Human beings are emotional subjects because they face challenges in life by managing their emotions in accordance with the values of the society in which they live. In earlier times, such as the Middle Ages, humans lived emotionally different lives, not because their society was “primitive,” but rather because of the values around which each society was structured. That is why our analysis must take into consideration the experiences of its men and women, because they reflect the specific code of values assumed by that society in the search for unity, founded upon shared memory. It is no coincidence then that the historiographic revisions of the historical memory and the analysis of the life experiences have led historical science to pay attention to the men and women who experienced emotionally the course of history. Despite different interpretative approaches, from the eighteenth century onwards studies concerning medieval society have paid attention to the emotive nature of medieval men and women. Research that focuses on the emotional experience of human beings will help us to understand what the men and women of the Middle Ages were really like.
1 The Historiographic Tradition
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the triumph of the bourgeoisie stigmatised the Middle Ages. After all, the disruptive nature of a revolution like the one that began in Paris in 1789 was visualised as a break with the medieval tradition. Feudalism was officially abolished in August 17931 with a sense of liberation that was immediately projected onto Voltaire’s memory. The thinker had died on the eve of the revolution, but then, in 1791 he was given a place
Contempt for the Middle Ages came at a huge cost in terms of the loss of documentary and monumental heritage. As early as 1793, Henri Grégoire warned that there was a common public heritage that had to be preserved and integrated into collective memory.4 This is the path that led the Guizot government under Louis Philippe to create the post of Inspector of Historic Monuments in 1830, first filled by Ludovic Vitet and then, Prosper Mérimée. An appreciation for the architecture and works of art created in the Middle Ages, one that was distanced from their original ideological meaning spread from this attitude. This approach is what, in different ways, would be accepted simultaneously in European countries and included in their legislation, with varied fortune.5 Romanticism had already encouraged a new appreciation for landscapes and romantic ruins6 and shown admiration for the ideals attributed to Christian knights, as Chateaubriand pointed out.7 In Europe at that time, universalist models derived from enlightened thought were set aside and, in contrast, national authorities instead gradually imposed a political model based on the State-nation understood in an ethnographic sense, as a ‘nation-génie’.8 In order to foster some consistency, the historical roots of a supposed common national identity based in the past, especially in the Middle Ages, in each European country.9 This supposed shared national history was anchored
Inquiry into the emotional perspective of medieval men and women was not unknown in the nineteenth century. On the contrary, the emotional values attributed to the Middle Ages, especially the chivalrous code of values, religious fervour and the bonds of feudal solidarity not only permeated literature15 and art,16 but also influenced thinkers as varied as Karl Marx, who valued the paternalism of feudalism,17 or Wilhelm Dilthey, who highlighted the era’s mysticism.18 All this together shows that, in the nineteenth century, the Middle Ages were perceived as a historical period with their own emotiveness.
The possible subjectivism inherent in these idealistic approaches is contrasted with the emergence of positivism at the end of the nineteenth century.22 Anchoring the history in the document turns the historian into a kind of judge, because he or she has to choose which figures and events are worthy of being told. In any case, the documents place the roots of history in human beings; they are the protagonists, even when they can only be sensed behind the fiscal pressures, seigneurial demands or working practices. Thus, basing history on the document also allows widely differing varied readings, while shining light on individuals affected by the historical events.
Two works were published at the beginning and the end of the second decade of the twentieth century (respectively, 1911 and 1919) that, from different perspectives, sought to understand medieval society by investigating the emotionality that permeates culture, seeing this as the backbone of society. I refer to the contributions by Henry Osborn Taylor23 and Johan Huizinga,24 two books whose fates were very different, as the former, after enjoying various reprints in the first third of the century, has since been unfairly marginalised,
In 1929, the Spanish philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset, stated that “we live under the brutal rule of the masses,” noting a dominance of the crowds (aglomeraciones) in which it was necessary to ask “who rules the world?”25 Aldous Huxley responded in 1936 by drawing attention to the fact that the equilibrium, between the set of population that apparently decides its own fate and the elites who hold the reins of power (both political and economic), is balanced by propaganda. Propaganda does not encourage rational thinking but rather appeals to their emotions, the primary stimuli of the population. Feelings, like fear, continue to mobilise living beings, whether human or animal.26 The ideologies consolidated from the third decade of the twentieth century invoked grand ideals, such as homeland or an egalitarian society, but sought to garner popular support through emotional appeals. However, these same ideologies required people to dilute themselves within the whole of the so-called ideal society, because the individual in himself or herself is unimportant; what is important is the supreme entity, that is, the society, the political party, the nation or the state. The idealistic philosophical approach inherent in all totalitarian ideologies from the first half of the twentieth century interpreted the human being as a part of the social whole. That is how this higher collective body, called the ideal state or society, fully justified its political behaviour and, if necessary, the sacrifice of individuals.27
Political evolution seems to accentuate this path. The evil protagonist of Graham Green’s novel, The Third Man, published in 1950, tries to justify himself by echoing the generalisation of this situation: Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don’t. Why should we?28 All sociology—from its emergence with Émile Durkheim, and continuing with Max Weber’s rethinking and the later structuralist concerns about detecting the infrastructure of each social system—agreed with the statement by Juan Francisco Marsal that,
This is the context in which Lucien Febvre, writing in 1941—when history was being experienced under the invocation of emotional adhesions and through the pain of many humans—called for linking sensitivity and history in order “to reconstitute the emotional life of the past” in his article published in the journal Annales, so often cited by later historiography.30 By combining the rigour of the documentary base, with a contextualisation based on knowledge of the values around which the society under study was built and a historical approach that does not ignore the sensibilities of each of the people involved, these three ideas together became an integrative and recommended path for those wishing to undertake research into earlier societies. This is how the Annales school emerged, founded on the so-called history of mentalities, which sought to go in depth into the fundamental and emotional axes of human beings. The perspectives of authors like Duby, Ariès, Vovelle, Delumeau, Mandrou or Le Roy Ladurie, among others, are varied, but they all delve into the values that governed human behaviour in the period and scope studied. Their perspectives have familiarised the historiography with such terms as culture, imaginary, ideology, the unconscious or forms of consciousness. In any case, it is clear that the history closest to the real past is that which seeks knowledge of the men and women of the period studied. This is because this approach leads us to understand what guided them in aspects that earlier researchers could have considered insignificant, beginning with valuing the daily life of all members of society.31 Peter Burke pointed out that in doing so, “the territory of the historian [expanded] to unexpected areas of human behaviour and to social groups neglected by traditional historians.”32 In reality, these are places where light needs to be shed to grasp the societies studied fully. It is not a matter of increasing the number of social strata to be studied—to avoid excluding certain sectors of the population—but rather of finding a
This approach sees the study of the past as the actions of men and women whose interactions generate society. That is why historical research delves into the interconnections between people. Changes within the discipline of philosophy have also contributed to a renewal of perspectives. Foucault’s warnings about the traps of power33 and Derrida’s distrust of the texts that historicism presented as a guide, while at the same time warning about incorporating ‘the difference’ in the analysis,34 forced us to rethink how history should approach the subject of its research.35 The past is always made up of emotive humans, and the incorporation of new perspectives, either such emerging fields as environmental history36 or a more balanced view that includes other beings, like animals,37 does not alter, but rather highlights even more, the emotional traits that make up the human being.
At the same time, these approaches also encouraged us to look at the relationships established by the subjects studied. Both the philosophy of history and ethics38 invited researchers to look at the course of history not as the construction of a particular teleology but as the analysis of the relationships between human beings in each historical period. Thus, the study of societies based on the analysis of the connectivity between their members involves integrating the transversality of perspectives and leads to talking about individuals and assessing the effects of the sensitivity inherent in their relations.39
With all this behind us, the historiography in the early twenty-first century is mature enough to grasp that medieval society was made up of emotional subjects who acted collectively.40 It is necessary to emphasise the collective sense of the human being in the Middle Ages, because at that time a person was always seen as belonging to a group, thus included into circles of solidarity and identity that could be intertwined or overlap. These groups could be family,
On the other hand, the dramatism of the twentieth century, with so many conflicts in different parts of the world, with confrontations not only between armies but also societies either in a state of total war or that have subjected individuals to the omnipotent and arbitrary behaviour of state powers, has increased the perception that historical events affect humans in the depths of their identity and in the way they perform their emotionality.46 It is history as pain. When political and social history are filled with pain, this conjunction brings views of our past and present closer together.47 The historian can find himself or herself faced with the dilemma about how to write about trauma.48 A historical investigation under these parameters forces us to consider pain and death as a fate that conditions our lives, according to Teo Ruiz: “We
Writing history under these parameters of the uncertainties of life requires valuing emotion, but also forces us to fit the memory of the past into our current society.
2 Managing the History Experienced: Memory and History
The last third of the twentieth century witnessed the emergence of an obligation to remember, based precisely on history as anguish for the many silenced victims. Massacres and cruel ideological confrontations have accompanied all humankind’s progress through history,50 although it is true that the combination of ideology and technical means in the twentieth century has enabled a greater capacity to exterminate.51 Moreover, the twentieth century gave birth to a truly global information network.52 Access to information has not given the population real access to the management of power, but rather to participation in the circulation of opinion on a global scale.53 In this way, the characteristics of identity and social cohesion most widely accepted among the people incorporate a certain memory, one which strengthens the link between history, experience and emotion. Historical accounts of recent painful events refer to social treatment very close to individual behaviour, where emotions, procedural memories and trauma are intermixed.54 Not only is history expected to judge the past, but history itself is judged. From this position,
Memory as a social practice fulfils two goals. First, memory is a reparation for the silenced victims, generally doubly victims: for the unjust actions that mistreated them or took their lives, and often for the later official accounts that have tried to ignore them. It is necessary to reconstruct the historical narrative to reincorporate these victims into society to stabilise a historically objective account of past events.60 The connection between the historical past and the present feeds a specific model of social cohesion. However, in the opposite
Memory alone will not achieve the desired social cohesion; more important still, it will damage the historical account and all related elements, such as heritage. In the early decades of the twenty-first century, when the Afghan Taliban destroyed the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan and people in Western Europe and the United States of America removed statues of historical figures that had hitherto decorated streets, they were clearly demonstrating a change in the memory with which society wanted to mirror itself. However, at the same time, it is evident that they were reliving the ravages suffered by the heritage in the years following the French Revolution and after the subsequent liberal revolutions in Europe. This is why we should also expect to see a resurgence in appreciation for the value of heritage. The management of monuments began not because of what they meant ideologically nor what values people projected upon them, but because monuments are like artistic objects and referents of a historical past that should not be forgotten but rather integrated into the research and the narrative of the history of society. In this way, each item should be displayed where it might have greater sense in a ‘vital landscape’ in terms of the values and emotional evocations of each society.61
Is a society so based on memory socially viable? “Without at least the option of forgetting, we would be wounded monsters, unforgiving and unforgiven … and, assuming that we have been paying attention, inconsolable,” David Rieff concluded on writing “In Praise of Forgetting.”62 Various people have testified that they suffer from an excessive burden of memory weighing on their shoulders. In his delightful play, Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt portrays a character who experiences his Jewish identity as a painful burden of memory (“To be Jewish is simply to remember. A bad
The recovery and study of memory through this path requires integrating the emotional experience of human beings into historical analysis. The social
3 Emotiveness and Experience
As Reinhart Koselleck highlights, historians share much with other social researchers, but what most clearly distinguishes them is that the subject of their study involves temporal experience: “if we, the historians, want to develop a genuine theory that is to be distinct from the theories of the social sciences in general, it obviously has to be a theory that makes it possible to accommodate the changes in temporal experience.”72 Indeed, experiences reflect human beings who feel, in one sense or another. Michel de Certeau called for studying “the practices” precisely to reach the true reality. To do so, he adapted the “wander lines” mapped and popularised by Fernand Deligny in his work with autistic children.73 As François Dosse explained, “De Certeau resumed what Deligny called ‘The Wander Lines’, that is the paths traced outside the paths travelled by autistic children, solitary itineraries, efficient wanders that cut the path of adults.”74 Thus, the “practices” refer to specific facts that provide an unusual perspective, based on “the inner experience,” which allows the development of a fresh perspective.
These approaches, with a strong epistemological content, link easily to the above-mentioned incorporation of the everyday path into historical research,
In this context, Joan W. Scott claims that the past must be studied through “historising ‘experience’.” Putting human experience at the centre of the analysis requires a review of perspectives. The source used to know the past must be the subject of specific questioning, because it is necessary first to investigate its use and the circumstances of its creation and management to respond to the central point: how the reality of the subject of study has been experienced. This becomes the starting point that enables the reality experienced by the men and women of the period under study to be reached: “when experience is taken as the origin of knowledge, the vision of the individual subject (the person who had the experience or the historian who recounts it) becomes the bedrock of evidence on which explanation is built.”78
This way, a specific history of experiences can be defended, because history is, at the end, a reconstruction of the lives of the men and women who preceded us. Over recent decades, various initiatives have been undertaken in this sense by different research groups. For instance, two examples far removed from each other can be mentioned. In 2018 in Finland, the University of Tampere promoted the Centre of Excellence in History of Experiences, financed by the Finnish National Research Council, in order to delve into such concepts as lived religion, the lived nation, and the lived Welfare State.79 The following year at the University of Lleida in Spain, the research project Power experienced in the Late Middle Ages was launched with financing from the Spanish ministry of research (pid2019-104085gb-I00). This was aimed at enquiring into the experience of power in late-medieval society, both by those who wielded it and those subjected to it. This research project was the natural continuation of an earlier project between 2016 and 2019 that studied emotion: Expression,
The connection between emotion and experience has deep roots, as Keith Oatley states when noting that since the nineteenth century, the study of emotions has adopted two pillars: culture and experience.81 Indeed, in 1985 Peter and Carol Stearns proposed the term “emotionology” to cover “the collective emotional standards of a society,” while contrasting this with “the emotional experiences of individuals or groups.”82 They understood the concept “emotional experience” as intertwining a strong cognitive and introspective capacity with the cultural standards of the time studied.83 Similarly, since then, various initiatives have focussed research on delimiting and conceptualising the elements that constitute emotional experiences within different fields and perspectives.84 In the end, what really motivates human beings, and often sticks in their memories, is the experience of an instant. As Joseph Ratzinger has written, “there are times that should not pass. What you achieve there should never end. That it passes yet it is only the experience of a moment, therein lies the real melancholy of the human experience.”85
4 An Approach to the Experience of Emotion in the Middle Ages and the Evidence of Explicit Management Thereof
In the Middle Ages, the term “experience” was very common and usually associated with memory. What we remember happening becomes the template for decision-making. That is the origin of an oft-repeated expression: “experience
These examples show that the men and women of the Middle Ages had various reasons to scrutinize and invoke specific experiences. From the start, they perceived their surroundings and built the framework of their lives through memory and the evocation of specific events, above all those events worthy of mention, experienced personally or by others and that remained in the memory. This is very clear in the mechanism used to remember time, based not on a sequence of years but on experiences worthy of remembrance. These were
In 1357, when King Peter the Ceremonious explained to his uncle, Prince Peter, how he was preparing to face the recent Castilian invasion, he hoped to model his approach on dynastic memory, mentioning how each of his predecessors (his great grandfather, Peter the Great, his grandfather, James ii, and his father, Alfonso the Benign) had faced similar events.97 It is clear that this explanation was part of the Crown’s discourse of affirmation based on the continuity of the dynasty, which is why it pursued a specific memory,98 but it also demonstrates a reasoning based on the analysis of specific events, facts worthy of memory which, after all, were one’s own and other’s experiences. In short, the Crown drew on life and models of life as a sum of experiences deserving to be recalled.
Going to the church we found all the people on the streets, some here, others there, and all of them feeling huge pleasure because of seeing us, which is why they were crying and showing so great reverence that they touched the ground with their elbows. They said: ‘Lord, don’t forget us!’ And we went right to the church. In the church all the people cried, and we also cried with them, as well as all our entourage that went to the church with us.105
You should always have a cheerful face. This does not mean so much laughing but a kindly expression, because too much laughing, too much speaking and moving the eyes and head too much are reasons why the prince is scorned. The opposite behaviour leads the prince to be loved, because this is a sign of wisdom, which adding a composed joy show him as an amiable prince.108
This advice was fully coherent with the Christological model: Jesus Christ’s face always appeared serene, not sad but thoughtful, without laughing ostentatiously.109 These models of emotional behaviour were suitable for all society.
The expression of sentiments was part of the reality of a studied and interested game of political strategies in the fifteenth century. In this context, attempts by municipal governments to force the whole population to participate in ceremonies designed to express grief for the death of the sovereign, and then the care taken in writing detailed reports about these displays of emotion to send to the new sovereign, as done in the major Catalan towns and cities, was part of these strategies.115 Late-medieval power was a game of emotional experiences, played according to political interests. Communication between rulers and the ruled was at the centre, and full of emotional messages. Depending on the circumstances, the monarch, like other lords, would choose between “producing terror”116 or showing that his was a “soft lordship.”117 Governing through fear and attracting the love of the lord were strategies adapted depending on which was calculated to be more effective. These were not rhetorical resources, because the messages were transmitted through gestures. To pressure the municipal government of Vic in 1366, the king not only threatened the local magistrates explicitly with death but also had gallows built in the main square
As physical representations of power, gallows provided a means of emotional communication between rulers and the ruled, whether it was between lords and their subjects, or municipal councillors and townspeople. Similarly, the ideological guidance provided by Christianity, was carried out by transmitting the religious message emotively. In no other historical period did preachers enjoy such prominence and popular acceptance – “perhaps never had so many people based their prestige on the power of seduction of their words as in this time!”120—, precisely because religion was at the centre of social behaviour and the transmission of codes of behaviour, not through intellectual reasoning but rather blunt emotional reaction. Language, expressions and even liturgy were centred almost exclusively on gestures and expressions of emotion—that included suffering—experienced and shared.121
The shared nature of these experiences exacerbated the effects on society as a whole. As stated, in the Middle Ages, human beings were rarely alone. They were part of multiple groups within society, beginning with the family and then continuing into other circles of collective solidarity, such as the faction, feudal ties or the municipal collective, and they could even share a wider common identity through the concept of nation.122 When the death penalty was applied and, with it, the rupture of the social fabric that so displeased God was repaired, popular participation was required to visualise how society as a whole participated in the satisfaction of recuperating the lost order and shared in the indignation towards those who had dared to break it. As a whole, the people jeered as the accused passed through the streets and suffered the torture meted out.123 In this way, people acted in group solidarity, as an emotional community sharing the traits with which it identified.124 In this concatenation
Humans interrelate at a given time and in a specific place, anthropomorphising the landscape. History can thus be likened to cartography, where everything is a matter of scale. From a certain distance, we can explain the Middle Ages according to their structures, and describe the main features of the economy, institutions, cultural forms and social structure. But, as the scale widens and approaches the living space, we will appreciate, without any contradiction, that the structural supports equate to specific people who preceded us, endowed with names and feelings, who shared emotional experiences according to a code of values commonly accepted at the time, and derived from a specific adaptation to the Christian ideology adopted to regulate society.
This may seem obvious, but it may be worth noting that, when studying the past, what one finds is people who shared, emotionally, vital experiences. Surely it should not be necessary to state this, because it is too obvious amongst almost all historians that these people were not mere data in a database, but rather human beings not very different from us, yet it is also good to remember it.
John Markoff, The Abolition of Feudalism: Peasants, Lords and Legislators in the French Revolution (University Park, 1996), pp. 516–559.
“Aux grands homes la patrie reconnaissante.” Alexia Lebeurre, Le Panthéon. Temple de la nation (Paris, undated), pp. 20–21; Alain Garrigou, “Panthéon, on y entre, on en sort,” Le Monde diplomatique 68/812 (November 2021), 22.
Henri Grégoire, Rapport sur la nécessité et les moyens d’anéantir le patois, et d’universaliser l’usage de la langue française (Paris, 1794), p. 2.
Joseph L. Sax, “Heritage preservation as a public duty: the Abbé Grégoire and the origins of an idea,” Michigan Law Review 88/5 (1990), 1142–62.
For example: Joan Ganau Casas, La protección de los monumentos arquitectónicos en España y Cataluña 1844–1936: legislacion, organización, inventario (Lleida, 1988), pp. 11–29.
Núria Perpinyà, Ruins, Nostalgia and Ugliness. Five Romantic Perceptions of the Middle Ages. And a spoonful of ‘Game of Thrones’ and Avant-garde Oddity (Berlin, 2014), pp. 15–95.
François René de Chateaubriand, The Beauties of Christianity (London, 1813).
Patrick Cabanel, La question nationale au xixe siècle (Paris, 1997), pp. 13–14.
Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations. The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton-Oxford, 2002), pp. 37–40.
Anne-Marie Thiesse, La création des identités nationales. Europe xviiie–xixe siècle (Paris, 2001), pp. 23–235.
José Puiggarí, Monografia histórica e iconográfica del traje (Barcelona, 1886); Albert Charles Auguste Racinet, Le coutume historique, 6 vols. (Paris, 1888); José Puiggarí, Estudio de indumentaria española (Barcelona, 1890).
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonnée de l’Architecture française, 9 vols. (Paris, 1856–1869); Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire Raisonnée du Mobilier Français de l’époque carlovingienne à la Renaissance, 6 vols. (Paris, 1868–1875); Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Histoire de l’habitation humaine depuis les temps préhistoriques jusqu’à nos jours (Paris, 1875).
Paul Lacroix, Le Moyen Âge et la Renaissance. Histoire et description des moeurs et usages, du commerce et de l’industrie, des sciences, des arts, des littéeratures et des beaux-arts, 5 vols. (Paris, 1847–1851).
Flocel Sabaté, “Emotions, Feelings and Middle Ages,” in Defining and Perceiving Feelings in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Flocel Sabaté (Leiden-Boston, forthcoming).
Among others: Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (Barcelona, 1982); Ramon López Soler, Los bandos de Castilla (Geneva, 1973); Enrique Gil y Carrasco, El señor de Bembibre (Geneva, 1974).
William Gaunt, El sueño prerrafaelista (Mexico City, 2005).
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London, 2002), p. 222.
Wilhelm Dilthey, Selected Works, Volume iii: The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences (Princeton-Oxford, 2002), pp. 257–64.
Dilthey, Selected Works, Volume iii: The Formation of the Historical World, pp. 214–15.
“Ce qui est singulier, ce qui ne se produit qu’une fois.” Robert Bonnaud, Histoire et historiens depuis 68. Le triomphe et les impasses (Paris, 1997), pp. 109–10.
Manuel Cruz, El historicismo (Barcelona, 1981), pp. 52–59; Pelai Pagès, Introducción a la Historia. Epistemología, teoría y problemas de método en los estudios históricos (Barcelona, 1983), pp. 195–97.
Estevão de Rezende Martins, ed. A história pensada. Teoria e método na historiografia europeia do século xix (São Paulo, 2010), pp. 187–215.
Henry Osborn Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind. A History of the Development of Thought and Emotion in the Middle Ages, 2 vols. (London, 1911).
Johan Huizinga, Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen (Harlem, 1919).
“Vivimos bajo el brutal imperio de las masas”; “¿Quién manda en el mundo?” José Ortega y Gasset, La rebelión de las masas, (Madrid, 1960), pp. 49–264 (1st edition, 1929).
“By appeals to such well-organized sentiments as snobbery and the urge toward social conformity; by playing on the animal instincts such as greed, lust, and especially fear in all its forms.” Aldous Huxley, “Notes on Propaganda,” Harper’s (December 1936), 32.
Diverse approaches to ideological dissemination among the affected population testify to this: Elizabeth Wiskemann, Europe of the Dictators, 1919–1945 (London, 1966), pp. 243–54; Conxita Mir, ed., Jóvenes y dictaduras de entreguerras (Lleida, 2007); Hans Magnus Eizensberger, Hammerstein ou l’intransigeance. Une histoire allemande (Paris, 2010).
Graham Green, “The Third Man,” The Third Man & Other Stories (London, 2017), p. 121.
“El ‘punto de vista del actor’ carece de importancia.” Juan Francisco Marsal, La sociología (Barcelona, 1975), p. 124.
“Reconstituer la vie affective d’autrefois.” Lucien Febvre, “La sensibilité et l’histoire: Comment reconstituer la vie affective d’autrefois?,” Annales d’histoire sociale, 3 (1941), 5–20.
Carlos Antonio Aguirre Rojas, La Escuela de los Annales. Ayer, Hoy, Mañana (Vilassar de Dalt, 1999), pp. 141–70.
Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution. The Annales School 1929–1989 (Stanford, 2015), p. 142.
Miguel Morey, Lectura de Foucault (Madrid, 1983), pp. 231–358.
José María Ripalda, “Derrida, Foucault y la Historia de la filosofía,” Anthropos 93 (1989), 57–63.
Jan Goldstein, ed., Foucault and the Writing of History (Cambridge, Mass., 1994).
Manuel González de Molina, Juan Martínez Alier, eds., Historia y ecología (Madrid, 1993).
Eric Baratay, Le Point de vue animal. Une autre version de l’histoire (Paris, 2012).
Miguel Bueno, “Ética y filosofia,” Tareas 1/1 (1960), 95–107.
Among the works that have focused on studying the relationship in the Middle Ages, it is worth highlighting María Milagros Rivera Garretas, ed., Las relaciones en la Historia de la Europa medieval, (Valencia, 2006).
Piroska Nagy, Damien Boquet, eds., Le sujet des emotions au Moyen Àge (Paris, 2008).
Flocel Sabaté, “Identities on the move,” in Identities on the Move, ed. Flocel Sabaté (Bern, 2013), pp. 14–22.
Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca-London, 2006).
Josep Olives i Puig, “Del pactisme medieval al contractualisme modern,” Finestrelles 6 (1994), 205–41.
Damien Boquet, Piroska Nagy, Sensible Moyen Âge. Une histoire des émotions dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris, 2015).
Barbara H. Rosenwein, Generations of Feelings. A History of Emotions, 600–1700 (Cambridge, Eng., 2016).
We can mention here the famous—and painful—account by Zweig in his posthumous book, Die Welt vin Gestern: Stefan Zweig, El mundo de ayer. Memorias de un europeo (Barcelona, 2001), pp. 9–16.
Keth Wailoo, Pain. A Political History (Baltimore, 2014).
Dominick Lacapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore-London, 2001), pp. 181–219.
Teofilo F. Ruiz, The Terror of History on the Uncertainties of Life in Western Civilization (Princeton-Oxford, 2011), p. 172.
David El Kenz, ed., Le massacre, objet d’histoire (Paris, 2005); Elie Barnavi, Anthony Rowley, eds., Tuez-les tous! La guerre de religion à travers l’histoire, viie–xxie siècle (Paris, 2006).
“The Shoah is an exceptional, unique and monstrous phenomenon. The permanent proximity of programmed death gave the deportation a particularly atrocious and unforgettable character.” (“La Shoah est un phénomène exceptionnel, unique et monstrueux. La proximité permanente de la mort programmée a donné à la déportation un caractère particulièrement atroce et inoubliable”). Simone Veil, “Préface,” in Les juifs de France dans la Shoah, Jacques Fredj (Paris, 2011), p. 5.
Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass. 1996–98).
Zygmunt Bauman, Dentro la globalizzazione. Le conseguenze sulle persone (Rome-Bari, 2006), pp. 9–31.
Peter A. Levine, Trauma and Memory. Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past (Berkeley, 2015), pp. 27–48.
This can be appreciated in museographic stories. Here are two examples: in the Museo Etnográfico in Buenos Aires, “Juan B. Ambrosetti” begins the story of the extermination of the Selk’nam or Ona, who lived in the south of current Argentina, warning on a panel: “Those peoples who fascinated Westerners are gone, they were massacred in a few decades, and not by the conquerors of the sixteenth century, but by our grandparents, and less than one hundred years ago.” (“Esos pueblos que fascinaron a los occidentales, ya no están, fueron masacrados en pocas décadas, y no por los conquistadores del siglo xvi, sino por nuestros abuelos, y hace menos de 100 años”). And in Paris, in narrating the serious crimes against Jews committed in France between 1940 and 1944, the Memorial of the Shoah exposes the link between historical events and present-day society: “this story is close to us, it took place in our country, in our towns and villages […] It is up to all of us to appropriate it, to live and to build with this crime, and despite this crime.” (“cette histoire est proche de nous, elle s’est déroulée dans notre pays, dans nos villes et nos villages (…) À nous tous de nous l’approprier, de vivre et de construire avec ce crime, et malgré ce crime”). Jacques Fredj, Les juifs de France dans la Shoah, (Paris, 2011), p. 11.
In an informative way it can be seen summarised in: Rafael Narbona, “Emmanuel Lévinas, la huella infinita,” El Cultural (August 2020), <
Alain Houziaux, “La péché original, Freud et le devoir de mémoire,” in La mémoire pour quoi faire?, ed. Alain Houziaux, (Paris, 2006), pp. 13–46.
Joan Wallach Scott, On the Judgment of History (New York, 2020), pp. 1–88.
Alicia Maria de Mingo Rodríguez, “Nación cotidiana, democracia creativa e interculturalidad. El cuidado por lo irrepresentable como espíritu de la Comunidad,” Recerca. Revista de Pensament i d’anàlisi 10 (2010), 141–61.
There are several areas where social reintegration must take place: Elizabeth Jelin, ed., La commemoraciones: Las disputas en las fechas ‘in-felices’ (Madrid, 2002); Elizabeth Jelin, Victoria Langland, eds., Momentos, memoriales y marcas territoriales (Madrid, 2003); Elizabeth Jelin, Federico Guillermo Lorenz, eds., Educación y memoria. La escuela elabora el pasado (Madrid, 2004).
Emmanuel Fureix, “Déboulonnages et dévoilements: l’histoire en morceaux,” Écrire l’histoire 20–21 (2021), 229–32.
David Rieff, In Praise of Forgetting. Historical Memory and its Ironies (New Haven-London, 2017), p. 145.
“Être juif, c’est simplement avoir de la mémoire. Une mauvaise mémoire”; “à chaque fois que je vendais un livre, je me sentais plus libre.” Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran (Paris, 2001), pp. 40–51.
“Queremos olvidar el ayer, salvo para la composición de las elegías. No hay conmemoraciones, ni centenarios ni efigies de hombres muertos.” José Luis Borges, “Utopía de un hombre que estaba cansado,” Prosa completa, 4 vols. (Barcelona, 1985), 4:163.
Félix Duque, El mundo por de dentro. Ontotecnología de la vida cotidiana (Barcelona, 1995), pp. 36–54.
“Every technical act, every scientific gesture, oozes ideology” (“Tot acte tècnic, tot gest científic, regalima ideologia”). Pere Casaldàliga, A l’aguait del Regne (Barcelona, 1989), p. 29.
Tzvetan Todorov, Les abus de la mémoire (Paris, 2004), pp. 9–61.
Paul Ricoeur, La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli (Paris, 2000), pp. 167–369.
Johann Michel, Le devoir de mémoire (Paris, 2018), pp. 9–120.
“La historia no debe ponerse al servicio de la memoria, sino que, por el contrario, debe aceptar la demanda de memoria, pero solo para transformarla en historia.” Antoine Prost, Doce lecciones sobre la historia, (Valencia, 2000), p. 302.
“De la mémoire à l’histoire.” Jacques Fredj, Les juifs de France dans la Shoah, pp. 196–201.
Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History. Timing History, Spacing Concepts (Stanford, 2002), p. 121.
Fernand Deligny, Oeuvres (Paris, 2017).
“De Certeau retomaba lo que Deligny llamaba ‘las líneas de errancia’, o sea los trayectos trazados fuera de los caminos transitados por lo ninos autistas, itinerarios solitarios, vagabundeos eficades que cortan el camino de los adultos.” François Dosse, Paul Ricoeur – Michel de Certeau. La historia: Entre el decir y el hacer (Buenos Aires, 2009), pp. 119–20.
Geoff Eley, “Labor History, Social History ‘Alltagsgeschichte’: Experience, Culture and the Politics of the Everyday—a New Direction for German Social History?,” Journal of Modern History 61/2 (1989), 297–343.
William H. Jr. Swell, “How Classes are Made: Critical Reflections on E. P. Thompson’s Theory of Working-Class Formation,” in E. P. Thompson: Critical Perspectives, Harvey J. Kaye, Keith McClelland, eds. (Philadelphia, 1990), pp. 50–77.
Kathleen Canning, “La història feminista després del gir lingüístic. Historiar el discurs i l’experiència,” Afers 33–34 (1999), 303–41.
Joan W. Scott, “The Evidence of Experience,” Critical Inquiry 17/2 (1991), 777.
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Keith Oatley, Emotions. A Brief History (Oxford, 2004), pp. 19–38.
Peter N. Stearns, Carol Z. Stearns, “Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards,” American Historical Review 90 (1985), 813–36.
Peter N. Stearns, American Cool: Constructing a Twentieth-Century Emotional Style (New York, 1994), p. 3.
Javier Moscoso, “La historia de las emociones, ¿de qué es historia?,” Vinculos de Historia 4 (2015), 23–24.
“Il y a des instants qui ne devraient pas passer. Ce qu’on y atteint ne devrait jamais finir. Que cella passe pourtant et ne soit que l’expérience d’un instant, là se trouve la véritable mélancolie de l’expérience humaine.” Joseph Ratzinger, La mort et l’au-delà (Paris, 2005), p. 101.
“Experiència qui és mestra de totes coses.” Among others: Próspero de Bofarull, Procesos de las antiguas cortes y parlamentos de Cataluña, Aragón y Valencia custodiados en el Archivo General de la Corona de Aragón, 8 vols. (Barcelona, 1850), 6: 72.
“Quia Magistra rerum efficax experiencia edocuit.” Cortes de Cataluña, 26 vols. (Madrid, 1900), 3: 305.
“Per experiencia que est verum magistra et mater cognice.” Vic, Arxiu Municipal de Vic, Llibre de Privilegis x, pergamí 189.
Barcelona, Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó, Cancelleria, reg. 221, fol. 42v; 2220, fol. 7v.
aca, Cancelleria, reg. 1912, fol. 140r; 2218, fol. 145r.
aca, Cancelleria, reg, 952, fol. 150r; 1912, fol. 108v; 1913, fol. 5v, 37v; 40v; 1914, 165r, 167r; 1915, fol. 1r, 1916, fol. 136r; 2217, fol. 17v-175v; 2219, fol. 41v-42r; among many others.
aca, reg. 1915, fol. 70v.
Lleida, Arxiu Capitular de Lleida, Llibre Verd, fol. 59bis r.
aca, Cancelleria, reg. 951, fol. 129r.
“Confiants plenament per experiència moltes vegades provada de la leyaltat e suficiència de vós.” aca, Cancelleria, reg. 1913, fol. 178r.
Flocel Sabaté, “Quina edat té l’Arbert Sescorts? Memòria, fama pública i alletament,” in Histoire et archéologie en Pays catalans. Mélanges offerts à Aymat Catafau, ed. Nicolas Berjoan, Olivier Passarrius (Perpignan, 2024), pp.176–178.
Ramon Gubern, Epistolari de Pere iii (Barcelona, 1955), pp. 142–43.
Flocel Sabaté, “L’invisibilità del re e la visibilità della dinastia nella corona d’Aragona,” in Il principe invisibile, eds. Lucia Bertolini, Arturo Calzona, Glauco Maria Cantarella, Stefano Caroti, (Turnhout-Mantua, 2015), pp. 27–64.
Josep Maria Pujol, “Composició oral interactiva en el ‘Llibre dels feits’: el testimoni de la retòrica,” in Jaume i. Commemoració del viii centenari del naixement de Jaume i, ed. Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol (Barcelona, 2011), 2: 741–59.
“A deixar constància de petites escenes de la seva vida quotidiana, aparentment mancades de cap altre interès que el purament personal, i que no s’amagui d’exposar les reaccions emocionals seves o dels personatges.” Josep Maria Pujol, “Jaume i, ‘rex facetus’: notes de filologia humorística,” Estudis Romànics 25 (2003), 215.
“E nos ploram ab ell.” Jaume i, Llibre dels fets del rei En Jaume, ed. Ferran Soldevila (Barcelona, 2007), p. 67.
“E ploram nós, e ells preseren llur comiat. E, quan haguem estat una peça, nós e ells, que no podíem parlar per la dolor que havíem, dixem-los que els lleixàvem per cap En Bernat de Sancta Eugènia, e que faessen per ell així com farien per nós.” Jaume i, Llibre dels fets del rei En Jaume, p. 198.
“El plor dels herois.” Ferran Soldevila, “Prefaci al Llibre dels feits del rei En Jaume o Crònica de Jaume i,” in Llibre dels fets del rei En Jaume, Jaume i, ed. Ferran Soldevila (Barcelona, 2007), p. 22.
Jaume Aurell, Authoring the Past. History, Autobiography, and Politics in Medieval Catalonia, (Chicago-London, 2012).
“E nós, anant a l’esgleia, trobam tot lo poble per les carreres, los uns deçà, los altres dellà, qui hagué de nos gran goig, plorant e faent-nos reverència, amb los colzes en terra, dient-nos: -Senyor, no ens vullats oblidar! E anam-nos-en dret a l’esgleia, e com fom dins l’esgleia, plorà tot lo poble, e nós ab ell ensems, e aquells qui ab nós eren entrats.” Crònica de Pere iii el Cerimoniós, ed. Ferran Soldevila (Barcelona, 2014), p. 110.
Pujol, “Jaume i, ‘rex facetus’,” p. 215.
Alberto Montaner Frutos, “La palabra en la ocasión. Alfonso V como ‘rex facetus’ a través del Panormita,” e-Spania 4 (2009), <
“Detvez esser tostemps ab cara alegra, mas no molt rient, mas bé acuyllent, car masa riura e masa parlar e masa moura los uyls e·l cap fan menysprear lo príncep, e·l contrari lo fa prear, car és indici de saviea, la qual ab composta alegria fa lo príncep amabbla per excés.” Ramon Ferrer Navarro, Eiximenis i la seva obra (Valencia, 2010), p. 34.
Albert G. Hauf, “La ‘Vita Christi’ de Fr. Eiximenis o.f.m. (1340–1409) como tratado de Cristología para seglares,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 71 (1976), 37–64; Albert G. Hauf, D’Eiximenis a Sor Isabel de Villena. Aportació a l’estudi de la nostra cultura medieval (Valencia-Barcelona, 1990), pp. 19–55.
Piroska Nagy, Le don des larmes au Moyen Âge (Paris, 2000), pp. 171–420.
Joan Fuster, “L’oratòria de Sant Vicenç Ferrer,” Obres Completes (Barcelona, 1968), 1: 46–7.
Francesca Español, “El ‘correr las armas’, un aparte caballeresco en las exequias medievales hispanas,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 37/2 (2007), 867–905.
Flocel Sabaté, Vivir y sentir en la Edad Media. El mundo visto con ojos medievales (Madrid, 2011), p. 89.
Elina Gerstman, ed. Crying in the Middle Ages. Tears of History (New York-Abingdon, 2012).
Flocel Sabaté, Lo senyor rei és mort! Actitud i cerimònies dels municipis catalans baix-medievals davant la mort del monarca (Lleida, 1994), pp. 247–63.
“Donar terror.” Flocel Sabaté, “Por política, terror social,” in Por política, terror social, ed. Flocel Sabaté (Lleida, 2013), pp. 13–14.
“Suau senyoria.” Flocel Sabaté, “Discurs i estratègies del poder reial a Catalunya al segle xiv,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 25 (1995), 642–43.
Eduard Junyent, La ciutat de Vic i la seva història (Barcelona, 1976), pp. 104–05.
Flocel Sabaté, “Les fourches patibulaires en Catalogne au bas Moyen Âge,” Criminocorpus (2015), <
“Jamais peut-être autant d’hommes ne durant leur prestige à la séduction du verbe !” Francis Rapp, L’Église et la vie religieuse en Occident à la fin du Moyen Âge (Paris, 1999), p. 133.
Noël-Yves Tonnerre, Être chrétien en France au moyen Âge (Paris, 1996), pp. 145–48.
Flocel Sabaté, “Els referents històrics de la societat: identitat i memòria,” in L’Edad Mijana. Món real i espai imaginat, ed. Flocel Sabaté (Catarroja-Barcelona, 2012), pp. 48–49.
Flocel Sabaté, The Death Penalty in Late-Medieval Catalonia Evidence and Significations (London-New York, 2020), pp. 183–214.
Flocel Sabaté, “Identity in the Middle Ages,” in Identity in the Middle Ages. Approaches from Southwestern Europe, ed. Flocel Sabaté (Leeds, 2021), pp. 9–25.
Perpignan, Archives Départementales des Pyrénnes-Orientales, 1B-94, fol. 45v.