The Fitzwilliam Museum - University of Cambridge

48 The Soul approaching the Celestial City
Major Acquisitions
Metz, c.1435
Illuminated miniature on
vellum from Guillaume de
Deguileville, Pilgrimage of
the Soul
140 x 130 mm
MS 1–2003
Acquired in memory of Michael
Camille. Purchased from the
Wormald Fund with contributions
from Michael Camille's friends
and colleagues.
Guillaume de Deguileville wrote his
allegorical epics, the Pilgrimage of
Human Life and the Pilgrimage of the
Soul, between 1330 and 1358. Inspired by
the Roman de la Rose and Dante's Divine
Comedy, they echoed throughout the
poetry of John Lydgate, Chaucer, and
John Bunyan. The lyrical moralisations
about virtue and vice evoked the imagery
of heaven and hell in deluxe medieval
manuscripts. The most profound study of
the illustrations to Deguileville's works
remains the unpublished Ph.D thesis of
Michael Camille, completed in
Cambridge in 1985 under the supervision
of Professor George Henderson. Camille's
untimely death deprived the world of
medieval scholarship of an original
thinker, an inspiring teacher, and a
generous colleague. The representation of
the Soul personified as a youth and
escorted by her Guardian Angel to the
Celestial City seems a suitable tribute,
ad imaginem and in memoriam. The
Museum commemorates Michael
Camille with this acquisition, closely
related to his early career in Cambridge
and purchased with generous donations
from a large number of Camille's former
friends and colleagues.