Fig. 1. “August,” from The Julius Calendar and Hymnal, British Library MS Cotton Julius A VI (early to middle eleventh century), fol. 6v. (© The British Library Board.) Following the pattern of the other months represented in the same calendar, August captures a gesture of postcolonial translation as multiple and diverse temporalities become one time. In effect, viewers see Christian temporality homogenizing the ancient zodiac (represented by the “Augustus Leo” of the poem) and agricultural time (indicated by farmworkers in harvest gear) into standard temporality—the time framed by “Virgo Maria” on line 15, or 15 August. The calendar’s work suggests that AD time is unbounded by and even alters its borders.

Fig. 2. A Latin Psalter, Bibliotheque Nationale Arsenal MS 1186 (1225–35), fol. 1v. (Image reproduced by permission from the Bibliothèque nationale de France.) Featuring a moment of charting/mapping time, this image captures a thirteenth-century vision of the work accomplished by Dionysius Exiguus, the tonsured figure seated on the right. The image carefully instructs viewers that the work of charting time—both measuring and recording it—belongs to the labor of the Christian religious who alone have the skills to tell time.

Fig. 3. “Mainz Anonymous,” Landesbibliothek Darmstadt MS Cod. Or. 25 (c. 1560), fol. 17v. (Image reproduced by permission from Landesbibliothek Darmstadt.) “Mainz Anonymous” begins in the lower left-hand corner of the left-hand column.

Fig. 4. “Child Slain by Jews” (“Hou the Iewes in despit of vre lady þrewe a chyld in a gonge [latrine]”), Vernon Manuscript, Bodleian Library MS Eng. poet. a. 1 (c. 1380–1400), fol. 124v. (Image reproduced by permission from the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.) Note the conscious spillage of expressions of Christian temporality into the margins of the poem.

Fig. 5. “Jewish Boy” (“Hou a Iew putte his sone in a brennyngge ouene for he was communed wit oþur cristene children on þe pask day” [took communion on Easter]), Vernon Manuscript, Bodleian Library MS Eng. poet. a. 1 (c. 1380–1400), fol. 125r. (Image reproduced by permission from the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.) Two scenes of father-and-son time (outside the church and near the stove) divide the pictorial. Although Jewish time seems to absorb the image, Christian temporality prevails. The son’s attendance at Easter service brings Mary to protect the son from the flames of the father’s oven. (Note also the son’s prayerful pose.)

Fig. 6. “Merchant’s Surety” (“Hou a Iew lente a cristenemon moneye and took ure lady to borow [used our lady as guarantor]”), Vernon Manuscript, Bodleian Library MS Eng. poet. a. 1 (c. 1380–1400), fol. 126r. (Image reproduced by permission from the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.) This image reproduces the complicated conversion process undergone by Abraham.

Fig. 7. “The Destruction of Jerusalem,” from Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes, Paris MS 63 (c. 1413–15), fol. 237, detail. (Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.) The Jews, featured in the lower right side of the manuscript, are being forcibly banished from Jerusalem, or violently removed from the castle’s boundaries. That expulsion folds into Siege’s general desires to translate Jewish temporality out of the story.

Fig. 8. “Woman Roasting Her Baby,” from Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes, Paris MS 63 (c. 1413–15), fol. 237, marginalia detail. (Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.) It is worth noting the physical expressions of remorse in the male figures of this depiction of a moment of cannibalism. The woman’s posture suggests that she is explaining why she is roasting the boy turning on the spit.

Fig. 9 “A Jewish Woman Devouring Her Child during the Siege of Jerusalem,” from Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes, Paris MS 63 (c. 1413–15), fol. 241, detail. (Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.) The posture of the men in this image, chastising the Jewish woman as she actively participates in cooking and devouring her son, provides a context for the posture of regret held by the men in figure 8.

Fig. 10. “Alma redemptoris mater,” British Library MS Harley 1704 (c. 1470), fol. 28r. (© The British Library Board.) This image illustrates the poem’s expression of distancing itself from Chaucer’s authorship and the Canterbury Tales. That act of separation from origins represents one of the four ways that the fifteenth-century manuscripts under discussion in the present chapter disassociate themselves from Chaucer and the pilgrimage tale he wrote.

Fig. 11. “Alma redemptoris mater,” British Library MS Harley 1704 (c. 1470), fol. 30v. (© The British Library Board.) The underlining here operates like a cryptic message that privileges, disembodies, and repurposes the song “Alma redemptoris mater.”

Fig. 12. “Fabula monialis de sancta maria,” British Library MS Harley 2382 (c. 1500), fol. 97r, detail. (© The British Library Board.) Like Harley 1704 (see fig. 10), Harley 2382 is an example of authorial dissociation.

Fig. 13. “Fabula monialis de sancta maria,” British Library MS Harley 2382 (c. 1500), fol. 99v. (© The British Library Board.)

Fig. 14. British Library MS Harley 2251 (c. 1470), fol. 72v. (© The British Library Board.) Harley 2251 opens differently from Harley 1704 (fig. 6) and Harley 2382 (fig. 8) but is still clearly disassociating itself from Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales. The rubrication in the opening majuscule affirms its start and solidifies its position as a separate poem with a separate identity.

Fig. 15. British Library MS Harley 2251 (c. 1470), fol. 76v. (© The British Library Board.) As evident in this image and its closing “Amen,” Harley 2251 means to end with the sacred image of the little martyred boy in his tomb, thus excising history.

Fig. 16. Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson C. 86 (c. 1500), fol. 174v. (Image reproduced by permission from the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.)