Table of Bigamy, from the Summa Super Titulis Decretalium Completa 1275 - 1299

Curator: Oh, I am instantly transported. What a feeling of hushed reverence this miniature evokes! It’s delicate yet… foreboding? Editor: Indeed. This is a page from Henry of Segusio’s “Summa Super Titulis Decretalium Completa,” specifically the “Table of Bigamy.” Created sometime between 1275 and 1299, it uses ink, tempera, and perhaps even some colored pencil to visualize a rather thorny legal concept within the context of medieval canon law. Curator: "Thorny" is one word for it. Bigamy… yikes! It makes me think about the pressures and constrictions placed upon people then, and even now, of course. So many circles and restrictions implied in those orbs all over the central figure, who, by the way, looks awfully serene considering her predicament. Editor: The image functions as a visual aid to explain the degrees of consanguinity and affinity that would render a marriage unlawful. Each of those circles connected to the central figure represents a prohibited degree of relationship, making it clear who one could and, crucially, could *not* marry. It's social control diagrammed! The figures at her feet embody transgressions. Note that she’s at once enclosed and exalted—a figure simultaneously representing law and subject to it. Curator: Ah, law! Such a fluid concept even today, don’t you think? Seeing it rendered like this, in this meticulous gothic hand, makes me consider how interpretations shift and how power constructs narratives that last centuries! The halo, for example—the color seems so saturated. Editor: The use of color is definitely purposeful. The gold halo, the bright blues and reds that frame the central figure – they signify the authority and sacredness attributed to the law and to those who interpret and enforce it. But look closer: at the bottom are these strange androgynous, tormented souls with ambiguous facial expressions; it's their lived realities versus the legalistic theory above. Curator: Exactly! And there we have the seed of dissonance. What happens when the beautiful structure of the law collides with, perhaps even crushes, real-life human experience? Perhaps a little bigamy becomes rather… complicated? Editor: Complicated indeed. This image, though small in scale, invites us to grapple with power, prohibition, and the human cost of rigid social structures, which I suppose means it does its job, even 700 years later. Curator: And like a tiny seed, it blossoms in my mind into a broader meditation on the fragility of freedom… and the enduring power of visual language.