French historian, author of works on the history of everyday life, family and childhood. The subject of his most famous book, Man Facing Death, is the history of attitudes towards death in European society.
Aries himself considered himself a “right-wing anarchist.” He was close to the far-right organization Aksion Française, but over time he distanced himself from it as too authoritarian. Collaborated with the monarchist publication La Nation française. However, this did not prevent him from being in close relations with a number of left-wing historians, especially Michel Foucault.
Ariès occupied a unique position in the world of French intellectuals. For most of his life he did not have academic status: for almost forty years he worked in a senior position in a department importing tropical fruits to France. In particular, he contributed to the technical and information re-equipment of the import service. Ariès called himself a “Sunday historian,” meaning that he works on historical works in moments of rest from his main place of work. This is the title of his autobiographical book, published in 1980 (Un historien du dimanche). During Ariès's lifetime, his works were much better known in the English-speaking world (translated into English since the 1960s) than in France itself. It was not until 1978 that he received belated academic recognition and a post at the École Supérieure des Sciences Sociales, whose director was the historian François Furet.
He has produced several first-class historical studies, the subject matter of which is focused on the poles of human life. On the one hand, these are works devoted to childhood, the child and the attitude towards him under the “old order”, mainly in the 16th-18th centuries, on the other hand, works on death and its perception in the West throughout the Christian era. Both of these arc points in human life, in Ariès’s interpretation, lose their ahistorical nature. He showed that both the attitude towards childhood, towards the child, and the perception of death are important subjects of historical analysis.

PHILIPPE ARIES: DEATH AS A PROBLEM OF HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

What is the reason that among the problems of the history of culture and worldview developed by modern historians, the problem of death occupies one of the prominent places? Until relatively recently, it hardly occupied them at all. They silently proceeded from the postulate that death is always death (“people were born, suffered and died…”), and, in fact, there was nothing to discuss here. From the workshop of historians, only archaeologists dealing with human remains, graves and their contents, and ethnologists studying funeral customs and rituals, symbolism and mythology, came into contact with this topic. Now, historical science is faced with the problem of how people perceive death in different eras and their assessment of this phenomenon. And it turned out that this is a highly significant problem, the consideration of which can shed new light on the worldview and value systems accepted in society.

The fact that historians until recently passed over this problem in silence is explained by a lack of understanding of, firstly, how important a role death plays in constituting the picture of the world inherent in a given socio-cultural community, as well as in mental life, and, secondly, how changeable - despite all the stability - is this picture of the world and, accordingly, the image of death and the afterlife, the relationship between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

When historians finally took the problems of death seriously, it was discovered that death is not only a subject of historical demography or theology and church didactics. Death is one of the fundamental “parameters” of collective consciousness, and since the latter does not remain immovable in the course of history, these changes cannot but be expressed in shifts in a person’s attitude towards death. Studying these attitudes can shed light on people's attitudes towards life and its basic values. According to some scientists, the attitude towards death is a kind of standard, an indicator of the character of civilization. The perception of death reveals the secrets of the human personality. But the personality, relatively speaking, is the “middle member” between culture and sociality, the link that unites them. Therefore, the perception of death, the other world, connections between the living and the dead is a topic whose discussion could significantly deepen the understanding of many aspects of the socio-cultural reality of past eras, and better understand what a person was like in history.

Until recently, as if it did not exist for historical knowledge, the problem of death suddenly and explosively arose in the horizon of research, attracting the attention of many historians, especially historians dealing with the history of Europe in the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the modern era. The discussion of this problem, having illuminated aspects of the mentality of people of these eras that had previously remained in the shadows, at the same time revealed new aspects of the scientific methodology of historians. The topic of awareness of death in history has revealed with particular clarity the connection between the directions of scientific research in the humanities and modernity. The attention of historians is increasingly drawn to the history of human consciousness, and not only, not even so much its ideological aspects, but its socio-psychological aspects.

The literature devoted to death in history is already difficult to review. French historian Michel Vovelle, who has long been involved in this issue, in one of his articles warns against confusing the scientific study of the perception of death with fashion. However, fashion also expresses a certain social need. A kind of “boom” caused by interest in the problem of the perception of death in different cultures really took place in the 70s and 80s, and it gave rise to a number of interesting works.

The problem of attitude towards death and understanding of the other world is an integral part of a more general problem of mentalities, socio-psychological attitudes, and ways of perceiving the world. Mentality expresses the everyday appearance of collective consciousness, not fully reflected and not systematized through the focused efforts of theorists and thinkers. Ideas at the level of mentalities are not spiritual structures generated by individual consciousness, complete in themselves, but the perception of such ideas by a certain social environment, a perception that modifies them unconsciously and uncontrollably.

Unawareness or incomplete awareness is one of the important signs of mentality. In mentality, something is revealed that the historical era under study did not intend at all, and was not able to communicate, and these involuntary messages, usually not “filtered” and not censored in the minds of those who sent them, are thereby devoid of intentional bias . This feature of mentality contains its enormous cognitive value for the researcher. At this level, it is possible to hear things that cannot be learned from conscious statements.

The circle of knowledge about a person in history, about his ideas and feelings, beliefs and fears, about his behavior and life values, including self-esteem, expands sharply, becomes multidimensional and more deeply expresses the specifics of historical reality; It is very significant that new knowledge about man, included in the field of view of the historian at the level of mentalities, relates primarily not only to representatives of the intellectual elite, who throughout most of history monopolized education, and therefore information traditionally available to historians, but also to broad sections of the population.

If ideas are developed and expressed by a few, then mentality is an integral quality of any person; you just need to be able to grasp it. Previously, the “silent majority”, practically excluded from history, turns out to be able to speak the language of symbols, rituals, gestures, customs, beliefs and superstitions and bring to the attention of the historian at least a particle of their spiritual universe.

It turns out that mentalities form their own special sphere, with specific patterns and rhythms, contradictory and indirectly connected with the world of ideas in the proper sense of the word, but in no way reducible to it. The problem of “folk culture” - no matter how vague and even deceptive this name is - as a problem of the spiritual life of the masses, different from the official culture of the elite, has now acquired new enormous significance precisely in the light of the study of the history of mentalities. The sphere of mentalities is just as intricately connected with the material life of society, with production, demography, and everyday life.

The refraction of the defining conditions of the historical process in social psychology, sometimes greatly transformed and even distorted beyond recognition, and cultural and religious traditions and stereotypes play a huge role in its formation and functioning. To discern behind the “plane of expression” the “plane of content”, to penetrate into this unspoken and fluid layer of social consciousness, so hidden that until recently historians did not even suspect its existence, is a task of paramount scientific importance and enormous intellectual appeal. Its development opens up truly boundless prospects for researchers.

It seemed necessary to me to remind about these aspects of mentality, since it is in attitudes towards death that the unconscious or unspoken plays a particularly large role. But the question arises: how can a historian, using verifiable scientific procedures, accomplish this task? Where to look for sources whose analysis could reveal the secrets of collective psychology and social behavior of people in different societies?

Familiarity with works on attitudes towards death in Western Europe could introduce one to the laboratory of the study of mental attitudes. Given the relative stability of the sources available to historians, they must first of all follow the line of intensifying research. The scientist is looking for new approaches to already known monuments, the cognitive potential of which has not been previously recognized and assessed, he strives to ask them new questions, to test the sources for “inexhaustibility”. Raising the question of attitudes towards death is a clear indication of how much the acquisition of new knowledge in history depends on the mental activity of the researcher, on his ability to update his questionnaire with which he approaches seemingly already known monuments.

Reading posts about the terrorist attack in Volgograd, I never tired of being amazed at how differently people react to death. They experience it differently and require different reactions from others. It feels like in this regard we are at a turning point, at the point of changing new social stereotypes. I decided to look at how attitudes toward death changed over a long historical period, and came across the most interesting book by Philippe Ariès, “Man in the Face of Death.”

And Ariès himself (French Philippe Ariès, July 21, 1914, Blois - February 8, 1984, Paris) turned out to be a most interesting person. For most of his life he did not have academic status: for almost forty years he worked in a senior position in a department importing tropical fruits to France. In particular, he contributed to the technical and information re-equipment of the import service. Ariès called himself a “Sunday historian,” meaning that he works on historical works in moments of rest from his main place of work.

During Ariès's lifetime, his works were much better known in the English-speaking world (translated into English since the 1960s) than in France itself. It was not until 1978 that he received belated academic recognition and a post at the École Supérieure des Sciences Sociales, whose director was the historian François Furet.

Oddly enough, before Ariès, the topic of man’s relationship to death had practically no researchers. His book marked the beginning of a whole layer of new research by historians, psychologists and cultural scientists. Death began to be viewed as one of the fundamental “parameters” of collective consciousness, and since the latter does not remain immovable in the course of history, these changes cannot but be expressed in shifts in a person’s attitude towards death.

The book itself is large in volume and written very unevenly, in places even chaotically. Quotes from “The Song of Roland” are adjacent to quotes from Tolstoy and the works of the church fathers. But the content is so interesting that I decided to present its content briefly. Those who are interested can, of course, read it in its entirety. It is impossible to retell such a work in your own words, so I will mainly quote quotes highlighted in blue.

Aries outlines five main stages in changing attitudes towards death. The first stage (indicated by the expression “we will all die”) is a state of “tamed death”, which remains stable in large sections of the population, from archaic times to the 19th century (or even to the present day). With this term (“tamed death”), Aries emphasizes that people at this stage treated death as an ordinary phenomenon that did not inspire them with special fears. Man is organically included in nature, and there is harmony between the dead and the living.

Death tamed
First, let's ask a naive question: how do the knights die in The Song of Roland, in the novels about the Knights of the Round Table, in the poems about Tristan? They don't die as expected. Their deaths are regulated by a strict ritual, helpfully described by the poets. Death is ordinary, normal, and does not come to heroes on the sly, unnoticed, even if it occurs as a consequence of an accidental wound, even if it is caused, as has happened, by too much excitement.

The most significant thing about this death is that it leaves time to realize its approach. “Ah, fair sire, do you think that you will die so soon?” “Yes,” Gauvain replies, “know that I won’t live even two days.” Neither the doctor, nor the comrades, nor the priests (these are generally forgotten and absent) know about this as well as he does. The dying person himself measures how long he has left to live.

Pious monks did not differ in this respect from knights. According to the chronicler Raoul Glaber (beginning of the 11th century), after four years of imprisonment in the monastery of Saint-Martin de Tours, the Venerable Hervé felt that he would soon leave this world, and numerous pilgrims flocked there in the hope of some miracle. An inscription from 1151, kept in the museum of the Augustinian monks in Toulouse, tells that the church watchman at Saint-Paul de Narbonne also “saw death approaching him, as if he had known his death in advance.” Surrounded by monks, he made a will, confessed, went to church to take communion and died there.

Some premonitions had the character of a miracle; A particularly sure sign was the appearance of the deceased, even in a dream. Thus, the widow of King Ban, after the death of her husband and the mysterious disappearance of her son, took a monastic vow. Years have passed. Once she saw in a dream her son and nephews, who were considered dead, in a beautiful garden. “Then she realized that the Lord had heeded her prayers and she would soon die.”

The development of science, however, forced the most sensible scientists to treat premonitions of death as folk superstitions, although some considered them poetic and treated them with respect.

Particularly significant in this regard is the way Chateaubriand speaks about them in The Genius of Christianity. For him, premonitions of imminent death are just beautiful folklore. “Death, so poetic because it touches immortal things, so mysterious because of its silence, must have a thousand ways to announce its coming,” but he adds: “to the people.” What a naive admission that the educated classes no longer perceived the signs portending death! At the beginning of the 19th century. scientific people did not believe at all in what they themselves began to consider picturesque and even delightful. In Chateaubriand's eyes, all the "thousand ways" in which death could announce its arrival had the character of a miracle. “Either death made itself known by the ringing of a bell, which began to ring on its own, then the person who was about to die heard three blows on the floor of his room.”

In order for the approach of death to be notified in advance, it should not be sudden, repentina. If she did not warn of her arrival, she was no longer considered a necessity, although formidable, but expected and accepted willy-nilly. Sudden death disrupted the world order in which everyone believed. She was an absurd instrument of chance, sometimes acting under the guise of God's wrath. That is why mors repentina was considered shameful and dishonorable to the one whom it befell.

In the Middle Ages, not only sudden and absurd death was low and disgraceful, but also death without witnesses or ceremony, such as the death of a traveler on the road, a drowned man caught in a river, an unknown person whose body was found on the edge of a field, or even a neighbor, struck by lightning for no reason. It didn't matter whether he was guilty of anything, such a death branded him with a curse. This idea was very ancient. Virgil also forced innocent people to vegetate in the most miserable part of hell, who were put to death on false charges and whom we, modern people, would, of course, want to completely justify.

If it was still possible to discuss the sudden death of an honest player, then in the case of a person who died from damage, there was no longer any doubt. The victim cannot be declared innocent; he is inevitably tainted by the “baseness” of his death. Guillaume Durand combines the victim of witchcraft with people who died during adultery, theft or pagan games, that is, in general, all games, with the exception of knightly tournaments (many canonists did not make leniency for tournaments).

The popular condemnation that befell the victim of a villainous murder, if it did not prevent her from being buried in a Christian manner, sometimes imposed on her something like a fine. The canonist Thomassen, writing in 1710, reports that in the 13th century. The archpriests of Hungary were in the habit of “taking a mark of silver from those who were unluckily killed by sword, or poison, or other similar means, before allowing them to be buried.”

The death of the condemned was even more shameful. Until the 14th century. they were denied even the opportunity to save their souls before execution: in another world they would have to face the same curse as in this one.

Ordinary and ideal death in the Early Middle Ages was not a specifically Christian death, a blessing for the soul, as centuries of Christian literature, from the church fathers to pious humanists, imagined death to be. Since the risen Christ conquered death, it was considered as a new birth, as an ascent to eternal life, and therefore every Christian should have expected death with joy. “In the midst of life we ​​are at the mercy of death,” wrote Notter in the 7th century. and added: “Do not betray us to a bitter death.” Here “bitter death” is death in sin, and not the physical death of the sinner itself.

On your deathbed: everyday rituals
Feeling his imminent end, the dying man took the necessary measures. In a world as full of wonders as the world of the Knights of the Round Table, death, on the contrary, was a very simple thing. When Lancelot, defeated and weakened, expected imminent death in a deserted forest, he took off his armor, prostrated himself on the ground, turning his head to the east, folded his hands into a cross and began to pray. Death is always described in words whose simplicity contrasts with the emotional richness of the context.

Attachment to a life burdened with worries and sorrows, regret about it is combined with the acceptance of imminent death.

All these actions, performed by the dying person after he lies down facing the sky, with his arms crossed on his chest, are of a ritual, ceremonial nature. In them one can recognize a variety of what, under the influence of the church, would become a medieval testament: confession of faith, repentance, farewell to the living and pious orders relating to them, surrender of one's soul to God, choice of burial. When the last prayer is said, the person lying on his deathbed can only wait for the end, and death has no longer any reason to delay.

With the end of the prayer, death came instantly. If it happened that she was late, the dying man waited for her in silence and no longer communicated with the world of the living.

Publicity
The intimate simplicity of death is one of its two necessary characteristics. The other is publicity, and it persisted until the end of the 19th century. The dying person should be in the center, among the gathered people.

Even a complete stranger to the family could enter the dying person’s room at the moment of the last communion. Thus, the pious Madame de la Ferrone (30s of the 19th century), walking through the streets of Ixl, heard a bell and learned that they were about to bring the last communion to a young priest who was lying on his deathbed. Previously, Madame de la Ferrone did not dare to visit the sick man, since she did not know him, but the last communion “quite naturally made me go there.” (Let us note this “quite naturally.”) Together with everyone else, she knelt at the gate of the house while the priests entered with the holy gifts, then everyone rose, entered the house and were present at the last communion and unction of the dying man.

“Tame death” was accepted as a natural inevitability. Aries explains the lack of fear of death among the people of the Early Middle Ages by the fact that, according to their ideas, the dead did not expect judgment and retribution for their lives; they plunged into a kind of sleep that would last “until the end of time,” until the second coming of Christ, after whereby all, except the most serious sinners, will awaken and enter the kingdom of heaven.

The dead sleep
The distance between life and death was not perceived, as the philosopher Vladimir Yankelevich put it, as some kind of “radical metabola.” There was no idea of ​​absolute negativity, of a gap in the face of an abyss where there is no more memory. People also did not experience dizziness and existential angst, or at least neither of them found a place in the stereotypical images of death. But there was no faith in a simple continuation of life on the other side of earthly death. It is noteworthy that the last farewell of Roland and Olivier does not contain any hint of the possibility of finding each other again in heaven. Better than any historian, the philosopher Yankelevich understood this character of death as a transition: the deceased slips away into a world “which differs from this one only in a very low level of intensity.”

Then they thought that the dead were sleeping. This idea is ancient and unchanged: already in Homer’s Hades the dead, disembodied ghosts, “sleep in the arms of death.” The regions of hell in Virgil are “the seat of sleep, shadows and soporific night.” Where the most blissful shadows rest in the Christian paradise, the light has the color of purple, that is, twilight.

In Feralia, on the day of remembrance of the dead, the Romans, according to Ovid, made sacrifices to Takita, a mute goddess who embodied the silence that reigned among the manes - the souls of the dead - in “that place doomed to silence.” It was also the day of sacrifices performed at the tombs, for the dead, at certain times and in certain places, awoke from their sleep like vague images from a dream and could bring confusion into the world of the living.

It seems, however, that the exhausted shadows in pagan beliefs were still more animated than the Christian sleepers of the first centuries of the new religion. Of course, they too could wander, invisible, among the living, and we already know that they appeared to those who were soon to die. But early Christianity insisted even more on the hypnotic insensibility and even unconsciousness of the dead, undoubtedly precisely because their sleep was supposed to be only an expectation of a happy awakening on the day of the resurrection of the flesh.

In Latin inscriptions one can often read not only “here lies”, but also “here rests”, “here rests”, “here sleeps”. In the early medieval liturgies, which were replaced by the Roman liturgy in the Carolingian era, “names of the deceased” are mentioned; believers were asked to pray “for the souls of the departed.” Unction, reserved for clergy in the Middle Ages, was called dormientium exitium, the last sacrament of the sleeping.

The image of death as a dream has survived centuries: we find it in the liturgy, in funerary sculpture, in wills. Indeed, even today, after someone’s death, people pray “for the repose of his soul.” The image of peace embodies the most ancient, most popular and most unchanging idea of ​​​​the world of the dead. This idea has not disappeared even today.

In a blooming garden
The dead slept in the flowering garden. “May God receive all our souls among the holy flowers,” cries Archbishop Turpin, standing before the bodies of the fallen knights. Roland also prays that the Lord will place his soul “in holy flowers.” The paradise of Turpin and Roland, or at least this image of paradise (for there were others), is not much different from Virgil’s Elysium with its “fresh meadows watered by streams,” or from the promised garden that the Koran promises the faithful.

In contrast, Homer's Hades has neither a garden nor flowers. Hades (at least the one depicted in the 11th song of the Odyssey) does not know the torments that appeared later in the image of Christian hell. The distance between the ideas of the underground kingdom of the dead in Homer and Virgil is greater than between the ideas of Virgil and the most ancient image of the other world among Christians. So neither the Middle Ages, with its passion for Virgil, nor Dante were mistaken.

In the Credo or in the old Roman canon, hell appears as the traditional abode of the dead, a place of waiting rather than a place of torture. The righteous of the Old Testament waited there until Christ, after his death, came to free or awaken them. Only later, in the context of the idea of ​​the Last Judgment, hell finally became throughout Christian culture what it had previously been only in individual cases: the kingdom of Satan and the place of eternal torment for sinners.

Submission to the inevitable
Court documents from the late 17th century. allow us to detect in the popular mentality of that era a mixture of insensitivity, humility and a desire for publicity in relation to death, which we have already explored based on other sources.

And it's not a lack of ways to express feelings; after all, for example, the man of that time was able to express the bewitching charm of money and wealth with great force. But despite such love for the things of this world, the dying criminal, as he appears in court records, “gives the impression of acceptance of the inevitability.”

Death tamed
To discover throughout history, from Homer to Tolstoy, an invariable expression of the same global attitude towards death does not mean to recognize for it some kind of structural constancy, alien to the actual historical variability. Against this primary background, dating back to immemorial antiquity, many elements were constantly changing. But this background itself resisted the impulses of evolution for more than two thousand years. In a world subject to change, the traditional attitude towards death appears as a kind of dam of inertia and continuity.

It has now been so erased from our morals that it is difficult for us to imagine and understand it. The old position, in which death is at once near and familiar, but at the same time belittled and made insensitive, is too contrary to our perception, where death inspires such fear that we no longer dare to speak its name.

That is why, when we call this death intimately connected with a person, as it was in past centuries, “tamed,” we do not want to say that it was once wild and then became domestic. On the contrary, we mean that she has become wild today, whereas before she was not so. It was that death, the oldest, that was tamed.

O.A. Alexandrov, economist and historian

Philippe Ariès: a look at childhood and family under the Old Order

People come to historical science in different ways: some take the traditional route, entering a university or college, for others History is a hobby, an activity for the soul. Still others, after receiving a diploma in history, work in another field, devoting their free time to history. The latter includes Philippe Ariès, often called the “weekend” historian. Occupying the position of an official for the control of fruit exports, he publishes unique works devoted to the evolution of attitudes towards death and childhood, ideas about History in different eras, reflections on the nature and place of homosexuality in the system of personal relationships.

Philippe Ariès is a happy husband and father, loved by his wife and children.

The family life of Philippe Ariès, illuminated by the smiles of his loving wife and children, suggested to the historian the topic of a new book - Child and family life under the Old Order. Like all the historian's works, this book is original to the point of extravagance, controversial and provocative. Ariès is not interested in statistics of fertility and mortality, demographic transitions (although he analyzed them in early works), or the influence of living standards on the number of children in a family. He is interested in something else - attitudes towards childhood, relationships in the family, psychological problems of childhood and motherhood, the cultural environment of the aristocracy, using the example of which the author showed the evolution of the development of anthropological practices.
Children often ask their parents what they were like as children, how they played, what they dreamed of becoming. For the average person, this is a short-term immersion in the memory of his childhood, in a bygone era. A historian perceives such questions differently: tell us about changes in attitudes towards children in past eras, reveal the child’s worldview, his fears and dreams.

Aries divides the society of the past into two worlds: the world of adults and the world of children. The historian’s words about the absence of childhood are often perceived by his colleagues as a gross mistake. P. Hutton wrote about the misunderstanding of Aries' idea, pointing out the inclusion of childhood in adulthood, the merging of childhood and adolescence. As a phenomenon, childhood has always existed, as has parental love. Another thing is the attitude towards them in different eras, sometimes belittled, sometimes romanticized.
Philippe Ariès showed the life of a person from birth to formation as an individual, a citizen. From the medieval perception of childhood and family, a thread of understanding stretches to the modern family. Let's go with Aries to the world of childhood, distant and close, just like the afterlife in people's minds.
Ariès illustrates the story of the childhood and adolescence of “little adults” with examples of sculpture and painting related to the evolution of the understanding of death. Life and death are nearby, and Aries finds the intersection points of these phenomena. Tombstones, frescoes, sculptural compositions reflect the vision of people of different eras of human life.
So the baby was born. From childhood, elements of historical memory are embedded in human consciousness: name, date and year of birth, genealogy and description of the social environment. These are different reference points: name and gender are imaginary forms (sometimes myths), surname is tradition, age is the world of numbers.
For a long time, secular and spiritual authorities did not record the year of birth. Why? The explanation is in the religious perception of people: in the Middle Ages, life was seen as a path to cleansing from sins, a time of preparation for the future, afterlife. The time of a person’s existence on earth is insignificant compared to the life of the soul in another world. Fifty or sixty years of earthly life versus hundreds, perhaps thousands of years in the afterlife. The attitude was different to names given in honor of saints or heroes, and surnames that reflected the family’s sphere of activity or area of ​​residence.
Until the early modern period, according to Aries, there was no custom of painting children and family portraits. The ancient arts - painting, sculpture, architecture, music - were supposed to satisfy, according to the Christian religion, the spiritual needs of medieval society. Family history was recorded in genealogy, rarely in memoirs.
The family portrait - a living testimony to the history of the family - penetrates European society during the Renaissance, during the period of revival of interest in the Personality. The dates and names of the artists appear on the portraits. Dates are imprinted on material objects of housing - beds, wardrobes, chests.
As in the Middle Ages, Renaissance man used another category instead of dates and ages - stage of life. Anthropological practice distinguished three ages of life - youth, maturity, old age. Maturity was understood as a difficult period of life - youth was gone, but old age did not come. By the way, for most people old age did not set in, since due to numerous wars, epidemics, crime (partly suicides), people rarely lived to old age. Old age was treated differently: true Christians in old age gain wisdom and holiness (with the exception of women), people of little faith and non-Christians fall into insanity in old age, losing their common sense and memory.

Artifacts serve as illustrations of the ages of life: childhood is expressed in toys, youth - in textbooks, youth - in weapons and flowers (the courtly culture of the nobility, maturity - in household items, old age - in worn clothes, a fireplace or a bench near the house where the old man spends time, remembering my youth.
Medieval historians note the stability of the periodization of life, comparable to the rigid structure of medieval society. This rigidity was ensured by religion, prohibiting social elevators and ancient cultural practices.
However, there was some blurring of ages. Youth meant mature years, childhood turned into adolescence. It is no coincidence that the French language did not have the word “youth” under the Old Order. Instead they said “child” (enfant). People moved from childhood into adulthood. This transition depended on the social and economic status of the family: having started working or taking part in political affairs and wars, the child became an adult. The word “child” was used not only to indicate age, but also as a friendly address (“little one, bring this” or “come on, guys”). We do not know whether in the Middle Ages the expression “don’t be a child” was used to denote infantilism, the weakness of an adult. There were probably certain variations of this expression.
In the Middle Ages, the importance of childhood was diminished by religious and economic factors. First, the Church established a monopoly on the teaching of writing and numeracy by creating monastic schools. Secondly, the rising cost of papyrus and paper narrowed the scope of school education. Finally, the creation of a unified system for teaching writing was hampered by the presence of many languages ​​and dialects, as a result of which residents of neighboring regions often did not understand each other. The unification of the language will begin in the 18th century, and in a number of countries a century later. The unity of language on the territory of the country played the same role in the life of Europe in modern times as the system of payments in euros or visa-free regime in the European Union now plays.
Childhood was in the shadow of public life due to the high mortality rate and low standard of living of the European population. Children were paid attention only when they survived and grew up. Attitudes towards the institution of childhood began to change with the advent and spread of printing, which gave textbooks and entertaining literature to European civilization. The cheaper prices of books made them more accessible to all social classes. Translations of religious literature into national languages ​​played a significant role. One of the first translators was Martin Luther. However, it took two centuries for the perception of childhood in the eyes of society to change dramatically.
The secularization of life and the increase in economic well-being, mainly among the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, divided children into older, middle and younger. Aries indicates the beginning of such a division - the 18th century. It is quite possible that he is mistaken, and a century earlier the nobility distinguished the shades of childhood. Wasn’t there a gradation of children according to the time of birth into older, middle and younger? This can be seen in all fairy tales and oral folk art. It’s just that in the Middle Ages such gradation may not have been emphasized in everyday life.

The phenomenon of childhood is viewed through the prism of art - painting, sculpture and architecture. In the Middle Ages, a child on frescoes or in the form of a sculptural element is a little Christ or an angel. There were images of innocent children killed.
As a rule, they were depicted dressed. American sociologist Neil Postman noted that the Church cultivated a sense of guilt and prohibited overt bodily practices. A naked person was considered crazy, strange, giving rise to lustful thoughts. Only in the 16th century, with the beginning of the Renaissance, artists and sculptors turned to the nude, recreating the tradition of Antiquity.
Although children increasingly appear in group and family portraits, there were no stand-alone depictions of the child until the 18th century. Children were painted as small adults, which is clearly visible in the paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Jan van Eyck. The exception was portraits of children of the nobility.
In the Age of Enlightenment, a new compositional solution in painting emerged: in a family portrait, adults are grouped around children. Did this mean increased attention to children, future heirs of the family and historical memory? Without a doubt. At the same time, the religiosity of artists and parents left an imprint on children's portraits and figures: as a rule, children are spiritual and beautiful. These are little angels.

Philippe Ariès pays attention to children's clothes. Colors and shapes, clothing styles served as markers of social class. We mentioned flowers briefly. As for styles, in the Middle Ages they wore long clothes that protected a person from temptations. Naturally, the clothes of the nobility and commoners were different. There were differences among the bourgeoisie, which sought to keep up with the nobility in wealth and fashion. In medieval society, there was a ban on wearing clothes of a different social class. The uniform was worn by clergy and teachers, and the military. Commoners dressed according to their income level in discreet, gray or black clothes. Brightness and luxury of clothing was condemned by the Church as a sign of pride and vanity. Children dressed like adults.

Childhood is not only work and responsibilities, but also games. The game element of socialization and inculcation of everyday culture skills has been studied in detail by J. Huizinga and N. Elias. The highest nobility preferred playing chess, dolls, and playing ball. The lower strata of society played lotto, leapfrog, hide and seek, etc. It is worth noting that there was no gradation between the games of adults and children - they were the same. Moreover, the military nature of the European economy in the Middle Ages focused the attention of the king and feudal lords on war games - tournaments, staged battles, horse riding, fencing, archery (later - with firearms). F. Ariès talks about the games of royal families and nobility, ignoring other social classes. This one-sidedness is one of the serious shortcomings inherent in the research of the French cultural historian.
True, Aries briefly mentions the bourgeois games borrowed from the authorities. A means of unifying social classes were carnivals and common holidays, when commoners walked alongside nobles and clergy. Later, carnivals were divided into folk and noble, the latter being a means of socialization, dating, intrigue, and romance.

The Catholic Church looked disapprovingly at the fun of the nation, trying to ban gambling (cards, backgammon, etc.). Another entertainment was dancing. In the Middle Ages there was a period when even clerics danced. In addition to games and dances, with the development of printing, fairy tales became popular, partially adapted to the tastes of the nobility by its representatives (for example, the tales of Charles Perrault).
Teachers and governesses take part in raising children. We will say especially about the first ones. As for the second, governesses taught not only manners and etiquette, but also sexually enlightened the offspring of noble families. Considering the low level of medicine and the prevalence of sexual diseases, such a social practice was not without meaning. Children of the nobility are introduced to the intimate sphere at an early age, from 4-5 years old. The historian Emile Malle described how the governess played with the genitals of little Louis XIII, telling him about his virility. Now this may seem like pedophilia to us, but in the culture of that era it was the norm.

Revolutions in Europe replaced religious models of child rearing with liberal ones. The development of medicine and hygiene increased the duration of childhood and adolescence, delaying death. Of course, this was typical for a number of countries, including England and France. In Eastern European countries, prohibitive and restrictive bodily practices continued to exist.
Philippe Ariès's pessimism regarding the evolution of ideas about childhood is evident in his reflections on children of the 20th century. The emergence of new means of communication (radio, television, the Internet), cheaper travel, and children’s access to information previously closed to them leads to the disappearance of childhood. N. Postman agrees with Aries, using the example of the United States to examine the transition from reading books to clip-based perception of information through television programs and websites. V. Yanin, author of an article about Postman’s book The Disappearance of Childhood, is sure that childhood is impossible without social secrets. And yet children continue to believe in fairy tales and miracles, even understanding their illusory nature. Why? The answer lies in the archetypes of consciousness - the action of the mental attitude “belief in the miraculous” has not been canceled.

Now it is necessary to say a few unpleasant, but necessary words.
Philippe Ariès's book is categorical and relies more on a subjectivist approach. This is its weakness, which gives rise to shortcomings. Leaving aside the historians’ accusations of little digital material and analysis of statistical data (this is not so important for the analysis of the mentality of the individual and society), we note obvious errors.
Philippe Ariès, while researching mentality and historical anthropology, mainly analyzed the highest social classes - the aristocracy and the white clergy, occasionally touching on the bourgeoisie. In his picture of history there is no place for peasants and workers, as well as the creative intelligentsia. An equally serious drawback is the historian’s categorical position on a number of issues. Thus, Aries denies the presence of parental love and a sense of family unity in the Middle Ages, emphasizing the indifferent attitude towards children. Any mother will disagree with a historian, not to mention psychologists, cultural experts, and anthropologists. Of course, frequent wars and epidemics devalued human life, and the low standard of living made the birth of many children undesirable. But the same diseases and mass disasters united the surviving family members. Let’s not forget about orphanages and hospitals opened at monasteries and in cities.
These are the main shortcomings of F. Ariès's unique book. Of course, the phenomenon of childhood needs further research; fortunately, the work of Ariès, Postman and other historians has laid a good scientific foundation.

Literature
1. Aries F. Child and family life under the Old Order. – Ekaterinburg, Ural University, 1999.
2. Gurevich A.Ya. Historical synthesis and the Annales School. – St. Petersburg, Center for Humanitarian Initiatives, 2014.
3. Postman Neil. The disappearance of childhood. Article.

March 21st, 2012

Non-positive positivist background.

This article by Philippe Ariès was published by Communications (1982 V. 35, N. 1. P. 56-67) and attracted my attention for two reasons. Firstly, a fairly well-known historian, the author of the books “Child and Family Life under the Old Order”, “Man Facing Death”, a very extraordinary researcher who has caused a rise in interest in these topics (see H. Hendrick Children and Childhood// Refresh 15 (Autumn 1992)) turned to a marginal area for historians of culture, everyday life, mentality (although, of course, it has now acquired its place in Western Europe), secondly, it (the history of homosexuality) is considered from completely different positions. Ariès found a very interesting approach with his conceptualization.

The article was translated loosely at first, since it was assumed that it would remain for personal use. After becoming familiar with the author’s position, I tried to obtain permission from the copyright holders for translation and publication. By chance, the opportunity arose to publish it in one of the Moscow collections, however, the publishing house did not require an email confirming consent, but an official document. But, unfortunately, despite the abundance of emails and then calls to the phone number indicated on the copyright holder’s website, it was not possible to contact anyone (the automated lady in French claimed that the phone was not in service). Later, the site stopped working, and the publisher was no longer waiting. The translation of the article was never published.

I still decided to post the translation online.

Reflections on the history of homosexuality

It is clear that the weakening of the taboo on homosexuality, as Michael Pollack shows, is one of the scourges that attacks the current morality of our Western society. Homosexuals today form a cohesive group, still marginal of course, but already aware of their identity; it demands rights from the dominant social majority, which still does not accept it (and even in France they react sharply to sexual offenses when they occur between two individuals of the same sex - legislation increases punishment), but this group is also not yet confident in itself and even wavers in his conviction. However, the door is open to tolerance, even to agreement, which would have been unthinkable thirty years ago. Recently, magazines reported on a wedding in which a Protestant pastor (rejected by his church) married two lesbians, not for life, of course (!), but for as long as possible. The Pope was forced to intervene to recall Pauline's condemnation of homosexuality, which previously would not have been necessary if corresponding tendencies had not emerged within the bosom of the Church itself. It is known that in San Francisco gays It has its own lobby, which should also be taken into account. In short, homosexuals are on the way to their own recognition, and there are now enough conservative moralists to be indignant at their insolence, as well as the weakness of the resistance offered to them. However, Michael Pollack has doubts: this situation may not last long, everything may even turn around, and Gabriel Matzneff echoes him in Le Monde (5.1.1980) in an article with the headline “Underground Paradise” is already a Paradise, but still underground. “We will witness the return of morality and its triumph. [Calm down, it's not tomorrow!] We will also have to hide even more than before. The future is underground."

Excitement reigned. It is true that there is a way to regain control, which, however, is aimed more at safety than at restoring morality. Is this the first stage? Meanwhile, the normalization of sexuality and homosexuality has already gone too far to succumb to pressure from the police and justice. It should be recognized that the position achieved by homosexuality is due not only to tolerance, open-mindedness - “Everything is allowed, nothing matters ...” There are subtler and deeper things and, without a doubt, more structured and categorical, at least for a long time period: from now on, society as a whole, albeit with some stability, is ready to accept the model of homosexuality. Here is one of the points that struck me most in Michael Pollack's report: the models of global society are approaching the idea of ​​homosexuals about them, and the approach is caused by a distortion of the image and roles.

I will use this thesis. The dominant model of a homosexual, starting from the time (i.e. from the 18th - early 19th centuries to the beginning of the 20th century), when he himself is aware of his uniqueness and perceives it as a disease or perversion, is an effeminate person: a travesty with a high-pitched voice . Here one can see the homosexual's adaptation to the dominant model: the men he loves have a feminine appearance, and this remains in the general mainstream of what reassures society. However, they can also love children or very young people (pederasty): a very ancient relationship, which we can even call classical because it dates back to the times of Greco-Roman antiquity, and is also present in the Muslim world, despite Ayatollah Khomeini and his executioners. They correspond to traditional educational practices or initiation, which, however, can degenerate into a distorted and secretive form: a special friendship borders on homosexuality, without being aware or recognizing it.

According to Michael Pollack, today's standard of homosexuals often discards and pushes away these two previous models: the effeminate type and the pedophile, and replaces them with the image of the macho, the athlete, the superman, even if these images retain certain characteristics of the youth, as can be seen, by comparison, in the Mexican American fine art of the 20s-30s. or in Soviet art: the image of a leather-clad biker athlete with a ring in his ear - an image that has gained popularity among all ages, however, regardless of their own sexuality - the type of youth with whom even women strive to compare. This is a situation where we don't always know who we are dealing with: him or her?

The erasing of the difference between the sexes in adolescents, isn’t this a true feature of our society, a unisex society? The roles are interchangeable, both father and mother, as well as sexual partners. And it’s surprising that the only model is the masculine one. The girl's silhouette approaches the boy's silhouette. She has lost the smooth curves that artists of the 16th-19th centuries admired and which are still held in high esteem in Muslim society, perhaps because they are still associated with maternal duty. Today no one will make fun of girls’ thinness, as the poet of the last century did:

Who cares about thinness, O my object of love!

After all, if your chest is flat, then your heart will be closer.

If you go back a little in time, perhaps there are some suitable signs of some other society with a weak tendency towards unisex, in Italy of the Quattrocento, but then the model was less masculine than now, and strove for androgyny.

The acceptance by all young people of an external appearance that is undoubtedly homosexual in origin may also explain their curiosity, which is often sympathetic to homosexuality, from which it borrows some features, the presence of which it is happy in places of meetings, acquaintances, and entertainment. "Homo" has become one of the characters in modern comedy.

If my analysis is correct, then unisex fashion becomes a clear sign of general changes in society: tolerance towards homosexuality arises from a change in the representation of the sexes themselves, not only their functions, their meaning in the profession, in the family, but also their symbolic image.

We are trying to grasp what is now flashing before our eyes: but can we get a sample of relationships earlier than they are set out in the written prohibitions of the Church? But there is a wide area for such research. And we will adhere to this assumption, which could become the basis for research.

Recently, books have begun to appear that make one think that homosexuality is an invention of the 19th century. Michael Pollack was cautious in the debate that arose after his report. Meanwhile, the problem turned out to be interesting. Let's agree: this does not mean that there were no homosexuals before - this is a ridiculous hypothesis. But at the same time, only homosexual behavior was known that was associated with a certain age of life or with certain circumstances, which does not exclude coexisting heterosexual behavioral practices in the same individuals. Paul Wen drew attention to the fact that our knowledge of classical antiquity does not allow us to talk about homosexuality or heterosexuality, but we should talk about bisexuality, the open manifestation of which is it seemed conditioned by the chance of encounters, and not biologically.

Undoubtedly, the emergence of strict moral norms that control sexuality, based on a world philosophical concept such as Christianity, which developed them and brought them to the present day, patronizes the harsher term “sodomy”. But this term, inspired by the behavior of the men of Sodom in the Bible, refers rather to an act called unnatural ( morecanum), how masculorumconcubitus, also understood as contrary to nature. Thus, homosexuality was then clearly separated from heterosexuality - the only normal and acceptable practice, but at the same time it was included in a long list of perversions; Western ars erotica is a catalog of perversions of everything sinful. Thus, the category of perversion is created, or as they said then, voluptuousness, from which homosexuality can hardly be distinguished. Of course, the situation is more complex than this overly crude description suggests. We will return shortly to an example that characterizes this complexity, which turns into ambivalence in Dante. A homosexual in the Middle Ages and under the Old Order was, so to speak, a pervert.

At the end of the 18th century. - early 19th century he is already becoming a monster, abnormal. This evolution itself gives rise to the problem of the relationship between the medieval or Renaissance monster and the biological abnormality of the Enlightenment and the beginning of modern science (see J. Ceard). The monster, the dwarf, and also the old woman, who is associated with the witch, are all an insult to creation itself, accused of their nothing less than devilish nature.

The homosexual of the early 19th century inherited all these curses. He was both abnormal and perverted. The Church was ready to recognize the physical abnormality that made a homosexual an effeminate man, an abnormal and effeminate man, and this is worth remembering, because this first stage in the formation of autonomous homosexuality passed under the sign of effeminacy. The victim of this abnormality, of course, was not to blame, but this did not make her any less suspicious, subject to her nature more than anyone else to sin, more capable of seducing her neighbor and drawing him onto the same path, and therefore she should have been locked up as and a woman or to supervise her like a child and subject her to constant suspicion from society. This abnormal person, precisely because of his abnormality, was suspected of becoming a pervert, a criminal.

Medicine, beginning in the late 18th century, adopted a clerical view of homosexuality. It became a disease, at best an ailment, the clinical study of which then made it possible to diagnose it. Several recently published books, some of them by J-P. Aron and Roger Kempf (J.-P. Aron; Roger Kempf), gave the floor to these amazing doctors and their patients, and these books gained popularity. Thus, in the depths of the former marginal world of prostitutes, available women and libertines, a new species arises, united and homogeneous, with its own innate physiological characteristics. Doctors are beginning to teach how to identify homosexuals, who, however, manage not to stand out. Checking the anus or penis seemed to be a sufficient means of identifying them. They were a specific anomaly, similar to the circumcised Jews. Homosexuals formed a certain ethnic group, even if their special quality was acquired and not determined by birth. Medical diagnostics were built on only two foundations. The first is physical: the stigmata of vice, which, however, was found in almost everything, among libertines and alcoholics; the second is moral: an almost natural inclination that pushed towards vice and which could spoil the healthy elements of society. In the face of exposure, which gave them a new social status, homosexuals defended themselves, on the one hand, by hiding, and on the other hand, by confessing. Pathetic and pitiful, and sometimes cynical, confessions are already the perception of our time, but it has always been a painful recognition of one’s difference, which is both irresistibly shameful and defiant. These confessions were not subject to publication or publicity. One of them was sent by Zola, who had no idea what to do with it, and then gave it to someone else to get rid of it. Such shameful confessions did not cause protest. If a homosexual made a “coming out of the closet,” then this exit led him to the marginal world of perverts, where he arrived until medicine removed him from there throughout the 18th century for its collections of ugliness and infection.

The anomaly here was expressed by gender and its ambivalence - an effeminate man, or a woman with male genitals, or an androgyne.

At the second stage, homosexuals immediately refuse both the “closet” and perversions, in order to now demand the right to be openly as they are, in order to affirm their normality. We have already seen this. This evolution was accompanied by a change in model: the masculine model replaced the effeminate or boyish type.

But here we are not talking at all about a return to ancient bisexuality, as it was practiced at a certain age, during initiation or brutal initiations into college, which persisted for a long time among teenagers. This second type of homosexuality, on the contrary, excludes heterosexual relationships either due to impotence or deliberate preference. Now it is no longer doctors or clergy who single out homosexuality as a separate category, a species, it is now homosexuals themselves who defend their difference, and thus they contrast themselves with the rest of society, still demanding their place in the sun.

I would like Freud to reject the following statement: “Psychoanalysis completely refuses to recognize that homosexuals form a special group with their own special qualities that could separate them from other individuals.” However, it did not prevent the vulgarization of psychoanalysis from pushing towards the liberation of homosexuality rather than towards its classification into types following the doctors of the 19th century.

They wanted to assure me that youth or adolescence did not really exist before the 18th century - a youth whose history was much the same (albeit with some chronological discontinuity) as the history of homosexuality: first Cherub, effeminate, then Siegfried, masculine.

I am rightly cited as an objection (N.Z. Davis) to the cases of youth abbeys, the “subculture” of London apprentices..., which indicate the social activity inherent in youth, the common interests of young men. And this is indeed true.

Youth immediately had both status and functions, both in matters of organizing communities and their leisure time, and in matters of work and workshop in the face of the boss and bosses. In other words, there was a difference in status between unmarried youths and adults. But this difference, even if it contrasted them, did not divide them into two non-communicating worlds. Youth was not institutionalized as a separate category, although young men had functions that applied only to them. That is why there was almost no prototype of the youth. This superficial analysis allows for some exceptions. For example, in the 15th century in Italy or in the literature of the Elizabethan era, there seemed to be a tendency towards the image of a young, elegant man of a thin physique, who was not without ambiguity and gave the impression of a homosexual in his appearance. Starting from the 16th and 17th centuries, on the contrary, the silhouettes of a strong and courageous adult or fertile woman took over. The example of the New Age (XVII century) is a young man, but not a young man (youth); it is the young man with his wife who rises to the top of the age pyramid. Effeminateness, boyishness, or even the fragile “youth” of the Quattrocento period are alien to the imagination of that time.

On the contrary, at the end of the 18th century, and especially in the 19th century, youth will begin to find its own justification at the same time as it gradually loses its separate position in global society, the organic elements of which it ceases to be in order to become only its “hallway.” This phenomenon of enclosure begins in the 19th century (the era of romanticism) among school bourgeois youth (schoolchildren). Apparently, it becomes universal after the Second World War, and youth from that moment appears to us as a separate age group - huge and massive, loosely structured, entered very early, and left late and with difficulties, which happens immediately after marriage. She has become a kind of myth.

It was this youth that was male from the very beginning, while girls continued to live the life of an adult woman and participate in her affairs. Then, as is the case now, when youth became mixed and at the same time acquired a unisex type, girls and boys adopted a common model - a more masculine one.

These lines were written in an atmosphere of moral order and obsession with security in 1979-1980.

An association of young village bachelors (from puberty to 25 years old) in France of the 15th-17th centuries, who organized holidays and entertainment, and also looked after the observance of the moral principles of family life in the village (approx.).