The Middle Ages in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The present short essay, drawn from the introductive lecture given by Lucio Villari during the seminar Duc La Nostalgia delle origini. Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc e la percezione del Medioevo nell’Ottocento (University Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria, 7 May 2014). between the famous French architect’s thinking and medieval thought. When speaking about Viollet-le-Duc, in fact, one is required to forget the term “restoration” for a while, seeing him in the light of the wider philosophical framework he applied to his own works, in which the rationality of the past was recalled for both a present and a future rationality of architecture. Viollet chose the Middle Ages as his reference period to develop this approach – which is applicable to any historical period – for two main reasons, cultural and political. From a cultural point of view, both the Middle Ages and Romanticism represented two vast avant-gardes, as they broke with traditional aesthetical languages. Using this commonality, from a political point of view, in the 19th century, it was possible to see the Middle Ages as the ‘mother and father’ of European history. This perception was strong in Italy, but even more so in France where, after the Napoleonic wars, the Middle Ages were seen as the true defining historical period of the country. Through reference to several intellectuals, such as Victor Hugo, Jules Michelet, Simon de Sismondi and Charles Baudelaire, Villari proves how Viollet-le-Duc was one of the few who glimpsed the continuity between past and present, developing a notion of the Middle Ages as ‘the time and the place’ where modern freedom germinated.