2 - The self as dissemblance

Summary

What is the image that Theophilus would hope to see if he were looking into his own seal matrix? The answer is difficult and shifting but equally compelling. The legend seems happy to reject homage as a model for self-identification. The texts and images hint at a homage-like relation to the Virgin, but for the most part it is not possible for Theophilus simply to break his oath to the Devil and make an oath to the Virgin. And even if our most idiosyncratic text, Rutebeuf 's Miracle, can have Theophilus make homage to the Virgin (486), the path to this moment is painful and filled with obstacles. And the homage itself is brief and illusory. It almost seems as if the legend is obsessed with the words, gestures, and images of homage only to jettison them as inadequate, too earthly, too secular. The submission that homage entails, as we have seen, can be positively analogous to the kind of submission that would be appropriate between man and God or man and the Virgin. But the model of homage seems linked too strongly to a secular world of property and power and wealth. It is an earthly contract, a chirograph with two signatories and mutual benefits and responsibilities. Ultimately, the legend rejects homage. It is really just the first moment of the story. Another, more inchoate, image of self emerges haltingly as Theophilus moves through the steps of self-recognition that his misfortunes impose on him. These steps include his potential identification with the Jewish intermediary, his loss of position, his false reprisal of power, and finally his crisis of conscience.

We notice that each of these steps of self-recognition is negative. Their negativity seems an important part of medieval identity and the issues of self-presentation touched on earlier. One way to understand this negativity that is particularly pertinent to the Theophilus legend is the concept of dissemblance. Dissemblance and resemblance are two key components of twelfth-century theology's understanding of man, especially the image of man in relation to God.