Tea at Trianon: The Art of Reading in the Middle Ages

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, November 26, 2021

The Art of Reading in the Middle Ages

From Europeana:

Let's take a journey through society of medieval Europe to discover the rich palette in which reading manifested.

We begin in the monasteries, where the written Latin word (Latinitas) was cultivated in the early centuries of the Middle Ages, and continue to the noble courts of the High and Late Middle Ages. The attitudes of nobility towards reading changed during the first half of the Middle Ages: the ability to read and write was among the skills civilised knights and damsels should possess. Their interests led to the creation of new literary genres: courts were the birthplace of courtly literature (hence the name).

From there, we move to cities, where the growing class of self-assured merchants, craftsmen and patricians looked at courts for inspiration and examples, while at the same time they adapted writing and reading for their own purposes. As the term literate (litteratus) was used in the Middle Ages specifically for people who understood Latin, we move to the role of reading in the vernacular. Literary works written at courts are some of the earlier and best known examples, but the vernacular slowly entered even religious literature, dominated by Latin.

We then move to the Balkan Peninsula to discuss the development of reading in Slavic languages. From there, we discuss an integral part of textual culture: reading networks. Within a community books were shared and read together (often by reading aloud), and affiliated communities exchanged manuscripts for copying. This allowed monasteries to collect impressive libraries with many texts, both medieval and classical, that were handed down until the present.

Finally, we return to the ecclesiastical domain, as universities are discussed. Reading and discussing texts were (and still are) a vital part of the university curriculum, and the development of science was based on thorough use of older, authoritative text. (Read more.)