Le Goff. Critical balance of a legacy

Abstract

The early works of Jacques Le Goff, on merchants, bankers and intellectuals of the Middle Ages, have qualities that announce their further development: weak economic theory and further development on the history of ideas. From 1964, with the publication of La Civilisation de l'Occident médiéval, there is a change. This change is part of a new approach of the Annales School: study of mentalités. Le Goff intended to analyze the mentality of medieval man. His study is based mainly on ecclesiatical scholars texts. We show in this paper that such sources provide acces to the mentality of the priestly class of power. Secondarily, Le Goff studied sources that allow to approach the mentality of knights. For analysis of peasants and other subaltern groups other sources that were never used by Le Goff are required. This analysis maintains some similarities with the historical materialism, but also has profound differences with the doctrine of Marx. On this basis the extent of Le Goff ´s legacy is determined