This concern, caused by the epistemological problems facing historians at present, is fully shared by Russian scholars, at least those of them who cherish the idea of developing historical knowledge unrestricted by ideological barriers.
The present author supposes that the essence of the problems, in a nutshell, may be put as follows: it goes without saying that in the process of social development, the effect of the objective conditions in society, and the effect of the subjective intentions and activities of the people living in it are inevitably interwoven. The historian, as a cognizing subject belonging to an epoch completely different from the one under study, stumbles over great difficulties when he tries to follow the inter-action of these two sides of historical reality. Besides, the sources nearly never reveal subjective concepts of the people of the past in relation to the development of objective social processes of the period. Meantime, every sensible historian knows that choosing between different lines of behavior, people make their choice conforming not so much to the reality as it is, as to their own vision of the reality. This makes understanding and elucidation of subjective concepts characteristic of an epoch under study an imperative condition of historical synthesis. A scholar, in search of the way to the synthesis, should first of all find a proper angle of analysis which could at the utmost enable him to embrace the both sides of historical reality, and, second, choose the way of research allowing the sources under study to reveal the information they carry on these two aspects of historical reality.
The approach chosen by the present author is an analysis of demographic concepts, demographic behavior and objective demographic processes in medieval France, in their interrelation. The «demographic concepts» mean here French attitudes to marriage, family, childhood, old age, illness, life and death, and other key subjects of human existence, characteristic of various social groups in various medieval periods. The term «demographic behavior» is used here to refer to the collective stereotypes of behavior that directly influenced human actions in the demographic sphere during different periods of the Middle Ages, while these actions, in turn, shaped objective demographic processes that were intricately intertwined with socioeconomic, political, and cultural processes in society as a whole.
The analysis of all these intertwined objective and subjective structures opens up a possibility to understand anew and more deeply the relation and interrelation of various phenomena in history. It seems the more interesting, as the demographic development in the medieval West as a whole, and in France in particular, has nearly never been studied in the way here suggested. One of the reasons of the lack of such studies lies in the laconism of medieval sources, which very seldom hold direct information on demographic phenomena. The researcher is therefore forced to focus his attention upon revealing indirect and implicit information carried by the sources. In this task he may be very efficiently assisted by the analysis of demographic concepts as a product of people’s subjective perception of the objective processes in the society they lived in, and in the demographic sphere in particular.
In this sense, the direct and indirect data on demographic concepts and the changes the concepts were undergoing, can be used for a mediated characterization of the very demographic processes themselves. And vice versa, the data on some specific variants of demographic behaviour, appearing from time to time in the sources, can be used in order to find in them information on the demographic concepts of the time. Last but not least, elucidation of the system of demographic concepts in one or other period of the Middle Ages will help to form a balanced assessment of fragmentary evidence, scattered in the sources, of demographic processes as they were.
The complex character of the research required a great variety of sources to be used; among them were treatises on theology and morals, penitentiaries, chronicles, acts, coutumes, church council, statutes, polyptiques, censiers, hagiographic texts, genealogical materials, biographies, literary works.
The Carlovingian epoch was chosen here as the initial point for the study, as that was the time of France’s emergence as an independent state (Chapter 2). The subsequent chapters deal with the flourishing period of French feudalism (Chapter 3), its critical stage in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the premise of the pending crisis of medieval society (Chapter 4), and the decline of feudalism and the genesis of capitalism in France in the period of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries (Chapter 5). The intensive historio-demographic exploration of the latter period on-going in France allowed the present author to restrict Chapter 5 to a generalization (in the main) of scientific data already accumulated, while the previous ones are based wholly on the author’s own research. The first four chapters present a parallel elaboration of the methods of research and subjects under study, as without the specially elaborated methods of analyzing the sources, it would have been impossible to solve the posed problems.
All the chapters have a similar structure: they describe nuptial patterns and nuptiality; concepts of family and family models; attitudes to childhood and the number of children; attitudes to women and the number of women as related to the number of men; attitudes to old age, death and longevity; views on the ages of man and the age structure; the rate of population growth and demographic dynamics.
The demographic results proper given by the research are as follows: in the Carlovingian period, the concept of marriage had not yet acquired a strict meaning. It embraced various nuptial models inherited, as a somewhat changed version, from the Romans and ancient Germans. The monogamic church marriage was but one of numerous nuptial patterns existing at that time. Therefore, the age at first marriage and the proportions marrying at that time should be assessed on the basis of all existent nuptial models. Most often, men married for the first time under twenty, girls even earlier then that. No more than 15 % or 20 % of peasants remained single; as to the nobles, the proportion was even smaller. Peasant families with children, in «peaceful» times, usually had two or three children who reached adulthood. And yet, the total number of the younger generation very slightly, and not everywhere, exceeded that of the older one. The high rate of infantile mortality, the mortality of mothers at childbirth and the shortness of adults’ lives brought the proportion of childless families in the Carlovingian epoch up to 30–45 %. As a result, the natural growth evidently did not exceed 0,1 % a year.
In the flourishing period of French feudalism, the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, the situation in the country changed for the better. Nuptiality rate remained very high, which might be explained, in particular, by the existence of free nuptial models along with the church marriage, which by that time had become predominant. The age at first marriage and proportions unmarried (peasants particularly) did not increase, while the number of children, and their proportion as to the whole population, grew considerably. And no wonder it was so, as inner colonization, urban growth and economic upsurge at that time went side by side with the changes in the conventional vision of the world. The increased prestige of worldly values found its expression specifically in intensified vital behaviour, in improvement of puericulture, as well as a better care of the old and ailing. The proportion of childless families in that period seldom exceeded 30 %. Families having children had now no less than three or four children alive. Old age, in common view, began at forty. The average life duration of the adults was 43 to 48 years, and that even among the knights whose status required risking their lives constantly. Old age feebleness was considered natural at 60 for the nobles (males), and 50 for the peasants (males). The natural population growth in several French provinces amounted to 0.6–0.7 % a year.
The new period of French demographic history which started about the mid-fourteenth century, was marked, as is well known, by a great decrease in population (30–40 %). Nevertheless, contrary to some previous judgments, the mechanism of demographic growth formed in past centuries was not paralyzed either by external or by internal factors. Sustained by the deeprooted stereotypes of behaviour, it proved helpful not only in replacing the population in the fifteenth century, but also in creating a possibility to surpass the level of the thirteenth century in this respect. The phenomenon may be proved by a number of facts. By the end of the period, the proportion of childless families was reduced to 20 %. The average number of living children in the late fifteenth century, as compared with the thirteenth century, increased. Families with four children and more became typical of all the social groups. At the end of the fifteenth century, the attitude to the initial stage of old age changed, now in was considered to be 50, not 40. The proportion of people over fifty, and even sixty, increased. The average duration of life of those over 20 was now about fifty years. In the main provinces of France, the natural growth amounted, in the late fifteenth century, to no less than 0.5 % a year, and in some places even more than that.
All this was closely connected with certain deep social and mental changes. The demographic growth in the late fifteenth century was undoubtedly stimulated by the increased number of «vacancies» which had appeared in villages and towns as a result of the devastation of the previous decades. But it would be impossible to explain the rapid replacement and exceeding of the previous numbers of the population by these factors only. Fear of death, so very characteristic of the sentiments of the time, was but the reverse side of the lust for life. The sense of the life’s value told favourably on the attitude to children, to the weak, ailing and old. The stereotypes of behaviour, which had been formed in this sphere much earlier, were now given a new powerful incentive. The influence of these stereotypes was essential, though changes in nuptial models went in the opposite direction. The increasing rigidity of rules for church marriage reduced illegitimate childbirth. Birth-rate was even more reduced by the older age at first marriage for males (about 25 years of age), which became conventional in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Evidently, the complex of stereotypes of behaviour, rooted back in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, sustained and further developed in the fifteenth century, made possible an intensive demographic growth not always congruous with social needs. This growth could only be brought to nought by cataclysms equal to those which occurred