“A Gallehault was the Book”: Francesca da Rimini and the Manesse Minnesanger Manuscript

In the second circle of Hell, amongst the ranks of the lustful, Dante encounters the tragic lovers from Rimini, Francesca da Polenta and Paolo Malatesta, in one of the most celebrated and commented upon episodes of the entire Comedy.¹ The making of the new, and heretofore unsung, heroes of love poetry against the background of a great classical and medieval library (from Dido, to Helen and Paris, to Tristan) happens famously “by the book”: the resolution of Paolo’s and Francesca’s “doubtful desires” into the crucial kiss on the mouth takes place while they are reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, a text now identified with the extended prose version of the story, known as Lancelot. Dante painstakingly insists that this tale of desire is also a tale of reading. Within the list of the great lovers from antiquity, Semiramis is the one “of whom we read” (Inferno 5.58, “di cui si legge,” identically rhyming with “legge,” 56, the law, so as to point out the link between written text and social norms, both infringed by the lovers in this canto). Francesca recounts that they were reading (“noi leggiavamo,” 127) the story of Lancelot, and reading compelled them to look into each other’s eyes (“gl’occhi ci sospinse / quella lettura,” 130–31). Importantly, they kiss while reading (“quando leggemmo,” 133). Finally, after having accused the book and its author of precipitating the love affair, just as Gallehault did for Lancelot and Guinevere, the lovers read no more: “Galeotto fu ‘l libro e chi lo scrisse: / quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante [a Gallehault was the book and he who wrote it; that day we read no farther in it]” (137–38).²

Dante ends Francesca’s narration with this masterful image of the lovers who suddenly, mysteriously (as the figure of reticentia which is employed in line 138 dictates) close the book, inviting us readers to pause and to realize that we ourselves are intensely involved in our reading of the canto, and the intoxicating power of love literature has been reenacted and re-presented to us. While, like Paolo and Francesca, we are intent on reading, the “magic” of poetry takes place and the new lovers-turned-text now become agents of such magic, and their author, Dante, becomes a new “Gallehault,” the mediator of our textual fantasies. Francesca’s mouth starts functioning for the readers as Guinevere’s smile, a locus for creative interpretation of the discourse of love. As we are approaching the end of the canto, we too interrupt our reading quite abruptly, as our guide faints and leaves us momentarily alone, to realize that we are readers, who are reading about lovers, who are reading about lovers….

Francesca and Paolo’s (and our) situation is possibly not unique, as shown by one plate in the Manesse codex, a richly illustrated manuscript compiled in Zurich at the beginning of the fourteenth century, which contains the most important collection of love poetry in German. The ornately illustrated plates depict the poets, frequently through their heraldry. One such plate (311r, Figure 1) shows two figures reading a text, which has been identified as the Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven (circa 1200). According to Hellmut Salowsky, the text on the page reproduces the beginning of the Lanzelet: “swer recht wort merchen kan, der gedenche wie [Whosoever can recognize true words, let him consider what…].”³

The Manesse lovers are sitting on a bench, under a rosebush whose trunk separates them and whose two branches come together in the shape of a heart and carry a shield where the word “Amor” is inscribed. The woman holds the book and shows it to the audience while tracking the letters with her index finger, while the man appears intent on listening. This particular image is linked to the poet Alram von Gresten, of whom (and of whose poetry and heraldry) very little is known. The general scholarly consensus is, therefore, that this illumination is a generic illustration of “love.”

The similarities with Inferno 5 are many and striking...