中世纪末的法国(Late Mediaeval France)身为当代人,我们很难心绪平和地去思考古代的社会制度。违反道德的暴行,实际上是人们对那些习以为常的不公正做出的普遍反应。人们经常发现自己在谈到阶级时,会像祖母们当年谈到“性”时那样尴尬。当然,这种态度并不能帮助我们去理解祖先们。过去的时代已经过去,而人们今天的所作所为是无法改变过去发生了的事情的。所以不妨可以提醒自己说,即使是最伟大的贵族,他们当年的那种物质生活也是严厉得让当代人中,很少有人能够幸存下来。在那个时代,的确已有阶级制度存在,尽管当 Late Mediaeval France As a contemporary, it is hard to think peacefully about the ancient social system. Violations of moral atrocities are in fact people’s common reactions to those commonplace injustices. Often people find themselves embarrassed when talking about class when grandmothers talk about sex. Of course, this attitude does not help us to understand ancestors. The past times have passed, and what people do today can not change what happened in the past. Therefore, we might as well remind ourselves that even the greatest aristocrats, the material life they were in that year was so harsh that few of the contemporary people could survive. There was indeed a class system in existence at that time, though