“Village Communitiesˮ in the Early Middle Ages ? A Change in Historiography

Abstract

Were the societies of the medieval West organised in “communitiesˮ? The use of this notion, which is rarely found in the sources before the 13th century, is particularly problematic for the early Middle Ages. However, it is for this period that 19th century jurists, followed by some later historians and sociologists, referred to the existence of “village communitiesˮ dating back to immemorial times. These writings on Genossenschaft, Gemeinschaft or Village Community are all the more important as they played a significant role in the genesis of the concept of community in social science. The historiography of the second half of the 20th century, however, made a kind of inversion: the formation of communities of inhabitants was then considered as a spatial and social organisation, related to the development of seigneurial domination and therefore placed in the second half of the Middle Ages. Today, the contribution of a considerable mass of new archaeological data, highlighting the transformations of the settlement system, incites us to reconsider the history of the inhabitant groups, placed in a long medieval period.