The Italian Cultural Institute and the Marguerite-Bourgeoys Museum, on the occasion of the exhibition “Universal Jerusalem” (December 5 2018- May 192019) in collaboration with the Archivio Provinciale Aracoeli-Storico dei Frati Minori della Provincia di S. Bonaventura, the Pontificia Università Antonianum Rome, the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum Gerusalemme and the Centre d’études médiévales de l’Université de Montréal, is pleased to announce the conference “Questi sonno e viagi ke debbono fare li pelegrini ke vanno oltramare (…) e che può fare ciascuna persona stando nela casa sua’: pèlerinage, flânerie ou méditation?” by Gabriele Giannini.
Monday April 29 2019, 7:30pm
Marguerite-Bourgeoys Museum
400, rue Saint-Paul Est
Vieux-Montréal
Info 514 282-8670
The guides to the Holy Land translated from Latin or composed in French in the thirteenth century pose a major problem of interpretation which, of course, involves the distance that separates men from the twenty-first century from those of the Middle Ages, their respective perceptions and practices: What function should be attributed to these short and modest texts in vernacular prose which abound in the manuscripts of the Middle Ages? Should we give credit to their prescriptive tone and their ambition to guide the pilgrim on the roads of Palestine (itineraries, distances, sanctuaries, etc.)? Or the accumulation of evangelical episodes, the memory of which is aroused by this or that other sacred place or object, their free association and intense exploitation are the sign of a displacement of the function of these texts in the long and venerable tradition?
Gabriele Giannini trained and worked at the Universities of Bologna, Rome La Sapienza and Göttingen, before joining the University of Montreal, where he has been teaching Romance Philology since 2012. His interests – the diffusion of French literature in Italy in the Middle Ages, the apocryphal stories in langue d’oc, the texts emanating from the Latin East during the Crusades – all revolve around the materiality of the transmission of medieval texts, namely manuscripts. They also remain at the center of research devoted to these small texts in French, unpretentious, who want to be guides of the Holy Land for the pilgrims of the thirteenth century, but who also work wonderfully as levers of travel in the room.