Over a thousand pages long, comprising 75 chapters, 24 maps and tables, 56 academic authors and dozens of images--this is a quite extraordinary volume, and, amongst other things, a staggering editorial achievement. Florian Mazel is one of the most interesting medievalists writing today, whose works on nobility and the Church, the Gregorian Reform, “féodalités” (plural) and the episcopal invention of “territory” have been gaining considerable interest well beyond a francophone audience. [1] He is clearly also the hardest working and most persuasive of editors, given the wonderful breadth of scholars here amassed; too many alas to name each one individually, but a tremendous range of specialists, including various mid-career scholars as well as some eminent figures.
The contexts that prompt the production of such a “new history” of the Middle Ages are multiple, as Mazel sets out in the Introduction. One is the rise of “world history,” where colleagues of later periods would benefit from being reminded of the complexity of the medieval period, and might draw strength from an enlarged geography (the chapters here taking us somewhat beyond the western European focus more usually found in classic francophone conceptualisations). Another is the pressing need to refute far-right attempts to adopt “the middle ages” as some imagined bastion of white supremacy; the variegated nature of medieval societies, and the early presence and importance of Islam, are thus brought well to the fore. Developments within western medievalist academia also provide a prompt, particularly (Mazel argues) the collapse of various past paradigms that sought to characterize the period and its dynamics, such paradigms often produced specifically within influential earlier French scholarship. What this Nouvelle histoire thus presents is not only a fresh summing-up across an expanded geography, but a culminating moment in which the francophone medievalist profession gathers together its more recent reflections, and presents something of a “break” from its past inheritances.
The book is arranged into three broad sections, the first two divided chronologically, the third taking a broad thematic approach. The first two sections present us with two “middle ages,” the first (fifth to eleventh centuries) characterized as the leaving behind of the antique world, the second (eleventh to fifteenth centuries) as the coming of a new age. There is thus still a split, which one could trace back to Marc Bloch, between an “earlier” and “later” medieval period--“feudal society” in Bloch’s terms--though for Mazel and various of his peers, the division does not revolve around “the year 1000,” there are long continuities as well as profound changes, and for Mazel in particular the changing role of the Catholic Church plays a more key role. There is much to the content of each section which will be perfectly familiar to other medievalists, as one would expect, given the aim of the volume to present “the middle ages” to a wider educated audience. But it may be useful here to highlight some elements that go beyond default expectations, and to pull out a few emerging themes of interest.
In section one, it is notable firstly that the transition from antiquity to the early Middle Ages, and what kind of “transition” one imagines occurring--collapse, crisis, transformation, rupture--is immediately framed in terms of ongoing historiographical debates (“Le paysage historiographique s’en retrouve aujourd’hui assez fortement clivé,” 41). No easy framing narrative is allowed; we are reminded from the off that to talk of “the middle ages” is to talk of an interpretation about periodization and societal change, and that such interpretations may differ, because of individual temperament, wider social expectations, and the kind of evidence available and considered. It is also notable that the discussion in the Nouvelle histoire immediately embraces questions of social structure across hierarchies (asking, among other things, whether there might have been a “golden age” for the peasantry in the post-Roman period), and connects this swiftly with the ideas and cultural values drawn primarily from the ways in which Christian writers grappled with the inheritance of antiquity and the emergence of new forms of life. At the same time, in a chapter on “L’homme dans son environnement” (Jean-Pierre Devroey) we are reminded that for the early centuries after the end of the Roman empire, the written sources tend to tell us only about a very small, elite fragment of society; this to be contrasted with the greater possibilities offered by the emergence of legislative and administrative sources under the Carolingians. All of this, Devroey reminds us, must now also be set within the scientific evidence for changing climate across the period and geographical/archaeological evidence for rural settlement patterns, each varying of course depending on which part of Europe is under discussion.
Across section one, given the fact of the emergence of the Carolingian empire, the geography under discussion tends to focus on Francia and its neighbours. But this is not to the exclusion of all else: whilst the Nouvelle histoire does not attempt to embrace a fully “global middle ages” (the legitimacy of such a concept itself currently contested), the chapter which discusses early Christianities (“L’archipel des chrétientés premières,” Marie-Laure Derat and Stéphane Gioanni) focuses on Ethiopia and Georgia, as well as Ireland; the chapter on the emergence of Islam (“L’irruption de l’Islam, VIIe-Xe siècle,” Emmanuelle Tixier du Mesnil) includes brief discussion of the spread of the religion to central Asia and India, as well as focusing on the Mediterranean world; and another chapter brings central-eastern Europe into the frame (“L’horizon saxon, slave et hongrois,” Geneviève Bührer-Thierry).
When turning its attention to the Carolingian world, a number of key themes and emphases emergeacross various chapters. As with the post-Roman world, the challenge of the sources, particularly for our knowledge of rural non-elites, is constantly kept present--along with important ways in which recent interdisciplinary work has started to “reveal the invisible” (230), archaeological investigations playing a key role. The complex ideological role played by Christianity, and its shifting relationship with secular elites (a key theme in Mazel’s personal research) is a recurrent topic of discussion. And the importance of thinking not only in terms of western Europe but, at the very least, a wider Mediterranean world, is constantly explored.
Was this “a feudal society” asks Mazel (“Une société féodale? Xe-XIe siècle,” Florian Mazel) toward the end of Part I? Here, admittedly, the gaze does default more to a traditional western European frame, but the analysis is notably nuanced and presents one of the fundamental “breaks” from some earlier, influential, francophone paradigms. The Carolingian situation rested upon “a strong delegation of powers to regional aristocrats, in regard to a wide diversity of local situations” (246); there were factors that made the whole cohere (the Carolingian lineage, annual assemblies and legislation, the networks which bound the elites of the Church and the Empire together), but these began to “come undone” in the second half of the ninth century for a variety of reasons, drastically lessening the effective scope of royal action. At the same time, the autonomy and self-legitimacy of the regionally powerful--the counts, bishops and abbots--continued to be affirmed, but now tending (in different ways, in different regions) to encounter the complications of previously bestowed royal “privileges” enjoyed by certain towns, monasteries and so forth. More local elites--those who would style themselves lords and knights--already existed; what changed was the wider context within which they might seek to exercise their own more limited power, and assert their legitimacy and identity. One element in this was the process of local fortification begun at the end of the ninth century. But its continuation across the eleventh and twelfth suggests a rather different process than a short period of “feudal crisis,” and the dynamics of castle-building included existing elites (bishops among others, in some regions) rather than solely marking the emergence of a new social order. There is no good evidence to suppose an increase in violence in the tenth and eleventh centuries, no feudal “anarchy.” It is true that new forms of social and political “regulation” emerged, in terms of “les relations féodales” between lords and subjects, but these notably varied in precise form across different regions. The relation between a lord and vassal could include the bestowal of land in the form of a “fief” (though quite often land already held by the vassal receiving it), but might involve various other “goods” instead; land was important but was not the only dynamic. Whilst there would later (late twelfth/thirteenth century) be some greater homogenisation to this “féodo-vassalique” culture, the long period of its emergence was marked by considerable regional variation. Much of this analysis will be familiar to a specialist readership, but in the context of a general book, intended for a wider intellectual audience, it is an extremely notable move away from the nostrums of earlier French scholarship.
Section two begins with Mazel again, and one of his fundamental areas of research: the huge societal shift, as he sees it, brought about by the Gregorian reform, covered here across two chapters (“La réforme grégorienne: un tournant fondateur (milieu XIe-début XIIIe siècle),” “La réforme grégorienne: un nouvel ordre social et seigneurial (milieu XIe-XIIIe siècle)”). [2] Not only did the changes associated with the reform fundamentally separate the identities of “lay” and “clerical,” Mazel suggests, but it profoundly altered the relationship between the aristocracy and the foundations of the Church, with longstanding effects for all. Following this editorial lead, the increased power and domination of the Catholic Church is a major theme across Part II: its political influence, among and between the monarchies of western Europe, its troubled relationship with Byzantium and the Eastern Church, its growing moral hegemony over aspects of social life, and the concomitant rise of mechanisms of persecution (inquisition into heresy most acutely). At the same time however we are reminded, later in section two, of the frequent “fragility” of papal power (“Théocratie pontificale et renouvellements impériaux,” Valérie Theis; “Division de la papauté et dynamiques politiques de la Chrétienté latine, 1378-1517,” Émilie Rosenblieh).
But, as one would expect, other areas of medieval society are also brought into view, the approach always notably structural and thematic rather than narrative. A very thoughtful chapter usefully sketches the complex contours of environmental change across the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, not only in terms of climate but in regard to human exploitation of the landscape (“Une mutation environnementale?,” Sandrine Victor). We are reminded of the rise of towns, of the communal movement, of the “commercial revolution” (the concept treated here with some caution by Clément Lenoble), of the various “crises” of the fourteenth century, and of the surge of popular uprisings visible from the end of the thirteenth century onward. Once again, whilst keeping western Europe as the centre, there is considerable exploration beyond as well, to Hungary, Poland, Rus, the Indian ocean, north and west Africa; and a chapter on the “estrangement” of Byzantium from western Europe, and its fall to the Ottomans (“De Byzance aux Ottomans: un éloignement progressif du monde latin,” Raúl Estangüi Gómez).
Final chapters reflect on whether one can say that a “European” cultural identity was born in the middle ages (“Une Europe Culturelle?,” Étienne Anheim), and on what it means to say that the middle ages “ended” (“Fins du Moyen Age,” Patrick Boucheron). Both are notably thoughtful. Anheim notes that to consider such a question now has very different political implications than when it being mooted by Jacques Le Goff and others around 1980, and concludes that both “Europe” and the very notion of a shared “culture” must be considered as problematic concepts and not historical givens; whilst there were aspects (particularly Christian religious aspects) of culture that were widely shared across regions, across the middle ages, there were growing disjunctures and differences also. Boucheron reflects on the various past investments in the idea of the middle ages “ending,” proffers a knowing profusion of potential and varying dates, reminds us of the Le Goffian idea of a “long middle ages” stretching well beyond the fifteenth century, and, in conclusion, notes that the obviously interpretive question of periodization is still worth grappling with, as a means of challenging the easy assumptions of “modernity.”
As will hopefully be abundantly clear by now, the first two parts of La Nouvelle histoire are consistently analytical and thematically abundant. Nonetheless, the third and final section brings the thematic fully to the fore. It covers a range of topics, some quite specific such as “Alimentation” (Alban Gautier) and “Héraldique” (Laurent Hablot); others very broad and overlapping with some chapters from the preceding sections (“Communauté(s),” Laure Verdon; “Travail,” Philippe Bernardi and Michel Lauwers); still others more abstractly thematic, opening up areas little touched upon in the earlier chapters of the book (“Emotions,” Piroska Nagy; “Paysage,” Magali Watteaux; “Temps,” Jean-Claude Schmitt). A sparkling and wide-ranging essay by Gil Bartholeyns on “Things, objects, products” considers the cultural meaning and experience of material culture, including the rise of a certain kind of “consumer culture” as early as the thirteenth century for European elites; and reflects on how objects could stand in for present absences (“Choses, objets, produits”). In the brief but thoughtful “Médiévalisme” (Zrinka Stahuljak) the recurrent reflection on modern ideas of and investments in the middle ages is brought directly into view, and, in an accurate reflection of modern culture, her entry point is the world of computer gaming, where various direct and implicit imaginings of the medieval past are legion. In concert with Boucheron’s contribution, as mentioned above, she emphasizes the ideological work performed by the combination of periodisations (medieval, Renaissance, modernity) that continue to haunt all our attempts to frame ‘the past’ as the past.
This review is lengthy; and yet it touches only a portion of what is contained herein. For professional medievalists, La nouvelle histoire will contain much that is familiar – but much also that is new. It provides a very useful summation of recent historiographical perspectives, and in many chapters proffers insights and thoughts that will prompt the next waves of study. The book is an incredibly handsome object, lavishly illustrated, beautifully produced (and physically, as well as intellectually, weighty!). I shall return to it frequently in the coming years, and I strongly encourage colleagues to explore its riches for themselves.
--------
Notes:
1. Florian Mazel, La noblesse et l’église en Province, fin Xe-début XIVe siècle: L’exemple des familles d’Agoult-Simiane, de Baux et de Marseille (2002); Mazel, Féodalités, 888-1180 (2010); Mazel, L’évêque et le territoire. L’invention médiévale de l’espace (Ve-XIII siècle) (2016).
2. Mazel returns to the centrality of la réforme gregorienne in his “Conclusion” to the volume as a whole; see also his earlier editorial efforts and individual contribution to La réforme <<Grégorienne>> du Midi, Cahiers de Fanjeaux 48 (Toulouse: Privat, 2013).