| CARVIEW |
- Work
- Title
- La Bible
- Alternative Title
- La Bible Guiot
- Incipit
- Dou siecle puant et orible m’estuet commencier une Bible
- Persons
- Author Name
- Guiot de Provins
- Time and Place
- Approximate Dating
- 1204-1209 (Orr 1915, xxxiii-xxxv)
- Dating Authority
- Orr 1915, xxxiii-xxxv
- Associated Place
- Cluny
- Associated Region
- France
- Typology
- Languages
- Old French
- Source Type
- Didactic, Satirical, Poetry
- Text Genre (Extent)
- Epic poetry (Relevant Passage)
- Text Length (Words)
- Long (> 5000 words) (14500)
- Discursive Context
- Thematic Context
- Diversity of Religious Lifeforms
- Type of criticism
- Satire, Complaint
- Debated groups
- Clerics, Cluniacs, Cistercians, Carthusians, Grandmontensians, Premonstratensians, Regular Canons, Templars, Knights Hospitaller, Female Communities, Black Monks, Benedictines, Benedictines (Female)
- Description
- Description of Work
- La Bible oder La Bible Guiot is an Old French verse satire of about 2700 lines, written by the poet and trobador Guiot de Provins (b. c. 1150, † c. 1208/9), probably of knightly status, who traveled extensively in Europe and the Eastern Mediterrean, probably participating in the Third and Fourth crusades. Guiot left some Old French poetry which appears to date to the 1180s, and then wrote La Bible and another poem after entering the abbey of Cluny as a monk after c. 1204. The text is one of the earlier examples of vernacular estates satire and contains a biting, often harsh critique of the various estates of the church and of secular society. It is especially bitter on the Roman curia, but also discusses all the other ecclesiastical and lay groups, including various religious orders, which take up most of the poem at c. 1500 lines.,In his 1915 edition, Orr established the terminus a quo and ad quem as 1204 and 1209 and tentatively dates to 1206 (Orr 1915, xxxiii-xxxv). Given Guiot’s profession at Cluny, the poem must have been written there or at least in France. ,,The poem states that it wants to ‘reprehend’ its audience because of the bad state of the world (‘lou siecle reprendre, ll.13) After a lengthy exhortation and censure of secular princes, the poem deals with the ecclesiastical estates from ll. 554. The specific groups addressed are the pope and cardinals (ll. ), archbishops and bishops (ll. ) , secular clerics (ll. 925ff), black monks and abbots (ll. 1043ff.), white monks or Cistercians (ll. 1187ff.), Cartusians (ll. 1327ff), Grandmontensians (ll. 1451ff), Premonstratensians (ll. 1579), black or Regular Canons of St. Augustine (ll. 1612ff.), Templars (ll. 1695), Hospitallers (ll. 1789), converses of St. Anthony (ll. 1936), and the female converses and nuns (ll. 2091-2270). The rest of the verses address the scholars, among them theologians (ll. 2271), jurists (ll. 2401), physicians or medics (ll. 2523-2686). All of the groups are charged with specific faults and typical sins, though Guiot often also lauds aspects of their lifeforms. ,One of the most interesting passages is an autobiographical narrative detailing Guiot’s life among the Cluniac or black monks and his brief stint in the Cistercian order, which he soon left again. Guiot acknowledges this conflict as an influence on his views, but nevertheless formulates a lengthy attack on the Cistercians. Their order is definitely described in harsher terms than other religious orders.,The list of groups presented in La Bible, and most especially the discussion of religious orders, is clearly related to earlier and roughly contemporary material discussing the new religious orders, such as the relevant excursus in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, Nigel of Longchamp’s Speculum Stultorum, or Walter Map’s De Nugis Curialium. The poem also has similarities to Latin estates satires with similar contents, such as Frequenter cogitans de factis hominum and De diversis ordinibus hominum.,,The manuscript tradition has been studied by Orr 1915 as the editor providing the latest critical edition. He only names two surviving manuscripts (Paris, Bibl. nat., ms. Français 25405 [A] and 25437 [B]), along with five manuscripts which have been lost or are only known due to mentions in other manuscripts. Of those, two can be identified (Cambridge, Pembroke College, 229 and Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, L. V. 32 (partially burnt in 1904)). Arlima (https://www.arlima.net/eh/guiot_de_provins.html#bil) lists a total of 8 manuscripts, including the manuscripts of Paris, Cambridge and Torino mentioned by Orr, alongside four more manuscripts in the BNF. It has to be noted though, that of these four manuscripts, only one (Arsenal, 3123) includes a complete copy of the poem, but it is an 18th century copy of ms. 25405. The other three, one of which dates from the eighteenth century as well, only seem to include certain excerpts of the poem. The manuscript tradition thus bears further scrutiny, but there is also no more recent modern study which reviews the manuscript tradition.,Translations include a full German translation by Wolfaert 1861.,Research on La Bible has largely been interested in the whole text as a satire or estates satire or in the identity of Guiot de Provins, as his identification with the ‘Kyot’ mentioned by Wolfram von Eschenbach is debated. Orr 1915, xx-xxxviii reviews the older literature. [The passage on the laybrothers of St. Anthony is discussed in Breitenstein 2023].
- Manuscripts
- Total number of Ms and early prints
- 8
- Number of Ms within 100 years
- 5
- Manuscripts
- Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Ms-3123
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Moreau 1715-1719Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, MS. L. V. 32Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Ms-5201 réserveParis, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Français 25437Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, NAF 13521Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Français 25405
- Early prints
- 0
- Transmission History Authority
- https://www.arlima.net/eh/guiot_de_provins.html#bil.
- Editions and Research
- Latest Critical Edition
- Orr 1915
- Other Editions
- “Orr 1915, 10-93; Baudler 1902; Meyer 1890; Wolfaert 1861; Méon 1808 (Reprint 1976)”
- Key Research
- Orr 1915,Dyggve 1938,Batany 1964,Batany 1969,Mühlethaler 1993
- Translations
- Wolfaert 1861 (German)
Cite As
Sita Steckel and Nils Foege, “La Bible”, in: Diversitas Religionum – Criticisms of Religious Orders in Medieval Europe: A Digital Repertory of Works and Manuscripts.
Date: 16-18 December 2013
Venue: Internationales Wissenschaftsforum Heidelberg (IWH), Hauptstraße 242, D-69117 Heidelberg
ABSTRACT
Master narratives provide collectivities with a coherent vision of their history and a sense of homogeneity. They are continually reiterated and stabilized constructions which tend to mask particularity and bias behind universalized representations of objective truth. Especially in postmodern and postcolonial critique, master narratives have been problema-tized in view of their homogenizing as well as exclusionary potential.
But beyond such critique, master narratives also offer a fruitful avenue to investigate dynamics involved in, and issuing from, intense cultural contact, and the possibilities of representing, performing and materializing cultural alterity in their framework.
With a view towards transcultural dimensions involved in establishing, supporting and subverting master narratives, this conference places a special focus on religion: on narratives which support, challenge or displace religious identities, on their own or possibly also in synergy with other forms of collective identity (culture, race, nation).
The conference “Putative Purities” is conceptualized and organized by the research group “Negotiating Religion in a Transcultural Framework” (MC3) of the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context – the Dynamics of Transculturality” of the University of Heidelberg.”
PROGRAMME
Monday, December 16th
13:30 Welcome address
Session 1: Inventing Orthodoxy and Homogeneity
14:00-14:45 Nicholas Vogt: “Sloughing Off the Shang: The Conflicted Zhou Legacy and Narratives of Early Chinese Ritual”.
14:45-15:30 Giulia Gebke: “The Ideology of Purity-of-Blood. A Master Narrative in Early Modern Spain”.
Session 2: Buddhist Narratives and Identity
16:00-16:45 Sven Bretfeld: “The Buddha’s Treasure Houses: Sri Lanka and Tibet as Subjects of Religious Master Narratives”
16:45-17:30 Ranjana Mukhopadhyaya: “Transculturalism in the Peace Narratives of Japanese Buddhism”
Tuesday, December 17th
Session 3: A Taxonomy of Difference
10:00-10:45 Federico Squarcini: “In the Beginning was Purity. Shaping and Sharing Master Narratives on Origins in Sanskrit Metrical Dharmaśāstra”.
10:45-11:30 Sita Steckel: “Contrasting, Comparing, Connecting. Thirteenth-century Christian Polemics and their Contributions to a Discourse of Religious Diversity”.
Session 4: Ordering the Past
12:00-12:45 Alexandra Walsham: “Making a Master Narrative: Memory, The Reformation and Modern Academic Writing”
12:45-13:30 Erik Schicketanz: “The Formation of Modern Chinese Buddhist Historical Narratives Under Japanese Influence”
Session 5: Translating Narratives
14:30-15:15 Stuart Lachs: “Public Expectations Meet A Self-Fulfilling Prophesy: A Contemporary Zen Autobiography”
15:15-16:00 Antje Flüchter/Giulia Nardini: “Christianity between Orthodoxy and Ambiguity. The Jesuit Roberto de Nobili (1577-1656) Translating between the Worlds“
Session 6: Nation and the City
16:30-17:15 Benjamin Zachariah: “The Invention of Hinduism for National Use”
17:15-18:00 Sadaf Ahmad: “Al-Huda and the Making of an Authoritative Master Narrative in Urban Pakistan”
Wednesday, December 18th
Session 7: Travelling Words
10:00-10:45 Andrew Quintman: “Geographical Narratives, Narrative Geographies: Transformations of Lives and Landscapes on the Himalayan Borderlands”
10:45-11:30 Davide Torri: “From Geographical Periphery to Conceptual Centre: the Travels of Ngagchang Shakya Zangpo and the Discovery of Yolmo Identity”.
Session 8: From Myth to Stone
12:00-12:45 Stefano Beggiora: “Migration, Cultural Adaptation Strategies, Negotiation of Space in the Mythical Narrative of Apatanis of Arunachal Pradesh”
12:45-13:30 Hasan Ali Khan: “How the Architecture of a Secret Belief System Affected the Larger Religious Milieu: the Case of the Suhrawardi Building Archetype in Medieval Multan and Uch”
A programme folder with abstracts is available for download from: www.putative-purities.uni-hd.de
The conference is open to the public and can be attended free of charge.
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Dr Anna Andreeva
Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context”
Karl Jaspers Centre
Voßstraße 2, Building 4400
69115 Heidelberg
Germany
https://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de
https://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/people/person/persdetail/andreeva.html
________________________________________
- See especially Alexandra Walsham, The Reformation and ‘The Disenchantment of the World’ Reassessed’, The Historical Journal, 51, 2 (2008), pp. 497–528. doi:10.1017/S0018246X08006808; an article entitled ‘Migrations of the Holy’ is forthcoming in the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies.
International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 2014
New religious histories: Four sessions and a roundtable
Tuesday 8th July 2014
Organisers: Melanie Brunner (Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds), Amanda Power (Department of History, University of Sheffield) and Sita Steckel (Historisches Seminar, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster)
Session I: Old and New Narratives
In order to work towards a new history of the religious and monastic orders, orthodoxy and heresy, and the wider church in the medieval period, we must address the master narratives on which most historical study continues to be based, and which are thus reinforced by modern scholarship. This session examines the effect of these narratives and modes of conceptualisation on modern historiography in order to propose some new approaches to the wider difficulties challenges of the study of late medieval religious history.
Amanda Power (Department of History, University of Sheffield): Reframing the friars minor: from old origins to new beginnings
Gert Melville (Forschungsstelle für Vergleichende Ordensgeschichte, Technische Universität, Dresden): Structuring Diachronic Approaches to the History of Religious Orders
Sita Steckel (Historisches Seminar, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster): The Multiple Middle Ages. Modernization and diversification approaches to religious history
Chair: Elisabeth Salter (Department of English Literature and Creative Writing, Aberystwyth University)
Session II: Naming and Describing Religious Groups
Historians have come rather unevenly to look at the relationship between terminology used by groups to describe themselves, by contemporary others to describe them, and by modern scholarship, who by choosing particular names endorse certain narratives. While the study of heresy has benefitted from a growing precision in ‘naming’, other areas lag behind. Here, two papers explore and problematise the words used to categorise, respectively, the followers of heretics and dissident Franciscan groups, while the third looks at how the perceived qualities and roles of an order shifted within the continuity of its name.
Lucy Sackville (Department of History, University of York): Bad Behaviour: Action, Category, and the Law in Early Inquisitions
Melanie Brunner (Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds): Spirituals, Zealots, and Michaelists: Categorising Franciscan Dissidents
Christine Caldwell Ames (Department of History, University of South Carolina): From the Beginning: Inquisition and Discerning Dominican Identity
Chair: Neslihan Senoçak (Department of History, Columbia University)
Session III: Diversity and Choice in Religious Life
Many studies of religious orders, ecclesiastical history and lay religion are carried out within distinct fields. One way to approach this problem might be through the idea of religious ‘choice’, or even a ‘religious market’. But allowing for geographical variations, and across the imposed categories of orthodoxy and heresy, a diverse range of groups offered preaching, pastoral care and other services, sometimes in co-operation and sometimes in fierce competition. How did contemporaries make sense of various forms of diversity and which perceptions and social ties narrowed their choices and influenced their allegiances?
Robbie Mochrie (School of Management & Languages, Heriot Watt University): Responses to radical economic thought within the Franciscan Order: accommodation and suppression
Cornelia Linde (Department of History, University College London): Competition between Franciscans and Dominicans in 13th-Century England
Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel (Institut de Recerca en Cultures Medievals, Universitat de Barcelona): Defining Conversion: The Role of Social Networks in the Spreading of Spiritual Dissent
Chair: Ian Forrest (Oriel College, University of Oxford)
Session IV: Questioning Authority
It is still often the case that overarching narratives of the religious orders are conceived from the top downwards. Tremendous weight is given to the views of the founder of an order and immediate companions or successors in authority. Equally, the wider context within which the orders are presumed to operate is understood through official, normative and aspirational statements from the papal curia and other sources of ecclesiastical authority. In challenging this construction of authority, the papers consider the social importance of the male Dominicans and the strategies by which Dominican nuns sought to secure their agency and autonomy.
Michael Vargas (SUNY New Paltz): Reconsidering Dominican influence
Mercedes Pérez Vidal (Departamento de Historia del Arte, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Gijón): Power and authority among Dominican nunneries in Castile. A reassessment of traditional conceptions
Araceli Rosillo Luque (Departament d’Història Medieval, Paleografia & Diplomàtica, Universitat de Barcelona): Sorority through the ages: modern nun’s chronicles and convent culture in Catalan female monasteries (XIIIth-XVIIth centuries)
Chair: Melanie Brunner (Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds)
Roundtable: Towards a Comparative Approach to Religious Histories
The series of sessions will conclude with a roundtable discussion about the future of comparative approaches to studying religious and monastic orders, orthodoxy and heresy, and the wider church in the medieval period.
Participants include Christine Caldwell Ames (University of South Carolina, Columbia), Melanie Brunner (University of Leeds), Emilia Jamroziak (University of Leeds), Amanda Power (University of Sheffield), Neslihan Senoçak (Columbia University), Jörg Sonntag (Princeton University) and Michael Vargas (State University of New York, New Paltz).
Chair: Sita Steckel (Historisches Seminar, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster)
In my attempts to understand the contentious and colorful world of thirteenth-century religion, I am at the moment trying to build closer links to historians of the monastic and mendicant orders. Beyond the busy German scene and blogosphere, an all-around felicitous connection to colleagues in Northern England has developed up recently, which has led to a proposal for four exciting sessions and a roundtable on ’New religious histories’ at Leeds next year, co-organized by Amanda Power (Sheffield), Melanie Brunner (Leeds), and myself. More on that to follow.
The intent of the workshop was to provide a comparative setting for the discussion of shared older narratives in the various histories of monastic and mendicant orders. Also, it specifically aimed to discuss “the histories and experiences of the various religious orders as context for each other – looking at mendicant communities within the context of older monastic orders and vice versa: as communities reacting to each other, assisting, competing, drawing on the same deep traditions and participating in the same contemporary agendas“, as Amanda put it.
Like the planned Leeds sessions, however, the workshop turned strongly on the idea that we should not only compare and connect monastic and mendicant religiosity and community-building, but look beyond the world of religious communities to medieval religion as a whole.
A basic approach suggested by Sethina Watson was that we might focus on particular „stages“ of religious identity and interplay between religious identities and various audiences – as Emilia Jamroziak suggested, cults of saints would provide a good field for comparative work. A particularly interesting strand of discussion also concerned the comparative view of ‚founders‘ of orders or other important historical figureheads used to express an order’s identity to various audiences.
Altogether, we discussed that the construction of identity for specific orders does not only seem closely tied to their position vis-à-vis other groups – a point that has already been made forcefully, for example by Ramona Sickert2 The „signifiers“ or flashpoints used to negotiate specific identities also seem to change over time, with things like poverty and austerity gaining and losing importance periodically3.
To me, the workshop illuminated the potential for a connected history of religious orders, clergy, laypeople and heretical movements – fields which are mostly separate in research at the moment, though this is beginning to be viewed with growing discontent (going by discussions during an IMC Leeds roundtable this year). Why such a connected history makes sense seems fairly obvious – what is more difficult about it, I tend to think, is that it will need a shared language of research. To tackle the older narratives still inherent in the highly charged field of religious history, we will probably need to take the time to discuss the historiography and grand narratives of the history of religion, spread over many fields today (modernization theory is of course prominent among such narratives – though at lunch this week I was accused of obsessing over this point, probably not wrongly). We should also think about a shared language allowing us to pinpoint changes in religious identities. One step might be to heed Christine Caldwell Ames’ recent call to get a clearer idea of how to theorize „religion“4. I also tend to think that Astrid Reuter’s fantastic Bourdieu-based model of „Boundary work on the religious field“5 is helpful. I suspect that I should write a separate post about this issue one of these days.
Inspiredly, the workshop ended on the idea that the follow-up workshop at the University of Leeds in spring 2014 should actually consist of co-written papers, tying experts for different religious groups/orders together. I hope I will be able to go or to continue the debate at IMC Leeds 2014…
- See specifically on the comparative approach Gert Melville, Anne Müller, Mittelalterliche Orden und Klöster im Vergleich. Methodische Ansätze und Perspektiven, Vita Regularis 34, Münster 2007.
- Ramona Sickert, Wenn Klosterbrüder zu Jahrmarktsbrüdern werden: Studien zur Wahrnehmung der Franziskaner und Dominikaner im 13. Jahrhundert, Vita Regularis. Ordnungen und Deutungen religiosen Lebens im Mittelalter 28), Berlin 2006.
- A point also made by Anne Müller, Symbolizitität als Differenzmerkmal. Überlegungen zur systematischen Analyse symbolischer Repräsentationsformen im Religiosentum, in: Melville – Müller (Eds), Mittelalterliche Orden (as above), pp. 187-209
- See most recently Christine Caldwell Ames, Medieval Religious, Religions, Religion, History Compass 10.4 (2012), 334–352.
- Astrid Reuter, Charting the Boundaries of the Religious Field: Legal Conflicts over Religion as Struggles over Blurring Borders, Journal of Religion in Europe 2.1 (2009), 1–20.