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The article discusses the attitudes of the French middle class or bourgeois class in contrast with the attitudes of city dwellers during the 13th and 14th centuries, with a focus on historical documents and manuscripts from the area of Paris, France which demonstrate aspects of bourgeois culture and literature. Topics include literature in the bourgeois society of late Medieval France, the study of philology and the vernacular language of the Medieval middle class, and the social and cultural aspects of these manuscript collections.

The article presents a portrayal of French Cardinal and Saint Pierre de Luxembourg from the Protestant Reformation to the Counter-Reformation, the reform movement by the Catholic Church in response to the Reformation. It discusses his beatification which was pronounced by Roman Pope Clément VII on April 9, 1527. It discusses the booklet to which de Luxembourg is attributed titled "Livre de monseigneur sainct Pierre de Lucembourg, lequel il envoya à une sienne seur pour la retraite des estatz mondains, intitulé La diete de salut." The author states that this booklet was printed five times between 1490 and 1525 and republished in Avignon, France, in 1562 under the titled "Voyage spirituel du pelerin de saincte mere l'Eglise Romaine," by Pierre de Sure.

The article discusses the relationship between the Parlement of Paris and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in France during the 14th century. Topics discussed include crimes of lese majesty; the power of the French king, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Pope; and the effect of the Parlement's suzerainty on the Catholic clergy in France.

The poetry competition founded in Toulouse in 1323 is a well-known instance of cultural resistance, thanks to its promotion and preservation of poetry in Occitan shortly after the county of Toulouse had become part of the French crown. This article re-examines the Leys d'Amors, the treatise produced in two redactions by the Consistory in the mid-fourteenth century, in order to establish whether Occitan is treated as a civic 'mother tongue', or if instead the text reveals an approach to language acquisition modelled on Latin treatises familiar to the University, in which case Occitan becomes less a 'mother tongue' than an 'other tongue'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Margherita Datini's correspondence with her husband Francesco presents a well-documented case of progress from partial to full literacy. In Margherita's merchant world, letter writing was a major concern, and her household duties included frequent reports to her absent husband. First, she prided herself on her dictation, and then she turned her attention to reading and writing. A recently discovered autograph letter shows that she was writing at twenty-eight, earlier than previously thought, and she attained full literacy in her mid-thirties. After that, writing no longer seemed a challenge, and she returned to using a scribe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author examines an illustration in the ms Bodley 264 medieval manuscript held in the collection of the Bodleian Library, Oxford University. The text in question is an illustrated version of the "The Romance of Alexander." The author describes the image, a piece of marginalia, depicting scenes of blind men attempting to club a sow. The author suggests that this picture is an illustration of blood sport popular in France during medieval times in which blind men would attempt to batter a sow to death. It is suggested that this spectacle was performed before a paying audience who attended, presumably, not to see the sow killed but to see the blind men to injure each other.

Discusses the expulsions of Jews from France in the 14th century. General agreement that Charles IV drove the Jews from his kingdom; Consideration of works by French chroniclers who wrote at the time of or relatively soon after the alleged expulsion; Ways in which Philip the Fair's policies regarding the Jews influenced and affected the three sons who succeeded him as king of France.

Examines religious asylum in the commercial, financial, and university center of Montpellier, France in the early 14th-century through the record of a municipal inquest of 1332 contained in a lengthy manuscript dossier from the Archives municipales de Montpellier. Testimony by asylums and the reaction of lay authorities to it; Question of whether it was Montpellier practice to interrogate persons accused by crimes in religious houses where they sought asylum.

Examines the wages, personnel, and conditions of wage labor on Artesian building sites during the period 1302-1329. Rebuilding of the castle of Hesdin; Categories of labor employed on the building sites in and around Arras; Accounts for the bailliage of Arras; Mobility of laborers between sites; Hours of labor; Paid and unpaid holidays, and overtime.

Examines the suppression of the Templar Order from three complementary angles which has yet to received history scholars' full attention. Result of changing attitudes on the part of the nobility toward the knights; Templars' exemption from clerical patronage and release from titles as source of resentment; Appearance of Templars as threat to Philip the Fair.

Examines the patterns of crime in Paris, France in the 14th-century. Criminal register of the Chaltelet of Paris for the years 1389-92; Confessions of the perpetrators; Migration of criminals tried between 1389-92 at the Chaltelet; Analysis of the Paris residents among the criminals; Rootless character of the criminals; Theft and its corollaries.

Presents literary criticism which analyzes the "Knight's Tale" by Geoffrey Chaucer. It explores the Knight's description of a scene on the wall of the temple of Mars of a sow eating a child, and discusses whether Chaucer's use of this image is related to a similar contemporary occurance in the Norman town of Falaise. The timeline of Chaucer's writing and potential revisions of the story are also explored.