Margriet Hoogvliet

Encouraging Lay People to Read the Bible in the French Vernaculars: New Groups of Readers and Textual Communities

Modern research has shown that the vernacular Bible in medieval France was closely related to the linguistic politics of the French Kings and to projects of royal self-fashioning. This has also become a generally accepted explanation for the unproblematic presence of Bibles translated into French: the biblical text was supposedly only accessible for the aristocracy and wealthy merchants. This article will argue that this is only a part of the history of the French vernacular Bible by showing that an impressive amount of books with either the entire Bible or specific parts of its text have survived. Traces in the original manuscripts show that these books were actually used by laypeople for their religious life. Past research has often focused on evidence for tensions around vernacular Bibles and restrictive measures and examples where laypeople were actually encouraged to read the Bible have been completely overlooked. Finally, archival evidence shows an impressive penetration of the vernacular Bible, reaching all levels of the French society before 1520. Other contextual sources show that lay readers could have accessed its text through textual communities and libraries with some form of open access.

The Medieval Vernacular Bible in French as a Flexible Text: Selective and Discontinuous Reading Practices

This chapter presents historical source material, much of it unpublished, that confirms the hypothesis that in fourteenth and fifteenth-century France the vernacular Bible was a text that was often read in different forms. In order to demonstrate this flexibility of the Bible in French during the late Middle Ages, it retraces the most characteristic forms in which the biblical text circulated during this period: first, specific parts of the Bible; second, the biblical lessons that were read during Sunday Mass; third, the life of Christ and the Passion based on the Gospels; and finally collections of biblical quotations with moral guidelines. The chapter argues that vernacular Bibles in different formats were closely connected to selective and discontinuous reading practices applied to Sacred Scripture, with a manifest predilection for certain parts of the text and its message: the biblical pericopes, the life and Passion of Christ, and moral guidelines. Keywords:France; Gospels; selective and discontinuous reading practices; vernacular Bible

Challenging the Paradigms: Holy Writ and Lay Readers in Late Medieval Europe

This introductory chapter summarizes the main results of the research project ‘Holy Writ and Lay Readers. A Social History of Vernacular Bible Translations in the Late Middle Ages’ (2008–2013). The project, funded by the European Research Council and the University of Groningen, aimed at reconstructing the process of translation and dissemination of vernacular Bibles in three European areas (Italy, France, and the Low Countries) during the late Middle Ages (from the end of the thirteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century). Challenging paradigmatic views and research traditions on severe restrictions of the circulation of vernacular Bible by the medieval Church, the project has chosen to specifically concentrate on readers and readerships and investigates the varied modes of approach taken by lay and non-professional users of the Holy Writ. The emphasis is laid on the dynamic approach of lay believers, male and female votaries, primarily involved in wordly activities and experiencing their religious life within the framework of family, marriage, and professional activities.

Princely Culture and Catherine de Médicis

The name of Catherine de Medicis evokes almost immediately the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, which began with the assassination of the Protestant leader de Coligny and culminated in the murder of thousands of Huguenots in Paris and elsewhere in France. In sixteenth-century Protestant propaganda and in modern historiography, Catherine is considered to be one of the cruel instigators who planned this massacre immediately after the marriage of her daughter Marguerite to the Protestant Henry de Navarre. The strategies used by Catherine stand out because of their originality and their effectiveness. Among the architectural patronage was of great importance: Catherine spent enormous fortunes on the construction and embellishment of castles and funeral monuments. Another was the cultivation of splendid court festivals, which are probably the most striking element of princely culture during the lifetime of Catherine de Medicis. Keywords: Catherine de Medicis; France; Huguenots; Marguerite; princely culture; Protestant Henry de Navarre

The medieval texts of the 1486 Ptolemy edition by Johann Reger of Ulm

Abstract In Johann Regers 1486 edition, Ptolemys Geographia is preceded by a Registrum alphabeticum and followed by the treatise De loas ac mirabilibus mundi. The additional texts are based on medieval examples: a Latin translation of Jean Germains La mappemonde spirituelle (c.1450), Vincent of Beauvaiss Speculum naturale (13th century), and Isidore of Sevilles Etymologiae and De natura rerum (6th‐7th century). The combination of medieval knowledge with the highlight of classical geographical science indicates that in the fifteenth century Ptolemys mathematical cartography did not replace medieval descriptive geography, but rather that his work was interpreted within the framework of traditional knowledge.

Review of Sharon Farmer The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris: Artisanal Migration, Technological Innovation, and Gendered Experience (Philadelphia, 2017)

In this excellent book, Sharon Farmer studies the luxury silk cloth industries of thirteenth-century Paris, resulting in highly valuable new insights on the international mobility of skilled artisans and women’s economic activities. In the introduction, Farmer sets out the main goals of her study: showing that a genuine silk industry was present in Paris during the thirteenth century and that the introduction of the required techniques could only have taken place by means of the immigration of merchants and skilled artisans from the lands around the Mediterranean. A second important thesis is that Paris offered female silk entrepreneurs more possibilities than the same industries in Mediterranean towns. The main historical sources used are Parisian guild statutes (c. 1266–1365), tax assessments (1292– 1313), and household documents from several European aristocratic courts. These are extensively reproduced in the second half of the book, based on both edited and unedited sources. One of the most important ideas expressed throughout the work is the connectedness of Paris to the wider Mediterranean world, including Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities, suggesting the necessity of extending Mediterranean studies to northern France. Next to this, Paris as a multicultural city in the thirteenth century is a recurring theme. This gives rise to some important critical remarks about modern ideas concerning immigration and the supposedly rural and national French ancestry (2). The first chapter deals in more detail with immigrants in Paris during the thirteenth century, such as Lombard bankers; scholars; aristocrats; and, most important, merchants and artisans from nearby regions such as Flanders, Burgundy, and Germany, and also from surprisingly distant areas such as Iberia, Italy, Cyprus, and outremer (from the other side of the Mediterranean). The following chapter provides technical information about extracting silk thread from cocoons, as well as the production of luxury textiles such as silk cloth, veils, gold cloth, and velvet. Next to this, Farmer presents the international trade networks through which the required materials, knowledge, skills, and people might have travelled from China to Paris. Chapter 3 examines the organization of the silk industries in Paris by specialized entrepreneurs, together with information about less wealthy silk workers, many of them immigrants. The geographically widespread origins of the people involved is surprising, although one could have reservations about some attributions; for example, the surname Tabarie does not necessarily refer to the town of Tiberias in the Holy Land (93), but could also be based on tabard, an Old French word for tunic. A very useful aspect of this chapter is the plotting of people active in the silk industries on a map of medieval Paris, which allows for some interesting discoveries about concentrations and proximities. The focus is shifted to gender in the next chapter. A few women entrepreneurs became extraordinarily wealthy because of their activities in the silk economy. Most female silk workers, however, remained of very modest fortune, although the historical documentation shows that many of these women were independent and that the ouvri eres de soie had organized their industry in a female guild. The opposition of male versus female taxpayers might, however, be less rigid than sketched by Farmer, because names of male taxpayers in the tax assessments in reality often represented a married couple running the family business together. The final chapter turns to financial aspects of the silk industry in Paris and examines the relation between female silk workers, Lombard bankers, and Jewish pawnbrokers. Less convincing in this chapter is the depiction of Lombard men as sexual predators, “vibrat[ing] with male sexual energy” (147), as the sole explanation for the female silk workers’ preference for female Jewish moneylenders. This seems to be based on cultural and gender stereotyping, rather than on historical realities. Farmer’s approach is interesting from a methodological perspective, as well. First, the use of spatial approaches for the study of situated activities in the townscape of Paris, both geographical and social, is very effective. Second, her treatment of fragmentary and incomplete data from the thirteenth century is daring and innovative. By combining them with a broad spectrum of contextual data, including international or later parallel phenomena, Farmer is able to paint a much livelier picture of the silk industries in thirteenth-century Paris than would have been possible based on local data alone. The argument could, however, have been more calibrated. For instance, there is a slight tendency to present “plausible hypotheses” from one chapter (75) as established facts in the following one, which risks annoying a few fact-fetishizing historians. Finally, more in-depth methodological reflections on the use of fragmentary sources and on spatial approaches would have made the overall argument stronger.

Holy Writ and Lay Readers in Late Medieval Europe: Translation and Participation

The late medieval and early modern cultural transformation has been a much debated topic in European research agenda over the last decades. This chapter focuses on didactic and moralizing literature, in which themes strictly related to the life and activities of lay readers are discussed. The chapter discusses the relations between individuals and groups in the late medieval and early modern urban environment, in particular professional ethics, and family relations. The specific question of the emancipation of the laity, through active readership of religious literature in the vernacular, and in particular the active role of lay people in the transmission and in the production of religious knowledge is still an underestimated subject in medieval research, in spite of the growing interest in the study of religion as cultural manifestation and the significant advances in the study of late medieval religious movements. Keywords: early modern cultural transformation; European research; family relations; religious literature

Introduction: Discovering the Riches of the Word

Religious learning involves reading. More than that, it is largely constituted by reading [. . .] Religious reading requires and fosters a particular set of attitudes to what is read, as well as reading practices that comport well with those attitudes; and it implies an epistemology, a set of views about what knowledge is and about the relations between reading and the acquisition and retention of knowledge.1

How to Tell a Fairy Tale With Images: Narrative Theories and French Paintings from the Early Nineteenth Century

This article first discusses theoretical approaches to the question of pictorial narrative, and argues that images can generate a narrative, but do so by different means than texts. Consequently, visual narratives should not be analysed using the same criteria as developed for textual narratives. Based on this idea, the article further analyses two French paintings from the early nineteenth century that represent a fairy tale by visual means alone, and which can be considered as paintings that tell a fairy tale: Petit Chaperon rouge (c. 1820) by Fleury Francois Richard, and Peau d’âne (1819) by Jean‐Antoine Laurent.

Paris dans la cosmographie universelle de François de Belleforest: cartographie et politique au temps des Guerres de religion

Pour le public moderne la description de Paris dans la Cosmographie universelle, ecrite par Francois de Belleforest et publiee en 1575, est probablement un ouvrage decevant : l’auteur reproduit d’autres textes et il s’occupe plus de l’historiographie que de la cartographie scientifique. Cependant, grâce aux nouvelles perspectives offertes par les recentes theories de la cartographie, cette description de Paris publiee au temps des Guerres de religion apparait plutot comme un discours politique, traduisant les opinions des elites urbaines et defendant leurs interets.