'The Consent in Pictures : marriage Representations in medieval Manuscripts of the Liber Extra (1250-1400)

Abstract

This lecture is about the marriage representations that can be found in illuminated manuscripts of the Liber Extra, the decretal collection promulgated by pope Gregory IX (1227-1241) as the official law of the Church. The decretal collection consists of five books, the fourth devoted to marriage questions. If a copy of the Liber Extra has been illuminated, there is -usually- only one illustration located at the beginning of each book. So the marriage representation at the beginning of book IV opens the section about marital issues. In my dissertation 'The Consent in Pictures. Marriage representations in the medieval (1250-1400) manuscripts of the Liber Extra' the relation between marriage representations and the text of book IV is the central issue. I have researched what function the illustrations have, how they are related to the text they illuminate, whether they add something to the text and if they form a source of information on their own. Until I started my research on the marriage representations in 1992, the illumination of the Liber Extra had never been studied as an independent subject. Most marriage representations from this decretal collection have not been published yet. Therefore I am working on the English translation of my dissertation. Publisher: Uitgeverij Verloren - Hilversum - The Netherlands (www.verloren.nl).