Page - 7 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Volume LIX

After Philomena had recounted her story on the first day of Boccaccio’s Decameron, Dieoneo begins his own – a tale about a monk and an abbot who had lapsed into sin, epitomiz- ing the late medieval discourse on seeing and hearing.1 This fourth tale of the day tells about a certain monk in Lunigiana who was overtaken by carnal appetite at the sight of a well-favored lass.2 After entering into conversation with her, and knowing that all the other monks were asleep, he brought her to his cell to satisfy his needs. While the couple were disporting themselves, it so chanced that the abbot arose from his sleep and, hearing the racket that betrayed the amo- rous couple, he crept stealthily up to the door to listen. The monk, who had heard the scuffling of the abbot’s feet, put his eye to a crack in the wall and saw the spying abbot eavesdropping on them. Seeking to escape condemnation, he slipped away from his cell, leading the abbot into a trap, to take his place there. Rather than reproaching the poor girl and the monk, how- ever, as he planned, the abbot instead shut the door behind him and delighted in the pleasures of the flesh. Meanwhile, the monk went back to looking through the crevice, and he both heard and saw all that the abbot was doing and saying. When the abbot returned to his chamber – not before he had locked the damsel in the monk’s cell – he was eager to rebuke the monk and send him to prison. However, when he realized what the monk now knew and had seen through the ‘key-hole’, he withdrew his plan and pardoned him instead. The story ends with the narrator’s cynical remark that the girl, if it is to be believed, returned more than once to the monastery after- ward, making thus the (superior) abbot and the (relatively inferior) monk equal partners in sin. Dieoneo’s tale is set into motion by two sen- sory and cognitive experiences: hearing and see- ing. While the abbot organizes his viewpoint, ethics, and information according to things heard, the monk does so by means of things seen. Both senses are at play, and each is voyeuristic in its turn: while the abbot practices aural voyeur- ism, the monk’s voyeurism is ocular. These, how- ever, are not depicted as equal; eavesdropping appears to be less convincing and reliable than peeping. In order to enforce his alleged superior- ity, to attain knowledge, and to understand what VOYEURISTIC STIMULI SEEING AND HEARING IN THE ARENA CHAPEL Assaf Pinkus This article is a part of my research project “Voyeurism in Late Medieval Art and Devotion,” carried out at Tel Aviv University with the generous support of the German-Israeli-Foundation, Young Scientists’ Program. I wish to thanks my assistants, Alexander Ripp, Naama Schulman, and Gili Shalom, for their insightful ideas and remarks during the preparation of this article for publication. 1 See R. Martinez, The Tale of the Monk and His Abbot, in: E. B. Weaver (ed.), The Decameron First Day in Per- spective, Toronto 2004, pp. 113–134, esp. pp. 117–118. For a comprehensive overview of medieval cognition, see D. G. Denery, Seeing and Being Seen in the Later Medieval World, Cambridge 2005. 2 Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron of Boccaccio, Bibliophilist Society, London 1930, I, p. 4. Most of Denioneo’s stories are of sexual nature depicting private events violated by an intruding gaze; as such, this narrator is clearly a voyeur.