Soshnikova, K. V.
The Miracle of the Empress from Gautier de Coinci’s «Miracles de Nostre Dame» in the Medieval Manuscript Tradition, in: Proslogion: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Social History and Culture, 2025. Vol. 8 (2). P. 46–63.
Kseniia Vladimirovna Soshnikova, Doctor of History, research fellow in the Manuscripts Department of the National Library of Russia (191069, Russia, St. Petersburg, Sadovaya st., 18)
soshnikova_ks@mail.ru
Language: Russian
This article examines a fragment of The Miracles of Notre Dame (Miracles de Nostre Dame), one of the first religious poems in French, written by the Benedictine monk and prior of Soissons, Gautier de Coinci, in the first third of the 13th century. The poem contains legends about the miracles of the Virgin Mary that took place in various French cities. These legends are included in the poem as separate texts with rubrics. The fragment under study, the Miracle of the Empress (Miracle de l’impératrice), is the longest text in Gautier de Coinci’s poem. Its plot influences a various medieval literature. The miracle describes the misadventures of the empress of Rome who is saved from harm by the Virgin Mary and enters a monastery. This complex text, filled with epithets and metaphors, was illustrated in manuscripts of the 13th–15th centuries. This article explores the iconography of this miracle in various manuscripts from the National Library of Russia (NLR) and international collections (the National Library of France, the Royal Library of Belgium). Particular attention is paid to a codex (Fr.F.v.XIV.9) preserved in the NLR’s Manuscript Department, which is one of the earliest and most fully illustrated versions of Gautier de Coinci’s the Miracles of Notre Dame. An examination of the miniature from this manuscript suggests the use of a special language of gestures and symbols by the artists, allowing the reader to become acquainted with the poem in detail without even having to carefully read the text. Analysis of this miniature reveals particular iconographic aspects of the Marian miracles and allows them to be considered in the context of medieval manuscript culture.
Keywords: French manuscript, French miniature, Gautier de Coinci, The Miracles of Notre Dame, The Miracle of the Empress of Rome, medieval poetry, medieval music
URL: http://proslogion.ru/82-soshnikova
10.24412/2500-0926-2025-82-46-63
