How the Goodman Read His Bible
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Bobbi Sutherland
Abstract
Though best known for its “cookbook” portion, the Menagier de Paris contains a wide miscellany of information. Written by a man for his fifteen-year-old wife, it teaches her to be a good wife in every sense of the word. It includes a treatise on the seven deadly sins and stories of good and bad women, many of which are drawn from the Bible. Recent scholarship has shown that contrary to long-standing assumptions, the Bible was widely known and read by the laity of the Middle Ages, especially in France and the Low Countries. The Menagier provides further support for these observations, as well as a fleshed-out example of how one member of the bourgeoisie interacted with the biblical text. Using the biblical text and commentaries, the author clearly interprets the church's teachings so as to fit his own lay context. He is unafraid to add to the biblical text in order to bring his characters to life or strengthen his points. The author of the Menagier is only one person, but he demonstrates the degree of devotion to and familiarity with the Bible that was possible for laymen of the late Middle Ages.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the Houghton and Beinecke libraries for their assistance and the opportunity to use their collections; I would especially like to thank the staff at Houghton library for providing me with material on very short notice. I am also very grateful to the anonymous readers of De Gruyter, Journal of the Bible and its Reception for their invaluable suggestions and advice. I thank Dordt College for helping to fund my research at Houghton and Beinecke. Finally, I am grateful to the colleagues at the University of Dayton and elsewhere who acted as sounding boards, offered suggestions, and read drafts.
Works Cited
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©2015 by De Gruyter
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Galatians 3:28 in Thomas Aquinas’ Lectures on the Pauline Letters: A Study in Thomistic Reception
- How the Goodman Read His Bible
- “I Was Exhausted as a Woman”: The Slippage of Virtue and Gender in the Testament of Job
- Stravinsky and U2 Fix Psalm 40
- After Beryl Smalley: Thirty Years of Medieval Exegesis, 1984–2013
- Book Review
- IDOLS OF NATIONS: Biblical Myth at the Origins of Capitalism
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Galatians 3:28 in Thomas Aquinas’ Lectures on the Pauline Letters: A Study in Thomistic Reception
- How the Goodman Read His Bible
- “I Was Exhausted as a Woman”: The Slippage of Virtue and Gender in the Testament of Job
- Stravinsky and U2 Fix Psalm 40
- After Beryl Smalley: Thirty Years of Medieval Exegesis, 1984–2013
- Book Review
- IDOLS OF NATIONS: Biblical Myth at the Origins of Capitalism
