The Studium in the mirror of the Bibles moralisées. Moral exegesis and social imaginary of the Parisian masters (13th-15th century)

Abstract

As looking at the urban Europe at the end of the Middle Ages as a laboratory of modern sociological thought, Parisian scholars are an efficient observatory, not only because they formed one of the new categories born in the urban world of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but also because they had intellectual tools useful for their self-promotion. Asserting their own social identity was also a part of a wider undertaking to articulate a structured and hierarchical socio-political order, which this Parisian masters intended to promote among the royal elites. The Bibles moralisées were an essential part of this process, providing an exegetical outreach of the God message and offering a living panorama of society to its princely readership. Social order is merged with moral order, and draws its justifications from the holy history experiences. In this world, doctores and scolares have a prominent place, for they are the guardians and dispensers of divine doctrine.