From Clairvaux to Montpellier, 900 years of light
The university medical library is exhibiting one of its treasures: the manuscripts from Clairvaux Abbey preserved in Montpellier. This exhibition is also a journey in search of knowledge, from medieval copyists to the spirit of the Enlightenment.
In 2015, we celebrate its 900th anniversary. In 1115, its foundation by Saint Bernard enabled the Cistercian order to spread throughout Europe. The famous and prolific Clairvaux Abbey quickly became an intense spiritual and intellectual center, thanks in particular to its encyclopedic library, consisting of manuscripts copied and illuminated by the monks of the abbey.
Gathering knowledge
At the beginning ofthe 19th century, Gabriel Prunelle discovered and exploited this gold mine. Tasked with building a library for the Montpellier Faculty of Medicine, this bibliophile and scholar drew on the abbey's rich collections, which had been confiscated during the Revolution. Seven centuries apart, the abbots of Clairvaux and the Montpellier librarian pursued the same quest: to gather all existing knowledge.
In the meantime, the spirit of the Enlightenment had taken hold. Gabriel Prunelle believed that his students should be familiar with the best of all disciplines, not just medicine. He was part of a mission tasked with touring the "literary deposits" of France, which had been assembled during the revolutionary seizures, to select the works he considered essential.
He thus chose 72 manuscripts from the library of the famous Cistercian abbey, covering all disciplines, from religious books to medicine, philosophy, history, and science, reflecting the encyclopedic library he wanted to establish at the faculty of medicine. In total, he sent 1,000 manuscripts and 80,000 printed works to Montpellier, thus creating a rich and varied collection covering all fields of knowledge.
A virtual library and an exhibition
Today, on the initiative of the Grand Troyes Media Library, the 1,100 surviving manuscripts from the medieval library of Clairvaux have been digitized and are accessible to all online in the "Virtual Library of Clairvaux – 1472."
72 of these manuscripts are kept at the Montpellier Interuniversity Library (BIU). The University Medical Library, the conservation-restoration workshop, and the BIU digitization workshop worked closely together to complete the digitization process.
In Montpellier, a selection of these manuscripts, written between the 12th and 15th centuries, are on display in the exhibition "The Art of Knowledge." Among them is a12th-century "legendary," a jewel of a collection rarely shown to the public. The display cases also highlight the materials, methods, and different stages of manuscript production, shedding light on the conditions of knowledge production in the late Middle Ages.
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