Les exempla cisterciens du Moyen Âge, entre philologie et histoire

The Cisterciens started to create collections of exempla in the second half of the twelfth century. The exempla soon entered into the repertoire of the mendicant orders who exploited their didactic function. This is an initial analysis of a corpus focusing on the famous history of the Virgin who visits her monks during harvest. The variants of this exemplum help us understand the literary and historical nature of the exempla in the Cistercien world.