The Bible Historiale was one of the most widely copied versions of the Bible for late-medieval French-speaking readers. It was written between the fall of the crusader city of Acre (1291) and 1297 by Guyart des Moulins, a canon of the collegiate church of Saint Pierre at Aire-sur-la-Lys (Pas-de-Calais), then in the county of Artois, for the use of lay readers who were unable to read Latin. It combined a prose version of most of the books of the Bible with translated extracts of Peter Comestor's twelfth-century Historia Scholastica, a text that laid stress on the Bible's historical content. Within a few decades, there were many copies of the Bible Historiale, and some of these added the missing books, copied from another translation that had been produced in Paris, probably by Dominicans, the Bible du XIIIe siècle. As time went on copies of the Bible Historiale were enhanced with glosses and variants; it was translated into many languages in Europe. The last surviving copies of the French text were printed in Paris in 1545. There are over 140 manuscript copies and dozens of early printed versions.
For all its success with readers over two centuries, the Bible Historiale has often been misunderstood by modern scholars. This is in part because its complicated tradition resists generalizations. Jeanette Patterson's monograph complements the as-yet partial editions by Xavier-Laurent Salvador, with whom she has published several times (see the website: https://www.biblehistoriale.fr/). There is no modern complete edition of the book.
Patterson approaches the Bible Historiale as a series of challenges. The first, she argues, lies in the mind of a modern reader who might believe that translated Bibles were discouraged in the pre-Reformation era. The first chapter dismantles this assumption, arguing that the plethora of vernacularized, summarized, and narrated biblical books indicates the opposite. When translations were discouraged or banned, it was in contexts of heretical turmoil. In other words, translation was permissible, but heretical interpretation was not. However, it is impossible to control the uses to which a translation can be put, and this consideration leads her to explore the issues of selective translation, censorship, and omission that mark the many copies of the Bible Historiale. Patterson bases her monograph on a selection of manuscript copies that she describes in an Appendix (163–166). Chapter 2 discusses moments when Guyart constructs his readers as people who might feel concern about episodes such as the Fall and provides narrative details that might have echoed familiar images or performances. This is an attempt to compensate for the underpinning theological or intellectual knowledge that they are supposed to lack. Chapter 3 looks at three summarized apocryphal texts that were included in a copy of the Bible Historiale by its fifteenth-century scribe. This copy acknowledges that apocrypha have an uncertain relationship with religious truth and may be seen to trust the lay reader's judgement in this matter. Chapter 4 shows how some copies of the Bible Historiale trust their readers by including two versions of the book of Job: a “little” Job that omits the disturbing words uttered in that book, and a “great” Job that offers a complete text, allowing the reader to appreciate that book's ambivalence. Other copies select only one version. Chapter 5 cites a copy of the shorter, illustrated Bible moralisée. Its scribe promises its readers a book that is shorter and less boring than the Bible Historiale, while copying some of its content. This last chapter draws attention to the likely reputation of the Bible Historiale among its real, rather than intended, readers. The habits of contemporary readers of biblical material are discussed in the Conclusion, where a short debate about the changing ways in which the Bible is read and quoted online deserves further development.
This careful structure allows Patterson to guide her intended reader through the challenges that Guyart and his successors set out for theirs. I would have welcomed more detailed consideration of the medieval readers, as each copy of a manuscript addresses a discrete audience, and the “lay reader” is a term that covers many different reading communities (see the very interesting discussion of the other texts that were bound with copies of the Bible Historiale, 67–68). The discussion of Guyart's association of his project with the disturbing news of the fall of Acre in 1291 is short (140–142) and deserves more attention, in part because this crusader city is associated with another French Bible (La Bible d'Acre). The fall of Acre was regarded as a disaster at the time, and it signaled the end of crusades to the Levant. Patterson underplays the association of “Frenchness” and the French language with nation, but it would be useful to see more development because she underlines that Guyart's target audiences for his “historical” Bible were aristocrats connected to the French royal court. Moreover, the impressive number of printed copies implies that the audience profile changed considerably.
This is a timely and engaging study. Patterson draws attention to the Bible Historiale in the wake of a major series of studies and editions of the medieval vernacularizations of biblical and related books. She makes a significant contribution to the reassessment of medieval biblical traditions and of the ways in which the clergy sought to teach doctrine and to prevent heresy. The strengths of this monograph lie in Patterson's careful attention to the ways in which Guyart (or rather the many “Guyarts” who narrate the various copies of his book) avoid patronizing their target audience. She marshals evidence that the Bible Historiale welcomes comparative reading, anticipates the reader's anxieties about some topics, and makes it clear when it censors others. Beyond medieval studies, this book would be a valuable addition to more general studies of reception, translation, and pedagogy.
