The thirty-six manuscripts included in this catalogue provide viewers unique access to the authentic, spontaneous vision of people in medieval France, Italy, Germany, the Low Counties, and Britain. As award-winning author Christopher de Hamel writes in the introduction 'There is one way in which manuscripts are different from all other works of art: they can talk Shared language is the basis of all communication, and manuscripts can actually speak to us.' Most people today think of the Middle Ages as a time when cloistered monks wrote and read only in now-obscure languages. Of course, Latin was the language of those who aspired to literacy, and it was the language of the Church. But what many do not realize is that by the thirteenth and fourteenth century (and certainly well before Columbus discovered America in 1492), numerous books became available in the everyday languages spoken 'at the court, on the street, and in the bedroom.' This catalogue focuses on just such manuscripts, written for people at diverse levels of society, not only the privileged aristocracy, but doctors, artisans, townspeople, women, the clergy, and the lay devout. The Middle Classes imitated the nobility in commissioning vernacular manuscripts. Texts of patriotic history and good manners and courtly romance entered manorial households. Literacy moved away from the Latin-based monopoly of the Church. It may be that the owners were actually reading texts themselves, whereas a great prince or king of an earlier generation would often have heard a story read aloud. By the fourteenth century the mercantile classes needed to read in order to conduct commerce, and it was usually in their own languages. At the end of the Middle Ages probably most people in towns had some experience of literacy...
(0 Comentarios)
