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Ouvrages Année : 2019

The Invention of the Church (Forthcoming at Columbia University Press, 2023).

L'Invention de l'Eglise

Résumé

Bénédicte SERE, L’invention de l’Église. Essai sur la genèse ecclésiale de la modernité politique, Paris, Puf, 2019. This essay has arisen from a thought-provoking question: why do academic textbooks clash so dramatically with respect to the documentation of medieval Church history? How does one make sense of the disparity between the evidence of 15th-century archival sources and the later official accounts of the same era? These official narratives, often circulating within manuals of religious or Church history, seem to be untethered from the historical record. The dialogue between the present and the remembered (or invented) past yields intriguing historical distortions and manipulations. Our focus is directed towards a meticulous examination of seven pivotal observation points: conciliarism, constitutionalism, collegiality, reformism, anti-Romanism, modernism, and infallibility. At each juncture, it is imperative to interrogate the evolution of these concepts, their legacy, the threads of continuity or rupture, their reiteration, and their contemporary reuses in the construction of political modernity. This inquiry perpetually juxtaposes archival documentation with grand academic narratives, thus tracing the layers of earlier traditions. When historians and theologians of our 19th and 20th centuries spin their tales—whether in the service of official historiography or its counter-memory—they reimagine the historical trajectory of Pontifical power as a gradual, perhaps even inevitable, ascent rooted in the foundational Middle Ages. By excavating and tracing the archaeology of seven pivotal concepts (in -isms), we endeavor to reveal that present-day narratives and their quest for origins are motivated by political interests and power issues. Drawing on close reading of 14th- and 15th-century sources, we underscore the stark divergence of narratives: the linear storyline of reinvention juxtaposed against the narrative that emerges organically from the texts themselves, independent of the previous linear paradigm. Through an exploration of how the Church has consistently reshaped the narrative of its own history, this work seeks to chronicle the Church’s self-crafted identity, oscillating in a constant back-and-forth between the Middle Ages and modernity, even contemporaneity. The “history of the Church” as disseminated through textbooks becomes an optical illusion, a product of the Church’s response to its contemporary challenges, altering its recollection of the past. It is the space between discourses – the divide between the Middle Ages and modernity – that breathes significance into this approach, where the Church’s own self-reporting diverges from the actual history of the Church. The waning centuries of the Middle Ages were undoubtedly a time of ecclesiastical turmoil. A counter to the prevailing Roman centralism, which had held sway since the 13th century, took shape: the 15th-century councils like Constance and Basel emerged as paramount authorities within the Church. The Pope, in this epoch, has been described as the mere steward (minister) of the Church. Practical applications of political constitutionalism ensued. The papal figure rarely tasted such vulnerability as during this second phase of the Middle Ages. Pontiffs found themselves critiqued in treatises, targeted in pamphlets, embroiled in controversies, deposed through councils, subjected to trials, personally challenged, and even publicly berated. One can scarcely imagine the strain this episode imposed on the sanctioned memory of the papacy. History reveals that the resurgence of papal supremacy corresponded, in secular realms, with the resurgence of royal authority under Charles VII during the 1440s and 1450s. To create a narrative of unambiguous papal power, the history of those obscure years had to be rewritten. Hence, the history of the 15th century and its pivotal episode – the conciliar juncture – called for a recalibration: the invention of conciliarism became an imperative. Straying from conciliar theories, this invention found its genesis in the mid-15th century with Juan de Torquemada († 1468), its first proponent, a fervent supporter of the papacy, who recast it as a form of resistance against the papal authority. The construction of conciliarism was meticulously woven to be the embodiment of anti-power sentiment. The mythologization of this episode entailed crafting a narrative of origin: it was imperative to attribute shadowy beginnings to conciliarism. When Juan de Torquemada tied conciliar theories genealogically to Marsilius of Padua’s treatises and William of Ockham’s theories, he took a definitive step: he birthed conciliarism while tainting it from the outset with its presumed dual heritage of heresy. Conciliarism had to metamorphose into the ideology of heresy because it was seen as the ideology of opposition to papal supremacy. From the 15th century to the 1960s, conciliarism, “this accident in the history of the Church”, coexisted with its tarnished memory within the official narrative and academic literature of religious history. However, the 1960s heralded a resurgence in the study of conciliarism, catalyzed by the unforeseen announcement of a second Vatican Council by John XXIII. The term “New Conciliarism” was coined. Amidst fervent and at times heated debates (recall the fervor surrounding the Haec Sancta decree), a singular question emerged: is the Church an absolute monarchy or a constitutional monarchy? It was as if the crux of the debates rested on the Church’s ability to withstand counterforces and limitations against the backdrop of papal absolutism. Equally central and interwoven with the initial '-ism', constitutionalism proves itself to be a narratological concern, resonating from the 15th century to the contemporary era. As a construct, constitutionalism shares the same essence as conciliarism: both strive to rein in unchecked power. They reject the omnipotence of monarchy and openly contest its plenitude potestatis. Constitutionalists strive to stymie abuse and safeguard the interests of subjects and believers. While constitutionalism was professed from the 15th century to the 20th, a debate sparked by Brian Tierney revolves around whether the same constitutionalism endures from medieval times into the modern era. Indeed, as the Church germinated an ecclesiological form of constitutionalism through conciliarism, the question of the cross-pollination of political models across different domains—ecclesial to secular and vice versa—became a pertinent inquiry that remains relevant today. Hence, the nexus between conciliarity, constitutionalism, and collegiality. Within the heart of the Second Vatican Council’s deliberations, the notion of "collegiality" gained prominence. While not obviously prevalent in medieval sources, the concept was still present. What precisely is this collegiality, so closely intertwined with synodality and conciliarity, that the Council Fathers of the 20th-century sought to establish, harking back to the late medieval period? They aimed to posit a centuries-spanning tradition of counterpower beyond the shadows of post-Tridentine monarchism. The interplay between conciliarity and collegiality—or synodality and collegiality—fits neatly within the extensive history of interactions between Roman primacy and its counterforces. The visionaries of Vatican II, especially Congar, envisioned a form of episcopal collegiality that would serve as a counterpower to monarchical dominance in the atmosphere of the 1960s council. They projected this idea onto the medieval period, particularly during the time of reform councils in the 15th century, proposing the existence of episcopal collegiality. Yet they failed to recognize the waning centuries of the Middle Ages as a period of corporatist practices. It was an era of burgeoning municipalities, urban representative assemblies, chapter and collegiate gatherings, as well as the development of democratic, electoral, and deliberative mechanisms. Bereft of the intricate nuances of texts and archives, they failed to grasp the lived realities of religious and urban institution and communities, essential for understanding their collegial practices. The theologians and official historians of the Church focused narrowly on the evolution of doctrines, without delving into lived experiences that shape history. Reformism, anti-Romanism, and modernism represent distinctive manifestations of counterpower, opposition, or resistance to the hegemony of Roman centralism in its diverse forms. A closer examination of anti-Romanism in the 15th century unveils an intriguing principle: anti-Romanism symbolizes critical reflection, limitation, and resistance, without necessarily invoking schismatic fragmentation. An affinity for the institution persists, even as anti-Romanism flirts dangerously with the margins of dissent and critical stance. Modernism—and its converse, anti-modernism—add another dimension to the battle against Roman supremacy, whether intellectually or scientifically. Given the existence of a form of philosophical modernity within the Middle Ages through the introduction of Aristotle’s work in the West – an external influence to the Latin theological framework – delving into the contemplation of a long-term “modernist” crisis becomes rooted in substance. The medieval lens invites an examination of the status of intellectual modernity within the Church. In essence, the modernist crisis poses the question about the acculturation of truth throughout history. Modernism, therefore, challenges the constructs of truth laid out by the central authorities while addressing the role of critical thinking within the institution. In a curious twist, however, infallibility was born within the realm of infallibilism. Infallibilism is perceived as the culmination of the centralizing logic inherent in Romanism and pontificalism. Thus, infallibilism fundamentally opposes conciliarism, modernism, reformism, and constitutionalism. Revisiting the sources of the 14th and 15th centuries uncovers a paradox that challenges the infallibilist theologians present at the First Vatican Council. In the 14th century, amid debates about evangelical poverty, the concept of papal infallibility emerged as a weapon directed against the Pope himself. The contemplation of the pontiff's infallibility evolved into a mechanism for considering the boundaries of papal authority. Infallibility emerged as a shield against papal sovereignty, functioning as a constitutional check against the threat of absolutist drift in the plenitudo potestatis. This historical reversal becomes even more astounding when we consider that modern advocates of infallibility invoked medieval infallibility to historicize, contextualize and legitimize this new dogma. And so, this essay takes us on a journey through the historiography of the 19th and 20th centuries, revealing the path to engaging with “religious history” beyond the façade of “religion”. It invites us to reimagine “Church history” itself - a history of the Church refracted through the prism of its own narrative within a revitalized perspective on the entity known as “Church”.
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hal-04201474 , version 1 (10-09-2023)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04201474 , version 1

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Bénédicte Sère. L'Invention de l'Eglise. PUF, 2019, Noeud Gordien, Essai, 978-2-13-078655-9. ⟨hal-04201474⟩
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