Annual-Report-2019

RELIGIOUS LIEUX DE SAVOIR IN PREMODERN TOURS
AND ORLÉANS: A SOCIAL AND SPATIAL APPROACH
TO RELIGIOUS READING IN FRENCH (C. 1450-C. 1550)
Dr Margriet Hoogvliet
LE STUDIUM / Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Research Fellow
Smart Loire Valley General Programme
From: University of Groningen - NL
In residence at: Centre for Advanced Studies
in the Renaissance (CESR) - Tours
Nationality: Dutch
Dates: June 2019 to June 2020
Dr Margriet Hoogvliet earned her PhD “cum laude”
(the highest honour in the Netherlands) in 1999 with
the thesis Pictura et Scriptura: a study of text-image
relations in maps of the world from the twelfth to
the early seventeenth century (published in 2007
in the Brepols series Terrarum Orbis). Alternating
with teaching and researching, positions with the
universities of Groningen, Utrecht, Amsterdam,
Paris Sorbonne/EPHE, and Leeds, she has worked
since 2009 as a postdoctoral researcher, first for the
project Holy Writ and Lay Readers: A Social History
of Vernacular Bible Translations in the Fifteenth
Century. She is a successful co-applicant of COST
Action IS1301 “New Communities of Interpretation
(2013-2017) and of the project Cities of Readers:
Religious Literacies in the Long Fifteenth Century
(Dutch Research Council (NWO), 2015-2020).
Margriet Hoogvliet has published frequently and
widely on the biblical and religious reading cultures
of lay people living and working in the towns of
late medieval France and the advanced religious
participation of middle-class and poor laypeople.
Prof. Chiara Lastriaoli
Host scientist
Prof. Chiara Lastraioli is the vice-director of the
Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Val de Loire.
Professor of Italian Studies at the CESR and at the
Faculty of Languages and Literatures of the University
of Tours ; her teaching and research explore the
relation of Italian and French Renaissance Literatures
to theology, propaganda, book trade, and the history
of scholarship. She is in charge of the “Bibliothèques
Virtuelles Humanistes” program (CESR), and she
has published numerous essays on Renaissance
authors and printers. Recently she has published a
monographic volume on Pasquinate, grillate, pelate
e altro Cinquecento librario minore. She is also the
coordinator of the EDITEF project on Italian Books and
Book Collections in Early Modern French Speaking
Countries, financed by the “Agence Nationale pour la
Recherche”, and the project ECRISA (L’Ecriture, ses
supports, ses archives) financed by Region Centre-
Val de Loire.
This project intends to show that up to ca. 1550 many of the inhabitants of
“average” French towns as Tours and Orléans were literate and that they did
have access to religious texts in French. Centuries-old documents from the
historical archives and library collections, such as surviving administrative
records, handwritten books, and early prints will provide information about
the wide range of social backgrounds of the readers, from a stocking maker
in Orléans to well-off merchants and lawyers. The research also aims to
retrace how religious texts were disseminated through social networks
connecting these readers. Furthermore, the religious reading activities by
lay people in Tours and Orléans are analysed from a spatial perspective.
Where could late-medieval city-dwellers go to learn to read, to purchase
books, or to consult religious texts in open access? What happened to a
private home or workshop when it was also a space of religious reading?
Reading activities, books, libraries, and book collections are also studied
as places of knowledge (lieux de savoir), where knowledge was created,
stored, accessed, or disseminated.
The historical data often allow plotting these places of knowledge on
historical maps of premodern Tours and Orléans. Further analysis of these
places of religious knowledge by making use of computerised Geographical
Information Systems will allow for even more refined conclusions about
spreading, concentrations, and accessibility. The research plans to explore
the possibilities of a smartphone app (ArcGIS) for a touristic route and
other outreach activities.
Since June 2019, the wonderful library of the CESR delivered a detailed
knowledge of the existing research publications concerning the urban
history of Tours and Orléans, most notably about book production, book
ownership, libraries, schools and other places of knowledge. Next to this
ongoing study of the scientific literature, I have researched the following
historical sources i) in the inventory of a book seller in Tours, Chereau in
1868), ii) in Tours public library archives showing enormous documentbased
bureaucracy of the town and the socially widespread use of written
documents in the urban culture, iii) in Books from the collections of the
public libraries of Tours and Orléans, Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
Arsenal showing considerable number of manuscripts and early prints
that can be related to Tours and Orléans. I have furthermore identified five
manuscripts with religious texts accompanied by a family diary (livre de
raison) noted by the lay book owners themselves. Another witness of the
writing activities by lay people is Tours, BM, Ms 231, a Book of Hours copied
by Nicolas Rolet in the early years of the sixteenth century.
There are several indications that this book originated from the Loire Valley
(references to Vendôme and to Saint-Martin in Tours). Sources as these will
be the basis of an additional publication about lay people as writers and
authors in late medieval Tours and Orléans
Human & Social Sciences 2019
97