Paths that do not cross? The itineraries of the elites and the common people in the kingdom of France and on its margins in the Late Middle Ages
Type de matériel :
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Studying the experience of the road during the Middle Ages should allow us to understand not only where the roads were but also who used these roads and why. Literary sources highlight how much the experience of space depended on the roads: the stages on the highways were famous and fixed in long-term memory in the form of road legends. This popular knowledge influenced the representations of royal elites, who chose for political reasons to focus on major axes to the detriment of landlocked areas, as in Auvergne. Were the people affected by such a hierarchy? We can show that the people did not always travel along the routes we would expect. During the Hundred Years' War, the Norman rebels and those who were fleeing Ile-de-France avoided the main roads so as not to be seen. Moreover, some infrastructure was built for the sole use of elites. In Forez, the villagers did not use the bridges but preferred to cross the Loire wading. Finally, the example of the Jura mountains proves that popular traffic was not tightly controlled: in some cases, the different social classes did not take the same roads.
Réseaux sociaux