Discovering the Riches of the Word: Religious Reading in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

380 Pages·2015·8.534 MB·English

by  Sabrina Corbellini, Margriet Hoogvliet, Bart Ramakers

Discovering the Riches of the Word
Intersections
Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture
General Editor
Karl A.E. Enenkel (Chair of Medieval and Neo-Latin Literature
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
e-mail: kenen_01@uni_muenster.de)
Editorial Board
W. van Anrooij (University of Leiden)
W. de Boer (Miami University)
Chr. Göttler (University of Bern)
J.L. de Jong (University of Groningen)
W.S. Melion (Emory University)
R. Seidel (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main)
P.J. Smith (University of Leiden)
J. Thompson (Queen’s University Belfast)
A. Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin)
C. Zittel (University of Stuttgart)
C. Zwierlein (Harvard University)
VOLUME 38 – 2015
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/inte
Discovering the Riches
of the Word
Religious Reading in Late Medieval and
Early Modern Europe
Edited by
Sabrina Corbellini
Margriet Hoogvliet
Bart Ramakers
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: “Dat boeck vanden leven ons liefs heren Jhesu Christi” (Zwolle, Peter Os van Breda:
20 november 1495). Groningen, University Library, INC 131 A.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Discovering the riches of the word : religious reading in late medieval and early modern Europe / edited by
Sabrina Corbellini, Margriet Hoogvliet and Bart Ramakers.
  pages cm. — (Intersections : interdisciplinary studies in early modern culture, ISSN 1568-1181 ;
volume 38)
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
 ISBN 978-90-04-29038-9 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-29039-6 (e-book) 1. Christian
literature—History and criticism. 2. Christians—Books and reading. 3. Christianity and literature.
I. Corbellini, Sabrina, 1969– editor.
 BR117.D57 2015
 809’.93527405—dc23
2014048902
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering
Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities.
For more information, please see brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 1568-1181
isbn 978-90-04-29038-9 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-29039-6 (e-book)
Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and
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Contents
Notes on the Editors  vii
Notes on the Contributors  viii
List of Illustrations  x
Introduction: Discovering the Riches of the Word  1
Sabrina Corbellini, Margriet Hoogvliet, Bart Ramakers
1 Approaching Lay Readership of Middle Dutch Bibles: On the Uses of
Archival Sources and Bible Manuscripts  18
Suzan Folkerts
2 Manuscript Paratexts in the Making: British Library MS Harley 6333 as a
Liturgical Compilation  44
Matti Peikola
3 Uncovering the Presence: Religious Literacies in Late Medieval
Italy  68
Sabrina Corbellini
4 Evidence for Religious Reading Practice and Experience in Times of
Change: Some Models Provided by Late Medieval Texts of the Ten
Commandments  88
Elisabeth Salter
5 ‘Car Dieu veult estre serui de tous estaz’: Encouraging and Instructing
Laypeople in French from the Late Middle Ages to the Early Sixteenth
Century  111
Margriet Hoogvliet
6 Books, Beads and Bitterness: Making Sense of Gifts in Two Table Plays by
Cornelis Everaert  141
Bart Ramakers
7 Some Aspects of Male and Female Readers of the Printed Bible Historiale
in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries  171
Éléonore Fournié
vi contents
8 From Nicholas Love’s Mirror to John Heigham’s Life: Paratextual
Displacements and Displaced Readers  190
Ian Johnson
9 Vernacular Biblical Literature in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Universal
Reading and Specific Readers  213
Élise Boillet
10 The Catholic Church and the Vernacular Bible in the Low Countries:
A Paradigm Shift in the 1550s?  234
Wim François
11 Reading the Crucifixion in Tudor England  282
Lucy Wooding
12 The Other Nicodemus: Nicodemus in Italian Religious Writings
Previous and Contemporary to Calvin’s Excuse à Messieurs les
Nicodémites (1544)  311
Federico Zuliani
13 ‘What’s Learnt in the Cradle Lasts till the Tomb’: Counter-Reformation
Strategies in the Southern Low Countries to Entice the Youth into
Religious Reading  335
Hubert Meeus
Index Nominum  363
Notes on the Editors
Sabrina Corbellini
is Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the University of Groningen (department
of Medieval History). Her current research is concerned with the
reconstruction of the readership of religious texts in late medieval Europe.
From 2008 to 2013, she was Principal Investigator of the ERC-Starting Grant
project “Holy Writ and Lay Readers”.
Margriet Hoogvliet
is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Groningen and Leeds. Her
current research is concerned with readers of biblical and religious texts
in French during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. She has also
published extensively on text-image relations, political communication in
the period of Catherine de Médicis, and the history of cartography (Pictura et
scriptura: textes, images et herméneutique des mappae mundi (XIIIe–XVIe s.),
Turnhout: 2007).
Bart Ramakers
is Professor of Historical Dutch Literature at the University of Groningen.
He specialises in medieval and sixteenth-century drama and has a particular
interest in the intersections between performative and visual culture. He is an
editor of the Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art (NKJ).
Notes on the Contributors
Élise Boillet
is a researcher at the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance
(Université François-Rabelais, Tours). Her research interests centre on early
modern Italian religious literature. At the CNRS, she coordinates the research
theme, Profane et sacré dans la culture européenne des XIVe–XVIIe siècles.
Suzan Folkerts
is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Groningen with a NWO
Veni grant for her project “From monastery to market place. Towards a new
history of New Testament translations and urban religious culture in the Low
Countries (c. 1450–1540)”. In 2010, she earned her PhD with a dissertation on
the manuscript transmission of medieval saints’ lives.
Éléonore Fournié
is an independent Scholar. She received her PhD in Medieval history from
the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and graduated from
the École du Louvre in Paris. She is the author of L’iconographie de la Bible
historiale (Turnhout, 2012).
Wim François
is Research Professor of the Special Research Fund of the KU Leuven. He
focusses on the place of vernacular Bible reading in the early modern period,
as well as on Bible commentaries edited by Louvain and Douai theologians
during the Golden Age of Catholic biblical scholarship (1550–1650).
Ian Johnson
is Reader in English and a member of the Institute of Mediaeval Studies at
the University of St Andrews. He is founding General Editor of The Mediaeval
Journal and was for many years General Editor of Forum for Modern Language
Studies. Among his latest books is The Middle English Life of Christ: Academic
Discourse, Translation and Vernacular Theology (Turnhout, 2013).
Hubert Meeus
is Professor of Dutch Renaissance Literature and Theatre History at the
University of Antwerp. His subjects of research are literature and theatre in
the Low Countries during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the
history of the printed book from its invention until 1800.
notes on the contributors ix
Matti Peikola
is Professor of English at the University of Turku. His research interests
include Middle and Early Modern English language, discourse and textual
scholarship, codicology and bibliography, Wycliffite studies, and writing
literacy in early colonial New England. He is currently working on a critical
edition of Wyclif’s Wycket as well as exploring patterns of production and
transmission of the Wycliffite Bible in later medieval England.
Elisabeth Salter
is currently Professor of English and Head of the Department of English at
the University of Hull. She is developing her research on popular reading in
late medieval and early modern England by extending her work on popular
religious reading and creativity, with a particular focus on works of religious
instruction including catechetical texts.
Lucy Wooding
is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at King’s College London. Her
research interests centre on late medieval and Reformation England, with a
particular interest in the intersections between visual and print culture. She
is the author of Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England (Oxford, 2000)
and Henry VIII (2008).
Federico Zuliani
is a PhD student at The Warburg Institute, University of London. He studied
at the Universities of Milan, Copenhagen and Geneva. His subjects of
research are religious minorities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
especially in Denmark and Italy, and the history of biblical exegesis.