medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
At 09:08 AM 12/09/2002 -0400, you wrote:
medieval-religion: Scholarly
discussions of medieval religion and culture
Response to your note dated 09/11/02
Dear Dr. Diebold,
In regard to Francois Villon.
In March 1449 he was received into the baccalaureate, and in August 1452
he
became a Master of Arts - that is to say, a junior member of the
clergy.
W. L. Schreiber, in his "Biblia Pauperum from the only edition with
50
plates" (translation mine, I will give the German version if
requested)
published in Strassburg in 1903, lists thirty manuscript versions of
the
Biblia Pauperum. Twenty-one of these manuscripts are dated. They are
dated
1350-70, 1360-80, 1353, 1340-50, 1430, 1380, 1380-1400, 1360-80,
1400,
1400-1420, 1340, 1360-75, 1420-40, 1450-65, 1460-80, 1450, 1415,
1390-1410,
1425, 1440-60, 1470.
You will note that four of these manuscript versions appeared close to
1460,
the date given to about ten 40 page versions of the Biblia
Pauperum.
This is solid evidence that the concept of teaching, or learning,
from
images telling a Biblical study was familiar to Villon who lived
1431-63.
After all, his education at the University of Paris was as a religious.
In
March 1449 he was received into the baccalaureate, and in August 1452
he
became a Master of Arts - that is to say, a junior member of the
clergy.
I suggest that Villon, because of his education, was familiar with the
use
of pictures, on paper or parchment, as wall paintings or as painted
glass
windows as teaching aids. Whether to the literate or illiterate is
not
important since the literate would have had their information refreshed,
and
the illiterate could follow the words of the priest looking at the images
in
the wall paintings.
For myself, I find your statement "A quotation by Villon in which
he
represents his mother as saying something does not strike me as
good
evidence for how the 'untutored' used images." Since the
"untutored" could
not write how could they have left "good evidence for how the
'untutored'
used images"?
Regards, Jim
Jim,
The issue addressed above are of considerable importance to me, and for
everyone, I would assume, in particular the pandora box opened by the
sentence: "and
the illiterate could follow the
words of the priest looking at the images in
the wall paintings." Now, where is there evidence of a priest
preaching with the help of images? How about the
"readability" of these images so they can be used for that
purpose? What is that "seeing" all about? What exactly did you
see, and what did you believe to see? Was it really necessary to
"see" it our way, or was the word, the sermon much more
important than the image? Any suggestions?
Jens T. Wollesen
Jens T. Wollesen
Assoc. Prof., Dr. phil. habil.
University of Toronto
Department of Fine Art/Graduate Department of History of Art
100 St. George Street Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3G3
Canada
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nonsense is nonsense, but the history
of nonsense is scholarship
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