Popes, kings and other councils: the Middle Ages would be “ reformer ». While contemporary speeches are saturated with “ reform », A collective book questions the meaning and scarcity of the word in the West between the XIIIe and the XVe century.
While contemporary speeches are saturated by the word of “ reform “(Pension reform, vocational high school, active solidarity income, to stick to French news in recent months), Twelve historians and historians of the Middle Ages wonder, in a book coordinated by Marie Dejoux, on what it means to reform in the West between the XIIIe And XVe century.
Of the “ reformers ” everywhere
Since the XIXe century, Historiography has continued to tell the long and “ dark »Middle Ages, by detecting rupture times or, at least, reforming scansions: Carolingian reform of IXe century, Clunisian reform of the Xe century, Gregorian reform of XIe century, councils “ reformers ” of XVe century, etc.
Also celebrated the figures of reformers, popes (like Grégoire VIIwho gave his name to “ Gregorian moment “, Or innocent IIIwith the fourth Lateran council in 1215) to princes and kings, like Saint Louis, with his “ Large reformation order »From 1254 and its program Reformatio Regni.
In his History of civilization in EuropeFrançois Guizot does not describe, in 1828, how the papacy submits the church “ for the purpose of reform, progress, not for a stationary and retrograde purpose “, While a” such movement occurred in monasteries »» ? We can guess, in this desire to detect in the history of the Church a succession of reforms, the shadow of the reform with a large R and the blows carried by Luther to the Roman ecclesial institution.
Beyond the latter, many medieval institutional experiences have been envisaged in the prism of the reforming paradigm, without the term “ reform »Not being clearly defined and historicized. Now this obsession with reform says just as much, even more, on the political imagination of contemporary societies since the XIXe century only on medieval times.
Rather conservative than revolutionary
Since the XVIIIe A century, the word designated a radical change brought to an institution, aimed at improving its functioning. Heard in a progressive sense, it is inseparable from a conception of historical time, resulting from the Enlightenment, as a process tense towards progress within societies marked by the industrial revolution.
In the Middle Ages, on the other hand, reforming means above all to restore, re-formal, that is to say to restore in the primitive form thought by God before the fall. “” It is therefore neither get backwards towards a “golden age” (…), nor progress “, But renovating what has undergone the outrages of time and has corrupted (p. 12).
We can certainly find the idea of an improvement (Reformatio in Melius) to be brought in customary law or administrative, judicial and accounting practices, but it often consists in returning to a previous state. Middle Ages reformers are much more conservatives than revolutionaries !
To understand this change of meaning between the medieval period and today, the book invites a dive to the heart of medieval documents of a wide variety (theoretical treaties, legislative acts, charters, chronicles, notarial acts, etc.) in order to track down the words of the reform, in particular thanks to the tools of lexicometry and lexicography.
A rare term
That the reforming vocabulary designates in the Middle Ages ? How is it used and in what goals ? Guided by a common questionnaire (vocabulary of the reform, associated lexicon, types of sources, reform objects, etc.), the authors of Reformotio propose a vast panorama of the uses of the term in the various political regimes and the various European territories, from the crowns of Castile and Aragon to the English monarchy, passing through the Italian cities, the Dauphiné, the Empire and the Kingdom of France.
First observation, already drawn up by church historians, but confirmed here by historians of political powers: at the omnipresence of the reforming paradigm under the pen of historians responds the extreme rarity of the term in the documentation, before as after 1200.
So there is a question of reformotio during the Estates General of 1355-1358 or in the royal orders of XIVe–XVe centuries. When Robert Cazelle makes the government of the Marmousets, the advisers of Charles Vi (1380-1422), a time of reform of the administration, Amable Sablon du Corail shows that, if it is a question of “ mammoth By reducing the number of royal officers, the term of the reform is absent from the order of 1388.
Other terms prevail in Latin, French, English, Castilian and Italian to designate reforming actions and social and institutional reorganization times. The collective survey also shows how this lexicon, born in the fold of a universal church, then spread in political institutions, notably in the crown of Aragon and the kingdom of France, perhaps through pontifical legations in the South to XIIIe century.
Impossible revolution
In the times of conflict, the opponents of the powers were also able to claim the reformotio as a watchword. Returned against those who prevailed until then, the reformer lexicon then takes care of a subversive political force. For example, during the sling of the barons against the King of England Henri III in the years 1257-1268 ; When the King of France, Philippe le Bel, facing Pope Boniface VIIIhears himself to take care of the “ Reformation of the Kingdom and the Gallican Church »» ; Or, in the 1430s, when the Council of Basel puts the Pope Eugène in trial Iv For its action deemed anti-reformator.
THE XIVe–XVe centuries are well worked by “ a democratic push that (tries) to impose new forms of government ». About the Grande Jacquerie of 1358, Claude Gauvard wonders if this insurrection is not the sign of the reforming aspirations of a “ Expanded public opinion “(Consent to tax, request for monitoring the abuse of officers and advisers). She writes:
Doesn’t she sign the impossible transformation of reform into a revolution ? Finally, it is the force that silences the revolt born of these reforming desires. The same scenario was repeated in 1382, 1413 and 1418.
By pointing the gap between the ample historiographical use of the “ reform ” – Particularly in France – and the scarcity of the term in medieval documentation, this collective survey invites a healthy questioning of historian practices. If the reform may appear as a “ Stimulating reading key », The use of this lexicon must be rigorously questioned so that the reform does not become a concept screen, or even an incantatory formula.