Performative Reading and Receiving a Performance of the Jour du Jugement in MS Besançon 579

MS Besançon 579, a deluxe mid-fourteenth-century manuscript, contains the only known version of the French mystery play Jour du Jugement, which provides the most detailed and extensive dramatic account of the arrival, life, and destruction of Antichrist (fig. 1).¹ In this version of the legend, Antichrist is conceived by the whore of Babylon and a devil in disguise. Later, Antichrist costumed as a Franciscan friar performs a variety of miracles to convert unsuspecting Christians. In response, the two Apocalyptic Witnesses, Enoch and Elijah, are sent to warn against the eternal consequences of succumbing to Antichrist's deceptions. After kings and cardinals have converted to Antichrist and the pope is imprisoned for refusing to do so, God sends to earth his seven avenging angels with vials of his wrath. Upon Antichrist's destruction, Mary and the saints implore Christ before his Final Judgment to spare those who had remained faithful. The drama is presented in the manuscript through the verbal, visual, and dramatic texts that construct a version of the performance text for the reader/viewer. The play's written, dramatic, and visual texts draw from a variety of sources to present a compelling and realistic portrayal of how and when Antichrist might penetrate contemporary Christian society, but it is also filled with humor, sex, dancing, fantastic miracles, and violence to delight as well as warn of the frightening reality of Antichrist.

This essay investigates how the dramatic subject matter of the miniatures of Besançon 579 affected the way in which the manuscript was conceived and illustrated and the manner in which the reader/viewer receives not only the dramatic text, but also the performance text of the Jour du Jugement through the visual representation of the play.

Fig. 1.

Besançon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 579, fols. 27^v–28^r, c. 1330

(Cliché CNRS-IRHT, © Bibliothèque municipale de Besançon).

For this mode of reception, imagine the owner of the Besançon manuscript inviting an acquaintance or distinguished visitors to sit and "read" the story of Antichrist. Turning the page, the dramatic performance begins with the preacher's opening sermon. In medieval drama, the narrator plays a critical role, introducing and often summarizing the story before it is enacted.² Such a narrator is seen in the first small miniature warning of Antichrist's imminent arrival. From his pulpit the preacher, dressed in dark robes, raises an open palm and extends the index finger of his other hand as he addresses a large crowd that includes a king, bishop, pope, tonsured cleric, and several veiled women seated before him. This image, like the rest of the miniatures, introduces the characters and illustrates the mise-en-scene while pictorially advancing the dramatic text and providing a sustained visualization of the action. While the readers hear and look, they simulate the audience's experience of a theater performance. As the action begins, each participant could take a turn speaking the various parts, or one person could assume the task of animating all the speaking roles. Now, instead of passively receiving the performance, the readers fully and actively participate in a new and original performance.

The size and luxury of the manuscript that contains this play suggest an owner who desired a comprehensive and stimulating rendering of the Jour du Jugement within the folios of the manuscript. According to Graham Runnalls's classification of French drama manuscripts, the Jour du Jugement falls into type G: "a luxury manuscript recording the text of a past performance, belonging to a patron or guild, and not intended to be used as the basis of a performance; perhaps intended for reading."³ As a commemorative manuscript, however, the Jour du Jugement includes very little information about staging—only three very brief directions provide any information about the movement of the figures onstage. Any information concerning costumes, stage properties, or staged action can only be discerned in the visual text of the miniatures because the written text is limited...