Second-hand books, second-rate culture?
The Library of a Bourgeois at the Dawn of the 15th Century (Le Mesnagier de Paris)
p. 15-31
Résumé
Much attention has been paid to the libraries of the great princes and the aristocracy in general: this is because we have sources, catalogues, epistolary correspondence, and even the collections themselves to measure the respective tastes and culture of these microcosms. Now, there is a milieu that emerges in the 13th century, the bourgeoisie, a caste that can be characterised by two features in particular: its relative material ease and its aspiration for education. Thus, taking an interest in the rise of the private libraries of the bourgeoisie, however incomplete our documentation may be, is also a way of questioning a major change in society which, in the long term, will make this population an essential vector of conservation and cultural transfer. It is true that our subject − the unusual case of a bourgeois household at the end of the 14th century − is outside the scope of this book, which is part of early modernity. Let us therefore consider that the Mesnagier de Paris constitutes a kind of antechamber, its premises and foundations; let us examine this foundation, even if we have to be content with dotted information because we have to distinguish a real library (containing object-books) from a virtual library (the numerous references in the text).
Texte intégral
1Much attention has been paid to the libraries of the great princes and the aristocracy by scholars in general;1 pioneers have also looked at private libraries, particularly those of damsels and other princesses:2 this is because we have sources, catalogues, epistolary correspondence, and even the collections themselves to measure the respective tastes and culture of these microcosms. Now, there is a milieu that emerges in the 13th century, the bourgeoisie, a caste that can be characterised by two features in particular: its relative material ease and its aspiration for education. Thus, taking an interest in the rise of the private libraries of the bourgeoisie, however incomplete our documentation may be, is also a way of questioning a major change in society which, in the long term, will make this population an essential vector of conservation and cultural transfer.
2It is true that our subject – the unusual case of a bourgeois household at the end of the 14th century – is outside the scope of this colloquium, which is part of early modernity. Let us therefore consider that the Mesnagier de Paris constitutes a kind of antechamber, its premises and foundations; let us examine this foundation, even if we have to be content with dotted information because we have to distinguish a real library (containing object-books) from a virtual library (the numerous references that pepper the text).
3Let us quickly present the Mesnagier de Paris. What Mario Roques called “a curious domestic bible”3 is the work of an ageing bourgeois who wrote it around 1393:4 the author proposes to give a general education to the very young woman – she is fifteen – whom he has just married. The project outlined in the Prologue is to teach behaviour and general culture. This heterogeneous text deals with a host of subjects, most of which are conventional, and which echo an ancient and long-standing didactic tradition aimed at women. At once the antithesis of the monastic scriptoria and the seigneurial courts, we find ourselves in the midst of the great problems posed by the ‘popularisation’ of knowledge adapted to a lay, ‘bourgeois’ public. The text develops in the opening chapters the topic of theological virtues and mortal sins, but above all of their practical consequences. Thus, the reader is confronted with questions such as honest dress or shameless looks, domestic economy and the chastisement of chambermaids; he finds side by side and without any marked division, matters of canonical instruction and those of material and domestic culture: autorserie, cooking, gardening, but also the hunting of flies and other fleas, a marital and social morality, or a sumptuous collection of “tricks” we would say today, such as how to assess the age of a hare by the number of holes it has under its tail (II, iv, 22), how to prevent a dog from barking (III, ii, 4) or even how to change the colour of wine (II, v, 319). Useful knowledge is thus presented as an encyclopaedic whole whose coherence, or at least continuity, is ensured by reality itself.
4But our manual has many dark sides that force us to handle it with caution,5 starting with the problems related to books. How does cultural transfer function at the dawn of modernity in the absence of books in the sense of ‘objects’, or at least in a context of great scarcity? How does knowledge enter the home? For indeed, the whole question is whether we are talking about the book in the material and corporeal sense of the term, or about an abstract entity that embodies what we call ‘culture’, ‘knowledge’, ‘knowing’. At the moment we grasp the problem, there is a step to be taken from one to the other.
The appropriation of knowledge: the context
5At the end of the Middle Ages, education was a real issue in the upper echelons of society, and learning to read was strongly encouraged in all circles, especially among girls.6 But books were still rare and therefore very expensive; this would only change with the arrival of printed books and their penetration into all strata of society. Our author is concerned about his young wife’s reading in his educational programme. He recommends that she reads the Bible (meaning the Bible historiale),7 the Golden Legend, the Apocalypse, and the Life of the Fathers: above all, he asks her to consult the “few good books in French that I have” without naming them, to our great regret:
May all this, dear friend, suffice for you in this matter. The natural intelligence with which God has endowed you, your good and pious disposition to obey God and his Church, the preaching and sermons you will hear in your parish and elsewhere, the Bible, the Golden Legend, the Apocalypse, the Life of the Fathers and a few other good books in French which I possess and which you are free to take as you wish, all of this will provide you with the rest and will complete in depth my teaching according to the good pleasure of God who wills to lead you there and to incite you (I, iii, 118, p. 128).
6Clearly, the question of the “body of the book” is asked.
7The rise of the city – and therefore of the bourgeoisie (civil servants, merchants, lawyers) – does not only go hand in hand with that of the universities; from the twelfth century onwards, “elementary” schools multiply in the cities and also, to a lesser extent, in the countryside. Book production itself left the monastery and was organised in the city, at the same time as its content became more profane. This raises the question of the circulation of “culture” and the permeability of socio-cultural spheres: the famous practice of the exemplar8 seems to be essentially academic, and the texts thus multiplied are primarily those on the faculty curriculum. In other words, those contents are unlikely to enter bourgeois homes: general culture and scientific specialisation are aimed at a distinct readership. Moreover, manuscripts continued to spread slowly, which led to a gap between the intellectual production of an era and the real penetration of new ideas and knowledge into the social fabric. The average figure is two to three volumes per household.
8At the time of our Bourgeois, the rudiments of reading and writing as well as arithmetic were taught to children either within the household – the mother played a very important role in this learning process – or outside the family, from the age of about seven,9 at the Parva Scola. By the age of nine or ten, a boy can read and write Latin. Above all, he will memorise a large number of phrases and aphorisms, proverbs and sentences. Then, between the ages of ten and fifteen, he entered the Magna Scola and studied Priscian (Institutiones grammaticae), Horace, Seneca, Juvenal, the Disticts of Pseudo-Caton, and Ovid (the “moralized”)10 in depth. At the end of this training, most clerical schools dismissed their students, who then began their professional specialisation.
9As specialists have pointed out, “the bourgeois turned their backs on the university”;11 few attended university, cathedral or canonical schools to pursue the two cycles of the liberal arts; the limited role of the bourgeoisie in artistic development has also been emphasised.12 However, if we have reason to believe that our Bourgeois evolved in the spheres of the royal administration, the judicial world or the army, we will never know concretely what his specialisation was: the author of the Mesnagier relies on an ancient didactic tradition which he adapts to his subject – the instruction of a wife – but which he sometimes simply copies. If he had access to books, he could copy them himself or have them copied, or buy them second or even third hand.13 There were also public libraries such as that of the Sorbonne College; while it is unlikely that access to these collections was public, i.e., not restricted to clerics, academics and other students, a civil servant of the king (in the broadest sense) such as our Bourgeois perhaps was, could no doubt gain access to them from time to time by knocking on the right doors.
10Our author certainly had the average general knowledge representative of his time and environment, with the remarkable feature that the teaching of morals was clearly shifted towards that of appearances and everything relating to behaviour in society. “Practical” subjects, in particular, were given a large place, announcing the spirit of the future peddling literature: household and domestic management, gardening, cooking. The wife must know everything: this is how the author justifies, and even apologises for, placing in his work a cruel exemplum like Griseldis, a literary reference in short rather than a model to follow14 as he says. Indeed, we must now speak of the practice of reference which opens up the at least “virtual” library of our author.
Which books? Mesnagier’s practice of reference
11Although books were increasingly widespread in the Middle French period (14th-16th centuries) in professional bourgeois circles (doctors, lawyers, academics), private libraries remained poor, as we have seen: “only a tiny proportion of the wills of bourgeois, merchants and tradesmen refer to books, attesting to the scarcity of non-utilitarian writings and the existence of embryonic libraries in private homes”.15 Thus, in wills, one to three books are usually bequeathed; this number will increase very slowly, even if there are exceptions, such as the case of doctor Astruc del Sestier who, in 1439, shared his library of 179 manuscript books between his two children:16 grammars, specialised treatises in different professional disciplines such as medicine or law, and works of piety and edification.
12However, the medieval manuscript did not remain locked up in its owner’s ‘bookshop’ but it was passed from house to house: we have concrete examples concerning the bookshop of the duke of Berry,17 of which we know that he owned titles which are used by our Bourgeois author (in particular Le Livre du chevalier de La Tour Landry pour l’enseignement de ses filles, Le Livre des propriétés des choses by Jean Corbechon and Le Viandier dit de Taillevent);18 the temptation is great to imagine that our author, in the service of the prince at least intermittently, borrowed them from him… But this does not solve our central question: what about his personal library? – First of all, it is made of titles and names.
Names
13Our author’s bibliographical references are the “classics” of his time: The Bible, the Golden Legend, The Lives of the Fathers, Saint Augustine, Saint Gregory, Petrus Comestor’s History of the Bible, Titus Live, the historian Flavius Josephus, the Catholicon, Gratian’s Decree, the History of Griselidis (Petrarch), the Seven Wise Men of Rome, Scipio’s Dream, the Roman of the Rose, Jacques de Cessoles, the Chemin de pauvreté et de richesse by Jean Bruyant, Mélibée and Prudence. We can add to this list some “mentions” such as Cerxès, Paul Diacre and Bertran le Viel.
14By way of comparison, the master of Charles VI, Philippe de Mézières, compiled a study bibliography for his royal pupil (and here we can assume the existence of “real” books): the Old Testament for religious and political culture; Aristotle, Seneca, Boethius in philosophy; for history, Titus Livius, Valerius Maximus and Flavius Josephus, and finally, Saint Augustine. It is significant that our bourgeois author lacks any philosophical references. Nor is there any allusion to Arthurian works and other works ‘full of blunders’ as expressed by the old master of Mézières, who firmly dissuaded his royal pupil from getting lost in them19 (in vain, it seems, for we know that Charles VI greatly appreciated Le Conte du Graal and Lancelot by Chrétien de Troyes)! Nor does le Bourgeois make any reference to a work that was very much in vogue in his time, the Grandes Chroniques de France: yet it is hard to believe that he ignored them if we assume that he was in the royal administration or the army. Did he consider them to be of no interest for the instruction of a lady? And yet, a contemporary of the young wife, Christine de Pisan (1364-1430), proves that women can be passionately interested in the history of their country, and even in politics. Moreover, the Duke of Burgundy, uncle of Charles VI and brother of Jean de Berry, had the young wife of the king read the Grandes Chroniques to teach her her profession as queen!20 But for the Bourgeois, this is clearly not a subject for ladies!
15There are other great absentees, contemporary authors in particular, as has been said: the difficulties of distribution and circulation of books explain the chronological gap between the production and the penetration of a work in society – this will only really change with the rise of printed texts; manuscripts circulate with difficulty, and in closed environments. Did our author even read Le Livre du chevalier de La Tour Landry pour l’enseignement de ses filles ? Did he read Eustache Deschamps, especially his Miroir de mariage (1381-1389)? In any case, he does not quote him; all these names probably do not constitute necessary or desirable cultural baggage for a young bourgeois wife, as little as the works dealing with love, a subject which occupies such an important place in the other medieval manuals of savoir-vivre.21 Is this an indication of the specificity of bourgeois culture, and of bourgeois morality in particular, whose main concern is good reputation? There is nothing more dangerous than all these literary and courtly trends for the honourability of women and the name, and several allusions to the harmful nature of the company of young damsels point in this direction! Thus, bourgeois literary culture, as presented here, stops at the gates of love. Finally, another characteristic of this library is that it is less diversified than the aristocratic examples we know.22
16But above all, the question of which books our author actually held in his hands remains completely open: we will never know the names of these “good books in French that I have”. In order to compile his Mesnagier, did he, like his counterpart, the Chevalier de la Tour Landry, ask a secretary to prepare documents for him to use? Did he borrow documents from his entourage, or even from public libraries? In any case, our author accumulates names and titles as if to build the ideal catalogue of a private library, a sum of indispensable references. But very often, his quotations and references are imprecise: it is highly likely that he relied on approximate, second-hand copies, or syntheses, or, finally, on his memory and all the diffuse “cultural noises” that gravitate around him.
17Conversely, our author regularly ‘borrows’ passages from authorities without saying so, just as the Chevalier de la Tour Landry23 never mentions his main source, the Miroir des Bonnes Femmes. This may not be a deliberate omission, as the separation between ‘opinion’, personal culture on the one hand, and scriptural authorities on the other remains blurred. Third possibility, our Bourgeois can also attribute authorship to a person in a purely factitious manner: the argument of authority functions in itself, as an act of language;24 it is a vector of cultural transmission in its own right, undoubtedly as effective as a book of skin and ink. Besides, do we even have the means to check? – Thus, the Bourgeois perpetuates a practice inherited from the clerics of the Middle Ages and draws from a pool of topoi in free circulation, so to speak, as if in a common purse; of the “body of the book”, there is hardly any trace other than a name. The authors certainly do not feel that they are betraying or lying. They are simply making up for the absence of books.
A second-rate book?
18We can identify six practices – from our point of view – of reference as a substitute for the real possession of books, but which in reality are largely confused under the pen of our author: quoting, paraphrasing, alluding, summarising, adapting, and finally commenting. One might suspect that our author often writes from memory. This is the source of the famous instability or variance of medieval books, and of many confusions for each manuscript offers its own version of a text, never exactly the same. Thus, the treasure hidden in the field and the bonas margaritas, the precious pearls that symbolise the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 13:44-46) are transformed and become the good wife25 in the Mesnagier: “By the treasure found in the field and by the precious stone we can understand every good and virtuous lady”. And if the Bourgeois refers to Saint Jerome, we do not know if we are to understand the Vulgate or the History of the Bible of Petrus Comestro, or even a Historical Bible (cf. note no 7) – you see the referential jungle.26
19It is probable that our author had in his possession a fragment of the Bible historiale, perhaps its completed version, i.e., the free adaptation into French of the text of Pierre le Mangeur, carried out by the canon of Guyart des Moulins between 1291 and 1295; Guyart prunes the text of the Comestor of the philosophical developments while preserving from his model the use of illustrations (exempla) outside the Scriptures. In any case, these eight hundred preserved manuscripts speak for themselves of the immense and lasting success of this work of popularisation and translation of the main books of the Bible, which provided, until the end of the Middle Ages, more than the Bible itself, the main references of sacred history: it is first and foremost a history in the eyes of the laity to whom it is addressed, a succession of stories, a historiated Bible; a Bible for the poor.27
20This example shows the difficulty, or even the impossibility, of tracing the precise sources of our author and illustrates perfectly the practice of referencing as well as the didactic argumentation of this time: it says above all that the author did not have the original in his hands. Such practices can therefore very easily lead to “falsified” texts; it is not so much a clumsiness or “fraud” as a typical confusion between a text and its glosses. These second-hand transmissions can occasionally lead to pleasant curiosities such as the episode of the lentil dish conceded to Jacob by Esau in exchange for the birthright, which our author has adapted to his own taste:
The fourth branch of gluttony is when a person eats so greedily that he does not chew the food; he gobbles it up whole and fast. Thus, the Scripture records that Esau, the eldest of many brothers, was in such a hurry to eat that he almost choked to death.28
21There is no trace of this strangulation in the Vulgate (Gen. 25:33-34), which only mentions Esau’s great hunger and exhaustion, which prompted him to make the deal we know: Esau sold his birthright to Jacob, who gave him bread and lentil stew. He ate and drank and rose up and went his way.
22This free use of a thematic pool gives an air of déjà-vu to many texts without it being possible to identify either the original source or the number of intermediaries. Le Mesnagier thus echoes several extracts from Robert de Blois’s Chastoiement des dames; in both texts, advice is given on comportment on the way to church (or ailleurs): one refers to the measured gait that the lady should adopt (in particular, she should avoid trotting and cors), and look straight ahead (v. 81), to avoid any foolish look (v. 162), while the Mesnagier paints ‘these madwomen who, shamelessly, go with their necks erect like deer in the undergrowth with the oblique look of a mad horse’ (I, iii, § 117, p. 128). The same can be said of many passages in the Livre du chevalier de la Tour Landry. All these elements contribute to one of the main characteristics of the medieval book – in the concrete sense of the term: the great instability of its content, which consequently characterises cultural transmission by stamping it with the seal of variance.
23Moreover, the frequent discrepancy between the source and the “paraphrase” or gloss that our author presents could also be the result of a pedagogical concern for popularisation of science: it is a question of being clear, and also incisive – even if it means inventing a scene of strangulation –, it is a question of making a choice, it is a question of drawing from the theories the only practical deductions: for our Bourgeois, culture, before being a delectare, is clearly a prodesse, a useful thing! It is also and above all a manageable and plastic thing, which can be adapted…
An original cultural appropriation
24Centuries before Balzac, everyday life in its nakedness (and even a certain “triviality”), enters with its whole body into the pages of the book; a new dimension of reality coincides with the ancestral bookish culture and thus writes – a nice pirouette while the lack of books remains chronic – a new page of libraries: rather than resorting to subtle, learned and theoretical argumentation, our author searches in the “book of the world” (cf. Saint Bernard), i.e. concrete reality able to feed the demonstration, and thus enriches the pool of references in a new way. In so doing, he gradually forges a real transfer of knowledge and ‘culture’ by adapting it to his universe: we are no longer in the world of the fabliau, nor of satire, nor even in that of the wisdom of the vilain (i.e., the peasant). Let us develop three examples: the heroic virtues of everyday life; the dog rather than the lion; domestic happiness.
25The gallery of classic, even stereotypical, heroic models is enriched in our textbook; thus, a simple bourgeois woman, Jeanne la Quentine, takes her place alongside the literary Lucretia and Susanna. This anecdote, which has the appearance of an exemplum, seems to be first-hand: not only do we know of no other literary occurrence of this story, but we are inclined to believe the author’s assertion that he got it from his father:29 this wife of Thomas Quentin learned that her husband was fooling around, that he was having an affair with a poor girl working as a spinner. Instead of causing a scandal, this exemplary wife patiently suffered the situation without her husband noticing that her secret was no longer a secret to her. One day she managed to find the place where the girl was staying. When she discovered the poor room, with no furnishings, no wood, no candles, no oil, no coal, without nothing but a bed and a blanket, her spinning wheel and a lump of other stuff,30 she decided to come to the poor woman’s aid: ‘My friend,’ she said to her, ‘I must preserve my husband from all bad rumours; so be discreet about your affair, in which he delights, in order to preserve his honour, but also mine and that of our children. I will do the same for you, determined as I am to love you and help you. In particular, it is important to me that we both look after his health and well-being’. New Sarah, new Rachel, she sends this young woman what is needed to properly equip the small household: toiletries, logs, bed and body linen, with a whole organisation to regularly change dirty for clean, without the husband’s knowledge. This greatness of heart, inspired both by a concern for honour and certainly by sincere compassion, was rewarded by the husband’s return home. Finally, and we are grateful for this, the author also reassures us about the fate of the poor young spinner girl!
26Second example: if the heraldic code that developed from the 12th century onwards elected the lion as the emblem of nobility by excellence because of its symbolic richness (and also to some extent to counter the Teutonic bear),31 our manual sets up the dog as a paragon of virtues, man’s humble companion and embodiment of the virtue of fidelity. Clearly, our author knows and appreciates this animal, he does not need any esopic model or literary Husdent (Tristan’s dog) to compose his lines; at most, his personal experience confirms the tradition.
By God, I saw in Nyort an old dog lying on the grave where his master had been buried; he has benne killed by the English men; and my lord, the duke of Berry and a great number of knights were led there to see the marvel of the loyalty and love of the dog, which day and night did not leave the grave where his master was, whom the English had killed (I, v, 30, p. 182).
27Finally, third example, the Mesnagier exalts not the amorous passion that drives people to all sorts of excesses, but the simple domestic and conjugal well-being, which can be likened to the definition of an ideal. The house, the ostel, becomes the centre of the universe created by our author, who provides us with valuable information on “domestic economy” and the “science of the house”;32 what is conveyed here is not a copy of learned treatises. Let us admire the precision with which these humble scenes of daily life are described, where servants are called by name:
Have the bottoms of your wine, verjuice and vinegar barrels inspected by dame Agnes the beguine or master Jehan the intendant by candlelight to see that they are not leaking. Make sure that your cattle are well supplied with fodder for the night, and that the fire is well covered in all the chimneys, that the fire of the chemineses will be covered by all, give voz gens for their members time and space to rest (II, iii, 18, p. 458).
28There are also these jubilant recommendations for catching fleas, mobilising glues and repellent potions: their validity has been verified by the author himself, he affirms, and we have the weakness to believe him, precisely because of the ‘rusticity’ of the subject and the stylistic marks of subjectivity:
In summer, make sure that there are no fleas in your room or in your bed. There are six ways to avoid this, from what I have heard. Some people say that you should scatter alder leaves around the room and the fleas will get stuck there. Item, I have heard that you can spread one or more slices of bread with glue or turpentine, place them in the centre of the room and stick a burning candle in the middle of each slice: the fleas will then get stuck in them. I have tried another method myself and it is effective: take a rough sheet and spread it out in your room on the bed; all the fleas that can get into it will be caught and you will only have to pick them up in the sheet to take them wherever you want. Item this also works with sheepskins […]. But the most difficult thing is to protect yourself from the ones in the blankets, in the furs or in the clothes you wear. You should know that I have made the following experiment: when these blankets, furs or clothes are well isolated and locked in a trunk tightly fastened with straps for example, or in a well closed and compressed bag, the fleas, deprived of light, air and space, will perish and die on the hour (I, vii, 3, p. 298-300).
29The chapter on ‘how to take care of one’s husband and the house’ is particularly touching:
All this [enduring the pains of external work] does not matter to him because he is comforted by thinking of the care his wife will take of him when he returns, of the caresses, joys and pleasures she will lavish on him or cause him to lavish in her presence: taking off his shoes by a good fire, washing his feet, giving him clean shoes and slippers; and making him eat and drink well, serving and honouring him (I, vii, p. 294).
30The care of the house is one of the expressions of conjugal tenderness. “And so guarantee him and keep him from all mischief, and give him all the ease you can think of” (I, vii, 6, p. 302). The book of our Bourgeois thus adds a new chapter to the traditional theological as well as literary and courtly chain! Culture is nourished by the humblest reality – the domestic reality.
Conclusion
31The Mesnagier de Paris is therefore a good indicator not only of the laborious transfer of the book from the clerical and then the aristocratic sphere to the bourgeoisie, but also of the irruption of a new theme that reflects a new conception of culture, extended to the realms of everyday life.
32The Mesnagier can thus mark the passage from a practice of references inherited from an age where the book is a rarity and respect for the Authority a limit if not a brake on the free expansion of thought to an integration of material realities into the book, while awaiting its multiplication from the era of printing, some fifty years later. It was as a book-object that the Mesnagier de Paris was to enter the libraries, those of the bourgeoisie no doubt, little by little (but in this area we have hardly any inventories and therefore no formal proof), but also of great princes and illustrious princesses, Marguerite de Navarre in the first place – in the end, it is indeed thanks to this body that this old book has reached us!
Notes de bas de page
1Sarah Fourcade, La noblesse à la conquête du livre. France, v. 1300 - v. 1530, Paris, Champion, 2021.
2Reference to the works of Helga Meise, in particular Sophie von La Roche Lesebuch, ed. by Helga Meise, with Claudia Bamberg & Andreas Jacob, Frankfurt am Main, Ulrike Helmer, 2005; Das archivierte Ich. Schreibkalender und höfische Repräsentation in Hessen-Darmstadt 1624-1790, Darmstadt, Hessische Historische Kommission, 2002.
3Mario Roques, “Traduction françaises des traités moraux d’Albertano de Brescia – Le livre de Mellibée et de Prudence par Renaut de Louhans”, in Histoire littéraire de la France, t. XXXVII, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1936, p. 502.
4Le Mesnagier de Paris, ed. by G. E. Brereton & J. M. Ferrier, trans. and notes K. Ueltschi, Paris, Le Livre de Poche, “Lettres Gothiques”, (1994) 2010.
5See Karin Ueltschi, “Le Mesnagier de Paris : vers une écriture du quotidien ?”, in E. Rassart, et. al. (Ed.), La Vie matérielle au Moyen Age. L’apport des sources littéraires, normatives et de la pratique, Louvain-la-Neuve, Institut d’études médiévales, 1997, p. 245-260.
6Geneviève Hasenohr, “Les lectures religieuses des laïcs dans la France du xve siècle : norme et pratique, lumières et ombres”, in Ead., Textes de dévotion et lectures spirituelles en langue romane (France, xiie-xvie siècle), Turnhout, Brepols, “Texte, Codex & Contexte”, XXI, 2015, p. 147-148.
7In Paris, between 1230 and 1260, the first translation or rather compilation of the Bible into French was undertaken, henceforth called the French Bible or Bible historiale. It was this Bible that was reproduced until the arrival of the printing press.
8This is the principle of “lending by the booklet” or chapters: a carefully checked text is set up as an exemplar to be copied in large enough type to minimise transcription errors. This exemplar is then divided into booklets, the speciae (or peciae, pieces) loaned to students, which allows for the multiplication of the simultaneous copying of the same work and thus significantly accelerates its distribution.
9See Thierry Dutour, La Ville médiévale : origines et triomphe de l’Europe urbaine, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2003, p. 223. For further reading : Pierre Riché, Écoles et enseignement dans le haut Moyen Âge. Fin du Ve siècle-milieu du xie siècle, Paris, Picard, (1979) 1999 ; Danièle Alexandre-Bidon & Marie-Thérèse Lorcin, Système éducatif et cultures dans l’Occident médiéval (xiie-xve siècles), Paris, Gap, Ophrys, 1998 ; Jean-Michel Mehl, Des jeux et des hommes dans la société médiévale, Paris, Champion, 2010.
10Marylène Possamaï-Pérez, L’Ovide moralisé : essai d’interprétation, Paris, Champion, 2006 ; L. Harf-Lancner, L. Mathey-Maille & M. Szkilnik (Ed.), Ovide Métamorphosé. Les lecteurs médiévaux d’Ovide, Paris, Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle, 2009.
11Jean Favier, Le Bourgeois de Paris au Moyen Âge, Paris, Tallandier, 2012, p. 569.
12It is confined “to the fields of popularised production and was essentially exercised in a collective manner”. Georges Duby, Le Temps des cathédrales. L’art et la société, 980-1420, Paris, Gallimard, 1976, p. 239.
13See Geneviève Hasenohr, “L’essor des bibliothèques privées aux xive et xve siècles”, in André Vernet (Ed.), Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, I, Les bibliothèques médiévales, Paris, Cercle de la librairie, 1989, p. 225.
14The Bourgeois refers to Petrarch; however, it is possible that this cruel tale was invented from scratch by the Franciscans: the story is therefore of scholarly origin, and Latin. Philippe de Mézières also adapted it into French at the same time. See Marie-Geneviève Grossel, “Sainte paysanne et épouse fidèle : l’image de Griseldis à l’épreuve des Miroirs de marriage”, in D. Buschinger (Ed.), Autour d’Eustache Deschamps, Amiens, Centre d’études médiévales de l’université de Picardie-Jules Verne, 1999, p. 104.
15G. Hasenohr, “L’essor des bibliothèques privées…”, (fn 13), p. 242.
16Donatella Nebbiai, Le Discours des livres. Bibliothèques et manuscrits en Europe, ixe–xve siècles, Rennes, PU Rennes, 2013, p. 203.
17“It passed from hand to hand” (“Il passait de main en main”) : see other cases in Françoise Autrand, Jean de Berry, Paris, Fayard, 2000, p. 437-438.
18Ibid., p. 466 and 469.
19Françoise Autrand, Charles VI, Paris, Fayard, 1986, p. 28.
20Ibid., p. 170.
21Claude Roussel, « Le legs de la rose », in A. Montadon (Ed.), Pour une Histoire des traités de savoir-vivre en Europe, Clermont-Ferrand, Association des publications de la Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines, 1994, p. 3.
22G. Hasenohr, “Les lectures religieuses des laïcs…”, (fn 6), p. 155.
23In the Prologue to his Livre pour l’enseignement de ses filles (1371-1372), the Chevalier de la Tour Landry explains that he asked two priests and two clerks to collect works for his enterprise that he had in his library: “Si leur fiz mettre avant et traire des livres que j’avoie” (4, 14-15), in short, a preliminary documentary work.
24Cf. John L. Austin, How to do Things with Words, Oxford, Oxford UP, 1962.
25“Of each good woman Jesucrist says on chapter.xii. of the gospel of saint Mathew: Simile est regnum caelorum […]: The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who walks looking for gemstones, and when he has found a good and precious one, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it. By the treasure found or field of earth and by the precious stone we can understand each good precious woman” (I, iv, 2, p. 132). It should also be noted that we may be dealing with an amalgam with another biblical passage, the Book of Proverbs, which says that “the valiant woman” is “infinitely more precious than pearls” (Proverbs, 31, 10).
26I, v, § 16, p. 172.
27See Anna Loba, Le Réconfort des dames mariées. Mariage dans les écrits didactiques adressés aux femmes à la fin du Moyen Âge, Poznan, Adam Mickiewicz University, « Filologia Romanska », 46, 2013, p. 93.
28I, iii, § 93, p. 106.
29Lequel exemple je oys pieça compter a feu mon pere, dont Dieu ait l’ame. I, ix, § 3, p. 400.
30I, ix, 4, p. 402.
31See Michel Pastoureau, L’Ours. Histoire d’un roi déchu, Paris, Le Seuil, 2007.
32See A. Loba, Le réconfort des dames mariées…, (fn 27), p. 99.
Auteur
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Karin Ueltschi
Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, CRIMEL
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Creative Commons - Attribution - Pas d’Utilisation Commerciale 4.0 International - CC BY-NC 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
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