ABSTRACT
The history of the idea of dividing society into three orders-those who work, those who fight, and those who pray-is one of the longest-lasting conceptualizations of European society (alongside that of the “body politic”), providing the basis of many a justification of the status quo up to the French Revolution and beyond, even into the twentieth century.1 One of its oldest expressions in Western society occurs in an early eleventh-century history of the bishops of Cambrai-Arras: the Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium, where it is included in a speech (eloquium) put in the mouth of Bishop Gerard I of Cambrai-Arras (1012-1051).2 Another, near contemporary, formulation is to be found in Bishop Adalbero of Laon’s (977-c.1035)3 satirical poem Carmen ad Rotbertum regem.4 The two texts formed the starting point of undoubtedly the most significant treatment of the Three Orders topos by a medieval historian, Georges Duby’s Les trois ordres ou l’imaginaire du féodalisme.5
