The Danse Macabre of Women: Ms. fr. 995 of the Bibliotheque Nationale.

This beautiful book is must reading for scholars interested in the late Middle Ages, and particularly in attitudes to women and to death. The manuscript of the Danse Macabre of Women (BN Ms. fr. 955) provides an interesting comparison and contrast to the printed versions by Guyot Marchant, which appeared after 1486. The manuscript contains painted miniatures of 36 women, the Musicians of Death and a Parisian authority figure in academic regalia; each illustration is accompanied by a two-part poem in which Death addresses its intended victim and the woman responds. In chapter one, Anne Tukey Harrison examines the manuscript and printed tradition of the work, showing that the manuscript was an elaboration over several decades of what had begun as a fairly simple poem. In chapter two, the art historian Sandra Hindman looks at the relationship between the printed and manuscript versions, their respective attitudes to women, and the question of who may have commissioned the manuscript. Five color plates accompany the first two chapters; black and white plates of all the illustrations can then be found with the matching verses.

The illustrations and poetry provide a fascinating commentary on Parisian life at the end of the fifteenth century. The women in the paintings and verses come alive for the observer, often showing surprising complexities. The figures represent the full range from queens to merchants, nuns to prostitutes. Only two of the figures, the Witch and the Whore, carry negative social connotations, but even their depiction in the manuscript (unlike the printed text) is ". . . individualizing and offer[s] a variety of traits, both bad and good. Each woman is representative, but none of them is a caricature or a stereotype" (11). Hindman's examination of the relationship between printed text and manuscript takes this further, as she observes how the placement of the negative depictions, as well as their actual rendering, supports a more misogynistic interpretation in the printed books. This, and the more "noble" costumes of all the women in the manuscript, make plausible her view that this was a work commissioned by a woman at court, possibly Anne of Brittany, Marguerite of Austria, or Anne de Beaujeu. The choice of such a work for commission not only reflects the desire to own a beautiful object, but also humanist interests among royal and noble Frenchwomen at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries.

Harrison's observation that the manuscript women are not stereotypes can be extended to other figures in the painted miniatures. Women religious are not reduced to the kind of caricatures of churchmen and women so prevalent at the end of the Middle Ages. Nor does the merchant woman or the prostitute seem to fit some preordained category, although the descriptions match each character quite well. It is interesting to note that the prostitute's response to Death correlates nicely with a sermon on Mary Magdalene by Michel Menot (d. 1518), a contemporary French preacher: the Danse's prostitute laments, "Hang the ones who led me there / And left me to the trade. / If I had been well brought up / And guided in the first place, / I would never have been found like this. / The end follows the beginning" (102). Menot states "If Magdalene. . . had been educated in good and honest society, she would have been good. But she was given to three pimps who led her off to do their will" (Joseph Neve, Sermons choisis de Michel Menot, Paris, 1524, 147). This example shows the exciting possibilities for comparison between the poems/illustrations in this volume and other sources from the period which also dwell on memento mori themes. In short, this is valuable source for scholars in all fields of medieval studies.

LARISSA TAYLOR Colby College