Symbolic system of wood to the Middle Ages

Until the 13th century wood and its derivatives were the principal food products of the economy and European industry. It was also carrying a very rich Symbolique. These two observations imbricate one the other without one being able clearly to disentangle the cause of the consequence.

Wood in the medieval economy

An essential and irreplaceable food product

First of all, wood is the material more used in almost all the sides of the human activity. One makes use of it for the heating, or the construction of dwellings and works of art (wood of fuste), manufacture of tools and weapons and also in the form of coal for the metallurgy (foundry and forging mill) and the glassmaking. It is essential quickly as being the motive fluid of all the economy. Certain authors qualify even medieval Europe of age of wood. This intensive use quickly involves an overexploitation of the resources, in particular after the demographic explosion of the 12th century, which pushes as of the 13th century the local governments to limit its employment (obligation to build out of stone in certain cities, for example) and tends to rationalize the exploitation of the forests. In France, the proportion of the covered territory of forests reaches its historical minimum with the turning of the 13th century. This relative shortage is also explained by the intense trade whose wood is the object as of the An millet, Northern Europe massively exporting its resource towards southernmost Europe and the countries of Islam, all the more deprived why a climate warming prevails at the time.
The importance of wood is also attested by the lexicon: in Latin medieval the word materia indicates before all structural timber, and extension, all other material. Wood is the matter par excellence.

Decline

From the middle of the 12th century, the industry and the trade of the textile release from the increasingly large profits and this on a European scale then world. It will end up supplanting wood at the 13th century, becoming the object of all passions and being at the origin of greatest European fortunes (cf Jacques Cœur). There too, the lexicon attests this new hegemony, the term fabric indicating in Moyen French the textile, and by extension all the materials. This direction of the word " étoffe" finds itself nowadays in the expession " to have the fabric of… " who means " to be made same wood as… " , and it loop is buckled.

Wood in the imaginary medieval one

This quasi-hegemony of wood on the trade and industry is accompanied like often with the Middle Ages by an intense load symbolic system.

The first of materials

Wood is, for several reasons the material which dominates all the others. It is initially a living matter what confers from the start to him an image much more positive than that of metal and stone. Metal, and in particular steel are very badly seen because its production is only one continuation of negative actions (use of fire, chemical conversions and comparable mechanics with démoniaque magic, massive use of wood). Wood is also preferred with other alive materials (skin, ivory, horn, bone…) because it is of vegetable origin and consequently famous chaste.
This superiority are atestée per many popular traditions and myths. Michel Pastoureau quotes in his work a history symbolic system of the Western Middle Ages the example of a statue out of wooden changed into stone not to have exaucé the prayers of the faithful ones. It was to some extent retrogressed of the staut of living with that of inerte.
Another index of the prevalence of wood on the symbolic system plan is the evolution of the trade of Joseph saint. In the primitive texts of the Gospels written in Hebrew then translated into Greek, it is qualified general term of d'" ouvrier" or " artisan" , without precision as for its trade ( tekòn in Greek). Let us note, that this choice of profession is symbolic system and insists on the mean extraction of Christ, more especially as in these two cultures (Hebraic and Greek) the worker manuals are very devalued. The first Latin translations of the beginning of the Middle Ages specify the trade of carpenter. One can as note as when the textile replaces wood like matter par excellence, of new traditions will appear and indicate that Jesus was in his childhood apprentice dyer on the Lake Tibériade. It is even on this occasion that it would have made its first miracle after an error (or a joke) and on the insistantce of his mother.

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