Oosterwijk - Vive l'amour. Lovers and Death in the Medieval Danse Macabre more

Vive l‘amour? Youth and Death Vive l’amour? Sophie Oosterwijk Lovers and Death in the Medieval Danse Macabre However often Danse Macabre texts emphasise the universal truth that Death strikes down the young as well as the old, it is the image of youth that has the greatest poignancy – children, but also young lovers. Yet while the former may die in a state of innocence, the latter are usually blithely oblivious of their perilous condition: they are in love, but in Christian thinking such love is carnal and therefore sinful. This idea is illustrated very explicitly in the engraving Death and the Lascivious Couple by Hans Sebald Beham (1500-1550), which shows a naked couple caught almost in flagrante by Death (Fig. 8).1 However, there are more subtle depictions. In 1639 Rembrandt created an etching of two lovers encountering Death (Fig. 1).2 The pair show all the hallmarks of romantic love: both are young, elegantly dressed, and the woman even holds a flower – presumably a rose, the archetypal love token. Yet on their leisurely stroll, they have stumbled upon a cavernous tomb from which a cadaver figure emerges, still clad in the remnants of flesh, shroud and hair, and holding out an hourglass to the young couple. It is the ultimate vanitas warning: time passes quickly, flowers wilt, and love may wane or be cut short through an untimely death. With his etching of the two lovers Rembrandt drew upon a much older tradition that also has relevance for the Danse Macabre, despite the fact that women originally featured less prominently in this medieval theme. The most famous French example does not even appear to have included women at all. Extant manuscript copies of the text and the woodcut edition of 1485 by Guyot Marchant suggest that the lost Danse Macabre mural of 1424–25 10 Fig. 1: Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, The Lovers and Death, etching, 1639. 11 Fig. 2: The amoureux in the unfinished Danse Macabre fresco on the north wall of the monks’ choir, abbey church of St Robert at La Chaise-Dieu (Haute-Loire), first half of the fifteenth century. in Paris was a hierarchically ordered, all-male scheme: women are merely alluded to in the dialogue between the living characters and their dead opponents.3 Thus the chevalier is reprimanded for having spent time dancing with the ladies and he himself boasts of having been loved by them: he is thus a typical knight of medieval romances, a hero but also a courtier and lover. Even more romantically inclined is the younger escuier or squire, whose language is that of the courtly love tradition. He regretfully bids his adieux to the ladies and the physical delights they used to offer him, while taking the opportunity to warn them against favouring their bodies over their souls. After all, their beauty will fade a little every day, and Death may yet catch them unprepared, as his final line reminds 12 them: ‘Tous fault morir on ne scet quant’ (All must die, one does not know when). The origins of the Danse Macabre are still unclear, but the mural in the cemetery of the church of Les Saints Innocents in Paris appears to have been the catalyst in the spread of the theme across Europe. A painted scheme at Old St Paul’s Cathedral in London was commissioned by the town clerk John Carpenter around 1430, while another mural was painted on the walls of the cemetery of the Dominican convent in Basel some time around 1440. Some examples are difficult to date, however. The unfinished fresco on the north wall of the monks’ choir in the Benedictine abbey of St Robert in La Chaise-Dieu (Haute-Loire) has previously been dated to the late fifteenth century but a much earlier date is now favoured, closer to that of the Paris mural. This fresco shows the traditional alternation of dead and living dancers, albeit without dialogue: texts underneath the figures were evidently planned but never added. Unusually the easternmost pillar of this scheme includes a now faded depiction of the Fall of Man with Adam and Eve naked on either side of the tree, which serves to remind viewers why mankind is subject to death. Another unusual feature of the Danse at La Chaise-Dieu is the tonsured monk whom the artist apparently changed into a female figure by adding a veil and altering the sleeves in the underdrawing. Furthermore, there is the figure of a young man dressed in an elegant tunic with long trailing sleeves, tight hose and pointed shoes (Fig. 2). These two figures are on different sections of the wall and so do not interact, but whereas the status of the lady is unclear that of the amoureux is unmistakable: he is young, noble, and holds a spray of flowers in his left hand. The amoureux also appeared in the Paris mural, as we can still see in one of Marchant’s woodcuts (Fig. 3). He is placed much further down the hierarchical order, but his language is even more courtly than that of the escuier. Addressed by le mort as ‘Gentil amoreux’, the lover bids his adieux to a whole range of frivolous pursuits, including hats, flowers, fellow-lovers and girlfriends: ‘A dieu chapeaux bouques fleuretes / A dieu amans: et puceletes’. Apart from the feathered cap, however, nothing in Marchant’s woodcut indicates the character of the amoureux: he is admittedly young, noble and elegant, but he has no flowers nor is there any sign of the ‘puceletes’ that he alludes to in his stanza. Moreover, his clothes and those of his fellow dancers are in the style fashionable in Marchant’s day, which suggests either that the mural was repainted in the intervening sixty 13 Fig. 3: The physician and the amoureux, woodcut from Guy Marchant’s Danse Macabre edition first published in 1485. years since its creation or that Marchant’s artist updated the appearance of the figures in the Danse to suit contemporary tastes. Unfortunately the Danse Macabre mural in Paris was destroyed probably in 1669 when the walls of the charnel house were demolished to widen the street outside, and there is little evidence from the period about its original appearance. Yet one piece of evidence has thus far been largely overlooked. The figures in a Danse Macabre border in a Parisian book of hours (Paris, BnF ms Rothschild 2535, fols 108v-109r) can be dated stylistically to c.1430, which is very close in date to the Paris mural with which it shares many similarities. The Rothschild Danse has admittedly far fewer figures, but it opens with the sequence of pope, emperor, cardinal and king, and also includes a labourer, an infant in a cradle, a hermit, a knight, a physician and a bishop. In addition, there is also an elegantly dressed nobleman who is accompanied by a lady in the horned headdress of the period (Fig. 4). The pair are evidently a couple and both show dismay as they find themselves seized simultaneously by the approaching cadaver, who has laid one hand on the man’s elbow and another on the woman’s left shoulder. With both hands on his belt the man’s posture suggests 14 male pride, whereas the woman has placed her right hand on his shoulder for support. It is possible that the Parisian illuminator of the Rothschild book of hours took the liberty of adding this pair as new characters in his Danse Macabre borders, or that he introduced the female companion to illustrate the character of the amoureux more clearly. Yet there are also indications that he modelled his other figures on those in the Paris mural in as far as we can trust Marchant’s woodcuts. For example, in either Danse the pope is paired with a cadaver carrying a coffin and the infant is pulled from his cradle by his right hand. Might the lover in the Paris mural originally have been depicted with a female companion as his attribute? Such an added figure can be compared to another anomaly in the French poem, viz. the addition of the homme povre or poor man (in some manuscripts labelled l’homme qui emprunte, the man who borrows) as a foil to the usurer. This pair occurs in the preceding woodcut in Marchant’s edition, which shows their dead companion leaning back to leave room for them both. The poor man has his own stanza, however, which has had to be squeezed in as a single column on the far right of the page. 4 There is yet further, extraneous evidence to suggest that there may have been a woman in the Paris mural, or at least that contemporaries would have expected the amoureux to have a female companion. The Danse Macabre contains many echoes of the ancient scheme of the Ages of Man, in which each – male – representative is described and depicted with all the physiological characteristics of his particular age group. Thus the infant is innocent, helpless, and unable to walk or talk; the young boy is playful but acquiring reason; and the adolescent is warm-blooded, vain, and preoccupied with love. Depending on the different divisions of the Ages, Adolescentia could range from fourteen to twenty-one or older still. In some medieval schemes, the Ages were compared to the months of the year with each month representing six years of human life, thereby making April the traditional month of youth and courtship5 – a tradition that underlies the betrothal scene in the miniature for April in the famous Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry illuminated by the Limbourg brothers around 1413–16. Although the Ages are usually represented as single male figures, the link between Adolescentia and courtship is also made in some illuminated manuscripts. An example is a roundel labelled ‘Adolescencia’ in a diagram of the Five Ages of Man from a Bavarian manuscript of c. 1330–40, which is based on Bartholomaeus Anglicus’ encyclopedic text De Proprietatibus Rerum.6 Instead of the sole 15 male representative of each Age that we see in the other roundels on the page, this particular diagram depicts the Age of Adolescentia as a young man holding a flower as a symbol of courtship – just like the amoureux in the Danse Macabre fresco at La Chaise-Dieu (Fig. 2) – but meanwhile also embracing a woman. Yet she is not a representative of Adolescentia in her own right, but merely an attribute of the male adolescens. Another example of a young couple representing the Age of Adolescentia can be found in the English fourteenth-century encyclopedia Omne Bonum (Fig. 5). The couple in the historiated initial A that opens the entry for ‘Adolescentia’ are elegantly dressed and evidently of high status: the man’s prominent sword signals his nobility and his masculinity. In fact, the miniature is highly suggestive: the woman holds out a round mirror – a sign of vanity, or an emblem of her sexuality? – while the man’s sword hangs incongruously between his legs like a huge phallic symbol. More closely related to the Danse Macabre is the older theme of the Three Living and the Three Dead, which traditionally shows the encounter of three young noblemen or kings with three decaying corpses. Again the contrast is between perfect, vain youth and the horror of man’s ultimate physical degradation; the two groups are often presented as each others’ mirror images.7 Yet whereas the Three Dead are virtually always male, one full-page miniature in a Flemish book of hours of c.1480 (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78 B 14, fol. 227v) shows not the usual three, but four living protagonists: one of the three hunters has a female companion sitting behind him on his white horse, who is not a character in her own right but an added token of courtship and youth.8 The development of Death and the Maiden as a separate motif9 had its parallel in the theme of Death and the Young Man. The latefifteenth-century drypoint etching The Young Man and Death of c.1485-90 by the Housebook Master shows an elegant, long-haired youth being accosted by a corpse figure, his youth and vigour in complete contrast to the desiccated appearance of his companion.10 The destroyed Hungerford Chapel (completed 1471) at Salisbury Cathedral once featured a painting that may have represented Death and the gallant, the latter richly dressed in a doublet with slashed sleeves and a hat with a feather.11 Two painted panels of the early sixteenth century on the exterior of the Markham chantry chapel in the church of St Mary Magdalene in Newark (Nottinghamshire) still show a richly dressed youth with a Tudor cap being offered a flower by Death, both as a parody of courtship and a symbol of the transitoriness of life.12 Another surviving mural of the same period in the 16 Fig. 4: The amoureux and his mistress in a Danse Macabre border in a book of hours illuminated in Paris c.1430 (Paris, BnF ms Rothschild 2535, fol. 108v). 17 Fig. 5: Two lovers representing the Age of Adolescentia, miniature in the fourteenth-century English encyclopedia Omne Bonum (London, BL Royal MS 6 VI E, fol. 58v). beguinage church of St Agnes at Sint-Truiden (Belgium) shows the figure of Death poised to transfix an elegantly dressed young man in a richly feathered hat.13 In all three cases, elegant dress and plumed hats appear to epitomise the vanity of youth – a visual tradition with which Rembrandt must have been familiar, as his etching shows. Yet in another English vanitas example, both sexes are parodied. One panel of a painted rood-screen of the late fifteenth century at Sparham (Norfolk) shows a male cadaver in a feathered cap being offered a flower by a female corpse dressed in an ermine-lined dress and elegant hennin of the period. As Julian Luxford has recently demostrated, this panel compares well with Continental examples of such macabre pairs, e.g. a two-sided panel of c.1500 of two lovers in finery and as shrouded corpses (Lauenburg an der Elbe, SchleswigHolstein), and an Upper-Rhenish or Swabian panel of c.1470 that originally showed two lovers as corpses on one side (Strasbourg, Musée de l’oeuvre Notre Dame) and on the other two elegant court18 ing lovers (now Cleveland Museum of Art).14 The pairing of a young man with a female companion thus occurred earlier in depictions of the Age of Adolescentia or the month of April, while by the late fifteenth century the motif of two lovers or their macabre counterparts was well established. It was the Paris mural that inspired the English poet-monk John Lydgate (c.1371–1449) to compose his Middle English Dance of Death, which was a close adaptation of the French text. However, Lydgate added a few new characters, including the figure of the ‘Gentilwoman amerous’ immediately following the ‘amerous Squyere’, as Lydgate interpreted the French amoureux, rather in the tradition of the Squire in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.15 In Death’s lines to the ‘amerous Squyere’ Lydgate introduced even more courtly language than is found in the French poem. The amorous squire is ‘fresshe & amerous / Of 3eres 3onge flowryng in 3owre grene age / Lusti fre of herte and eke desyrous’ (lines 433–35: fresh and amorous; young of years; flowering in your green age; lusty, free of heart, and also full of desire) – imagery strongly reminiscent of Spring, youth and courtship. However, his pleasing appearance is about to be transformed ‘in to asshes dede / For al beaute is but a feynte ymage / Whiche steleth a-wai or folkes can take hede’ (lines 438–40: into dead ashes, for all beauty is but a faint image which steals away before people notice it). In other words, the amorous squire will become like his dead counterpart in the Danse and his lament is the typical response of a young lover unprepared for death: ‘Adieu of 3owthe the lusti fressh floure / Adieu veynglorie [of bewte and of pride] / Adieu al seruyse of the god cupide’ (lines 443–45: Farewell to the lusty fresh flower of youth, farewell to the vainglory of beauty and of pride, farewell to all service of the god Cupid). There is no mention of hats or flowers, but Lydgate’s lover is apparently no less a philanderer than his French counterpart, as suggested by the line ‘Adieu my ladyes so fresshe so wel be-seyne’ (line 446: Farewell my ladies so fair and so elegant). Yet instead of translating the direct warning to the ladies by the French amoureux, Lydgate chose to introduce a sequel to the amorous squire by adding the figure of the amorous gentlewoman, ‘Maistresse of 3eres 3onge & grene’ (line 449: Mistress of young and green years), as Death calls her. This courtly mode of address is very much in the style of medieval romance, as is the description of the gentlewoman holding herself ‘of beaute souereyne’ (line 450) and the ‘daunger’ or haughtiness of the aloof lady in romances, notwithstanding the example of famous beauties such as Penelope and Helen who likewise succumbed to death and thereby lost their 19 Fig. 6a: The Edelfrau. Danse Macabre woodcut in the Heidelberg Blockbook of c.1458 (Heidelberg University Library, Cod. Pal. germ. 438, fol. 136v). allure. Even the ‘3eres 3onge & grene’ may be intended as satire, for the lady herself alludes to her age and her experience with men: ‘For yn my 3owthe this was myn entente / To my seruyce many a man to a lured’ (lines 461–62: ‘For in my youth it was my intention to lure many a man to my service’). Yet men and women aged differently in the Middle Ages: long before a squire could afford to wed, a young woman would normally have been married off and potentially become an object of adoration or lust for amorous young bachelors. Once again the gentlewoman repeats the common truth that Death spares neither old nor young and that he is indifferent to beauty, but her words show her to be no less frivolous than the amorous squire. It is possible – but not necessary – that Lydgate took his inspiration for the amorous gentlewoman from a painted pairing of the amoureux with a female companion in the Paris mural, simply 20 Fig. 6b: The Edelmann. Danse Macabre woodcut in the Heidelberg Blockbook of c.1458 (Heidelberg University Library, Cod. Pal. germ. 438, fol. 137r). adding the stanzas that were missing in the French poem. The poet is known to have found inspiration for his poetry in visual imagery, although this alone does not explain the addition of other new characters in his Middle English Dance, such as the abbess and the lady of great estate. It is interesting to note that the so-called B-version of his Dance of Death – which is almost certainly a case of later scribal variance rather than the deliberate revision by Lydgate himself that tradition holds – includes the amorous gentlewoman but not the amorous squire: he was probably felt to be superfluous because of the occurrence of the squire earlier in the poem. There are yet more cases of young lovers in the German Totentanz tradition, of which Lydgate may not have been aware. The origins and date of the Latin-German Totentanz text continue to be a matter for debate among scholars, the oldest manuscript copy of the Latin 21 Fig. 7a: Der iungeling, woodcut illustration from Der doten dantz mit figuren, clage und antwort schon von allen staten der werlt published by Heinrich Knoblochtzer, after 1485 (Heidelberg University Library, C 7074 qt. Inc., fol. 12v). lines dating from 1443–47. It is here that the figures of the nobilis and nobilissa occur in sequence, the former being presented as a terrifying fighter and the latter complaining about the follies of life and the pipe of Death. It is only in the expanded German version and in the illustrations of the Edelmann (nobleman) and Edelfrau (noblewoman) on facing pages in the Heidelberg Blockbook of c.1458 that we notice more telling allusions (Fig. 6a and b).16 In the text the Edelmann still comes across as a valiant warrior, but in the woodcut he is ironically paired with a female cadaver with pendulous breast and a shroud for a skirt; the very sight of her seems to emasculate him, which is symbolised by the dropped sword and dagger.17 The elegant Edelfrau is paired with a naked and apparently male cadaver, who emphasises the part that dancing and music has played in her life. Both figures also occurred in sequence in the so-called Großbaseler Totentanz mural of c.1440, an expanded version of the same German text found in the Heidelberg Blockbook.18 In Merian’s engravings of this since lost Totentanz mural, first published in 22 Fig. 7b: Die Iunckfrauwe, woodcut illustration from Der doten dantz mit figuren, clage und antwort schon von allen staten der werlt published by Heinrich Knoblochtzer, after 1485 (Heidelberg University Library, C 7074 qt. Inc., fol. 20r). 1621, the Edelmann is an older knight in armour, but the Edelfrau is once again a vain woman keen to admire her blond hair in a mirror. More relevant here are two other figures further on in this Totentanz, but separated by the Wucherer. The Jůngling is a long-haired young man in an elegant short tunic, tight hose, pointed shoes, and a curious headdress that may either have been a chaperon or a feathered cap in the original mural. He is caught unawares while out strolling (‘spacieren’), as Death’s opening line indicates in Merian’s version, while the young man himself admits the purpose of his nightly walks: carousing and womanising. The pretty Jungfraw with her red lips wears a maidenly garland on her head and expresses her love of dancing, thereby presenting herself as a picture of allurement. However, Death – his skull crowned with a leafy wreath – is forcing her to join a very different dance. Rather similar to their counterparts in Basel are the iungeling and iunckfrauwe (Fig. 7a and b) in Der doten dantz mit figuren, clage und antwort schon von allen staten der werlt by Heinrich 23 Fig. 8: Hans Sebald Beham, Death and the lascivious couple, engraving, 1529. Knoblochtzer. This illustrated Danse Macabre edition was published after 1485, following the success of Marchant’s edition on which it is partly modelled. Both figures are crowned with garlands, which emphasises their youth. The iungeling is presented as young, handsome and frivolous; keen on dancing, singing and courting; and too vain to consider himself mortal – a fatal mistake. The iunckfrauwe displays her vanity and coquetry through her dress and demeanour: Death alludes to her ‘groißen swantze’ (the long train of her dress) and her ‘hoiffart’ (haughtiness) – a characteristic of the aloof courtly lady. She shares with her male counterpart a love of dancing and singing – the typical pastimes of youth – yet despite their similarities the two figures are not presented in sequence but far apart in the string of dancers. Rembrandt’s etching thus follows a tradition dating back centuries in showing the lovers as young, beautiful, elegant and frivolous. The flower in the woman’s hand may be the symbol of courtship, but the aim of such romance is ultimately the stark image of physical 24 love that we find in Beham’s engraving (Fig. 8). After all, the Roman de la Rose is likewise an allegorical quest for sexual fulfilment, and courtly love has ultimately no other purpose. Chaucer vividly demonstrated this truth in the Merchant’s Tale where a lusty Damian finally manages to consummate his passion for January’s young wife May in a quick romp up a pear tree. Romance is thus not dead – it is just short-lived, like youth and beauty. However, pride and lust are deadly sins for which the lovers in the Danse will ultimately pay the price. John H. Astington, ‘Three Shakespearean prints’, Shakespeare Quaterly 47:2 (1996), pp. 178189, fig. 3. 2 The intriguing back view of the female figure in Rembrandt’s etching had its forerunner in the figure representing Luxuria in the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things by Hieronymus Bosch or a follower (Madrid, Prado), and can be compared to later such views in the work of Gerard Terborch, Pieter de Hooch, Jacob Ochtervelt and Johannes Vermeer. 3 For a recent study of the Paris mural, see Sophie Oosterwijk, ‘Of dead kings, dukes and constables. The historical context of the Danse Macabre in late-medieval Paris’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 161 (2008), pp. 131-162. The all-male character of the Paris Danse is often overlooked: for example, Gregory T. Clark, The Spitz Master. A Parisian book of hours (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2005), p. 52, erroneously describes it as ‘the macabre cycle in which rotting corpses seize living men and women from every walk of life’. 4 One may also compare the addition of a final mort following the hermit at the end of the Danse proper, again with an added stanza printed as a single column, although here the addition makes good sense as it gives Death the final word before the author concludes the Danse. 5 Erik Dal with collaboration from Povl Skårup, The Ages of Man and the months of the year: poetry, prose and pictures outlining the Douze Mois Figurés motif mainly found in Shepherds’ Calendars and in livres d’heures (14th to 17th century), Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab Historisk-filosofische Skrifter, 9:3 (Copenhagen: Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 1980), esp. pp. 12, 42-50. 6 Elizabeth Sears, The Ages of Man: medieval interpretations of the life cycle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), fig. 65. 7 For example, see Susanna G. Fein, ‘Life and death, reader and page: mirrors of mortality in English manuscripts’, Mosaic, 35:1 (2002), pp. 69-94. 8 Christine Kralik, ‘Änderungen in der Andachtspraxis und die Legende der drei Lebenden und der drei Toten in spätmittelalterlichen Handschriften’, L’art macabre 6 (2005), pp. 134-147, fig. 5. 9 Stefanie Knöll, ‘Zur Entstehung des Motivs Der Tod und das Mädchen’, in: Zum Sterben schön: Alter, Totentanz und Sterbekunst von 1500 bis heute, ed. Andrea von Hülsen-Esch and Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen with Stefanie Knöll (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2006), vol. 1, pp. 65-72. 10 J.P. Filedt Kok (comp.), Livelier than Life: the Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet or the Housebook Master, ca. 1470-1500 (Amsterdam: Rijksprentenkabinet/Rijksmuseum, 1985), cat. 58, pp. 154-156. 11 James M. Clark, The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Glasgow: Jackson, Son & Company, 1950), pp. 10-11. It is possible that this painting was part of a larger Three Living and Three Dead composition. 1 25 12 See Sophie Oosterwijk, ‘Money, morality, mortality: the migration of the danse macabre from murals to misericords’, in Peregrine Horden (ed.), Freedom of movement in the Middle Ages (2003 Harlaxton Symposium Proceedings), Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 15 (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2007), pp. 37-56, fig. 24. 13 See Anna Bergmans, ‘Functie, betekenis en context van de muurschilderingen’, in Thomas Coomans and Anna Bergmans (eds), In zuiverheid leven. Het Sint-Agnesbegijnhof van Sint-Truiden: het hof, de kerk, de muurschilderingen, Relicta Monografieën, 2 (Brussels: Vlaams Instituut voor het Onroerend Erfgoed, 2008), pp. 211-259, at pp. 247-248 and fig. 7.42. 14 Julian Luxford, ‘The Sparham corpse panels: unique revelations of Death from late fifteenth-century England’, The Antiquaries Journal, 90 (2010), pp. 1-42 and esp. figs 2, 9, 15-16. 15 All quotations from Lydgate’s poem are based on the Ellesmere Manuscript version of the text in Florence Warren (ed.), with introduction and notes by Beatrice White, The Dance of Death, edited from MSS. Ellesmere 26/A.13 and B.M. Lansdowne 699, collated with the other extant MSS, EETS, o.s. 181 (London: Oxford University Press, 1931, repr. 2000). 16 For the Heidelberg Blockbook, see Gert Kaiser (ed.), Der tanzende Tod: mittelalterliche Totentänze (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1983), pp. 276-329, and also the website http://diglit.ub.uniheidelberg.de/diglit/cpg438/. For the Latin text see Reinhold Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik des Todes: Die mittelalterlichen Totentänze und ihr Nachleben (Bern/Munich: Francke, 1980), pp. 31-39 and 149. 17 The Edelmann thereby fits earlier medieval representations of cowardice in which an armed knight drops his sword and flees at the sight of a snail or rabbit, e.g. in a sculpted quatrefoil at Amiens Cathedral. 18 Reproduced in Kaiser 1983, pp. 194-275.