A study of the immensely popular "lives" of Christ and the Virgin in medieval France. The story of the life of Christ and his mother was told in many texts in various French vernaculars (Anglo-Norman and Old Occitan, as well as Old and Middle French) between the middle of the twelfth century and the end of the fifteenth; there are more than a hundred such texts, extant in at least 400 manuscripts. These "sacred fictions" are the subject of this book. Given that the principal events in the lives of Mary and Jesus were well known to potential audiences, the choice of genre was the most important decision facing a medieval author. The writers of these works made deliberate formal choices which their audiences recognized and which provided one frame of reference for reading them. Professor Boulton here classifies the different lives of Mary and Jesus according to the various narrative forms they take: epic, romance, allegory, chronicle, and meditative text. In addition, because a text's embodiment in its codex reflects how it was encountered by medieval readers, each chapter considers the transmission of the texts, as well as their often radical alteration in different manuscripts when they survive in multiple copies.
Author(s): Maureen Boulton
Series: Gallica, 38
Publisher: D. S. Brewer
Year: 2015
Language: English
Pages: 394
City: Cambridge
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Literature and Religion, Religious Literature
Narrative Lives and Doctrine
Lives of Christ in manuscript
Organization of the Book
1. Sacred Romances: Genealogy, Lineage and Cyclicity
Wace, 'Conception Nostre Dame'
Thirteenth-Century Cycles
The 'Histoire de Marie et de Jesu' and its Cycle
A Christ Cycle: 'Histoire de Jésus, Passion des Jongleurs'
The Double Cycle of (Pseudo)-Gautier de Coinci
Jehan de Venette, 'L’Histoire des Trois Maries'
2. Sacred Epic and the Diffusion of Anti-Jewish Sentiment
The 'Bible' of Herman de Valenciennes, or 'Le Roman de Dieu et de sa mère'
The 'Venjance Nostre Seigneur'
The Franco-Italian Passions
The anonymous 'Ystoire de la Passion'
Niccolò da Verona, 'Passion'
'La Passion du Christ', by Niccolò da Casola
3. Sacred Allegory and Meditation
John of Howden, 'Rossignos'
Matfre Ermengaud, 'Le Breviari d’amor'
Guillaume de Digulleville, 'Le Pelerinage Jhesucrist'
Jean Henry, 'La Gesine de Nostre Dame'
4. Sacred Histories: the Chronicles of Jean d’Outremeuse and Jean Mansel
Three thirteenth-century compilations
Fourteenth-century compilations of the 'Histoire d’Outremer'
Jean d’Outremeuse, 'Ly Myreur des Histors'
Jean Mansel, 'La Fleur des Histoires'
5. Sacred Imaginations: Lives of Christ and the Virgin in Texts of Affective Devotion
Passion texts
Jean Gerson, 'Ad Deum vadit: Sermon on the Passion'
The 'Passion Isabeau'
Christine de Pizan, 'Les Heures de Contemplacion sur la Passion'
Jean Miélot, 'Les Contemplations sur les sept heures de la Passion'
Translations and Adaptations of the 'Meditationes vitae Christi'
Jean Galopes: 'Livre doré de la Vie de Nostre Seigneur Jhesucrist selon Bonneadventure'
Jean Aubert, 'La vie du Crist en sept parties'
Guillaume le Menand, 'La Grant Vie de Jhesucrist'
The Life of the Virgin
Martial d’Auvergne, 'Les Matines de la Vierge'
Gabrielle de Bourbon, 'Les Doulleurs de la Passion'
Epilogue: Lives and Afterlives
Appendix: Lists of Manuscript by Chapter
Bibliography
Index
