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A critical edition and the first English translation of the French play.

April 1542 saw a massacre of epic proportions in the Luberon, in southeastern France, of its Waldensian population, who had been peacefully living there after they settled in a few centuries before. This massacre foreshadowed the wars of religion, which tore apart the kingdom for almost forty years. The Tragédie du Sac de Cabrières is the only play devoted to these events. This is a critical edition and English translation of the French play. Three critical editions of the play have been published in 1927, 1928, and 1998, and this new edition complements the previous works. This is the first English translation of the play and makes it available to an international audience of scholars and students of the early modern period.

This edition “translates” the moment of the play's creation, the representation of the event, and its importance in the narrative of religious persecutions in sixteenth-century France. It explains how history is dramatized through the creation of the scenic story and scenic play of Cabrières. and how the specific retelling of the events of Cabrières makes this a tool of historical narration, thus allowing the audience to participate in the unfolding of history before their eyes. Therefore, they become part of history, because it is played before their eyes so that they can not only witness it but also propagate the glory of the martyrs for future generations. This is not only a translation and a work of literary scholarship, it is an analysis of the literary, political, and religious production of this period, and a multidisciplinary analysis of Waldensianism in southeastern France.

Johan Huizinga’s much-loved and much-contested Autumn of the Middle Ages, first published in 1919, encouraged an image of the Late French Middle Ages as a flamboyant but empty period of decline and nostalgia. Many studies, particularly literary studies, have challenged Huizinga’s perceptions of individual works or genres. Still, the vision of the Late French and Burgundian Middle Ages as a sad transitional phase between the High Middle Ages and the Renaissance persists. Yet, a series of exceptionally significant cultural developments mark the period.

The Waxing of the Middle Ages sets out to provide a rich, complex, and diverse study of these developments and to reassert that late medieval France is crucial in its own right. The collection argues for an approach that views the late medieval period not as an afterthought, or a blind spot, but as a period that is key in understanding the fluidity of time, traditions, culture, and history. Each essay explores some “cultural form,” to borrow Huizinga’s expression, to expose the false divide that has dominated modern scholarship.