Books of hours: Vie de l'Homme by Godard

We have seen how out of the 26 verses in Dance aux Aveugles, the 23 have been reused in "La Vie de l'Homme". Francis Douce writes about Dance aux aveugles on page 232. Then he goes on to mention a book that contains 23 verses from Aveugles with illustrations:

Some of the editions are ornamented with cuts, in which Death is occasionally introduced, and that portion of the work which exclusively relates to him seems to have been separately published, M. Goujet¹³⁸ having mentioned that he had seen a copy in vellum, containing twelve leaves, with an engraving to every one of the stanzas, twenty-three in number. More is unnecessary to be added, as M. Peignot has elaborately and very completely handled the subject in his interesting "Recherches sur les Danses des Morts." Dijon, 1826. octavo.

(¹³⁸) Biblioth. Franc. tom. x. p. 436.

(Francis Douce: The dance of death exhibited, 1833)

This is Douce at his most frustrating. Did he really expect his readers to figure out what was meant by »Biblioth. Franc. tom. x.«, and then proceed to track down a copy of volume 10 of the (then) 88 year old "Bibliothèque françoise ou Histoire de la littérature françoise" to read what it says on page 436?

Fortunately it is possible these days to find the "Bibliothèque" on Google Books, where it turns out that all there is on page 436 is a synopsis of the real article on page 186. Apart from this, Douce is right: The French author, abbot Claude Pierre Goujet, has seen a book, where twelve leaves contain 23 "dizains" (stanzas of 10 lines each), each adorned by a picture. Goujet gives the text from the first of these 23 "dizains", which starts »je suis la Mort de nature ennemie«, so there is no doubt we are dealing with "Dance aux Aveugles" (and not "La Vie de l'Homme").

Douce's second reference is to a book by Peignot, but Peignot only quotes a catalogue, so it's better to look in the catalogue itself Catalogue de livres imprimés. The book in question is a book of hours named "Heures de Nostre Dame à l'usage de Troyes" — printed by Thomas Englart (Anguelart) for Guillaume Godard. At the end of the book comes 12 leaves with illustrations and "dizains" with the first starting: »Je suis la mort de nature ennemye. Qui tous viuans finablement consomme«.

We no longer have to guess because September 2023 the BNF scanned the booklet that was described by Goujet (Douce's first source). Incidentally, this is not identical to the one described by Douce's second source, Peignot. This second booklet, which resides at la Bibliothèque Mazarine, starts with a quire marked "V. i" indicating that there have been many preceding pages, and furthermore the headings are in red.

The explanation then is that Godard has copied Hardouyn's woodcuts for "La Vie de l'Homme", just like he also copied Hardouyn's, "La Destruction de Hierusalem" (picture to the right). These two cycles were primarily used for decorating the margins in the books of hours, but Hardouyn sometimes published "La Vie de l'Homme" and "La Destruction de Hierusalem" separately (example here and here). The two booklets we are discussing show that Godard did the same.

The booklet contains, as Douce said, 23 of the verses from Dance aux Aveugles. Above each stanza is a copy of the illustrations that Hardouyn had produced for La Vie de l'Homme. The copies are laterally inversed, but follow Hardouyn's originals closely, although they are slightly more primitive and a good deal more caricatured.

The scene with the cutthroat is used for illustrating Cain and Abel, and vice versa. Since there are only 22 woodcuts, one of the verses has been illustrated with a depiction of Job on the dung-heap.

On the last page is the prophet to the left. Hardouyn had 2 male and 2 female prophets. Simon Vostre has copied the first male prophet and used him for the authority, who concludes Accidens de l'Homme. Godard has copied the second prophet (picture to the left) and equipped him with a Latin text. This text was originally authored by Dionysius Carthusiensis (Denis the Carthusian - 1402–1471), but the same lines, »Lex metuenda premit mortales […]«, also introduce the printed books with the Danse Macabre of the women.

Godard's primary reason for creating these woodcuts has probably been for illustrating his books of hours. Let us look closer at one such book (see external link).

This book of hours, »Heures de nostre dame a Lusaige de Romme«, is disorganized, to say the least. Two of the images aren't included at all (viz. soldiers and woman in bed), while other scenes are used repeatedly (in fact I haven't found Godard's version of Hardouyn's soldiers anywhere).

A few of the images are accompanied by a text from La Vie de l'Homme (not from Aveugles as in the previous booklet), even though it isn't always for the right images. All in all five verses are brought, but most of the time there isn't any text, or the text is from another work, which Godard has also copied from Hardouyn, viz. "La Destruction de Hierusalem" (picture to the right).

Godard's woodcuts were later used in a book from 1547 published by Jehan Le Coq of Troyes. The woodcuts were combined with the text from Accidens de l'Homme (see the prophet to the right).

Winn thinks that Godard has copied "Vie de lhomme" from Hardouyn (and not the other way around), because Godard has also copied — and inversed — "La Destruction de Hierusalem" from Hardouyn.(1) I am not familiar with specifics of this argument, but we can see a blatant example to the right, where Jesus ben Ananias shouts his woes over the daughters of Syon: The words "Ve, ve, ve" (Woe, woe, woe) have also been laterally inversed.

The next chapter tries to correlate all these source and The 23 verses.

The previous subject was The Dance of the Blind Death.

External links

Winn:

Although it is difficult to assert which set takes precedence because of the factors cited above, it is known that Godard copied another set of Hardouyns borders (on the Destruction of Jerusalem) by reversing his images«.

(Mary Beth Winn, "Gathering the Borders in Hardouyn's Hours", page 151)

Marginal thinking: 17. Guillaume Godard

External links