Registering Social Change: How Historical Transformations Are Reflected in the “Livres de Raison” (c. 1400–1600)

This exploratory research project has highlighted the potential of the livres de raison as privileged sources for understanding the impact of the macro-historical transformations from late-medieval to early modern society on the daily lives of the literate middle classes. Methodologically, the project has made the case for an approach that conceptualises the changes in the functions and format of the livres as the authors’ responses to the sociocultural pressures of a transformed society. While statistical analysis is complicated by the difficulty of defining the livres de raison, a good many sixteenth-century livres are at once more concerned with the memorialisation of family events and less concerned with lists of assets, revenues, and expenses. These twined developments amount to a repurposing of the traditional register defined by the late fourteenth century by its mix of notes on household business and family events into a record bearing a closer resemblance to family chronicle. These developments can be explained as responses to two major historical changes. First, the progress of pragmatic literacy and growing access to notaries led to the growth and diversification of accounting records. In this novel documentary environment, the single register in which the pater familias kept track of patrimony and business transactions (occasionally recording other consequential information as well) was largely obsolete. Second, with mounting socioeconomic pressures associated with a changing society and upward mobility, town notables began to use the livre de raison – now liberated of its duty as an accounting book – as a repository of family history, in an effort to shift the economic competition against upstarts on the more favourable terrain of prestige and cultural capital. Knowledge of the illustrious family line and prestigious matrimonial alliances could thus be preserved with a view to informing participation to public life.