The Price of Perjury

A Reflection on Dieric Bouts the Elder’s

Justice of Emperor Otto III

Dieric Bouts the Elder

Dieric (also known as Dirck, Dirk, or Thierry) Bouts the Elder (1410/20-1475 A.D.) was a Dutch painter born and trained in Haarlem. Most of his artistic life, however, was spent working in Louvain for the Flemish aristocracy and ecclesiastics, painting altar pieces and other religious art, as well as some secular pieces such as portraits and landscapes. Unfortunately, there is little in the way of biographical material on the Elder Bouts, but he—along with Hans Memling—are generally considered to be the successors to the school of Rogier van der Weyden (a/k/a Roger de La Pasture, ca. 1399-1464). It may be that Bouts was taught by the famous van der Weyden, but there is little evidence to support that with any certainty. Whether he was taught by van der Weyden or not, he was deeply influenced by him, as he was also by the artists Albert van Ouwater, and Petrus Christus.

In Bouts’s art one sees a devotion to precision and detail, a trait especially evident in the meticulous, lush, and festooned garments of his subjects which are notable for their exquisite and sumptuous designs and manifolds. Characterized also by their slender, vertical compositions, Bouts’s tendency to paint thin and angular subjects seems to be a Gothic atavism. Those characteristics, however, are very typical of the art of the Northern Renaissance in the Netherlands in general, and they are characteristic of Bouts specifically; indeed, it is because of these traits that he has been both criticized and praised by art critics:

The Commission for the Exemplum "The Justice of Emperor Otto"

Bouts’s The Last Supper (1464-68) is generally considered one of his finest works, as it was painted at the height of his powers. Around the same period of time that Bouts painted The Last Supper, Bouts was commissioned by the town council of Louvain to paint a series of four panels for the town hall (l’hôtel de ville).² The year he was commissioned he completed two panels together known as the Justice of the Emperor Otto (La justice d’Othon). The panels were originally intended to hang in the town hall of Louvain as a judicial exemplum,³ a depiction of a moral or exemplary tale for the benefit of the magistrates of the town, a common custom in the town halls of that age. The two panels that were painted are currently housed in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts (Musées Royaux Des Beaux-Arts) in Brussels, Belgium. The Justice of the Emperor Otto illustrates the legend of the false accusation of the wife of Otto III (980-1002), the King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor. The depiction of this legend was intended to illustrate the virtue of justice, and the virtue of reasoned, not passionate, judgment. It was not an uncommon theme: Roger van Weyden painted a similar piece earlier for the Brussels town hall, a piece which, though it no longer exists, without doubt informed Bouts’s piece.⁴

Source of the Exemplum

Bouts’s panels are imposing,⁵ as the figures painted on them are life-sized, which give a particular weight to the message intended to be conveyed by the horrible tragedy of Otto III’s precipitous judgment caused by his unfaithful and treacherous wife. The story, which is wholly legendary, is found in the 12th-century chronicle written by Godfrey (or Gottfried), Bishop of Viterbo (ca. 1120-ca. 1196).⁶ The story is also mentioned in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend or Aurea Legenda as obiter dicta in the hagiography of St. Pelagius, Pope in a digression dealing with the history of the Lombards.⁷

The story—and it is nothing but legend—relates that the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III married the daughter of the King of Aragon. Otto’s hot-blooded Aragonese wife, however, became enchanted by a nobleman of Otto’s imperial court, and made advances toward him. In a story redolent of the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar,⁸ the count remained loyal to his lord and wife. The result can be summarized in the well-known words of William Congreve (1670-1729):

True to the type of Potiphar, Otto's spurned wife accused the nobleman of having made advances upon her, defaming and falsely accusing him, and setting in motion the wheels of the emperor’s justice, or perhaps better, injustice.

The Panel "The Execution of the Innocent Man"

Bouts's Justice of Otto III: "The Execution of the Innocent Man" Panel

Naturally, the threatened imperial cuckold Otto became infuriated at the alleged lèse mejesté, and, acting in hasty judgment spurred by that sudden passion, summarily ordered the nobleman beheaded. The execution of the innocent count is depicted in the first panel entitled “The Execution of an Innocent Man.” The panel is composed of three, chronologically-distinct scenes. In the upper right, behind a low fence of ashlar stone, are the emperor and his wife, clearly in the imperial gardens. It is as if they participate in the entire process of the unjust execution which is depicted in two scenes in front of them. The activity immediately before the execution is displayed on the left part of the panel, and the activity after the execution is shown on the lower right of the panel. The emperor’s wife looks toward the first scene, and sees the condemned nobleman, who is barefoot with his hands tied, and wears a simple white robe of a man condemned to die. She evinces no concern about the act of injustice she has perpetrated; if anything, she seems wistful that she was not able to satisfy her lust.

The nobleman is resigned to his unjust fate. In a tender depiction, he shares some last words with his wife, as he walks towards the Franciscan friar who will hear his last confession. The confessor is ready with God’s sacramental mercy. The friar already has his right hand raised ready to make a sign of the cross over the innocent penitent, anticipating the absolution that will occur at the words “ego te absolvo.”

The emperor stands by his wife, but he looks elsewhere from her, perhaps to show that his level of guilt is less than his wife’s. He views the result of his hasty judgment from afar. The executioner, sword behind his leg, hands the nobleman’s wife her husband’s recently severed head, which she gently cradles in a white shroud. The executioner is dressed in green and yellow tights, stained with the innocent man’s blood. According to M. Pastoureau, the colors of the executioner’s clothing symbolize disquiet and aggression.¹⁰ The scene is filled with townspeople, magnates, and ecclesiastical representatives, probably contemporaries of Bouts in the town of Louvain. Because this panel was not completed by Bouts (since he died in the middle of fulfilling the commission), but by others, it does not have the quality of the other panel.¹¹

According to the legend, the nobleman’s wife, convinced of her dead husband’s innocence, asked to be allowed to prove the truth of her husband’s claim of innocence and clear her husband of the stain of adultery by suffering an ordeal of fire. The Golden Legend relates the event as follows:

The Panel "Trial by Fire"

Bouts's Justice of Otto III: "The Trial by Fire" Panel

The second panel of Bouts’s Justice of the Emperor Otto, entitled “Trial by Fire,” depicts the scene described in the quoted passage above. It is split up into two distinct scenes. The first addresses the plea and ordeal of the nobleman’s wife. The second, smaller and in the background, shows the punishment of Otto III’s guilty wife.

In this panel, Otto III sits on his marble throne on a raised dais in the royal chambers. Surrounded by six officials—probably officials of Louvain anachronistically incorporated into the scene—he sits in his capacity as supreme judge of the empire. He bears his royal robe, of rich red and gold brocade, opulently lined with brown ermine. Crowned, he holds also his scepter in his right hand. He appears solicitous to the grieving widow who appears before him with her plea. Nestled in her right arm is the lifeless head of her husband. Held confidently in her left hand is a red-hot iron bar—she obviously passes the trial by ordeal. The emperor is attentive; indeed, he appears touched, on the edge of repentance, as he has his left hand placed over his heart. In a real way, he is the defendant of the widow’s plaint, and—against the fundamental axiom of justice that no one should be the judge of his own cause—he must adjudicate against himself and against his wife to find for the widow. Though he must judge himself and his family, the truth of his rash judgment as well as his wife’s infidelity and perjury, appears to have struck him deeply.

And in response he judges, and tries to put undue the harm his rash judgment caused. He condemns his lying and unfaithful wife to death. Through the doorway on the left side of the panel, one can see a bleak and dry landscape, clearly the place of execution outside the town. By the path that leads to the place of execution is red brick wall, with a lion sejant, a symbol perhaps of and attribute of Justice, or perhaps a reference to the lions that decorated the throne of Solomon.¹³ This is a Justice that comes too late, and, though it cannot undue the entire harm, at least it comes.

On a hill is a lighted pyre around a pole, and tightly bound to the pole is Otto III’s wife, condemned to die by burning by her husband the emperor. Perhaps the fires are symbolic of her eternal fate: will she also end in the fires of Dante’s hell and lie smoldering with “la falsa ch’accusò Gioseppo?”¹⁴ There remains some hope for the emperor’s wife if she took advantage of the last confession offered to her by the religious habited in white—perhaps a Cistercian—who accompanied her to her last moments. God's mercy extends to the very threshold of life for the repentant.

Meaning Behind the Exemplum

At one level, the moral of the diptych is that a judge or magistrate should not judge hastily. He or she should not judge a cause or impose a sentence before hearing both sides and all the evidence. A judge—even a judge with the supreme imperium—ought not to be the judge of his own cause, as his bias (or in this case passion) may carry him to an unreasonable, hasty judgment. At another level, the exemplum is intended to convey the injustice caused by perjury and by defamation. This message is strongly illustrated in the diptych, as the defamation and perjury resulted in both the death of an innocent man, and the death of the perpetrator. Some have interpreted Bouts’s work as both a criticism of the arbitrary judgments of judges relying on customary law, and an advocacy of the competency of city magistrates to judge under the rational procedures and written law.¹⁵ Others have seen it as demonstrative of “the anguish of error [in judgment] and the weight that it places on the heart of the judge.”¹⁶ All of these, and more, may be read in Bouts’s masterpiece.

Post-Script: The Real Otto III and an Alternative Source of the Legend?

Otto III's Crown

An interesting aspect of this legend is its lack of historical basis, as it is certain that Otto III died young, and was never married. Historically, the real Otto III was the only son of Emperor Otto II and Theophanu, a Byzantine princess. Otto II arranged for his son at the tender age of three to be crowned King of the Germans at Aachen. Shortly before the coronation ceremony, however, Otto II died. Otto III ascended to the throne at three years of age, and thus by necessity ruled through informal regents, including Duke Henry “the Quarrelsome” of Bavaria, and later his mother, Theophanu who was regent between 985 and 994. When Otto’s mother died in 991, Otto III’s grandmother, Adelheid, governed his kingdom until he became fit to reign in his own behalf, most likely around 994 when he was 14 years old.¹⁷ Shortly afterwards, he was crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by Pope Gregory V.

Otto III, The Mirabilia mundi

When he came to rule on his own, Otto III had grand designs, and apparently both the talent and drive to see these plans through. His admirers called him the Mirabilia mundi, the “wonder of the world.” In the words of Ricarda Huch which perhaps best encapsulates Otto III’s vision, “Otto III wanted to rule the world and be a saint at the same time.”¹⁸ Facing the coming of the first millennium as King of the Germans and Holy Roman Emperor, “the emperor had the visions of the apocalypse embroidered in gold on his coronation mantle. So this soul wandered here and there, between this world and the next.”¹⁹

Otto III's Lands Offer Obedience

With the help of Christian clerics—particularly his intimate friend Gerbert of Aurillac who later became Pope Sylvester II—he intended to shake of his Saxon 'rusticitas or boorishness, and put on a mantle of Greek subtilitas or subtlety.²⁰ More Greek than Saxon in blood, and more Roman than German in rule, Otto III saw himself the agent for the Renovatio imperii Romanorum, the “Restoration of the Roman Empire,” in the West.²¹ More than that, he saw himself on a divine mission to do this, as he called himself servus Jesu Christi et Romanorum imperator augustus secundum voluntatem Dei salvatorisque nostrique liberatoris (“servant of Jesus Christ and august emperor of the Romans, in accordance with the will of God and of our savior and redeemer”) and, more humbly, servus apostolorum (“servant of the apostles”).²²

Indeed, he appears to have been well on his way to implementing his plans. Taking advantage of political stability in Germany, he intervened in Italian affairs and affairs of the Church, and had the opportunity to arrange for two of his friends to become pope. After the death of Pope John XV, Otto III deposed the Roman urban prefect Crescentius,²³ and then arranged for his chancellor and cousin Bruno to become pope. Bruno accepted the honor, was elevated to the see of Peter, and adopted the name of Gregory V. When Gregory V died, Otto III decided to elevate his friend Gerbert of Aurillac from the see of Ravenna, to the see of Rome. Once pope, Gerbert selected the name of Sylvester II.²⁴

Otto III's Grave

Unfortunately, Otto III’s reign as King of the Germans and Emperor was short. He died while on campaign of the morbus Italicus—perhaps the plague or perhaps malaria—on January 24, 1002, only twenty-one years of age.²⁵ “In the winter time,” the chronicler Bruno of Querfurt tells us, “the mild Otto died without children, alas. He died not as was expected of a great emperor, but in a small castle.”²⁶ He was buried at Aachen, by the grave of Charlemagne, one of his spiritual mentors. Otto III’s grandiose dreams thus came to naught. Sic transit gloria mundi.

It is curious that the legend of a disloyal wife was attached to Otto III. It is historically certain that Otto III did not marry, and had no children. After all, at his death the Ottonian dynasty ended, and his throne and scepter went to his cousin Henry II (973-1024). There is some evidence in the historical chronicles that Otto III considered a monastic vocation.²⁷ Inconsistently, but probably more likely, other historical evidence indicates that he had sent repeated embassies to Byzantium to make arrangements for a wife.²⁸ His embassies were finally successful, and his Byzantine bride had landed at Bari, only to be disappointed in her nuptials. “The ardently longed-for porphyrogenita, for the first time granted by Byzantium to an emperor of the west,”²⁹ had to return home unwed. Otto the bridegroom had died before this long-sought marriage could be finalized.

How then is it then that Godfrey’s Chronicle and de Voragine’s Golden Legend contain this legend? Speculatively, the legend may be an allegory, written perhaps by a clerical supporter of the Crescentian party, of Otto III’s precipitate judgment in punishing the anti-pope John XVI and the Roman urban prefect Crescentius. After Otto III’s dispute with Crescentius relating to the appointment of Gregory V, Crescentius was exiled, but later pardoned.³⁰ Unrepentant, Crescentius again sought to control the appointment of the papacy, and in fact, supported by the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, appointed Johannes Philagathos of Piacenza as anti-pope John XVI.³¹ Otto III’s Gregory V was forced into exile through Crescentius’s machinations.

In response, Otto III gathered up his armies, and marched again to Rome, and besieged it. The antipope John XVI fled, and Crescentius locked himself up in Castel Sant’ Angelo. This time, however, Otto III was not as merciful. Encouraged by Gregory V, Otto III captured the antipope, and had him punished by mutilating his eyes, nose, and tongue.³² Similarly, after his capture, Crescentius suffered mutilation, was condemned to death for treason, and was beheaded.³³ Mutilation and beheading being insufficient punishment for a perversus governed by the devil’s wiles, Crescentius’s body was then hurled from the battlements of Castel San’ Angelo, and later hung upside down on Monte Mario.³⁴ People were horrified at these acts of barbarity, and Otto III was reprimanded by none other than St. Nilus and St. Romuald.³⁵ About a year later, Gregory V suddenly died, perhaps as a result of murder; others say, not necessarily in contradiction to the first reason, as a result of divine retribution.³⁶ Otto III himself made a pilgrimage poenitentia causa for the sake of expiation of his role in the mistreatment of his prisoners to St. Nilus’s hermitage at Serperi.³⁷

In the legend, could Otto III’s “wife” be Gregory V, the legitimate Pope who lusted after papal power and, when thrown out of Rome, encouraged Otto III to besiege Rome and render the precipitous judgment and punishment of Crescentius and the antipope John XVI? Could the “wife” of the dead nobleman represent St. Nilus or St. Romuald, who through his virtue and words of truth spiritually convicted Otto III of the wrong he had committed? Did this allegory get written down, and then wend its way into the source material used by the medieval historians in future generations being accepted as historical?

The legend of Otto III is a historical puzzle, a puzzle the answer to which we shall probably never know even probably, and almost certainly never know certainly. But whatever its origins, and however limited its historical value, it made a fine subject for the genius of Dieric Bouts, and a rich exemplum of justice whose pedagogy remains valid to this day.

Endnotes