Space and Place in Medieval Contexts

Abstract

Since Henri Lefebvre published his magisterial tome, The Social Production of Space, in 1958, medievalists and others have come to incorporate space as a central theme in medieval history, literature, art, science, and philosophy. For medievalists in particular, Lefebvre's work might be seen to be foundational, as he understood the very idea of space to be historically linked to the transformation of the European west through Christianization and through the increasing urbanization of the European landscape. Lefebvre believed that space could be separated into three categories or types - social space, physical space, and mental space. He argued that social space was produced by various economic and political means; that physical space was empty or void; and that mental space was entirely abstract. Lefebvre's ideas on space were driven in part by a Marxist approach to the urbanization of the European landscape; he understood the 'commercial revolution' of the high Middle Ages to be a sort of precursor to a more intrusive form of capitalism which marked out urban space as a 'tool of terrifying power'. Although Lefebvre's characterization of the medieval urban landscape has been significantly nuanced in recent years, his overall insistence that historical change can be tracked through spatial understandings and forms has continued to stimulate what has come to be known as 'the spatial turn' in histories of the premodern world.