The bishop and the territory, city of God, city of men : cross-readings

Following on from La Maison-Dieu. Une histoire monumentale de l'Église au Moyen Âge (800-1200) published in 2006, Cité de Dieu, cité des hommes. L'Église et l'architecture de la société, 1200-1500 (PUF, 2016) by Dominique Iogna-Prat articulates a general history of the Middle Ages understood as the passage from one metaphorical configuration to another: the imaginary institution of society was based on the metonymy of the church (as edifice) to the Church (as institution and social body); it is now thought of as "architecture" (building the city, politically constructing the city). This transition was made possible by a profound change in the territorialization of the sacred, imposing a new configuration of power, which Florian Mazel has documented. This is the subject of his recent book, L'évêque et le territoire. L'invention médiévale de l'espace (^{Ve-XIIIesiècle} ) (Seuil, 2016), which outlines the genesis of a new territorial sovereignty. By confronting these two approaches, which have in common that they put the ancient civitas and the medieval city to the test of the spatial turn, we will not only seek to resituate the part played by the ecclesiastical institution in the organization of powers in the Middle Ages. We'll be looking to identify the scansions of a new periodization which, ultimately, calls into play the very idea of modernity.