Nommer les structures rurales entre fin de l’Antiquité et Haut Moyen Âge : le répertoire lexical gréco-latin et ses avatars modernes (1re partie)

Abstract

Twelve centuries separate the age when villa signified a type of residential complex built on a land property, and castellum a village, from the age when villa changed its meaning for that of “village” or produced in French the word “ville”, and castellum its French derivative “château”. When should we situate those discontinuities? In the 6th century? the 9th? the 12th? Such were indeed the different moments that were hypothesized for the same break: deciding between them is not possible but from a one and only ‘questionnaire’ in which terminology plays a major part. This long evolution is of interest for both historians and archaeologists, whose dialogue is more often than not unsatisfactory, all the more since fewer are those cases in which written sources and archaeological documentation tally each other. Not to consider that semantic evolutions are not the same in the various regions and written sources, at any time, simultaneously make use of different styles (practical, literary, underlitterary or familiar, even slang) while the persisting use of Latin and Greek uniformly draws an illusory veil of continuity upon higly moving referents. Therefore our intention here is, for that long sequence (3rd-12thcentury), although focusing on the 4ththrough 9thcenturies, to acknowledge the semantic evolution in the terminological resources of ancient languages (Latin and Greek) as regards the rural realities - agrarian structures, landholding, settlement -, but equally estimate how some ancient lexemes are transplanted right into the discourse of today antiquaries and medievalists, either historians or archaeologists. Fresh inquiries made clear the use of some terms which spread in that age, such as massa fundorum, praetorium, in relation with the transformations of the agrarian producing system while other ones (praedium and its Greek equivalent epoikion, sors, iuga) added a new meaning in connexion with the major fiscal reform by Diocletian which conceded autopragia to the largest estates. Some semantic evolutions seem to have been anticipated by the historians (chôrion or villa with the meaning of village, castellum with that of fortified village), when others were postponed like that of villa in the meaning of estate; some senses were ignored, like castrum in the singular as a synonym for castellum / village. Polysemic phenomena were badly kept unobserved. We should elsewhere take into account the difficulty experienced by the moderns in forgetting those connotations that we consciously or unconsciously apply today to many Latin and Greek terms related to ancient realities (to be continued).