Suite de mes recherches… Dans de futurs billets, nous parlerons de jongleurs. Pour l’instant, nous continuons avec les ménestrels.  Pour l’instant, aucune vérification n’est faite pour savoir combien sont connus aux historiens de la musique et combien manquent. Ce travail viendra plus tard encore…

Source : Arras, BM, 0863 (1043), f. 149v
(http://initiale.irht.cnrs.fr/decor/44017)

Voici nos petites découvertes à partir de JJ 100 :

• “Denisot Le Feve (?), menestrier de …”, en octobre 1369 (JJ 100, f. 165r, n° 542);
• “Jehannin Dorgeret, menestrel de haux instrumens” et ses camarades, en mai 1374 (JJ 105, f. 182r, n° 337)

  • Le jour de la Chandeleur derreniere passee, aprés ce que ledit Jehannin et Oudinet du Gué, menestrel desdiz instrumens, ores [sic] souspé en l’ostel du Veau devant Saint Merry avec Jehannin, filz du maire de jonoie, Jehannin Proudomme, Perrin Chevalon, Rogerin Le Ligueur, et Oudinet le Couroier, et que yceulx menestrelz orent joué desdiz instrumens, ilz se feussent partis dudit hostel avec une lanterne et une chandelle…

• à Senarpont, “une feste es halles d’icelle ville, en laquelle feste avoit un menestrel jouuant d’une cornemuse” en juillet 1374 (AN JJ 105, f. 231r, n° 452) et (AN JJ 106, f. , 154v, n° 191) ;

Continue reading Medieval Music, episode 3 →

Nous vous souhaitons une très belle et heureuse année 2018, pleine de découvertes et de recherches fructueuses ! Nous espérons que vous trouverez grâce à Himanis des informations utiles et surprenantes 😀

A l’occasion d’une discussion avec Isabelle Ragnard, nous avons cherché quelques informations nouvelles sur les musiciens au Moyen Âge. Grâce à HIMANIS, de nombreuses sources nouvelles sont apparues en un rien de temps .

Quelques histoires de cornemuse (d’où l’illustration) : en septembre 1360 (JJ 88, fol. 63r), le 11 juillet 1374 (JJ 105, fol. 230v, n° 452), le 12 décembre 1375 (JJ 107, fol. 188r), en  juillet 1385 (JJ 127, fol. 30r).

Continue reading Some Medieval Music for a Happy New Year \(^o^)/ Un peu de musique pour la nouvelle année →

Il y a quelques années, deux de mes amis ont publié une somme magistrale sur les préambules des rois de France, étudiant la production des actes royaux et ses acteurs au regard des actions juridiques et des thématiques et du style rhétorique des préambules : Barret, Sébastien, et Benoît Grévin. Regalis excellentia :  les préambules des actes des rois de France au XIV^e siècle, 1300-1380. Paris: École des chartes, 2014 (Mémoires et documents de l’École des chartes, 98), ci-après abrégé « Barret-Grévin ».

La finesse de ce travail, sa complétude et son existence même, preuve que les méthodes les plus austères de l’érudition ouvrent des vues riches et chatoyantes sur les pratiques intellectuelles et l’histoire culturelle.

Pour ce billet, c’est principalement la partie documentaire de l’ouvrage qui sera utilisée, afin de mesurer l’utilité des recherches et développements faits dans le projet HIMANIS, même si je tenterai, in fine, quelques remarques sur les préambules eux-mêmes.

Méthodologie : performance, précision, rappel et résultats

Après l’énorme travail d’indexation automatique, il faut évaluer la performance de l’indexation.

Continue reading The Royal Highness / L’altesse royale / regalis celsitudo : une thématique de préambule pour mesurer l’utilité d’HIMANIS →

As some of the readers will know, I am particularly interested in the city of Saint-Omer in Northern France. This is a good reason to test and search for the first time unknown occurrences of this city, its city officials and chapter officials in the registers of the French royal chancery.

As a matter of fact, the results are quite impressive…

In total, 173 occurrences are found for “audomarum” OR “audomari” or “audomaro” and 73 occurrences for “saint omer”. I noticed bypassing that “osmer” is also present in the registers, but not in our index (generally silently regularized to “omer”).
Continue reading Saint-Omer in the registers of the French royal chancery (99.6% precision!) →

The simple query of part of the protocol formula [ dei gratia francorum ] in the HIMANIS search engine return results that confirm what we already know about language used by the French Royal Chancery for recording acts.

http://prhlt-kws.prhlt.upv.es/himanis/index.php/ui/chapters/chancery?q=%5B+dei+gratia+francorum+%5D&t=50&feedback=1

Some warning.

1. The complete formula ([name of the king] dei gratia Francorum rex…) is often skip and replace by “[name of the king] etc.”
2. As the search engine is not yet lemmatized, distinction is made between “gratia” and “gracia”. To have more precise results, one can add the results of a second query [ dei gracia francorum ]
3. Some noise might also be introduced by the vidimus copy of an act within an act.

Nevertheless, as from the first register (JJ35) the French Royal Chancery used both Latin and French and that one prevailed over the other at different periods, all major transitions are outlined by this query.

Serge Lusignan, in his 2004 book La langue des rois au Moyen Âge, point out how langage used evolved. From his observations, we can explain the major breaks-up in the following graph that we made from our query (number of query results are in red in the graph; in blue are the total number of acts for each register):

1. JJ35-49: French is seldom used as language of registration by Philippe IV (5%)
2. French is a little more used by Philippe IV two elder sons: JJ50-52 Louis X (19%) ; JJ53-60: Philippe V (10%).
3. JJ53-65A: The French conquest begins slowly under his younger son, Charles IV (11% at the beginning; 26% at the end).
4. JJ65B-79: Major break-up appears during the reign of Philippe VI. No reason is known, but in October 1330 French overthrow Latin for around 80% of act are registered in French from this date.
5. JJ80-95: When Jean II become king (JJ80), Latin regain his place (2% of French only) until his capture. During the Regency of the Dolphin Charles (JJ84-95), French progressively take back his ground: from 32 % in 1358 it reaches 75% by the end of 1360. Back from his captivity, Latin is back again, but not with the past glory (21% French).
6. JJ96-117: When Charles V becomes king in 1364 what today could be named a “Language policy” is put in place. From now, language is determined by the nature of the act recorded: French for remission; Latin for ennoblement, legitimation, Amortization and almost everything Church related. As Remission count for 62% of the registered act during his reign, French became predominant from now on.

Good news! We travelled across the registers, looking for pilgrimages… A search for pilgrimages in the registers of the French royal chancery is a fantastic example of what HIMANIS is bringing to the historians and interested citizens.

Search for “pelerinage” or “pelerinages” with a confidence level as low as 0 gives 54 matches with an average confidence of 46.6. This means 54 registers and 96 pages corresponding to the search, and 99 spotted occurrences. We searched in French only and, here, the results are amazingly accurate: All spotted occurrences are correct! And they even include an occurrence in a black-and-white register, scanned from the microfilm… A very good information for further research.

The table below shows the list of occurrences with direct links. Of course, there are some artefacts and in one occurrence, we see a bizarre result: http://prhlt-kws.prhlt.upv.es/himanis/index.php/ui/show/chancery/259/149?q=pelerinage+%7C%7C+pelerinages&feedback=1 in which there are two (red) boxes around the word, which is “pelerignage” but has also been indexed as “pelerinage”. In this case, I have to confess that I have clicked on “correct” to confirm the reading, before realizing that it was, technically speaking, not a correct match 😉
Continue reading 99 pilgrimages / 99 “pelerinage(s)”: accuracy and historical research →

Last week, I was in Graz, talking about “Automated indexing of medieval manuscripts: the HIMANIS research project and the registers of the French royal chancery” at a Lunchtime Lecture of the Zentrum für Informationsmodellierung at the University of Graz.

For this lecture, I prepared a small slide which I had ever wanted to do: just give an idea of the coverage of the inventories at a glimpse. Well, it is easy and difficult at the same time.

The Virtual Reference Room of the National Archive indicates many inventories for the fonds JJ. Not fewer than 42!

But, if you simplify a bit, then, you have the systematic printed inventories from JJ 37 to JJ 79 (1300-1350), then you have handwritten unpublished inventories for the years 1350-1364 (JJ 80 to JJ 95), and, besides some particular text editions, esp. regarding the Poitou region, some geographic inventories for JJ 35 to JJ 266, covering the provinces of Gascogne, Blésois, Orléanais, Chartrain, Languedoc and Rouergue.
In the map above, there are of course some catches: I’ve avoided the question of the exact limits of the older provinces by using a map with actual departements. But I hope this gives a good idea of how much we have to discover in the Chancery registers 😀