University of Groningen
Manual Labour and Biblical Reading in Late Medieval France Hoogvliet, Margriet
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Journal of Early Modern Christianity
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10.1515/jemc-2019-2009
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Hoogvliet, M. (2019). Manual Labour and Biblical Reading in Late Medieval France. Journal of Early Modern Christianity, 6(2), 277–297. https://doi.org/10.1515/jemc-2019-2009
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Manual Labour and Biblical Reading in Late Medieval France1
Margriet Hoogvliet
University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Research Fellow of le STUDIUM, Institute for Advanced Studies – Loire Valley; Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance (CNRS), Tours, France
M.Hoogvliet@rug.nl
Abstract
This article discusses artisans and people doing manual work in the French-speaking areas of Western Europe who owned and read the Bible or parts of its text during the late Middle Ages and the early sixteenth century. The historical evidence is based on post-mortem inventories from Amiens, Tournai, Lyon, and the Toulouse area. These documents show that Bibles were present in the private homes of artisans, some of them well-to-do, but others quite destitute. This development was probably related to a shift in the cultural representation of manual work in the same period: from a divine punishment into a social space of religion. The simple artisan life of the holy family, as imagined based upon the Gospel text, and their religious reading practices were recommended as an example to follow by both lay people and clerics.
French Bibles, artisans, Amiens, literacy and reading, holy family, apostolical poverty, the imitation of Christ
The ‘evangelical peasant’ was promoted as a virtuous example by Luther, Calvin, and other leading figures of the Reformation because of their natural wisdom, their ability to read Sacred Scripture and to cite its text. However, the idea of ennobling labour sustained by a thorough knowledge of the Bible was not an invention of the Reformation, but was strongly rooted in the religious culture of the fifteenth century.2 The emergence of the literate layman
1 The research for this article has been funded by the Dutch Research Council (Netherlands Organisation for
Scientific Research/NWO) for the research project ‘Cities of Readers: Religious Literacies in the Long Fifteenth Century’ (2015-2020) conducted at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. This article builds further on my contributions to an earlier publication: Sabrina Corbellini and Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘Artisans and Religious Reading in Late Medieval Italy and Northern France (c. 1400—c. 1520),’ Journal for Medieval and Early Modern Studies 43/3 (2013): 521—44.
2 Paul Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 232—4; including
and Bible reading artisans in late medieval England was illustrated by Peter Heath in 1969, and more recently Caroline M. Barron has collected evidence of books and Bibles owned by merchants and artisans in late medieval London.3 One of the examples Barron discusses is John Clifford, a mason from Southwark, who died in c. 1417 and left a collection of books including a Psalter, an English translation of the Gospels, and a Legenda Aurea.4 For
Germany, Miriam Usher Sherman has pointed to the ‘strongly established Bible culture at the artisan level well before the reformation’.5 In the Netherlands, the shoemaker Cornelius Aernoldszoon, who lived as a lay brother in Eemstein Abbey (Canons Regular of Saint Augustine) near Dordrecht, left an ownership note in his Dutch Old Testament printed in Delft in 1477.6 And fifteenth-century Italian and French artisans, as Sabrina Corbellini and I have shown, were avid consumers of biblical and biblically-oriented texts, such as the French hosier Guillaume Mesland from Orléans who purchased a book with the Life of Christ in French, and the Italian dyer Bartolomeo di Dato Pucci, who copied himself the Fioretto della
bibbia.7
In spite of the existence of these historical examples, the practice of artisans reading the biblical text is still often associated with dissenting groups or with the Protestant Reformation and not so much with forms of lay religiosity that were endorsed during the late Middle Ages. In order to show that the historical evidence of Bible reading artisans quoted above is not incidental or limited to specific local practices, but part of a broader Europe-wide
development it is important to continue to bring new historical data into the footlight about late medieval people who mostly did manual work, their Bibles, and their religious reading cultures based on the biblical text. In order to contribute to a further broadening of the documentary basis of this topic, I will present in this article archival evidence from the
French-speaking areas of western Europe of people who primarily performed artisanal manual
3 Peter Heath, The English Parish Clergy on the Eve of the Reformation (London: Routledge, 1969), 70.
4 Caroline M. Barron, ‘What did medieval London merchants read?,’ in Medieval Merchants and Money: Essays
in Honour of James L. Bolton, ed. Martin Allen, Matthew Davies (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2016), 43—70 (49).
5 Miriam Usher Sherman, Conflicting Visions of Reform: German Lay Propaganda Pamphlets, 1519-1530
(Boston: Brill, 1996), 11, 159—80.
6 Mart van Duijn, De Delftse Bijbel: een sociale geschiedenis 1477-circa 1550 (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2017),
142, 166—172.
7 Corbellini, Hoogvliet, ‘Artisans,’ 528—9. For artisans who owned the printed French Bible historiale complétée
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see: Éléonore Fournié, ‘Some Aspects of Male and Female Readers of the Printed Bible Historiale in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,’ in Discovering the Riches of the Word: Religious Reading in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Sabrina Corbellini, Margriet Hoogvliet, Bart Ramakers (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 171—89.
work and who owned Bibles and Bible-based texts, dating from the early sixteenth century and in some cases from an earlier date, most notably from the French town Amiens.
The Archives communales of Amiens preserve one of the richest surviving series of post-mortem inventories of Western Europe, starting in 1503 and continuing into the seventeenth century.8 Amiens is now situated in northern France, but in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries the town was for a long period under the English crown (1422-1435) and part of the Duchy of Burgundy (1435-1477), before returning de facto to the French kingdom in 1471 as a border town with the Burgundian and Habsburg Low Countries. The language spoken and written in Amiens was close to Picard, one of the variants of Middle French that was
customarily used in the area stretching from Paris northwards to the commercial metropolises in the Low Countries, such as Ypres, Ghent, and Bruges.9 In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Amiens was an important centre of woolen cloth production, as well as a staple place of cereal and wine. Because of its geographical location on the political border and on the crossroads of international trade, Amiens was connected, commercially and culturally, to the Low Countries, to the French kingdom, and to further distant European areas. Since Amiens was by no means an isolated town, it makes it a suitable case for relating the biblical reading cultures of its inhabitants to wider European practices.
To show that the evidence from Amiens is characteristic of a much more general
phenomenon, the overall conclusions about Bibles owned and read by labourers in Amiens as found in the inventories of the Archives communales will be supplemented by other archival data from Tournai (now in Belgium, but until 1521 a French exclave not far away from Amiens), and from some towns in southern France. For these pre-Reformation artisans and other workers, reading the vernacular Bible was part of a specific religious identity that gained momentum most notably in the course of the fifteenth century, as I will argue in the second part of this article, based on directions for reading and the fashioning of religious identities as present in biblical and religious texts in French. Several of these texts sought to
8 For studies of books in the Amiens inventories, see: Georges Durand, Ville d’Amiens: Inventaire sommaire des
archives communales antérieures à 1790; Tome VI, série FF (1 à 702) (Amiens: A. Graux, 1911); Albert Labarre, Le livre dans la vie amiénoise du seizième siècle: l’enseignement des inventaires apres décès du XVIe siècle (Paris: Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1971); Mary Jane Chase, Popular Piety in Sixteenth-Century Picardy: Amiens and the Rise of Private Devotions, 1500—1540, (Diss. Columbia University, 1992), 217—37.
9 Serge Lusignan, Essai d'histoire sociolinguistique: le français picard au Moyen Âge (Paris: Classiques Garnier,
transform the conception of artisanal and manual work into a space of religion, by
emphasizing for instance that its simplicity and honesty mirrored the modest life of the holy family and the humble carpentry work done by Joseph, assisted by the young Christ.
Alternating manual work and Bible reading was increasingly advocated as an integral part of the religious life of both laity and clergy.
1. Bibles and Artisan Readers
Wills and post-mortem inventories are among the most informative historical testimonies of historical book ownership because they often contain precise references about the places where books were present in the homes of the laity, as well as about the kind of texts, including Latin and vernacular Bibles and Bible-based texts. The officials who made the inventory usually listed room by room the objects of value as they found them in the private homes of Amiens, a few days after the passing away of an inhabitant.10 However, the inventories cannot be used in a straightforward manner for a quantitative assessment of the number of Bibles in circulation among the laity, or as proof of their absence. Firstly, inheritances were usually settled in accordance with common law and in these cases an inventory or other legal documentation was not required. The request for an inventory was often the result of blended families, due to second marriages of widows and widowers, thus necessitating that the rights of children and stepchildren be secured.11 Similarly, people whose children were still minors and those without children (the latter most notably widows), are over-represented among the post-mortem inventories. Furthermore, many of the inventories were part of a final execution of the deceased’s will. Since no wills survive for Amiens, it is impossible to know what objects were bequeathed by will and which were handed over to the recipient before the inventory was made. It is also possible that objects, especially books, had already been given away while the testator was still alive. Finally, although the series of inventories in the Archives communales of Amiens is substantial, many other similar
documents are now lost. As a consequence, the number of Bibles and Bible-based texts found in the inventories does not lend itself to conclusions about quantities. Nor does the absence of
10 For a discussion of the particularities of the inventories and the conditions under which they were made, see
Chase, Popular Piety, 45—63
11 Martha Howell, The Marriage Exchange: Property, Social Place, and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries,
mentions of Bibles in an inventory imply their absence, either; it is only an absence of information.
As most of the inventories from Amiens list in detail objects of value present in the private homes, these lists of objects can be considered as small historical snap shots of the town’s households. Inventories are unique, highly informative sources not only about lay book ownership, but also about the material contexts of reading practices in lay households, since they usually contain further information about the overall wealth or poverty of the household, about objects relating to the devotional, economic and social activities that took place in the private homes, about the life of the inhabitants, and the spatial lay-out of their houses. In addition, the inventories can be compared to small jigsaw pieces connected to the broader historical context, for instance because they often enable us to locate the house in the cityscape of Amiens and to relate the economic and religious activities of the inhabitants to wider urban networks. Finally, reading directions in the actual texts provide more information about the cultural and religious horizon of the readers, about intended and actual biblical reading practices, as well as about the formation of religious identities.
In the late Middle Ages, long before the actual breakthrough of the Reformation in France, the laity in Amiens would have informed their reading practices through a variety of Bible translations and Bible-based texts in both Middle French and Picard.12 For instance, a vernacular Bible manuscript likely to have been copied and read in late medieval Amiens is now Manuscript 29 in its Bibliothèque municipale. It is a fragment of a late fifteenth-century copy of an older translation of the New Testament, possibly of the entire Bible, into Picard French, which was originally made in the fourteenth century or even earlier.13 The Picard translation reproduces the biblical text without glosses. This handwritten copy has running
12 Pierre-Maurice Bogaert, « La Bible française au Moyen Âge. Des premières traductions aux débuts de
l'imprimerie, » in Les Bibles en français: histoire illustrée du Moyen Âge à nos jours, réd. Pierre-Maurice Bogaert, Christian Cannuyer (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), 14—46; Clive R. Sneddon, ‘The Bible in French,’ in The New Cambridge History of the Bible: From 600 to 1450, ed. Richard Marsden, E. Ann Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 251—67; Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘The Medieval Vernacular Bible in French as a Flexible Text: Selective and Discontinuous Reading Practices,’ in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. Eyal Poleg, Laura Light (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 283—306; Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘Encouraging Lay People to Read the Bible in the French Vernaculars: New Groups of Readers and Textual Communities,’ Journal for Church History and Religious Culture 93 (2013): 239—74.
13 Samuel Berger, La Bible française au moyen âge: Étude sur les plus anciennes versions de la Bible écrites en
prose de langue d’oïl (Paris: Champion, 1884), 264—5. A microfilm of this manuscript can be consulted online: https://bvmm.irht.cnrs.fr/consult/consult.php?REPRODUCTION_ID=18304. The same translation can be found in Zürich, Zentralbibliothek, MS C. 175.
titles on top of each recto side and chapter numbers added to the text, thus facilitating the quick retrieval of specific Bible verses. The manuscript on paper with simple penwork decoration in blue and red now contains Acts to Apocalypse and has eighteenth-century ex-libris notes from Saint Acheul Abbey (canons regular), which was located just outside the eastern city gates of Amiens. This vernacular Bible may have been kept in Saint Acheul’s library from its creation onwards, but it could also have been donated to the canons after having been read in Amiens or its vicinity over several centuries.
Turning to the post-mortem inventories from Amiens, among the long lists of furniture, clothing, business stock, work instruments, valuable objects, several books show up, among which religious books, Bibles and biblically based texts.14 With 125 registered items, Books of Hours are the largest group of books listed in the inventories, studied here for the years 1503 to 1525. Books of Hours in particular were found in the hands of very modest or even poor people who had to make a small living by working with their hands, such as a glove maker, and a butcher.15 Books of Hours for the diocese of Amiens usually contain parts of the Bible, such as the initial chapters and the Passion story copied from the Latin Gospel of John, a selection of Latin Psalms, and regularly also the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and prayers in Latin as well as in French.16 In addition, most Books of Hours for the use of Amiens that were printed by Simon Vostre in Paris featured in their margins strips with images and short captions in French representing stories from the Old and New Testaments.17
The laity probably responded to calls to read the Bible and to adjust their lives in accordance with its prescriptions, while the growing levels of literacy and a greater social dissemination of religious participation among the laity was accompanied by an eagerness to educate themselves by reading the Bible. Evidence from the inventories shows that the Bible in French and longer Bible-based texts existed in several private homes in early
14 I will publish an overview in the book that I am currently writing in collaboration with Sabrina Corbellini and
Bart Ramakers as an outcome of the ‘Cities of Readers’ project.
15 Amiens, Archives communales (hereafter: AC), FF 163/27 (1519) and FF 163/43 (1520). Similarly, a
remarkably high percentage of artisans in sixteenth-century Amiens owned at least one religious object (1503-1541), see: Chase, Popular Piety, 242—6.
16 Virginia Reinburg, French Books of Hours: Making an Archive of Prayer, c. 1400—1600 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012), 15—9, 96—100.
17 Reinburg, French Books, 33; Patricia Stirnemann, « Un incunable enluminé: Les Heures de Simon Vostre à
l’usage d'Amiens, » Bulletin Monumental 146/2 (1988): 141-142; Jean Desobry, « Les Heures de Simon Vostre à l’usage d'Amiens imprimées à Paris vers 1508, » in Liber Amicorum: Etudes historiques offertes à Pierre Bougard (Arras: Commission départementale d'histoire et d'archéologie du Pas-de-Calais, 1987), 123—39.
century Amiens. Some owners were quite affluent, such as Nicolas Caignet, mayor of Amiens, who lived in a spacious house with an ornamental garden. Nicolas died in 1519 and the inventory of the objects in his home lists at least 46 books with bindings, among which a
Bible en françois.18 Although inventories were probably made more frequently for richer households, quite a few inventories were made for people of a much lesser fortune, including some who were poor or even destitute.19
Contrary to modern expectations, the Amiens inventories include evidence of people of only a very modest fortune who owned a Bible in French or a Bible-based text with the biblical text adapted for specific uses. One of them was the widow Marguerite le Sellier who died in 1521.20 The inventory states that Marguerite lived in a house on the eau de Merderon, one of the waterways in the lower part of town in the Somme riverbed that was used to drain the foul-smelling waste from Amiens’s butcheries and tanneries. Marguerite must have been quite poor because the total value of her household goods was only 37 livres and the list of her possessions fills less than four sides of paper and many of her possessions are described as old and used. Outside Marguerite’s house was a kind of wooden shed (le loge) where she kept instruments for tanning leather (servant audit mestier de thaneur) and for spinning textile threads (ungs essignolles, ung dewidoir et un rouet). The presence of these objects shows that Marguerite did simple manual work for the leather and textile industries of Amiens. In the single room downstairs more work-related instruments (servans au mestier de thaneur) were present, next to furniture, beds, and a wooden buffet. In this latter place Marguerite had stored her few possessions of value, such as a wooden crucifix, a sculpted head of Saint John the Baptist, a precious belt made from cloth of gold with gilded silverwork, an old black velvet collar, a red velvet purse, and scissors. It is remarkable that Marguerite, who clearly had to work hard to earn a living, nevertheless owned two books stored in the same buffet: an illustrated parchment Book of Hours (unes heures en parchemyn escriptes a la main
ystoriees) and a separate, old and worn Bible (ung livre couvert de cuir tane nomme le Bible deschire vielz). Marguerite must have read her Bible regularly in the direct context of
artisanal work and the two religious artworks in the same room.
18 Amiens, AC, 163/31.
19 For instance, the total values attributed to the moveable goods range from 21½ sous to 17,187 livres (based
on the handwritten notes by Alfred Labarre in the Archives communales of Amiens for the years 1503—1525). The basic currency unit was une livre, the equivalent of 20 sous, or 240 deniers. The inventories only list the moveable goods owned by the deceased person and not their debts or other properties.
The particular description by the inventory makers of the state of the Bible, which was described as heavily used, shows that it had definitely been read by Marguerite and by other readers. This should come as no surprise, because the levels of literacy in the towns in this part of Western Europe were much higher than often thought, even among the lower classes and the poor.21 For instance, Beguines and Franciscan sisters of the Third Order (soeurs grises or grauwzusters) are known to have offered free education at a basic level to these groups.22 For Amiens there is ample historical documentation about the presence of small schools (petites écoles) providing initial education in literacy and numeracy.23 It would not be logical to suppose that these late-medieval lay people, many of whom had learned to read and who regularly used this skill in daily life, never consulted the Bibles and other religious books in their homes.
Besides Marguerite le Sellier, there were other poor artisans in Amiens who owned a
vernacular Bible, such as Colaye de Vaux and her husband Nicolas Aubry, a shoemaker. An inventory of the objects in their home was made after Colaye died in 1522.24 Their house was
21 Alain Derville, « Alphabétisation du peuple à la fin du Moyen Age, » Revue du Nord 66 (1984): 761—76; Clive
Burgess, ‘Educated Parishioners in London and Bristol on the Eve of the Reformation,’ in The Church and Learning in Later Medieval Society: Essays in Honour of R.B. Dobson, ed. Caroline M. Barron, Jenny Stratford (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2002), 286—304; Thérèse de Hemptinne, « Lire et écrire, c’est prier un peu. Culture écrite et pratiques féminines de dévotion aux Pays-Bas à la fin du Moyen âge, » in Livres et lectures de femmes en Europe entre Moyen Âge et Renaissance, réd. Anne-Marie Legaré (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 151—62; Jelle Haemers, ‘Een brief van Pieter de Coninck aan Sint-Omaars (1306). Over schriftelijke communicatie van opstandelingen in veertiende-eeuws Vlaanderen en Artesië,’ Handelingen van het Genootschap voor
Geschiedenis 154/1 (2017): 3—30. For reading artisans in England see: J.W. Adamson, ‘The extent of literacy in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: notes and conjectures,’ The Library, fourth series 10/2 (1929): 163—93.
22 Pierre Pierrard, « L’écolâtrerie de Saint-Jean et l’enseignement à Valenciennes des origines au début du 17me
siècle, » Mémoires du cercle archéologique et historique de Valenciennes 3 (1957): 31—99 (57—67, 87—99); Hilde De Ridder-Symoens, ‘Education and Literacy in the Burgundian-Hapsburg Netherlands,’ Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies 16 (1995): 6—21; Ann Veheyen, ‘Onderwijs en opleiding in de 15de eeuw te Leuven,’ in
Leven te Leuven in de late Middeleeuwen, red. Lutgarde Bessemans et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 113—25; Thérèse de Hemptinne, ‘Reading, Writing, and Devotional Practices: Lay and Religious Women and the Written Word in the Low Countries (1350–1550),’ in The Voice of Silence: Women’s Literacy in a Men’s Church, ed. Thérèse de Hemptinne, Maria Eugenia Góngora (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 111—26.
23 Deregulation of the petites écoles by bisshop Jean Avantage in 1454 or 1455: Jean-Marie Mioland, Actes de
l’Église d’Amiens (Amiens: Caron et Lambert, 1848), 28—78. Conflict between the town and the scholasticus about the taxation of the petites écoles, see: Bob Wegman, ‘Frémin le Caron at Amiens: New Documents,’ in Essays on Renaissance Music in Jonour of David Fallows: ‘bon jour, bon mois et bonne estrenne’, ed. Fabrice Fitch, Jacobijn Kiel (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011), 10—32. See also: Édouard Maugis, Recherches sur les transformations du régime politique et social de la ville d’Amiens (Paris: A. Picard et fils., 1906), 553—9; Albert Labarre, « Les maîtres écrivains. Contribution à l’histoire de l’enseignement à Amiens du XVe au XVIIIe siècles, »
Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Picardie 58 (1979—1980): 37—54.
not located in a street and possibly located in one of the dry plots of land in the Somme riverbed, surrounded by small canals and waterways. Colaye and Nicolas were of very modest means: the total value of their possessions was only 122 livres and the inventory barely fill five sides of paper. In one of the two rooms upstairs, next to an old poster bed, clothes
(robbes) and three wax tablets of different sizes, the inventory mentions two books: A Golden Legend and a Bible (une Legende doree avec ung Bible). The wax tablets show that Colaye and Nicolas used this room for writing, alongside religious reading activities from the book of Saint’s lives and the Bible.
In its complete form the Bible is a large book and its format can often prove too large to be practical for all uses. Attitudes towards the composition of the Bible were much more flexible during the Middle Ages than in later centuries, and, as a consequence, parts of the Biblical text were regularly selected and rearranged for specific reading activities.25 For instance, the life of Christ is narrated four times in slightly different forms in the Gospels. For
commemorative and compassionate devotional exercises relating to Christ’s life and Passion, which were central to pre-Reformation religiosity, it was more convenient to have a single narrative based on the combined texts of the four Gospels. In addition, the Gospel texts in this shorter version would have been more affordable for readers who did not have a large sum of money to spend.
A case in point from Amiens is Jehan du Peutel who died in 1518. The inventory indicates that he lived in a small house in the Basse Rue Notre-Dame, in the densely-built old part of Amiens, near the cathedral, on the edge of the lower and wetter Somme riverbed. The makers of the inventory did not give Jehan’s occupation. He must have been an artisan or manual worker because his house had a workshop (un ouvroir). Unfortunately, the objects listed do not provide conclusive evidence about his activities there, but elsewhere in his house Jehan had several bundles of spun hemp thread, suggesting that he worked in the Amiens textile industry. His occupations did not make him very rich, because the total value of the goods in his house was only 83 livres. In the room downstairs on the frontside of his house, the inventory makers found furniture, a bed, clothing, and an old painted cloth of the three kings (ung drap painct ou est emprainct les trois rois viel), the only visual object in Jehan’s home.
25 Hoogvliet, ‘The Medieval Vernacular Bible’. English medieval bibles also circulated in largely fragmentary
forms; see Mary Raschko, ‘Taking Apart the Wycliffite Bible: Patterns of Selective and Integrative Reading,’ Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 47:3 (2017): 461—86.
Several small books were found in the attic, situated immediately on the first floor, next to another bed, furniture, a work instrument made of lead, and a stock of hemp threads. One of these small books is described in more detail: a small book with the Passion of Christ (ung
petit livre la ou est escript la Passion).
Another example is Guillaume Blanchaux who lived near the harbour of the River Somme in the western part of Amiens. Guillaume died in 1517 and in the inventory made shortly after his death he is referred to as a merchant.26 The total value of the moveable possessions of Guillaume and his wife is not given, but they must have been wealthier than the Amiens inhabitants discussed earlier, because the inventory covers 44 pages and mentions valuable objects such as religious artworks and silverware. It also includes an extensive business administration. Although the inventory does not mention a workshop, it seems likely that Guillaume and his wife were active in the textile industry as dyers who also took care of the finishing work on textiles, because there is a reference to the satin dyeing (la vefve a declarie
estre a la taincture: xxxj satins) and a calendaring press with rolls, used to smooth of textiles
(en une calendre prez le beguignage). Guillaume and his wife must have been able to read and write because one of the rooms in their house was described as a writing room (ung
escriptoire).
A room downstairs at the back of the house contained parts of the Bible in two different formats, next to several paintings with religious subjects. Firstly, there was an oak wood panel with the Ten Commandments (Ung tableau de bois de quesne ou sont escriptz les dix
commandements de la loy). The presence of this panel is remarkable because these were
usually placed in a publicly accessible place, such as in or on parish churches, schools, hospitals, convents, as recommended by Jean Gerson.27 Guillaume and his wife may have kept this panel with the Ten Commandments for personal instruction and as a constant
26 Amiens, AC, FF 160/10.
27 Richard Marks, ‘Picturing Words and Texts in the Medieval Church,’ in Image, Text and Church, 1380—1600:
Essays for Margaret Aston, ed. Linda Clark, Maureen Jurkowski, Colin Richmond (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2009), 162—202; Madeleine Gray, ‘Images of Words: Iconographies of Text and the Construction of Sacred Space in Medieval Church Wall Painting,’ in Sacred Text - Sacred Space: Architectural, Spiritual and Literary Convergences in England and Wales, ed. Joseph Sterrett, Peter Thomas (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 15—34; Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘Pour faire laies personnes entendre les hystoires des escriptures anciennes. Theoretical Approaches to a Social History of Religious Reading in the French Vernaculars During the Late Middle Ages,’ in Cultures of Religious Reading in the Later Middle Ages: Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit and Awakening the Passion, ed. Sabrina Corbellini (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 247—74 (256—7).
reminder of their rules, but they may have also intended it as instruction for children, employees, and visitors.
The second biblical text in the same room as the panel with the Ten Commandments was a printed book with a French translation of the Speculum humanae salvationis: ‘i grant livre en
pappier maulle qui se appelle le Miroir de la redemption humaine’. This specific title is the
same as an edition of a French prose translation and adaptation of the Speculum text, first printed by Jean Vérard in Paris in 1500.28 Vérard’s print reproduces an earlier translation and adaptation made by the Augustinian hermit Julien Macho, which was first printed in Lyon by Martin Husz in 1478 with the title le Mirouer de la redemption de l’umain lignage translate
de latin en francoys selon l’intention de la Saincte escripture (‘Mirror of the salvation of the
human lineage translated from Latin into French according to the meaning of Sacred Scripture’).29 The Latin illustrated verse text of the Speculum is not usually regarded as a Bible, although its purpose was to demonstrate the prefigurations of the Virgin and Christ in the Old Testament. The French adaptation by Julien Macho, however, is in its title presented as being based directly on Sacred Scripture. A closer examination of the text shows that the translator Julien Macho has adapted and expanded the Speculum text into a work strongly based on the Bible. Firstly, each of the stories from the Old and New Testaments of the
Speculum reproduces the biblical prose text together with the exact reference to the Bible
books and chapter numbers. Secondly, some of the Bible fragments of the Speculum are accompanied by a note indicating the Sunday for which it is a liturgical reading. Thirdly, Macho (or the printer Martin Husz) has added an alphabetical register to the text, together with a table of the liturgical Bible readings for Sunday masses, with references to folio numbers.30 But most importantly, the actual French prose translation of the Speculum text ends on folio 161 recto (feuillet clxi) and the text continues with the annual cycle of liturgical Bible readings in French starting with the first Sunday of Advent, to which sermons have regularly been added.
As a consequence, readers must have perceived Julien Macho’s French adaptation of the
Speculum as a Bible because it presented them with the biblical text adapted for a specific
28 Miroir de la rédemption humaine (Paris: Jean Vérard, [1499]). 29 This title also occurs in the Vérard editions, on folio 2 recto.
30 The Vérard editions have a slightly different table of contents at the end, also referring to the liturgical Bible
use, in this case the liturgical readings from the Bible for Sundays and feast days. This is also confirmed by historical uses of this text. For example, a reader has added the words ‘Bible en
francoys’ on the first fly leaf a copy of the 1482 edition by Matthias Huss and on the last fly
leaf he has written in the same ink ‘Ceste Bible compete et apertient a Jacques Castereaut
clerc demourant a Dijon et l’acheta ou mois de septembre l’an mil xxxx quatre vingt et deux’
(This Bible belongs to Jacques Castereaut, a cleric living in Dijon and he bought it in the month of September of the year 1482).31 Since this French translation and adaptation of the
Speculum was regarded as a Bible by a cleric from Dijon, it would certainly have been
interpreted and used as such by Guillaume Blanchaux, his wife, and other readers.
A final example from Amiens is Ildevert Fosse, referred to in the inventory as a merchant and weaver of woolen says (saieteur), who passed away in 1525, just before the first censoring measures of heretical texts issued by the faculty of theology of the Sorbonne.32 Says were woolen cloths of a lighter quality and an important export product of Amiens. Most weavers in Amiens were poor and did not have many possessions of value apart from their looms. For instance, another weaver of says, Enguerran Harecque, lived until his death in 1519 in the rue des Minimes, situated in the humid and industrial northern part of Amiens in the Somme riverbed.33 Enguerran’s household was destitute and was valued at a meagre 21 livres. The house must have been full of activity on working days because two looms were found in the workshop and another one in a room upstairs. Apart from furniture, crockery and textiles, only a few luxury objects were mentioned: a wax agnus dei in gilded silver (un Agnus Dey
aussy d’argent doré), and a painted cloth representing the Virgin in a bedroom in the attic
(une ymage Nostre Dame, de toille paint, enchassé en bois). No books are mentioned in the inventory made after Enguerran’s death, but, as discussed earlier, this does not prove that he did not own any books, because he may have donated them while still alive or bequeathed them in his will.
31 Le Mirouer de la redemption de l’umain lignage, [Lyon: Matthias Huss, 1482]. I have consulted: Paris,
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés. A-1243 ; online consultable via http://gallica.bnf.fr. A later edition has an ex-libris note by a glove maker from Paris: “Ce present liure appartients a nicolas Lefebvre Maistre ganstiers a parys” (15th or early 16th c.). Le mirouer de la redemption de l’umain lignaige, Lyon : Matthias Husz, 1483. Lyon, Bibliothèque municipale, Rés Inc 115.
32 Amiens, AC, FF 181/9. 33 Amiens, AC, FF 163/36.
With a total value of no less than an impressive amount of 2,190 livres, including the business stock, Ildevert Fosse’s household inventory and business were much richer than Enguerran’s and those of most of the other saieteurs in Amiens. There were three looms in Ildevert’s house and their presence suggests that he too was most likely to have been involved in the manual weaving work on these instruments. In addition to the actual weaving work on the looms, he was probably also engaged in the financing and trade of woollen says and precious silk satins, because the latter were also mentioned in the inventory. The inventory lists a single book: A large manuscript on paper containing the text of a Passion play (Un gros livre
en pappier, escript a la main portant la Passion par personnages).34
Passion plays were staged regularly in Amiens during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the first recorded performance taking place in 1402 or 1403.35 Ildevert’s handwritten copy of the Passion par personnages could well have been based on one of these
performances organized in Amiens. However, the written copies of the Passion par
personnages were intended and used first and foremost as reading texts. The combined
reading of the stage directions in the rubrics, the direct speech, and the illustrations (where present) gave the reader an impression of embodied voices, intended to stir up more intense feelings of compassion and affective devotion.36 The text of the Passion plays typically incorporated many direct quotations from the Gospels, thus making reading the Passion par
personnages a form of Gospel reading.
The examples discussed above of lay people from Amiens, some quite poor, others more affluent, all of whom made a living from manual work and were owners and readers of the Bible or the biblical text in other formats were by no means a local exception. There is similar evidence from other French-speaking towns, but this documentation is more fragmented than the series from Amiens. On the other hand, these are often earlier cases that confirm the
34 Several different textual variants survive in approximately fifty manuscripts and several printed editions. For
an overview, see: Graham Runnalls, « Les mystères de la Passion en langue française: tentative de classement, » Romania: recueil trimestriel consacré à l'étude des langues et des littératures romanes 114 (1996): 468—516.
35 Georges Lecocq, Histoire du théâtre en Picardie depuis son origine jusqu’à la fin du XVIe siècle (Paris: Librairie H. Menu, 1880), 41—55. On the Passion play performed in Amiens in 1500, see: Graham Runnalls, Les mysteres dans les provinces françaises (en Savoie et en Poitou, à Amiens et à Reims) (Paris: Champion, 2003), 227—63.
36 Laura Weigert, French Visual Culture and the Making of Medieval Theater (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2015), 78—80; Robert L.A. Clark, Pamela Sheingorn, ‘‘Ces Mots Icy Verrez Juer’: Performative Presence and Social Life in the Arras Passion Manuscript,’ in The Social Life of Illumination, Manuscripts, Images and Communities in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Joyce Coleman, Mark Cruse, Kathryn Smith (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 207—49.
overall picture found in early sixteenth-century Amiens. For instance, mentions of many books including several Bibles in French, can be found in wills and inventories from the town of Tournai, as indicated earlier a French exclave situated 140 kilometers to the north of Amiens. Unfortunately, most documents from Tournai do not contain references to the testator’s occupation. There is, however, one exception: Jehan Danvaing, described as a tanner, died in 1401 and his possessions were inventoried in order to be sold. A Bible in French (Un livre de le Bible en franchois) figured among his possessions.37
The practice of doing manual work and reading the Bible was not limited to northern France and a few more examples can be found south of the River Loire. The inventory made in 1475-1478 of the possessions of the hosier Jehan Delagrange from Lyon includes a Life of Christ starting with ‘Audiens sapiens sapientior erit’.38 This Life of Christ reproduces parts of the Old and New Testaments, as well as extra-biblical narratives about Christ’s life and passion. Similar examples have been found in the town of Toulouse: Arnaud Gardela, a merchant in spices who would also have been occupied with battering and grinding his merchandise, owned several books, including a Psalter and a Gospel book according to the inventory from 1430, and Guilhelm Bernard, a haberdasher from Castelnaudary, a smaller town near
Toulouse, owned a handwritten book on parchment with Christ’s Passion in 1418 (“passionem Domini nostri Jhesu Cristi” and “quasdam preces et regulas in pargameno
scriptas”).39
The tanners, shoemakers, hosiers, weavers, wool workers, shopkeepers, and poor people who did manual work as those discussed above have left only sporadically traces in archival and codicological sources. As a consequence, the documented cases discussed here probably represent a much larger pattern of lay biblical readership. Their absence in the surviving historical sources is more likely to imply that there is no information available than being evidence of these lower-class lay people not having access to the biblical text at all.
37 Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, De fin or et d'azur: les commanditaires de livres et le métier de l'enluminure à
Tournai à la fin du Moyen Age (XIVe-XVe siècles) (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 175, T. 76.
38 Lyon, Archives municipales, 3 GG 124. I am much indebted to Jean-Benoît Krumenacker for consulting this
document for me. For the Life of Christ, see: Geneviève Hasenohr, Textes de dévotion et lectures spirituelles en langue romane (France, XIIe-XVIe siècle) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 114—5, nr. 29820.
39 Marie-Claude Marandet, Le souci de l'au-delà. La pratique testamentaire dans la région toulousaine
2. The Evangelical Artisan
The reading culture of the Bible among people doing manual work in Amiens and elsewhere in western Europe is not a fortuitous development, but it is part of a wider transformation in religious life during the fifteenth century, which caused a change in the cultural representation of manual work into a social space of religion, especially when alternated with prayer and reading the Bible.
During the fifteenth century, the religious importance of simple manual work, for both clerics and the laity was increasingly emphasized, with reference to biblical warnings against
idleness as in 2 Thess. 3: ‘The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat’.40 In addition to manual work, humility, charity, and apostolical poverty were understood as Christian ideals and as a form of imitatio Christi.41 Voluntary poverty was recommended not only to the mendicant orders, but also to the laity, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and with renewed energy in the fifteenth century. The Augustinian Friar Jacques Legrand from Paris, for example, praised voluntary poverty and working for a living in his widely read book intended for the laity, le Livre de bonnes meurs (The Book of Good Behaviour, c. 1404/1410):
L’omme n’est pas digne de vivre qui par sa negligence dort en son pechié et muert en povreté; car non obstant que povrete soit bonne quant elle est voulentaire, toutesfoiz celui fait moult a reprendre qui par sa paresce est povre et miserable.42
[Man is not worthy of living when he, through his carelessness, neglects his sins and dies in poverty, because, notwithstanding that poverty is good when it is voluntary, still the person is to blame who is poor and miserable because of his laziness].
40 Jacques Le Goff, Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980),
107—21; Lisa H. Cooper, Artisans and narrative craft in late-medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 7—9.
41 Lester K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy of Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell university Press,
1978); Freedman, Images, 212—35. For a recent overview of the study of medieval ideas about poverty, see: Sharon Farmer, ‘Introduction,’ in Approaches to Poverty in Medieval Europe: Complexities, Contradictions, Transformations, c. 1100—1500, ed. Sharon Farmer (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 1—22. For the growing importance of humility, especially lay models of humility: Claire M. Waters, Translating “clergie”: Status, Education, and Salvation in Thirteenth-Century Vernacular Texts (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). The idea that charity was especially to be found in the lay world is discussed in: Adam J. Davis, ‘The Social and Religious Meanings of Charity in Medieval Europe,’ History Compass 12/12 (2014): 935—50.
Elsewhere in his work Legrand emphasized that poverty pleases God greatly (l’estat de
povrete est moult agréable et plaisant a Dieu).43 People should not spurn poverty, he wrote, because Jesus himself was born from a poor mother and his family was supported by the poor artisan Joseph:
Et de fait Jhesucrist nous a donné l’exemple de povreté, car il fu nez de tres povre mere et nourri de povre fevre, c’est assavoir de Joseph [...]. Par lesquelles choses Jhesucrist nous monstre que nul ne doit desprisier povrete: car Jhesucrist di en l’Euvangile que qui veult estre parfait il doit aux biens mondains renoncier et les donner aux povres, comme recite saint Mathieu en son .XVII.e chapitre.44
[And indeed, Jesus has given us the example of poverty, because he was born from a very poor mother and was sustained by the poor artisan Joseph. By these things [i.e. the poverty of his family] Jesus shows us that nobody should despise poverty, because he said in the Gospels that those who want to be perfect should abstain from their worldly goods and give them away to the poor, as Saint Matthew explains in his 17th chapter].45
The fifteenth century saw a growing attention for the dire circumstances of Christ’s life during his youth and especially the humble and frugal life of the holy family, the artisanal manual work carried out by Joseph, assisted by the young Jesus, and the textile work done by Mary.46 Ideas such as these were medieval elaborations of Matt 13:55, where Christ is
identified as the son of a carpenter: ‘Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?’ and Mark 6:3, where Christ himself is referred to as a carpenter: ‘Isn’t this the carpenter?’.47 In the same spirit, the life of the holy family was recommended as an example to follow in a fifteenth-century French Life of Christ now known as la Vie de nostre benoit Saulveur:
43 Beltran, Jacques Legrand, 337—40, 365—6. 44 Beltran, Jacques Legrand, 337.
45 In modern Bibles this is Matt 19:21.
46 Brian Patrick McGuire, ‘When Jesus did the dishes: The transformation of late medieval spirituality,’ in The
Making of Christian Communities in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. Mark F. Williams (London: Anthem Press, 2005), 131—52; Freedman, Images, 223—6; Cooper, Artisans, 106—46.
Personne devote, si tu es laboureux ou de mestier, travaille et laboure volentiers pour ta vie gaingner, a l’exemple de la mere Dieu et de Ioseph son mary, et tu seras bien eureux. Comme Nostre Seigneur le dit ou saint psaultier, parlant par la bouche du saint prophete David: ‘Labores manuum tuarum quia manducabis beatus est et bene tibi erit’. Laboure de tes mains ce que tu mengeras, et seras bien eureux et tout bien te viendra.48
[Devout person, if you have a job or if you are exercising a craft, work gladly in order to gain your living following the example of the Mother of God and Joseph her husband and you will be happy. As our Lord says in the Psalter, speaking by the mouth of his prophet David: “Work with your hands for what you will eat, and you will be happy and blessings will come to you”].49
The example of the holy family as simple artisans, living a life of apostolic poverty was also disseminated in the visual arts. This iconography is remarkably also present in the famous early sixteenth-century wood carvings of the canon’s choir stalls in Amiens cathedral.50 One of the larger sculpted panels is a representation of the Virgin weaving on a loom (ill. 1). This image can be interpreted as a reflection of Amiens’s large community of weavers of woolen says, teaching them that by working diligently and devoutly they could mirror their lives in the life and holiness of the Virgin. However, it is not at all certain whether lay artisans had regular access to the canon’s choir in the cathedral. The sculpted wooden relief of the Virgin weaving was most likely a message also intended for the canons, exhorting them to avoid pride in their position, to humble themselves as the Virgin did, and to find religious
inspiration in the simple religiosity of the artisans surrounding them in the town where they were living.
Alternating manual work with reading the Bible and religious texts was an integral part of the life of the holy family as imagined in the late Middle Ages and recommended as an exemplar to real artisans, too. Visual examples include the famous Mérode altarpiece (1427—1432), an Annunciation triptych from the workshop of the painter Robert Campin in Tournai, with the
48 Millard Meiss, Elizabeth H. Beatson, eds., La Vie de nostre benoit sauveur Ihesuscrist & la Saincte vie de
nostre Dame (New York: New York University Press, 1977), 40—1.
49 Psalm 128:2.
50 Kristiane Lemé-Hébuterne, Les stalles de la cathédrale Notre-Dame d'Amiens: histoire, iconographie (Paris:
carpenter Joseph in his workshop on the right panel and the Virgin reading her books devoutly on the central panel.51 Another example is a late fifteenth-century wooden statue representing the holy family made by the Utrecht-based Dutch sculptor Adriaen van Wesel. It was probably intended as part of a larger altarpiece and represents the holy family, with Joseph and Jesus working as carpenters, while the Virgin reads a book sitting near them (ill. 2).52
Lay artisans and members of religious orders who did manual work were also encouraged to pray and to read during resting periods by the actual religious texts in the vernacular. One of several other examples that could be quoted here is Pierre Gringore’s narrative poem Le
chasteau de labour (The Castle of labour, c. 1490) in which a lazy young man learns the
rewards of honest manual work. Reading Sacred Scripture is recommended as an integral part of this way of life:
Les sainctes escriptures lis/ Et tu vivras en continence.53
[Read Sacred Scripture/ And you will live modestly.]
Exhortations like these show that texts based on Sacred Scripture in the homes of artisans and manual labourers were not acquired accidentally, and that these books had a clear purpose: Readers saw their working life and modest social condition endorsed as a saintly example in the biblical text, while reading the Bible in order to make their lives conform to biblical lessons was an integral part of their daily occupation.
Similar ideas about the religious value of manual work also shaped the lives and biblical reading habits of members of religious orders. As Jacques Le Goff has observed, starting in the twelfth century, ‘manual labor was restored to a place of honor with the Carthusians, and particularly the Cistercians and Premonstratensians’.54 In fifteenth-century Amiens this was especially true for several communities of Beguines and soeurs grises (Third Order
Franciscans), whose religious life was increasingly modelled after monastic rules and who
51 New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Inv. 56.70a–c.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/470304.
52 Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent, Inv. ABM bh471.
53 Pierre Gringore, Le chasteau de labour (Paris: Simon Vostre, 1501) fol. 18 recto. 54 Le Goff, Time, 114.
were active in healthcare and the education of young children. Some of these women earned money by doing manual work in the textile industry, as testified in 1505 by the saieteurs of Amiens who made an official complaint to the city council about the unfair competition by the weaving activities of the soeurs grises.55
In reality, the soeurs grises were following the rules and prescriptions of the Franciscan Third Order sisters as defined by the Franciscan Observant movement, which stated unambiguously that the sisters had to work after the daily prayers:
Pourceque oiseusete est cause de moult de pechies et de vices souverainnement doivent les soeurs apres le divin service estudier a occuper leur temps a ouvrer en faisant ouvrages prouffitables pour leurs maisons c’est assavoir apres prime dicte au matin. Celles qui ne seront autrement occupees par la disposition de la maistresse se metteront a ouvrer en l’ouvroir ou aultrepart comme il appartient. Et feront les ouvrages comme elles le scaivent faire. Et tenront silence audit ouvroir la matinee iusques au diner.56
[Because laziness is the cause of many sins and vices, after Divine Office the sisters should find a way to fill in their time by working and doing profitable works for their houses, that is after Matins having been said in the morning. Those who do not have another occupation should start to work in the workshop, or elsewhere as required, according to the priorities of the female regent. And they will do the work that they can do. And they will be silent in said workshop from Matins until mealtime.]
By analogy with the monastic lectio divina, the sisters were expected to listen during mealtimes as books with religious and biblical texts were read aloud:
Et afin que lame soit refectionnee comme le corps elles ne commenceront point a mangier tant que la lechon sera commencee. Et lira on tousdis a table tant au disner que au souper en livres de bonne et saine doctrine.57
55 Amiens, AC, BB20, fol. 117 recto. Beguines in 13th c. Paris were working in the textile industries as well, see:
Tanya Stabler Miller, The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 59—80.
56 Paris, BnF, MS NAF 28187, folio 21 recto. 57 Paris, BnF, MS NAF 28187, folio 21 verso.
[And in order to nourish the soul just as the body, the sisters will not start to eat before the lesson will be started. And they will always read from books with good and sound doctrine at table during dinner and supper.]
These regulations show that these (semi-)religious women modelled the rules of their community according to the religious ideology of working life, based on prescriptions in the Bible and following the example of the holy family. The presence of the sculpted panel representing the Virgin weaving in the canon’s choir in Amiens cathedral may have been a similar exhortation intended for the canons and a reminder of the importance of humility. The growing emphasis on the value of manual work for professed religious living the vita
contemplativa and exhortations to lay people to read the Bible had as a consequence that the
two groups increasingly shared experiences and reading practices. The social space of manual work grew closer and closer to the space of religion, and vice versa.
3. Conclusion
In conclusion, the series of archival evidence from Amiens together with supplementary information from Tournai and towns in southern France show that even manual workers who lived very modestly owned and read Bibles and Bible-based texts in the French vernaculars during the fifteenth and early sixteenth century. In order to counter historical commonplaces about the exclusion of artisans and poor people from access to the Bible in the period before the Reformation, we need to continue to retrieve new historical sources showing these practices and bringing them to the attention of a broader audience. Clearly not every lay person had made religion a central part of his or her life and there must have been many other people who were more indifferent to religiosity.58 Nevertheless, biblical texts that stress the importance of manual work and set the virtuous example of the Holy Family in their poverty and daily labour provided a strong impetus for both lay people and clerics to follow these calls. The intensified focus on these biblical examples also changed the religious value of artisanal life and manual work, for both the laity and communal living religious groups. The
58 John Van Engen, ‘Multiple Options: The World of the Fifteenth-Century Church,’ Church History 77/2 (2008):
French-speaking areas of western Europe present similar social patterns of biblical reading cultures to those that have been found for other vernacular languages, thus showing the ‘the universalising effects of piety’.59 More collaborative research from a transnational perspective is needed in order to reveal shared biblical reading cultures across languages, cultures, and social backgrounds in late medieval Europe.
59 C. Annette Grisé, ‘Afterword: Adaptation, Negotiation, and Transformation,’ in Devotional Literature and
Practice in Medieval England: Readers, Reading, and Reception, ed. Kathryn R. Vulić, Susan Uselmann, C. Annette Grisé (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 267—82 (278).
