Two leaves from a Medieval breviary (prayer-book), c.1350-1400

The actual scripture quotations begin with blue and gold illuminated letters. Towards the end of each passage, there is a small red “R” that marks the “Response”. At the conclusion of the Response, the next lesson is announced. There are three lessons on these leaves. The first leaf begins with the word “Requiem” with the initial letter illuminated. The third lesson begins with the illuminated letter “M” on the word “Manus”. This passage is from the Book of Job, Chapter 10, verses 8-11 which reads: Your hands have formed me and fashioned me; will you then turn and destroy me? Oh, remember that you fashioned me from clay. Will you then bring me down to dust again? Did you not pour me out as milk, and thicken me like cheese? With skin and flesh you clothed me, with bones and sinews knit me together.

Tacitus' Germania and the Jesuit Relations: Intertextuality in the Transatlantic World of the Early Jesuits in New France.

The first Europeans who wrote about the Indigenous people of the newly discovered Americas, not only used medieval, but also classical literature as a tool of reference to describe 'otherness.' As true humanists, the French Jesuits who arrived in the New World were deeply influenced by their classical education and, as claimed by Grafton, reverted to ancient ethnographic texts, like Tacitus' Germania, to support their analyse of the Indigenous people they encountered. Books talk to books. Inspired by Germania, the early French Jesuits managed to convey to their readers a subtle critique of their own civilization, enhancing, like Tacitus, the virtuous aspect of the so-called barbarians they described while illustrating the corruption of their respective civilized worlds. This thesis suggests that the essence of Tacitus' work is definitively present in Pierre Biard's letters and his Relation. His testimonies illustrate the connection the early French Jesuits had with the humanist thought of their time.