Hermitage and heritage: Augustinians in history

Austen (the surname of one of England's best-loved novelists and Austin (the capital city of Texas) are both abbreviations of the name Augustine. That name became popular from Saint Augustine of Hippo, Father and Doctor of the Church (354-430), philosopher and theologian (left: Wellcome Library no. 3493i).

In England the name Augustine later acquired added lustre from the Roman missionary Saint Augustine of Canterbury, who re-introduced Christianity to Britain in the 6th century. The earlier Augustine, Saint Augustine of Hippo, was a Roman citizen of the province occupied today by Algeria. At one time a professor of rhetoric in Rome and Milan, he returned to North Africa and died there after writing numerous works of theology and philosophy. His studies of such subjects as time, memory, mind, and magic are still much admired: today the School of Life in London recommends Saint Augustine's Confessions to its students, while a writer in a recent New York Review of Books boldly declared that he was "surely one of the mightiest intellects ever to walk this earth" [1].

The high intellectual standing of Saint Augustine of Hippo underlay the success of the Augustinian Order formed from various groups of hermits, and explains why he and members of his Order are so abundantly represented in the Wellcome Library. By Augustine himself the Library has an incunable edition of his De civitate Dei (Venice 1490), three incunable editions of his sermons, and many other works.

Of his followers, the Wellcome Library has nine editions of works by the Augustinian philosopher Giles of Rome (Aegidius Romanus, ca. 1243-1316), three of which (On the material of the heavens, On possible understanding against Averroes, and a Commentary on Aristotle's Physica) are edited by another Augustinian called Giles, namely Giles of Viterbo (Aegidius Viterbiensis, 1469-1532), also a cardinal and a student of Jewish mystical writings. The Wellcome Library's incunable edition of the work of the two Giles's has the inscription "Egidius in Phis." (Giles on the Physica) written on the bottom edge (above right): before the mid-17th century, books were generally stored with their edges facing towards the room (not their spines, as today), and the owner of this book in the sixteenth century evidently knew who "Giles" would be and what the "Phis" were. [2]

One of Giles of Viterbo's contemporaries north of the Alps was George Ripley (d. ca. 1490), a canon of the Augustinian priory at Bridlington, Yorkshire, whose scrolls of alchemical symbols have recently been discussed on this blog.

Another Augustinian of the same era was Saint Thomas of Villanova (1486-1555), Bishop of Valencia and a professor at the University of Alcalá, after whom many universities and schools are named. In the engraving on the left (Wellcome Library no. 11665i), a young woman finds her leg ulcers relieved after her cheek is brushed with a locket containing a portrait and a relic of Saint Thomas of Villanova.

The Wellcome Library has many writings by the Augustinian satirist and preacher Abraham à Sancta Clara (1644-1709), a famed communicator of his day both in Vienna and internationally.  The print below of a man literally dicing with death illustrates one of his popular books on death in the time of the bubonic plague.

 Nineteenth-century Augustinians include the experimental gardener Johann Mendel (1822–1884) -- or Brother Gregor, to use his name in religion -- after whom is named the Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic (and, on a smaller scale, a meeting room in the headquarters of the Wellcome Trust in London). He was a member of the Augustinian Abbey of St Thomas in Brno, and from 1868 its abbot. In his horticultural work, Mendel grappled with botanical manifestations of the questions discussed by his predecessor Giles of Rome in the latter's De formatione corporis humani, written around the year 1270. An up-to-date introduction to the work of the Augustinian Order today can be found in the website Augnet.

Wellcome Library no. 47111i (detail)

The most monumental Augustinian work in the Wellcome Library is surely a gigantic etching (approx 145 x 160 cm.) produced on twelve plates in 1614 by the Italian engraver Oliviero Gatti of Bologna (1579-ca. 1648?). It bears the heading Mysticae Augustinensis Eremi sacrum gloriae decorisq. Theatrum ("Sacred display of the mystic glory and distinction of the Augustinian hermitage"); for brevity the work is also called Arbor augustiniana ("The Augustinian tree"). Gatti was commissioned to create this magnificent baroque print by two Augustinian friars, Marc Antonio Viani (from Bologna) and Paulus Vadovita (from Wadowice in Poland). Seven copies are known, not all of them now complete: the Wellcome Library's copy lacks two of the twelve plates. The print exists in two states: one from 1614 dedicated to Pope Paul V and King Philip III of Spain, the other dated 1678 and with updated dedications to their successors, Pope Innocent XI and King Charles II of Spain: the Wellcome Library's copy is of the first state. The print has been cleaned and conserved this year by Amy Junker Heslip in the Wellcome Library's Conservation department; during conservation, the superb quality of the paper and the vigour of the etching were revealed.

 Wellcome Library no. 32491i (plate 8 of the Arbor augustiniana) 

In the centre of Gatti’s composition, Saint of Augustine of Hippo sits holding the Rule of his Order (above), while around are representatives of the sacred and knightly orders associated with him, saints and martyrs, and eminent Augustinian friars and nuns, including his mother, Saint Monica. Giles of Rome appears no fewer than three times: once as a bishop, once as a cardinal-archbishop (left: Wellcome Library no. 32476i), and once among those who renounced a princely or royal title to become an Augustinian hermit: Giles of Rome was widely believed to be a member of the Roman noble family of Colonna, though the truth of this has been doubted. [3] A full analysis of the work is of course beyond the scope of this posting, but the prints themselves are available in the Wellcome Library to anyone wishes to study them, or indeed just to enjoy the brio of their draughtsmanship.

If we turn back from the Augustinian Order to Saint Augustine of Hippo himself, in addition to the many graphic representations of the saint the Wellcome Library has an oil painting, the subject of which has recently been identified by Mr Roberto Tollo in the course of his studies of Augustinian iconography. The painting is painted on a large sheet of copper (69 x 85.7 cm.) and was acquired by Sir Henry Wellcome in Granada in Spain in 1934.

  Wellcome Library no. 44998i

The copper support, the Spanish provenance, and the costumes in the painting (similar to those in paintings by the Antwerp painter Frans Francken II) together suggest that this is a Flemish painting made in Antwerp in the mid-seventeenth century and painted on copper for export to Spain or Latin America. Paintings on copper travelled well, and once exported, could serve as models for larger paintings on wood or canvas for display in the churches, hospitals and convents of Spain and New Spain. [4]

Mr Tollo has now confirmed this by pinpointing the exact source of the composition as an engraving by the Antwerp artist Schelte Bolswert (1586-1659), apparently after his own design. That Schelte Bolswert's prints of Augustinian iconography were popular in the Hispanic world we know from the painted versions of them that have been found in Seville, Madrid, Quito, and Lima: the evidence is given in the Wellcome Library catalogue.

The subject derives from an episode in Carthage in the year 388, described by Saint Augustine himself [5]. The man in bed on the left is Innocentius of Carthage, who suffered from a rectal fistula, and was about to be treated for it by a painful surgical operation: in Augustine's words, "curabatur a medicis fistulas quas numerosas atque perplexas habuit in posteriore et ima corporis parte" (he was being treated by doctors for the many and difficult fistulas which he had on the posterior and lowest part of the body). However, for reasons of propriety, Schelte Bolswert shows the patient instead with a bandaged leg which a surgeon is expecting to amputate.

The surgeon, dressed in early 17th-century clothes, is sitting nearby with a brazier full of cautery irons – red-hot irons for sealing blood vessels -- and, on a table, an amputation knife for cutting the flesh around the bone: the surgeon's instruments are described in Augustine's account as "tremenda ferramenta". In the centre, blessing Innocentius, Saint Augustine is portrayed as a tonsured friar. Beyond him is a group of hermits of Saint Augustine, kneeling in prayer. Innocentius believes himself to be cured by a modern miracle without surgical innovation, and the surgeon almost lets go of his amputation-saw in surprise. On the right, a "marvellous Alexandrian surgeon" mentioned by Augustine as having been called in as a consultant raises his hand in an expression of astonishment, as well he might. He here represents those who assumed that miracles ceased in post-Biblical times, an assumption challenged by Saint Augustine from his own experiences. Augustine's message is that even eminent consultants cannot afford to take anything for granted.

[1] London review of books, 19 May 2011, p. 22. New York review of books, 27 October 2011, p. 54
[2] Questio Egidii Romani Eremite de materia celi. Padua: Hieronymus de Durantis, 1493, fol. B1v "F. Egidius Eremita Viterbiensis castigavit et dedit"
[3] M. Anthony Hewson, Giles of Rome and the medieval theory of conception: a study of the De formatione corporis humani in utero, London: Athlone Press, 1975, pp. 3-4 and 25 (find in the Wellcome Library here)
[4] Isaac van Oosten, Noah leading the animals to the ark, painting on copper 69.5 x 86.8 cm., Sotheby's, London, 6 July 2006, lot 101 (discussion in catalogue entry). Note that van Oosten's painting is very close in dimensions to the Wellcome Library painting. Pablo Escalante Gonzalbo and Martín Olmedo Muñoz, 'De invloed van de Zuid-Nederlandse gravure in Nieuw-Spanje', in Werner Thomas et al., Een wereld op papier: Zuid-nederlandse boeken, prenten en karten in het Spaanse en Portuguese wereldrijk (16de-18de eeuw), Louvain 2009, pp. 212-232
[5] De civitate dei, book XXII, chapter 8 (online at http://www.augustinus.it/latino/cdd/index2.htm)

Two empresses and their sons

SS. Constantine and Helena. Russian painting on wood.
Wellcome Library no. 34400i

Empresses are rarely encountered. However a small Russian painting in the Wellcome Library records a bond between two empresses who lived fifteen centuries apart. As will be seen, 4 September is an apt date on which to publish it.

The Roman Empress Helena (ca. 246/50-330) was the consort of the Emperor Constantius, and the mother of the first Christian emperor, Constantine (ca. 272-337). The painting shows her on the right, with her son Constantine on the left. Constantius divorced her or separated from her and remarried for political reasons, abandoning Helena and depriving her of imperial honours. When Constantius died in York in 306, Constantine (also then in York) succeeded him, and restored his mother to her previous status in the imperial court in Byzantium.

As the mother of the new Emperor, Helena supported Constantine in the promotion of Christianity throughout the empire, and devoted herself to the recovery of the relics of Christ's Passion in Jerusalem, particularly the excavation of the Cross.

Hence, in the engraving shown here, Helena and Constantine are the figures closest to the Cross, Helena on the left and Constantine with a full beard on the right, both of them wearing imperial crowns (click on the image to enlarge it). Helena died in Byzantium in 330 in the presence of her son.

Engraving by Nicolas Beatrizet, 1557. Wellcome Library no. 10914i

The Wellcome Library painting of Constantine and Helena is a Russian icon. The two saints are named as "Святыи Цар Константин" and "Святая Царица Елена" (the Holy Emperor Constantine and the Holy Empress Elena). Between the two figures is the Cross. The Cross had been the subject of a dream in which Constantine had been told "In hoc signo vinces" ("In this sign you shall conquer"). A relic believed to be the original Cross had, as we have seen, been discovered by Helena in Jerusalem. Neither the subject nor the manner of depiction is particularly rare. What is distinctive about the painting is its provenance. Before it was acquired by Henry S. Wellcome, it had belonged to another empress: Empress Eugénie of the French (1826-1920), consort of the Emperor Napoleon III (1808-1873).

Eugénie was a Spanish countess whose mother was of Scottish and Belgian parentage. In 1853 she married Napoleon III. He had lived in various places (on Lake Constance in Switzerland; Leamington Spa, Warwickshire; Southport, Lancashire; New York City) before returning to France in 1848 to take up the presidency and in 1852 the Imperial throne.

Right: The empress Eugénie in Paris. Engraving by D.J. Pound. Wellcome Library.

Napoleon III's reign was eventful. He provoked the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, only to end up losing it and himself a prisoner of war after being captured at the battle of Sedan. He returned to England and settled with his wife at Chislehurst in Kent. There they lived with their son, Napoleon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte, the Prince Imperial, who had been born in 1856. It was at Chislehurst that Napoleon III died in 1873, weakened by a sequence of three surgical operations performed in an attempt to break up a huge bladder stone.

Left: the Prince Imperial Louis Napoleon. Wood engraving, 1879. Wellcome Library no. 580028i

The exiled Eugénie was not so fortunate in the career of her son, Prince Louis Napoleon, as Helena had been in the support of her son, Constantine. Louis Napoleon joined the British army and was keen to see action in the Zulu War. On 1 June 1879 he took part in an expedition outside the camp. He and his party were ambushed by some forty Zulu: most of the other soldiers got away, but the Prince Imperial was unlucky. His dead body was discovered the following morning riddled with spear wounds.

The reaction around the world was comparable (mutatis mutandis) to the shock at the death of Diana Princess of Wales in 1997. Eugénie was of course devastated. In 1880 she went to South Africa to visit the spot where he had been killed.

On her return to England she left Chislehurst and moved to Farnborough in Hampshire, where her remains of her son's body were interred with his father. There she involved herself in good causes, including women's suffrage, improving the treatment of young offenders, and children's charities, as well as radio, electrification, motor cars, her complicated family relationships, and a close friendship with the Queen. In World War I she turned a wing of her house into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers.

Right: the Empress Eugénie mourning her late son the Prince Imperial. Colour lithograph by F. Betbeder, 1879. Wellcome Library no. 575546i

Among her many possessions was the icon of Helena and Constantine which is now in the Wellcome Library. In gazing on the likeness of her fellow-empress, Eugénie could recognize in several respects a kindred spirit. The island named after St Helena, to which her husband's uncle Napoleon I had been exiled, was often in her thoughts: violets from the island decorated her sitting room. Eugénie was also linked with Helena through the True Cross, for Eugénie was the guardian of a relic believed to be a fragment of the Cross which Helena had excavated. This sliver of wood, glazed with a pale green gemstone and housed with other relics in a Gothic iron chasse, was believed to have been buried with Charlemagne; the Emperor Charles V had had it placed in the treasury at Aachen, from which it passed to Napoleon I and thence through his step-daughter Hortense de Beauharnais to Eugénie. It was the only item which Eugénie had managed to save from the Tuileries when she was forced to flee the howling mob surrounding the palace on 4 September 1870, and it received an honoured place in the chapel at Farnborough Hill. Through a continuous line of individuals and families, from Jerusalem to Byzantium, from the first Holy Roman Emperor in Aachen to the Empress of the French in the rolling Hampshire countryside, "westward the course of Empire takes its way", in Berkeley's words.

On the other hand, the sight of Helena standing side by side with her son could arouse more melancholy thoughts. Unlike Constantine, Eugénie's son never succeeded his father as Emperor. Unlike Helena, Eugénie herself was never restored to her former imperial glory. The icon reassured because it represented a fond ideal to be cherished, rather than the sorrowful reality. And just as the icon commemorated Helena and Constantine long after their deaths, so perhaps Eugénie and her son would be remembered in centuries to come. That certainly seems to be the intention of the person who placed the icon in a box lettered "La belle fleur de mémoire". And, as we read about them here, we cultivate that flower of remembrance.

A note on the provenance
The box (above left and right) is inscribed and is accompanied by a letter from Mr Norman H. Greatorex, 13 The Hostel, Newburn Street, London S.E. 11, offering the painting to Queen Mary, consort of King George V of the United Kingdom. The letter states "These belonged to the Empress Eugénie & came from Farnborough Hill after she died there. I bought them at Guildford for 10/-". A letter to Mr Greatorex from a Lady in Waiting declined the gift "as the Queen does not collect icons". "These" in the the letter presumably refers to the painting and the box.

Acknowledgments:
Agnes Carey, Empress Eugénie in exile, New York: Century Co., 1920
Anne L McClanan, Representations of early Byzantine empresses: image and empire, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002
William Smith, Eugénie, impératrice des Français, Paris: Bartillat, 1998
William Smith, The Empress Eugénie and Farnborough, Winchester: Hampshire County Council, 2001

Codex Sinaiticus online

We normally post about our own holdings, or something related to our own holdings, but when I saw the Guardian article and British Library news today on the Codex Sinaiticus project, I was so impressed, I had to share. The Codex Sinaiticus is a 4th century Bible with the earliest known New Testament text. Written in Greek, it contains a large number of annotations correcting the original text.

The Codex Sinaiticus website is beautifully and lovingly crafted with a depth of information on the manuscript rarely seen on any website. It is so much more than just digital images - although bringing the manuscript together virtually from its 4 physical locations (the British Library, the National Library of Russia, St. Catherine's Monastery, and Leipzig University Library) is in itself of huge benefit to scholars. You can view images in two different lights - "standard" light, which allows you to see the text well, and "raking" light, which shows the texture and natural undulations of the pages.

It has also been transcribed to allow full use of the texts, and much of it has been translated into Russian, English, German and modern Greek. Dig deep for extensive information on the history of the manuscript, the content and context of the texts, and - of particular interest to me personally - the details of the project itself. The site is a little slow at the moment, due to the press attention, but don't let that put you off.

The British Library is hosting an exhibition and will be holding a conference on this manuscript and project.

Well done to the team of conservators, researchers, photographers, transcribers and techies who made it possible to bring this international treasure to the world in such a rich and engaging way.