The Birth of Europe

LE GOFF / Middle Ages and the Birth of Europe Final 5.10.2004 10:24am page i

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

LE GOFF / Middle Ages and the Birth of Europe Final 1.10.2004 2:45am page v

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

For Bronislaw Geremek

LE GOFF / Middle Ages and the Birth of Europe Final 1.10.2004 2:45am page vii

LE GOFF / Middle Ages and the Birth of Europe Final 1.10.2004 2:45am page viii

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

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LE GOFF / Middle Ages and the Birth of Europe Final 1.10.2004 2:45am page xiii

LE GOFF / Middle Ages and the Birth of Europe Final 1.10.2004 2:45am page xiv

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.

LE GOFF / Middle Ages and the Birth of Europe Final 1.10.2004 2:49am page 1