The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined
by Georges Duby
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Description
"In The Three Orders, George Duby--one of the most influential French historians of his time--examines the origins of an 'imaginary' tripartite division of society in medieval France, a division that endured for a millennium. This construct is the image of a society in which men separate themselves into three hierarchical orders--those who pray, those who fight, and those who work. Duby explains why this schema, supported by the general movement of the economy and the political and cultural show more organization, became entrenched in the north of France during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The book begins with a brief examination of a popular early seventh-century treatise on the 'three estates' of France. Duby then jumps abruptly back to the period in which the notion that French society was divided into three estates was born. It was the bishops of a tottering Capetian state who drew upon older imaginings of hierarchical order to project a new rationale for royal power and peasant subservience; their ternary scheme collapsed with the monarchy itself, to be resuscitated in the twelfth century, when the maturing of feudal-vassalic institutions and the conflict between Capetians and Plantagenets contributed to a definitive restoration of monarchical trifunctionality. In tracing the fortunes of the three orders, Duby shows how the tripartite schema came to occupy a central position in social thought and clarifies the manner in which feudal society viewed itself." show lessTags
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A fascinating study of the origins of the model of the three orders / estates which later become not only commonplace but structural in both France and England (consider not only the Estates-General in France but the structure of Parliament / Houses of Convocation in England). Duby shows how the emergence of the model is intertwined with the changes in society between the Carolingian state and the later feudalism of the high middle ages.
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4,249 works; 129 members
Author Information
234+ Works 11,489 Members
Georges Duby was a member of the Academie Francaise, and taught for many years at the College de France
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- De drie orden : Het zelfbeeld van de feodale maatschappij 1025-1225
- Original title
- Les trois ordres ou L'imaginaire du féodalisme. - Parijs : Gallimard, 1978. - (Bibliothèque des histoires) (Bibliothèque des histoires)
- Original publication date
- 1978
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- History, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality, Politics and Government
- DDC/MDS
- 321.3 — Society, Government, and Culture Political science Systems of governments and states Feudalism
- LCC
- HN425 .D78313 — Social sciences Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform Social history and conditions. Social problems. By region or country
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 296
- Popularity
- 108,094
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.61)
- Languages
- 7 — Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 14
- ASINs
- 7
