The dangers within: Fears of imprisonment in enlightenment France

Abstract

The histonan Jean Defumeau begins his classic study or fear in late-medieval and early modem Europe by citing Montaigne's description of arriving after nightfall in the town of Augsburg in 1580. To enter the town, Montaigne wrote, the traveler had to pass through a daunting series of protective barriers - hidden doors and iron gates that slammed shut behind him as he advanced; a drawbridge suspended above a moat; and several dark or dimly lit rooms. In the last of those rooms, a bronze vase hung from a chain. Into that vase the traveler deposited his travel money, which the town guard reeled in by pulling on the chain. If the amount was enough to satisfy the required entrance fee, the guard would activate one final door allowing the traveler to pass into the town; if it was not enough, the traveler would be condemned to spend the rest of the night confined in the room. That the citizens of Augsburg would erect so formidable a wall against the threat of external dangers testifies to the general atmosphere of insecurity prevailing at that time. It also provides Delumeau with the framing synecdoche for his study, that of the West as a "besieged fortress" (cité assiégée), a fear-ridden civilization struggling to defend itself against the multiple dangers that assailed it during the roughly three hundred years from the advent of the Black Death to the end of the age of religious wars.