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Les notions de mouvance et variance, créées à la croisée des mondes des littéraires et des anthropologues, s’appliquent mal à l’étude des œuvres littéraires médiévales sorties de leur milieu immédiat, qui ont perdu le contact avec le codex. Souvent accompagnés d’images, créés pour accompagner des images ou produits dans une démarche culturelle basée sur une fusion image-texte, ces œuvres représentent une série d’accidents qui jalonnent la périphérie d’un corpus unitaire qui recouvre plusieurs corpora étudiés par les disciplines traditionnelles. La situation particulière de ces textes ne permet pas de les étudier avec l’une des méthodes ecdotiques déjà consacrées. Le cas de chaque texte, chaque œuvre d’art ou chaque situation mixte doit être étudié selon la complexité du cas en question, en accord avec la nature organique et hétérogène du corpus commun littéraire et artistique.

International audience

International audience

International audience

L’article remet en cause l’identification du Manuscrit du Roi (Paris, BnF, f. fr. 844) avec un cadeau offert à Guillaume de Villehardouin à l’occasion de son troisième et dernier mariage avec Anne / Agnès, fille du despote d’Épire. La présence ambigüe de deux pièces attribuées au prince de le mouree en tête du recueil, suivies par des textes attribués à un cuens dangou permet d’identifier de la même manière plusieurs autres commanditaires et destinataires, sans que ces autres identifications ne soient nullement préférables par elles-mêmes à d’autres identifications, dans un contexte différent de celui de la Morée franque et de la Naples angevine.

International audience

International audience

International audience; The scribe of manuscript London, British Library, Additional 15606 (dating back to the early 14 th century) made an interesting error, leading to the substitution of a bifolio in a quire of the codex and suggesting that the French poem Eructavit, inspired by the commentary of a psalm, could stand in for a symbolic representation of the psalter.

The unique character of the manuscript and its French translation need to be evaluated from many points of view. My chief interest here lies in the direct consultation of the manuscript and in identifying the various stages in the transcription of the Old French text, that is, in its internal chronology. The Greek text will be of less importance—quoted only when it explains an odd situation in the French text).

International audience

International audience

The origins of the complex interplay linking heresy and medieval translation of the Bible may be identified in the ambiguous French cultural context of the 12 th century. Later developments such as the Lollards, the Hussites, and the Reformation followed the pattern established by the Waldensians and the followers of Lambert the Stutterer, but they were not mere avatars, in a chain of dissident movements. The situation appears to be different at the beginning and at the end of this chain, in the case of French literature, and in the Ruthenian or Romanian one. There is an endless oscillation between high-prestige and low-prestige levels of culture, linked with the scholastic or academic milieu and that of popular culture. Texts circulated from one level to another and from one linguistic area to the other. Franciscans and Dominicans also played an important role in the creation of religious texts and biblical translations, leading to odd and ambiguous situations in the Hungarian or Romanian cases. The same happened in Ruthenia, under the influence of the Benedictine Glagolites. There may be a link between the Central European and early French experiments, but the original phenomenon had no dissident undertones. The Church never forbade the translation of the Bible, only translations linked to the person of a certain heretic, and did not accept the use of vernacular translation in preaching, where a Latin sacred text had to be used. There was a preference for the addition of an explanatory apparatus or canonical commentaries in those translations, and this is one of the most characteristic features of early French translations. Because the Old Testament was a book of history, vernacular sacred texts were often accompanied by profane stories, to the point that French influence can be traced through the pan-European circulation of profane subjects as well. The social aspects of the phenomenon are less clear, as there were various textual communities, with various priorities, united only by a common interest in the use of the vernacular language. The current study is a foray into a grey area that needs to be analysed in future studies.

International audience

International audience

International audience

International audience

International audience

International audience; Starting with an analysis of a curious description of a Byzantine church’s middle and upper registers, including the Dodekaorton painted scenes, in the 12th-century Old French poem Voyage of Charlemagne to Jerusalem and Constantinople, the present study explores this parody’s links with its Medieval Latin sources of inspiration –and with the “Descriptio qualiter” written in the abbey of Saint-Denis in particular–, focusing on the use of late antique heritage in 11th and 12th century narratives about events happening during Carolingian times. The confusion between Byzantium and Antiquity is a cultural reflection of a wider mind-set, linked with the ideas of “translatio imperii” and “translatio studii”.

Deux chapiteaux dans deux églises grecques médiévales montrent que l’occupation franco-italienne de la Grèce continentale après la Quatrième Croisade (1204) a déclenché toute une série de modes culturelles, chevaleresques aussi bien que pornographiques.