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15 chapter one The Materiality of Writing In the middle ages, books were manuscripts: the handwritten codices that made their appearance in the fourth century CE and whose use drastically changed the relationship to culture. A few scrolls (the Latin word is volumen) subsisted in the medieval era, but for very specific types of texts: scrolls of chronicles, scrolls recording deaths or for short pieces: songs, scrolls on which prayers or magical formulae were written, spells, theater rollets that at times contain only one actor’s lines. A few particular cases have given rise to questions, such as the Evangile aux femmes, a satirical text, found both in numerous codices and on a single scroll. Manuscripts were produced by scribes, often assembled in scriptoria, originally monastic, then secular. In the Middle Ages, a scribe was called an escrivain; this is the first sense of the word and was for a long time— until the thirteenth century—its only meaning in Old French.1 Some names of scribes are known. Perhaps the most famous for his connection to the literary work is Guiot, who copied Chrétien de Troyes’ romans a century after their composition in what is now French National Library, fonds français (BNF, fr.) manuscript 794. At the conclusion of Yvain, he notes: “This manuscript was copied by Guiot” (Cil qui l’escrist Guioz a non). This colophon also gives the permanent location of his workshop in Provins [Seine-et-Marne], “before the church of Our Lady of the Valley ” (devant Nostre Dame del Val/est ses osteus tot a estal). Jean Madot signed his transcription of the Roman de Troie (manuscript BNF, fr. 375), priding himself on being the nephew of Adam de la Halle. He also gives the date of his copy: Candlemas 1288. Other scribes are attached to an important personage. Thus Raoul Tainguy, whose writing is so distinctive , often signs the manuscripts that he copies with his name or with the mention le caterval, the good drunkard, equivalent to a signature. He seems to have been the appointed escrivain of Arnaud de Corbie, a man of power in the Armagnac party, chancellor of France between 1388 and 16 writing in the middle ages 1413. He copied Eustache Deschamps’ “complete” works, manuscript BNF, fr. 840, for de Corbie. Writing is work and art. As early as the eighth century, a scribe enjoys underlining the tiresome side of this work through a word game that recalls rhymes and riddles (formulettes et devinettes): “Tres digiti scribunt, duo oculi vident. Una lingua loquitur, totum corpus laborat”: three fingers, two eyes, one tongue, an enumeration in decrescendo that culminates in the totality of the body. Le Livre de Sidrac, from the end of the thirteenth century, similarly declares: “He who writes makes his whole body suffer, his eyes, his brain, and his kidneys, and he dares neither think nor look nor laugh nor speak nor hear nor listen; he doesn’t dare think of anything except that which he is writing, and he who does not know how to write cannot imagine that writing is an art” (Qui escrit, il travaille tout son cors et les ielz et la cervelle et les rains, si n’ose penser ne regarder ne rire ne parler ne oïr ne escouter mais que en son escrivre, et qui ne set escrivre ne cuide que l’escripture soit art). In his Description de la ville de Paris au XVe siècle (Description of the City of Paris in the Year 1407), Guillebert de Metz calls attention to the fame of Paris copyists, singling out “the sovereign scribe Gobert, who improved the art of writing and of sharpening quills; and his pupils, such as the duc de Berry’s young Flamel, who were retained by princes because of their good writing” (Item Gobert, le souverain escripvain, qui composa l’Art d’escripre et de taillier plumes; et ses disciples qui par leur bien escripre furent retenus des princes, comme le juenne Flamel du duc de Berry). To encourage his scribes, Jean Gerson wrote a treatise for them singing their praises: De laude scriptorum (In Praise of Scribes). But scribes could also have a bad reputation. They might deceive out of greed, as is pointed out in La Somme le Roi: “like these writers who show good writing in the beginning and then do it poorly” (comme cil escrivain qui montrent bone letre au commencement et puis la font mauvaise). They may be stupid, even...

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