Image Doctrine in the Margins
The Annotated Manuscripts of Jerónimo Nadal’s Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia
p. 357-392
Abstracts
Two manuscripts of Nadal’s Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia housed at the Pontifical Gregorian University, each subdivided into two bound volumes, contain numerous marginal and intratextual references to the imagines. This chapter focuses on these insertions and what they tell us about the Society’s investment in defining and controlling the images that anchor Nadal’s text, and especially in distinguishing between two registers of imago—evidentiary and inferential.
Deux manuscrits des Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia de Nadal conservés à l’Université Pontificale Grégorienne, chacun subdivisé en deux volumes reliés, contiennent de nombreuses références marginales et intratextuelles aux imagines. Cette contribution se concentre sur ces insertions et sur ce qu’elles nous disent de l’investissement de la Société dans la définition et le contrôle des images qui ancrent le texte de Nadal, et notamment dans la distinction entre deux registres d’imagines : l’image évidentielle et l’image inférentielle.
Index entries
Mots-clés: image évidentielle, image inférentielle, référence marginale, référence intratextuelle
Keywords: evidentiary image, inferential image, marginal reference, intratextual reference
Full text
1The two manuscripts of Jerónimo Nadal’s Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia housed at the Pontifical Gregorian University, each subdivided into two bound volumes, contain numerous marginal and intratextual references to the imagines, presumably interpolated by the scribe after the bulk of the text had already been written out. Manuscript 1 is a ‘fair copy’ neatly transcribed in a number of hands for presentation to the censors. The adnotationes come first, ranged in liturgical sequence, each prefaced by a title that specifically refers to these descriptive texts as anchored in their associated imagines: for example, chapter xix, Eadem Dominica in Quinquagesima: Sanatur caecus ante Iericho, & duo post Iericho (‘The Same Sunday before Ash Wednesday: One Blind Man is Healed before Jericho, and Two after Jericho’), is titled In 19 imaginem (‘On the 19th Image’) and chapter xx, In Purificatione Beatae Mariae Virginis (‘On the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary’), is titled In 20 imaginem (‘On the 20th Image’).1 In fact, the image that goes with chapter xix is numbered imago 83 on the plate, the image that goes with chapter chapter xx, imago 8 (fig. 12.1). The formulae In 19 imaginem and In 20 imaginem thus repurpose the chapter numbers, using them to identify the imagines, and conversely, they identify the respective chapters as written in response to or, better, as a function of their respective imagines. The subsection comprising the adnotationes is then followed by the texts of the meditationes, again in liturgical order, each listed under a brief title encapsulating the primary subject being meditated: for example, meditation lxxviii is called De Sacrificio et sacramento sacrae Eucharistiae (‘On the Sacrifice and Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist’).
Fig. 12.1. Jerónimo Nadal, Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia, manuscript 1: ‘In 19 imaginem’. Pontifical Gregorian Institute, Rome. APUG 876.04 67

2Manuscript 2 consists of all four types of text found in the Adnotationes et meditationes: captions (adnotiuculae), pericopes, annotations (adnotationes), and meditations (meditationes). These are positioned on the manuscript page so as precisely to map how they should appear on the printed page; the positioning of the pericopes is particularly complex, with varying intervals of space and multiple parallel columns indicating how the Gospel passages mutually relate, and how they may be harmonized into temporally consistent narrative sequences. Unlike manuscript 1, manuscript 2 contains extensive corrections. Blocks of text are crossed out, and substitute blocks are inserted wherever space allows. Instructions to the printer are added here and there: for instance, before the meditation on Palm Sunday, in chapter lxxiii, a note reads: “This is not the [right] place for this meditation, which should be transferred to the end of the annotation and image on page 443.” Before the meditation on Christ in the house of Annas and the betrayal of Peter, in chapter lxxxv, a marginal note inserted next to the opening line of the meditation, reads: “The meditation should be placed not here but after the annotation that follows on page 85.” All these elements, along with the fact that manuscript 2 is written in a loosely penned semi-cursive, rather that in the very neatly penned quasi-cursive of manuscript 1, indicates that manuscript 2 is likely the printer’s copy intended to guide and facilitate the process of typesetting. The somewhat messier appearance of the manuscript overall would tend to support this assumption. So too would the absence of numerous approbationes, which in the first printed edition of 1594/95 would have been limited to the most recent testimonials only. As will become evident from what follows, I believe that the untidier manuscript 2 in fact preceded the cleaner manuscript 1.
3What do these testimonials tell us about the possible involvement of Nadal in the process of correcting his completed book and, more specifically, of ensuring that his text and images were jointly responsive, indeed fully integrated? To answer this question, we need first to look more closely at these statements of support. The adnotatio subsection of manuscript 1 closes with a series of approbations. The earliest are dated 1579 (fig. 12.2):
I have seen the annotations and meditations on the gospels wont to be read in church over the year's course, by Reverend Father Jerónimo Nadal of the Society of Jesus. The doctrine contained [by said annotations and meditations] is indeed wholly sound and Catholic, of great piety and learning, and fit to enkindle faithful hearts to virtue and perfection of the Christian life. Wherefore I deem the work worthy to be published in print for the common good. In Rome on the last day of July 1579, I Doctor Franciscus Toledo have judged in this wise.2
Fig. 12.2. Jerónimo Nadal, Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia, manuscript 1: ‘Approbationes’ in adnotatio section. Pontifical Gregorian Institute, Rome. APUG 876.04 363

4A second approbation, issued on 5 August 1579 by Egidius Gonzalez on the authority of Pope Gregory XIII, immediately follows, along with a third approbation by Jacobus Paets, who confirms the approvals previously granted by his colleagues. Finally, Evangelio Patius of the Order of Augustinian Hermits, having been given the manuscript by Bartholomaeus de Miranda, Master of the Sacred Apostolic Palace, re-approved it at a much later date, 29 August 1593, about two years before it was finally published. The imprimatur, formally conferred by the theologian Joannes Saragosa on 29 August 1593, accompanies Patius’s signature.
5Two sets of approbations appear in the meditatio subsection of manuscript 1. The meditation on the Annunciation concludes with another approbation by Franciscus Toledo, dated 31 July 1579, and co-signed by Egidius Gonzalez and Jacobus Paets on 5 August 1579. In addition, all three licensed the manuscript a third time, at the end of the long excursus in praise of the Virgin Mother of God, again on 31 July and 5 August 1579 respectively. Their tripartite attestation prefaces the much later warrant ot the theologian Hieronymus Vitalius, composed on the order of Bartholomaeus de Miranda who himself supplied the imprimatur, on 4 October 1593 (fig. 12.3):
Father Bartholomaeus de Miranda, Master of the Sacred [Apostolic] Palace, directed me to appraise this whole work containing meditations on the gospels wont to be recited in in church; having judged them free of any defect, I declare in advance that they are worthy to be read and will much profit the pious in spirit. 4 October 1593.3
Fig. 12.3. Jerónimo Nadal, Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia, manuscript 1: Second set of ‘Approbationes’ in meditatio section. Pontifical Gregorian Institute, Rome. APUG 876.03 332bis verso.

6The multiple approbations predating Nadal’s death in 1580 leave open the possibility that he himself may have supervised the revisions to both manuscripts 1 and 2, especially since they are so consistent with his conception of the alternatively and complementarily evidentiary or inferential status of the imagines (on which see chapter 4 supra). In addition to Nadal, his estwhile amanuensis Jacobus Ximenez, who was intimately familiar with the format and function of the Adnotationes et meditationes, may also have been involved with the revisions. Additionally, some of the editorial marks in the margins, such as the x’s used throughout the first half of manuscript 1 to indicate where an explicit textual reference to an imago occurs, were possibly introduced by one of the censors. The sheer number of inserted remarks about images testifies to the central place of the imagines in Nadal’s book: in proofing the manuscript, Nadal, his associates, and/or the censors placed great weight on the correlation between imagines, adnotationes, and meditationes.
7Many of the insertions approach the question of correlation not directly but obliquely – by calling attention to the few identifiable discrepancies between specific adnotationes and the imagines to which they refer. How and why they do so are the questions at issue, but it is important to state at the outset: first, that the remarks adducing momentary lapses of correlation imply that everywhere else, on the contrary, the images and texts, rather than diverging, instead punctiliously correspond; second, that these remarks themselves correlate with the frequent observations about images, which punctuate the master text. Put simply, the interpolated remarks about images are consistent with, indeed amplify the nature and scope of the observations already in place. This is the main reason why it makes sense to identify Nadal – if not him, then his fellow Jesuits in Rome, and their shared image theory – as the primary source of the further observations that can be seen to follow from his. An example of an embedded as opposed to inserted statement about images occurs in annotation C of chapter xxii, Eadem Feria: De thesaurizatione (‘On the Same Weekday [Ash Wednesday]: On the [Parable of] the Laying Up of Treasure’), where Nadal encourages the votary to ornament and particularize imago 22, which portrays Christ preaching on Mount Thabor (‘A’) and describes in five episodes the parable he taught of the laying up of treasure (‘B’-‘F’):
Thieves plunder and purloin everything. You can fashion [an image] of moths devouring a precious garment, of rust eating away magnificent vessels, which things the imago has not been able to represent. And thus are the objects amassed by a miserable miser at the devil’s instigation laid waste by thieves, again at the devil’s behest; and not only are [those things] of no use to him, but they are turned to the greater affliction of his body and spirit. You can meditate those riches harshly tormenting that most wretched man in hell.4
8Nadal adds another instruction about image-making at the close of annotation F, with reference not only to the image of a soul placing his spiritual treasure before God (‘F’), but also to the detailed images comprised by imago 22, which visualize the parable (‘B’-‘F’) with consequent specificity, on the basis of Matthew 6:19-20: “What further things are depicted, pertain to the beauty of the picture, and are not necessary to teaching of the Gospel.”5 They are licensed, in other words, by the rhetorical rule of decorous amplification, and cleave closely to the words of Christ, even while enlarging, but of course never overstepping them. In manuscript 1, both passages are clearly marked with an x.
9Manuscript 2 includes multiple examples of such amplifying supplements to a given imago, in the form of amendments to a given text. Take the addendum to annotation D of chapter vii, Circuncisio Christi (‘Circumcision of Christ’), inscribed at the end of the first sentence and extending far into the right margin (fig. 12.4, pl. 5/VII). It implicitly justifies the artist’s inclusion of two serving boys (‘D’) in imago 5, who carry medicaments and bandages for Christ, and water and a towel for the priest, neither of whom is mentioned in Luke 2:21, and explicitly encourages the beholder to follow suit by imagining all the accoutrements and collateral actions that must plausibly have accompanied the rite of circumcision:
The space of the image could not hold two actions useful to the meditation: medicine is applied to the wound of the crying baby Jesus, which is salved and bandaged, and mother Mary stands nearby, allaying the child’s tears and sorrow with sweet words, and nor is Joseph absent; and then, after application of the medicaments, the mother places the babe on her lap, embraces him most sweetly, caresses and kisses him, and offers him her breast; and thus enfolded, the little boy, [who is] God, finds rest in her embrace and face, and sucks milk from her breast made full by heaven.6
Fig. 12.4. Jerónimo Nadal, Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia, manuscript 2: Marginal note to annotation D of chapter vii, ‘Circuncisio Christi’ (‘Circumcision of Christ’). Pontifical Gregorian Institute, Rome. APUG 876.01 65

10Since this passage is fully integrated into the fair copy of annotation D, it seems probable that manuscript 1 was written after manuscript 2, and in response to it.
11The addendum to annotation D propounds mimetic plausibility (or, alternatively, plausible mimesis) as the principle that guides the process of meditative image-making. The statement inserted into annotation L of chapter xx, In purificatione beatae Mariae Virginis (‘On the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary’), in manuscript 2, takes a somewhat different tack. It declares that the image could not encompass ‘the major distinction between the forecourts of the temple, nor their ornaments’, and admonishes the beholder to ‘let what has been depicted suffice as is’.7 Here the votary is discouraged from amplifying what the imago shows, perhaps because the temple was a sacred space whose precise measurements, both in plan and elevation, had been carefully and contentiously reconstructed by biblical exegetes for centuries. In manuscript 1, the second part of the admonition – maiorem, nec eorum ornamenta, sat nunc esto quod designatum est – was written in darker ink and a slightly more cursive hand, to highlight its presence and underscore its message. And in the published version, the sentence becomes even more prominent: separated from annotation L, it floats below the adnotationes and clearly applies to all of them, like a summa of the process of visualization to be enacted in reaction to imago 8 (pl. 8/XX).
12The long marginal text appended to annotation A of chapter xxviii, Feria Secunda post Primam Dominicam Quadragesimae: Iudicium universale (‘Monday after the First Sunday of Lent: The Universal Judgment’), explains and justifies another kind of adjustment to a Gospel image (fig. 12.5, pl. 99/XXVIII). Conspicuously inserted into manuscript 2, this text is fully and neatly assimilated into manuscript 1. Nadal is trying to justify the inclusion of two imagines of the Last Judgment –imago 98, based on Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21, and imago 99, based on Matthew 25:31-46 (pl. 98/I, 99/XXVIII). The images, he avows, have been fully harmonized, in the sense that they depict two stages of the same event, as described in two sets of biblical loci, which in turn are commemorated at different times of the Church year, the former on the second Monday after the first Sunday in Lent, the latter on the first Sunday of Advent. Here he implicitly compares the process of meditative image-making to the exegetical process of harmonization that draws parallels amongst various integral texts in the four Gospels, assembling them into a continuous narrative sequence. What makes Nadal’s account distinctive is that the instrument wherewith he integrates the constituent parts of the story he tells is a pair of associated imagines:
The first image, which constitutes the first Sunday of Advent, pertains to what shall immediately precede the Universal Judgment, whereas these [in the second image] to what shall be conjoined with the judgment itself. There Christ comes to judge the living and the dead; here he sits in judgment. There he sends angels as ministers of the resurrection: men die, arise, and are brought forth in the valley of Josaphat. Here all have by now risen from the dead, and are assembled at the throne of Christ in majesty. There all creatures threaten mortal men, most of all the wicked; here an end has been made to all such threats, but a fearful judgment is wrought upon the evil, and a most sweet upon the good. Then by a fiery conflagration that shall precede Christ, the whole world and all its works are seen to have burned and been purified. Nothing remains but the heavens, elements, men, and demons; these must be thrust down into hell, those must be judged, either for eternal life or eternal fire.8
Fig. 12.5. Jerónimo Nadal, Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia, manuscript 2: Marginal note to annotation A of chapter xxviii, ‘Feria Secunda post Primam Dominicam Quadragesimae: Iudicium universale’ (‘Monday after the First Sunday of Lent: The Universal Judgment’). Pontifical Gregorian Institute, Rome. APUG 876.01 203

13On this account, neither imago is conceived as plausibly inferential; rather, both are presented as evidentiary of the final things preached by Christ himself on Mount Olivet.
14At the other end of the spectrum between the inferential and the evidentiary is imago 14, key elements of which are defended in a crucial observation added to the opening paragraph of chapter xxvii, Eadem Dominica Prima Quadragesimae: Angeli ministrant Christo (‘The Same First Sunday of Lent: Angels Minister to Christ’) (fig. 12.6, pl. 14/XXVII). This paragraph and its inserted final sentence make a very strong case for plausible inference as a necessary tool of meditative image-making (further on which see chapter 4 supra). As Nadal puts it, there are many things absent from the Gospels that can yet be subsumed into one’s spiritual exercises, since they offend neither against religious doctrine nor practice. Matthew 4:11 incontrovertibly states that “angels came and ministered to [Christ]”; because he was weak and hungry from his fast, they must have brought food and drink; and therefore, if one extends these premises, one may spin a corollary premise, asking whence the food came, and deducing that its point of origin must have been either human or divine. The conclusion to be drawn in the form of a qualifying premise is that “we may thus meditate how the food was borne by angels either from heaven or from the Virgin Mary, as several holy doctors have meditated”.9 The remark was inserted into both manuscripts 1 and 2, in what looks like the same hand. This would suggest that it was a later addition to both, made around the same time, and considered a necessary justification for the most hypothetical and, in this sense, richly ornamented of the sequence of three imagines (12-14) narrating the temptation of Christ in the wilderness.
Fig. 12.6. Jerónimo Nadal, Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia, manuscript 2: Marginal note prefacing annotations on chapter xxvii, ‘Eadem Dominica Prima Quadragesimae: Angeli ministrant Christo’ (‘The Same First Sunday of Lent: Angels Minister to Christ’). Pontifical Gregorian Institute, Rome. APUG 876.01 199

15Meditative plausibility had its own decorum, however, and there were limits to what counted as plausible, as the deletion of a large section of annotation A, crossed out in manuscript 2 and never published, reveals (fig. 12.6). This was the long passage preceding the current annotation A. It may have seemed, in rhetorical terms, to partake excessively of periergia, the combination of high style and trivial subject matter. Christ’s defeat of the devil is a heroic feat; the preparation of his meal, by contrast, appears inconsequential, even if the cook is Mary assisted by angels:
The Virgin Mary’s little house in Nazareth, which by the singular benefaction of Christ is visited in the territory of the town of Picentine Loreto, on the Adriatic Sea. There angels had come as ambassadors to mother Mary. They salute the Virgin most reverently, report of his fast, temptation, victory, even though the mother had learned beforehand from Christ that those things would come to pass, and absent [from him] had contemplated them in [her] heart, as she was wont to do with whatsoever Jesus, being absent, was engaged. They add that Jesus was weakend by hunger, and preferred his mother’s cooking to any other’s. Mary exults in the glory of the son, and having made herself ready prepares food at the hearth for God the son, with care furnishes a little pot of vegetables, roasts little fish in a frying pan. Girded round about, angels assist the impoverished Queen of Heaven, carry water, throw wood on the fire, stoke the flames with bellows, furnish bread, water, perhaps some wine. Never was so dignified a meal prepared, never by such ministers. Nor is it exceeding strange, [for] the meal was being prepared for God: though food had often been prepared for him in this way, yet was this [preparation] more solemn. Seeing that all was ready at last, the angels equip themselves for a journey, take up the provisions, each his allotted part, etc.10
16The drawing of ‘Angels Ministering to Christ’ by ‘Livio Agresti’, from the first series of modelli, prepared under Nadal’s supervision in the early 1560s, precisely illustrates this paragraph: a subsidiary scene marked A, at left, shows Mary seated by the hearth, three angels in attendance, the closest one holding a charger (fig. 12.7).11 The attention lavished on this episode demonstrates that Nadal himself composed the description of the meal prepared in the holy house of Loreto, and that he thought it worthy of inclusion in a relatively conspicuous location, the left middle-ground of the imago. The scene continued to be featured in the drawing by ‘Giovanni Battista Fiammeri’, from the second series of modelli, drawn between 1579 and the early 1580s, and completed after Nadal’s death in 1580 (fig. 12.8). Fiammeri added a chimney emitting smoke from the hearth fire, a telling detail that makes the holy house even more conspicuous. And yet, Bernardino Passeri removed it from his modello, drawn in the mid-1580s, undoubtedly responding to the deletion of the scene from the manuscript and the two earlier series of drawings (fig. 12.9). Just as it is crossed out in manuscript 2, so in the Agresti and Fiammeri drawings, a broad pen line is drawn through scene A. This indicates that a decision was taken by Nadal’s successors – most likely by Jacobus Ximenez – to excise the scene. In order to preserve the close relation between text and image that governs the Adnotationes et meditationes, Mary’s kitchen was then excised from imago 14, so that no trace of it remains in Passeri’s version. Three conclusions can be drawn from these circumstances: first, the process of revising Nadal’s text continued at the very least into the mid-1580s; second, the text and images were revised in tandem; third, the revisions were effected in part by his fellow Jesuits, perhaps in consultation with the censors.
Fig. 12.7. Livio Agresti (attributed to), Angels Minister to Christ, ca. early 1560s, pen and ink. Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma.

Fig. 12.8. Giovanni Battista Fiammeri, Angels Minister to Christ, ca. 1579-early 1580s, red chalk. Windsor Castle, The Royal Collection.

Fig. 12.9. Bernardino Passeri, Angels Minister to Christ, ca. mid-1580s, pen and ink. Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, Brussels.

17One additional significant correction made to manuscript 2 and integrated into manuscript 1 is the addition of the line "you may refer both images to the spirit" – namely, construe them as spiritual allegories – to annotation D of chapter xli, Eadem Feria VI. Post Dominicam Secundam Quadragesimae: Extra vineam filium occidunt (‘The Same Friday after the Second Sunday of Lent: They Kill the [Householder’s] Son outside the Vineyard’) (fig. 12.10, pl. 92/XLI).12 Chapter xli is the second of two devoted to recounting Christ’s Parable of the Householder and His Vineyard in Matthew 21:33-43, Mark 12:1-9, and Luke 20:9-18 – chapters xl-xli (imagines 91-92). The annotations commence with a prefatory statement about the number of imagines required to illustrate the parable fully, in this case two: “The first image could not contain everything; for this reason, the second is added”.13 Similar statements occur throughout the Adnotationes et meditationes, especially the chapters focusing on parables, as witness the remark summing up the sequence of three chapters – xxxvii-xxxix (imagines 73-75) – on the Parable of Dives and Lazarus. It appears just before annotation A of chapter xxxvii in manuscript 1, but was ultimately printed at the close of the meditation concluding chapter xxxvii (pl. 73/XXXVII): “The luxury of the banquetter, his vile death, and hell could not be depicted in a single image; therefore, they have been distributed across three, of which this is the first, with two following”.14 Or take the similar statement that prefaces the annotations on chapter xlii, Sabbatho post Secundam Dominicam Quadragesimae: De Prodigo adolescente (‘Saturday after the Second Sunday of Lent: On the Prodigal Youth’), the first of four on this parable – xlii-xlv (imagines 66-69) – in manuscript 1: “It was needful that the parable of the prodigal youth be contained in four images”.15 Like the remark opening the annotations on chapter xl, these statements assure the reader-beholder that the image encompasses every detail of the parable, and does so in the most fastidious manner possible, leaving out nothing described by Christ. As I have argued elsewhere, this attention to descriptive detail can be seen to correspond to the distinctive status of the parables, which are word-pictures painted by Christ himself, verbal images that set a precise visual template for the pictorial images attaching to them.16 Within this context, the sentence added to annotation D of chapter xli in manuscript 2 insists that the parable, even though it is illustrated literally, cleaves closely to the words of Christ, and displays a very high degree of descriptive specificity, must be interpreted in the manner intended by its divine author – as an allegory of the distinction between the Old Law and the New, bodied forth by Synagogue and the Church. The rest of annotation D drives home this point that the inserted passage sums up in the form an exegetical principle:
He lets his vineyard to husbandmen that they may in time provide its fruit. You may refer both images to the spirit, for the dismissal of Synagogue is openly described, and the election of the Church. Yet are we each admonished gravely neither to neglect nor reject divine visitations and inspirations, lest through perversity of life, having let slip these gifts, we unexpectedly encounter the justice of Christ, and our powers brought to naught, we are shattered, and the justice of God bears down and falls upon the pieces [of ourselves], not only dashing against charity and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but also abolishing faith and hope. For a shameful life is wont to beget despair and infidelity, and the neglect of every good.17
Fig. 12.10. Jerónimo Nadal, Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia, manuscript 2: Marginal note to annotation D of chapter xli, ‘Eadem Feria VI. Post Dominicam Secundam Quadragesimae: Extra vineam filium occidunt’ (‘The Same Friday after the Second Sunday of Lent: They Kill the [Householder’s] Son outside the Vineyard’). Pontifical Gregorian Institute. APUG 876.01 273

18The reference to ‘visitationes vel inspirationes’ doubles as an allusion to the parable itself, which visits its auditors – and here, its viewers – with inspiring words and images that make present the spirit of Christ.
19The interpolations that I now want to examine appear exclusively in manuscript 1, often in the form of marginal glosses. These explanatory notes give us a clearer sense of how the imagines were interpreted. The images were sometimes read fungibly: a single image, as the note appended to annotation G of chapter xix points out, can occasionally signify more than one event. This form of usage occurs very rarely in the Adnotationes et meditationes, which makes all the more conspicuous its appearance in chapter xix, Eadem Dominica Qunquagesimae: Sanatur unus caecus ante Iericho, & duo post Iericho (‘The Same Sunday before Ash Wednesday: One Blind Man is Healed before Jericho, and Two after Jericho’) (fig. 12.11, pl. 83/XIX). The marginal note reads: “This one image and annotation can likewise serve [to represent] this miracle, a few additional things being understood”.18 The miracle to which annotation G alludes is the healing of the two blind men on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, after Christ exits the city; as Nadal notes, this miracle is recorded not in Luke 18:36-43 – the pericope illustrated in imago 83, the circumstances of which are exhaustively described in annotations A-F – but rather, in Matthew 20:29-34 and Mark 10:46-52, which focuses on Bartimeus, one of the two blind men. So why does he insist now on rereading the imago as an image of this other miracle?
Fig. 12.11. Jerónimo Nadal, Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia, manuscript 1: Marginal note to annotation G of chapter xix, ‘Eadem Dominica Qunquagesimae: Sanatur unus caecus ante Iericho, & duo post Iericho’ (‘One Blind Man is Healed before Jericho, and Two after Jericho’). Pontifical Gregorian Institute. APUG 876.04 68

20The answer has to do with the allegorical reading of the two Jerichoan miracles, that Nadal develops in annotation G. The healing of the blind man as Jesus enters Jericho alludes to the mystery of the Incarnation, by which he took up the burden of human flesh, passible, blind, and subject to hunger, thirst, and decay, and engaged to alleviate humankind’s spiritual infirmities. Conversely, his healing of the two blind men as he leaves Jericho en route to Jerusalem and the Cross, signifies the mystery of the Passion, whereby he engaged to suffer cruelly in the flesh, that the wounds engendered by human sin might be healed. This second miracle also functions as an allegory of his desire to lighten our spiritual eyes by means of meditative prayer: “Jesus was climbing toward his Passion and Cross to be endured in Jerusalem: he wanted thereby to signify that there is need of divine illumination in meditating [his] Cross and Passion, and drawing fruit from them”.19 The reason, then, why we are counselled here to read one and the same image in two ways, is that the imago is designed to operate as a meditative crux upon and around which a double allegory is constructed: for this double allegory to work, Christ must be seen as both coming and going, and as such, the image must be construable in both senses. As a matter of fact, the imago works fine either way, with minimal, if any, retooling required from the beholder. The captions, for example, could easily apply either to the blind man healed before Jericho, or to Bartimeus who was healed afterward; the reader need only decide whether caption A, ‘Jericho, the city of palms’, stands for Jesus’s destination or point of departure. Imago 83, viewed in this way, and its attendant annotations and meditation are instances when, precisely because a single image can be read in two ways, the historical event becomes nearly transparent to, or even elides into its allegorical meaning. The ‘mystery’ or, better, puzzle of one image that can function as two, stands proxy for a different kind of mystery or, rather, for two mysteries – that of the Incarnation and that of the Passion, by the power of which we are made whole and our spiritual eyes opened. In the published version of chapter xix, the marginal note was altered to read ‘the image and its annotatiunculae’ (‘captions’), and this allowed the text to be moved to a more visible location, immediately below the captions in the imago, and below the adnotatiunculae at the start of chapter xix (pl. 83/XIX).20 As a result, the injunction became more prominent, for it now frames one’s viewing of imago 83 and reading of chapter xix.
21This use of a single image in place of two leads one to ask why in other cases, additional images were added, creating sequences in which the pericopes associated with a Sunday, feast day, or feria were illustrated multiply. Chapter liv, Dominica IIII. Quadragesimae: Quietem agunt discipluli iubente Christo, postea navigant trans mare (‘Fourth Sunday of Lent: The Disciples Repose at the Command of Christ; Afterward They Cross the Sea by Boat’), chapter lv, Eadem Dominica: Docet, et sanat lanquidos. Distribuuntur turbae, quasi per contubernia (‘The Same Sunday: He Teaches and Heals the Sick. The Multitude Is Divided, as if into Squadrons’), and chapter lvi, Eadem Dominica: Satiat quinque millia hominum (‘The Same Sunday: He Furnishes [Food] to Five Thousand Men’), describe the events associated with his preaching beside the sea of Tiberias, chronicled in Matthew 14:13-22, Mark 6:31-45, Luke 9:10-17, and John 6:1-17 (pl. 41/LIIII, 42/LV, 43/LVI). In chapter lvi, the assertion “This image is added to make the event more vivid”, which precedes the annotations on imago 43, justifies the presence of this third illustration, which is organized exactly like the previous imago, with the main protagonists, Christ and the disciples, positioned in nearly identical poses (pl. 42/LV).21 Given these similarities, how should we interpret the reference to expressio (‘vividness, clarity’)? The marginal gloss inserted beside annotations B and C reveals more explicitly what imago 43, as opposed to imago 42, purports to represent: “All were contented by five loaves and two fishes. Over and above this, there were twelve baskets of leftovers. He then dismisses the multitude who offer him divine thanks. He blesses them most kindly”.22 The first image depicts the people being taught by the disciples Christ sends to instruct them, whereas the second depicts how they are fed by him and, having been fed, come to realize that he has been sent by God, and are blessed; the close visual analogies between the two imagines thus enable the viewer better to comprehend how they differ in status and meaning. We might put this as follows: the words conveyed in imago 42 are consumed, like food, in imago 43. In moving from one image to the other, the votary negotiates between two kinds of depiction – of an historical event in 42, of an allegorical rendering of this same event in 43 (pl. 42/LV, 43/LVI).
22Annotation C of chapter lv emphasizes that the care Christ urges his disciples to expend on preaching finds its most perfect expression not here but in the imago to follow. It operates in this sense as a proleptic exploration of the theme of the cura Christi (‘care, solicitousness of Christ’), the full development of which is deferred until imago 43. The implication is that imago 42, even while showing something different from imago 43, prepares for or even adumbrates it: “In the following image contemplate how great is the care of Christ, also of the apostles, lest the multitude suffer hunger. The place is barren, say all the apostles, the hour draws nigh, for it is dusk; send the people away: and Christ responds by saying what he always says to bishops and prelates – that they ought to feed [the people].”23 Indeed, the block of text appended to annotation F insists that episode F of imago 42 be read as a Eucharistic allusion to the cura Christi more fully enacted in imago 43:
Divine virtue receives and begins to sanctify the loaves by taking and touching them, looks heavenward, signifying whence divine virtue would be conferred on them; he blesses them and sets the miracle in motion, imbuing the loaves with divine virtue: so that what could only nourish by natural means, might now bring forth supernaturally another kind of bread, and by the divine virtue of the hands of Christ, a few seeds might produce a mighty harvest. He breaks [the loaves] into pieces, and by this breaking he divinely measures out the divine loaves, whereby they are multiplied, distributes to the disciples the bread he has broken, that they too might break the loaves imbued with divine virtue, and multiply them. O bread, o riches beyond measure, o glorious sweetness!24
23The hermeneutic function of multiplying an event across several imagines becomes even more apparent in the marginal gloss added to annotation A of chapter cxxii, Dominica Tertia post Pascha. De eo quod dixit Christus; Modicum & non videbitis me, etc. (‘Third Sunday after Easter: On that which Christ Said, “A little while, and you shall not see me, etc.”’) (pl. 104/CXXII). This is the first chapter in a three-part sequence extending through chapter cxxiii, Dominica Quarta post Pascha: De eo quemadmodum Spiritus sanctus arguit mundum, etc. (‘Fourth Sunday after Easter: What the Holy Spirit Discloses to the World, etc.’), and concluding with chapter cxxiv, Dominica Quinta post Pascha: Orationis perfectio docetur (‘Fifth Sunday after Easter: Perfection of Prayer is Taught’) (pl. 105/CXXIII, 106/CXXIIII). As in the case of imagines 82 and 83, imagines 104-106 follow the same template: Jesus and the apostles are positioned in nearly the same fashion in all three images, to emphasize that this is one continuous event, even if commemorated over the course of three Sundays. On the other hand, the tripartite sequence of imagines subdivides Christ’s last discourse to his disciples, as recorded in John 16, into three consecutive phases or aspects that are further demarcated by their allied chapter heads, captions, pericopes, annotations, and meditations. The marginal gloss – “which for perspicuity’s sake it should please to represent here by means of another image, as next at hand by the following two images” – along with annotations A, B, and C, discloses why this organizing apparatus of connection and separation was applied.25 Nadal avers in ‘A’ that Christ arose from the Last Supper and began to deliver his long discourse on what was soon to follow. In ‘B’ he explains that a short time (modicum) would pass during which he and they would be parted, while he lay in the tomb, and that his absence would correspond to a dimming of the light of faith, brought about by their failure to see him either in body or spirit. In ‘C’ he affirms that after another short period of time, that is, after the Resurrection, they would see him again, not only exteriorly but also interiorly, by faith, even though some of them, at one time or another, had failed to believe. This, then, is the explanation for the division into three separate yet interconnected parts: the intervals between the chapters – we might call them ‘breaks’ – stand for the modica that will soon follow the Passion, when after daily seeing him, being with him, they will lose sight of him in body, mind, and spirit, and then, after he is risen, will see him again, their bodily and spiritual vision restored. The similarity of the three imagines, in particular the way they feature Christ standing foursquare amongst them, fully visible, unencumbered, with arms outstretched, emphasizes that the discourse currently unfolding is about the Lord’s presence, his corporeal and spiritual apparency. The three parts of this discourse make perspicuous the intervals of seeming absence that will test their faith, or alternatively, they mark the modica that correlate respectively to the start of his homily, to his prophecy of the Passion, and to his promise of the Resurrection. The marginal gloss on the three images constitutive of the final homily thus alerts the votary to the close relation between vision and speech, preparing him better to discern that the true topic of the sermon being delivered by Christ is the consanguinity of sight, discernment, and faith.
24The question of sequence much exercised the annotators of manuscript 1, as the statement prefacing the annotations on chapter lxxi, Feria Secunda Maioris Hebdomadae: Caena apud Simonem leprosum (‘Monday of Holy Week: The Feast at the House of Simon the Leper’), makes evident. The prefatory remark was highlighted with a cross:
This image is placed in front [of the others], along with the annotation[s], on account of the historical sequence, according to which you may meditate [what occurred] before Jesus’s entry into the city [viz., Jerusalem], and accommodate it to the Monday, following the usage of the Church: you will observe the same with regard to the next three [images], the history of which is comprised by the gospel for the ninth Sunday after Pentecost.26
25The sequence of three images in question illustrates chapter lxxii, Dominica in Ramis Palmarum: Ducitur asina & pullus ad Iesum (‘Palm Sunday: The Ass and Colt Are Led to Jesus’), chapter lxxiii, Eadem Dominica in Ramis Palmarum: In conspectum Hierusalem venit Iesus (‘The Same Palm Sunday: Jesus Comes in Sight of Jerusalem’), and chapter lxxiv, Eadem Dominica in Ramis Palmarum: Ingressus solennis in civitatem (‘The Same Palm Sunday: Solemn Entry into the City’) (pl. 85/LXXII, 86/LXXIII, 87/LXXIIII). Whereas liturgical tradition dictates that the latter three events be commemorated on the ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Nadal has instead attached them to Holy Week and to the final meal celebrated by Christ before his fateful entry into Jerusalem. In defending the placement of these images, Nadal and his fellow Jesuits were privileging the historical integrity of the Passion cycle over and above liturgical desiderata. Although it is true that every plate in the Adnotationes et meditationes carries two numbers – an Arabic numeral identifying its place in the historical sequence, and a Roman numeral that correlates to the chapter number and, for the most part, to the liturgical calendar – an exception seems to have been made for the ordering of the Passion images and texts. Here the historical sequence and the criteria of Gospel harmonization hold pride of place. The chapters attaching to imagines 85-87 were displaced from their Pentecostal context and subsumed into Holy Week, as the prefatory disclaimer avows.
26Amongst other references to liberties taken in ordering and composing the images, one of the most interesting appears in annotation F of chapter lviii, Feria tertia post Dominicam IIII. Quadragesimae: Docet Iesus; concitantur contra eum Iudaei (‘Tuesday after the Fourth Sunday in Lent: Jesus Teaches; the Jews Contend with Him’) (pl. 51/LVIII). The annotation, marked with an x, praises the draughtsman’s witty (festive) addition of little demons holding chains just above the heads of the hostile Jews; the device, as Nadal notes, alludes to their desire to vanquish Christ, to subdue and kill him.27 Their motives are known to him, but he thwarts them for now because the hour of his death has not yet arrived. Underlying this account of his forbearance and foreknowledge is John 6:7: “[…] but me [the world] hateth: because I give testimony of it, that the works thereof are evil.” If annotation F reads like an endorsement of pictorial license exercised with a view to showing what Christ knows about his interlocutors, and what the evangelist John allows the reader to infer, the text inscribed in the margin of annotation B bis, by more precisely describing the significance of Christ’s gesture and pose, puts stress on the correspondence between Gospel text and Gospel image: “This being the case, Jesus yet responds benignly and knowingly: ‘One work have I done, and you all wonder’”.28 There follows an additional interpolation that unlike almost all the others was not included in the published text, surely because it cast into doubt the capacity of images to encompass the primary res of the Gospels: “The rest of what this Gospel contains could not be expressed by the image, as oftentimes many other things.”29 Inserted between annotations E and F, this assertation must partly refer to the events chronicled in John 7:26-52, none of which appears in imago 58, but it can easily be read as a warning against the limited scope of the book’s evangelical images. The insertion can hardly have come from Nadal, and it is significant that it was never incorporated into the book as published.
27Other allusions to constituent elements present in the Gospel text but absent from the image because they transgress the unities of time and place, were kept most assuredly. These inserted passages, all of which were incorporated into the published book, primarily serve as prompts to the votary that invite him to visualize, in agreement with the pictorial image, ancillary elements that the imago does not show. For example, the note added to annotation A ter of chapter lxxix, De gestis post sacram communionem (‘On the Events after Holy Communion’) – “which the same image could not be represent” – refers to the clearing of the (altatr) table, after celebration of the Holy Eucharist, which must be imagined to have occurred before Jesus began to preach (pl. 103/LXXIX).30 Added to annotation F of chapter cxix, Prandet cum septem discipulis Iesus (‘Jesus Eats with the Seven Disciples’), the sentence – “Then with very weighty words and spirit he makes Peter the pastor of his flocks and vicar in his Church, which [things] the image could not express” – urges the votary to imagine what transpired directly after Peter, responsive to Christ’s command, prepared a meal of fish for him and then joined him at table (pl. 145/CXIX).31 John 21 does not specify that Peter cooked the meal, but imago 145 nevertheless stresses this point, and places him beside Christ, to demonstrate that it is about Peter’s primacy as vicar and servant of the Lord. Seated between Jesus and the other disciples, he is portrayed as the person who mediates their presence at table. Furthermore, he points at the fish placed before Christ, an allusion to his faith in the mystery of the Resurrection; he seems to aver that it is truly Christ in the flesh who sits at table, as shown by the fact that he dines with them, in accordance with John 21:13-14: “And Jesus cometh and taketh bread, and giveth to them, and fish in like manner. This is now the third time that Jesus was manifested to the disciples, after he was risen from the dead”. Imago 145, then, is an epitome of pictorial license and decorum, for every liberty it takes is anchored in John 21. Moreover, it provides all the information one needs to visualize what comes next – namely, the episode distilled by annotation F.
28Insertions of this kind chiefly function as a tacit acknowledgment of the narrative coherence of the book’s pictures: the image sets the scene for those corollary events that the mind’s eye may project onto the scenography of the imago, either just before or just after what is actually portrayed. This proves true in particular for the imagines not organized as itineraria winding from the background into the foreground and then back again. Instead, these imagines tend to focus on a single event; the subsidiary episodes, like the central scene, are pushed forward; aligned with the picture plane, all the episodes occur as if simultaneously. A prime example of this format is imago 148 illustrating chapter cxxvi, Ascensio Christi in coelum (‘Ascension of Christ into Heaven’) (pl. 148/CXXVI). Annotation F describes the events that immediately followed the Ascension: “But in those days the apostles and disciples, expecting the advent of the Holy Spirit, were full of hope, returned daily to the temple, praised and blessed God (truly in such wise as no image could express), and until the time when they should receive the power of the Holy Spirit and be endowed with divine firmness and constancy, by the will and disposition of Christ noone hindered them or drove them away”.32 Caption F distills this annotation, as follows: “They return home and go assiduously to temple, praising and blessing God, which no [pictorial] image could express”.33 Inscribed near the right margin, just under the tree, the letter F indicates that we should imagine what annotation F describes, as if it were unfolding at right in an adjacent, consecutive scene. The disciples’ animated poses, gestures, and facial expressions can easily be applied to the events delineated in caption F and annotation F; which is to say that the avowal “quod non potuit exprimere imago”, far from foreclosing the visualization of F, prompts us to imagine, on the basis of imago 148, how the disciples actively awaited Pentecost.
29Occasionally, variations on the phrase haud non potuit exprimere imago are inserted into the manuscript to signal that the event to be imagined, along with its attendant circumstances, though they follow from the imago and may be appreciated as consistent with it, have not actually been pictured because they derive not from the Gospels but from devotional practice. Take the marginal gloss on annotation A of chapter cvi, De Christi sepultura (‘On the Burial of Christ’) (pl. 133/CVI). In this specific case, what “the picture cannot express” is the iconography of the Pietà licensed by meditative tradition, but not by Scripture:
Piously we shall meditate how the Virgin mother Mary, clutched Christ to her breast once he had been lowered from the Cross (which no image could express) and with the greatest sorrow of spirit, and the greatest devotion caressed him, surveyed his every wound, with her hands touched and stroked him, dampened him with tears, how her spirit trembled now with compassion, now in sweet and pious hope of the Resurrection. Standing round, the holy women and disciples, the Magdalene above all, as far as is permitted make full her spirit with pious offices and devotion […]. The Virgin mother discourses divinely on the death of her son […] and makes known her wish that he now be conveyed to the tomb, the day drawing to dusk.34
30The qualifying phrase, seen in this light, has a double purchase: it allows us to infer that extra-scriptural images, though they may be imagined, have in practice been omitted; it suggests as well that emotions as great as those of Mary and her companions, though they may be visualized in mind and heart, are finally beyond the scope of material images.
31I have been examining various kinds of reference to images in the marginal notations of the two manuscripts prepared for the typographer and censors of the Adnotationes et meditationes. As we have just seen, these addenda distinguish between pictured and imagined images, visual and verbal image-making, even while stressing their complementarity. They also direct our attention to a host of criteria applied to the production of the imagines: the principles of amplification, multiplication, and distillation, of exegetical harmonization, of inference and meditative plausibility, and of narrative coherence. The interpolated remarks have also enabled us to consider how decorum and descriptive specificity can accompany, rather than foreclosing, pictorial license, and how evidentiary image-making can provide a basis for parabolic allegory. In closing, I want briefly to discuss the only instance of internal contradiction or, more exactly, unresolved ambiguity in the relation between text and image that I have thus far encountered in Nadal’s magnum opus. To set the scene for this anomalous case, let us begin by recalling how punctilious Nadal and his collaborators usually were about closing the gap between the imagines and their corresponding captions, pericopes, annotations, and meditations.
32Imago 88, which illustrates chapter XXIX, Feria III. post Domin. I. Quadragesimae: Eijcit Iesus vendentes de templo (‘Wednesday after the First Sunday of Lent: Jesus Expels the Sellers from the Temple’) depicts in the foreground the event chronicled in Matthew 21:12-13, Mark 11:15-16, and Luke 19:45-46, and compares it to the similar event in John 2:14-17 (pl. 88/XXIX). The marginal gloss on annotation A clarifies which of the two is shown here, and emphasizes that Christ, his ministry now ending, has become sterner, more demanding. It states that at the start of his ministry, he raised a scourge against the sellers in the temple, but used it only to expel their livestock, gently forbearing to strike any man. But now, continues the prefatory statement, just days before the crucifixion, though he carries no scourge, he strikes with greater force, expelling both buyers and sellers, and overturning the chairs of the sellers of doves. This imago, annotation A concludes, perforce depicts the second cleansing of the temple. The gloss was clearly added to stress how true to Scripture imago 88 is; by accurately distinguishing between two otherwise very similar events, it heightens the votary’s sensitivity to scriptural detail and, more importantly, makes him aware of differences in the behavior of Christ. In his thirty-third year, on the cusp of the Passion, he behaved differently than he had earlier.35
33The marginal note, ultimately published as a preface to chapter XXIX’s annotations, typifies the very close connection between text and image characteristic of the Adnotationes et meditationes. It therefore comes as a surprise in another context to encounter an example of conspicuous ambiguity in imagines 111-112 respectively illustrating chapter lxxxiv, Ducitur ad Anna primum (‘He is First Led to Annas’), and chapter lxxxv, Interrogatur ab Anna. Negat eum Petrus (‘He Is Interrogated by Annas. Peter Denies Him’) (pl. 111/LXXXIIII, 112/LXXXV). In chapter lxxxiv, the key revision is inscribed in dark ink as an alternative version of annotation C: it states that Annas thanked the mob for soliciting his preliminary judgment of that ‘scoundrel’ Christ; Annas then demurred, saying that Christ must first be brought to Caiaphas. This is why “another set of annotations has been subjoined” – viz., the annotations to be found in chapter lxxxv, which ostensibly describe the events that followed, that is, in the house of Caiaphas.36 Imago 111 depicts Christ being led to Annas (‘A’), made to stand before him (‘B’), and then redirected to Caiaphas (‘C’). However, the title, captions, and annotations of chapter lxxxv situate the interrogation of Christ (‘A’) and the first blow struck against him (‘B’) in Annas’s house, not Caiaphas’s. Annotation A bis, for instance, reads:
Annas bore Jesus’s answer most bitterly, ordering that he be seized and conveyed to his son-in-law Caiaphas, the high priest of that year, whither all the priests, scribes, and elders had gone, and whom [Annas] himself hastened to follow, so as to take part in their deliberations and judgment. Here meditate anew with what indignity and contumely the wicked men led good Jesus, [and] how Peter and John followed timidly at a distance. In truth, I find it easy to agree with Augustine and the common consensus that Jesus was interrogated by Annas, there received the blow and was denied by Peter: and yet images [of Jesus and Annas] are adapted to both accounts. For even if nothing I have said took place in the house of Annas, yet it can be meditated there: in what manner Jesus was presented to [Annas], and how [Annas] forthwith signalled that [Jesus] should be led away to Caiaphas and that he himself would follow. From the present image, the things remaining can be observed as if brought to pass in the house of Caiaphas.37
34The line ex p[raese]nti imagine quasi in domo Caiaphae facta intelligantur, added in dark ink by a different hand, leaves open the status of imago 112, allowing the viewer to situate the events shown in A and B either in Annas’s house or in Caiaphas’s, and accessorily, to identify the figure labeled A either as Annas or Caiaphas. In the published text, an additional inscription, engraved at the base of imago 111, though it strongly favors setting these events in Annas’s house, nonetheless continues to acknowledge, if not endorse, both options:
This image has been placed [here], should anyone wish to conclude that the blow against Jesus was not struck in Annas’s house, nor Peter’s first denial made there. Yet that both occurred in that very place, conforms more to the Gospel text, as depicted in the next imago.38
35This disclaimer invites us to read imago 112 as an image of Christ before Annas, even though it follows imago 111 that clearly shows Annas pointing the way to Caiaphas. On the contrary, as we have just seen, annotation A bis reinstates the possibility that we are looking at Jesus’s encounter with Caiaphas, which would then continue in chapter lxxxvi, Trahitur ad Caipham Iesus. Negat iterum Petrus (‘Jesus Is Dragged to Caiaphas. Peter Denies Him a Second Time’). What distinguishes this ambiguity in the status of imagines 111-112 from the multiple interpretations of imagines 98-99 (chapters i and xviii) or imago 83 (chapter xix), discussed above, is that here ambiguity shades into ambivalence. The two readings of imagines 111 and 112 are definitely not harmonized; they are mutually contradictory. The inscription added to imago 111, which invokes the Gospels (specifically, the pericopes of Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22, and John 17 cited in chapters lxxxiv and lxxxv), stating that Annas’s house was the probable locus, but refrains from foreclosing the alternative reading, exposes a certain tension in the narrative function of the two imagines, and their sequential relation. But the inscription, probably composed ex post facto by a follower of Nadal, also reveals how the Jesuits strove to maintain the criterion of meditative license, the freedom of the votary to explore alternative scenarios, so long as neither alternative contravenes Scripture or the exegetical tradition. Quite the reverse: as the clause si quis velit intelligere affirms, in reading images accommodations of this kind must be preserved.
Footnotes
1 Since the two manuscripts of Jerónimo Nadal’s Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia quae in sacrosancto Missae sacrificio toto anno leguntur are inconsistently paginated, citations in my text are accompanied by references to the relevant chapter numbers.
2 Vidi annotationes et meditationes in evangelia per anni cursum in ecclesiam legi solita R. P. Hieronymi Natalis sacerdotis societatis Iesu, quae quidem sanam omnino et catholicam doctrinam continent, magnaeque eruditionis et pietatis ad fidelium corda ad virtutem et vitae christianae perfectionem inflammanda. Quare dignum opus iudico, quod typis excudatur ad communem utilitatem.
3 Huic toti operi, quod continet meditationes in Evangelia in Ecclesiam decantari solita censuram meam apponi praecepit Reverendissimus sacripalatij Magister Pater Bartholomaeus de Miranda, quas a omni labe nudas iudicari, praeloqui dignas censeo, in quibus legendis spiritus piis non parum proficiet. Romae, 4. Octobris. MD.LXXXXIII.
4 Fures effodiunt omnia & furantur. Potes tineas demolientes ad pretiosam vestem, ad praeclara vasa aeruginem affingere, quae imago non potuit exprimere. Itaque quae Daemone instigante comparavit miser avarus, illa eodem procurante fures diripiunt; & non solum avaro non sunt usui, sed in maiorem, & corporis, & animi afflictionem convertuntur. Potes meditari eas divitias in Inferno duriter cruciare miserrimum hominem.
5 Quae praeterea depinguntur, ad decorem picturae spectant, non sunt ad Evangelij doctrinam necessaria.
6 Non potuit locus imaginis capere gesta duo, quae ad meditationem sunt utilia: alterum, ut pueri Iesu plorantis vulneri medicina adhibeatur, vulnus liniatur & obligetur, Maria mater ut astet, fletum & dolorem filij verbis suavissimis demulcens, nec desit officio Ioseph: alterum, quemadmodum post factam medicinam puerum excipiat gremio mater, suavissime complectatur, foveat, deosculetur, mammam illi offerat: ut vicissim in illius sinu, complexu, vultu conquiescat infantulus Deus, & lac sugat virginis ab ubere de caelo pleno.
7 Non potuit Imago exprimere distinctionem atriorum maiorem, nec eorum ornamenta: sat nunc esto quod designatum est.
8 Prima imago, quae prima Dominica Adventus facta est, ad illa attinet quae Iudicium universale proxime praecedent; haec ad ea quae erunt coniuncta cum ipso Iudicio. Illic venit ad iudicandos vivos & mortuos Christus: hic sedet in Iudicio. Illic mittit Angelos ad ministerium resurrectionis; moriuntur, resurgunt, adducuntur in vallem Iosaphat homines: hic omnes iam resurrexerunt a mortuis, & sunt ante Christum ad thronum maiestatis eius congregati. Illic minantur omnes creaturae mortalibus, malis praesertim: hic illarum minarum est finis. Exercetur vero iudicium in malos horrendum, in bonos suavissimum. Denique ignis incendio, qui praecedet Christum, totus orbis, & operae eius conflagrasse, & purgata esse omnia intelliguntur; aliud nihil remanere, quam caelos, elementa, homines, Daemones; hos in Infernum detrudendos, illos iudicandos, vel in vitam aeternam, vel in aeternum ignem.
9 Poterimus igitur meditari cibum Christo angelorum ministerio allatum, sive e caelo, sive a Matre virgine; quod & nonnulli sancti Doctores meditati sunt.
10 Domuncula Mariae virginis in Nazareth, ea videlicet quae visitur singulari Christi beneficio Laureti in agri picaeni vico, de mare Adriaticum. Ibi angeli qui legati venerant a Jesu ad matrem Mariam[.] Virginem salutant honorificentissime, renuntiant de eius ieiunio, de tentatione, de victoria, tametsi ea et prius a Christo mater intellexerat futura et mente fuerat contemplata absens, ut ea solebat in quibuscunque absens Jesus versabatur. Addunt fame illum esse debilitatum, et malle a matre paratis cibis refici, quam aliunde. Exultat Maria de filij gloria, et accincta ad focum parat cibos filio Deo, leguminis ollulam curat, frigit in sartagine pisciculas. Angeli succincti subserviunt Reginae celorum pauperi, aquam portant, ligna foco subijciunt, flammam follibus excitant, parant panem, aquam, et fortassis non nihil vini. Nunquam tam dignum prandium paratum est, nunquam talibus ministris. Nec mirum Deo prandium parabatur: quanquam similiter est illi saepe paratus cibus, sed hic solennius. Vident tandem angeli parata omnia; accingunt se itineri, sumunt cibaria suam singuli partem, etc.
11 Throughout this chapter, as also in my earlier one on evidentiary and inferential image-making in Nadal’s Adnotationes et meditationes, I use the names of Livio Agresti and Giovanni Battista Fiammeri, usually cited as the designers of the first and the second series of drawings for the Imagines, as placeholders of a sort for the still to be identified draftsmen or teams of draftsmen.
12 Utramque imaginem potes ad spiritum referre.
13 Non potuit omnia complecti superior imago, propterea additur secunda.
14 Non potuit una imagine depingi luxus Epulonis, mors tetra, & Infernus, propterea in tres imagines haec distribuimus: superior una est, sequuntur duae.
15 Et hic oportuit quatuor imaginibius complecti parabolam Prodigi adolescentis.
16 W.S. Melion, Parabolic Analogy and Spiritual Discernment in Jéronimo Nadal’s Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia of 1595, in L. Stelling, H. Hendrix, and T.M. Richardson (eds), The Turn of the Soul: Representations of Religious Conversion in Early Modern Art and Literature, Leiden-Boston, 2012 (Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture, 23), p. 291-338.
17 Locat alijs agricolis vineam suam, qui dent proventum suo tempore. Utramque imaginem potes ad spiritum referre, nam aperte ex-auctoratio Synagogae describitur, & Ecclesiae electio. Tamen gravissime admonemur singuli, ut divinas visitationes vel inspirationes non negligamus vel reijcamus, ne amissis donis, incidamus in Christi iustitiam per vitae nostrae perversitatem, & conquassentur vires nostrae & confringantur. In quas confractas incumbat & cadat Dei iustitia, & comminuat non charitatem solum, & dona spiritus sancti; sed fidem etiam aboleat & spem. Solet enim vita flagitiosa parere desperationem atque infidelitatem, vel omnino omnis boni neglectum.
18 Huic item miraculo subservire potest una haec imago et annotatio paucis praeterea intellectis.
19 Ascendebat Iesus ad passionem & crucem Hierosolymis subeundam: voluit ergo significare lumine caelesti opus esse ad meditationem crucis & passionis suae, & fructum eius percipiendum.
20 J. Nadal, Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia quae in sacrosancto Missae sacrificio toto anno leguntur, Antwerp, Martinus Nutius, 1595, imago 83: Sanationi duorum caecorum post Iericho subservire possunt hae annotatiunculae, ut imago.
21 Haec additur imago ad maiorem rei expressionem.
22 Saturantur omnes e quinque panibus & duobus piscibus. Supersunt fragmentorum cophini duodecim. Dimittit deinde turbas gratias illi agentes divinas certatim: eis ipse benedicit humanissime.
23 In reliqua imagine contemplare quanta sit cura Christi, Apostolorum etiam, ne pericliteratur fame turba. Desertus, inquiunt Apostoli omnes, est locus, hora praeterijt, vespera enim est; dimitte turbas: & Christos respondet ut eos ipsi alant, quod plane semper dicit Episcopis & Praelatis.
24 Accipit virtus Dei panes, incipit divinos facere suo captu & tactu, suspicit in caelum, significans unde divinam virtutem illis esset communicaturus; benedicit illis, molitur miraculum, indit virtutem panibus divinam; ut qui tantum nutrire poterant naturaliter, possint etiam alios panes supernaturaliter germinare, ut pauca semina ingentem segetem, divina Christi manuum virtute. Frangit, metit divinitus ex panibus divinis sua fractione, qua illi multiplicabantur distribuit discipulis a se fractos panes, ut & ipsi frangerent divina virtute imbutos, & multiplicarent. O panum immensas opes, & suavitatem gloriosam!
25 Quod alia figura libuit hic repraesentare ad maiorem perspicuitatem, ut proxime sequentibus duabus imaginibus.
26 Praemittitur imago haec & adnotatio propter historiae seriem, ex qua tu, & ante ingressum Iesu in urbem poteris meditari, & accommodare ad feriam secundam, iuxta usum Ecclesiae: similiter intellige de tribus proximis, quarum historiam complectitur Evangelium nonae Dominicae post Pentecosten.
27 Illud tamen festive pictor adiunxit, capitibus Iudaeorum insistentes daemonculos cum vinculis, ut significetur quid in eorum animis operarentur Diaboli.
28 Haec cum ita sint respondet tamen illis Iesus benigne & sapienter: Unum opus operatus sum, & omnes miramini.
29 Reliqua ex hoc evangelio imagine exprimi non potuerunt. Ut saepe multa alia.
30 Quod non potuit repraesentare eadem imago.
31 Constituit Petrum pastorem omnium ovium suarum, & Vicarium in terris: quod imago capere non potuit.
32 Illis vero diebus pleni spe Apostoli & Discipuli, exspectantes Spiritus sancti adventum, versabantur quotidie in templo, laudantes & benedicentes Deum (huiusmodi vero non potuit exprimere imago) nec quisquam illos impediebat vel abigebat, ita volente & disponente Christo, donec acciperent Spiritus sancti virtutem, qua robur induerent divinum & constans adversus persequutores omnes.
33 Redeunt domum, & sunt assidue in templo, laudantes & benedicentes Deum, quod non potuit exprimere imago.
34 Pie possumus meditari depositum e cruce Christum Mariam Virginem matrem gremio excepisse (quod not potuit exprimere imago) & summa cum animi sui partim moestitia, partim devotione fovisse, oculis omnia vulnera lustrasse, manibus contrectasse ac demulsisse, lachrymis irrigasse, pavisse animum hinc compassione, illinc suavi ac pia resurrectionis expectatione. Circumstantes mulieres ac discipuli quoad licuit, Magdalena praesertim, animum pijs officijs & devotione explent; renovatur luctus. Habet divinam orationem Virgo Mater de eius morte ad filium; praesentes attentissimis auribus audiunt: finem facit Virgo Mater dicendi, faciunt alij, ostendit illa velle ut statim sepulturae mandetur inclinante iam die ad vesperum, aufertur ab eius gremio.
35 Christ’s age appears beneath the title of each imago, on the same line as the biblical citations: for example, Anno xxxiij.
36 Propterea subditur alia adnotatio.
37 Acerbissime tulit responsum Iesu Annas: iubet corripi, & trahi ad generum Caipham Pontificem anni illius, quo omnes Sacerdotes, Scribae, & Seniores convenerant, quos sequutus est ipse festinus, ut concilio & iudicio interesset. Hic rursus meditare quanta cum indignitate & contumelia bonum Iesum ducerent homines scelerati, ut longe Petrus & Ioannes timide sequerentur. Facile enim assentior Augustino & communi consensui, fuisse interrogatum Iesum ab Anna, ibi accepisse alapam, apud Annam a Petro negatum: & tamen sunt imagines suae ad utramque intelligentiam accommodatae. Nam si nihil eorum quae dixi, apud Annam factum est, illud tamen apud Annam meditandum; quemadmodum Iesus illi offertur, & confestim ipse innuit ut ulterius ad Caipham ducatur, se consequuturum. Reliqua ex praesenti imagine quasi in domo Caiphae facta intelligantur.
38 J. Nadal, Adnotationes et meditationes, imago 111: Posita est imago haec, si quis velit intelligere, non fuisse in domo Annae inflictam alapam Iesu, nec factum primam Petri negationem. Utrumque tamen ibidem factum esse, consonat magis Evangelicae lectioni, ut in sequenti imagine appingitur.
Author
-
Walter S. Melion
Emory University - wsmelio@emory.edu
Only the text can be used under the OpenEdition Books License license. Other elements (illustrations, attached files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.
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