Corpus mysticum. Genealogía de una imagen teológico-política

Resumo

It was E. Kantorowicz who pointed out, in his work The Two Bodies of the King, that the analogy of the Corpus mysticum had been one of the most important images for political theology. However, the historian did not explain the origin and evolution of this analogy. This thesis has developed the genealogy of this social image, which was gradually consolidated as a model for understanding the Church, until its meaning slipped into a political meaning: Corpus mysticum will be, at the end of the Middle Ages, the political community, and its head will be the king. From a political-theological approach, attentive to pointing out the processes of transfer between theological and political concepts, we have approached the meaning that this image had when it was created by the apostle Paul, and the semantic development that it acquired as a social image, a content that will make its definitive transfer of meaning possible. The main milestones in this genealogical journey have been, after presenting the Pauline image, the apostolic fathers and apologists, North African Latin theology, the legal transfers in late antiquity, Carolingian theology, scholasticism, and the definitive transition process that would turn the image into a political concept. Various moments that turned the notion of Corpus mysticum into a juridical-social, and at the same time spiritual, model of the Church, which would be useful as a model of self-understanding for the the early beginnings of the modern state. A process in which disciplines as varied as theology and political theory, law and liturgy.