Using Expertise to Improve through a Medieval Dutch Miscellany

Summary Based on the representative example of a miscellany (ca. 1500) of assorted advice texts from the Dutch town of Deventer, at present British Library Sloane 345, this case study argues that many late medieval urbanites strove to become masters of ‘the good life’, which functioned as part of a habitus of ‘betterment’. Scrutinising the many surviving informatory repositories like this one reveals signs not only of a developing domesticity and an increasing ‘vernacularization of medical knowledge’ during this period but also of a strong didactic streak relating to a human inclination towards (self-)enhancement. The Deventer miscellany was a tool for facilitating a long-term, experience-based ‘culture of expertise’ that emerged in the fifteenth century and resurfaced in the Enlightenment, providing knowledge which helped people to decode the world around them, understand their individual lives in connection to societal issues and find a path towards achieving a fulfilling existence.