Stein (2025 Congress)

Emmarae Stein
(University of Rochester)

Abstract of Paper
presented at the 60th International Congress on Medieval Studies
(Kalamazoo, 2025)

Session on
“Deviant Images:
Text/Image Relationships in Medieval Manuscripts
(1): Visual Intervention”

Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Organized by
Mildred Budny (Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)
and
Courtney Anne Berg (City University of New York)

2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program

“Minor Deviations:
The Interplay of Text and Image
in Fifteenth-Century Papal Prophecies”

Abstract:

This paper examines the relationship between the illustrations and text in a set of manuscripts of the Vaticinia de summis pontificibus copied during the pontificate of Eugenius IV (1431–1447). The Vaticinia is a set of illustrated papal prophecies, whose texts and images have been more or less standard since the early fourteenth century. I am working with four Italian manuscripts of the Vaticinia:

  • an uncatalogued MS in the Rossell Hope Robbins Library at the University of Rochester;
  • London, British Library, Harley MS 1340;
  • Chicago, University of Chicago, MS 1288; and
  • Bologna, Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio MS A.2848.

These four versions of the Vaticinia remain fairly consistent in imagery. However, there are moments when the illustrations break from the standard tradition, as well as small variations in the prophetic text.

Analyzing anomalies in the illustrations, I suggest that the compilers or illustrators of these manuscripts were trying to make subtle commentaries about the state of the Church during a time when the role of church councils in the project of reform was hotly debated. Specifically, by making changes to the standard illustrations, the creators of these four manuscripts were able to inscribe a new or altered meaning to the prophetic text. These illustrators (or their patrons) were engaging in nuanced visual interventions that could alter a readerʼs understanding of the papacy, beyond simply assigning names to the popes depicted in the standard accompanying images. In comparing four manuscripts from the same region and time period, this paper seeks to demonstrate how these visual deviations were used to address specific polemic concerns in Italy in the 1430s and 1440s.

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