Why medievalists ?

Abstract

The lecture begins with an evocation of its " situation " in the course of the lectures (courses and seminars) since 2016 by returning to the euristic value of the notion of experience. Here, we consider it in its relationship toagency, according to a historical dialectic thought up by Edward Thompson (" Men act, experience, think and act again "). But from what past ? Between the Greco-Roman reference past (whose historical anthropology enables us to distinguish between politics and policy ) and the " more current past " of the Enlightenment, we question the theoretical effectiveness of the medieval past. This is based on a case study : Ernst Kantorowicz's analysis of the liturgical acclamations of the royal cult, a seemingly out-of-date object which, at the time he wrote his book(Laudes Regiae. Une étude des acclamations liturgiques et du culte souverain au Moyen Âge, 1946, trans. fr., Paris, 2004) a noisy political topicality, forcing the historian to question " the dangers inherent in the profession of exhuming the past ". The analysis we propose, based on a re-reading of this scholarly investigation, focuses on the liturgical genesis of modern government. It also makes it possible to carve out a past available in the medieval period, very broadly : from the Carolingian knotting in the years 780 between Davidic kingship and liturgization of secular power to the three possible ends of royal praise (with Richard II in 1377, with Charles V in 1530, with Charles of Habsburg in 1918), which also represent three possible ends for the Middle Ages.

Contents

• In " Situation du cours ", hearing situation from a Sartrean ear
• Closing the Ambrosian construction site properly: the archaeology of a proper name
• An unassimilable remnant : the liturgical genesis of modern government
• Beginnings and recommencements, " political fictions " (lecture 2017-2018) and " communal experience " (seminar 2017-2018)
• For an experimental history of political experimentation
• Back to the notion of experience, " knowledge acquired through practice " (Brunetto Latini, Trésor)
• Agency and experience, " powerful words " by Edward Thompson (The Uses of Custom.Traditions et résistances populaires en Angleterre ^XVIIe-XIXe siècle, trad. fr. Paris, 2015)
• Experience is " the mental and emotional response of an individual or social group to many related events or to the repetition of the same type of events "
• Repetition and rhythmicity, from group fusion to the oath
• Compulsory historical comparators : we may be living in a double-bottomed presentism
• Why " The inventions of politics " ? Gender issues in the definition of politikos in ancient Greek political anthropology
• The  program: to contribute to a general theory of power in Western Europe, not by chronicling institutional constructions but by mapping situations of political inventiveness
• Seeking out the emergence of politics in places where we don't necessarily expect it, where it doesn't noisily express itself
• Invention, wear and tear, inversion : the rhythms of political experimentation. The example of ostracism in Athens in the^5th century (Pascal Payen, " Ostracism, amnesties, amnesia : Athens in the^5th century BC. ", in R. Cazals dir, Histoire comparée des épurations politiques, Toulouse, 1999, and Vincent Azoulay and Paulin Ismard dir, Clisthenes and Lycurgus of Athens. Autour du politique dans la cité classique, Paris, 2011)
• L'autre passé disponible : l'héritage des Lumières (Antoine Lilti), our " plus actuel passé " (Georges Canguilhem)
• Against the panic of historical analogy : the dangers of recourse to the past in unstable, uncertain and unformulated situations
• Today, the narrowing of historical explanation to " fièvres hexagonales " (Michel Winock)
• Why medievalists ? Only to question the hue of our political passions ? Michel Pastoureau's yellow
• Taking the present of the Middle Ages seriously : the new digital forms of a history in the present(www.entre-temps.net)
• An apparently inactual object : royal praises (Ernst Kantorowiz, Laudes Regiae. A study of liturgical acclamations and sovereign worship in the Middle Ages, trans. fr., Paris, 2004)
• " These damn praises (turn out to be far more tedious than I had imagined. The book is much longer than I thought, it's at least 350 pages, not counting the notes which are a hell " (Letter from Ernst Kantorowicz to ÉdouardRoditi, 12 December 1940, quoted in Robert Lerner, Ernst Kantorowiz: a Life, Princeton, 2017, p. 242)
• " He is not, I believe, a scholar by profession, but rather a man of letters " (Marc Bloch, Revue historique, 158, 1928, p. 116)
• Stephan George and secret Germany, from Hölderlin to Heidegger
• The " gropings " of the historian : Kantorowicz and the genealogy of royal acclamations from 1934 to 1946
• L'histoire d'une formule, Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat : " On the blade of the sword, it gives hope for victories ; on church bells, it presages their announcement "
• Its parodic reversal : the obverse and reverse of medieval glory
• A Carolingian knot in the years 780 : Davidic kingship and the liturgization of secular power
• " However, any revival of the past is like a double-edged sword. When Pepin resurrected the ideal of the rex et sacerdos with the biblically-inspired royal anointing, he could not have imagined that this innovation would be immediately countered by Constantine's Donation, thus helping to promote the counterpart of the sacerdos et imperator in the ecclesiastical hierarchy "
• When history collides with erudition : rhythmic echoes and deadly refills
• The " inner life of ceremonies"   : a Western history of trance ? (Alain Wijfels)
• When do the lauds stop ? With Richard II (1377), with Charles V (1530), with Charles of Habsburg (1918), three possible endings of the Middle Ages
• In 1922, a double reinvention : the mutual challenges of Mussolini and Pius IX
• The untimely return of Christ the King, or " the dangers inherent in the profession of exhuming the past "