Carolingian scholarship of his grandfather. All intellectual and artistic pursuits would be singularly devoted to the study of God. The sublimely powerful written word came as new form of riches to be valued no less than the gleaming gold and garnet of newly-fashioned jewels. From this Court School would emerge the very Craftsman to do justice to the Lindau Gospels. He would craft a thing of beauty, from gleaming gold and rare gems, to match the illuminated words the Benedictine monks had set to parchment.
And so the Craftsman of the Court School of Charles the Bald was sent to The Abbey of Noble Canonesses of Our Lady Under the Lindens, to see the Lindau Gospels for himself. If he did not arrive Under the Lindens with the proper sense of awe and honorifics due to an illuminated manuscript such as was present before him, the Craftsman rightly held his breath for near half a minute in incredulous delight upon first sight. He was bedazzled by the aesthetics of the codex, as the Craftsman could not read the Latin inscribed on the pages, could not himself behold the riches those written words revealed.
The Craftsman labored. Although – and, in hindsight, rightly so – he was not admitted to stay in residence at The Abbey. Instead, the lad found lodging in the nearby village of Weißensberg. Taking his inspiration from the early Christian and Byzantine art so admired by his patron, Charles the Bald, the Craftsman hammered and chiseled the back side of gold sheets to achieve an embossed effect upon the front: repousée. He burned all five fingers on his left hand while working the front cover, as the gold sheets had to be heated and reheated throughout the process until they became incandescent. The blisters that formed after the burned flesh peeled away would never recede; the fingertips of the left hand would thereafter remain rough and insensitive. He would never again, for example, caress the cheek of a gentle lover with that left hand. Strong hands were masculine, but rough fingers that were abrasive to the fresh skin of a young lady, he was later told on more than one occasion, were a turn-off. Even in the 9th century.
For weeks the Craftsman did nothing but hammer and chisel the gold sheets, creating a repousée worthy of the Gospels. He then set to work on the filigree: thin wires of gold twisted into a cord. He made the cords himself, by spinning gold strips into thin wires. He spun metal into golden angel’s hair. This filigree he then mounted onto the underlying sheet of gold repousée. To the gold repousée and gold filigree, the Craftsman mounted garnets, emeralds, sapphires, and pearls. He created a raised jeweled border for the Upper Cover’s perimeter. At the center of the cover, he affixed a jeweled cruciform upon which stood a golden figure of the crucifixion of Christ. Over the head and halo of Christ, the Craftsman inscribed the words HIC EST REX IVDEORVM, This is the King. The Craftsman did not read Latin himself, and so for the translation, a friar by the name of Matthias offered to scribble the phrase on a scrap of vellum. Matthias was new to The Abbey, having arrived only the year before. His brothers-in-God were still unsure about him. It hadn’t yet been decided if he had been given a calling or if he had simply run out of options. Time would tell.
In any event, the Craftsman labored. His Upper Cover of the Lindau Gospels would be one of only three Carolingian goldsmith works of the Court School of Emperor Charles the Bald. He couldn’t have known this at the time, of course. But there was much at stake in his work. Any deviation from perfection would soil his patron’s dreams for a lasting mark on posterity. Charles the Bald wasn’t micromanaging the project, of course. He had larger concerns as Holy Roman Emperor. And the Craftsman had not one moment of hesitation as to the superior quality of his work. As he hammered and chiseled and affixed jewels to gold, he too glowed like the golden sheets beneath his hands, he shined like the polished rubies and pearls rubbed between his scorched fingertips.
The Craftsman glowed and shined because he thought near-constantly of his lover, a young woman about his age who had been living in the same village of Weißensberg for about one year. She definitely had not been in the village more than two years, although no one could say for sure when they first remembered her arrival on the scene. In any event, she was a brewer. She brewed hops in her home, and sold her brew to the inn-keeper who had rented the Craftsman his room. The Craftsman felt it was almost too good to be true. He hammered and chiseled by day, and enjoyed the brew of his beloved by night.
Later, a rumor circulated between Weißensberg and The Abbey of Noble Canonesses of Our Lady Under the Lindens that a woman, in fact, had posed for a certain Craftsman who was at that very moment hammering gold sheets into the likeness of Christ upon the crucifixion. A woman. Had posed as Christ. Or rather, she had not exactly posed as Christ, but she had arranged herself in the position of holding her arms outstretched, head turned ever so slightly and down to the right, ankles pressed firmly together. This couldn’t be proven as blasphemous per se, as any person might stand, at any moment, with his or her arms outstretched. Who was to say that position alone was a blaspheme? It was a fool’s argument. It would not hold up. Not even in 9th-century Europe. In any event, the rumor had the stench of scandal, not because of the pose this woman held for the better half of an otherwise quiet summer morning, but because a Craftsman was hammering into a gold sheet the slightly downturned face of the Christ on an Upper Cover of a Book for The Abbey, and anyone who happened to be peeking through a window could plainly see that this brewer-woman was, in fact, his model. Not one person who heard this rumor was ok with the implication. No one knew who had started the rumor, but everyone agreed the act went Beyond the Pale.
Was the brewer concerned for her safety upon hearing the ugly details of a rumor, spread like wildfire, through a gossipy medieval town, in which outsiders could come and go as they pleased but to disrupt the Natural Order of Things was likely to get one trussed up and hauled before the Magistrate? She was not concerned in the least. She was not concerned in the least because the brewer was not only the current lover of a travelling Craftsman from the Court School of Charles the Bald, but she was also the beneficiary of a great patron, someone high within the ranks of the Carolingian Empire and was, as such, Untouchable. It was in fact this great patron who had suggested that she choose a career in brewing over midwifery, which had always been her Plan B, but would have severely curtailed her personal freedom of movement, which she very much enjoyed. Babies and birthing being what they are.
The Craftsman completed his work, the Upper Cover and the Lower Cover of the Lindau Gospels were affixed to the manuscript before the next winter was out. He returned to the Court School of Charles the Bald and continued his mission as an ambassador of Carolingian Art. He became well known for his use of the hovering, floating figures that he had placed around the body of Christ on the Lindau cover. Those weightless spirits, not held down to the earth, are not found in any earlier examples of Carolingian art. A second bejeweled book cover commissioned by Charles the Bald, The Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram, also bears these same figures. The Craftsman was not yet done with his work. He hammered and he chiseled and he cavorted with the local ladies, always more than a little self-conscious about the scarred and rough fingertips of that left hand.
The Lindau Gospels, now majestically encased in the Upper and Lower Covers commissioned by Charles the Bald, remained at The Abbey of Noble Canonesses of Our Lady Under the Lindens in Lake Constance until 1803, when it was sold to the Canoness Antoinette Baroness von Enzberg. Seeing the enormous profit she could make in a very short period of time, the canoness sold the book to Baron Josef von Lassberg in 1816, where it lived happily for 30 years. An agent for the Earl of Ashburnham purchased the book from von Lassberg in 1846, whereafter the medieval codex landed in America, in the hands of financier and collector John Pierpont Morgan, in 1899. It remains in the collection of the Morgan Library and Museum to this day. If you go to the Morgan and find that the Lindau Gospel is not on display, please ask when it is scheduled to return to the light of day. Its complete story is not yet told.
