Core class + tutorial: The Medieval Nation

This course aims to challenge classical assumptions about nation formation, by showing how concrete power issues lead, at a time neglected by theoretical work on the nation, to the crystallization of a more or less intense medieval ‘national fact’. Combining an empirical and comparative approach with theoretical reflection, it will set out to understand what made the creation of a nation ‘necessary’ and ‘successful’ at a particular moment in European history and society. To that end, it will address the issue in an original way on two levels – collective and individual – the responses and actions of individuals being essential to understand how the nation has come to be a ‘fundamental political factor’. In the context of profound transformations in both religious and political spheres, which increasingly involved the participation and the consent of the individuals from the 13th century onwards, the nation was also being built by engaging and, simultaneously, shaping its own members as ‘national subjects’ sensitive to the idea of the nation and willing to be a part of it. To better reveal the mechanisms at work in the development of the nations, this seminar intends to follow a comparative approach through a European scale typology and to deeply analyze medieval sources written in the different studied polities.