This article proposes two new categories for classifying libertines, which could replace the undesirable categories of moral libertinism and intellectual libertinism: proponents of a morality based on nature and proponents of an ethic of provocation. It shows that Antoinette Deshoulières (1638-1694) is unique in that she cannot be easily classified in either category and highlights the complexity of the poetess’s libertinism. Finally, it attempts to explain Deshoulières’ originality to some extent by her position as a woman.
In the second half of the twelfth century, as vernacular literature in French and German flourished, the discourse of authors reflecting on the modalities of this literary production was a constant. In this context, the epilogue to Heinrich von Veldeke's Eneasroman (written between 1170 and 1190) gives us a remarkable account – real or fictional – of a book stolen from its author before being returned to him nine years later. The following study combines approaches from literature, philology and intermediality to analyse the implications of this textual passage. By examining variants present in the manuscripts of the Eneasroman and miniatures from the oldest of them (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Mgf 282), it shows how the epilogue and its manuscript transmission reflect the mediality, materiality and mobility of the text, as well as the process of finishing and perfecting the work, in the context of a vernacular literature that was emerging and asserting itself in relation to Latinity.
Founded in 1573, the Filles-Madame, a charitable foundation of the Dukes of Nevers, aimed to perpetually endow 60 poor girls each year, in the lands of their duchy. On the death of the founders, this foundation, with no buildings of its own and no dedicated staff, seemed destined to disappear due to the dispersal of the territory in which it operated. The intervention of the administrators of the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, the guardian institution in charge of its protection, triggered a process of institutionalization from the mid-17th century onwards. The aim of this article is to describe the driving forces behind this process, demonstrating the importance of negotiation and conflict in the birth of an institution. Through a reflection on the composition of its rich corpus of documents, it intends to show that institutionalization is the fruit of a negotiated diffusion of new administrative techniques to reluctant officers, in territories where the application of these administrative requirements is a challenge.
This article investigates the long-term construction, transmission, and transformation of the chartriers of the Brosse family, a noble lineage rooted in the regions of Berry, Marche, and Bourbonnais. By examining the archival trajectories of four seigneuries (Sainte-Sévère, Boussac, Huriel, and Malval), it challenges the static view of noble archives as mere repositories of inherited rights. Instead, it reveals dynamic practices of document production, classification, and circulation embedded within strategies of territorial control and lineage continuity. Drawing on inventories, physical characteristics of the documents, and the history of their storage and reclassification, the study sheds light on the interplay between private memory, feudal legitimacy, and institutional requalification. The fate of these archives offers insights into how chartriers operated as tools of social power and identity, and how their status evolved from instruments of lordship to objects of patrimonial and historiographical interest.
From the late xvith century onwards, the assemblies of the States of Burgundy, Brittany and Languedoc pursued a coherent policy of collection, protection and exploitation, albeit at different times. Thanks to this policy, they acquired a territorial intelligence that went hand in hand with the ambition to embody a provincial authority complementary to monarchical sovereignty.
This article focuses on the way in wich archives were preserved, classified, and used in a educational establishment in Savoie: Annecy’s college. For this reason, « records inventories » constitute essential resources, for both historians and archivists. They allow a better understanding of classification and conservation’s conditions of the documents in a modern institution.
Under the direction of their elected dean, the group of regent doctors form the Paris Faculty of Medicine in the 18th century. The only regent doctors authorized to teach there, they were also medical professionals who participated in the life of their corporation. At the end of his deanship, the Dean wrote the Commentaires of the Faculty of Medicine, an account of the life of the Faculty and a compendium of its deliberations. Expressing the collective voice of the regent doctors, the text with its codified structure is the result of the work of the dean of collecting supporting documents and formalization. Verified and approved by the group, the Commentaires were both instruments of control for the corporation and an archive of its institutional memory, enabling it to prove its anteriority and legitimacy and to consolidate the exercise of its privileges. However, the increasing professionalization of doctors in the latter part of the 18th century relegated the Commentaires to being only the archives of the Faculty which disappeared with the suppression of the corporations in 1792.
Talking about the everyday objects of Reformed religious dissent under the Edict of Nantes in France may seem like a rather daunting task. Yet one might well ask whether the "Religion of the Word," as Protestantism is often called, truly rejects all forms of materiality. A frontispiece illustration from The Consolations by Charles Drelincourt offers a starting point to explore a representation of the Reformed domestic space as a house of prayer—a place that takes on material form in and through the circulation of the Biblical Word.
Contrary to what historiography usually reports, the famous account of the "Relation de la mort de MM. les duc et cardinal de Guise..." was never written by Marc Miron, the 1st physician of Henry 3rd. Our investigation aims at tracing the history of this text through its printed and then manuscript sources, in order to identify the origin of the error that was later peddled. Comparing the various copies preserved highlights the oldest of all, produced at the turn of the 17th century. It provides exceptional information on the author of this story and its recipient. We will evaluate its interest in terms of its likelihood, contextualising as much as possible its writing, but also the way in which its political issues had been updated from one decade to the next. This long-ignored text was finally disseminated in scholarly circles during the 1630s, but the fame it acquired was not without manipulation.
