Why is the official narrative of the history of the Catholic Church so discordant with the archival sources of the Middle Ages? This is the central question of medievalist Bénédicte Sère’s Inventing the Church: The Pull of the Past in Ecclesial Politics, which explores the gap between fifteenth-century texts and later narratives about infallibilism, collegialism, reformism, and other major concepts in the history and modern self-representation of the Catholic Church.

In this conversation, translator Caroline Wazer asks Sère about the origins of the book, the complexities of translating terms from Church history, and the differences between teaching this material in France and the United States.

Caroline Wazer: Your book highlights the tension between archival evidence and grand historical narratives. What initially led you to suspect that the textbook accounts were so discordant with the medieval sources?

Bénédicte Sère: In the 2010s, while working on my habilitation dissertation, I immersed myself in the sources from the time of the Great Western Schism (late fourteenth to early fifteenth century). I discovered a wealth of unedited texts, still available only in manuscript form. I read hundreds of little-known treatises, epistles, harangues, letters, and other writings. Through them, I caught a spirit—a distinctive atmosphere of debate and dissent, of conflicting positions and intellectual tensions. There were polemics on both minor and major issues related to the Church, its government, its hierarchy, its head and members, layered controversies that revealed the stakes of the time. I was able to reconstruct distinct spheres of polemical discourse and grasp the complexity of the historical moment.

But when I came back to teach, I turned back to standard textbooks and felt a profound disconnect. These works seemed entirely removed from the sources I had spent years reading. They were repetitive, derivative, and often borrowed entire paragraphs from one another. What struck me was the stark contrast between the vibrant, contested material in the archives and the flattened, sanitized tone of narrative offered in academic manuals. This discrepancy puzzled me, and I began to ask why the gap was so wide. I came to see it as the product of ideological constructions and official narratives, shaped by the institutional centers of Roman historiography.

As a historian, I became interested in this process of rewriting—how the late Middle Ages have been reimagined through official modern historiography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I thought it might be worth accounting for this historiographical shift, starting from the very discrepancy I had experienced so strongly.

Wazer: Were there moments in your research when you found yourself unexpectedly sympathetic to the Church’s decision to craft these narratives, despite their historical distortions?

Sère: Not sympathetic, no—but not antagonistic or aggressive either. I approach the Church as a historical object, not as a community to which I would belong or feel emotionally attached. My aim is neither to defend nor to accuse, but to observe. What I try to highlight is that the Church, beyond being a spiritual institution, is also a structure shaped by ideologies and political stakes. I don’t speak from within, but I also don’t condemn the mechanisms at play. As a historian, I strive to remain as neutral as possible in order to trace and describe the processes that produced these narratives and the major place that the Church has in societies.

Wazer: As someone who has taught in both France and the United States, have you noticed any differences in how French and American students respond to the idea that Church history is as much a product of narrative construction as it is of archival “facts”?

Sère: It’s always a subtle task and complex challenge to help students grasp the distinction between historical reality and historiographical construct—and even more so to show that both are themselves historical objects. This challenge applies not only to Church history, but to any field of historical inquiry.

That said, I have noticed a significant difference between France and the United States in the cultural and intellectual relationship to the Church. In France, there is a longstanding tradition of skepticism, even irritation, toward Church history—partly shaped by the political legacy of laïcité. Although a recent trend, especially in Paris since the 2010s, has seen renewed interest in ecclesiology and the intersection of theology and social sciences, many French scholars and students still tend to view strictly ecclesial topics as somewhat “confessional” or ideologically oriented.

By contrast, in the U.S., the academic study of religion is more institutionally embedded and widely accepted. The presence of divinity schools, departments of religion, and theological seminaries means that students are generally more accustomed to engaging with religious material—even if recent shifts have pushed attention toward more marginalized or nonmainstream religious expressions. Still, the very idea that Church history is subtly constructed—as much narrated as documented—can be productive and thought-provoking on both sides of the Atlantic.

Wazer: Many of the original sources you quote were originally written in Latin (in addition to some in German and English), meaning parts of this book have always been in translation—even in the French edition. Were there any non-French terms or concepts that you found especially difficult to translate for a modern Francophone audience?

Sère: Yes, one term in particular comes to mind: ecclésial, and by extension, ecclésialité. These words are often confused with ecclésiastique (ecclesiastical), but they mean something quite different. Ecclésial refers not to the institutional Church per se, but to the lived, performative dimension of being and making the Church. It gestures toward a dynamic and collective experience—what it means to “do Church,” to enact it.

Ecclésialité is not about structures or hierarchies, but about a form of social and symbolic energy. It reflects a Durkheimian sense of the Church as a society, and society, in turn, as a latent Church—imbued with a religious substratum. It’s about the Church’s self-perception, its internal imaginaries, and the tension between performed belonging and inherited tradition. Ecclésialité names the irreducibility of the Church to its institutions—it’s the space where ideological horizons, symbolic acts, and lived experiences intersect. Translating that concept across languages and academic cultures is always a challenge.

Wazer: In the book, you warn against presentism while acknowledging that every age inevitably reinterprets the past. Where do you see the boundary between legitimate reinterpretation/revision and distortion? Do you think historians today can (or should) aim to fully escape presentism?

Sère: Either legitimate or distorted, reinterpretations must first and foremost be made with awareness. What I caution against is the uncritical acceptance of historiographical narratives or academic textbooks as transparent, objective truth. My aim is not to reject reinterpretation, but to encourage vigilance: we must remain conscious of the filters through which we read and write history.

In that sense, I advocate for a return to the sources—not with the illusion of accessing a pure past, but to decipher what the sources themselves are trying to say, rather than forcing them to confirm what we wish to find. It’s about resisting the temptation to instrumentalize the past for present needs, and instead allowing the past to surprise us, to remain other, even resistant.

Wazer: Since we began working on this translation in early 2024, Pope Francis passed away and Pope Leo XIV was elected. In your opinion, are any of the “isms” you explore in the book especially relevant at this present moment in Church history?

Sère: Many of the “isms” explored in the book remain highly relevant in the current moment. Reformism, for instance, is a recurring theme in Church history—persistently invoked, yet never fully resolved. Every new papacy seems to reopen the question: what does it really mean to “reform the Church”? What expectations, tensions, and polemical weight does that phrase carry—and according to which factions or theological sensibilities?

These debates are far from settled; they resurface again and again, shaped by changing historical contexts but grounded in longstanding structural and ideological tensions within the Church.

Constitutionalism is another enduring and increasingly pressing issue—not only within Church history but in modern societies more broadly. It raises fundamental questions about authority and governance: Who truly governs the Church today? Is it a single individual—the pope? A collegial body of cardinals? Informal networks, lobbying groups, or even media and social platforms?

In an era when constitutional norms and democratic principles have been challenged—most visibly in recent months in the United States—the resilience of constitutionalism is being tested. This raises urgent questions about the stability of governance structures everywhere, including within the Church. Do the papacy and the Roman Curia now find themselves counterbalanced by new forms of power, such as public opinion and social media, which complicate traditional centralized authority and expose the complex dynamics between institutional frameworks and external pressures?

Once again, many of the tensions explored in the book are not merely historical phenomena but remain deeply relevant today. Church history is not a separate field from political considerations more generally.