[PDF] THE MEDIEVAL VERNACULAR BIBLE IN FRENCH AS A FLEXIBLE

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? The linguistic and geographical reality of France during the late Middle Ages does not correspond to the modern situation. I will use hereafter French in a very broad sense, including variants as Anglo-Norman, Picard and Walloon, but excluding the languages from the Midi (Occitan, Provençal, Catalan). This Bible translation is nowadays referred to as the Bible française du XIII? siècle or the Bible du XIII? siècle. For the dating and further references, see: Clive R. Sneddon, "The Old French Bible: the ??rst complete vernacular Bible in Western Europe" in The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception and Performance in Western Christianity, ed. Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly (New York, 2011), pp. 296-31; idem, "The Bible in French" in The New Cambridge History of the Bible: From 600 to 1450, ed. Richard Marsden, E. Ann Matter (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 251-267, at p. 256. On this Bible and further references, see Guy Lobrichon's essay in this volume. THE MEDIEVAL VERNACULAR BIBLE IN FRENCH AS A FLEXIBLE TEXT:

SELECTIVE AND DISCONTINUOUS READING PRACTICES

Margriet Hoogvliet

Compared to other linguistic areas of late medieval Europe, the vernacular Bible in northern France stands out. A prose translation of the entire Bible into medieval French? intended for lay readers was available as early as the middle of the thirteenth century (between 1220-1260, according to the most recent estimation).? In other regions of Western Europe, on the other hand, complete vernacular Bibles did not circulate before the fourteenth century. Around 1310-20 copyists in Paris combined this ??rst French Bible with another vernacular Bible, the Bible historiale, translated into Picard in the years before 1297 by Guiart des Moulins. The new French Bible resulting from the fusion of these two earlier biblical translations, in modern scholarship referred to as the Bible historiale com- plétée was one of the great successes of the commercial manuscript pro- duction in Paris during the fourteenth and ??fteenth centuries, and over

140 copies still survive in full or in part.

The Bible historiale has been the focal point of much scholarly atten- tion, and not without reason: it is an impressive work which was copied in lavishly illustrated folio volumes. The privileged position of this transla tion in modern research nevertheless inhibits our understanding of the di?ferent forms and functions of French vernacular Bibles, because it has overshadowed other forms in which Sacred Scripture was available for readers in late medieval France. In reality the Bible in the French vernacu- lars was a ??exible text, which was often copied in an abridged form, The often-repeated (and inaccurate) idea that vernacular Bibles were prohibited dur- ing the Middle Ages plays an important role in French scholarship. See, for instance: Marie- Élisabeth Henneau and Jean-Pierre Massaut, "Lire la Bible: un privilège, un droit ou un devoir?" in Homo religiosus. Autour de Jean Delumeau (Paris, 1997), pp. 415-424; Anita

Guerreau-Jalabert, "Commentaire" in

Les tendances actuelles de l'histoire du Moyen Âge en

France et en Allemagne

, ed. Jean-Claude Schmitt and Otto Gerhard Oexle (Paris, 2003), pp. 219-226, at p. 222: "La lecture directe de la Bible [...] fut probablement toujours étroite- ment contrôlée par l'Église et la di?fusion des versions vernaculaires de l'Ancien et du Nouveau Testament fut sans doute très restreinte jusqu'à la ??n du Moyen Âge". ("Direct reading of the Bible was probably always strictly controlled by the Church and the dissemi- nation of vernacular versions of the Old and New Testaments was without any doubt very limited until the end of the Middle Ages"). "The Bible was made similar to a book of history, if not reduced to it". Pierre-Maurice Bogaert, "La Bible française au Moyen Âge. Des premières traductions aux débuts de l'imprimerie" in Les Bibles en français: histoire illustrée du Moyen Âge à nos jours, ed. Pierre- Maurice Bogaert and Christian Cannuyer (Turnhout, 1991), pp. 14-46, at p. 44. Georges Duby, The Age of the Cathedrals: Art and Society 980-1420 (London, 1981), pp. 232-233. "A Bible in pieces, reduced to the form of banalized fragments". Hervé Martin, Le métier de prédicateur à la ??n du Moyen Âge (1350-1520) (Paris, 1988), p. 268. fragmented and sometimes paraphrased. In French scholarship these fragmented vernacular Bibles and paraphrases are often characterized as church-endorsed substitutes, aimed at preventing the laity from gaining true biblical access. For instance, in his overview of French vernacular Bibles during the Middle Ages, Maurice Bogaert observes that none of the medieval French translations deserves to be considered as a real Bible: "[La] Bible [était] assimilée sinon réduite à un livre d'histoire".? A similarly negative judgement had been expressed earlier in George Duby's Age of the Cathedrals, still an often consulted introduction to the history of France during the late Middle Ages. Duby repeated the hypothesis that the real Bible was hardly ever, or not at all, available in French during the Middle Ages and the laity had to do with a much diluted and ??ltered text: [T]he translations of the Old and New Testaments held only a minor place. [...] At the beginning of the ??fteenth century, short extracts of the Sunday's lessons or "moralised" simpli??ed adaptations of the Bible were still the only books in the French dialect available to the lettered laity. Scholars often stress that the Bible in abridged and fragmented form is not a real Bible, as, for instance, Hervé Martin, who speaks of: "une Bible en miettes, ramenée à l'état de fragments banalisés". Judgements such as these are based on the idea that a Bible should con- tain all the canonical books from Genesis to Revelation. However, before the decree

De canonicis Scripturis

(1546), issued by the Council of Trent, no ecclesiastical rule prescribed the precise form of the Bible, and one shouldquotesdbs_dbs27.pdfusesText_33

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