Traité de la vanité des choses mondaines, 1471

Jean Barthélemy (fl. 1446-1460), Traité de la vanité des choses mondaines (Treatise on the Vanity of Worldly Things). The treatise begins with a short prologue that explains the circumstances of the text’s composition: “A la louange et honneur de dieu et contempnement des chouses terriennes, cy conmence vng petit traictie de la vanite des choses mondaines, fait lan mille iiiic lx a l’instance et honnourable et deuote religieuse seur Jehanne Girad du tres tresreligieulx [sic] couuent de l’umilite de Notre Dame de Longchamp par le plus petit et indigne des mineurs frere Jehan Bertelemy”, (For the praise and honor of God, and the disdain for earthly things, here begins a small treatise on the vanity of worldly things, made in the year 1460 at the request of the honorable and devout nun, sister Jeanne Girad of the very pious convent of the Humility of Our Lady of Longchamp, by the smallest and most unworthy of Franciscans, brother Jean Barthélemy).

No edition exists of the Traité or any of Barthélemy’s other works, which have never been printed. The Traité has been identified in only four other manuscripts besides this one, all dating to around the same time, in the 1460s and 1470s, shortly following the text’s composition. This manuscript dates to the same period (1471). The text itself is a representative example of late medieval Franciscan spirituality, tailored for a monastic female audience. Barthélemy is indebted to Francsican authors such as Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, reveres the Franciscan founding saints Francis and Clare, and upholds Franciscan ideals of poverty and prayer (Longpré, 1935, col. 1271). As a work in the (French) vernacular, the text would have been appropriate for the female audience of Poor Clares, less likely than their male Franciscan counterparts to be literate in Latin. Clarissan nuns, indeed, were traditionally under the spiritual direction and guidance of Franciscan friars, particularly in the form of sermons and treatises like this one, advocating the religious virtues of discipline, obedience, and the practice of devotional exercises. The Traité, therefore, has particular value as a witness to the approved spiritual diet for female religious in the second half of the fifteenth century, as well as to the continued importance of women as an audience for Franciscan spiritual writing.