Medieval Readers

Taking MS. BAV, Vat. lat. 5001 as a case study, the article provides preliminary considerations on the ways that historical writings were read in Southern Italy during the Late Middle Ages. The early-fouteenth-century manuscript contains a miscellany of chronicles, charters and texts of other types, all of which were produced in the South between the 8th and the 10th centuries. This miscellany, in particular the chronicles by Erchempertus and that by the Anonymous Salernitanus, were heavily glossed in the 14th century by at least five different readers. The article consists of a short foreword and three chapters. The first part deals with the manuscript itself, with its history and with the manuscript copies of it produced by early-modern Italian scholars. Some of these copies also contain the medieval glosses. They therefore make it possible to recover parts of the glosses that have been lost through the trimming of margins in the Vatican codex. The second section discusses selected glosses by hand D, who was the most assiduous of all the readers and who reveals a particular interest in the city of Salerno. First I examine the glosses that served as a guide to contents (summaries, cross-references), then I consider the glosses concerned with topography of the city, the territory and political order of the region (here the tension between continuity and change is often visible), I round off by discussing the annotations that extract political and moral teaching from accounts of single events. Finally (section three) it is argued that the present case study leads to two conclusions: firstly, that glosses scattered in the margins of historical manuscripts are witnesses of the phenomenon of comment- ing on historical works in the Middle Ages (a fact that continues to be underestimated by the modern scholarship); secondly, that in studies on historical culture of medieval Southern Italy more room should be given to the analysis of individual historical manuscripts and their uses. The article and the entire volume are available free of charge on the website of Reti Medievali.

Modern scholarship seems to undervalue medieval commentaries on historical writings. This article intends to bring this phenomenon to scholars' attention by providing a preliminary overview of the forms and subjects of such commentaries. It examines various types of evidence including not only a few commentaries proper (Nicolas Trevet's on Livy and John of Dąbrówka's on Vincent of Cracow), but also different apparatus consisting of more or less systematic interlinear and marginal glosses and commentary-like additions to vernacular translations, mostly of Italian and French origin. It begins by considering various consultation-related signs and annotations, such as cross-references. Then, it studies the text-like features of sets of glosses (ascertained authorship and manuscript tradition) and briefl y discusses some of their patterns of display as found in single manuscripts. Turning to the contents of commentaries, the article first touches upon introductions to the authors (accessus) and upon comments on the historians' lives and the history of their writings. The article then discusses comments on different levels of meaning: first, explanations of grammatical forms, figures of speech, semantics of single words and entire fragments, then, different ways of exploring, or imposing, the inner senses of historical narration, mostly of an ethical nature. Finally, the text argues that among the different ways of expounding an historical account, comments on subject matter are especially worthy of attention from the perspective of the history of historical scholarship. Explanations of technical terms and place names often led to erudite digressions and revealed tensions between continuity and change. Expounding historical contents of entire fragments might include some elements of source criticism or tend towards a new historical synthesis. Medieval commentators were also able to read historical information beyond the factual account, often introducing subjects proper to antiquarian writings.

**English abstract follows** Dans le cadre de cette étude, deux catalogues ont été établis : le premier dresse une liste critique et mise à jour des éditions attribuées à Antoine Vérard ; le second répertorie toutes les gravures figurant dans ces dernières, ainsi que leurs occurrences. Cette double recension a permis de mettre en évidence le travail de treize dessinateurs, dont le Maître de Robert Gaguin et, peut-être, le Maître de la Chroniques scandaleuse. Vérard, qui était vraisemblablement déjà libraire avant de se lancer dans l'édition, se serait surtout inspiré de l'œuvre des imprimeurs-libraires parisiens, lyonnais et strasbourgeois plutôt que des manuscrits. La façon dont il fit usage des gravures évolue au cours du temps. Cette évolution est probablement l'expression d'une mutation des attentes des lecteurs, toujours plus nombreux et possédant des bibliothèques de plus en plus fournies aux xve et xvie siècle. Le génie de notre libraire fut de s'adresser concurremment à toutes les catégories sociales de lecteurs, quelle que soit leur richesse (en particulier grâce à la personnalisation des exemplaires). Il contribua donc largement à la diffusion de l'art parisien du livre illustré.
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English title: "The work of the Parisian bookseller Antoine Vérard (1485-1512): production, use and circulation of the images in the early illustrated books."

For the purpose of my study, two catalogues were put together. The first one is a critical list of the editions attributed to Vérard (updating those of John Macfarlane and Mary Beth Winn). The second one is a list of all the cuts used in those editions with their occurrences. My analysis shows that these cuts were based on drawings of at least 13 artists. The Master of Robert Gaguin and, perhaps, the Master of the Chroniques scandaleuse were among them. Vérard probably sold books some time before he started publishing. The study shows that his use of woodcuts was inspired by bookseller-publishers from Paris, Lyons and Strasburg instead of following the manuscripts. The way Vérard used the cuts changed during his career. It could indicate an evolution in the way people read illustrations. Indeed, during the xvth and xvith centuries, the number of book owners was continuously increasing, and so was the amount of books possessed by each of them. Vérard was probably one of the very few publishers able to produce books for every kind of reader (merchants, nobility, clergy, scholars, women), regardless of their wealth (thanks to the customisation of the copies). That is why we can say that he contributed greatly to the growing popularity of the Parisian art of illustrated books.

Medieval "wager tales" are stories in which two men place a bet on a woman's virtue. In order to win the wager, one of the men surreptitiously obtains intimate knowledge about the woman's body, often involving a birthmark or other identifying mark on her skin, only visible when she is unclothed. The woman is then unjustly discredited and must strive to reestablish her reputation. This paper examines one version of the tale as found in a late 13th-century Tournaisian manuscript and shows how the man's effort to stain the woman's reputation is repeatedly reenacted by readers as they manipulate the parchment page.

This article rethinks the importance played by Romanitas in the thought and imagination of early Duecento Italian civic knights. The starting point is the household inventory of a knight and civic officer from the city of Piacenza who owned works by Ovid, Terence, and other ancient authors. These texts were staples of the medieval school curriculum, and formed the education of future civic officers, who until the mid-thirteenth century came predominantly from the knightly classes. Romanitas and chivalry were combined in order to create an image of social prestige indispensable for those who sought to pursue a successful public career. This emerges from many contemporary literary sources, among which are a panegyric commissioned by the nobleman Bernardo di Rolando Rossi of Parma (d. 1248), and the chronicle written by Giovanni Codagnello of Piacenza (d. 1235). Fascination with antiquity was a constant in the history of the Italian cities since, at least, the twelfth century. The way in which the educated classes studied and received the classics was not fixed, but varied according to changing cultural, social, and political contexts and expectations.

**English abstract follows** Cet article est fondé en grande partie sur mes recherches effectuées en master. Il s'en distingue pourtant par le biais d'une comparaison entre les éditions parisiennes de la traduction du Bellum Gallicum de César par Robert Gaguin et celles des autres traductions du même texte parues dans toute l'Europe. Cette originalité peut être résumée par cette phrase, provenant de la conclusion de l'article : « Placées sous l'autorité du célèbre Robert Gaguin, les premières éditions parisiennes érigent César en exemple de conduite chevaleresque, de même que les éditions allemandes et l'édition vénitienne de 1530. Au contraire, l'édition parisienne de 1531 et l'édition espagnole de 1529 associent le général romain à des héros antiques. Par des représentations actualisantes des faits passés, les éditions françaises, mayençaises et l'édition vénitienne de 1530 favorisent les parallèles entres histoire antique et moderne, répondant aux attentes de lecteurs cherchant dans ce récit des clefs pour comprendre ou justifier les événements présents.
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Title : "About the illustrations of the Parisian editions of Robert Gaguin's translation of Julius Caesar's Bellum Gallicum"

This article is mostly based on my master theses. The approach is not exactly the same: I compared the editions of Robert Gaguin's translation of Julius Caesar's Bellum Gallicum in French to the editions of the other translations of the same text published all over Europe. In the earliest Parisian editions, placed under the moral and intellectual authority of Gaguin, Julius Caesar exemplifies the chivalric leader. It is also the case in the German editions and the Venetian edition of 1530. On the other hand, the Parisian edition of 1531 and the Spanish edition of 1529 associate the Roman general to Ancient heroes. The French editions as a whole, as well as the ones published in Mainz and the Venetian edition of 1530, encourage historical parallels between ancient and modern times by visually "actualizing" the imperator's text. By doing so, the publishers wanted to please the readers who were studying ancient history to explain recent events.

Published in La France et l'Europe autour de 1500, Geneviève Bresc-Bautier, Thierry Crépin-Leblond and Élisabeth Taburet-Delahaye (éd.), Paris, École du Louvre, 2015, pp. 51-58.