Contenu du sommaire

Brother Felix Fabri's Evagatorium : from travel wanderings to narrative wanderings. There are only a few literary studies on the monumental Evagatorium written by the Dominican Felix Fabri (circa 1440-1502), who travelled to the East on two occasions. Now the Evagatorium cannot just be reduced to a collection of data ; it is also a piece written with particular care. The work has three objectives : to instruct the reader by faithfully describing the places visited, holy places in particular, but also to entertain him and to make him imagine the experience of the wanderings of the grand journey with all its dangers and exoticism. Felix Fabri was aware of the heterogeneous quality of his book, which is an account “neither of a journey, nor of a pilgrimage, nor of an expedition”, and this explains the choice of the neologism “evagatorium” to describe it. This article would therefore like to demonstrate that this “evagatory” was conceived not only to reflect the autho 's own “wanderings” of body and spirit, but also to lead the reader into wandering.

A piece of treasure and a projective memory : The “Saint Martin” Vase, onques faict par mains d'omme terrien.
The treasure of the Abbey of Saint-Maurice d'Agaune has a sard vase from the 1st Century BC, which legendary tradition attributes to being a gift of Saint Martin. The legend dates back to a little after the middle of the 12th Century and, in all likelihood, was created at the Abbey of Saint-Maurice, at a critical moment of spiritual renewal for the Abbey, which led to the reorganization of the Abbey's memory. At Saint-Maurice, this involved both legal documents, which were “falsified”, and individual pieces in its treasury for which prestigious donors were invented : by calling on “founders” or “patrons” from the distant past, the Abbey could acquire a longer history and so carry on as a sacred site.

The two Alpaidas and epic place-names (Avroy-)Auridon-Oridon-Dordon(e). Contrary to what some scholars have recently tried to demonstrate, the beautiful episode about Alpaida in the 12th Century Girart de Roussillon has no genetic link either to a story about elves or to German mythology. As background, the episode follows the narrative storyline of the beautiful jailer in love with her prisoner (substantiated at least twice in 12th Century French-speaking circles before the Girart) whereas, for its proper names and certain related motifs, it was inspired by the legend of Alpaida, mother of Charles Martel (as this legend appeared in the 12th Century). In favor of this latter relationship, one should note the etymological identity, hitherto unrecognized, between Avridum “Avroy-près-Liège”, home of Alpaida, mother of Charles Martel, and (Auridum>) Auridon, the imaginary home in the Ardennes of the Girart Alpaida. Oridon in the song of Auberi le Bourguignon and, probably, Dordon(e) in the Quatre Fils Aymon, both names of imaginary castles in the Ardennes, are derived from the same place-name.

State power and personal enrichment : investments and accumulation strategies carried out by the Duke of Burgundy's officials in Flanders. In the Late Middle Ages, Flemish civil servants played a key role in the creation of the Burgundian State. The revenues they generated in various ways and from various sources were first invested in landed property by senior civil servants. The fiefs and domains were indeed very valuable as symbols of authority and as a means of social advancement. Furthermore, land, an essential means of production in feudal society, continued to be the most important and safest kind of capital. For many senior civil servants, inherited property brought in, on a yearly basis, as much or more than the amounts that service to the State enabled them to pocket. It can justly be said that some senior civil servants profited by renting out plots of land or entire buildings. As much from the political as from the economic point of view, the creation of the State meant, other than the salvation of some noble families, the success of newer members of the power elite in the Burgundian State.

Transmitting and presenting “know-how” in the Fait de cuysine by Maître Chiquart. The Fait de cuysine by Maître Chiquart (1420) enjoys exceptional status in the history of texts on French gastronomy. It also stands out from other medieval recipe books in French in that it shows literary qualities of composition that are as unexpected as they are undeniable. In order to transmit both his knowledge and his “know-how” (and this desire emerges as much in the text's vocabulary as in its syntax), Maître Chiquart turns his text into a real piece of theater, with a decor that gleams with cleanliness (something the study of lexical recurrences enables one to highlight), putting his actors in place and regulating their movements in minute detail (resorting to achieve this to a stylistic use of the French verbal system of rare finesse, the main subject of our study), thus reviving memories of a sumptuous banquet.