Center for Advanced Studies on the Late Middle Ages
The CESFiMA is part of the interdisciplinary POLEN laboratory (Powers, Letters, Norms) at the University of Orléans, which brings together historians, literary historians, legal historians and linguists. It focuses on the medieval period, in a chronologically broad sense, in line with Jacques Le Goff's concept of the “long Middle Ages”. The teachers-researchers who make up this team carry out their research on the 12th-16th centuries, with the medievalists in the strict sense focusing more specifically on the 13th-15th centuries, while the Renaissance specialists concentrate more particularly on the 15th century and on the links (continuities and ruptures, but above all coexistence) between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. To this must be added the Latinist teachers-researchers, a significant part of whose research concerns Medieval-Latin culture.
While this acronym does not refer exactly to the chronological period it designates, it is nonetheless an emblem that reflects a desire to work in a coordinated fashion, according to principles of complementarity and collaboration, on the one hand within the framework of the PRES Orléans-Tours, and on the other within a broader regional framework. Indeed, the CESFiMA enables us to trace, between Poitiers and Orléans via Tours, a strong axis of research on an essential period of European history, which can also be understood over a coherent long-term period, from the High Middle Ages to the beginning of the Classical Age. The CESCM in Poitiers focuses on the early Middle Ages, up to the 12th century; the CESR in Tours on the Renaissance “from Petrarch to Descartes”; the CESFiMA thus takes its place between the two, bearing in mind that the three centers share common chronological “steps”.
The CESFiMA’s scientific project
Composed mainly of historians and literary scholars (French literature), with the addition of legal historians and specialists in British literature and civilization, CESFIMA works mainly on the period from the 12th to the 16th century. Its research focuses largely on the question of standards, models and knowledge, their construction, dissemination and contestation. But it also plans to focus on the body over the long term, from Antiquity to the Renaissance, and on the relationship between societies and environments.
Four areas of research are thus taking shape, two of which are emerging (areas 3 and 4):
1) Construction, contestation and evolution of standards and models
The period covered by the CESFiMA is produces many norms and models, in the religious, political, legal, literary and scientific spheres. In more ways than one, the 12th century was a turning point in medieval history, with significant effects over a long period of time, sometimes perceptible right up to the Renaissance: Gregorian reform, the establishment (or attempted establishment) of monarchical absolutism, the rediscovery of Roman law, the renewal of canon law and the drafting of customary law, the emergence and growth of vernacular literature, the development and dissemination of scientific and encyclopedic knowledge. The question of the construction of norms and models leads us to study that of powers in general, since the ability to produce and issue norms and models is precisely one of the defining features of what we call a power. Finally, the reaction to the dissemination and imposition of norms and models, and more particularly their contestation, which can play a part in their evolution, are among the objects of reflection, particularly in the political, legal and religious fields. Literature, itself in a state of flux and sometimes in tension, whether poetically or generically, also constitutes an object of research conducive to historical investigation, in that it bears witness in its own way to the diverse realities of its time. The future GIS LuxOrientis (2023-2028) will also focus on the life of objects of power within the broader framework of an interdisciplinary study of the phenomenon of luxury and the reception of objects from the East in the West.
2) Dissemination and transmission of standards, knowledge and models
Linked to the construction, contestation and evolution of norms, knowledge and models, the question of their dissemination and transmission (which presupposes an appropriation/acculturation that diffusion alone does not imply) constitutes a specific subject. Given the vast scope of the issue, the focus is on the modes of circulation of norms, knowledge and models, with particular emphasis on the written word (from charters to treatises on magic or divination) and images (from literary or scientific illumination to cartography), as well as on the role of translation in the phenomenon of diffusion, transmission, appropriation and acculturation. An integral part of CESFiMA's scientific project since its inception, this theme is now reflected in the emerging theme of the MSH Val de Loire, “Transmission(s), transfert(s), réappropriation(s)”.
These two lines of action cover complementary, even intertwined, realities and practices. They will be exemplified in the coming period by the renewal (2023-2027) of the agreement between the CESFiMA and the IRHT (“Sciences of the Quadrivium - Musicology” Center), as well as by the ANR CiSaMe project (2023-2027) and the Translatio program (2023-2024).
3) Images, discourses and uses of the body
This emerging area of the CESFiMA aims to unite current approaches in which the question of the body has been or could be raised (literature and iconography, political discourse, law and justice, theology and religion, divination and magic).
A number of research themes have already been identified to explore this emerging area, in the context of seminars, study days or symposia, or with a view to a series of articles, notably for the CESFiMA review, Cahiers de Recherche Médiévales et Humanistes: the vulnerability of the body in epics, from Antiquity to the Renaissance, in a genre where the body is first given, like that of Achilles, as invincible; the traveler's body in travel narratives of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, from Joinville to Montaigne: pilgrimage, crusade, diplomatic mission, trade, exploration or conquest, each in their own way inducing a particular or new experience of the body (of oneself and of the other); discourses and uses of the body in law and justice, in the exercise or image of power, in magical or divinatory practices; the place and representation of the body in Western and Eastern visual culture; the question of the body and nature (the human, the non-human; the animal and the monstrous); the question of the body and its natural or cultural environment.
The multi-disciplinary nature of the approaches used gives us hope of describing a way of thinking or establishing an anthropology of the body from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance.
4) Societies and environments
This emerging area of research will explore the long-term relationship between societies and their environment, whether natural, developed or built, and the material and cultural practices developed as part of this interaction, from the Pays de Loire to the farthest reaches of the Islamic world. The themes that will organize this reflection are as follows:
1/ The first theme will focus on practices and representations of spaces and landscapes. In the tradition of landscapes studies, and following on from a study of gardens on a planetary scale (2015-2018) and an exhibition at the French National Archives on painted maps from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance (2019), we will look at the interaction between humans and the natural and anthropized environments they inhabit, develop, describe, travel through..., in particular through the notion of landscapes. The focus will be on the description and representation of landscapes (in texts and images of all kinds) and the historical or literary issues they raise, as well as the concrete practices associated with these landscapes (exploitation, administration, travel, etc.). Examples include built landscapes such as gardens, public spaces, palatial structures and religious monuments, and the cultural practices associated with them, such as the issue of sustainable water management over the centuries and in wetlands.
2/ The second theme will focus more specifically on the interaction between humans and specific environments, such as mountains, seismic zones, isolated areas or wetlands. The archaeological work on the Altessina mission (Sicily), which began in June 2022, is part of this approach. This project is part of a wider context that aims to examine the history of settlements in Central Sicily, from the administrative division of the Sicilian Wali in the Middle Ages to the process of incastellamento in Central Sicily up to the 15th century.