Making Sense of Unopened History Books

Abstract This study examines how closed books convey medieval historicity, focusing on the library of John, Count of Angoulême (1400–1467), documented in an inventory, with over seventy-five surviving codices. Offering a complement to François Hartog’s text-centric regimes of historicity, it argues that unopened historiographical manuscripts shape perceptions of the past through external features, specifically titles visible on the outside, independent of their contents. John’s library, housed at his castle in Cognac, categorized history via “landmarks” or “metaphorical keys,” predominantly personal names of authors or actors, anchoring chronicles, mirrors for princes, travelogues, and romances to individual figures. These labels displayed on spines, edges, or covers projected a broad, inclusive historicity encompassing factual and mythical narratives. In contrast, genealogies of French kings, titled to highlight familial succession, connected past and present, grounding John’s royal lineage in chronological continuity. The naming system, reflecting the count’s identity as a French royal prince, created a spectacle of closed books that imparted a sense of temporality on observers, shedding light on medieval practices of display over reading. By analyzing the inventory’s emphasis on external markers, this study reveals how unopened books shaped medieval historical consciousness.