The aim of this paper is discuss the "public" and "private" spheres dichotomy, trying to show how it was used by traditional historiography to situate chronologically and thematically the High Middle Ages in an ambit of a general evolution that would have conduced, through the triumph of "public" over "private", for the construction of the modern world. Will also search, from some juridical texts, show how this dichotomy is impossible to the comprehension of the frankish world at the High Middle Ages.
historiography; public; Franks; legal texts