Earthly Treasures: Material Culture and Metaphysics in the Heptameron and Evangelical Narrative

Chapter Six: Earthly Treasures: Marguerite’s Mondain Monstrances

173 Chapter Six Earthly Treasures Marguerite’s Mondain Monstrances Monstre: f. A patterne, scantling, proofe, example, essay; also, a muster, view, shew or sight; the countenance, representation, or outward appearance of a thing; a demonstration; also, a watch, or little clocke that strikes not; also, the glassie box that stands on the stalls of Goldsmithes, cutlers, &; and generally, any thing that shewes, or points at, another thing; whence, la monstre d’un horloge. The hand of a clocke. La monstrance d’un maquignon de chevaux. The place wherein a horse courser shews his commodities … Monstrüeux … exorbitant, unnaturall, or most contrary to nature. Randle Cotgrave A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues With the exception of theological applications, Randle Cotgrave’s above definition of monstre enumerates the uses that Marguerite finds for objects in the Heptaméron. The definition also implicitly suggests ways in which her evangelical distrust of those things has developed. Its several categories all relate to artifacts. Monstre exalts appearance over essence: it is “the outward appearance of a thing.” It is unnatural, “most contrary to nature.” Artificed, something produced through technological expertise (“a demonstration”), monstre often designates a decorative arts object: “… the glassie box that stands on the stalls of Goldsmithes, Cutlers, &,” or a timepiece: “a watch, or little clocke”; such objects show that monstre is fixed in temporality and is essentially material. While it displays something other than itself, the monstrance as constructed contains that thing and in some measure claims structural identity with it, rather than designating something outside itself (such an orientation 174 Chapter Six “beyond” would move in the direction of a metaphysical perspective , and would be therefore acceptable to Marguerite). Monstre also “shews … commodities,” objects of exchange or transaction, stopping short of transformation. For these reasons, and recalling the Catholic view of monstrance as a miraculous manifestation, a containment and a physical showing-forth of a divine attribute, evangelicals distrusted reliance on objects for meaning, to stabilize significance or to embed the sacred in an earthly setting. The Catholic church mobilized monstrances for the faithful to venerate in a sort of theatrical pageant throughout the city; they fixed relics in the frontals of high altars and encased them under transparent glass bubbles as objects of devotion. Evangelicals, influenced by scriptural injunctions against representations of the holy, confined their worship to what they found in the Bible rather than accepting purported evidentiary displays of the holy in the form of a physical embodiment, image, or object, such as a reliquary or statue. Evangelicals questioned the practice of devotion to icons, saints’ bones, and relics housed in monstrances. Evangelicals’objections echoed Calvin’s writing against relics , Zwinglian and Anabaptist iconoclasm, and were especially akin to Luther’s denial that materiality in and of itself could encapsulate sacred significance. As contrasted with transubstantiation , Luther’s notion of consubstantiation maintained that the elements of bread and wine evoked the real presence of Christ but nonetheless remained earthly substances: while a spiritual transformation of the heart of the worshiper should occur, the bread and wine were never themselves lifted out of materiality, although their material substance was temporally “overlooked.”1 The words of the consecration spoken at the Eucharist generated for Luther a symbolic transformation— with, nonetheless, real matter (bread, wine)—to which the believer acquiesced, so that metaphysical message surpassed material substance. However, the material substance was not itself believed to be transformed in such a way as to become holy (as in the doctrine of Transubstantiation); rather, it was provisionally lifted up, to recall a higher reality, then resumed its base essential state. While in the Eucharist, bread could not possess immanence, in Luther’s view it could act as a vehicle to invoke or to enable one to envision transcendence. 175 Earthly Treasures Ambroise Paré, a physician with Huguenot sympathies,2 wrote Des monstres et des prodiges in reaction, at least in part, to the Catholic practice of venerating objects or fragments of objects, deemed to be holy. While he believed that God allowed monsters and marvels to occur in nature, Paré stressed that such manifestations should always be interpreted as signs, not as presence: they were phenomena intended for instruction, warning , or enlightenment. Through their misshapen materiality, they shocked the viewer into perceiving existence in a new way, thereby alerting humankind to God’s purpose for the world. However, they did not...