Table of Bigamy, from the Summa Super Titulis Decretalium Completa

Henry of Segusio · 1275/99

Medium

Manuscript cutting in tempera and gold leaf, with gothic book hand inscriptions in Latin in pen and dark brown ink, with red and blue ink headers, ruled in graphite, on parchment

Original size

44.5 × 28 cm (17 9/16 × 11 1/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Medieval

This gilded manuscript page offers a rare window into the visual language of medieval canon law, where jurisprudence and artistry were inseparable. Henry of Segusio — known as Hostiensis — was the foremost canonist of the thirteenth century, and his *Summa Super Titulis Decretalium* became one of the most authoritative texts in medieval ecclesiastical law. This cutting demonstrates the meticulous craft of Gothic illumination: tempera pigments layered over burnished gold leaf, framed by the precise ruled lines and crisp red and blue ink headers that distinguished high-status legal manuscripts from workaday copies. The Latin inscriptions, rendered in a disciplined Gothic book hand, are as much a visual element as they are text. Hostiensis completed the *Summa* around 1253, and copies circulated widely across European universities and cathedral chapters for generations after his death — this version, dated to the final quarter of the thirteenth century, reflects that ongoing tradition of scholarly transmission. Because the original uses tempera rather than oil, our artisans translate its flat, luminous planes and metallic passages into oil on canvas with careful attention to the original's palette and spatial compression, preserving the jewel-like intensity that has made this page a treasured object at the Art Institute of Chicago for over a century.