Page - 21 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Volume LIX

VOYEURISTIC stimuli 21 by all, but not heard. Whereas the gestures of the confessors and their mimics were clearly discern- able from afar by every passerby (as was probably also the penitent’s display of emotion, even if its cause remained unknown), the conversation itself was hardly available. The ritual of confes- sion was thus conceived as an event constructed on several levels of voyeurism, each providing the voyeur with only partial information: the ocular voyeur gained privileged visual information, but since he could not hear the content of the con- fession the visual information remained incom- plete; while although the eavesdropper, on the other hand, could grasp the essence of the mat- ter, this not only required a great deal more effort but was also practically impossible. The confes- sion thus encouraged concurrently inclusion and exclusion of the viewer, just as the play of interior and exterior does in Giotto’s painting. The maid eavesdropping on St. Anne, and the viewers peer- ing into her intimate bedroom, reenact, there- fore, those invasive voyeuristic practices known to the viewers from their own voyeuristic experi- ences during confession. In this constellation, the priest himself (not the penitent) became a spectacle. The Domini- can manual Liber de eruditione praedicatorum, after 1263, by the preaching brother Humbert of Romans (1200–1277), details the appearance and behavior of the preachers in visual terms.59 Rather than discussing the content of the preach- ing itself, as was customary in the ars praedi- candi, it unrolls the techniques of preaching and the ways in which the brother should appear in front of his audience. This manual specifies the many duties which are connected with being the object of the congregation’s gaze, an object of spectatorship: fitting and modifying the preach- ing, gestures, facial expression, appearance and the like, according to the specific audience. The audience is categorized according to gender, social rank, age, the nature of its sins and others. Accordingly, the preaching brother should always behave as if he himself is subjected to somebody’s gaze, wherever he is; even when he is by him- self, he should act as if he is being watched by an invisible eye, and primarily by God.60 This idea is also articulated in Franciscan writings, as for example by David of Augsburg (d. 1272): At no time should you ever be careless or secretive […] rather you should always maintain your self with discipline and chastity in sight, taste, touch, and in everything else. As if you were being watched by someone.61 Since the priest was always to exam- ine himself in terms of self-representation and as being subjected to the gaze of the ‘other’, he became a public being – a spectacle – ostensi- bly lacking any private sphere. But this is only part of the picture. From the De modo orandi corporaliter sancti Dominici,62 written between 1280-1288 by an anonymous Dominican brother from Bologna and illustrating the nine ways of praying of St. Dominic, one learns that peer- ing at the saint was part of the assimilation and imitation practice. In this treatise, praying ges- tures are described in non-liturgical context, as 59 See in ibidem, p. 22. On the development of ars praedicandi, see J. Longère, La Prédication medieval, Paris, 1983, pp. 54–130. 60 Denery, Seeing and Being Seen (cit. n. 1), p. 27. 61 David Of Augsburg, De institutione novitiorum, part I, chapter 16 in Bonaventure, Opera omnia, p. 298. Quoted after Denery in: ibidem, p. 7. 62 On the ‘De modo orandi corporaliter sancti Dominici’ and its translation, see S. Tugwell, The Nine Ways of Prayer of Saint Dominic: A Textual Study and Critical Edition, in: Medieval Studies 47, 1985, pp. 1–124; idem, The Nine Ways of Prayer of Saint Dominic, in: S. Tugwell (ed.), Early Dominicans: Selected Writings, New York 1982, pp. 94–103. 63 See J. C. Schmitt, Between Text and Image: The Prayer Gestures of Saint Dominic, in: History and Anthropology 1, 1984, p. 129.