The Birth of Europe - Buch · The Birth of Europe Jacques Le Goff Translated by Janet Lloyd LE GOFF...
Transcript of The Birth of Europe - Buch · The Birth of Europe Jacques Le Goff Translated by Janet Lloyd LE GOFF...
The Making of Europe
Series Editor: Jacques Le Goff
The Making of Europe series is the result of a unique collaboration between fiveEuropean publishers – Beck in Germany, Blackwell in Great Britain and theUnited States, Critica in Spain, Laterza in Italy and le Seuil in France. Eachbook will be published in all five languages. The scope of the series is broad,encompassing the history of ideas as well as of societies, nations, and states toproduce informative, readable, and provocative treatments of central themes inthe history of the European peoples and their cultures.
Also published in this series
The European City*Leonardo Benevolo
Women in European HistoryGisela Bock
The Rise of Western Christendom:Triumph and Diversity 200–1000 ad
Second editionPeter Brown
The European RenaissancePeter Burke
Europe and IslamFranco Cardini
The Search for the Perfect LanguageUmberto Eco
The Distorted Past: A Reinterpretation ofEuropeJosep Fontana
The European FamilyJack Goody
The Origins of European IndividualismAaron Gurevich
The EnlightenmentUlrich Im Hof
The Population of EuropeMassimo Livi Bacci
Europe and the Sea*Michel Mollat du Jourdin
The Culture of Food*Massimo Montanari
The First European Revolution,900–1200R. I. Moore
Religion and Society in Modern EuropeRene Remond
The Peasantry of Europe*Werner Rosener
The Birth of Modern SciencePaolo Rossi
States, Nations and NationalismHagen Schulze
European Revolutions 1492–1992Charles Tilly
* Title out of print
LE GOFF / Middle Ages and the Birth of Europe Final 5.10.2004 10:24am page ii
The Birth of Europe
Jacques Le Goff
Translated by Janet Lloyd
LE GOFF / Middle Ages and the Birth of Europe Final 5.10.2004 10:24am page iii
# 2005 by Jacques Le Goff
English translation # 2005 by Janet Lloyd
BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA
108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK
550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia
The right of Jacques Le Goff to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in
accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without
the prior permission of the publisher.
First published 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Le Goff, Jacques, 1924–
[Europe est-elle nee au moyen age. English]
The Birth of Europe / by Jacques Le Goff; translated by Janet Lloyd.
p. cm.—(The making of Europe)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-631-22888-8 (hardcover: alk. paper)
1. Middle Ages—History. 2. Civilization, Medieval. 3. Europe—History—476–1492.
I. Title. II. Series.
D117I42 2005
940.1—dc22
2004011509
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Set in 10 on 12.5pt Sabon
by Kolam Information Services Pvt. Ltd, Pondicherry, India
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom
by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry
policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary
chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board
used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards.
For further information on
Blackwell Publishing, visit our website:
www.blackwellpublishing.com
LE GOFF / Middle Ages and the Birth of Europe Final 5.10.2004 10:24am page iv
Contents
Series Editor’s Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiMaps xii
Introduction 1
Preludes: Before the Middle Ages 6
1 The Conception of Europe (Fourth to Eighth Centuries) 14
2 An Aborted Europe: The Carolingian World (Eighth to
Tenth Centuries) 29
3 A Dream of Europe and the Potential Europe of the
Year 1000 40
4 Feudal Europe (Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries) 49
5 The ‘‘Fine’’ Europe of Towns and Universities
(Thirteenth Century) 99
6 The Autumn of the Middle Ages or the Spring of a
New Age? 154
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Conclusion 194
Chronology 202A Selective Thematic Bibliography 211
Index 252
LE GOFF / Middle Ages and the Birth of Europe Final 1.10.2004 2:45am page vi
vi contents
Series Editor’s Preface
Europe is in the process of constructing itself. The hope that it holds out is
great. This will only be realized if Europe is mindful of its history, for aEurope without its history would be a sorry orphan. Today comes from
yesterday and tomorrow emerges out of the past. It is a past that should not
paralyze the present but help it to be faithful to its inheritance yet differentand innovative as it progresses. Our Europe, flanked by the Atlantic,
Asia and Africa, has existed for a very long time, marked out by its
geography and modeled by its history ever since the Greeks gave it thename that it has retained to the present day. The future must rest upon the
legacies which, ever since antiquity or even prehistory, have made Europe a
world of exceptional richness and extraordinary creativity, in both its unityand its diversity.
The Making of Europe series was generated by the initiative of fivepublishers, all with different nationalities and languages: Beck in Munich,
Blackwell in Oxford, Crıtica in Barcelona, Laterza in Rome, and le Seuil in
Paris. The aim of the series is to illuminate the construction of Europe,together with all the unforgettable trump cards that Europe holds, but
without concealing its inherited problems. In its pursuit of unity, the con-
tinent of Europe has survived bouts of internal dissension, conflict, division,and contradiction. The Making of Europe series does not seek to hide them.
Commitment to the European endeavor must accommodate a knowledge of
the entire past as well as a vision of the future. Hence the proactive title ofthe series. It does not yet seem the moment to write a synthetic history of
Europe. The essays that this series presents are works by the best historians
LE GOFF / Middle Ages and the Birth of Europe Final 1.10.2004 2:45am page ix
of the present day, some European, some not, some already well known,
some not. They will be tackling themes that are essential to the history of
Europe right across the board, in domains economic, political, social, reli-gious, and cultural; and they will be based not only on the long historio-
graphical tradition inherited from Herodotus but also on new ideas
elaborated in Europe that have deeply reinvigorated twentieth-century his-torical studies, particularly in the last few decades. These essays should be
accessible to a wide readership, for one of their prime objectives is clarity.
Our ambition is to provide at least partial replies to the major questionsposed to those engaged in the making of Europe both now and in the future:
‘‘Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going?’’
Jacques Le Goff
LE GOFF / Middle Ages and the Birth of Europe Final 1.10.2004 2:45am page x
x series editor’s preface
Acknowledgments
First I should like to thank the Editions du Seuil team who have worked
with great competence, intelligence, commitment, and flexibility in theproduction of this book: Nicole Gregoire, with whom collaboration
has been an exceptional pleasure, also Gregoire Monteil and Catherine
Rambaud.Special thanks go to the friends who read my book in manuscript so
attentively: Richard Figuier and my colleague and dear friend Jean-Claude
Schmitt, whose enlightened comments and advice were of the greatest value;and Jacques Berlioz , for his unfailing friendly support. I am also extremely
grateful to Patrick Gauthier-Dalche for his help with matters of space and
cartography, and to Pierre Mounet for all his valuable assistance with themedieval Germanic area.
LE GOFF / Middle Ages and the Birth of Europe Final 1.10.2004 2:45am page xi
Map
1T
he
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LE GOFF / Middle Ages and the Birth of Europe Final 1.10.2004 2:45am page xii
Note
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1997),
p.
116.
LE GOFF / Middle Ages and the Birth of Europe Final 1.10.2004 2:45am page xiii
Introduction
Every historical work, even those concerned with periods in the far distant
past, relates to the present. This book is directly relevant to the presentEuropean situation. I wrote it in 2002–3, between the moment when a
number of European states adopted a common currency and the point at
which the European Union expanded to admit several of the states of centraland eastern Europe. Furthermore, this book is published in the Making ofEurope series, in which five publishers in different languages are collabor-
ating in an effort to create a common cultural domain. The title of the seriesis in itself a clear enough indication of the determination of publishers and
authors alike to make the most of their respect for historical truth and the
impartiality of historians with a view to illuminating the circumstances inwhich the European community is being constructed.
The present essay lays no claim to erudition, nor is it intended to present
either a continuous history of the Middle Ages in Europe or a comprehen-sive, let alone a detailed, account of the principal aspects of this history.
Instead, it sets out to illustrate the thesis that it was in the Middle Ages
that Europe first appeared and took shape both as a reality and as arepresentation. This was the decisive time of the birth, infancy, and youth
of Europe, even though the people living in those medieval centuries never
dreamed of constructing a united Europe nor desired to do so. Only PopePius II (Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, pope from 1458 to 1464) possessed a
clear idea of Europe. In 1458 he produced a text entitled Europa, which he
followed up, in 1461, with another on Asia, thereby indicating the import-ance, even then, of the comparison and contrasts between Europe and Asia.
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