Nationale De France Research Articles

Found in Translation: Images Visionary and Visceral in the Welles-Ros Bible

This essay introduces to a wider audience the manuscript that I call the Welles-Ros Bible (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1), the most complete surviving witness and sole extant illuminated copy of the Anglo-Norman Bible, the earliest full prose vernacular Bible produced in England. I argue that this grand, multilingual manuscript and the vernacular translation preserved in its pages were commissioned in the 1360s by the widowed baroness Maud de Ros to serve as a primer, mirror, guide, family archive, and source of consolation for her son, John, fifth Baron Welles of Welle, Lincolnshire, and other estates. Working under the direction of a Carmelite chaplain, who I believe composed the translation, the two secular artists who illuminated the manuscript strove to visualize scripture in a manner that was at once faithful to the vernacular biblical text in all its concrete detail, evocative of its most elevated themes, and relevant to the values and lived experience of its intended reader-viewer. I show how the Bible’s pictorial and heraldic program reframes Christian salvation history as Welles family history. In addition, using as case studies a selection of illustrations for the Old Testament books, I endeavor to reconstruct the main artist’s creative process, and to identify some of the possible contours of the collaboration that produced the Bible’s visual program. This essay contributes to our picture of lay literate and religious aspiration; the history of Bible translation and reception; women’s cultural patronage; artists’ literacy and working methods; and medieval ideas about gender, sexuality, memory, and the emotions in post-Black Death England.

New evidence of non-traditional Egyptian blue manufacture in the 6th century Ashburnham Pentateuch

The Ashburnham Pentateuch (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. NAL 2334), dated around 600 CE, is an early medieval illuminated manuscript containing five books of the Old Testament. It is one of the most important artworks of its genre, thanks to its pictures that are among the earliest surviving and most extensive biblical illustrations. It is richly decorated with 18 full-page miniatures (remains of the original 69) illustrating scenes from the Genesis and Exodus biblical books. Its production has been assigned on stylistic base to Spain, Northern Africa or Italy.The miniatures of the Pentateuch have been analysed in non-invasive way by means of UV–visible diffuse reflectance spectrophotometry with optical fibres (FORS), spectrofluorimetry and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) in order to characterise its palette and to compare it with those of other early medieval manuscripts. The results of this investigation highlighted the wide use of the pigment Egyptian blue, an unusual feature in miniature painting; moreover this synthetic pigment appears to have been produced following a non-traditional manufacture, due to the analytical evidence of a copper/zinc alloy as source of copper instead of the traditional sources used by Egyptians and Romans, i.e. copper, copper minerals or bronze.

Where Comics and Cultural Heritage Meet: A Conversation with Damien Sueur and Yannis Koikas on BDnF: The Comics Factory

The Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF; French National Library) recently launched a free comics creation desktop and mobile application, “BDnF”. Designed and produced by the BnF, BDnF is a digital creation tool for making comics and other multimedia stories, mixing illustration and text. BDnF allows users to engage creatively in specific aspects of comics (narrative construction, temporality, space, text/drawing/synergy, etc.). A key feature of the application is its integration of a wide variety of educational and iconographic resources, and in particular of the digital collections of the BnF. Initially launched in French, the English language option was launched in May 2020. This article introduces the application to an English-speaking audience through a conversation with Damien Sueur, Digital Production Manager at the Digital Publishing Department, and Yannis Koikas, Head of the Digital Publishing Department at the Bibliotheque nationale de France.

A Review of the Contents of Albi, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms 40

The paper proposes a new description of Albi, Biblitohèque Municipale, MS 40. The volume is rich in unedited anonymous texts, and the boundaries between them are displayed in different, sometimes confusing ways, which has led to some inaccuracies in previous descriptions. Moreover, several unedited texts are brought to light, namely Nomina dierum et mensium, Vocationes mundi, Quaestiones Albigenses (linked to the Prebiarum de multorium exemplaribus, CPL 1129b), and the ps. Augustinian sermon De decem talentis (CPPM 3310), among others. Also, emphasis is put on the consistent contacts of the Albi MS with Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 2718, München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 19410 and Köln, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, MS 15.

Science in History


 In 1987, Ernest Coumet highlighted the presence of a “scientific revolution” in Alexandre Koyré’s works. When and where did the destruction of the Cosmos and the geometrization of space materialize in the authors she studied? In what work do we find the “revolution” for which Koyré is so well known? From unknown texts, at least in 1987, Coumet pointed out concordances between Koyré’s philosophy of historical knowledge and that of Raymond Aron – of Weberian inspiration – affirming Koyré’s famous concept of Scientific Revolution as “ideal type”. Which means to say that, in the works of the author of From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, “revolution” is not a historical reality, but an interpretative horizon. However, a letter from Koyré to Aron discovered by us in the archives of this author, deposited in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, shows us the unsustainability of Coumet’s hypothesis. Nevertheless, it seems to us that the great lesson of his singular hypothesis remains, that of the importance of not neglecting the conception of the history of those who focus on the past of the sciences.

Three Lost Miniatures in Codex Sinopensis (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, supplément grec 1286; Gregory-Aland O/023)

Codex Sinopensis (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, supplément grec 1286; Gregory-Aland O/023) is one of the earliest examples of an illuminated gospel book. This article examines instances of transferred paint in the codex along with textual and paratextual features to identify three lost miniatures that once adorned the pages of Codex Sinopensis. Thus, our knowledge of one of the earliest cycles of miniatures in a gospel book can be extended with the addition of the three identifiable but now-lost miniatures: The Miracle of the Coin from the Mouth of the Fish (Matthew 17:24–18:4), the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard (Matthew 19:25–20:9), and Christ’s Entrance into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:5-12).

A neglected homily by Caesarius of Arles. The complete version of Sermo Étaix 4

In 1975, Raymond Étaix published a fragment of what he considered to be a lost sermon by Caesarius of Arles (sermon Étaix 4) based on the manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 2730. In the latter, this fragment (fol. 68v-69r) is attached as a kind of peroratio to a text which, according to Étaix, was Augustine’s sermon 304 on the martyr Laurentius (fol. 67r-68v). The present article argues, however, that the fragment is attached to a strongly modified version of the Augustinian homily and that the whole item on fol. 67r-69v is Caesarius’ sermon that Étaix supposed was lost. The article further suggests that, for the compilation of this homily, the Bishop of Arles used a more original version of Augustine’s sermon 304 than that which was transmitted by the sermon’s entire direct transmission and which can be found in modern editions. A critical edition of the new Caesarian sermon is given at the end of the article.

Friday Veneration among Syriac Christians: The Witness of theStory of the Holy Friday

AbstractThis article contains the original unpublished Syriac text of the Story of the Holy Friday, an anonymous hagiographic composition that promotes an idiosyncratic form of Friday veneration, which demands that Christians refrain from work on that day completely. The text of the Story, published on the basis of manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, syr. 234, is accompanied with an English translation and discussion of its unusual message, possibly related to the early period of Muslim-Christian relations in the Near East.

Printing Chinese Characters, Engraving Chinese Types: Wooden Chinese Movable Type at the Imprimerie Nationale (1715-1819)

Abstract The collection of Chinese wooden movable types is among the oldest treasures of the Imprimerie Nationale. The types were carved in Paris between 1715 and 1819, and they are a legacy of the first French attempts to master the expertise necessary to print Chinese alongside Western alphabetic scripts. This article, which is the result of research conducted at the Imprimerie Nationale, combined with a study of historical and literary sources from various periods kept at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and at Italian libraries, provides a description of the types’ physical characteristics and relates how they were created, designed, organized, engraved, employed, classified and stored. Our research focuses on the attempts to include Chinese characters in publications in Western languages which were made in Europe and particularly in France from the beginning of the eighteenth century onwards. At a time when Europeans were beginning to expand their range of activities in Asia, printing in Asian scripts was a technical as well as a commercial, political and intellectual challenge. With no Chinese typographer to help, the French team modelled the types on characters found in a Chinese dictionary imported into France by missionaries, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century they published two dictionaries which included Chinese characters printed with wooden type.

The Chikchi and Its Positions in Fourteenth-Century Korea

The purpose of this paper is to examine the historical and ideological positions of the Chikchi, a Korean Zen text. Originally composed of two fascicles, the book was published with metal type in 1377 and in woodblock print in 1378. The metal type print only remains. in its second fascicle, which is currently preserved in the La Bibliotheque nationale de France, registered in the Memory of the World by the United Nations, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Memory of the World list. However, the woodblock print remains in two fascicles, including the teachings of Buddhas, recorded sayings, enlightened verses, and transmission records of more than one hundred patriarchs and masters of India, China, and Korea. The role of the Chikchi shines more in modern times. As a rare book in Korea and as the oldest extant book printed with metal type in the world, it has a great significance in the world history of printing culture. The Chikchi also has originality in terms of soteriology, ideological flexibility, an open interpretation of Buddhist teachings, and an integration with Confucianism, thus suggesting its possible contribution to a better understanding of the characteristics of Korean Buddhism in particular and, by extension, East Asian Buddhism in general.

Ripensare la lingua del Flos sanctorum catalano

Abstract The article represents an attempt to reconsider the exceptional linguistic status of the manuscript Esp. 44 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, containing the Old Catalan translation of Jacopo da Varazze’s Legenda aurea. First studied by Joan Coromines, its language appeared remarkably conservative and vernacular to the great philologist, however now, more than a half-century after his judgment, the comparison with other products of what has been defined the earliest Catalan scripta leads to relativize linguistic traits of the Parisian manuscript. In particular, it is shown that the manuscript 713 in the library of the University of Barcelona is also distinguished by its linguistic features, and yet it is studied here for the first time.

An Alchemist’s Travels, according to Himself

This essay reconsiders a little-known collection of Latin alchemical recipes from the fifteenth century attributed to one “Leonard of Marburg.” Preserved today in only one manuscript (MS Latin 14005, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris), these recipes were collected over the course of the narrator’s arduous travels ranging from Italy, to Poland, to Armenia—or so Leonard claims. Are we supposed to believe him? Reading this alchemical text alongside other medieval travel narratives, I show how this travel narrative signals its affiliations with that genre and, in so doing, invites us to regard it as a literary experiment rather than a record of a medieval traveling alchemist’s alchemical practice.

Autour d’un tableau méconnu du Louvre : Bertholet Flémal, François Chauveau, Sébastien Leclerc, trois artistes pour un commanditaire à l’heure de la révocation de l’édit de Nantes.

Anne le Pas de Sécheval est maître de conférences à l’Université Paris Nanterre. Sa recherche est actuellement centrée sur la peinture dans les églises de Paris et l’art religieux en France au xvii e siècle. Elle a publié en 2018 « Hardouin-Mansart et la genèse du décor intérieur du Dôme » dans l’ouvrage Saint-Louis-des-Invalides : la cathédrale des armées françaises dirigé par Alexandre Gady et Antoine de Romanet. Paraîtra en 2020 l’article « Philippe de Champaigne et Charles Le Brun lecteurs du livre d’Ézéchiel ? Réflexions sur la culture biblique des peintres au xvii e siècle » dans les actes du colloque international Mise(s) en œuvre (s) des Écritures 2 de l’École des Chartes. Université Paris Nanterre, 200, avenue de la République, 92001 Nanterre Cedex.

A Coleção de Tours de atas do concílio de Éfeso (431): um testemunho carolíngio de ressignificação doutrinal e circulação de textos no Mediterrâneo tardo antigo

Este trabalho visa compreender a multiplicidade de sentidos e experiências históricas que se cruzam no manuscrito latino conservado na Bibliothèque Nationale de France sob o número 1.572, outrora conservado em Saint-Martin de Tours e que preserva uma coleção de “atas do concílio de Éfeso (431)” nomeada a partir dele. Defendo inicialmente a própria desconstrução da ideia de que o concílio de Éfeso tenha produzido atas em sentido estrito, alinhando-me às ideias de Eduard Schwartz acerca tanto do faccionalismo desse encontro como do caráter propagandístico das coleções documentais produzidas pelos partidos em choque nesse momento e por novos grupos eclesiásticos que deram novos sentidos à disputa cristológica após o concílio de Calcedônia (451). Passando em revista, em seguida, pela recepção do debate efesino no Ocidente latino, procedo a uma breve descrição dessa dita coleção de Tours, levantando hipóteses sobre a datação e o local de seu arquétipo (segundo quarto do século VI em Constantinopla). Por fim, voltando-me ao contexto da Gália, ofereço uma hipótese de transmissão da coleção por meio de um itinerário mediterrânico associado à dita controvérsia dos Três Capítulos, concluindo que sua recepção e produção no período carolíngio se deu tanto por meio da recuperação de sentidos produzidos ao longo dessa longa e difusa cadeia de transmissão mediterrânica quanto por novos interesses e necessidades que surgiam nesse momento na Gália carolíngia e que não necessariamente se vinculavam à polêmica cristológica.

II. Viyana Kuşatması’ndan Sonra Fransız Gravürlerinde Osmanlı Tasvirleri

The European perception of the Ottomans, as an opposite entity and identity, is a topic that has been studied by many scholars and from several perspectives. The present paper investigates this issue too. The seven almanacs with engravings of the collection Michel Hennin: Estampes Relatives a l’Histoire de France found at the Bibliotheque National de France constitute the primary sources that are examined here. These engravings were created in Paris for the years 1686–1689. They are illustrations of the wars that followed the Second Siege of Vienna, and depict the European victory over the Ottomans, with a visual vocabulary which consists of Roman and Christian components. Each engraving is described in detail with an emphasis on the iconography in this study. By explaining what their iconographic components are, and what they mean, it will be possible to analyze the European perception of the Ottomans, and see how the Roman and Christian symbols and iconography were re-loaded and utilized while depicting “the enemy” during the years of war. The employment of such iconography will also show that the wars with the Ottomans were given a place in the historical understanding and expectations that the symbolism which these engravings use.

The Tomars’ new emotional regime: martial Hindu identity?

ABSTRACTThe Tomar court in Gwalior sponsored the first known extant retellings of the epics in Classical Hindi. This is sometimes interpreted as a Hindu renaissance after an interlude of Sultanate-installed overlordship in Gwalior. Is there evidence that the Tomars inaugurated an emotional regime of resurgent Hinduism when they came to power around 1394? This paper attempts to answer the question based on the contemporaneous Persian sources, complemented with Tomar inscriptions and the relevant passages in the Classical Hindi chronicle Gopācalākhyāna, authored by Khaḍag Rāy (ca. 1630), on the basis of a recently rediscovered manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Developments in the Scholarly Use of Digital Archive Material

In order to analyse ordinary scholarly practices in the age of digital technology, we are obliged to explore the route of digital archives, whose number of users, volume of documents, and range of content have increased considerably in the past decade. Two studies carried out five years apart on users of the Gallica digital library, the digital archive of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (France’s national library) and its partners, alongside other analysis (semi-structured interviews; ethnographic video observations; and analysis of access logs) have enabled conclusions to be drawn from changes in recent years in our relationship to digital archive material and its user interfaces regarding the growing role of personal research and the development of close reading online.

An Update to “Et aysi trobaretz de las suas chansos”: Occitan Manuscripts Online

An Update to “Et aysi trobaretz de las suas chansos”: Occitan Manuscripts Online Courtney Joseph Wells Keywords Occitan literature, philology, textual criticism, troubadours, digital humanities, medieval manuscripts, songbooks, chansonniers online, manuscripts online Since publication in Tenso 31 (2016) of “‘Et aysi trobaretz de las suas chansos’: Occitan Manuscripts Online,” the website <https://trobaretz.wordpress.com>, which contains descriptions and links to 120 Old Occitan manuscripts online, has received a total of 1,727 visitors who have registered 4,712 views online from forty-one different countries.1 Of this total, 3,040 views have come from Italy (64.5%), 647 from the USA (13.7%), 236 from France (5%), 233 from Spain (4.9%), and 129 from the UK (2.7%), statistics that give a sense of where interest in the manuscripts lies. However, since the time of publication, fifty-two new manuscripts have been digitized and made available to the general public, and four that were included in the original publication have been, to the best of my knowledge, taken down. In the newest version of the site, I now have listed a total of 168 Old Occitan manuscripts available online, with partial descriptions (and references to relevant bibliographies with more complete entries), and live links to each resource on the holding library’s website. As before, my methodology has been simple (Wells 69–74): I have followed Clovis Brunel’s Bibliographie des manuscrits littéraires en ancien provençal, supplemented with Jean-Baptiste Camp’s Les Manuscrits occitans à la Bibliothèque nationale de France, to constitute my list. Of the 376 manuscripts indicated by Brunel, 158 are now available online, making close to half (42%) of Brunel’s repertory available online. 75% of Riquer’s list of “los cancioneros más utilizados” (12) assigned a capital letter can now be consulted online (24 of 32 total). While compiling this updated list of Occitan manuscripts online, I began to notice a discrepancy in Brunel’s criteria for inclusion that can only be addressed in part here (Brunel xi–xiii). [End Page 71] This inconsistency has to do with what constitutes a “literary Occitan” manuscript. For example, Brunel includes manuscripts that have Occitan citations, such as item 160 of the updated website, which contains Guillaume de Dole, but he does not include the three manuscripts of Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia found in Berlin, Grenoble, and Milan, even though they contain troubadour citations. Whether it was because he did not consider the Italian poet’s Latin treatise as “literary” or that he contested the “Occitan” nature of the work, I cannot say. However, items 48 and 146 on the updated site now include links to digitizations of manuscripts containing Dante’s treatise on vernacular literature. In my future research, I will begin including more manuscripts such as these. Further questions arise: should manuscripts of Guillelmus de Aragonia’s De nobilitate animi, a work which has troubadour quotations translated into Latin, be included? What about digitizations of Ramon Muntaner’s Catalan Crònica, which contains the well-known Sermó composed in Occitan? I will be able to address these and other questions in future additions to the website. For the time being, only the two manuscripts of Dante’s De vulgari—Grenoble (item 48) and Milan (item 146)—with their Occitan citations, have found their way onto the list. While four manuscripts listed in the 2016 publication have seemingly gone missing,2 I hope that my addition of a table of contents and a fresh new look to the website will tide users over while I continue to hunt down the now-missing volumes. I [End Page 72] would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who have contacted me to inform me of new manuscripts published online. I hope that readers of Tenso and users of the site will continue to alert me to new Occitan manuscripts online so I can add them to the website (wells@hws.edu). I would like to thank in particular Miriam Cabré, Katie Chapman, Christopher Davis, Marisa Galvez, Sarah Kay, Kathryn Klingebiel, William D. Paden, Wendy Pfeffer, and Eliza Zingesser for their feedback and/or suggestions for the site. Their interest...

Astronomy in Hebrew in Istanbul: Abraham ben Yom Ṭov Yerushalmi (fl. 1510)

The only astronomical work by Abraham ben Yom Ṭov Yerushalmi is a set of instructions (or canons) in Hebrew for astronomical tables for which the tables are not extant. Abraham was active in Istanbul in the early sixteenth century and cited many previous authors of astronomical tables in Hebrew. The instructions include ways to use the tables for computing mean and true planetary positions as well as solar and lunar eclipses. According to a prayer book published in 1523, Abraham was familiar with the tables of Ulugh Beg (composed ca. 1440), originally in Persian, and translated into Arabic and Turkish. An anonymous Hebrew version of Ulugh Beg's tables is uniquely preserved in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Heb. 1091. It is noteworthy that Abraham's canons share some unusual technical terms with the Hebrew version.

La satire en vers au xixe siècle

Generally, nineteenth century literary history has tended to ignore satire in verse. It seems to be assumed that the genre disappeared with the last of post-revolutionary satirical verses. And yet, it actually carries on throughout the century even if its very aims are out of step with the rest of poetical practices of the time. This article is based on an exhaustive inventory of all the publications with the word “satire” in their title or sub-title as listed in the catalogue of the Bibliotheque nationale de France. This corpus made up of 430 texts highlights the diverse motivations of the authors of satirical verses. During the period examined, this genre plays a discreet yet constant role in literary disputes, and allows many - mostly second-rate - authors to express themselves on moral, social and circumstantial subjects.