Master of Death: The Lifeless Art of Pierre Remiet, Illuminator.

That "dolorous age," said Jules Michelet of the Middle Ages, and since then a singular, morbid proclivity has impelled artists and post-Romantic nonconformists to heave periodic sighs of nostalgia for that turbulent era. Paul Verlaine contrasted the "enormous and delicate" medieval epoch with his own, a nineteenth century which he saw possessed "of carnal spirit and sad flesh." More than a hundred years later, the flesh remains ever so sad, and the spirit, mired in consumerism and material comfort, no less carnal. It is thus perfectly natural that we feel intimidated by medieval excess; that we feel uneasy when we canvass a period of history that sanctioned public displays of arrant brutality, and in which quarterings, beheadings, dismemberings, live burials, and burnings at the stake were commonplace; that we experience discomfort at the recitation of massive epidemics that mowed entire villages, countries, or continents.

What did people think whose relation with the great reaper was so disturbingly close? Traditionally, historians endeavored to seek an answer through the interpretation of written texts and not, until recently, via a systematic exploration of the images that the past has handed down to us. Michael Camille's Master of Death is a comprehensive study of the life and works of Pierre Remiet, medieval book illuminator. Book illustration in the Middle Ages obeyed very different determinants, and served altogether different purposes, from those we are familiar with today.

Illustrators, it seems, did not draw on the book pages those complex motifs of intertwined vines, acacia leaves, and grotesque little figures simply to serve as ornament. Nor was their task confined to providing a concrete visual embodiment of the written text. Rather, the space "on the edge" of the text was often used by the illustrator to make a personal statement. This could be a textual commentary along the lines of perfect religious orthodoxy, or an entirely idiosyncratic interpretation, or a satirical, irreverent, and sometimes shocking exegesis. Thus, in a previous book, Image on the Edge, Camille calls attention to a human figure drawn on the margin of a religious text, that flashes a naked bottom and seems engaged in wild antics, while his facial appearance looks disturbingly like that of Christ. In Master of Death, the author makes us ponder his statement that illustrations may be likened to "complex systems of thought," and that they require as much poetic sensibility to be interpreted as the text itself. By his own assertion, Camille's work has hinged entirely upon the relationships that exist between words and images; and it is difficult to think of anyone better prepared for the task of "reading" visual messages from the troubled, or in Barbara Tuchman's expression, "calamitous," medieval past.

The reader is told, at the outset, that Remiet passes for an undistinguished artist. He is not rated among the top exponents of his craft by connoisseurs of medieval art. But the very fact of his alleged mediocrity recommends him to the historian. For a great artist breaks with all norms and, in a way, seems to exist outside time, whereas an "ordinary maker" is enormously informative to historical investigation, precisely "because he is rooted in a world he can never transcend." Remiet, in other words, is representative of his times, and Camille points out that his times had more in common with our own, than the more recently departed nineteenth century.

It is not common to say of a learned treatise in the history of art that the author identifies himself with his personage. But the deep, genuine involvement of Camille with the life and works (the two, we are told, were synonymous in that venerable era) of Pierre Remiet is glaringly manifest. Remiet comes alive in the first chapter, where he is depicted in his little Parisian shop on the Rue de la Parcheminerie, facing the church of Saint Severin, all redolent of the animal skins being prepared in the neighboring houses for the illuminator to exert his art upon them. Remiet's presence is strongly felt as each subsequent chapter depicts and lovingly discusses the surviving samples of his handiwork.

The body of work of Pierre Remiet is called "lifeless" in the book's subtitle, not in a derogatory way, but to emphasize and to "celebrate its reality, traced within and from the body of a historical subject." In other words, it is lifeless in the sense that the French call nature morte a great painting of "still life." The subject of death is variously represented, but always forcefully, suffused with religious sentiment, and always adverting to a future life that is to come, in the resplendent tradition of Christianity. No one had yet intimated that "God is dead"; and death was still representable: no one had yet invented the means to kill, as is now possible, on massive scale and leaving no trace. And so powerful and moving was Remiet's life work that, had his name been lost to posterity, Camille opines, he should have been known as Master of Death, in the style of other unnamed medieval artists.

The books of the wealthy, in the Middle Ages, had covers ornamented with rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones. They could also be provided with clasps, which could be locked: The bound volume was thus likened to a treasure chest. Opening Master of Death, like the books illuminated by Pierre Remiet, gives the impression of penetrating a treasure vault. In either case, "one cannot just flick through its contents." It is difficult to survey the richness of ideas developed by the author. Master of Death is a work of admirable scholarliness. The ample annotations, bibliography, and comprehensive catalogue of the illustrations give an idea of the daunting task undertaken by Camille, whose engaging style and peerless erudition are everywhere in evidence. The book has close to two hundred technically excellent figures, many in color. Unfortunately, some were reproduced at too small a scale, so that the reader has difficulty appreciating their details.

F. Gonzalez-Crussi is a pathologist at Children's Hospital in Chicago. His most recent book is Suspended Animation: Six Essays on the Preservation of Bodily Parts (Harcourt, Brace & Co.).