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THE PROBLEM of FRENCH NATIONAL IDENTITY in the LATE THE PROBLEM Of FRENCH NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES Nathan A. Daniels WINNER OF THE JOSEPH MULLIN PRIZE IN HISTORY (ORIGINAL RESEARCH) And even though this nation is proud and cruel toward its enemies, as its name signifies, it is merciful toward its subjects and those it dominates.. Thus, it is not without reason that this lady is renowned ..‘ above all other nations. O wrote Primat, a monk at the abbey of Saint-Denis, in his preface to Sthe Grandes Chroniques de France, the official chronicle ofthe history of France and its kings. Compiled and edited from older histories in the 127oS, the Gra odes Chroniques detailed the deeds and heroics of the French people and kings, beginning with their mythical Trojan ancestry, and extending through the present. While this was not the first vernacu lar historiography of France, it was by far the most popular, copied and illuminated in countless manuscripts during the course ofthe fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, of which over one hundred and thirty survive today.2 Of particular importance, is Primat’s use of the word nation in describing France—a term that has caused problems of definition for scholars over the past century. Craig Calhoun argues that in the premo dern era, the term ‘nation’ was apolitical, referring solely to a people linked by birth and culture.3 However, such a definition cannot suffice to describe what Primat meant by this term. France, while by no means a modern nation-state, nevertheless underwent a period of significant change during these centuries, during which history, race, culture, tradition, ritual, and monarchy became intertwined to form a new ‘J. M. E. Viard, ed., Les Grandes Chroniques de France (Paris, 1926—1953), 114. Quoted in Colette Beaune, The Birth of on Ideology: Myths and Symbols ofNotion in Late-Medieval France, trans. Susan Ross Huston (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 287. See Anne H edeman, The Royal Image: Illustrations ofthe Grandes Chroniques de France, 1274—422 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). Craig Calhoun, Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 9. 2 Nathan A. Daniels definition ofwhat it meant to be French. The presence of this emerging national identity challenges traditional notions of what nationalism means outside of modernity. If there is anything that present-day scholars of nationalism agree upon, it is that the Middle Ages played no part in its development. Nationalism is inherently caught up in the equation “nation = state = people,” and as such, it cannot exist outside of the modern nation-state.4 Eric Hobsbawm follows “most serious students” in that the idea of the ‘nation’ is a “social entity only insofar as it relates to a certain kind of modern territorial state, the ‘nation-state,’ and it is pointless to discuss nation and nationality except insofar as both relate to it.”5 Similarly, Benedict Anderson includes in his definition of the ‘nation’ that it is “sovereign”—”born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm.”6 Under such definitions, any hint of the ‘nation’ or ‘national identity’ in the Middle Ages can be readily dismissed for lacking the essential requirement of modernity. Despite these limitations, scholars of nationalism have sought to define the elusive phenomenon in exceptionally broad terms that encourage inclusivity. Anderson has famously described the nation as an “imagined political community,” whose members are linked together by the understanding that they are somehow part of a broader culture of shared values.7 Hobsbawm provides an equally broad definition, using the assumption that a nation is “any sufficientl1 large body of people whose members regard themselves. as such.” Similar to Anderson’s argument, a nation exists when its members imagine its existence. Calhoun departs from these definitions, framing nationalism as a discourse, a project, and an evaluation.9 However, these three dimen sions are made up from many features of the “rhetoric of nation,” which are most commonly found as claims for nationhood. His ten features consist of: boundaries; indivisibility; sovereignty; an ‘ascending’ notion of legitimacy; popular participation; direct membership; culture; temporal depth; common descent or race; and historical/sacred relations to a territory.’0 While such claims to nationhood certainly cannot be quanti Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 19. Ibid., 9—10. 6 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1983), 7. 7lbid.,6. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 8. Calhoun, Nationalism, 6. ‘° Ibid., 4—5. ExPosrfAcTo THE PROBLEM OF FRENCH NATIONAL IDENTITY 3 fled, they nonetheless can act as a guide to the more tangible aspects of nationalism and national identity. As such, they provide a fitting point of departure for considering how some form ofnationalism was developing in France during the late Middle Ages. By analyzing the portrayals of French monarchy and history through symbolism, literature, and artwork, we can see that France indeed meets some of the broader criteria for nationalism as presented by Calhoun, and that the Middle Ages are an essential part of understanding the development of the nation. One of the greatest problems facing the study of nationalism in the Middle Ages stems from a lack of interest on the part of medievalists to engage with the broader literature on the subject. Ironically, there is no shortage ofscholarship coming out ofthe nineteenth and early twentieth centuries pointing to the Middle Ages as the origin of nationalism and national identity.” Looking back in the past, they wanted to see why Europe had produced separate nations at all, when the overarching presence ofreligion and language—Christianity and Latin—might have united the continent instead. The most important contemporary work on medieval nationalism is Joseph Strayer’s On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State.’2 Examining Europe between uoo and r6oo, Strayer argued that the origin of the modern state took place within this period— especially between 1300 and 145o—based on a specific set of criteria: the appearance of political units persisting in time and fixed in space, the development ofpermanent, impersonal institutions, agreement on the need for an authority which can give final judgments, and accep tance of the idea that this authority should receive the basic loyalty of its subjects.’3 While Strayer’s work is an essential starting point, all of the major contemporary work by scholars of nationalism has taken place in the forty years since, rendering much of it out of date. More recently, scholars such as Gabrielle Spiegel and Collette Beaune have advocated for the rise of French nationalism through a complex system of royal symbols and imagery, as well as the importance ofcreating an undisput able national history.’4 While such works are also invaluable to the study For a full account of the importance of medieval Europe in the imagination of nine teenth- and twentieth-century nationalists, see Patrick J. Geary, The Myth ofNations: the Medieval Origins ofEurope (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). Joseph R. Strayer, On the Medieval Origins ofthe Modern State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). ‘3lbid., 10. 4See, for instance, Gabrielle M. Spiegel, “Political Utility in Medieval Historiography: A Sketch,” History and Theory 14(1975): 314—325; and Colette Beaune, The Birth ofan Ideology: VOLUME XIX 2010 4 Nathan A. Daniels of French nationalism, they do little to reconcile the authors’ own definitions with those of the major scholars of nationalism. Beaune readily admits that she does not offer a definition of the ‘nation’ in her work, choosing rather to examine “how people thought of France, what they said about it, and how they expressed their love for it.”5 She acknowledges that such ideas do not correspond with the broader scholarship of nationalism, but does not offer an alternative approach. Christopher Mlmand has also identified the problem of nationalism in the Middle Ages, but he too has stopped short of engaging with it on a broader level.’6 He does however point out that one of the greatest factors in arguing against such national sentiment is the role of local particularism and provincialism. That is to say, although a group of people might at some level identify themselves as part of a larger entity that is France, they are more inclined to identify with their own town, or region. Such sentiment certainly raises problems for the case ofnational ism, but from it, we can be reminded of two things. First, that it is essential to openly consider problems such as this one, as there will be no consensus as long as scholars ofmodern nationalism and scholars of medieval nationalism are not using the same vocabulary and ideological definitions. Second, no medievalist since Strayer has attempted to argue that nationalism existed in the Middle Ages in a way similar to that of the modern nation-state. Without any doubt, monarchy looms large as the elephant in the room, and as long as there is a social hierarchy that undervalues the role of the individual member—let alone one that still has ties to a feudal social order—there remains a question that cannot be easily resolved. But at the same time, medieval nationalism is not dismissible either, as something was clearly happening. What remains to be seen, is what exactly to call it. With this background in mind, we can begin to answer our ques tion—how was nationalism constructed and understood in late medieval France? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to this question. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, French national identity became closely entwined with notions of a national history which claimed that the French were the chosen people of God, the ‘most Christian,’ and were—and had always been—led by a king who was divinely ordained, and whose bloodline extended back into time imme morial.
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