Il potere che interpreta. L’eco dell’esegesi dei duo gladii di Bernardo di Clairvaux nel pensiero politico dei secoli XIV-XVII

The protagonist of this volume is not so much Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), but his echo (14th-17th centuries). The reader who is looking for a profile of the abbot will therefore not find it. The question to which this book responds is rather addressed by Bernard to the protagonists of the history of political thought and can be dramatized, on the model of Christ\’s question to his disciples, in the form:\’Who do you say that I am?’. This is the meaning of a review of the witnesses (from Egidio Romano to Robert Bellarmine, from John of Paris to William Barclay, passing through William of Ockham and Marsilio da Padova) who, portrayed speaking only of themselves in his words, will be authors much more than interpreters of sophisticated models of understanding politics, its categories and its institutions. Compared to the new history that they will write, the authority of Bernard, exegete of Lk 22, 38, is sometimes a pretext and more often an alibi. Called to show that interpretation is a function of the power that interprets, the case of Bernardo shows that it is possible to build on the same commonplace a power founded now on transcendence, now on immanence, and to claim in its name both the decision on exception as much as the confirmation of the rule.