Most people today think of the Middle Ages as a time when
cloistered monks wrote and read only in now-obscure languages. Of
course, Latin was the language of those who aspired to literacy,
and it was the language of the Church. But what many do not realize
is that by the thirteenth and fourteenth century (and certainly
well before Columbus discovered America in 1492), numerous books
became available in the everyday languages spoken "at the court, on
the street, and in the bedroom." This catalogue focuses on just
such manuscripts, written for people at diverse levels of society,
not only the privileged aristocracy, but doctors, artisans,
townspeople, women, the clergy, and the lay devout. The Middle
Classes imitated the nobility in commissioning vernacular
manuscripts. Texts of patriotic history and good manners and
courtly romance entered manorial households. Literacy moved away
from the Latin-based monopoly of the Church. It may be that the
owners were actually reading texts themselves, whereas a great
prince or king of an earlier generation would often have heard a
story read aloud. By the fourteenth century the mercantile classes
needed to read in order to conduct commerce, and it was usually in
their own languages. At the end of the Middle Ages probably most
people in towns had some experience of literacy. Conventional Latin
texts give a picture of a quite narrow intellectual elite, but the
vernacular encompassed everyone. For example, giving advice to
widows, a translator puts Saint Jerome's famous letters into French
in a unique copy probably for a high-born woman. She is pictured in
the book. Toiling in the Italian metal industry in towns,
metalworkers can follow instructions on minting gold and silver
coins in their own language. The manuscript is on paper in simple,
yet readable script. Fancifully dressed carnival revelers cavort
through the streets of medieval Nuremberg throwing fi reworks
amidst fl oats and even an occasional elephant; the German text
celebrates the sponsoring families of the event. The Founder and
President of Les Enluminures (and medievalist), Sandra Hindman
reminisces "I have worked on vernacular manuscripts all my life and
they are closest to my heart. Like the experience of reading a good
book today, vernacular manuscripts off er an adventure into an
unknown world that brings to life people, places, and events of
long ago."
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