Moving Manuscripts: French Books and English Identity during the Hundred Years’ War

This paper examines the migration of books and people across the English Channel during the later stages of the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), a dynastic conflict between England, France, and Burgundy over control of the French throne. I argue that English aristocrats used French literature to curate a hybrid Anglo-French identity in order to support their political claim to rule both France and England. This self-fashioning was achieved, in part, through the acquisition and circulation of French luxury objects, including French books. Starting in 1422, following a series of English victories, English aristocrats seized possession of hundreds of French books and brought them to England. The French royal library, held at the Louvre, was emptied and dispersed among English owners. Aristocrats in England personalized, displayed, and gifted these valuable cultural objects. They used the manuscripts to produce additional French copies and patronized translations of French texts into English.

One particularly striking example of this phenomenon of translatio is the Talbot-Shrewsbury Book, a deluxe French manuscript given to Margaret of Anjou in 1445 upon her arrival in England and marriage to Henry VI, King of England. The gifted book, like the union it celebrated, framed the English aristocracy, through text and image, as the rightful inheritors of French lands and French culture.

This paper explores how cultural identity can be used to bolster political hegemony. During the Hundred Years’ War, the English used a narrative of cultural inheritance to legitimize conquest, a strategy employed and refined in ensuing centuries of expansion.