Gesturing in the early universities

DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. Gesturing in the Early Universities CORNELIUS O’BOYLE (*) SUMMARY 1.—Towards a theory of gestures. 2.—The medieval theory of gestures. 3.—The origins of formal gesticulations. 4.—Classroom gestures. ABSTRACT Research into the oral and literary traditions of scholastic education usually emphasizes the significance of the word in late medieval pedagogy. This paper suggests that coded hand signals provided early university scholars with an important non-verbal means of communication too. Using illustrations of classroom scenes from early university manuscripts, this paper analyzes the artistic conventions for representing gestures that these images embody. By building up a typology of these gesticulations, it demonstrates that the producers of these images and their audience shared a perception of scholastic education that embraced a sophisticated understanding of the activities associated with university education. BIBLID [0211-9536(2000) 20; 249-281] Fecha de aceptación: 5 de julio de 1998 «...First, Panurge yawned extravagantly, then as he yawned held his right hand in front of his mouth and over and over, with his thumb, shaped the Greek letter tau, or T. Then he lifted his eyes to heaven and rolled them like a she-goat in labour, coughing and sighing deeply. Then, pointing to where his codpiece should have been, but wasn’t, he grabbed his penis and rattled it melodically around between his thighs. Then he bent his left knee and bowed, holding that posture, his arms folded across his chest. (*) Lecturer in the History of Medicine. The Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. 183 Euston Road. London NW1 2BE. United Kingdom. 250 CORNELIUS O’BOYLE DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. Goatnose watched him attentively, then raised his left hand and clenched it, except for the thumb and index finger, which he joined nail to nail. “I understand”, said Pantagruel. “I know just what he means by this sign. It means marriage...”»(1). Thus do Rabelais’ famous comic characters investigate the possibility that wisdom can be communicated using «signs and gestures, but no words». Although exaggerated for effect, the episode is humorous precisely because we are aware that gestures do in fact play an important role in our attempts to communicate with one another. These gestures come in all varieties. Some are voluntary, such as a bow or a curtsy or a wink, whereas others can be quite involuntary symptomatic expressions, such as a frown or a laugh or a smile. Some appear to be natural and common to all people, such as the habit of pointing to indicate something. Others are conventional and specific to particular societies, such as the diverse signs of insult that form identifiable repertoires of gestures in each culture. Some are intended to accompany the spoken word, such as a handshake, while others are completely understandable without any other supporting means of communication, such as a salute or a genuflection. Though they may take many particular forms, however, gestures are always expressive bodily movements that exemplify, or magnify, or modify a particular thought or feeling (2). The part that gestures play in human communication has been extensively explored with respect to their anthropological and psychological significance (3). Less work has been done, however, on the role of (1) RABELAIS, François. Gargantua and Pantagruel, [translated by Burton Raffel], London, W. W. Norton & Company, 1990, [book 3, chapter 20], pp. 294-295. (2) The range and importance of gestures is discussed in THOMAS, Keith. Introduction. In: Jan Bremmer; Herman Roodenburg (eds.), A Cultural History of Gesture from Antiquity to the Present, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1993, pp. 1-14. (3) For a brief survey of the relevant literature see the bibliography given in BREMMER; ROODENBURG, note 2, pp. 253-260, esp. pp. 259-260. The study of gestures as part of human behaviour has been popularized in works such as MORRIS, Desmond. The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal, London, Jonathan Cape, 1967, and his Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behaviour, London, Jonathan Cape, 1977. 251 Gesturing in the Early Universities DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. gestures in history, either in terms of what they might tell us about social structures and cultural traditions in the past or what they might reveal about how people communicated with one another (4). Certainly, some work has been done on decoding sign languages that were used by particular social groups in certain circumstances. In the courtly life of the eighteenth century, for example, ladies gestured with their fans to communicate with their swains in situations where spoken language was impossible or forbidden. For instance, a lady might gesture to her lover with her fan to indicate to him that «the coast is clear—come to me» or maybe «go away—my husband is near at hand». But so far, nobody has examined the role that gestures played in the transmission of knowledge, particularly in the context of classroom teaching (5). This is the topic that this paper seeks to open up, at least in a preliminary way, as an important yet hitherto unexplored avenue of research in early university education. A notable feature of research into the early universities is that it usually pays close attention to the oral and literary traditions that underpinned scholastic education. By focusing exclusively upon these logocentric traditions, however, the significance of the word (whether written or spoken) in late medieval pedagogy has often been overemphasized. In this essay I wish to correct this perspective by investigating the use of gestures in early university education as a non-verbal means of communication. In claiming that gestures are an important object of enquiry for historians of the early universities, I assume that the transmission of knowledge in the classroom was one of the primary aims of this education, and that to understand this activity we must be able to interpret the performative gestures that were associated with it. To substantiate this claim we shall begin by outlining a theoretical framework for understanding gestures, and then, we shall survey the European tradition of gesture theory down to the fifteenth century. Having identified the general significance of gestures in late medieval society, the essay (4) A brief survey of works on the history of gestures is given in the bibliography in BREMMER; ROODENBURG, note 2, pp. 253-260, at pp. 254-259. (5) But see SCHMITT, Jean-Claude. La raison des gestes dans l’Occident médiévale, Paris, Gallimard, 1990, pp. 200-205. 252 CORNELIUS O’BOYLE DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. then seeks to demonstrate that a sophisticated system of coded hand signals was employed by scholars in the early universities as an important means of communicating the technical information that constituted the material of early university education. 1. TOWARDS A THEORY OF GESTURES In the broadest terms, a gesture may be defined as any movement of the body or posture that expresses an emotion or conveys a message to the observer. Gestures are usually performed to somebody (either to God in private prayer or to other people) in order to re-enforce or refine the signal implied by an activity such as speaking, listening, understanding, agreeing or dissenting (6). Taken together, they constitute a language which, though distinct, is closely related in many ways to written and spoken language. It is noticeable, for instance, that gesture language bears the same rudimentary structure as any other written or verbal language in that a gesture, like any other linguistic expression, is either conventional, or demonstrative, or iconographic. A gesture may be conventional in that, like an idiomatic expression, its meaning may be culturally specific. Like idiomatic expressions, these gestures are often untranslatable so that it is almost impossible to put them into other words (or gestures) without losing something of their original meaning. A gesture may be demonstrative in that its function is primarily indexical; in other words, the gesture is intended to point out something. The most obvious example of this is when we actually point to an object with our index finger and simultaneously say, «That is an X», or «This Y», or «It was Z». A gesture may also be iconographic in the sense that it seeks to represent the thing being discussed. An example of this is our manner of gesticulating when we try to describe a spiral staircase or a globe. Many of the earliest written languages, such hieroglyphics or (6) We are limiting our analysis here to gestures. This is not to deny that even when the body is in complete repose, it can give off messages as clear as any signal associated with bodily movement. Indeed, there is no attribute to the human body, whether its size, shape, height or colour, which does not convey some meaning to the observer. 253 Gesturing in the Early Universities DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. Chinese characters, are similarly pictographic in the sense that the inscribed figure was originally a visual representation of a thing or a syllable or a sound, but over time, the figure has become stylised until the character is now completely iconic. Similarly, most of the conventional gestures we use today probably had their origins in pictographic gestures (7). Indeed, the similarities are so striking that some people now believe that all written languages have their roots in the language of gestures. Gesture language and speech are also similar in the way they are learned. Just as native speakers learn their mother tongue conventionally, that is, they learn by uttering the appropriate responses in particular situations (and not by studying primers or memorizing vocabulary), so gestures are also learned conditionally, that is, they are learned as conditioned responses in certain circumstances. Moreover, the stages by which we learn these languages are the same. In speech, we learn the more complex structures of our native language by building upon the simple structures we learn first. The simplest of these is the naming of things that we learn by having them shown to us. Interestingly, this introduction to speech is usually done by means of a particular gesture known as ostension in which an object is pointed out to us and simultaneously named. We learn gestures in much the same way. Beginning with simple gestures such as ostension, through imitation and use we gradually build up a complex and sophisticated repertoire of bodily movements as a means of conveying our thoughts and feelings. The fact that we learn our gestures in this conventional fashion may explain why there are so few written sources on the subject, which in turn may explain why historians have, by and large, ignored the history of gestures (8). (7) Hence, the reason often given for greeting strangers by shaking right hands is that by doing so one reveals that nothing is being concealed in the hand used for wielding weapons. But see BÄUML, Betty J.; BÄUML, Franz H. Dictionary of Worldwide Gestures, 2nd edition, London, Scarecrow Press, 1997, pp. 285-289, for a more detailed examination of the matter. (8) There may, however, be more documentary evidence than we had hitherto imagined. For instance, a sketch of Eight Studies of a Hand originating in mid-fifteenthcentury Florence was once taken to be little more than an artist’s practice of drawing what is usually considered to be one of the more difficult parts of human anatomy to represent naturalistically. Now, however, we know that they are an 254 CORNELIUS O’BOYLE DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. Gesture language and speech are also closely related in the way they are used. As we have already noted, gestures can be used to re-enforce the message of the spoken word. In this capacity, gestures play a supporting rhetorical function in verbal communication. But in addition to this supplementary role, gestures and words can also be related in a more intimate way such that, together, they form a sort of mixed language. This is especially the case where gestures are needed to clear up the ambiguities of verbal language. Probably the simplest example of this is a situation in which an ostensive gesture is required to disambiguate demonstrative pronouns. For example, in some cases the utterance «He did it!» must be accompanied by a gesture that points out the individual in question so that there is no confusion as to who the «he» is to which the pronoun refers. So far, we have discussed the role of gestures in communication; but gestures may also have non-communicative functions as well. For instance, modern psychological research suggests that we gesture as we talk even though our gestures can’t be seen (for example, when we speak to somebody on the telephone) because bodily movements help the brain store and recall memories and thus aid the process of thinking (9). This suggests that gestures may help to fix ideas and notions in the mind in much the same way as graphs, pictures, charts and models are used to represent (literally: re-present) complex data to the mind in a vivid and memorable fashion. Gestures also play an important function in managing the relationships between individuals and groups in society. In a general sense, they characterize the sort of behaviour of an individual that a society finds artist’s depiction of eight distinctive hand gestures, each with its own particular rhetorical use and meaning. The sketches are reproduced in BAXANDALL, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972, plate 28. The meanings of these gesticulations are explained below. (9) Experimental research shows that people who are blind from birth (and who therefore could not have learned their gestures by seeing and copying them, and would be unlikely to give visual cues when they communicate) still gesture when they speak, even though they deny they do so. The implication is that the gesture serves some function other than communication. 255 Gesturing in the Early Universities DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. meaningful and socially acceptable. Moreover, gestures are an important means of social differentiation in that individuals and groups in society make use of distinctive bodily comportment to distinguish themselves. As public expressions of certain values and beliefs, these gestures are often the most immediate outward signs of the hierarchies and groupings that constitute social relations. Today, the gestures of bowing, curtsying, saluting, and even ring kissing, still express hierarchical relationships within certain social groups. Similarly, in the Middle Ages, monks, knights, merchants and scholars constituted distinct gestural communities insofar as each group had its own clearly defined ranks and orders which were denoted by specific gestures (10). These gestural characteristics were often represented with such care in medieval manuscript illuminations that it is the bodily posture as much as anything else (such as clothing or other accoutrements) that reveals whether an individual is praying, fighting, discussing or engaging in commerce (11). Furthermore, it is the gesturing between the characters who inhabit these illuminations that makes clear who is the superior in terms of the hierarchical relationships between them (12). These illustrations suggest that in the Middle Ages, (10) SCHMITT, Jean-Claude. The Rationale of Gestures in the West: Third to Thirteenth Centuries. In: Bremmer; Roodenburg, note 2, pp. 59-70, at p. 61. (11) The typical gestures of various social groups were depicted in the cycle of images designed to accompany Nicole Oresme’s translation of Aristotle’s Politics. Examples of these illustrations (from a manuscript in private French ownership and from Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale Albert 1er, MS 11201-02) are reproduced in SHERMAN, Claire Richter. Imaging Aristotle: Verbal and Visual Representation in FourteenthCentury France, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1995, pp. 222-223 and 254-255. Similar illustrations for this text were also produced by the fourteenthcentury Parisian illuminator Pierre Remiet. These now survive in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS fr. 9106, fols 243v and 244r, and are reproduced in CAMILLE, Michael. Master of Death: The Lifeless Art of Pierre Remiet, Illuminator, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1996, pp. 110-111, figs. 64 and 65. (12) For instance, in medieval illustrations of the mass the celebrant is usually distinguished from the attendant deacons and acolytes by his posture. See, for example, the Boucicaut Master’s early fifteenth-century depiction of the act of consecration in London, British Library, Add., MS 16997, fol. 145r [reproduced in PÄCHT, Otto. Book Illumination in the Middle Ages: An Introduction, preface by Jonathan J. G. Alexander, translated by Harvey Miller, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986, p. 198, fig. 207]. 256 CORNELIUS O’BOYLE DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. as much as for today, gestures played an important social function in serving a deeply felt individual need for self-identification and belonging. Gestures also form an intrinsic part of the ritual life of society in which authority and belief is expressed as effectively in the combination of words and movement as in written records. Indeed, the mixed language of utterances and gestures was probably the most effective expression of power in the Middle Ages when few people could read or write (13). Such expressions of power can be made solely by means of a gesture, such as a religious blessing or the laying-on of hands as an invocation of the Holy Spirit. They can also be made by means of formulaic utterances accompanied by the appropriate gesture. Thus, the priest utters the words of institution as he bows and genuflects before the altar during the consecration at mass. Expressions of power can also be embodied in symbolic objects associated with certain bodily movements. Thus, the act of consecration is made manifest at the elevation of the host by the priest, and a man is declared a knight when the monarch dubs him with a sword. Formal gestures of this sort help to publicize political and religious power, while at the same time conveying legitimacy upon the actor. In these ways, gestures fulfil a crucial ideological function in society. 2. THE MEDIEVAL THEORY OF GESTURES Though gestures were as important in the Middle Ages as they are today, their meaning was explained in different ways. The medieval theory of gestures was based upon an understanding of the relationship between the body and soul that went back to antiquity. Underpinning this theory was the belief that the human body was composed of an invisible inside and a visible outside linked in a dynamic relationship in which gestures were the outward expression of the secret movements of the soul within. External bodily behaviour thus laid bare the inner life of the soul. The relationship between body and soul also had an ethical (13) SCHMITT, note 10, pp. 59-60. 257 Gesturing in the Early Universities DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. dimension to it that manifested itself in certain sorts of gestures. Signs of bodily control were seen as indications of a desirable internal harmony and a superiority of the mind over body. On the one hand, the body, as the prisoner of the soul, might be given to extreme gestures that transgressed ethical limits and thus threatened the inner life of the soul. On the other hand, gestures of penance and piety were expressions of the fact that the body could be used positively to improve the soul (14). In the Christian culture of the Middle Ages, this theory provided the justification for a dramatic elaboration of the use of gestures in all forms of religious practices, from the individual activity of praying to the great rituals of state functions. The hand signals used in the early universities which we are interested in here, however, were based upon a rather different, though related, tradition of gesturing that also goes back to antiquity. The origins of this sign language are more readily apparent when we remember that these gestures are more properly characterized as gesticulations. A gesticulation, as opposed to a gesture, is a more or less elaborate movement of arms, hands and fingers that simultaneously accompanies speech. When used as a formal code of signs which are intended to amplify, modify, affirm or subvert their related utterance, gesticulations form an integral part of the act of verbal communication. 3. THE ORIGINS OF FORMAL GESTICULATIONS The origins of these formal codes of gesticulation appear to lie in the classical art of rhetoric. According to ancient Roman rhetorical theory, training was given not only in the invention, composition and style of speech, but also in its delivery, which included the appropriate gestures (15). For example, Cicero talks of the language of the body and its eloquence, by which he means the entire delivery of speech, both the voice (as the emanation of the body) and the bodily movement (14) SCHMITT, note 10, pp. 60-61 and 64-67. (15) GRAF, Fritz. Gestures and Conventions: The Gestures of Roman Actors and Orators. In: Bremmer; Roodenburg, note 2, pp. 36-58, at p. 37. 264 CORNELIUS O’BOYLE DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. Such an investigation of teaching scenes would certainly be worthwhile, but is well beyond the scope of this essay. Even so, some provisional inferences can still be drawn from classroom illustrations, at least with respect to the importance of gesticulations in early university teaching, so long as we remember that we are analyzing the artistic conventions they embody. This is true, of course, because all medieval illuminations should be understood, in the first instance, as works of art. Medieval art is distinctively anthropomorphic in character in that God, the devil, angels, and other supernatural beings are frequently rendered in human form. It therefore contains numerous images of the human body displaying all sorts of gestures, which have provided art historians with an invaluable source for studying the symbolic meaning of deportment (39). Their research has shown that the effective unit of narration in medieval art was the human figure, not only its physiognomy but also the way that it moved and expressed itself. Certainly, the wellknown physical characteristics of some individuals were depicted by artists as a means of distinguishing them. Thus, Christ and Mary are usually given fairly standard representations that reveal their identity, and saints usually have some characteristic physical mark of identification (40). But drawing upon the traditional view that there was a close relation between the movement of the body and the movement of the soul, artists believed that mental and spiritual states could also be depicted through physical expression (41). For example, a common gesture of greeting in late medieval painting is where the right hand is extended in an inviting manner, the palm of the hand is slightly raised and the fingers are allowed to fan downwards with the elbow slightly (39) See, for example, BAXANDALL, note 8, pp. 56-81. See also GOMBRICH, Ernst H. Ritualized Gesture and Expression in Art. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Series B, 1966, 251, 393-401; BARASCH, Moshe. Gestures of Despair in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art, New York, New York University Press, 1976; and BARASCH, Moshe. Giotto and the Language of Gestures, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987. (40) For Christ and Mary, see BAXANDALL, note 8, pp. 56-59. Examples of saints’ physical characteristics include representations of St Paul’s baldness and the stigmata of St Francis. (41) BAXANDALL, note 8, pp. 60-61. 265 Gesturing in the Early Universities DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. crooked. Artists also used gestures to diversify a group of people, giving each individual a unique character. Each figure plays its part in the story by interacting with the other figures in the group, thus suggesting relationships and actions. Slight differences in posture are used to establish credible relationships in the grouping and to suggest complex psychological interplay. In this way, static figures could be used to represent dynamic events (42). 4. CLASSROOM GESTURES Using these sorts of insights, art historians have been able to construct a thesaurus of iconographic representations that constitute the language of images in medieval art (43). Using this as a model, my intention here is to begin to construct a typology of gesticulations used by illuminators of classroom scenes. In doing so, I am not suggesting that these gesticulations comprise a universal or natural language. Rather, gestures are conventional; they are the products of social and cultural differences such that their meaning can be determined only from their individual contexts. In constructing a lexicon of gesticulations, then, my intention is to reveal the conventions that these images embody. The first thing one notices about medieval images of classroom scenes is the huge yet subtle variety they exhibit in terms of their contents (44). To be sure, the overall composition is invariably controlled by certain traditional elements in these sorts of illustrations. The scene (42) BAXANDALL, note 8, pp. 66-81. (43) See, for example, GARNIER, François. Le langage de l’image au moyen âge: signification et symbolique, 2 vols, Paris, Le léopard d’or, 1982-89; and GARNIER, François. Thesaurus iconographique, système descriptif des répresentations, Paris, Le léopard d’or, 1984. (44) Compare, for example, the simple traditional teaching scene at the beginning of Galen’s Tegni in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS lat., 17157, fol. 137v (in which the master and one of his seven students are holding wax tablets) [fig. 1] with Laurentius de Volterra’s detailed depiction of Henricus de Allemania lecturing to his students in Bologna (now Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Kupferstichkabinett, min. 1233) [reproduced in DE HAMEL, note 33, p. 130, fig. 123]. 266 CORNELIUS O’BOYLE DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. Fig. 1.—Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat., 17157, fol. 137v. is nearly always inside a room, with a master instructing a small group of students before him [Fig. 1]. Beyond this, however, images dating from the thirteen, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are diversified in many ways. From one image to another, the number of individuals changes, their clothes and other accoutrements are different, the furniture and other fitments of the room vary, the position of the characters is altered, and—most important for our purposes—the individuals are shown making all sorts of gestures. This diversity is in stark contrast to the fixity of other sorts of illuminations that appear in these manuscripts. For example, images of physicians inspecting urine flasks are much 267 Gesturing in the Early Universities DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. more generic in character. Whether the physician is indoors or outside, at the bedside or in a consulting room, in the presence of a patient, a messenger, a colleague or an assistant, he is always shown in the same pose. Dressed as a learned gentleman, he holds a jordan up to the light in one hand, and points at it in a rather vague fashion with the other [Fig. 2] (45). Representations of scholars in the classroom, by contrast, seem much more deliberate in the way they are diversified. This is especially the case with respect to gesticulations, as artists show masters and students making all sorts of arm and hand gestures. This diversity, of course, is not an indication that these scenes are naturalistic representations. Rather, it suggests that the artists who produced these illuminations and the people who viewed them shared a common perception of the university classroom that embraced a wide variety of activities that were commonly associated with the life of a scholar. An analysis of these different gesticulations may help to identify what these activities were. Among the features that distinguish images of academic gesticulations from other medieval gestures is the fact that artists depicted scholars as standing still, and no attempt is made to indicate locomotion. Moreover, artists rendered these gesticulations such that they appear to accompany the spoken word. It is also notable that these gesticulations are made almost exclusively with the arms (not with the head or legs), with movements that are confined to within their shoulders and waist. In other words, it seems that these scholars follow the classical rule that orators must not use exaggerated gestures. The image thus conveyed is that university scholars are invariably sober, articulate and self-controlled individuals with a certain gravity and purpose about them. (45) By about 1300, the image of the urine-flask had a purely iconic significance for its audience; it was a stock image that bore little relationship to Galenic medicine as it was practised by university-trained physicians at this time. McVAUGH, Michael R. Bedside Manners in the Middle Ages. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 1997, 71, 201-223. Illustrations of this sort may be found in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS lat., 7030A, fol. 7va, and Cambridge, St John’s College, MS 99 (D. 24), fols 23ra, 46ra and 59va. See also the medical miniatures of uroscopy reproduced in MacKINNEY, note 35, pp. 213-214, and the drollery of an ape dressed as a physician examining a patient’s pulse and urine on p. 216. This is a play on the traditional diagnostic tools of the medieval physician. 268 CORNELIUS O’BOYLE DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. Another characteristic of these classroom scenes is that they are composed to reflect the relative status of scholars in terms of their situation, position and gesture, as well as their clothing and size. Invariably, the master is situated on high, to the left of the student, while the student is situated low on the right-hand side of the frame. In terms of position, the master is usually seated on a throne (cathedra), facing the viewer, with his head lowered towards his pupils. By contrast, the pupils are usually in profile, seated on the ground or on benches, with their Fig. 2.—London, British Library, Harley, MS 3140, fol. 32v. By permission of the British Library. 269 Gesturing in the Early Universities DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. heads raised to their master (46). With respect to gesture, the master is often shown actively gesticulating towards his disciples, while the students are usually represented as passively paying attention to him. Sometimes, the pupils are depicted with their hands open in an equally passive act of accepting their master’s words. Even on those few occasions where pupils are shown actively imitating their master, the message conveyed by the students is one of comprehension and even obeisance [Fig. 3]. Artists also took great care to distinguish masters from students in terms of what they wore in the classroom. Depending on who the author of the text was, the artist might depict the teaching master in the habit of a Franciscan or Dominican friar (47), or he might dress him in the distinctive doctoral bonnet and long cape of a secular master. Concerning the students, artists might depict a scene from one of the higher faculties in which the students, who were often already masters of arts, are also shown wearing doctoral bonnets and long capes. Other images, however, illustrate scenes from the arts faculty, or maybe even grammar school, where much younger students are depicted wearing nothing but simple tunics and who may not even be tonsured. Size is another very obvious distinguishing feature, with the master or more important figures in the composition being shown much larger than the attendant students [Fig. 4]. An interesting variant on these classroom scenes is when two or more masters are represented. In these situations the characters are usually positioned facing each other, making similar gestures to each other, apparently discussing or arguing over some issue [Fig. 5]. Here, (46) A good example of this is the illustration in London, British Library, Royal, MS 17 E XX, fol. 10v. (47) For instance, the illumination that opens the Franciscan Richard of Mediavilla’s commentary on the Sentences in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS lat., 14563, fol. 1r shows the author, dressed in a Franciscan habit, teaching two students who are also dressed in Franciscan habits [reproduced in DE HAMEL, note 33, p. 123, fig. 117]. Similarly, at the beginning of Oxford, Bodleian, Laud Misc., MS 409, fol. 3v, Hugh of St Victor is shown teaching three students: all four characters are attired as canons regular [reproduced in DE HAMEL, note 33, p. 106, fig. 103]. 270 CORNELIUS O’BOYLE DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. Fig. 3.—A master demonstrates the gesticulations of assertion and affirmation while at least two of this students imitate him. (London, British Library, Harley, MS 3140, fol. 137r. By permission of the British Library). 271 Gesturing in the Early Universities DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. the emphasis is on equality, the authority of each individual being underlined by the similarity of their dress, posture and gesture. In medieval classroom illustrations, artists used gestures of the hand as the most expressive means of conveying what precisely was taking place in the scene. Hand gestures in this context are used to convey acts of accepting, refusing, affirming, allowing, agreeing and dissenting. These gestures are mostly a matter of the right hand, the left being auxiliary. This may reflect that fact that in ancient rhetoric the left hand was used primarily to control the toga, though it is more likely to indicate the traditional belief that the left hand was the evil hand and thus an inappropriate one for making faithful or truthful gestures. Fig. 4.—In this fifteenth-century illustration, which opens Gui de Chauliac’s Chirurgia magna, the seated master (Bernard of Gordon)summons three medical authorities (Avicenna, Hippocrates and Galen), who stand before him. Note that these four characters are drawn to a large scale, whereas the students seated to the left are drawn to a much smaller scale (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat., 6966, fol. 4r). 272 CORNELIUS O’BOYLE DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. Fig. 5.—This full-page illustration shows Hippocrates and Galen in debate. The characters are seated and gesticulate to one another while uttering incipits of their works. (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat., 6823, fols. 1v-2r). 273 Gesturing in the Early Universities DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. A study of these hand gestures reveals that artists consistently drew upon a stock of gesticulations to represent the various activities that they (and presumably their audience) associated with scholars in the classroom. For example, a closed hand with one or two fingers extended and the others folded is generally used to express the notion of affirmation. More particularly, pointing with the index finger is used as a sign indicating that the person is proposing an idea. Artists refined this gesture in various ways—notably by the orientation of the hand— according to the status of the person making the gesture and the sort of message being conveyed. For example, it was traditional for artists to represent superior people, such as God, popes or bishops pointing with two fingers rather than one(48). In these scenes pointing often had a simple ostensive function, where the index finger is used to indicate a thing or a person. But it could also be used to suggest that a person is giving directions either in the sense of showing the way to go or in the sense of explaining how to do something (49). In classroom scenes, it is invariably the metaphorical function of pointing that is emphasized. In these situations, pointing is particularly associated with the activity of communicating ideas. Pointing horizontally is used to express affirmation of an idea, or the expression of a personal thought [Fig. 6] (50), while (48) For instance, Anglo-Saxon illustrations of the empty tomb show the angel indicating to the three Marys that Christ is risen by pointing upwards with two fingers (see, for example, Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale, MS Y. 6, fol. 72v and MS Y. 7, fol. 21v, and London, British Library, Add., MS 49,598, fol. 51v) [reproduced in PÄCHT, note 12, p. 115, plate XIX, and pp. 182-183, figs 188 and 189]. Also, in a twelfth-century giant Bible from Admont, Salzburg (now Wein, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. Ser. n. 2701, fol. 69r), the Lord uses two fingers to instruct Moses to give the Ten Commandments to the Isaelites [reproduced in PÄCHT, note 12, p. 133, fig. 137. See also p. 136, fig. 142]. (49) See, for example, the medical miniatures reproduced in CARMICHAEL, Ann G.; RATZAN, Richard M. (eds.). Medicine: A Treasury of Art and Literature, New York, MacMillan, 1991, p. 67, colorplate 20, which show a physician pointing out how to carry out various medical procedures. (50) In addition to fig. 6, see also the beginning of Nicholas de Lyra’s Postilla litteralis super Biblia in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS lat. 14247, fol. 2r, where the Parisian illuminator Remiet has depicted a classroom scene in which the author points at his students while expostulating upon the Bible [reproduced in CAMILLE, 280 CORNELIUS O’BOYLE DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. Fig. 11.—In this opening illustration of the fifth book of Avicenna’s Canon the master authoritative points upwards to the first words of the text (“In this fifth book I will explain the uses of medicinal antidotes to you, and show you how to make them...”), which he seems to be reading from the copy of the text before him. His student appears to be disputing with him, using his right hand to concede a point, while at the same time using his left hand to make a counter-assertion. The third figure at the bottom is preparing the antidotes with his mortar and pestle. (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat., 14023, fol. 769v). 281 Gesturing in the Early Universities DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2000, 20, 249-281. Fig. 12.—The opening words of the Hippocratic Prognostics («Omnis qui medicine artis studio...») has encouraged the illuminator to insert a picture of a scholar seated before his lectern diligently reading a book to himself. He points to the words on the page as he utters them aloud (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat., 15457, fol. 88r). stock-in-trade images in the illuminator’s repertoire (53). Scenes of the classroom were diversified by artists according to their own understanding of what went on in the classroom in order to satisfy the discriminating understanding of their university-educated audience. As we have seen, one of their chief methods of doing this was to manipulate the gesticulations of figures to emphasize the variety of modes of communication that existed in the classrooms of the early university. (53) Of course, the fact that the audience for these scenes was probably university educated gives us no warrant for assuming that these images are any more realistic than other medieval images. It is interesting to note in this context that readers of The Times Higher Educational Supplement are still quite used to seeing cartoons of dons depicted as running around in mortar boards and gowns.