Commune, communauté, communalité dans les villes allemandes du Moyen Âge : une expérience européenne entre théorie et pratique

From a historiographical point of view, the medieval town - and more specifically its freest and highest political organization, which took the name of "commune" - has not ceased to be the subject of major narratives since the end of the Middle Ages, each in its own way attempting to assess its social, cultural and political significance in terms of its performance over the long course of European history. This session is an attempt to re-evaluate, balance and gauge the interpretative power of the ancient communal model for our time, by examining the term, both word and experience, through its historiographical construction (textual as well as visual and symbolic) at the time and subsequently; through its capacity to have initiated, at the turn of the ^19th and ^20th centuries, a major heuristic and epistemological encounter between history and sociology (Weber and Durkheim); through the specific practices and rituals for which it provided the framework and which instituted it (such as the oath). Our approach is deliberately designed to be historiographical, conceptual and geographical, drawing on references and points of reference drawn largely from the wider German-speaking world, both as a space that has produced urban structures not unrelated to living federalism (Germany, Switzerland), and as a scientific culture in which history, law and sociology have interacted in different ways. In this way, and for the subject under discussion, the seminar would like to invite its participants and audiences on a journey other than the classic and obvious Italian one, as a salutary reminder of the intricacy and diversity consubstantial with what we call Europe.