Honor and Profit
Type de matériel :
92
The private compilations, a disparate group of varied texts collected for personal use, constitute an invaluable tool to understand the culture, the centers of intellectual interest, and the concerns of the owner. The Paris manuscript, BNF, lat. 4641B, belongs to this category of manuscripts. It was compiled in the years 1430–1440 by a Parisian jurist who most probably officiated at the Chambre des comptes or the Cour des aides. The first part of the compilation, which opens with Stilus curie parlamenti of Guillaume Du Breuil, is of legal nature. The second part combines catechetic texts, religious meditations, moral pieces, chronicles, serious and licentious literary texts in prose and verse. The compiler reveals himself at the same time as a pious and jovial fellow. He is Parisian, attached to the royal lineage, not to the kingdom: he is only interested in the history of his city. Deeply religious, he worries about the means of avoiding eternal damnation. The fear of poverty and the material concerns due to unsettled times (monetary devaluation, real estate crisis) lead him to prioritize the value of work. Finally, some notes on Ãconomiques du Pseudo-Aristote, in which he reproduces Nicole Oresme’s translation adapted by Laurent de Premierfait, show that, for this middle-class man, a healthy domestic economy generates the profit from which he draws his honor. The list of the 48 isolated documents or groups of texts which constitute this compilation is given in the appendix.
Réseaux sociaux