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Note publique d'information : Read often, learn all that you can. Let sleep overcome you, the roll still in your
hands; when your head falls, let it be on the sacred page. - St Jerome, 384 AD With
these words, the Church Father Jerome exhorted the young Eustochium to find on the
sacred page the spiritual nourishment that would give her the strength to live a life
of chastity and to keep her monastic vows. His call to read does not stand alone.
Books and reading have always played a pivotal role in early and medieval Christianity,
often defined as ‘a religion of the book’. A second important stage in the development
of the ‘religion of the book’ can be attested in the late Middle Ages, when religious
reading was no longer the exclusive right of men and women living in solitude and
concentrating on prayer and meditation. Changes in the religious landscape and the
birth of new religious movements transformed the medieval town into a privileged area
of religious activity. Increasing literacy opened the door to a new and wider public
of lay readers. This seminal transformation in the late medieval cultural horizon
saw the growing importance of the vernacular, the cultural and religious emancipation
of the laity, and the increasing participation of lay people in religious life and
activities. This volume presents a new, interdisciplinary approach to religious reading
and reading techniques in a lay environment within late medieval textual, social,
and cultural transformations.
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