Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays

390 Pages·1975·7.927 MB·English

by  Natalie Zemon Davis

Society and Culture in
Early Modern France

Society and Culture in
Early M odem France
EIGHT ESSAYS BY
Natalie Zemon Davis
Stanford University Press
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 1965,1968,1973,1975 by Natalie Zemon Davis
Printed in the United States of America
Cloth isbn 0-8047-0868-1
Paper isbn 0-8047-0972-6
Original edition 1975
Last figure below indicates year of this printing:
86 85 84 83 82
Contents
Introduction xv
One. Strikes and Salvation at Lyon i
Two. Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy 17
Three. City Women and Religious Change 6$
Four. The Reasons of Misrule 97
Five. Women on Top 1x4
Six. The Rites of Violence 152
Seven. Printing and the People 189
Eight. Proverbial Wisdom and Popular Errors 227
Notes 271 Index 349

Illustrations
(between pp. 188 and 189)
plate 1: Title page of Les plaisans devis, recitez par les supposts du
Seigneur de la Coquille, Le Dimanche 6. Mars, 1594. A Lyon, Par le
Seigneur de la Coquille. Copy at the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon.
plate 2: Emblem of the Aumône-Générale of Lyon from La Police
de UAulmosne de Lyon (Lyon: Sébastien Gryphius, 1539). Copy in the
Archives municipales de Lyon, GG140.
plate 3: Float of the Abbé des Conards of Rouen from Les Tri­
omphes de P Abbaye des Conards, sous le Resveur en Décimés Fagot
Abbé des Conards, contenant les criées et proclamations faites, depuis
son advenement iusques à P An present (Rouen: Nicolas Pugord, 1587).
Copy at the Houghton Library, Harvard University.
plate 4: Distribution of bread and money by the Aumône-Générale
of Lyon, 1539, in La Police de UAulmosne de Lyon (see Plate 2 above).
p late 5: Mock coin of the Baron of the rue Neuve, Lyon, 1596, with
the device “Nostre iustice régnera en tous temps." Numismatic Collec­
tion, Musée de Lyon.
plate 6: Chariot of Mère Folle of Dijon, about 1610, from M. du
Tilliot, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la fête des Poux (2d ed.;
Lausanne and Geneva, 1751). Copy in the author’s collection.
plate 7: Parade on an ass of a husband beaten by his wife from
Claude Noirot, L’Origine des masques, mommeries, bernez, et revennez
es 'tours gras de Caresme prenant, menez sur l’asrte à rebours et charivary
(Langres: Jean Chauveau, ca. 1609). Copy at the Réserve, Bibliothèque
Nationale.
plate 8: A charivari from a manuscript of the Roman de Fauvel,
early fourteenth century. Bibliothèque Nationale, Mss. fr. 146.
VIH Illustrations
plate 9: a. Wife beats her husband with a fagot, from a German
playing card by Peter Floetner, about 15ZO. Reproduced in Eduard Fuchs
and Alfred Kind, Die Wieberherrschaft in der Geschichte der Mensch­
heit (Munich, 1913), 1: z, plate z (Bancroft Library, University of Cali­
fornia, Berkeley), b. Wife wearing a codpiece beats her husband. En­
graved by Martin Treu, ca. 1540-43, working perhaps in Bavaria (G. K.
Nagler, Die monogrammisten, 4, no. zi8o; Adam Bartsch, Le peintre
graveur [Leipzig, 1854-76], 9: 77; prints in the Dep’t of Prints and Draw­
ings, British Museum, and the Albertina, Vienna). Reproduced in Julia
O’Faolain and Lauro Martines, eds.. Not in God’s Image (New York,
1973), plate 17. c. “lecole des mary” [sic], French broadsheet printed
at Orléans in 1650 and reproduced in Fuchs and Kind, Die Wieberherr-
schaft, 1: Z7Z-73. d. Struggle for the breeches, a French engraving of
1690, reproduced in Fuchs and Kind, Die Wieberherrschaft, 1: 430,
plate 393.
PLATE 10: Woman shakes male fools from a tree, a drawing of about
15Z6 by the Petrarch-Master of Augsburg. Art Collection, Veste Co­
burg, reproduced in Erasmus en zijn tijd (Catalogue of the Exhibition at
the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, October-November
1969), no. 150.
plate 11: Phyllis riding Aristotle, a woodcut done in 1513 by Hans
Baldung, alias Grien. Reproduced in Hermann Schmitz, Hans Baldung
gen. Grien (Bielefeld and Leipzig, 19ZZ), plate 66.
plate iz: Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolf, woodcut, late fifteenth
century, from Solomon et Marcolphus collocutores (n.p., n.d.). Copy at
the Réserve, Bibliothèque Nationale.
plate 13: Skimmington Ride, engraved about 17Z6 by William Ho­
garth as an illustration for Samuel Butler’s Hudibras. Reproduced in R.
Paulson, Hogarth’s Graphic Works (New Haven, Conn., 1965), z, no. 83.
plate 14: Interior of the Reformed Temple de Paradis at Lyon be­
tween 1564 and 1567. Anonymous painting, perhaps by the Protestant
painter and engraver Jean Perrissin, at the Musée de Genève.
plate 15: Author portrait of the midwife Louise Bourgeois at age
45, 1608, in Observations diverses sur la stérilité, perte de fruict, foe-
conditê, accouchements et maladies des Femmes et Enfants nouveaux
naix... par L. Bourgeois dite Boursier, sage femme de Royne (zd ed.;
Rouen: widow of Thomas Daré, i6z6). Copy at the Medical Library,
University of California, San Francisco.
p late 16: Author portrait of the reckonmaster Milles de Norry at
age 4z from Larithmetique de Milles Denorry gentilhomme chartrain,
contenant ...la forme de l’achat, vente et distribution de toute sorte de
Illustrations ix
marchandise (Paris: Gilles Gorbin, 1574). Copy in Special Collections,
Columbia University Libraries.
plate 17: “Horribilia scelera ab Huguenotis in Gallijs perpetrata”
from Richard Versiegen, Theatrum crudelitatum haereticorum nostri
temporis (Antwerp: A. Hubert, 1588). Copy at the Thomas Fisher Rare
Book Library, University of Toronto.
plate 18: “Le massacre fait à Sens en Bourgogne par la populace
au mois d’Avril 1562” by Jean Perrissin, 1570. Reproduced in A. Frank­
lin, ed., Les grandes scenes historiques du XVle siècle. Reproduction fac­
simile du Recueil de J. Tortorel et ]. Perrissin (Paris, 1886), no. 15 (copy
at the University of California, San Diego).
Acknowledgments
Of the eight essays in this volume, five have been published before in
slightly different form. Chapter i first appeared as “Strikes and Salva­
tion at Lyons” in Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, vol. LVI (1965).
Chapter z was published as “Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy: The
Case of Lyon” in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, Vol. V
(1968). Chapter 3 was initially published by the University of Michigan
Center for Continuing Education of Women in A Sampler of Women’s
Studies (1973), edited by Dorothy McGuigan. Chapter 4, originally en­
titled “The Reasons of Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaris in Six­
teenth-Century France,” appeared in Past & Present, no. 50 (February
1971), © 1971 The Past and Present Society; Chapter 6, originally en­
titled “The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century
France,” appeared in Past & Present, no. 59 (May 1973), © 1973 The
Past and Present Society. I am indebted to Mr. T. H. Aston, Editor of
Past & Present, for permission to reprint these essays.
Minor revisions have been made in these five essays for the present
collection. Where there was some overlap in example or argument
among them, I have altered or shortened the text a little, though not
so much as to destroy the independence of each essay. I have corrected
errors where I knew of them, sharpened a few fuzzy formulations (much
aided here by the careful reading of Peter J. Kahn of Stanford University
Press), and added new bibliographic references here and there in the
notes.
In preparing these essays for publication, I have been assisted by re­
search grants from the University of Toronto; the University of Cali­
fornia, Berkeley; the American Philosophical Society; and the American