![]() ![]() The most important results of the dialogues in hybrid forums are the exchange of knowledge and the discovery of shared concerns, leading to a transformation of all groups involved: Hybrid forums are intended to re-connect opposing stakeholders in a “dialogical space”:įorums because they are open spaces where groups can come together to discuss technical options involving the collective, hybrid because the groups involved and the spokespersons claiming to represent them are heterogeneous, including experts, politicians, technicians, and laypersons who consider themselves involved. The sociologist Michel Callon has recently proposed the concept of hybrid forums as a remedy for the distrust between different societal groups in present-day societies. 3 Therefore, in this article I intend to finetune Bourdieu’s theories of the social field by using Michel Callon’s concept of “hybrid forums” in order to approach the confraternity of the Puy Notre Dame and its use of metaphorical images. At times Bourdieu seems to conceptualise the field rather as a distinct and homogenous entity with relative autonomy, by representing it as a microcosm and a specific space of social relations between agents, with a clearly distinguishable interior and exterior. This process of conceptual and religious cross-fertilisation and even the intermingling of two fields does not fit naturally into Bourdieu’s ideas of the social field ( le champ), even if he sees its boundaries as being constantly negotiated and therefore variable. As a second consequence, the social field of the active laity could become imbued with religious meaning and even sacrality. As a consequence, the religious field enlarged its potential of semantic expressions to include objects and concepts related to production and commercial activities. However, a more complex dynamics was at play in this confraternity and in many similar organisations in late medieval northern France and the Low Countries: the specific metaphorical imagery used in some of their poetical creations reflects a profound mixing of the religious field with the social field of commerce and artisanal production work, the latter usually associated with the laity. The Amiens confraternity can very well be understood according to Bourdieu’s terminology as an alliance between ordained religious and the laity, which exerted a certain effect on the religious field. Despite their diverse backgrounds, on the miniature in the escritel, laymen and tonsured religious alike are all united together under the Virgin’s protective cloak. These annals show that the social composition of the confraternity was highly diverse: the members originated from both the clergy and the laity, the latter ranging from the socially higher classes to artisans who must have been only of moderate wealth. ![]() 2 The escritel also reports the names and occupations of the annually elected maîtres with their personal mottos, which would simultaneously serve as the prescribed verse for the annual poetry contest. The full-page opening miniature in the confraternity’s escritel, a manuscript memory book with the regulations of the confraternity started in 1452, shows its members united under the cloak of the Virgin. They did so in the highly demanding poetical form known as the chant royal, which entailed, for instance, that the same rhymes be repeated in each of the five stanzas ( coblas unisonans) and each stanza end with the same prescribed metaphorical and cryptic verse. 1 This confraternity’s most important activity was a yearly poetry competition in which its members competed for the best poem celebrating the Virgin. Several textual and iconographic witnesses survive of the religious poetry that was produced by the late medieval confraternity of the Puy Notre-Dame in Amiens, a town situated in northern France. ![]() Keywords: confraternities religious poetry devotional culture France rhetoric sacralization religious field ![]()
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