Un "comté nouveau" dans la mouvance archiépiscopale. Relire l’émergence du comté de Rethel (Xe-XIe siècles)

The influence of the mutationist model developed by Georges Duby on French regional studies of the 1960-1980s is well known. However, for a quarter century this paradigm has shown its limits and is giving way to another reading of the X ^th-xii ^th centuries. In this context, a process such as the emergence of the often-called « new counties », these political entities without apparent antecedent attested for the first time in the XI ^th century, requires a new reading. This article will focus on the county of Rethel (Ardennes) whose emergence in the mouvance of the Archbishop of Reims has been the subject of a relatively consensual interpretation since Michel Bur's thesis on the county of Champagne. A more critical approach of the sources leads one, however, to propose a different reading and a different chronological scansion of the slow development of this county.