Life according to the Rule: A Monastic Modification of Mandatum Imagery in the Peterborough Psalter

Abstract

Medieval art historians have frequently and inconclusively sought a "monastic mode," a specific way that monastic art differentiates itself from secular religious art of the period. This article suggests that such a mode does indeed exist. It is not only one of selecting and interpreting, but a mode that causes traditional iconography to be reworked and modified to reflect life and ritual in the medieval monastery. One such modification can be found in the monastic use of traditional mandatum imagery, for which Christ's washing of his Apostles' feet on the evening of the Last Supper is an exemplum. Footwashing scenes are multiplied in monastic art and adapted to mirror the repeated footwashings that were a part of the monk's daily life. Such image manipulation is striking in the early fourteenth-century Peterborough Psalter, where a scene of St. Benedict washing the feet of a poor man is incorporated into a series of Scripture-related footwashings. The Peterborough mandatum image is a refashioning of a biblical event to convey a message that is peculiarly monastic and to reflect the ideal and rule of a way of life.