加载中…【（法）福西耶：斧子与誓言——中世纪的日常生活】
(2014-04-24 14:27:08)
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In attempting to shake up
“certitudes,” my hope is to lead the
eventual reader to raise
questions about them, naturally leaving
open the possibility of
returning to them if they prove the better
choice. I am aware that my
proposed course has some weaknesses.
What is important is that the
being that I will attempt to describe
in his body, his soul, his
brain, and his environment has to be inserted
into a context, which is that
of my sources, or at least those
that I can master. I cannot
claim to describe the fellah of the age of
the pharaohs or the Tibetan
monk any more than I can evoke the
courtier at Versailles or the
miner in Germinal. It is only within
the Middle Ages that I feel
myself somewhat at home, although my
profession has of course led me
to frequent the Athenian hoplite
or the Reichshoffen cuirassier
for a short time. As it happens, the
period of the “Middle Ages” has
specific traits, as does any other
stage in the human adventure: I
cannot hide them, thus calming
the posthumous anger of Lucien
Febvre. What is more, we need
to agree about what was or were
the “Middle Ages,” an expression
invented for the use of the
university by Guizot or perhaps even by
Bossuet. Was this a segment of
time in which the economy and society
had certain distinct
traits—“feudalism,” as Marx would have
it? But, really, did people eat
“feudally”? Was it a time of triumphant
militant and generalized
Christianity? But can we say that
the epidemic known as the mal
des ardents was an effect of the
Gospel according to Saint John?
Enough of that. Such niggling
objections serve no purpose. My
documentation and most of the
scholarly works that I intend
to pillage or draw from concern the
period between Charlemagne and
Francis I; like all other scholars
and with the same debatable
arguments, I will even concentrate on
the period between the twelfth
century and the fourteenth century,
the very period targeted by the
“medieval” banquets and parades
that municipalities put on to
raise money. Still worse: I will choose
most of my examples from
France, northern France in particular,
because it is the area I know
best.
I haven’t quite finished with
my attempt to turn aside facile criticism:
the man about whom I will speak
is neither a knight nor a
monk; he is not a bishop or a
“great man,” neither is he a bourgeois,
a merchant, a lord, or a man of
letters. He is a man worried about
the rain and the wolf,
concerned about wine, his strongbox, the fetus,
fire, the axe, the neighbors,
sworn oaths, salvation—all those
things that people speak to us
about only occasionally or by preterition
and through the distorting
prism of political institutions,
social hierarchies, juridical
rules, or the precepts of faith. Thus no
economic exposé will be found
here, no chart of technical achievements,
no class struggle: just a poor
everyday man.
One last word: I have borrowed
almost everything from others,
and I do not cite them. But, as
is usually said in hastily prepared
acknowledgments, they will
recognize themselves. Here and there
I have added a thought or two
of my own, especially on the import
of what is “natural” and on the
“misery” of man. I take responsibility
for these, as well as for
everything summarized and all simplifications
and neglect of chronological or
geographical nuances that
Have I clearly stated my goals?
Now all I have to do is achievethem.
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