Books of Knowledge in Late Medieval Europe: Circulation and Reception of Popular Texts

0549237 - FLÚ 2022 RIV BE eng M - Část monografie knihy
Žůrek, Václav
Chess, Moral Principles, and Ancient Stories: The Success of Jacobus de Cessolis’s Liber de moribus and Other Classicising Works in Medieval Bohemia.
Books of Knowledge in Late Medieval Europe: Circulation and Reception of Popular Texts. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021 - (Cermanová, P.; Žůrek, V.), s. 59-83. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 52. ISBN 978-2-503-59463-7
Grant CEP: GA ČR(CZ) GA17-19808S
Institucionální podpora: RVO:67985955
Klíčová slova: Medieval manuscripts * chess * medieval bestseller * Jacobus de Cessolis * exempla * Kingdom of Bohemia
Obor OECD: History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.USML-EB.5.125787

This article deals with one of the most popular medieval lay work - Liber de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium written by Jacobus de Cessolis. This work could be read as an allegorical treatise explaining the functioning of the medieval society on the basis of the rules of the game of chess. Another possible way of reading this book, which was no less responsible for its reader’s success, see in it a text mediating the knowledge about ancient Rome and Greece. This collection retelling the ancient history through stories, tales and exempla found a significant spread in medieval Bohemia as well as other similar collections used to the moral education (John of Wales Breviloquium, Gesta Romanorum or Pseudo-Burley’s Liber de vita et moribus philosophorum). This article analyses the spread and common destiny of these works on the example of several manuscripts containing them together. It also focuses on the main channels of transmission of these classicizing works in Central Europe.
Trvalý link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0325251