« Religion populaire » et culture folklorique (note critique)

Chanoine Etienne Delaruelle (died in 1971) left a considerable corpus of historiography. In his wake, historians of medieval religion no longer concerned themselves uniquely with the élite but took interest in the masses, no longer studied only institutions but also manifestations of piety. Twenty-four articles of E. Delaruelle have recently been collected and republished. They not only provide an opportunity to appreciate the richness of his work, but call for critical reflection, an appeal which is equally valid for his numerous disciples. The vagueness of concepts used (what does "popular" mean?), a priori judgments on the nature of "popular religion" (affectivity, naïveté, primitivism, childishness) reveal a lack of knowledge of folk culture and a failure to appreciate the extent of the conflict between the culture of the populus and that of the clerics in feudal society. A theory of the way in which feudal society functioned, coupled with an anthropological approach could lead to a formulation of other interpretations of the phenomena studied by E. Delaruelle (ex. : the question of christianization vs. acculturation) and noticeably enrich the field of medieval studies.Schmitt Jean-Claude. « Religion populaire » et culture folklorique (note critique). In: Annales. Economies, sociétés, civilisations. 31ᵉ année, N. 5, 1976. pp. 941-953