Thirteenth-Century France Research Articles

The Humiliation of Sinners: Public Penance in Thirteenth-Century France

The Humiliation of Sinners: Public Penance in Thirteenth-Century France

French Motets in the Thirteenth Century: Music, Poetry and Genre

This is the first full-length study of the vernacular motet in thirteenth-century France. The motet was the most prestigious type of music of that period, filling a gap between the music of the so-called Notre-Dame School and the Ars Nova of the early fourteenth century. This book takes the music and the poetry of the motet as its starting-point and attempts to come to grips with the ways in which musicians and poets treated pre-existing material, creating new artefacts. The book reviews the processes of texting and retexting, and the procedures for imparting structure to the works; it considers the way we conceive genre in the thirteenth-century motet, and supplements these with principles derived from twentieth-century genre theory. The motet is viewed as the interaction of literary and musical modes whose relationships give meaning to individual musical compositions. Contents Part I. Origins: 1. Introduction; 2. The origins and early history of the motet; 3. The French motet; Part II. Genre: 4. The motet ente; 5. Rondeau-Motet; 6. Refrain cento; 7. Devotional forms; 8. The motet and genre; Bibliography; Index.

The language of medieval music: two thirteenth-century motets

The phrase ‘the language of music’, made famous by Deryck Cooke's book of that name, is much repeated in modern music criticism. Is it possible to use this phrase in a medieval context? In what ways is the relationship between music and language in the medieval period best described? The importance of this question is clear when one considers both how high a proportion of medieval music was texted, and conversely, the extent to which the performance of much medieval poetry (even narrative poetry) involved music. We are fortunate that this very large issue has received detailed attention in John Stevens's magisterial account of medieval monophony. My attempt here is to extend the argument into the area of polyphony, concentrating on the nature of compositional activity in thirteenthcentury France. This will include discussion of how far the compositional processes of music and poetry are comparable in this period, and indeed whether they are in any way collaborative. Do the two structural systems – languages, perhaps – of music and words have any effect on each other's system of meaning?

Polyphonic Music in Thirteenth-Century France: Aspects of Sources and Distribution

Polyphonic Music in Thirteenth-Century France: Aspects of Sources and Distribution

Polyphonic Music in Thirteenth-Century France. Aspects of Sources and Distribution

Polyphonic Music in Thirteenth-Century France. Aspects of Sources and Distribution

Le tympan dans les portails flamboyants en France

In thirteenth-century France, tympanums were the focus of interest in great portals. With their horizontal registers of reliefs and statues, they displayed major iconographic themes, while jambs and archivolts appeared to be a complementary frame. On the other hand, the multiplication of archivolts created deep recesses at the bottom of which tympanums could seem submissive to their environment. In the fifteenth century, the flamboyant style stressed both the independence of elements and their intimate interrelations. Prominent elements were mouldings of jambs, arches, and gables of doors, niches, statues, and canopies anywhere. All of them overlapped with tympanums in an intense search for liaisons. Nevertheless, surfaces of tympanums could be defended as independent elements, as they could be of any shape or proportion without regard to the forms of adjacent framing arches. Quite often, on the other hand, tympanums were rather understressed. They were just treated as true or false windows with open or blind tracery. As such, their submissive placement behind prominent jambs and buttresses must have appeared inferior. They were progressively eliminated as in some cases the tympanum was just either an ambiguous and small part of wall between two superimposed arches, or a taller window or retable above a rather independent doorway. This paved the way for the Renaissance. It marked the end of the medieval tympanum, and the end of the medieval mind as well.

A Reevaluation of a Medieval Polemical Manuscript

Fragment A2 of MS Or. 53 of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Rome, though only five folios in length, provides the student of medieval Jewish history with fresh insights into the development of Jewish anti-Christian polemics. The manuscript appears to have been written in response to heightened anti-Jewish propaganda that emerged in Northern France as a result of the visit to that area by Paul Christian in 1269. The work is a compilation of arguments against Christianity drawn from the polemical traditions of Northern France, Germany and Provence. It also contains excerpts from the so-called Vikkuaḥ ha-RaMBaN, the Hebrew account of the debate on the Talmud held in Barcelona in 1263. Analysis of the material indicates that the manuscript does not contain the record of a face-to-face disputation between Paul Christian and a Jew named Menaḥem, as has been suggested. Arguments assumed to be related to such a meeting can be traced back to extant literary sources that predate the 1260s. Of particular interest are the passages from fragment A2 that were adapted from the Sefer ha-berit of Joseph Kimḥi, written about 1170, and the so-called Vikkuaḥ ha-RaDaQ, written in the early thirteenth century. MS 53 A2, written in the last third of the thirteenth century, represents the earliest extant evidence for use of the Kimḥi and the pseudo-Kimḥi material in later polemical literature. The appearance of the Provencal Kimḥi arguments in this Northern French manuscript also points to the movement of traditions from the south into the north and sheds new light on the geographic patterns of cultural development in thirteenth century France. Fragment A2 also contains almost verbatim parallels to anti-Christian criticism found in Nizzachon vetus, including traces of German linguistic influence.

A Reevaluation of a Medieval Polemical Manuscript

Fragment A2 of MS Or. 53 of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Rome, though only five folios in length, provides the student of medieval Jewish history with fresh insights into the development of Jewish anti-Christian polemics. The manuscript appears to have been written in response to heightened anti-Jewish propaganda that emerged in Northern France as a result of the visit to that area by Paul Christian in 1269. The work is a compilation of arguments against Christianity drawn from the polemical traditions of Northern France, Germany and Provence. It also contains excerpts from the so-called Vikkuaḥ ha-RaMBaN, the Hebrew account of the debate on the Talmud held in Barcelona in 1263. Analysis of the material indicates that the manuscript does not contain the record of a face-to-face disputation between Paul Christian and a Jew named Menaḥem, as has been suggested. Arguments assumed to be related to such a meeting can be traced back to extant literary sources that predate the 1260s. Of particular interest are the passages from fragment A2 that were adapted from the Sefer ha-berit of Joseph Kimḥi, written about 1170, and the so-called Vikkuaḥ ha-RaDaQ, written in the early thirteenth century. MS 53 A2, written in the last third of the thirteenth century, represents the earliest extant evidence for use of the Kimḥi and the pseudo-Kimḥi material in later polemical literature. The appearance of the Provencal Kimḥi arguments in this Northern French manuscript also points to the movement of traditions from the south into the north and sheds new light on the geographic patterns of cultural development in thirteenth century France. Fragment A2 also contains almost verbatim parallels to anti-Christian criticism found in Nizzachon vetus, including traces of German linguistic influence.

The "Shipman's Tale" and the Fabliaux

Of all the traditions that Chaucer drew upon while assembling the Canterbury Tales, one of the most influential was that of the fabliaux, the short bawdy tales in verse that flourished in thirteenth-century France. The offered not only a number of skillfully worked out narratives but also a set of well-tested conventions of subject and style whose spirit Chaucer could adopt even when he found his specific story material elsewhere.1 He exploited this model in various ways: both by emphasizing the qualities that set these tales apart from other contemporary genres, and by enlarging the sphere of the fabliau by incorporating poetic material of very different sorts within the stories of adulterous intrigue. In one instance, however, the tale now assigned to the Shipman, the relationship to the is particularly problematic. This tale too is quite plainly modeled on its predecessors; so closely, in fact, that J. W. Spargo, in the best-known study of its analogues, judged it to be a verbatim translation from a French fabliau that has since been lost.2 It shares the most common theme of the French tales, the story of a cuckold and a seducer, and it is the only one of Chaucer's fabliaux that is actually set in France. But the Shipman's Tale departs from the conventions of the genre in a great many ways that Spargo did not consider, and while Chaucer's use of the in this poem is evident, it does not follow the pattern of any of his other tales. The very texture of the poem is different from what one expects of a ribald story. It has none of the accustomed bawdiness of the other fabliaux, and the adulterous affair is nearly smothered by details in the lives of the characters completely extraneous to the plot. Its most striking qualities are a pervasive verbal humor of a sort that does not occur in the French fabliaux, and a structure in which the commercialization of sexual dealings, not the conventional triumph of one character over another, seems to be the major point. It is also unlike all of Chaucer's other comic tales, therefore, in that it is not well suited for a satire of another pilgrim;

The Death of King Arthur and the Waning of the Feudal Age

“The Death of King Arthur and the Waning of the Feudal Age” contains a discussion of La Mort Artu in terms of the rapidly changing social and philosophical ethos of thirteenth century France. Although Arthur's kingdom is, politically speaking, a model of the feudal world, its values and institutions—the judicial duel, entrapment in flugrunte delicto, system of vendetta and private war—no longer function to insure the unity of the realm. More importantly, the crisis that besets Logres extends to the basic pattern of feudal organization, vassalage, and to the feudal notion of state. Mordret's manipulation of fealty for personal gain points to a fatal flaw within the system as a whole: that the barons can only relate to the ultimate source of power, Arthur, through individuals like Mordret; their singular position in a vertical hierarchy of command gives them sovereignty over its lower echelons. In short, the collapse of Arthurian kingship is the direct result of Arthur's and Gauvain's unawareness of and inability to make crucial distinctions between state‐right and kin‐right, between public and private loyalties and policies: categories that are becoming increasingly important with the reconstitution of the Capetian monarchy and the revival of Aristotelian notions of the state. Only Lancelot is able to distinguish personal and clannish interest from general social interest; because he is willing to sacrifice both Guinevere and the right of his family to avenge his death for the sake of the common good he stands as a new type of individual within the Arthurian world. He seems much closer to the citizen of the modern state than to the subject of the feudal monarchy. Arthur, on the other hand, represents the old king at the end of his reign. His fatigue, blindness and madness reflect, two centuries after the beginning of the end of feudalism in France, the weariness of the feudal world.

Religion among the Poor in Thirteenth-Century France: The Testimony of Humbert de Romans

Some people say the Western world is in a mess, and what it needs is to rediscover its religion. Of the two chief kinds of objection made to this idea, scientific and social, the second is probably nearer the centre of debate now. Its main form, put broadly, is the theory that religion is a device promoted by the rich to stop the poor rebelling. A social theory like this has an historical dimension. To tell if it is true, data are needed about what people have actually done, rich or poor. Since history so far has mostly been about the great, the need for data is all the keener in respect of the poor. The aim of this article is to add, in the context of this general debate, to known data about poor men's religion, from an especially crucial and obscure period: the central Middle Ages.

Vagabonds and Little Women: The Medieval Netherlandish Dramatic Fragment "De Truwanten"

Previous articleNext article No AccessVagabonds and Little Women: The Medieval Netherlandish Dramatic Fragment "De Truwanten"Robert E. LernerRobert E. Lerner Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 65, Number 4May, 1968 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/389995 Views: 1Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1968 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Anne E. Lester Women behind the Law: Lay Religious Women in Thirteenth-Century France and the Problem of Textual Resistance, (Jan 2015): 183–199.https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137317582_13

The State and Landed Interests in Thirteenth Century France and England

Before coming to the substance of this paper, I feel that I must define its purpose somewhat more closely than I have done in the title which I have given to it. A study of the state and landed interests, of course, could embrace most of the domestic and much of the external histories of France and England in the thirteenth century, I shall be concerned with much less than that—with a problem which nevertheless seems to me to be of the first importance in any study of the social and economic policies (if that phrase be not too anachronistic) of medieval governments. I mean the break-up and alienation of feudal tenements in the thirteenth century, some of the causes and consequences thereof, and some of the attempts made to deal with the difficulties thereby occasioned. This still remains a large subject, and at best this paper is an attempt at synthesis, even of vulgarisation, which rests, in the main, upon the work of others. In particular, I have drawn heavily upon Professor Plucknett's study of the legislation of Edward I, and I was encouraged to venture upon some comparisons with France because he has also shown, I feel, that such comparisons may not be without value.