The Vitae patrum records the lives of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. They included early Christian ascetics, such as saints Elias, Onuphrius, and Mary of Egypt, who went off into the wilderness, where they underwent extreme acts of contemplation, deprivation, and penance to achieve a closer connection with God. The most well-known visualizations of these eremitic saints appear in large-scale paintings, such as the monumental fourteenth-century Thebaid fresco in the Camposanto, Pisa. Denva Gallant’s Illuminating the Vitae patrum: The Lives of the Desert Saints in Fourteenth-Century Italy focuses instead on the lesser-studied imagery in the Morgan Library’s Ms M.626, the most illustrated late medieval manuscript of the Vitae patrum. This manuscript contains more than thirty saints’ lives in Latin, accompanied by two hundred seventy-two framed images rendered (mostly) beneath the text in light-colored tempera wash.

Illuminating the Vitae patrum is the first book-length monographic study of Morgan MS M.626.  Gallant begins by contextualizing the manuscript in fourteenth-century Naples, where it was likely produced. This is demonstrated convincingly by stylistic comparison with frescoes in Santa Maria Donna Regina, Naples (ca. 1316–21) and with illuminations in the Anjou Bible (ca. 1340). Morgan MS M.626 is also similar in content to the unillustrated fourteenth-century Neapolitan Vitae patrum (Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, Cod.VIII.B.10). Furthermore, Morgan MS M.626 contains two crypto-portraits of the King of Naples, Robert of Anjou (r. 1309–43), in the guise of Emperor Theodosius I (r. 379–95) and as a judge in the Life of Poemon (fols. 60v, 61r). Gallant accepts this identification of Robert, made previously by Alessandra Perriccioli Saggese (“Un codice per Roberto d’Anjou,” 2018), as well as her dating of the manuscript to the 1330s, during Robert’s reign (versus the previously held dating of 1350–75, listed on the Morgan’s website). King Robert is also the presumed patron of the manuscript, perhaps commissioned for his own use or as a gift, although the Vitae patrum is not listed in the extant royal treasury records which were damaged in WWII.

Gallant contributes to a broader understanding of late medieval religious practice by interpreting Morgan MS. M.626’s imagery of saints’ lives relative to an increased lay interest in the spiritual practices and eremitic ideals exemplified by the Desert Fathers and Mothers. This appeal may have been inspired by popular texts, like Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend (ca. 1260) and Domenico Cavalca’s vulgarization of the Vitae patrum (ca. 1320–42); and by sermons, such as by Fra Giordano da Rivalto da Pisa (ca. 1255–1311), who urged his audience to “go into the desert” and emulate the desert saints. In particular, Gallant addresses the question of how a lay viewer would have related to and modeled themselves on these saints’ extreme and seemingly inimitable devotional practices. She argues persuasively that the illustrations in Morgan MS M.626 permitted their viewer(s) to follow these eremitic saints and “go into the desert” by providing visual models that accentuate attainable ideals, such as habits of spiritual focus, resistance to temptation, and penance—all practices to bring them closer to God, even if they could not literally go off into the wilderness.

Unlike the Camposanto frescoes, which have been interpreted as images agentes (depicting mnemonic details call to mind the full story), Gallant contends that the more extensive visual narratives in Morgan MS M.626 were intended to instruct their viewers in eremitic ideals, such as total reliance on God; virtuous actions, such as penance; and habits of mind, such as contemplation and focus.  Additionally, Gallant reveals that Morgan MS M.626 is unique in the extent of its narrative imagery. Instead of highlighting the saints’ extreme spiritual actions post-withdrawal, as in the contemporaneous Camposanto frescoes or illuminations in the Sicilian Vitae patrum, MS Vat.lat. 375 (sometimes difficult to see in the book’s black-and-white figures), most images in Morgan MS M.626 consist of multiple narrative scenes that portray a saint’s complete spiritual journey—from withdrawal into isolation to their personal experiences of contemplation, temptation, and/or penance, and ultimately their arrival at an intimate union with God. Gallant suggests that by portraying multiple stages in this journey, images of the saints’ lives in Morgan MS M.626 provide visual models of more realistic and achievable spiritual goals for the non-eremitic viewer.

In chapters two through four, Gallant focuses on withdrawal, temptation, and penance respectively, and demonstrates how images showing each of these phases of the saint’s spiritual journey might have been translated into actionable practice by their fourteenth-century viewer. For example, withdrawal might be practiced as inner isolation, focused contemplation, and/or a complete reliance on God. Resistance of temptation might be practiced by emulating the saints’ strategies for controlling behavior and thoughts so as to maintain their focus on God. Penance could be practiced by confessing sins (made a prerequisite for receiving the Eucharist by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215) with the hope of attaining communion with Christ and ultimately salvation. Such practices were all accessible to the fourteenth-century lay viewer on their own spiritual journey without necessitating an actual retreat into the wild.

At the end, Gallant cites avenues for future study, including a deeper exploration of Morgan MS M.626’s Anjou patronage and its Neapolitan context. These factors and the following issues deserve greater consideration and seem critical to an interpretation centered on audience reception. How big would the lay audience for a single manuscript have been? Why were this manuscript’s unique visual models and strategies not adopted into more widely accessible forms, such as public fresco programs? Does Robert’s patronage necessarily indicate a lay audience for Morgan MS M.626? Could it have been commissioned instead as a gift to a monk or monastic order, such as the eremitic Celestines who were historically favored by the Anjou? In the examples given in the book, few laypersons appear, other than as protagonists of worldly sin, persecution, and temptation (often as demons in disguise); or as necessary to facilitate or demonstrate the saint’s virtues and miracles, such as St. Anthony’s charity to pilgrims or Abbot Beno’s healing of the afflicted (fol. 39v, Fig. 6). More often than not, however, it is monks who serve as witnesses to the sanctity of the Desert Saints (see, for example, Figs. 4, 13, 22, 28, 31, 37–39, 43, 65, 69, 71) or as the saint’s guide to virtue (Figs. 36, 56, 57). A notable exception is in the Life of Mary of Egypt, in which Mary’s sanctity is revealed to the laity after she returns to the community (fol. 136v, Fig. 73). Regardless, the strategies Gallant proposes for viewing Morgan MS M. 626 might also have been useful for cloistered or urban monastics, who, like most laity, could not literally “go to the desert,” yet wished to model themselves on the Desert Fathers and Mothers; or who, like the monks Paphnutius and Zosimas, desired to bear witness of and transmit these eremitic saints’ spiritual lessons to the world beyond the wilderness.