Abstract
Oratores, bellatores, laboratores : can we make a gendered history of the famous trifunctionality by which medieval society was supposed to represent itself ? In Les Trois Ordres ou l'imaginaire du féodalisme (1973), Georges Duby asserts that " the feminine is not concerned by such classifications ". But is this true ? Going back through the intellectual genesis of this great essay on a reactionary thought that ended up institutionally conforming society, the investigation first focuses on the meaning and value of the term labor in the Middle Ages. If we accept that laboratores refers to those who toil at work, then we have a better grasp of the feminine principle at work in the creation of the social world. Not only does this shed light on the invisible part played by women in the world of work, it also sheds light on its political contradictions, particularly in cities. For while the sex of urban power is masculine, its allegories are always feminine ; an ambivalence that was expressed at the beginning of the 14th century when it came to understanding how political bodies at work with the feminine were constituted.