Politiques des émotions au Moyen Âge

Sous la direction de Damien Boquet et Piroska Nagy

Florence, SISMEL – Edizioni del Galluzzo, (Micrologus’ Library, 34)

2010

pp. VI-358

€ 54

A commander sur le site de l’éditeur ou via ce pdf

Et voici l’introduction désormais disponible ici : 2. Boquet Nagy intro PolEmo Final.

Présentation:
Ce livre est l’un des fruits d’un programme de recherches – EMMA («Les émotions au Moyen Age») – qui a été lancé en 2005 avec pour objectif d’étudier les émotions durant la période médiévale dans une perspective interdisciplinaire. Au fil d’une série de rencontres organisées à la Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme d’Aix-en-Provence, le programme EMMA a rassemblé plusieurs dizaines de chercheurs qui avaient pour défi d’intégrer dans leur champ propre le nouveau paradigme de l’émotion porté par la psychologie, la sociologie ou la philosophie. Politiques des émotions au Moyen Age est ainsi le troisième volet de ce projet éditorial qui s’est ouvert en 2007 par la parution d’un numéro de la revue Critique intitulé Émotions médiévales, dans lequel dix médiévistes proposaient une analyse critique de l’historiographie récente en la
matière. Les deux principales réalisations du projet, Le Sujet des émotions au Moyen Age paru en 2009 et aujourd’hui Politiques des émotions au Moyen Age, ont été conçues pour former une unité, relevant de ce que Foucault appelait la «gouvernementalité» et qu’on pourrait nommer aussi, en s’inspirant de William Reddy, la «navigabilité » des émotions pour qualifier l’articulation entre la construction de la subjectivité affective et l’usage social des émotions. C’est cette navigabilité des émotions qui explique le pluriel de «politiques» dans le titre de ce livre. Après avoir réfléchi en ouverture
aux conditions mêmes d’une histoire politique des émotions médiévales, nous commençons par aborder la politique dans son sens traditionnel d’art de gouverner la cité: comment les gouvernants usent-ils de leurs émotions, qu’elles soient ressenties et/ou scénarisées? Comment aussi contrôlent-ils et pèsent-ils sur les émotions des gouvernés? La première  section de ce livre fait la part belle à ces approches en montrant comment les émotions des princes – et à l’inverse l’absence  de certaines émotions – peuvent concourir à une idéologie du pouvoir souverain tout en mettant en scène le plus souvent  des situations politico-affectives où ce pouvoir s’exerce, y compris en dévoilant ses faiblesses. On mesure alors toute  l’étendue des registres d’application, entre élaboration d’une émotionalité publique et usage d’une palette émotionnelle de  type privé à des fins politiques. Gouverner les émotions, c’est aussi évaluer et encadrer celles des populations, donc exercer  un empire sur l’émotion comme finalité ou bien s’appuyer sur des émotions collectives pour viser un objectif second. Quoi  qu’il en soit, dans ces actes qui nous intéressent dans la deuxième section du livre, l’émotion n’est jamais réduite à un pur  moyen; elle est aussi l’agent de transformation par lequel l’événement politique advient. Cette navigation émotionnelle  relève alors du politique compris comme l’ensemble des formes organisées des rapports de pouvoir. L’important dès lors est  de laisser ouvertes les possibilités d’interaction pour voir comment les émotions manifestées signifient les rapports de  pouvoir tout en agissant sur eux au moment même où elles sont performées. Cette part d’incertitude, de malléabilité propre  à la communication émotionnelle prouve que l’émotion n’est pas le simple fard de l’événement mais qu’elle agit en son coeur  même, en lui conférant sens, efficacité et aptitude à redéfinir les rapports de pouvoir au sein des groupes sociaux. Sous  cet angle, les enquêtes de la troisième section sur les communautés d’émotions, voire sur les émotions  communautaires, découlent naturellement des sources. À partir du moment où l’historien admet que l’émotion est un fait  culturellement produit, intellectuellement reconstruit par la médiation écrite ou figurée et politiquement efficace, il est dans  son rôle lorsqu’il articule les configurations émotionnelles visibles dans les sources et les groupes socialement constitués,  plus encore lorsqu’il met au jour les modalités selon lesquelles le théâtre social des émotions participe des processus de reconnaissance et de renforcement des communautés d’intérêts.

SOMMAIRE:

Préface

– D. Boquet et P. Nagy, “L’historien et les émotions en politique: entre science et citoyenneté”

– É. Limousin, “Les émotions de l’empereur byzantin”

– B. Sère, “Le roi peut-il avoir honte? Quelques réflexions à partir des chroniques de France et d’Angleterre (XIIe-XIIIe siècles)”

– L. Smagghe, “Sur paine d’encourir nostre indignation. Rhétorique du courroux princier dans les Pays-Bas bourguignons à la fin du Moyen Âge”

– M. Guay, “Les émotions du couple princier au XVe siècle: entre usages politiques et affectio conjugalis”

– R. Alonso Álvarez, “Ploraverunt lapides et manaverunt aquam. El planto por el rey según las crónicas de los reinos occidentales hispánicos”

– C. Soussen-Max, “Violence rituelle ou émotion populaire? Les explosions de violence anti-juive à l’occasion des fêtes de Pâques dans l’espace aragonais”

– N. Archambeau, “His Whole Heart Changed: Political Meanings of a Mercenary’s Emotional Transformation”

– J.-M. Mehl, “L’émotion ludique au Moyen Âge”

– B. H. Rosenwein, “The Political Uses of an Emotional Community: Cluny and Its Neighbors, 833-965”

– J. Deploige, “Meurtre politique, guerre civile et catharsis littéraire au XIIe siècle. Les émotions dans l’oeuvre de Guibert de Nogent et de Galbert de Bruges”

– L. Verdon, “Expressions et usages des comportements affectifs dans le cadre de la seigneurie (Provence, XIIIe siècle). L’exemple de l’amour dû au seigneur”

– C. Denjean, “Identités et jeu des émotions devant la justice du roi d’Aragon: prêteurs juifs et courtiers chrétiens”

– B. Rimé, “Les émotions médiévales: réflexions psychologiques”.

– Indici

ABSTRACTS :
Damien Boquet and Piroska Nagy, The Historian and the Emotions in
Politics: Between Science and Citizenship

The place of emotions in politics has long been a blind spot of political science, an occultation reinforced by the mistrust of  liberal democracies towards emotional manifestations, easily discredited in the name of a rationalising pacification of  politics. For a few years now, we have witnessed a persistent return of emotion in politics and in political science, in fact at the same rhythm as the change of paradigm experienced by western societies towards emotion, the cognitive and moral  dimensions of which are beginning to be seriously considered. In this general introduction we present the current trends in  the social sciences which examine emotion within politics, then move to the methodological propositions of historians that wish to integrate the new paradigm of emotion. Finally, we examine the characteristic parameters of political history of the  Middle Ages and the orientations that the authors of this collective work have followed in problematizing such issues.

Eric Limousin, Emotions of the Byzantine Emperor

After beginning with a systematic identification of any mention of emotions in the Chronographia, it becomes possible to specify the use of Psellos’ emotional register. The emperor does not express emotions in   the public sphere. Nevertheless political actions do not reject emotions and these are expressed without reserve out of the Grand Palace of Constantinople’s reception rooms.

Bénédicte Sère, Can the King Be Ashamed? Some Thoughts about the Chronicles of France and England (12th-13th Centuries)

At the turning point of the 12th and 13th centuries, chroniclers and historians focus on the royal figure. On the French as much as on the English side, the king dons the attributes of a power his emotions then depend upon. As years go by, chroniclers set themselves more and more as the ower’s theorists until a Guillaume le Breton or a Primat become its official apologists. How do they dissert on the royal figure and especially on the emotional range that is related to him? To sound the question, we tackle the emotion of shame by interrogating the writings of the Philippe Auguste era.

Laurent Smagghe, Sur paine d’encourir nostre indignation. Rhetoric of Princely Wrath in the Burgundian Low Countries at the End of the Middle Ages

Wrath plays an essential role in the princely rhetoric of the Burgundian realm at the end of the Middle Ages. As it benefits from a great publicity but is submitted to a strict surveillance, it models an archetype portrait of the governor and testifies its capacity to carry out justice. The prince is advised to give in to it only as a last resort and with legitimate motives so as to manifest it with pragmatism and moderation, an advised entourage providing the respect of these injunctions. The gesture and the word which accompanies the manifestations of princely wrath, also socially constructed, are less a form of ‘letting loose’ than a political propaganda, as is testified by the complex feelings that underlie the relation between the prince and his cities.The sources’ hesitations to name such expressions of wrath and the vocabulary’s ambiguity to verbalize them reflect the contemporaries’ embarrassment towards an affect upon which the threat of transgressive conduct permanently rests, and is seen as particularly prejudicial to the practice of power.

Manuel Guay, Emotions of Princely Couples: Between Political Uses and Affectio Conjugalis

Sources from France’s royal courts and Burgundian princely courts in the 15th century shed light to the codifications that frame the representations of conjugal emotions and the political uses that princely  courts have made of these communicating acts. The different emotional postures – which adapt themselves to both public and political events – therefore constitute one of the princely powers’ practices of the 15th century. This study aims, on the one hand, to underline the ways princes control the representations of their emotions. To constitute the emotional conjugal behaviour as a model for society the princely affective manifestations are in turn moderate or used in all their evocative power. On the other hand, princes can exploit the representation of conjugal emotions (real and/or manipulated) to justify the  realisation of certain political objectives. But in certain circumstances this affective exhibition can shift in distance or deceit. This double practice aims to strictly separate the political and emotional spheres when emotions are seen as obstacles or threats to the introduction of model princely politics.
Raquel Alonso Álvarez, Ploraverunt lapides et manaverunt aquam. The Planctus for the King in the Chronicles of the Western Hispanic
Kingdoms.

Current western historiography is greatly interested in the manipulation of sources and in the ideological and political use of ceremonies in the Middle Ages. In this setting, this article aims at studying how medieval sources inform us about the emotions produced by the death of Visigothic-Spanish, Asturian-Leonese, and Castilian kings. Contrary to the Frankish case, we cannot find in the Visigothic era a single poetic composition or chronicle dedicated to ceremonies conducted after the death of kings or to plancti performed during these occasions.We must wait until the 12th century for the introduction of such expressions’ in Spanish literature. The most important representative of this genre was Bishop Pelayo de Oviedo (d.1153). He dedicated a long planctus to King Alfonso VI using some motifs stemming from the Hispanic tradition as well as some European ones, in a context of internationalization of the western Hispanic kingdoms. In the 13th century plancti for kings ended up being incorporated to royal chronistic
rhetoric by being used for monarchic propaganda.

Claire Soussen-Max, Ritual Violences or Popular Emotions? Anti-Jewish Aggressions During Paschal Festivities in the Aragonese Territory (13th – 1st half of 14th c.)
The nature of recurrent violence experienced by Jews in the Aragonese territory during the Easter festivities is studied here. The emotion born in the population by the reminding of the Passion of Christ through the liturgical celebrations brings it to commit many acts of violence, if not systematic, at least repeated. Their modus operandi is characterised by the stoning of men – and of their belongings – although this was banned in the aljama by royal and ecclesiastic authorities. Were the frequency of these episodes to evoke a ritual, which would then invalidate the thesis of a spontaneous emotion, the warning and the protective measures addressed to the Jews by the king would raise doubts as to the pertinence of an explanation by ritual. It seems that from liturgical ritual is born an emotion that sometimes degenerates in actions and in popular ‘emotions’. However, is a group emotion possible? Should we not instead see through these episodes the transformation of an individual feeling into a collective means of identification? The group identities are crystallized by emotions born from practices of piety: the Christian majority imposed to the Jewish minority an order in harmony with the wishes of the Church.
Nicole Archambeau, His Whole Heart Changed: Political Meanings of a Mercenary’s Emotional Transformation
In 1357 Countess Delphine de Puimichel miraculously transformed a mercenary, Durandus Arnaudi, from a violent attacker worthy of execution into a recipient of God’s grace worthy of forgiveness.Witnesses testifying to the event in Delphine’s canonization inquest and the inquest organizer, Nicholas Laorenc, carefully shaped this living miracle. They downplayed the living miracle that could have challenged papal authority and instead reflected the desire of the Papacy at the time to reintegrate the entire problematic group of mercenaries into the Christian community, which had few defences against them.
Jean-Michel Mehl, Play Emotions in the Middle Ages
The terms ‘game’ and ‘emotion’ are far from belonging to two different worlds. They certainly present a few divergences but mostly convergences variable in time and space. As such, they can be objects of history. However, emotional manifestations in games can only be read through very complex filters. Emotional scraps spring out of literary texts and from legal and even accounting documents. Outbeating,  overheating, aesthetic emotions and intellectual emotions are in the middle of most medieval games. The one and the other, all say something of the statute of play practices in medieval society.
As they stand, all, directly or not, echo liberty.
Barbara H. Rosenwein, The Political Uses of an Emotional Community: Cluny and Its Neighbors, 833-965

Under the first two abbots of the monastery of Cluny, Berno and Odo,no donor or seller ever called the abbot or the monks ‘beloved’. But near the beginning of the rule of Cluny’s third abbot, Aymard, around the year 943, a small group of people at La Chize, a villa near Cluny, did so in a series of sales transactions. In this paper I explore the nature and implications of this affective change, arguing that it signals a moment in which the Cluniacs appropriated an emotional language that had previously been used only for gifts among closely related laypeople.

Jeroen Deploige, Political Murder, Civil War and Literary Catharsis in the 12th Century. Emotions in the Writings of Guibert of Nogent and of Galbert of Bruges.

This contribution proposes a comparative analysis of two very famous cases of political murders in the northern kingdom of France during the first third of the 12th century: the murder of Bishop Gaudry near the cathedral of Laon in 1112 and the assassination of the Count of Flanders Charles the Good in the Saint-Donatien church in Bruges in 1127. In the events which have preceded these murders as in the difficult recovery of the social balance after them, emotions were omnipresent. We could even consider both these murders as true catalysts of very explicit emotions as well on the social and collective as on the individual level. This especially stands out in the famous testimonies of Guibert of Nogent and Galbert of Bruges which are examined in this contribution not only as extraordinary sources to study the role of emotions in these events but also as literary catharsis from their authors, moved as they were by the events they described. By analysing the emotional discourse in these texts in a quantitative and qualitative
fashion, this contribution aspires to highlight the tension between, on the one hand, the level of this society from the first third of the 12th century and, on the other, the narrativisation of this reality.
Laure Verdon, Expressions and uses of emotional behaviour in the seigneurial context: the case of love due to the lord (Provence, 13th century)
Medieval historians specializing in political history have come to understand the role of publicly-expressed emotion in the construction of a relationship of dependency. This dimension of the relationship between the lord and his subjects can be analysed using tools of interpretation borrowed from literary analysis, which reveal the elements of the communication code in use. However, when emotion is transmitted through other vehicles of communication, such as rituals, it is tempting to consider these an instrument of manipulation in the hands of the mighty. Anthropological approaches, which emphasize the dynamic of transformation at work in the performance of rituals, offer a way to grasp this topic using other kinds of evidence. The minutes of inquiries concerning the loyalty oaths of communities in the seigneurial context for instance, reveal the importance of “political sentiment” in the construction of subordination to the lord.

Claude Dejean, Identities and emotional play at the court of the king of Aragon: Jewish moneylenders and Christian brokers

Studying notarial registers, minutes of inquiries, and trials in the Crown of Aragon in the 13th and 14th centuries helps us to understand the role of emotions in the risk-taking integral to the large number of exchanges of debts at the basis of commercial and financial transactions between Jews and Christians. The emotions of clients needed to be properly managed by moneylenders and brokers in order to prevent a relationship based on trust from ending in conflict or even in an anti-Jewish riot. The acceleration of the rhythm of transactions and weakening personal links between the parties involved could lead to dangerous emotions, controlled or punished, which the royal state attempted to temper.

Bernard Rimé, Conclusion

Specialist of the psychological studies of emotions, the author of this chapter has been invited to formulate his conclusions of this meeting. He strived to appreciate the measure in which the outcome of the study of emotions in the medieval period harmonizes itself with the one, which prevails in the psychological study of emotions today. In this respect, the chapter concludes negatively. Indeed, the contemporary vision of psychological research gives an absolute priority to the tool function that the emotions serve to the adaptation of the individual. This vision radically contrasts with the emphasis given by the historic  studies of the meeting on the multiple social functions of emotion.

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