The religious conditions of political experience

Abstract

If the penitence of Canossa provides a glimpse of the moment when Christian humility is reversed into a spectacle of glory, what was the political availability of its memory at the time of the " Gregorian chiasm " ? In this exchange between sacrality and sovereignty, the possibility of a political experience is at stake, or rather, the possibility that there are experiences - a history of powers and not just of the domination of theecclesia, exalted by a certain historiography. We return here to what Pierre Toubert has called " the decisive experience of the Gregorian movement ", attempting to measure its productivity in the light of recent analyses (by Florian Mazel in particular). In legitimizing the idea of novelty, the reformers valued singular experiments, particularly in the genres of religious life. Following Jacques Dalarun's analysis, we take up the case of the eremitical congregation of Grandmont, in its documentary dichotomy(Book of Sentences and Rule). Particular attention is paid to the procedures for electing the prior and building consent, pointing to the " almost all" (" at these words, almost all said in a unanimous voice... ") as a form of political invention, with the monastic community thinking of society from the outside.

Contents

• It's snowing in Canossa : brief reminders
• Penance, Reformation and sovereignty : " He taught him to distinguish between places " (Theodoret de Cyr, Ecclesiastical History)
• The Gregorian moment and the thick line of a long ^twelfth century : separation or hinge ?
• Ecclesia, dominium and " double fracture conceptuelle " (Alain Guerreau, L'avenir d'un passé incertain. Quelle histoire du Moyen Âge au ^XXIe siècle ? Paris, 2001)
• What is archaism ? The critique of theological-political categories and the illusions of " the primordial indistinct " (Paolo Prodi)
• Insistence on the radical otherness of the Middle Ages : strategy, critique and false familiarity (Jérôme Baschet, " Between the Middle Ages and us ", in Didier Méhu, Néri de Barros Almeida and Marcelo Cândido da Silva eds, Pourquoi étudier le Moyen Âge ? Les médiévistes face aux usages sociaux du passé, Paris, 2012)
• Theology is not a block of certainties; its lexical logics are still active today (Giacomo Todeschini)
• " It was in this way, as if by breaking and entering, and in small steps, that novelty entered the stage of history in the West " (Levent Yilmaz, Le temps moderne. Variations sur les Anciens et les modernes, Paris, 2004)
• Dissemination : powers in post-Gregorian Europe
• What is " the decisive experience of the Gregorian moment " ? (Pierre Toubert, " Église et État au ^XIe siècle : la signification du moment grégorien pour la genèse de l'État moderne ", in Jean-Philippe Genet and Bernard Vincent eds, État et Église dans la genèse de l'État moderne, Madrid, 1986)
• " If you venture to set custom against us, remember that the Lord did not say : "I am custom" but "I am truth" " (Gregory VII to Wimundus, 1073)
• Theology of truth and " legitimacy of the nine "
• " The legitimacy of the new also emerges from the valorization of singular experiences and the multiplication of types of religious life " (Florian Mazel, Féodalités, Paris, 2010)
• The end of the age of experimentation ? " Lest the excessive diversity of religions lead to grave confusion in the Church of God, we firmly prohibit anyone from now on from inventing a new religion " (constitution 13 of Lateran IV, 1215)
• L'indignité au pouvoir : le projet renversant de Robert d'Arbrissel (Jacques Dalarun, Gouverner c'est servir. Essai de démocratie médiévale, Paris, 2012)
• " At these words, almost everyone said with a unanimous voice " : the almost everyone, or the invention of politics - A political experiment : the eremitical congregation of Grandmont and Étienne de Muret
• The Gregorian reform strikes at the heart of lineages : from deparentalization (Joseph Morsel) to the detour of fidelity from carnal kinship to spiritual kinship (Jacques Dalarun)
• Intuition and institution, Le livre des sentences and la règle de Grandmont : documentary dichotomy or political archaeology ?
• " All good is better in common than if it were not " : social utopia and the circulation of caritas
• Mutual charity and reciprocal obedience : the meaning of community
• Martha, Mary and the converse : governing " not by domination but by charity "
• " When it comes to electing the prior " : electoral procedures and the construction of consent
• Who is excluded ? Parity and the minor share
• Monasticism thinks of society from the outside : Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Le temps des moines. Clôture et hospitalité, Paris, 2017
• The reversibility of experiences : unconditional hospitality or confinements ? (see the web-documentary " Le cloître et la prison. The spaces of confinement " http://cloitreprison.fr/)
• Try your hand at democracy ? " Des accommodements, des reprises, des labeurs " (Marielle Macé, " Une humilité insolente. La résignation au pouvoir ", Critique, 810, 2014)
• What political experience  aims for: a mode of existence that is never dissociated from its form (Giorgio Agamben, De la très haute pauvreté. Règles et formes de vie, French translation, Paris, 2011)
• The religious conditions of political experience in the Middle Ages ? : " the wood of the cross is both the framework and the thorn in the side of medieval societies " (Jacques Dalarun)
• Sending : the baptism of Ômura Sumitada, Kyûshû, 1563 (Nathalie Kouamé, Le Christianisme à l'épreuve du Japon médiéval, Paris, 2016)