Camp at the Seigneuriales de Coucy, 25 April 2026. Photograph by Thibault Santonja .
Association, method
Our approach
La Seigneurie de Coucy reenacts daily life in the lordship of Coucy between 1340 and 1360, the life of those who really lived there: women and men, peasants, craftspeople, merchants, churchfolk, and burgesses in the original sense of the word, the people of the borough.
Who we are
La Seigneurie de Coucy is a living history project run by the AMVCC (Association de Mise en Valeur du Château de Coucy), a non-profit association under the French law of 1901, founded in 1972. The AMVCC is dedicated to showcasing the castle of Coucy and its surrounding area; the Seigneurie is its reenactment troupe.
We work on a narrow window, the mid-14th century, and on civil life rather than war. We are around twenty volunteers and our jobs have nothing medieval about them: among us are a designer, a photographer, a software developer, and many other backgrounds besides. The roles of craftsperson, researcher or educator are ones we take on for the length of an internal workshop or an encounter with the public, learning from one another.
The Middle Ages feel very close to us, yet they are as foreign to us as the ancient culture of a distant country. The way people saw life, the world and time then is nothing like ours. It is this gap that we try to understand, and it is also what makes the work so fascinating.
The period we study covers the years 1340 to 1360. It opens with the end of Enguerrand VI, lord of Coucy, and the early years of his son Enguerrand VII, then a child. This short chronological window allows for stylistic and documentary consistency: the outfits, objects and practices we recreate truly belong to this precise moment, and not to some vague, undifferentiated Middle Ages.
Our work always follows the same sequence, from the document to the encounter with the public. Each step builds on the previous one and shapes the next.
Step 1
Research
We practise source criticism: dating, location, the author's bias, the context of production. An illumination is not a photograph; an inventory does not record everything. Conclusions are validated collectively, by comparing several sources and setting aside whatever is not documented.
The writings of researchers and historians hold an important place in this work. Most of us are not historians, and the syntheses written by professionals are invaluable to us: they put an isolated source back into its context, point out ongoing debates and save us from many misreadings. We read them, we cite them, and we go back to them when an object or a gesture defeats us.
The chest is a good example. At a workshop on the weekend of 5 April 2025, several of us gathered around a computer to study the photograph of an old chest: the way the boards are joined, the position of the ironwork, the tool marks still visible on the wood. Each of us looked at a detail and commented on it, and we compared it with other surviving pieces and with what the illuminations show. That session produced the choices for our own chest, along with a list of points the photograph could not settle, notably the interior finish. We recorded them as such in the file.
Step 2
Reenactment
Reenactment gives material form to the conclusions of research. We favour natural fibres (linen, wool, hemp), plant dyes and vegetable-tanned leathers, consistent with the practices documented for the period. Metals, wood and ceramics are chosen by the same criteria.
Remaking an object with documented materials and methods, then observing the result, brings us close to experimental archaeology. We strive towards this approach without claiming to meet the standards of a laboratory: our trials remain those of serious amateurs, with no formal protocol and no publication. They teach us a great deal, and we present them for what they are.
Every piece is reviewed collectively before it joins the group's kit. We are willing to rework an object or an outfit when new sources lead us to revise our conclusions.
Step 3
Living history
Living history is where the troupe's work meets the public. At a heritage site, in a museum or in a school, we set up concrete situations: a sewing workshop, a coin-minting stall, a kitchen, a guard post. Visitors look, touch, ask questions.
Above all, we pass on the gestures of everyday life: getting dressed, cooking, working, playing. We do not stage combat scenes. War remains present in our explanations, because it weighs on the period, but what the public sees belongs to civil life. Visitors may come across a town militia standing guard, which gives us a chance to talk about how the town was organised.
Our stance is one of documented teaching: we explain our sources, our choices and our uncertainties. We would rather a visitor left with a precise question than with a vague impression.
Historical context
The period: the mid-14th century
The climate also weighs on these years. The early 14th century sees the onset of the cooling known as the Little Ice Age, although specialists do not agree on a starting date: Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, who pioneered the history of climate in France, takes the start of the century as a reasonable marker for Europe. Summers are no longer as warm and bad harvests become more frequent. The Great Famine of 1315-1317, caused by rains that drowned the crops, left a weakened population a generation before our chronological window. The people we portray grew up with that memory.
The period is also marked by the Black Death, which strikes France from 1348 onwards and transforms society for the long term: major population losses, reorganisation of labour, religious tensions, challenges to social hierarchies. It is in this weakened but still vibrant society that our reenactment takes place.
In this period, Coucy and its castellany hold a strategic position on the borders of the kingdom, the Empire and Flanders. The castle, built at the beginning of the 13th century by Enguerrand III, remains in the 14th century one of the most remarkable fortified complexes in the Western world. Our reenactment is rooted in the area that the AMVCC has been showcasing since 1972.
Our commitments
Five principles of reenactment
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01. Primary sources first
Any statement about 14th-century practices must be backed by an identified primary source: a text, an image, an object kept in a museum, the result of an archaeological analysis. Oral tradition and hunches are not valid sources.
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02. Experimental archaeology
Making is a form of knowledge that reading cannot replace. We test our interpretations by making an object with documented methods, or by repeating a movement with period equipment. This practice brings us close to experimental archaeology, which we strive towards with the means and the time available to volunteers.
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03. Transparency about uncertainty
The past can never be fully reconstructed. There are always grey areas, incomplete sources, interpretations that are plausible but not certain. We tell the public so. Distinguishing “what we know” from “what we assume” is a fundamental ethical act.
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04. Close ties with research
The work of historians, art historians and archaeologists is our constant point of reference. We follow the publications on the 1340-1360 period and on our region, and we cite them whenever we present something. We also talk regularly with researchers, who answer our questions and correct our mistakes. Most of us are not historians, and these exchanges are worth more than any certainties we could invent among ourselves.
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05. Respect for the public
Our public deserves to be informed, not just entertained. We accompany all our demonstrations with explanations of their context, including when historical reality calls for nuance. We show a highly hierarchical and deeply devout society, where the vast majority of people worked the land or kept a shop. Their daily life teaches us more about the 14th century than the splendour of the powerful alone.
Continue your visit
If you are organising an event or represent a cultural institution, our activities are described on the next page. If our approach speaks to you and you would like to contribute, we take on new members every year.