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In 896 or 897, nine months after the death of pope Fomosus, his corpse was exhumed by one of his successors, Stephan VI, who subjected him to an insulting ritual. The deceased pope was dressed with papal clothes and was judged by bishops, who accused him of illegal move, from the bishopric of Porto to the seat of saint Peter. After the trial, his judges ordained to remove clothes, to cut off se­veral fingers and sent him into the Tiber. Then, Stephan VI invalidated all liturgical ordinations Formosus had done as a bishop and as a pope. The event had a great impact, because of the savagery of the process, but also because the decisions of the “Cadaver synod” aroused disciplinary, liturgical and theological debates among the Church: it raised the question of episcopal migration from one seat to an other and the validity of sacraments made by an excommunicated pope. The case took place in a troubled context: at the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 10th century, supporters and opponents of Formosus struggled in Rome, aimed to control the papal seat and the curial offices. Nevertheless, the council was nor a spontaneous outburst of violence nor the manifestation of uncontrolled emotions. Instead, the 896/897 synod and the actions of the popes what took place in 897-910's were guided by ritual, legal, literary and memorial strategies intended to legitimate the authority of the popes. Opponents engaged in a competitio memoriae: Formosus supporters sought to demonstrate his sanctity in order to demonstrate the validity of his ordinations, while his enmities employed many devices to sully his memory and break personal relationships Formosus had forged among the clergy, in aim to deny him papal legitimacy, and to remove him from the list of popes.

In Lübeck, Stralsund, Paris, Bruges, Arnhem, Ypres, Dordrecht, Speyer, Zwickau, Heidelberg, Cologne and most certainly many more cities, a rather strange game took place in the late Middle Ages. A few blind men were placed in an enclosure with a pig. Each of them had a stick, with which they had to beat the animal to death; the winner took the carcass. Yet in the hustle they would hit each other more than the pig, much to the delight of the crowd. This cruel custom is not unknown. Since the Renaissance, it has been the topic of several literary texts and works of graphic arts. Some euphemized forms of the game (no killing, non-impaired participants with a blindfold) exist to this day. Moreover, several historical studies have addressed it in the past several years; most of them insist upon the cruelty of laughs, mocking and stigmati­zing visually impaired persons in the late Middle Ages. Yet the disability studies teach us that disability is a social and cultural construction, so that one should not interpret this “game” outside of the context that produced it. There are several possible ways of understanding it. On the one hand, this game can be seen as a catharsis in which the blind are to be seen above all as beggars: the poor, particularly beggars, were subjected to a strong social control in late medieval towns. By mocking the blind and inflicting violence upon them, the townfolks disciplined them. At the same time, it functioned as a means of exorcising the fear that was caused by their disability.On the other hand, the choice of a pig as the blind men's adversary, which has been largely neglected by the scholars so far, is not indifferent, for this animal functions as a perfect double of the blind, both in theology and in the medieval ima­ginaire. Pigs were often associated with the devil or the sins. Thus one can understand why several exempla, for instance by Jacques de Vitry, use the game as a metaphor for mankind's struggle with sin, while others compare the pig in the game with a bad preacher misleading the faithful.Finally, the game has to be interpreted in the context of urban political communication, as it was always organized by the city authorities. Several features of the show are similar to those of other urban games from the same era, in particular the ones taking place during Carnival: the inversion – here the weak imitating the strong – or the parody (cf. the numerous parodies of tournaments). It can then be compared to other shows like the prostitutes' races that both humiliated their participants and gave them a function – that of mocking the enemy or, in other cases, the authorities. In the end, the polysemy of this game, which is typical for medieval rites, reflects the ambivalent position of (visually) impaired people in medieval so­ciety: their liminality.

Between September 1870 and the end of May 1871, Paris is under a double siege, laid at first by the German armies, then by the army from Versailles. During that period, the city has to deal with a major crisis of over mortality rate. It forced the municipal administration of the cemeteries and the funeral director of Paris to break up with the hygiene and public health standards and to hurt the Parisians' sensibility and their “cult of the dead”. This article is based on the archives of Parisian ceme­- teries and on the papers published by Léon Vafflard, the funeral director of Paris. These data shed light on the new attitudes of the French contemporaries towards mass graves and burial system, in urban context. They also help to re-evaluate the importance of the years 1870-1871, increasingly being seen as a major crossroads of the contemporary French history.

The concept of ideology is frequently discussed by many sociologists and modern philosophers and used by historians of Rome. But it cannot be taken for granted as regards Antiquity. The rules and the conditions of Roman political life from Republic to early Roman Empire were not a fertile ground for the emergence of ideologies. However, in the 5th century B.C. and with the birth of the Principate, struggles of ideological nature seemed to have shaped Roman political life.

Unlike the castles and fortified houses of country nobility, the city palaces and peasants' homes of the Middle Ages that have been studied for long by historians and archaeologists, light has rarely been cast on the homes of the local elites, i.e. the important merchants from small cities and countryside, the law and finance officials, the married clergy, the notaries and other men of law, but also the priests or canons of collegiate chapters, commonly originated from the common people but sometimes also from the lower nobility. Therefore, this article aims at giving a deeper insight into these residences through the example of the Auxois bailiwick, in Burgundy.First of all the terminology used by Burgundy administrative sources will be scrutinized – recognition of cens (farms) or fief, administrative or tax enquiries, accounts, etc. – to qualify these residences. It reveals that three terms are most commonly used: “maison”, “hostel” and “chez”. These terms remain so general and so common that they don't give a precise idea of the architectural features of the buildings insofar as documentation uses them as much to designate aristocrats' residences as those of the most miserable peasants or middle classes. The concomitant use of these three different terms does not actually relate to different types of buildings but rather to semantic nuances: the word “hostel” refers to the home and its hosting function whereas “maison” relates to the notion of property. For this reason, the same building can be named by any of these two terms depending on the context. Thus these terms do not reflect the exact composition of the designated residences as they can alternatively indicate several buildings or a single place.However, by focussing on detailed descriptions and observations of still standing monuments or vestiges excavated by archaeologists, it becomes possible to overcome the vagueness of the sources regarding residences of the local elites. Indeed the sporadic use of more precise words – “manoir”, “meix”... – allows us to describe these residences as vast and complex properties combining housing and buildings for economic purposes, in particular for farming activities. In town, notables' residences, sometimes formed by the gradual annexation of neighbouring dwellings, could also support the agricultural activities, in particular in order to secure supplies, but they could also be dedicated to all sorts of activities such as trade. At last it is to be noticed that notables very often owned, in addition to their main residence, one or more “secondary” residences aimed at making their business flourish, at limiting the amount of their royal and seigniorial taxes, and serving their social ascent.Beyond the composition of the residences of local notables, the examination of their exterior appearance and interior structure conveys the willingness to distinguish oneself from common people and to assert their social superiority. The location of the residence – for example within the castle or in a town's door – could demonstrate such superiority. The features of such residences, i.e. their shapes, the extent or prestige of their dependencies as well as the building materials, also expressed a social status: the tower, the dovecot or the use of stones would tell much about the nobility of the master. As far as the interior composition of the residences is concerned, it shares a common feature with aristocratic homes, i.e. the division of space between common and private spaces. More precisely, the existence of a “reception hall” (salle), considered as a common and multipurpose room, is very frequent, to such an extent that the wealthiest Burgundy bourgeois would extensively receive guests, sometimes developing a hosting activity that would be supplement their main activities of law or finance ducal officers or trade.The present study of the residences of local elites in Burgundy reveals the intermediary status of these homes, designated by common words and located in rural and urban areas, but also characterized by their generous size and their wealthy nature in order to assert some social superiority. This study also demonstrates the importance of the economic purpose almost systematically attached to these residences.

Since the end of the 19th century, the autonomy of younger members has been a key element to the identity, the functioning, and the evolution of youth organizations of political parties. More generally, the autonomy reflects the relationship between the political parties and their members, the importance of internal hierarchies and the choice of an organizational model. The autonomy of youth organizations can thus be perceived as an important element in the analysis of political cultures.This paper proposes a comparative perspective between the French and the West-German case to shed light on the evolution of the autonomy of youth organizations. The German historian Wolfgang Krabbe suggests an interpretation of the history of 20th century youth organizations in Germany based on four models: 1) mentoring and popular education organizations, 2) auxiliary sections of the party, 3) pools of future cadres, 4) autonomous political youth. During the 1968s, most of the organizations tended toward the last model. This period can therefore be interpreted as a watershed moment in the autonomy of youth organizations and the transformation of political cultures within the parties. In the French case, the issue of the autonomy of youth organizations has never been as acute as during the 1968s. In the context of the generational conflict, which can be seen in the crisis of the Union of Communist Students (UEC) and was then exacerbated by the student movement, the credibility of party youth organizations required greater critical distance vis-à-vis their elders. Given the silence of political general staff in May 68, the events were often an occasion for younger members to experiment with a de facto autonomy in the field. In the wake of the movement, the parties accepted to bestow a broader organizational, financial and sometimes even political autonomy to the main youth organizations of the time: the Movement of the Communist Youth of France (MJCF), the Union of Youth for the Progress (UJP), and the Movement of the Socialist Youth (MJS). Unlike this evolution, the Young Independent Republicans (JRI) continued to claim their tight affiliation to the party and remained an exception in the French landscape of political youth organizations. In the eyes of many party leaders, this still fragile autonomy was, however, nothing but a passing concession that they soon reneged. The years 1974-1978 thus saw the break-up of some parties with their youth organizations or the takeover of these organizations by the party, whereas in other parties the autonomy of youth became increasingly formal. Contrary to their German counterparts, the French parties chose to keep their youth organizations under trusteeship for a long time. It took another two decades to see most of the French youth organizations regain autonomy in the 1990s and 2000s. This slow and late evolution of the tutelary model of political activism constitutes a feature of the political culture of French parties. It partly explains the limited influence of May 68 on French political life. In this sense, the events opened a parenthesis rather than a lasting evolution.