Self-presentation and geographical origin at the fifteenth-century University of Paris: an analysis of manuscript decoration

ABSTRACT This article analyses the decorated prefatory statements in two fifteenth-century books of the proctors of the German natio at the University of Paris as part of the discussion on the relationship between academic mobility and identity construction in medieval Europe. The article argues that the decorated statements – a virtually unexplored source – functioned as acts of self-presentation and ‘public identities’ for the proctors. Then, it discusses the complex role of geographical origins and related political, linguistic and cultural factors in the articulation of identity in the Parisian scholarly community. The relevance of the analysis for the debates surrounding the idea of ‘national identity’ in medieval Europe is also addressed.

representative portion of the prefatory apparatus of the books by theme. This approach simultaneously allows us to focus on the specifics of each statement and to collocate them within a wider framework, to observe patterns and idiosyncrasies. Finally, the article builds on this evidence to argue that the decorated statements functioned as acts of self-presentation, as 'public identities', for the proctors, and it discusses the fundamental and complex role of geographical origintogether with the political and cultural aspects that came with itin the articulation of identity in the Parisian scholarly community. The analysis also addresses the debates surrounding the notion of 'national identity' in medieval Europe. nationes were in many cases agglomerations of scholars from across Europe. Other scholars have been more critical. Rainer Schwinges took a sceptical approach and wrote that 'nations were anything but nationally-minded constellations or even agents of national ideology', but rather 'organisations of convenience based on like interests'. 5 Hilde de Ridder-Symoens remarked instead that 'it is hard to say how far the nationes within a university were instrumental in forging a common identity and "nationalist" feeling, but clearly there was an esprit de corps among fellow-countrymen.' 6 Jacques Verger preferred to speak separately about the sense of 'national' (nationalis) belonging nurtured through the natio system, which 'was an important component of the scholars' understanding of themselves', and about the national sentiments expressed through the 'national antagonisms' existing even inside the same natio, which 'were not unique to [and had not originated in] the university world … but did not disappear with arrival at university', and which could result in violent clashes such as those between English and Scots or Swedes and Danes. 7 In Paris, national sentiments were also ostensibly expressed through devotional practice: Paul Perdrizet produced a detailed inventory of saints' feast days which were added to the official calendar of the English/German natio by the scholars themselves, and he concluded that it revealed the rise of a sentiment des nationalités. 8 Alternatively, sentiments of national identity could develop once already at university. Sven Stelling-Michaud suggested that prolonged contact between scholars from different cantons in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries played a crucial role in the fostering of Swiss nationalism. 9 Over time, as a consequence of wider developments in scholarship and on the premise that an emphasis on shared culture reflected the nature of a medieval community better than the formal civic and territorial dimension implied by the modern term 'national', the category of 'ethnic' identity, together with more local forms of belonging, was brought into the discussion too, despite the two categories often bleeding into one another in practice. 10  has reformulated the question 'as to whether the masters were more likely to identify with the various ethnic backgrounds under the umbrella of the whole corporate nation'. 11 Weeda also stressed how 'there were various overlapping entities with which the students could identify themselves', the nationes, colleges, and national or other kinds of groups. 12 On the other hand, 'identity' is a slippery concept. To borrow Andrew Brown's words, 'the historian seeking "identities" must chart a delicate course between a Scylla of reification and a Charybdis of vacuity.' 13 Previous approaches to identity can be summarised through an 'essentialist' position, closer to that of scholars such as Anthony Smith, and a 'constructivist' position, closer to those, albeit different in many regards, of Fredrik Barth, Benedict Anderson and Rogers Brubaker, which is now dominant in the academic debate. 14 The latter position portrays identity as constructed and flexible rather than intrinsic and static. More recently, Brubaker has developed this position further by deconstructing the notion of 'identity' itself. While recognising the performative quality of identity, Brubaker warned against its conceptualisation as a substantial entity and its uncritical use as a category of social analysis, favouring terms like 'identification' (a 'processual, active term, derived from a verb') and 'social location'. 15 This is relevant when seeking 'identities' in the medieval university, where the articulation of identity was intertwined with political, economic and personal strategies. For instance, what should we make of the description of Master Heinricus de Busco as Brabantine (Brabantinus) and as '[a man] raised in the Brabant since infancy, who has always lived and intends to live in the same place, and almost all of whose friends are from the Brabant' ('qui in Brabancia ab infancia enutritus est, semper ibidem morabatur et morari intendit, et fere omnes habet amicos suos Brabantinos'), on the particular occasion of an allocation of benefices to Brabantine scholars in Paris, from which he had initially been excluded? 16 The present article contributes to the discussion around the construction of forms of social identity based on geographical origin in the context of the scholarly community of the medieval University of Paris through the analysis of a particular sourcethe decorated prefatory statements in the books of the proctors of the German natio which survive for the second half of the fifteenth century, covering the years 1466-77 (Archives de l'Université de Paris, Register 7) and 1477-92 (Register 8). 17 The 'books of the proctors of the nationes' (libri procuratorum nationum) are accounts of everything that happened in the institutional, social and academic life of the organisations, recorded in chronological entries. As the name suggests, the books were compiled by the proctors: elected approximately every three months by and among the masters, the proctor enjoyed various ceremonial, disciplinary and sometimes deliberative functions as the highest-ranking official in a natio. 18 The entries in the books of the proctors of the Parisian nationes are conventionally organised under prefatory statements recording the election (electio) or the renewal of the mandate (continuatio) of the respective proctor. Initially, the statements were short and simple, as one might expect from an essentially practical, administrative document. Decorating the books, however, had become a common practice by the second half of the fifteenth century. In the two books under consideration here, the prefatory statements themselves are in fact often lengthy and detailed, reporting the name, surname or patronymic, and a range of information about the geographical origins of the given proctor, namely the country, region, diocese and city, town, or village of provenance, and related matters such as the name of the ruler of the land. 19 The pages containing the statements are decorated with crests and coats of arms, mottoes, poems, and other pictorial and textual elements which revolve around the geographical origins of the proctor, accompanying and complementing the statements. 20 More typical decorative elements like borders and doodles are present too. The decorations surrounding the prefatory statements were unequivocally the work of the proctors themselves: many are signed, and their personal and idiosyncratic character also strongly indicates that. Furthermore, it is worth drawing attention to their uneven quality: some are rudimentary, and others demonstrate familiarity with pictorial convention and the use of colour, which may imply a training in draughtsmanship. 21 Following the publication of the first five volumes of the Auctarium Chartularii Universitatis Parisiensis between the end of the nineteenth and the mid twentieth century, the medieval books of the proctors of the Parisian nationes have become the subject of extensive research. 22 Historiography has focused overwhelmingly on their formal textual content the years 1332-35 (Reg. 2), 1368-83 (Reg. 3), 1392-1406 (Reg. 4), 1406-25 (Reg. 5), 1425-52 and 1465-6 (Reg. 6), 1466-77 (Reg. 7), 1477-92 (Reg. 8), 1521-52 (Reg. 15) and 1698-1730 (Reg. 38). 18 On the office of the proctor at the medieval university, see Kibre, Nations, 65-74. 19 Paquet has shown that the references to the geographical origin of the scholars in university documentation were frequently unclear in nature, variably indicating the residence or the domicile of the scholar, where his parents lived, his place of birth, where his family originated from, and other points: Jacques Paquet, Les matricules universitaires (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), 65-7. Nonetheless, investigating the reality behind the stated origin of the proctors is beyond the scope of the article, which treats geographical origin itself as a matter of self-presentation. 20 Unfortunately, due to the lack of surviving evidence, it is impossible to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the prefatory statements of all the books of the proctors of the Parisian nationes and their evolution during the medieval period. However, it seems that the first decorations appeared around 1450 (e.g. BIS, AUP, Reg. 6, ff. 185v and 186r), and that, for no clear reason, they became increasingly common and started to refer to the origins of the proctors around 1466. The book of the proctors of the Picard natio, which is contemporary to our German books, shows decorations of this type too, but since the natio had a more local and homogeneous recruitment, mainly from the region of Picardy and the southern parts of the Low Countries, it is not included in the analysis. 21 There is nothing to suggest that the illuminators operating around the university did more than maybe helping with the most elaborate illustrations, whereas they evidently had a direct role in the realisation of some of the decorations in the sixteenth-century book of the proctors of the German natio, which have a recurring format and a more lavish character (e.g. BIS, AUP, Reg. 15, ff. 493r and 498v). 22 Bibliographically, as follows (and see note 16 above): Heinrich S. Denifle and Émile L.M. Chatelain, eds., Auctarium Chartularii Universitatis Parisiensis: Liber procuratorum nationis Anglicanae (Alemanniae) (1333-1466). 2 vols. (Paris: apud fratres Delalain, 1894-97); Charles Samaran and Émile A. van Moé, eds., Auctarium Chartularii however, historiography has to the detriment of their decorative apparatus. This neglect is partly the result of an editorial choice: the Auctarium does not reproduce the illustrations in the books, and the brief footnotes describing some of them are often imprecise. The largest illustrations have been reproduced in works on multiple themes, but for chiefly ornamental purposes and without proper analysis. 23 Charlotte Bauer and Antoine Destemberg are among the few historians to have engaged actively with the decorated statements in the books. Bauer's study looks at a selection of the largest illustrations in the surviving book of the Picard natio. 24 She argues that the illustrations repeat an iconography which evoked ceremonial aspects of the activity of the natio, and which was meant to give visual shape to its authority and tradition. The emphasis is on the corporate identity and ideology of the natio. 25 On the other hand, Destemberg views the decorated statements as expressions of the individuality of the proctors and argues that the statements reflected their attachment to their respective places of provenance. However, Destemberg does not analyse the individual statements in detail, since his discussion is part of a larger study of the concept of honour in the medieval university. 26 The plethora of decorated prefatory statements covering the pages of the books of the proctors under consideration here thus remain virtually unexplored, overlooking the very materiality of the sources and the experience that the proctors would have had of them.
Focusing on the decorated prefatory statements in the books of the proctors of the German natio has two key advantages. On the one hand, it gives us the opportunity to observe how a numerous and diverse group of individuals within the Parisian scholarly community engaged with their own geographical origins first-hand. Indeed, 129 different proctors succeeded one another in compiling the books. The largest groups by origin were the proctors from the county of Holland (36), the kingdom of Scotland (35) and the German-speaking part of the Holy Roman Empire (34). From a more narrow and precise perspective, 36 proctors came from the diocese of Utrecht. The next largest group was from the diocese of St Andrews -18. Then followed Constance -14; Glasgow -9 Wrocław -6; Strasbourg -5; Lausanne, Liège and Pragueeach with 4; Aberdeen, Augsburg, Basel and Meisseneach with 3; Poznań and Speyereach with 2; Åbo, Brechin, Canterbury, Dorpat, Dunkeld, Eichstätt, Galloway, Moray, Trier, Ross, Uppsala, Warmia (in its namesake province of Warmia, Poland) and Würzburgeach with one proctor. Twenty-five proctors left a portion of their pages blank, presumably for future but never completed decoration, and 17 presented themselves through simple statements. A total of 87 proctors (more than two in three), however, chose to introduce themselves with decorated statements. The practice was equally popular no matter where in Europe the proctors came from. This is a rare opportunity: the evidence used to seek 'identities' in the medieval university usually consists of scattered and fragmented anecdotes, such as that of Heinricus de Busco, which are hard to interpret by themselves.
On the other hand, focusing on the decorated prefatory statements gives us a productive way to build on recent developments in scholarship surrounding the notion of 'identity' itself without becoming intellectually paralysed by them. This entails shifting our attention towards the issue of self-presentation, or better self-(re)presentation. The decorated statements served no practical purpose in the manuscripts, except that of making it easier to find one's way around the numerous entries. Therefore, the present article argues that they should be considered significant as deliberate and careful acts of self-presentation on the part of the proctors. What information did the proctors choose to convey about themselves through the statements? Looking at a flamboyantly Gothic page in one of the books, Élisabeth Mornet claimed that it amounted 'to a kind of celebration of the ego which is based on visual representation and appearance more than on the display of [the proctor's] origins or titles (everybody knew them in the narrow world of the nation)'. 27 However, the 'celebration of the ego' is inextricably linked to the 'display of origins'. Through the decorated statements, the proctors articulated and defined certain 'identities' for themselves. In the majority of cases, these identities were based on their geographical origins. The statements had a remarkable social and symbolic significance. Indeed, they speak to how the proctors wished to leave a lasting impression of their temporary presence in the scholarly community. Albeit only accessible to the restricted group of the proctors and their closest associates, who were sometimes entrusted with them, the books of the proctors effectively constituted the collective historical memory of the natio in material form. Describing a famous image of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell in the fourteenth-century Luttrell Psalter (London, British Library, Additional MS 42130, f. 202v), Michael Camille encourages us to position ourselves with Geoffrey, outside of the manuscript, looking at his 'projected self-imagea portrait of the way he wanted the world to see him'. 28 Similarly, this article proposes that the decorated statements functioned as the 'public identities' of the proctors in the particular communicative framework of the two books of the proctors of the German natio and, by extension, of the Parisian scholarly community as a whole.

The celebration of the Holy Roman Empire
The social composition and internal dynamics of the German natio at the University of Paris underwent great changes in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As a result of the Hundred Years' War and the Western Schism, the number of English scholars declined, and the scholars from the German lands became the predominant group in the community. Consequently, the initially 'English' (Anglicanae) natio assumed a much more 'German' and 'imperial' corporate identity: in the 1440s, the natio officially changed its name to 'German' (Alemanniae or Germaniae), replaced St Edmund with Charlemagne as its patron saint, and adopted the imperial eagle as its own crest, to be displayed on material objects and in public ceremonies. 29 Therefore, it is not surprising to find reference to the Holy Roman Empire among the decorated prefatory statements in the two books under consideration. That on the prefatory page of Johannes Gaisser is the most remarkable ( Figure 2). Johannes, who came from the diocese of Augsburg, was elected to the office of proctor in December 1488. His statement features two armed figures adorning the initial letter 'E' of the word electio. The first figure, the one inside the letter, was evidently meant to represent Maximilian I, King of the Romans from 1486. The figure is crowned and bears a shield with the imperial double-headed eagle, and is also accompanied by the note 'Maximilian king of the Romans, the most illustrious caesar' (Maximilianus Romanorum rex cesar illustrissimus). The second figure, outside the letter, is identifiable as a Landsknecht soldier from his distinctive clothes and weapons, which include a feather hat and two swords of different length, and from the note 'Coerbuggher Lantzknecht', where the term coerbuggher suggests that the man was from the German town of Coburg. 30 The amount of detail in the illustration, paired with the fact that it contains the only representation of the German emperor in the two books, indicate that Johannes had put it on the page with a purpose in mind. This is likely to have been the celebration of the imperial victory in the Austrian-Hungarian War of 1477-88demonstrating how the the decorated prefatory statements could become a means for the proctors to engage with the political events happening outside the university, news of which arrived quickly and which were surely the subject of intense discussion in a community as 'international' as that of the Parisian Latin Quarter. 31 First, the official armistice was signed in 1488, the year of the proctor's election. Second, it was during this war, in 1486, that Maximilian first employed the mercenary force of the Landsknechte, soon to become the bulk of the imperial army. A third connection may be found in the four heads which are sketched around the letter 'E'. Paul Louisy generically describes the figures as 'some type of scholars' (des types d'écoliers). 32 This cannot be correct: one of them is visibly crowned. Instead, this article proposes that they represented real historical figures associated with the conflict. The head on the left side, between Maximilian and the Landsknecht, might very well be Emperor Frederick III, Maximilian's father; its crown looks like the one worn by the German emperors. 33 The identity of the three heads on the right side remains uncertain. It is difficult to imagine that they were meant to be identifiable through actual physical characteristics, and, for that matter, that the proctors would have even been familiar with the physical appearance of the political players of the time. The caricatural style, however, the caricatural style in which they were drawn, seems intended to demean them, to proclaim their separateness from Maximilian and Frederick visually, and, perhaps, to place them on the opposite side of the conflict. We may then conjecture that the two uncrowned heads were intended to be Matthias Corvinus and George of Poděbrady, king of Bohemia, who had supported Corvinus during the war. The sketch could have been a jibe at the fact that the two rulers were not of royal blood: George was the illegitimate son of a nobleman and Matthias Corvinus the son of a famed military and political figure. Their origin had notoriously served as the basis for opposition and mockery. But it could also point to the fact that Corvinus had been elected without a crown, only managing to buy the Holy Crown of Hungary back from Frederick, who had been holding it since 1441, for 80,000 florins six years after his election, in 1464, under the stipulation that it would return to the Habsburgs if he died without a legitimate heir. 34 We can imagine that these and other facts were discussed and known in the scholarly community. Lastly, the crowned head might represent Louis XI of France, who was in conflict with the Empire over the Burgundian succession at the time.

Kingdoms and counties
The majority of the decorated prefatory statements in the two books feature more or less elaborate assertions of belonging to specific sociopolitical and territorial units. This is clear from the decorated statements of the proctors who came from Scotland. Nineteen of the 35 proctors explicitly declared their connection to Scotland through the inclusion of expressions such as 'Scottish' (Scotus), 'from Scotland' (de or ex Scocia), 'born in Scotland' (in Scocia natus), 'coming from the kingdom of Scotland' (de regno Scocie oriundus) and 'originating from the kingdom of Scotland' (ex regno Scocie genitus) in their statements. 35 Elected in 1484, Michael Straton introduced himself as 'Scottish, from the diocese of St Andrews and the province of Albany, in the kingdom of Scotland under the king of the Scots' ('Scoti diocesis Sancti Andree et provincie Albanie in Scocie regno sub Scotorum rege'). 36 Notably, Scotland is often described as a 'kingdom' (regnum). Indeed, throughout the books, the proctors employed a precise and practical nomenclature ('kingdom', 'county, 'margriavate' and so forth) which reflected the political structures of contemporary Europe. This implies a familiarity with such nomenclature and a shared interest in describing the geopolitical reality beyond France accurately, for one's self and, undoubtedly, also to make a statement to the other proctors.
The prefatory pages of the proctors from Scotland contain numerous illustrations. On the occasion of his election in May 1492, Georgius Cant decorated two folio sides. One side presents the depiction of the gates to the city of Edinburgh described above (Figure 1). 37 The other side presents instead a nondescript male figure bearing a standard reading 'Long live the Scots' (Vivant Scoti). 38 However, the most interesting page is that of Johannes Gray, elected in February 1489, who introduced himself as 'from the diocese of Ross, in the kingdom of Scotland' (diocesis Rossensis in regno Scociae). 39 The page of the Scottish proctor comes immediately after that of the German proctor Johannes Gaisser, and its compositionthe figures of a king and a soldier, respectively inside and outside the initial letter 'E'is so similar that it must be viewed as an intentional juxtaposition. There are three main differences between the two illustrations. First, in the Scottish version the king bears a shield with the red lion of Scotland and is accompanied by the note 'king' (rex), which identifies him as James IV, king of Scotland from 1488. Second, the soldier wears a red cap as a reference to the red lion. Third, the Scottish version is devoid of caricatures, supporting the idea that they had been included in the first illustration for a purpose. 40 Overall, the illustration can be viewed as a Scottish appropriation and adaptation of the previous design, and as a response to the political propaganda it conveyed, perhaps fuelled by an antagonism of which no other trace is left in the documentation. The illustration serves as a reminder that each statement should be considered not only by itself, but also in dialogue with the rest of them. This is how the proctors would have experienced them.
The same trend can be recognised among the decorated statements of the proctors from the rest of Europe. Ingolphus and Johannes Olavi both introduced themselves as 'from the kingdom of Sweden' (de regno Sueciae). 41 Twelve of the 36 proctors from the diocese of Utrecht declared that they came from Holland -first part of the Burgundian Netherlands and then, from 1482, part of the Habsburg Netherlandsthrough expressions such as 'from Holland' (ex Hollandia), 'coming from the duchy of Holland' (oriundus ex ducatu Hollandiae) and 'born in the noble county of Holland' (in nobili comitatu Hollandiae natus). 42 Modern Switzerland was also an important recruitment area for the German natio. From the fourteenth century, the Swiss territories had been organised in a confederation of small independent states (cantons) within the 37 The image is noteworthy because depictions of late medieval towns in Britain are rare in comparison to those of towns in continental Europe. It is hard to tell whether it was supposed to be a realistic depiction; it is more likely that the image was a combination, drawn from memory, of the various posts and posterns of the King's Wall which had been constructed around the mid fifteenth century. 38  Holy Roman Empire, the Old Swiss Confederacy. The confederacy enjoyed imperial immediacy, a privileged status in German feudal law which made the cantons free from the authority of any local ruler and placed them under the direct jurisdiction of the German emperor. Six proctors asserted they belonged to Switzerland through expressions such as 'from Switzerland' (de Schvitia or Svitia) and 'from the province of Switzerland' (de Schvicie provincie). 43 Some qualified their claims. Elected in 1478, Petrus Kistler introduced himself as 'from Bern under the lord provost of Zofingen, in Switzerland' ('de Berna domini prepositi de Sophingen in Svitia'); the town of Zofingen had been conquered by the city-state of Bern in 1415. 44 The statements of the proctors who came from areas more directly in the orbit of the Holy Roman Empire were no different. The two proctors from Livonia (now Latvia and Estonia) and Prussia, which were part of the state of the Teutonic Order, were explicit: Ywanus Eppenschede wrote that he came 'from Tartu, in Livonia' (de Derpt in Livonia), and Simonis Doliatoris that he came 'from Olsztyn, in Prussia, in the diocese of Warmia' ('de Allensteyn in Prusia dyocesis Wormensis'). 45 Similarly, the statements of two of the four proctors from the diocese of Prague referred to the powerful imperial state of Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic) as well as to the Bohemian people themselves. Stephanus Martini employed the expression 'from the kingdom of the Bohemians' (ex Bohemorum regno) on both the occasion of his election in 1481 and his reelection in 1490. 46 Elected in 1487, Johannes Andreae wrote that he was 'from Bohemia' (de Bohemia) and then asked 'St Wenceslaus', namely Wenceslaw I, duke of Bohemia, the patron saint of Bohemia, to 'pray for us' (Sancte Wenceslae ora pro nobis). 47 The request is significant for two reasons. First, because it indicates that 'national' devotion coexisted with the cult of the patron saint Charlemagne in the German natio. St Wenceslaus was actually one of the five saints from Bohemia to be added to the official calendar of the natio (under 28 September), as Wencesla[us] du[x] Boemorum; the responsible scholar had also taken care to write down his name in Czech, as swataho Wezlawa. 48 Charlemagne, on the contrary, was never invoked by an individual scholar but only in official circumstances and by the whole community of the natio. Second, the request is significant because it reveals that Johannes conceived of himself as part of an 'us', a community of people which presumably consisted of the members of the Bohemian community in Paris and the Bohemian people as a whole, who were bound together by, amongst other things, the cult of St Wenceslaus.

Provinces
Regional belonging also features prominently in the two books, and especially in the decorated prefatory statements of the proctors from the German lands. 49 49 Of course, 'region' and 'regional' are modern categories, which did not belong to the vocabulary of medieval men. Here, the term is simply used as a tool for comparative analysis when talking about different kinds of administrative proctors tended in fact to adopt self-presentation strategies centred on regional provenance rather than the larger political entities of the kingdom of Germany or the Holy Roman Empire. This might have partly been a consequence of the strong 'German' and 'imperial' corporate identity which was already displayed by the natio to which they belonged. However, the scholars from the German lands were a very heterogeneous group, unlike, for instance, the Scots. It is possible that, although conscious of being part of a broader political entity, this did not hold a priority in the scale of their personal identifications, and that they preferred to identify themselves through their own region of origin. This is the case for many of the proctors from the region of Swabia, in south-west Germany, from 1488 at the core of the Swabian League, a defensive alliance of princes, prelates and imperial cities. Elected in October 1470, Nicolaus Peir explicitly pointed out that the city of Ulm, whence he came, was 'in Swabia' (in Suevia). 50 In 1480, Thomas Ruscher wrote that he came 'from Schwabish Gmund, in the province of Swabia' (de Gamundie Suevie provincie). 51 Eight years later, Johannes Gaisser too wrote that he came 'from the diocese of Augsburg under the rule of the Swabians' (de dominacione Suevorum diocesis Augustinensis). 52 Thomas Stahel and Johannes Renner included the same curious expression, 'coming from the joyful province of the Swabians' (oriund[us] de provincia Suevorum letabunda), in their statements, respectively from 1486 and 1488. 53 Jacobus Maetzler was first elected to the office of proctor in December 1490. On this occasion, he generously decorated two folio sides. The first side will be described later in the article. On the second, Jacobus presented himself as 'from Lindau in the diocese of Constance, in the German Swabian League [repeated twice, in Greek and Latin characters]' ('de Lindow diocesis Constantiensis ΔεδωMhNAKH σουεφρουμNωθε λHΓε alias alemanica Suevorum liga'); the use of the Greek characters could be a subtle expression of academic expertise. The choice of referring to the position of the city of Lindau in the Swabian League can be interpreted as an expression ofat least apparentpolitical affiliation and loyalty. This idea is supported by the scribble next to the reference to the League, 'would that be long-lived' (utinam das lang belib), which was written in a combination of Latin and German terms.
Paulus Hemmerlin came from the region of Alsace, on the west bank of the Upper Rhine in northern France. Elected in 1489, he first introduced himself as 'from Andlau in the diocese of Strasbourg, a town situated in the fecund province of the Alsatians' ('ex Andelo diocesis Argentinensis opido in fecunda Alsaticorum provincia situato'), and then as 'Alsatian, born under the rule of the rulers from Andlau' ('Alsatic [ vigorous prince, the Margrave Albrecht of Brandenburg' ('subditus strenuissimi principi Alberti de Brandenburg marchionis') at the beginning of his formal entries. 55 The reference is to Albrecht III Achilles of Brandenburg. The subsequent proctors from the diocese of Speyer, which was in the margraviate of Baden, might have taken inspiration. Elected in October 1472, Johannes Molitoris decorated the initial letter 'E' with both his family crest and the crest of the margrave of Baden, captioning the latter 'under the most illustrious prince margrave of Baden' ('sub illustrissimo principe marchione de Baden'). In January 1490, Georgius Wolff defined himself as 'from Baden in the diocese of Speyer, currently under the rule of the most illustrious prince Margrave Christopher' ('de Baden diocesis Spirensis sub dominio illustrissimi principis marchionis Cristofori tunc temporis gubernantis'). 56 This time the reference is to Christopher I of Baden, prince-elector from 1475, who had succeeded his father Charles I, prince-elector from 1453 to 1475. The proctors who came from a margraviate chose to use their prefatory statements and the surrounding decorations to articulate theiragain, at least apparentpolitical affiliation to a polity and also to its ruler. This could be linked to the fact that, as opposed to other German regions such as Alsace, which had been sold by Archduke Sigismund of Austria to Charles the Bold in 1469, and had later seen its upper portion passing under the control of Frederick III as part of the Habsburg demesne in 1477, the inhabitants of the margraviates found a recognisable and essentially stable authority figure in the margraves.

Cities and families
Sentiments of belonging could coexist at many different levels. Within the various kingdoms, counties and provinces, the proctors came from certain cities, towns, villages and families. The decorated prefatory statements often reflected these more local aspects of the geographical provenance of the given proctor. Alardus Ghemanni underlined his connection with the city of Gouda on no less than three occasions: in a standard on the page recording his election, which reads 'Long live Gouda' (Vivat Gouda); in a second standard in praise of the Dutch city, reading 'Goodbye, splendid Gouda! Golden is your honour and may you not perish without your wit!' ('Aurea Goudam vale! Fulvus honor tuus et absque sale non tuus et pereat'), at the bottom of the same page; and in a third standard, again reading Vivat Gouda, at the end of the first formal entry penned by the proctor, next to his signature. 57 Moreover, some of the statements were decorated with drawings of the crests of the cities of origin of the proctors. of his statement. 59 Additionally, he included the figure of a soldier clothed in the same white and blue colours and depicted with the type of helmet and halberd used by the Swiss soldiers at the time. 60 Even more often, the proctors chose to pair the crest of their city of origin with the crest of their own family. The scholars at the late medieval University of Paris came from a variety of different socio-economic backgrounds, ranging from princes of the blood and sons of the nobility, to the offspring of officers, merchants and rich artisans, and to youths who needed financial assistance to be able to attend. The scholarly community was not free of the hierarchies of contemporary society. 61 Social differences were made visible in a multiplicity of ways, including rank-specific privileges such as the right to bear weapons. 62 Armorial display in the books of the proctors was yet another way of expressing those differences, one which relied on crests and coats of arms as markers of social status and vehicles of information about geographical origin, kinship and ancestry, and political alliances. Of course, crests functioned as a symbolic language which only the educated could properly understand, and most of the scholars would not have been able to 'read' the arms of their colleagues. 63 Regardless, it would have created an immediate visual separation between the scholars who did have a crest to display and those who did not. Elected in June 1489, Georgius Kesselring decorated his statement with the crests of his family and of the Alsatian city of Colmar, Colmar's golden Morgenstern on a red and green background; the Morgenstern, a club covered with spikes, was said to have belonged to Hercules himself. 64 On the prefatory page of Nicolaus Peir we find the unfinished crests of the proctor's family and of the city of Ulm, two horizontal bands of black and white, with the note 'of the imperial city' (civitatis imperialis) as an expression of political affiliation. 65 Jacobus Maetzler too paired the crest of Lindau, which was a linden tree, with the crest of his own family (Figure 3). Among the vegetation at the centre of the same page, the imperial coat of arms and, at the top of the page, the remark 'long live the king of the Romans' (vivat Romanorum rex), also stand out. In this as in many other cases, in fact, a sense of loyalty to a broader political entity, the Holy Roman Empire, unproblematically coexists with a more local attachment to a city, Lindau, as well as to the Swabian League as mentioned earlier. Frequently, the proctors of higher social class opted to have their own family crests as the only decoration on their prefatory pages. For instance, Ewaldus Bolbericz, elected in May 1481, simply decorated his page with a colourful coat of arms The articulation of family belonging was decidedly valued among the scholars of the Parisian community. A particularly notable case is that of a scholar named Harbartus, Figure 3. The first in a set of prefatory pages (electio magistri … ) for the same proctor, Jacobus Maetzler, presenting a complex decorative apparatus which includes the drawing of a Hanseatic cog, accompanied by the comment 'a Rorschach boat wants to get going' ('Ein roschach loff schiff wil an weg'). From the book of the proctors of the German natio at the University of Paris, December 1490. Source: Paris, Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne, Archives de l'Université de Paris, Register 8, f. 196v. Image reproduced from NuBis, the bibliothèque numérique de la Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne, under Licence Ouverte / Open Licence.
who was elected to the office of proctor in October 1492. Harbartus introduced himself as 'from Weda, also going by Willem, born in Kampen in diocese of Utrecht' ('de Weda alias Willem ex Campis nat[us] diocesis Trajectensis'). 66 Then, he used the following page to elaborate on this introduction. First, Harbartus decorated the page with two large crests, presumably those of Weda and his family. Second, he wrote a short poem: In these verses, Harbartus celebrated his family and ancestry through the literary image of a tree with numerous branches. This is not fortuitous: tree imagery, going back to the Tree of Jesse in the Books of Isaiah and Matthew, is greatly suggestive when it comes to the representation of genealogical themes. In the Middle Ages, trees draped with crests were often used to visualise, preserve and publicise (usually noble or royal) family relationships, appearing in books such as chronicles and genealogies and in various elite and religious settings. 68 Here, the image of a tree is likewise being employed in order to memorialise a family, its connection to the land from which it originated, and its past. 69 The same attention to the paternal figure can be found on the prefatory page of Balduinus de Scoenhovia, elected in August 1492. About himself, Balduinus wrote that 'he was Dutch from Utrecht. Do you know his father? His name is Antonius' ('Hollandrinus erat e Trajecti presule rectus. Noscere vis patrem? Nomen est Anthonius'). 70 Harbartus and Balduinus memorialised their own fathers, as well as themselves, in the book of the proctors of the German natio. This would have surely been a powerful symbolic gesture for those scholars whose families did not have the financial means to record their genealogy formally.

Vernacular intrusions
It is also important to discuss the sporadic use of the vernacular languages of the proctors in the prefatory statements and the surrounding decorations in the two books of the proctors of the German natio, which were otherwise entirely in Latin. The medieval University of Paris was a distinctive linguistic space where Latin, the lingua franca of university education, coexisted with an array of vernacular languages and dialectal variants 66 BIS, AUP, Register 8, ff. 233v, 236r. 67 'Aspice ramiferum qui sustinet arma parentum Harbarti. / Nitidus de Weda viguit ortus / ex Campis nati, Wilsem de nomine patris. / Cujus ab hoc genitu transiit umbra viri. / Ergo qui petis hiis requiem felicibus umbris. / Viribus ex totis sis memor ipse patrum.' 68 For a review of the history and usage of the tree imagery, see Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, 'The Genesis of the Family Tree', I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 4 (1991): 105-29. 69 Tree imagery is not out of place in the university setting, because the proctors of higher social class would have certainly been familiar with what it represented. Cf. BIS, AUP, Register 9, the book of the proctors of the Picard natio, which features several representations of a tree with crests hanging from it (see e.g. ff. 11r and 91r). 70 BIS, AUP, Register 8, f. 229v. from across Europe. 71 Against this background, it is necessary to view the use of the vernaculars not as accidental or as a matter of effective communication, but as the result of a deliberate choice which carried a certain social meaning. The association between national identity, nationalism and language in the Middle Ages has been much discussed and put into perspective in different countries and contexts. 72 The majority of the scholars, however, would agree that language is a crucial element in the make-up of a common culture, and that a sense of belonging to a language community is often at the basis of a shared social identity. 73 They would also agree that language is an important marker of group membership and one of the characteristics on which a group relies in order to distinguish itself from others. This view finds support in sociolinguistic research, and in particular in the constructivist perspective on language and identity elaborated by Robert Le Page and Andrée Tabouret-Keller, who defined linguistic behaviour as 'a series of acts of identity in which people reveal both their personal identity and their search for social roles'. 74 The present article argues that the 'vernacular intrusions'mostly in medieval German variants 75in the books conveyed a particular aspect of the social identity of the proctors. Choosing the vernacular automatically signalled the given proctor as a German-speaking individual and as coming from a specific linguistic and cultural area in Europe. It defined how the proctor wanted to be perceived in the larger Latin-speaking community of the German natio. Moreover, the intrusions constituted a subtext which was meant to be properly understood solely by those scholars who shared the same geographical origins, and hence linguistic and cultural background. This is not only because of the language barrier, as the degree to which different languages and even dialectal variants were mutually intelligible in medieval Europe is questionable, but also because of the content of the intrusions itself. 76 Indeed, the intrusions often revolved around 71 However, evidence from numerous universities shows that speaking Latin, especially outside the classroom, was understandably a chore for many of the scholars. University documentation frequently alludes to the need to regulate the use of Latin. A statute from 1328 makes the ability of a petitioner to state his case before the rector in Latin, At the top of the page, Petrus had also included the comment 'Here is a good Swiss!' (Hie guot Schwitz!). This was presumably with reference to Georgius, to whom the first three verses of the composition, which were written in the vernacular too, were clearly addressed as a private gesture of good luck. The last verse, which was written in Latin and was thus intelligible to the whole scholarly community, introduced the issue of historical, or rather mythical, descent in the self-presentation of the two proctors. Petrus was presenting himself and Georgius as belonging to a specific community of people, united by the fact that they were the offspring of Helvetia or of the Helvetians, the Celtic people inhabiting the Swiss plateau in Roman times.
Before the beginning of his own entries, Georgius added some other verses. These are all written in Latin, and read: Brother follows brother. The younger follows the older. For the honour of the Swiss. May those who live in Switzerland not be troubled forever. As the mountains surround it, so the Lord surrounds his people, now and forever. 79 The verses added two further layers to the self-presentation of the two proctors. One revolves around blood and belonging to family, and it is conveyed in the first two verses. The other is about belonging to a specific community of people, the Swiss, who lived in the territory of Switzerland, and it is conveyed in the remaining verses. Through the expression In honore Schvitensium, Georgius advances the idea that the members of a community could bring honour to it by means of their achievements abroad: this seems to reflect a genuine pride in the Swiss community. On the other hand, the sentiment of sorrow that Georgius expresses at the sufferings that those who almost verbatim quote from Psalm 125:2, which echoes the prayer addressed to St Wenceslaus by Johannes Andreae. 80 A similar sentiment was conveyed by the vernacular scribble below the composition. This reads 'may God reward you with a good fur coat' (loin dir got un gúta pell): it was likely a local saying, a blessing addressed to the scholars who could understand it. Overall, the two poems greatly contribute towards the selfpresentation of the two proctors. To the eyes of the Parisian scholarly community, Petrus and Georgius are memorialised as brothers and as belonging to a specific community, the Swiss, who inhabited the same territories and shared the same descent as well as the same historical consciousness and hopes for the future. The use of the vernacular further characterised their self-presentation in a linguistic cultural sense.
The prefatory pages of Jacobus Maetzler include several vernacular intrusions. The bottom of the first of the two prefatory pages for the first election of the proctor features the drawing of a ship, which is identifiable as a Hanseatic cog, and its stylised passengers. This charming drawing is accompanied by the comment 'a Rorschach boat wants to get going' ('Ein roschach loff schiff wil an weg'), where a Laufschiff is a fast military boat (i.e. paro in Latin), and Rorschach a town on the opposite side of Lake Constance from the island town of Lindau, whence Johannes came (Figure 3). The entire decoration is a specific reference to the cultural heritage of the proctor, and it might have been intended as a divertissement in tribute to his upbringing in the Bodensee region.
The prefatory page recording the renewal of the mandate of the proctor features a couple of intrusions too. 81 This time, Jacobus Maetzler introduced himself as 'from Lindau in the diocese of Constance, and from the Stählerner Bund' ('de Lindow us dem stachlin bundt diocesis Constanciensis'). Written in a combination of Latin and German terms, this was an assertion of geographical origin and linguistic and cultural identity in and of itself. The Stählerner Bund, also called Stäheliner or Stächelin Bund, was a jurisdiction in the area of Elgg, Hofstetten and Schlatt bei Winterthur in Switzerland. 82 It is likely that Jacob had lived in Lindau before moving to Paris, but that he was originally from the Bund, a small rural area not far from Lake Constance. What is particularly remarkable, however, what is particularly remarkable is the faded comment which can still be spotted among the lines of the statement, a completely different kind of vernacular intrusion from the ones analysed above. The comment reads 'The Juppe-dog is harmful; I shit in the mouth of the Stächlin Bund' ('d(er) juppen hundt der ist nit gsund. ich schijs dem stechlin pund in mund'). The crude comment takes aim at two different aspects of the geographical origins and the self-presentation of the proctor. In the first half of the comment, the reference is to the Juppenburd, the 'Petticoat League'. This was the name derisively given to the League of St George, one of the members of the Swabian League, which had long been in conflict with the Old Swiss Confederacy. The name derived from the juppe, an arming doublet, a type of padded defensive tunic or jerkin which was commonly worn under armour in Swabia. 83 The term bund ('league') was swapped out for hund ('dog'), in a play on words. We should remember that, in the prefatory statement for his first election just a couple of folios before, Jacobus had underlined his connection to the Swabian League. The second half is instead a direct jibe at the Stählerner Bund. Because of the unknown identity of the author of the comment, it is impossible to know whether it was the consequence of a personal antipathy, political antagonism, or something else. Nonetheless, the comment demonstrates that the 'public identities' articulated in the books of the proctors were subject to a constant scrutiny on the part of the other proctors and scholars, who would often engage actively with them. Moreover, after the case of the caricatures on the prefatory page of Johannes Gaisser, it is additional evidence of how mockery could become a means for the proctors to engage with the political dynamics and tensions at the wider European level.

Conclusion
The proctors of the German natio at the medieval University of Paris were evidently bound up in the articulation of certain 'public identities' through the decorated prefatory statements that they left in the manuscripts under consideration. In the vast majority of cases, these 'identities' were based on the geographical origins of the proctors. But each proctor relied on different aspects of what having a particular geographical origin entailed in the articulation and definition of his identity, according to whatever information he wished to convey about himself and whatever further messages he wished to pass to his colleagues. This translated to widely different self-(re)presentation strategies. Johannes Andreae appealed to St Wenceslaus for the protection of the people of Bohemia, the community he had explicitly introduced himself as from. Harbartus employed the literary image of a tree with numerous branches which cast a long shadow to praise and memorialise his father, despite, or precisely because, nobody in the scholarly community would have ever heard of him. We can also recognise patterns in the self-representation strategies of certain groups, such as the tendency of the proctors from the kingdom of Germany to focus on the local dimension: it will be interesting to to situate them within a wider framework in the future. The sheer variety demonstrates the level of freedom which the proctors must have enjoyed in the decoration of the two manuscripts, as well as the multifaceted nature of the forms of social identity which were continuously being constructed in the context of the medieval university.
The present article proposes that such a marvellous decorative phenomenon was a reflection and a consequence of the circumstances in which the proctors found themselves. It goes without saying that membership of the German natio, and of the University of Paris as a whole, shaped the experience and the corporate identity of the proctors to a great extent. 84 However, the Parisian scholarly community was a distinctively 'international' social space. Scholars converged on Paris from across Europe. They held different political loyalties, spoke different languages and dialects, and had different cultural backgrounds. Geographical origin was the most visible and significant marker of identity in the scholarly community. At the same time, it was the single most important determinant across a variety of areas of the institutional, social and academic life of the scholars, from the division of the scholars into nationes, to the allocation of benefices as in the case of Heinricus de Busco. 85 Therefore, the proctors of the German natio articulated their identity in terms which would have been extremely socially significant in the Parisian scholarly community.
Of course, the articulation of identity through the decorated prefatory statements did not necessarily reflect a sincere and ardent identification on the part of the proctors of the German natio. A proctor's self-presentation was the result of a deliberate and careful choice made in a particular communicative situation. The choice surely depended on a combination of different strategies, strategies which the historian will never be able to fully recover, especially as we gain distance, chronologically speaking, from them. However, the conclusion still stands that the decorated statements constituted the 'public identities' of the proctors, and that they provide rare tangible evidence of how the proctors positioned themselves in the microcosm of 'identities' that were the German natio and, by extension, the Parisian scholarly community in the second half of the fifteenth century. Moreover, a 'constructivist' approach does not negate the fact that the definition of identity may very well have been genuinely meaningful to the proctors, as Holtzruty's idea indicates -that the members of a community could bring glory to it by means of their achievements abroad.
The analysis has obvious relevance for the debates surrounding the notion of 'national identity' in medieval Europe. Questions regarding the applicability of the notion to the Middle Ages have long been discussed, with many scholars claiming that nations and national identities are a modern phenomenon. 86 From a modern perspective, it is often thought that medieval rulers lacked the governmental organisation and communication opportunities which were necessary to weld their subject peoples into nations. It is also thought that the local particularism and regionalism of the medieval society worked against the development of sentiments of national identity, or at least against giving them a substantial priority in the scale of personal obligations and identifications. 87 However, over the past four decades academic debates have been characterised by a vocal defence of medieval ideas of national identity. 88 This defence was accompanied by an interest in avoiding teleological nationalism and, as a consequence, in investigating medieval 'national identity' on its own terms, recognising that it could take a multiplicity of forms according to the historical context. Scholars such as Susan Reynolds have argued that sentiments of national identity, based on a sense of common politics, language and culture, could also be generated at ground level. 89 In fact, too much attention has perhaps been given to the development of national identity as a top-down process and not enough to its development from the bottom upalthough this is partly because the evidence for the latter is necessarily more scattered and fragmented. 90 However, a top-down approach to identity construction has some fundamental limitations, one being that it usually only provides us with the perspective of a highly literate elite writing with a propagandistic purpose. Reynolds has also already suggested that the medieval nation should be viewed as 'the product of its members' belief that it exists', anticipating Benedict Anderson's idea of 'imagined community'. 91 The books of the proctors of the German natio are a fascinating lens through which to contribute to these debates. This is precisely because they give us the opportunity to reconstruct how a numerous and diverse group of individuals in the Parisian scholarly community engaged with their own 'national' identity and with other forms of identity based on geographical origin at ground level, from the bottom up, and in a foreign city. Although the evidence is still fragmented, we can observe the proctors presenting themselves as belonging to specific sociopolitical and territorial units and to named communities of people. At times, we can catch glimpses of them expressing their attachment to the territory where their community was based, as well as their political loyalty to its ruler and pride in his military successes. We catch glimpses of them using the language which was typically spoken by the members of their community. We also see them engaging with its cultural heritage, including devotional practice, historical consciousness and myths. The decorated statements in the two books demonstrate that the proctors of the German natio thought these communities to exist and to reflect a series of recognisable characteristics, and people to exist in relation to them, both outside and inside the Parisian scholarly community. Against this background, it is worth noting that the statements were not just 'a portrait of the way [the proctors] wanted the world to see [them]'. Through the statements, the proctors often tried to assert their community of origin in the midst of all the decorations which competed for the attention of the onlookers. This is most clearly evident from the 'competing' illustrations of Johannes Gaisser and Johannes Gray. Yet these were not 'national' identities. 92 Using such a terminology would not only conceal the full complexity of the forms of social identity which were constructed and articulated in the medieval university. Indeed, it would also be a disservice to the scholars, who themselves supplied us with plenty of alternative terms, notions and categories to use to talk about their experience.