Antoine Destemberg
Antoine Destemberg is Associate Professor in Medieval History at the University of Artois, researcher at the Centre de Recherche et d’Études – Histoire et Sociétés <http://crehs.univ-artois.fr/equipe/enseignant-e-s-chercheurs-euses-et-doctorant-e-s/antoine-destemberg>, and associate researcher at the Laboratoire de Médiévistique Occidentale de Paris (UMR 8589). He is also a member of the editorial board of the Revue historique (Paris, FR) and the Revista de História da Sociedade e da Cultura (Coimbra, PT).
His doctoral thesis defended at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne focused on the social imagination of Parisian scholars between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries and the strategies of honour they deployed to assert themselves as a community in the political and cultural landscape. This thesis was awarded the “Le Monde” prize for academic research (2011). Published with the title L'honneur des universitaires au Moyen Âge. Étude d'imaginaire sociale (Presses Universitaires de France, 2015), it also received the Lantier Prize of the french Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (2017).
His current research focuses on the history of medieval universities, the history of intellectual elites, and the thinking of social order in the late Middle Ages. He particularly works on a type of biblical manuscripts known as Bibles moralisées. These luxurious manuscripts were produced mainly in France and England during the 13th and 15th centuries. They are intended to deliver to a princely and royal readership a popularization of the biblical exegesis produced in the Parisian theological schools, as well as comments on political, social and cultural issues that are immediately relevant to them. In so doing, these scholars conveyed to their readers a vision of the social world and outlined a new moral sociology, in the specific context of the growing affirmation of the state in medieval Europe.
At the MFO, he is conducting a research project entitled The Oxford-Paris-London Moralised Bible (c. 1235): Digital Humanities for the Study of Latin Biblical Exegesis devoted to the automatic transcription by AI (Handwriting Text Recognition) of the text of a 13th century manuscript partially preserved in the Bodleian Library (Bodley 270b), and to the computational analysis of intertextuality applied to Latin biblical exegesis, establishing links between the text of the Moralised Bible and the great patristic and theological collections.
He is also leading a Collective Research Project (PRC) funded by the French National Research Agency (2024-2028), entitled SOCIOMA / “For a medieval sociology” and devoted to the classificatory thought and social nomenclatures between 12th and 15th centuries, to show that they are not merely descriptive, but performative intellectual tools, a repertoire of social forms available to the protagonists, and a ‘technology of power’. Adopting a comparative and transnational approach (England, France, Italy, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Iberian Peninsula), this research aims to mobilise the analytical tools of sociology and social anthropology, applied to the study of medieval documentary corpora: scholarly corpora of law, medicine and theology; practical texts from urban regulations and chronicles. It is part of the most recent historiography, observing the new ‘governmental rationalities’ that developed from the twelfth century onwards.
Last publications:
- [2024] « ‘A desire to see more clearly’: theological device and sociological innovation of scholars in the 13th-15th centuries », dans Innovation and Medieval Communities (1200-1500), ed. Nils Bock and Élodie Lecuppre-Desjardin, Turnhout, Brepols, coll. « Studies in European Urban History », to be published [Preprint available on HAL : https://hal.science/hal-04250193].
- [2024] « Création divine et naturalisation de l’ordre social aux XIIIe-XVe siècles : l’exégèse visuelle et textuelle de la Genèse dans les Bibles moralisées », dans Naturalisation and Legitimation of Power (1300-1600), ed. Éloïse Adde and Jonathan Dumont, Florence, Sismel – Edizioni del Galluzo, coll. « Micrologus’Library », to be published [Preprint available on HAL : https://univ-artois.hal.science/hal-04246978].
- [2022], « Le studium au miroir des Bibles moralisées. Exégèse morale et imaginaire social des maîtres parisiens (XIIIe-XVe siècle) », Revista de História da Sociedade e da Cultura, 22 (2022), p. 45-74. <https://doi.org/10.14195/1645-2259_22-1_2>
- [2021] « Révolution intellectuelle ou révolution des “intellectuels” ? Intellectuels organiques et société politique aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge », in Vecteurs de l’idéel et mutation des sociétés politiques, dir. Jean-Philippe Genet, Paris/Rome, Éditions de la Sorbonne/École française de Rome, p. 47-59. <https://doi.org/10.4000/books.psorbonne.107935>
- [2020] Atlas de la France médiévale. Hommes, pouvoirs et espaces, du Ve au XVe siècle, Paris, Autrement (2nd edition). <https://shs.cairn.info/atlas-de-la-france-medievale--9782746755925>
- [2020], « L’ordre du discours académique. Ritualité des échanges laudatifs dans les universités septentrionales (XIIIe-XVe siècle) », in Clémence Revest ed., Discours académique. L’éloquence solennelle entre scolastique et l’humanisme, Paris, Classique Garnier, p. 37-60. <https://doi.org/10.15122/isbn.978-2-406-09696-2.p.0037>
- [2020] « Jean Buridan, la frontière et la carte : un conflit de juridiction à l’université de Paris au milieu du XIVe siècle », in Les Espaces frontaliers en Europe de l’Antiquité au XVIe siècle. Actes du colloque international (Arras, 15-16 octobre 2014), ed. Marc Suttor, Arras, Artois Presses Université, p. 93-107. <https://doi.org/10.4000/books.apu.22480>
Full CV and publications: https://univ-artois.academia.edu/AntoineDESTEMBERG
