2026, Vol., No.55

Korean Review of French History 2025 KCI Impact Factor : 1.62

pISSN : 1229-702X
https://journal.kci.go.kr/krfh

Taking a central place in ancient Roman tradition and Christian liturgy, wine was as an essential element of medieval monastic culture, with fulfillment for self-sufficiency, monastic hospitality, and the eucharistic sacrament. Grounded in Saint Benedict's rule of Ora et Labora longside a spirit of strict poverty and asceticism, the cistercian order sought to distinguish itself from the abbey of cluny, which was characterized by grand liturgies and accumulated secular wealth. The cstercians reclaimed marginal lands including forests, wetlands, and wastelands through direct manual labor, by the incorporated skilled lay brothers, conversi. The cistercian monks embodied the concept of terroir as a holistic environment encompassing both natural conditions, such as soil and climate, and winemaking craftsmanship. They distinguished soil properties through sensory experiences and pioneered parcel-by-parcel vinification based on meticulous observation of individual vineyard plots. Furthermore, they established a system for the aging of fine wines by utilizing torcularia and cellaria. Going a step further, through precise observation of microclimates, geothermal heat, and solar radiation, they constructed stone walls around exceptional vineyard tracts to delineate boundaries, establishing distinct climats and the iconic enclosed vineyard complex known as clos de Vougeot. For cistercian monks, the act of cultivating the land to express the ‘taste of the soil’ and the ‘taste of the grape’ to produce bonum vinum constituted the ultimate offering to God and an integral spiritual discipline in perfecting their religious devotion. Accordingly, this study aims to revaluate the historical significance of 11th–13th century cistercian monks centered in burgundy and the birth of bonum vinum through their viticultural and winemaking endeavors.

This article examines the relationship between discourses on luxury (“luxe”) and the emergence of public museums in France at the end of the eighteenth century. Eighteenth-century debates presented luxury both as a source of moral corruption and as a stimulus to commerce, industry, and civilization. The French Revolution, however, politicized luxury as a visible manifestation of inequality and monarchical magnificence. Museums were consequently confronted with a fundamental contradiction: while rejecting the political and moral order of the Ancien Régime, they preserved and displayed artworks and monuments confiscated from the monarchy, aristocracy, and Church. This article first considers discussions of luxury in the Encyclopédie and Kersaint’s writings on public monuments, before examining the critique of luxury and royal patronage developed in La Décade philosophique, littéraire et politique. It then turns to the Musée des Monuments français and the writings of Alexandre Lenoir to investigate how objects associated with past luxury acquired new meanings within the museum. Whereas La Décade portrayed luxury as an Ancien Régime vice that subjected art to fashion and power, Lenoir reinterpreted luxurious monuments as historical evidence of past customs and of artistic and technological development. Within the public museum, luxury could thus be transformed from an object of political condemnation into evidence of civilization and a component of national memory. This transformation reveals the revolutionary museum as a space in which political rupture with the past coexisted with the preservation and historical reinterpretation of its material remains.

This study examines, from a diachronic perspective, how perceptions of whales have changed in Western society. In antiquity and the Middle Ages, whales were often depicted as sea monsters, symbolized by figures such as Ketos and Leviathan. Yet they also carried diverse meanings: in the story of Jonah, the great fish serves as an instrument of divine providence, while in the legend of Saint Brendan, the whale appears as a benevolent creature that assists humans. From the late Middle Ages onward, with the development of natural history, whales increasingly became objects of observation and scientific inquiry. In the modern period, the growth of the whaling industry transformed them into valuable economic resources. While the industrialization of whaling in the nineteenth century led to overexploitation and declining whale populations, Romanticism and nature writing fostered a new sensibility that regarded whales as wondrous creatures possessing value in their own right. This shift eventually contributed to the rise of whale conservation and whale-watching tourism, through which whales came to be valued as living beings rather than resources to be killed and exploited. By tracing these changing perceptions of whales, this study explores new ways of understanding the relationship between humans and nature.