Le corps, les rites, les rêves, le temps: Essais d'anthropologie médiévale

by Jean-Claude Schmitt

Ao longo do texto o leitor verá alguns artigos de natureza bem diferente para esta coletânea. Quase todos têm em comum o fato de responderem às solicitações externas, muitas vezes vindas do exterior, por ocasião de colóquios e mesas redondas onde foram discutidos. São proposições alimentadas de diálogo e às vezes de polêmica. Nesse sentido, esses textos são representativos da maneira pela qual o autor concebe e conduz suas pesquisas, em uma troca em que se atenuam os limites entre a exploração individual e a reflexão coletiva.

Genres: History

456 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2000

About the author

Jean-Claude Schmitt (born March 4, 1946 in Colmar) is a prominent French medievalist, the former student of Jacques Le Goff. He studies the socio-cultural aspects of medieval history in Western Europe and has made important contributions in his use of anthropological and art historical methods to interpret history. His most significant work has dealt with the relationships among elites and laymen in medieval life, particularly in the realm of religious culture, where he has focused on ideas and topics such as superstition, the occult and heresy in order to flesh out the differing world-views of the lay peasantry and the clerical elites who attempted to define religious practice. He has contributed numerous books, articles and encyclopedia entries on these and related topics. He has also written widely on the cult of saints, the idea of adolescence, visions and dreams, and preaching.

Among Schmitt's best known works translated in English are The Holy Greyhound (1983), about the strange cult of a holy dog in medieval France, and Ghosts in the Middle Ages (1998) about notions of death, the afterlife and paranormal visions in medieval culture. Both works are considered important examples of "historical anthropology," or the use of methods and approaches borrowed from anthropology and other social sciences to investigate the past. Schmitt has argued that this has helped correct for the tendency among medievalists in the past to focus on elites, political institutions and narrative history to the exclusion of the lower classes and their less well-documented experiences of life.

Schmitt is currently Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and directs the society of professional historians, Groupe d'Anthropologie Historique de l'Occident Médiéval.

Reviews

[Mathieu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dans ce recueil d'articles, Jean-Claude Schmitt définit l'anthropologie historique et les apports qu'elle permet à la compréhension du Moyen Age, époque qui paraît faussement familière mais qui est en fait très éloignée de nos mentalités.

Ainsi, dans un premier article, il aborde le christianisme médiéval à propos du quel il refuse le mot de "religion" dont le sens actuel est hérité des Lumières. Il préfère parler de rites (messes, prières, sacrements) et de mythes (la Bible) ainsi que d'un rapport au temps. Un des apports majeurs de cet article: aucun homme au Moyen Age ne dirait "je crois en Dieu" car ceci relève d'un individualisme dans la croyance qui n'existe tout simplement pas.

Jusqu'alors surtout utilisée par les hellénistes, lorsque l'anthropologie historique éclaire le Moyen Age, on découvre à quel point cette période est à la fois proche et éloignée de la nôtre: on comprend davantage les hommes et les femmes du Moyen Age d'autant qu'on réalise à quel point ils nous différents.

Un ouvrage majeur et indispensable à qui prétend parler du Moyen Age.