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Didier
Méhu

History - Canada

Research topics

PROJECT

The place used for Christian worship played a fundamental role in social and spatial structuring throughout the medieval millennium (5th-15th centuries). From two points of observation, one at the beginning of the period, the other at the end, and from two types of approaches, one on the speeches of the clerics, the other on the concrete organization of the forms of human occupation, the present project intends to allow a better understanding of the polarization processes determined by the Church during the “long Middle Ages”.

Activities / Resume

BIOGRAPHY

Didier Méhu teaches and conducts research on the social history of the medieval West, mainly during the High Middle Ages and the Central Middle Ages (4th-12th centuries). He is particularly interested in connecting the discourses produced by the Church and the social practices, including the organization of space, the dynamics of settlement, and the construction and ornamentation of churches. His work thus leads him to combine history, art history, archeology, liturgy, various fields in which he teaches, supervises students and conducts research. Rituals, conceptions of the body, the evolution of the modes of representation and especially anthropomorphic sculpture, theology and the aesthetics of architecture are all themes that he crosses over and inserts into a social history.
His thesis (published in 2001) was based on the organization of space and social relations around the Abbey of Cluny between the 10th and 15th centuries. Since then, his research focused notably on papal journeys during the 11th and 12th centuries, the history of the Lérins monastery, the rituals of consecration of places and people.
Since 2014, he has undertaken research on the 4th and 5th centuries, and more specifically between the years 380 to 420, about which he is currently finishing a book. It is aimed to demonstrate that the true symbolic revolution that occurred during this period and was carried by the Christian episcopate, can be considered as the birth certificate of the medieval Church and, perhaps, a decisive time of a new social dynamic which radically broke with the Roman Empire’s one.
He is also working for several years on the long history of church dedication rituals, from the 4th to the 12th century, which will tend to show the important role, and until then neglected, of the centuries prior to the Carolingian Empire in the establishment by the churches of a social landscape polarized.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

  • Cluny après Cluny. Constructions, reconstructions et commémorations clunisiennes, 1790-2010, dir. D. Méhu, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2013, 402 p.
  • Pourquoi étudier le Moyen Âge ? Les médiévistes face aux usages sociaux du passé. Actes du colloque tenu à l’université de São Paulo du 7 au 9 mai 2008, dir. Didier Méhu, Néri De Barros Almeida, Marcelo Cândido da Silva, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2012, 254 p.
  • Mises en scène et mémoires et de la consécration de l’église dans l’Occident médiéval, dir. D. Méhu, Turnhout : Brepols (Collection d’études médiévales de Nice, 7), 2008, 400 p.
  • Paix et communautés autour de l'abbaye de Cluny (Xe-XVe siècle), Lyon : Presses Universitaires de Lyon / Centre interuniversitaire d’histoire et d’archéologie médiévales (Collection d’Histoire et d’archéologie médiévales, 9), 2001, 640 p. – réédition Lyon : Presses universitaires de Lyon, 2010, 640 p.
  • « La porte et l’autel : les figures des lieux liminaires de l’église paléochrétienne », dans Visibilité et présence de l’image dans l’espace ecclésial. Byzance et Moyen Age occidental, dir. Sulamith Brodbeck et Anne-Orange Poilpré, Paris, Éditions de la Sorbonne (Byzantina Sorbonensia, 30), 2019, p. 233-255.
  • « L’ordination de l’évêque au début du XIe siècle à partir des pontificaux de Roda et de Vic », Miscel·lània Litúrgica Catalana [Societat Catalana d’Estudis Litúrgics], xxvi (2018), p. 51-96, http://revistes.iec.cat/index.php/MLC/index / DOI: 10.2436/20.1002.01.33.
  • « L’onction, le voile et la vision : anthropologie du rituel de dédicace de l’église à l’époque romane », Codex Aquilarensis. Revista de Arte Medieval, 32 (2016) : Construir lo sagrado en en el Arte Medieval. Reliquia, espacio, imagen y rito, p. 83-110.
  • “The Colours of the Ritual: Description and Inscription of Church Dedication in Liturgical Manuscripts (10th-11th centuries)”, dans Sign and Design. Script as Image in Cross-Cultural Perspective (300-1600 CE), ed. Brigitte Miriam BEDOS-REZAK et Jeffrey HAMBURGER, Washington, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2016, p. 259-277.
  • « Augustin, le sens et les sens. Réflexions sur le processus de spiritualisation du charnel dans L’Église médiévale ». Revue historique, t. CCCXVII/2, n° 674, 2015, p. 271-302.
  • « Les rapports dans l’image », dans Les images dans l’Occident médiéval, dir. Jérôme BASCHET et Pierre-Olivier DITTMAR, Turnhout, Brepols (L’Atelier du médiéviste, 14), 2015, p. 275-290.
  • « L’évidement de l’image ou la figuration de l’invisible corps du Christ (ixe –xie siècle) », dans Images Re-vues, 11, 2013 : http://imagesrevues.revues.org/3384.
  • « Les figures de l’édifice ecclésial d’après le "Guide du pèlerin de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle" », dans Lieux sacrés et espace ecclésial. Actes du 46e colloque de Fanjeaux, juillet 2010, Toulouse : Privat (Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 46), 2011, p. 79-113.
  • « Locus, transitus, peregrinatio. Remarques sur la spatialité des rapports sociaux dans l’Occident médiéval (XIe-XIIIe siècle ») », dans Construction de l’espace au Moyen Âge : pratiques et représentations. XXXVIIe Congrès de la SHMESP (Mulhouse, 2-4 juin 2006), Paris : Publications de la Sorbonne (Histoire ancienne et médiévale, 96), 2007, p. 275-293.