Scientific dialogue between A. Gurevich and J.-Cl. Schmitt

Shkurat Petr Alexandrovich ORCID: 0000-0003-1846-9010 PhD in History Associate Professor of the Department of Socio-Economic Sciences; Department of Socio-Economic Sciences; Lipetsk Cossack Institute of Technology and Management (branch) of the K.G. Razumovsky Moscow State University of Technology and Management (First Cossack University) 398006, Russia, Lipetsk region, Lipetsk, Oktyabrsky district, Krasnoznamennaya str., vld 4 petr_shkurat@mail.ru

And finally we found out

About how men <…>,

The greyhound was revered as a saint

And they puked like the ultimate gift.,

what Abelard was deprived of.

Epigram to A. Ya. Gurevich (excerpt)

L. M. Batkin

Introduction

In June 2016, the PhD thesis of G. D. was defended at Kazan Federal University. Saetzyanova on historiography ^[1], devoted to the study of the scientific work of Jean-Claude Schmitt. This French medieval historian was one of Jacques Le Goff's students and director of the Historical Anthropology Group of the Medieval West (GAHOM) from 1992 to 2014. He is the author of 15 major papers and the supervisor of more than 40 dissertations.

Unfortunately, none of J. K. Schmitt's major works (except for several articles) has yet been translated into Russian. Back in 2002. His work "The Meaning of Gesture in the Medieval West" ^[2] was published in Ukrainian, but it went unnoticed in Russian-language historical scholarship. In addition to the already mentioned qualifying study by G. D. Saetzyanova, part of one chapter of O. V. Subbotina's PhD thesis on art history (2008) is also devoted to the analysis of the scientific work of this French historian ^[3]. In 2003 his student O. S. Voskoboinikov published a poli-review of 2 books by Schmitt ^[4] and 10 years later a short article "About his teacher" ^{[5, p. 115]}. O. A. Chuvorkina devoted one of her publications to the analysis of J.-K. Schmitt's point of view on the imago category ^[6]. Finally, in 2024, O. I. Togoeva published a review article dedicated to J. K. Schmitt's new book "Monks and Their Demons" ^[7].

According to G. D. Saetzyanova, it is "in the writings of (A. Ya. Gurevich — author's note) for the first time in Russian historiography that the name of J.-K. Schmitt is mentioned as a young and talented pupil of J. Le Goff" ^{[1, p. 7]}. Aron Yakovlevich's dialogue with the head of the third generation of the Annals school, Jacques Le Goff, has been the subject of many publications both in Russian and in foreign languages ^{[8, 9, 10]}. Unfortunately, his student, a representative of the so-called "fourth" generation of the Annals school, Jean-Claude Schmitt, remained "in the shadow" of his great teacher. There was no place for an analysis of his work either in the monograph of A. Ya. Gurevich "Historical Synthesis and the School of Annals" ^[11], or in the study of N. V. Gurevich. Trubnikova ^[12]. At the same time, the study of the scientific dialogue between these French and Russian historians seems relevant for modern historiography.

Brief information about J.-K. Schmitt's interaction with A. Ya. Gurevich can be found in the above-mentioned dissertations of G. D. Saetzyanova ^[1] and O. I. Togoeva's articles ^[7]. The purpose of this publication is to trace the main milestones of the scientific dialogue between Russian and French historians over the course of 32 years (1979-2011).

First of all, it is necessary to answer the question: "In what language did you get acquainted with each other's works?". While A. Ya. Gurevich, as a rule, referred to the original works of J. K. Schmitt, the French medievalist, by his own admission, used, in turn, only translated editions ^{[13, p. 42]}.

The first milestone: the use of exempla by A. J. Gurevich, investigated by J.-K. Schmitt

In the first edition of the Categories of Medieval Culture (1972) ^[14] (hereinafter referred to as "Categories ..."), A. Ya. Gurevich could not yet refer to Schmitt's work on Saint Ginefor ^[15], since the latter was published only 7 years later (1979). In the second, revised edition of Categories ... (1984) ^[16], the Russian scientist inserted only a link to this monograph by the French historian. In 1980, a Soviet medievalist published 3 small-scale (7-20 pages) essays on the original works of representatives of the 3rd generation of the Annals school: F. Aries "A Man in the face of Death" (1977) ^{[17, pp. 177-185]}, J. Le Goff "Rethinking the Middle Ages ..." (co-authored with Yu. L. Bessmertny) (1977) ^{[17, pp. 122-143]}, E. Le Roy Laduri "Montailloux..." (1975) ^{[17, pp. 67-74]}. This experience helped him in retelling Schmitt's work. In "Problems of medieval folk culture" (hereinafter — "Problems ...") (1981) ^[18] A Russian historian devoted a couple of pages to retelling the main content of a book by a French medievalist about a greyhound, which local peasant women revered as Saint Ginefor, the patron saint of children. In the following year, 1982, in the magazine "Annals. Economics, societies, civilizations" (fr. "Annales. Economics, Sociétés, Civilisations", hereinafter referred to as "Annals ...") is the second article by A. Ya. Gurevich devoted to the analysis of otherworldly ideas of people of the High Middle Ages. In the very first link, describing the range of historical sources used by him, the Russian historian refers to the works of the "annalists" familiar to the French reader: Le Goff, Le Roy Laduri, Schmitt ^{[19, p. 273]}.

In "Culture and Society of Medieval Europe through the eyes of contemporaries" (hereinafter — "Culture and Society ...") (1989) ^[20] Gurevich also recounts in detail the example of St. Ginephoros, adding another one — "About ten men who carnally knew one girl" from J.-K. Schmitt's earlier monograph "The Death of one Heresy ..." ^[21]. In addition, the Russian historian refers to 2 more publications by Schmitt. The first case describes an example of dancing by young men riding wooden horses ^[22]; in the second, Gurevich relies on the opinion of Schmitt ^[23] ("natives of the other world" flood the "West" ^{[20, p. 75]}), and J. Duby ("Christianity in the West at the turn of the X and XI centuries. as a "religion of the dead"" ^{[20, p. 75]}) to substantiate the relevance of the 2nd chapter "The World of the living and the world of the Dead" of his book. Gurevich refers to Schmitt's works in the same direction in his next monograph on the Middle Ages ^[24].

The second milestone: dictionaries on the Middle Ages and discussions around the medieval individual/personality

The next stage includes, first of all, interaction on the pages of the Explanatory Dictionary of the Medieval West (in French) (1999) ^[25] and the Dictionary of Medieval Culture (in Russian) (prepared in 1999, published in 2003) ^[26]. According to A. Ya. Gurevich, this interdisciplinary project was originally conceived by J. Le Goff and J.-K. Schmitt, who introduced the Russian historian to his dictionary. He, in turn, decided to present the same project in Russian. At the same time, despite the fact that the general parameters of both dictionaries are similar, the principles of their content are quite different.

The objectives of this publication do not include a detailed comparison of both editions, but one aspect is of interest — the dialogue between A. Ya. Gurevich and J.-K. Schmitt on their pages. G. D. Saetzyanova stated in her dissertation that the French historian wrote 6 articles for his publication and only 2 ("ritual", "sacred") for the Russian ^{[1, p. 40]}. The Russian medievalist is the author of articles about the individual in a foreign dictionary and about personality in a Russian dictionary. There are 4 articles by A. Ya. Gurevich in the list of references ("peasants", "death", "personality", "exemplum") in the Russian edition there are references to books and articles by Schmitt ^{[15; 27; 28; 29]}.

A little more detail should be given to the chronology of the mini-discussion about the individual and personality in the European Middle Ages between Gurevich and Schmitt. In 1972 . The Russian historian published "Categories ...", the conclusion to which he called "In search of the human personality" ^{[16, pp. 296-327]}. In 1989, a French scientist published an article entitled "The Discovery of the Individual: a historiographical fiction?"^[29], in which he questioned the existence of the process in the 12th century. Literally the following 1990, on the pages of the annual almanac Odyssey ^[30], the executive editor of which was A. Ya. Gurevich, the materials of the round table held in May 1988 within the framework of the interinstitutional seminar on historical psychology at the Scientific Council on the History of World Culture of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences on the correlation of the concepts of "individual" were published, "individuality" and "personality". This discussion was further continued in a series of works by A. Ya. Gurevich and L. M. Batkin ^{[31, pp. 11-12; 32]}. If the former understood by personality "a specific combination of all the same common features that were determined by culture" ^{[30, p. 86]}, the latter contrasted the medieval "individual" ("persona") and the "personality" of Modern times, which, unlike him, "is responsible for his personal values, is responsible not only for himself, but also in front of himself" ^{[30, p. 73]}.

In 1993, the journal Annals ... published Gurevich's third article ^[33], in which he analyzes from a historical and anthropological perspective the case of the psychiatric illness of the Avignon cleric Opicinus de Canistris: "In the context of the brewing social and psychological crisis (XIV century - author's note), the Opicin case is no longer perceived simply as the phenomenon of mental disorder, but as a symptom of a deeper process of transformation of the human personality" ^{[34, p. 422]}. In the section of his article "Individuality and Psychoanalysis", A. Ya. Gurevich provides a brief foreign historiography (9 units) of the problem of discovering the individual in history, mentioning, among other things, Schmitt's article ^[29].

The text of A. Ya. Gurevich's article in a slightly revised form was included as one of the subsections of his monograph in German (1994), and subsequently in Russian (2005) "The individual and society in the medieval West" (hereinafter — "The individual and Society ...") ^[34], prepared for the series "Becoming Europe". In this study, he cites Schmitt's opinion that the "discovery of individuality" has 3 aspects: "individual", "subject", "person". In general, the Russian historian shares the opinion of his French colleague about the first two terms, but in turn believes that "the concept of "persona" has undergone more serious transformations in the era under study" ^{[34, p. 43]}. Gurevich himself identifies 2 conditional personality types: the "northern pagan" with relative autochthonous character and the "Christian Medieval man" who spread throughout Europe.

The Third Milestone: The Historian and the Images

Around the same time, in the second half of the 1990s - 2000s, 7 articles by Schmitt were published in Russian, 3 of which appeared in publications edited by A. Ya. Gurevich. Two translations of the French historian's publications appeared at once in Odyssey (2002), devoted to the problem of the correlation of word and image in medieval culture. The first article was intended for a colloquium in Göttingen (1996) ^[35]. It was also published in French (1997) and is dedicated to expanding the historian's research field through art. The second one was published in the original language even earlier (1992) and represents Schmitt's practical developments in the field of art criticism and history, based on a study of the discussion between Jews and Christians about the cult of religious images in the 12th century.^[36]

And finally, the third and most popular publication in modern Russian art criticism by J.K. Schmitt is devoted to his concept of imago ^[37], which was published in the French Annals ... (1996) 6 years before it appeared in the Russian anthology.

At the same time, the Russian historian also made attempts to include medieval art as an auxiliary object in his research. For example, in the 4th chapter of "Problems..." he relied on the iconography of the Last Judgment, presented on the portals of Chartres, Bourges, Amiens, Bamberg, etc. Soborov ^{[18, pp. 176-182]}, and in "Culture and Society ..." devoted the 4th chapter to the analysis of the paradoxes of medieval consciousness on the example of the iconography of the western portal of the church of Saint-Lazare in Autun ^{[20, pp. 111-130]}.

A. Ya. Gurevich tried to popularize the works of the French scientist in Russian science at least at the level of articles. Perhaps he could have done even more in this direction, but in August 2006, the master of Russian medieval studies was gone.… Nevertheless, this did not prevent the editors of Odyssey from publishing translations of two more articles by Schmitt in 2010 and 2012 ^{[38, 39]}.

The fourth milestone: instead of a postscript

5 years after the death of the Russian scientist (2011), a collection of his memory "Images of the Past" was released, in which J.-K. Schmitt published his revised (in the original language — 2005) article "A. Ya. Gurevich and the "category" of time" ^[13]. In it, the French historian admitted that the following works of the Russian scientist had a great influence on him: "Categories ...", "Problems..." and "The individual and Society...": "all these books ... were extremely important to me (i.e. J.-K. Schmitt — author's note) personally.... they helped me formulate my own questions" ^{[13, p. 42]}.

Schmitt notes one of the advantages of Gurevich's scientific "baggage" is his research on the history of Scandinavia, which allowed the Russian scientist to go beyond Western Europe and "vividly describe the characteristics of the "barbaric" world" ^{[13, p. 43]}. At the same time, the French scientist cites the opinion of other "annalists": M. Blok, F. Braudel, J. Le Goff on the importance of the category of time for the historian. At the end of his article, Schmitt develops the idea expressed by Gurevich in "Categories ..." that "the whole rhythm of life has radically changed (in the modern world — author's note)" ^{[13, p. 52]}. The French historian did not just focus his attention on the concept of rhythm. He devoted a whole study to it, first writing a number of articles on this topic, and then published a monograph (2016) ^[40]. Moreover, Schmitt considers rhythms not only in relation to language and time, but also to space, architecture, ornament, etc. His research finds its supporters not only abroad, but also in Russian art criticism ^[41].

It was possible to put an end to this point, but after opening the monograph by O.S. Voskoboinikov (2014), one of J.-K. Schmitt's students, you can read literally on the first pages: "Gurevich's book ("Categories..." — author's note) was published forty years ago, and already this deadline sets historians the task is to move on" ^{[42, p. 11]}. I would like to believe that the "flame" of the scientific dialogue between French and Russian medievalists will never go out and will continue to "burn", thanks to the efforts of their students.

Conclusions

Scientific cooperation between A. Ya. Gurevich and J.-K. Schmitt began in correspondence format in the early 1980s, when the Soviet historian included in his monograph "Problems ..." a short retelling of the book by the French medievalist. At the first stage, both used the same type of historical sources, primarily medieval examples, but based on different materials. If Schmitt was limited to studying mainly continental Western Europe, then Gurevich's research "area" was much wider and also included Scandinavia.

The second stage indicates a closer interaction between these historians. He participated in editing dictionaries on medieval culture in French and Russian, as well as writing some articles for them. Their mini-discussion about the individual and personality in the European Middle Ages belongs to this period. This discussion between Schmitt and Gurevich became part of a larger discussion of the correlation of the concepts of "individual", "individuality" and "personality" in Russian historical science in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

At the third stage, Gurevich tried to popularize Schmitt's scientific work. The Russian scientist, as editor of the annual almanac and several collections, included translations of articles by the French historian into Russian. Moreover, 2 publications in the Odyssey were carried out after the death of the master of Russian medieval studies. At this time, Schmitt and other historians of the "fourth" generation of the Annals school shifted their attention to the field of art, realizing the advantages of such a change of research focus.

A kind of "postscript" was Schmitt's article in the collection in memory of A. Ya. Gurevich, in which the French historian tried to sketch in broad strokes his own point of view on the perception of the scientific heritage of the Russian medievalist. According to the French scientist's own admission, his attention to several categories of medieval culture, which A. Ya. Gurevich analyzed in his monograph, allowed him to single out another one — rhythms and dedicate another monograph to this.

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