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Actors and areas of the university reputation. The messengers of the University of Paris and information at the end of the Middle Ages
Historiography traditionally confered to the medieval University of Paris an early development of messengers network, covering a large European area. This network was meant to assure the link between foreign students and their initial environment. If documentation, dating from the late 13th century, attests an activity of messengers in the service of members of the Parisian university, it does not allow, however, to observe the existence of an institutionalized messaging board before the middle of the 15th century. Organized within university nations, the messengers network included each diocese of which masters and scholars were coming from, and some other major cities. The examination of the academic practice documentation allows to suggest an anthropology of information, attentive to actors, to their actions and conditions of practicing their office. It allows to draw the outlines of a late Middle Ages oversized institution, which has become a power issue and control instrument of university reputation.

The preaching form in Bern in the 16th century
We know a little about the preaching form during the first century of the Reformation, in particular in its first decades, when the treaties of reformed homiletics were rare or not yet composed. The historiography focused indeed more on the contents than on the shape, and too fast concluded, considering the Genevan practice, that the formal reformed preaching limited itself by following verse with verse a whole biblical book (lectio continua). Having studied the preaching forms in Basel and in Zurich, the author comes to Bern, the third and last major place of German Switzerland. It was a question at first of reading and of analyzing the institutional and political sources, the ecclesiastical prescriptions and the so-called Agenbüchlein. Secondly, handwritten sermons are studied. We notice that the political and religious authorities do not legislate on the form of the sermon, as in Basel and in Zurich, while we find a very interesting sermon of a Bernese pastor which, in 1567, preaches against the alliance with France, obviously in agreement with the political authorities. We show that the use of a lectionary in connection with some ancestral liturgical days was maintained in Bern, as in Basel and in Zurich, throughout the 16th century, contrary to what was made in Geneva.

Irish prisoners during the First World War : war propaganda, transferts of loyalty and resistances
During the First World War, Irish prisoners of war enjoyed special treatment. A few months after the outbreak of war, the German government separated Irish captives from other British soldiers and housed them together in a single camp. They were given plenty to eat, enviable living conditions, reading material and tobacco in striking contrast to the usual treatment of prisoners of war. When the men had a visit from Sir Casement, former British diplomat, sympathetic to the nationalist cause and an ardent supporter of an independent Ireland, the POWs understood that the Germans expected them to reject their British uniform. In their quest to excite historic tensions between Ireland and Great Britain, the Germans imagined a way to raise an Irish force to overcome the British army in Ireland. The ill treatment to which the prisoners were afterwards subjected can be put down to the desire to force them to betray Great Britain. While aggression towards prisoners of war usually aimed to break down individual resistance or put pressure on enemy governments, the punishments and deprivation endured by the Irish captives were exacted in order to incite them to support the German cause. After the failure of the German government's strategy which succeeded in mobilising a mere fifty men, the events that took place in Ireland on the eve of this First World War conflict shaped the way that the enemy looked on Irish troops.

The “10/18“ collection (1962-1968) : a small revolution in the publishing world
Created by Plon's chief executive Paul Chantrel in collaboration with Michel-Claude Jalard, and published by the UGE, the “10/18” collection was born in May 1962, 9 years after the launching of the “Livre de poche” by Hachette. In a booming paperback market, this new collection differed by its size – which gave it its name –, the sobriety of its cover, and above all a bold editorial line. “10/18” was designed to be a paperback collection which did not contain merely novels but some of the most important texts in fields as diverse as classic literature, philosophy, human and social sciences, politics or religion. In addition to that, “10/18” signed an agreement with the Editions de Minuit allowing them to publish Nouveau Roman titles which then reached record print runs. In 1964, with Jean-Edern Hallier and Dominique de Roux, “L'Herne 10/18” was created to publish new works of writers making their debuts on the literary scene. In 1966 and 1967, the collection opened up to art history with the “Collection d'art Unesco 10/18”.  The “10/18” catalogue was then, to say the least, eclectic: General de Gaulle alongside with Machiavel, Baudelaire beside Mao Tse-Tung, Michel Butor and St. Teresa of Avila. By its editorial choices, “10/18” aimed at a limited readership, mainly composed of intellectuals and students. This ambitious goal of publishing difficult texts at a modest price did not go without difficulty. The collection was in a sharp decline when in 1968 it picked up again with Christian Bourgois who remained faithful to the editorial approach drawn by his predecessors.