Reassessing Bourdelot-Bonnet’s first French History of Music (1715)
Myrna HERZOG
Published in Music in Middle Ages and Early Modernity
Keywords: 17th century, 18th century, Bonnet, Bourdelot, France, Gôuts Réunis, Historiography, History of Music.
This is an historiographical examination of the first History of Music published in France in 1715, written during a long span of time by three different authors. Histoire de la Musique et de ses effets depuis son origine jusqu’a present portrays the ideological war taking place in France in the late 17th and early 18th-century between defenders of the French and the Italian styles and proposes an union of the two – what would be later called Les Goûts Réunis (the united tastes) – as an esthetic solution to the conflict.
The Templars in France: Between History, Heritage, and Memory
Philippe JOSERAND
Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History
Keywords: France, Historiography, Memory, Myth, Templar Order, XIIth-XXIth Centuries.
A comprehensive scholarly study of the Templars in France has not been published yet. Yet their order, from the outset, was closely linked to the French present space: most brethren were born there, and the langue d’oïl rapidly stood as the official tongue of the institution. For two centuries, the Templars used the Capetian kingdom as the main operations base to act in the Latin East and to sustain their singular vocation merging prayer and warfare into the same religious move. After the trial which opened in 1307 on King Philip the Fair’s initiative, the Templar order, although suppressed, did not entirely disappear from the French landscape: some buildings remained and, even more, a myth took shape, from which an historiography gradually emerged. This scientific movement strengthened from the end of the twentieth century and it now allows to shed new light on the French Templar presence, and to question the generally accepted ideas in order to better understand a medieval reality, which is still fascinating, but often strangely evoked.
The Way to Heaven: religious instruction in the seventeenth century through Jesuit board games
Adrian SEVILLE
Published in Games from Antiquity to Baroque
Keywords: 17th century, Art History, Board game history, Emblematics, France, Jesuits, Missionaries in Canada, Missionaries in Turkey, Religious instruction.
During the 17th century, French Jesuits adapted the well-known jeu de l’oie (Game of the Goose) for the purposes of religious instruction in their foreign Missions. These games consisted of a series of religious emblems arranged to form a spiral track, the movement of tokens along this being determined by chance, subject to particular rules. The earliest of these games, the Jeu du Point au Point, is analysed in detail, giving historical background and explanation of the emblems and their significance. Two similar Jesuit games are surveyed and compared with other religious games of the period. It is evident that the visual image played a commanding role in Jesuit education.
