„Párizsban mindenki errõl beszélt…” (Hírek egy 15. századi Párizsi Polgár naplójában)
„This was the talk of the day in Paris...” (News in the Diary of the Citizen of Paris)

Summary/Abstract: The essay attempts to investigate a less known aspect of late mediaeval history: the problem of communication, of the flow of information. Since the method is the exploitation of one particular point of view, that of the entries of one diarist, personal opinions and individual assessments of reality are given wide room apart from the occasional general remarks. The utilization of one single point of view will obviously reduce the possibility of generalization, of a complete picture. Its advantage, on the other hand, lies in that what we will get is not an abstract image of the world, the way „mediaeval man” saw the world, but the actual, real views of a man who really did exist: it is from his nearly palpable point of view that we can view the news of early fifteenth-century Paris. The diarist, the unknown Citizen of Paris got his information mostly by word of mouth, but he was also the eyewitness to a number of events. Because he did not write his work for the public, his honesty is more likely, and his admitted partizanship reflects his real opinions. The Paris he introduces is in the centre of a world we would find too confined. The proportion of foreign news is negligible, mostly associated with ecclesiastical life, the Papacy, and wandering preachers. It is only the northern part of France that appears, and the people of Paris got repeated, more detailed news nearly exclusively from the direct vicinity of the city, from towns and villages within one or two days' walk from the capital. Nor is the space of Paris homogeneous from the aspect of the flow of information. The places of crucial importance are the gates, the Halles market, the square in front of the Town Hall, and Maubert square on the left bank. The diary also indicates that free spaces within the city, the streets, and crossings had more important roles than in later days. An analysis of the channels of information reveals the overwhelming importance of informal passing of intelligence, of gossipping, of interpersonal communication. This, of course, went hand in hand with the insufficiency of official channels, a permanent demand for news, as well as a susceptibility to information of uncertain origin, and rumours. It would appear, however, that for all the faltering system of spreading information, the people of Paris always managed to acquire from one source or another the information, often incredible, or unreliable in the eyes of posterity, that satisfied them and that they could use to complement and/or interpret the image they had of the world around them.

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