Les fondements de la tripartition sociale chez Adalbéron de Laon - article ; n°4 ; vol.33, pg 683-702

Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations - Année 1978 - Volume 33 - Numéro 4 - Pages 683-702
In the poem to king Robert Adalberon of Laon, we find hidden, behind a rigorous rhetorical structure, a whole ideological and mythical background. The pairwise opposition of social groups -clerics and serfs, warriors and monks, serfs and warriors- rests on symbolic and fantasmatic categories : the clothed and the naked, the orator and the mute, the bestial and the divine, the pure and the impure, etc. In short, «those who pray» are separated from the laity by their rejection of the world of the genus, that is, of sexuality and the family. Among the laity, serfs and warriors share the universe of the genus ; the latter possess the noble portion of it with the use of the potestas, while the former are at once the ill-born and the dominated. This tripartite representation of society can exist only by means of subterfuge which permits Adalberon to integrate the monks in the group of the clerics. This transposition is necessary in order to strengthen the mythical image of royal power which is in trouble by reviving an ancient conception of sovereignty of Indo-European origin.
20 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.