Description
"When historians and theologians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries attempted to tell the story of the Pope's place in the Roman Catholic Church and in European politics generally, they reimagined the historical trajectory of pontifical power as a gradual, perhaps even inevitable, ascent rooted in events in the Middle Ages. By excavating and tracing this intellectual history through seven pivotal concepts, Bénédicte Sère reveals that present-day narratives of the rise of papal power (largely influenced by those histories from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) are still shaped by medieval political interests and power struggles. Through an exploration of how the Church has consistently reshaped the narrative of its own history, this book chronicles its self-crafted identity and looks to historical sources to query the authenticity of that identity. Under closer inspection, the "history of the Church" as disseminated through contemporary accounts is revealed to be an illusion, a product of the Church's response to its challenges over the centuries. By exploring the space between this narrative and what the historical sources actually show-as well as the divide between the Middle Ages and modernity-Sère reveals how the Church's self-reporting diverges from the actual history of the Church but also how indebted our contemporary politics are to struggles, both political and ecclesiastical, that are now centuries old"-- Provided by publisher.
