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philippe buc

Philippe Buc

Professor of Medieval History

E-mail: igorbuc@stanford.edu — spam-filtered for non .edu addresses
Website: http://history.stanford.edu/people/buc

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At Stanford Since 1990

Ph.D., Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Sciences Sociales, Paris; M.A., University of California at Berkeley; Maîtrise-des-Arts, Paris-Sorbonne; B.A., Swarthmore College

Bio Sketch

Philippe Buc's research has been concerned with religion and power in pre-modern western Europe, principally from Late Antiquity to the High Middle Ages, so the 2nd to 14th centuries of the Common Era. The geographic areas that he is most familiar with include what are now France, Germany, and the Low Countries, but given the translocal nature of political and religious elites in the Middle Ages, his space is by necessity the whole of Western Europe.

His first book, published in 1994, was entitled L'ambiguïté du Livre. Prince, pouvoir et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible [the ambiguity of the Book. Prince, power, and the people in biblical commentaries]). It consists in a study of the elaboration and discussion of models of power within a source genre, scholastic commentaries of the Bible (the "Book" the title refers to), between ca. 1100 and ca. 1350. Was political power willed by God, and in what sense? Would it have existed without the Fall? Will it still exist after Christ's return, in paradise? What is its essential ground, reason or violence? Is taxation legitimate, and in general what are the limits of royal authority on its subjects? Can the subjects resist a king, and even depose him? Beyond these issues, L'ambiguïté du Livre explains how a scholar should read and interpret medieval biblical commentaries when s/he searches for political contents. This method is conditionned by the ! Book's own ambiguities (its openness to divergent interpretations), and by the way in which Church Fathers and later Catholic thinkers delt interpretatively with its inner tensions.

Buc's second book is a methodological reflection on the limitations of the use of anthropological concepts, in this case, "ritual", for the study of medieval political culture. It investigates, first, the techniques and strategies medieval authors employed in depicting or invoking what modern medievalists label "political ritual". Closely related to this question is the analysis of what medieval thinkers (and so probably medieval social agents) thought that these practices effected or ought to effect. Here the book tries to recover the medieval counterpart to historians' conceptualization -- as it were a medieval anthropology of these practices. The second part of the book turns to a third issue: Given the continuities and discontinuities between medieval and modern understandings of "ritual", what are the limits in the applicability of the latter to the medieval evidence? Dangers of Ritual (2001) has elicited a good share of positive and negative reactions, but! seldom indifference.

The third book -- it is being researched and written -- deals with the longue-durée histories and intersections of three cultural forms, holy war, martyrdom, and terror. It is both an analysis in cultural continuities -- for instance the French terroristes' debt to Catholic martyrdom, universalism, and theories of coercion -- and in the reflexive and reflective use of the premodern past by participants in modern terror, martyrdom, or holy war. Research is being funded in 2005-06 by the American Council for Learned Societies.

Research Interests

  • Late Antique and Medieval (to 1300); Political Culture; History and Anthropology; Political Rituals; Exegesis; History of Concepts
  • Translations of Medieval Sources Into English
  • Currently working on a book tentatively entitled "Genealogies of Religious Violence: Martyrdom, Holy War and Terror in the West, ca. 70 C.E. to ca. 2001".

Courses Taught:

  • Medieval Church and Violence
  • Europe from Late Antiquity to 1500
  • Body, Gender, and Society in the Middle Age;
  • Language of Politics 
  • Medieval Antisemitism
  • Inquisitors and Heretics

Publications:

  • "Pouvoir royal dans les commentaires de la Bible", Annales 40 (1989)
  • "... Healing Powers of the Capetian Kings", Viator 24 (1993)
  • "... Pierre le Chantre et la prédication laique", Mabillon 4 (1993) [see the review in Revue de l'histoire des religions 217 (2000), 13-14, 30-33]
  • L'ambiguïté du Livre: Prince, pouvoir, et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible, Théologie Historique 95 (Paris, Beauchesne, 1994)
  • "Italian Hussies and German Matrons: Liutprand of Cremona on Dynastic Legitimacy", Frühmittelalterliche Studien 29 (1995)
  • "... Princely Power between legitimacy and illegitimacy in the twelfth century", in T.N. Bisson, ed., Cultures of Power (U. Penn Press, Philadelphia, 1995)
  • "Exégèse et pensée politique: Radulphus Niger (vers 1190) et Nicolas de Lyre (vers 1330)", in Joël Blanchard, ed., Représentation, pouvoir et royauté à la fin du Moyen Age (Paris: Picard, 1995)
  • "Writing Ottonian Hegemony: Good Rituals and Bad Rituals in Liutprand of Cremona", Majestas 4 (U. Mainz, 1996)
  • "Horizons de l'écriture médiévale des rituels dans l'Antiquité Tardive", Annales 48:1 (1997)
  • "Conversion of Objects", Viator 28 (1997)
  • "Anthropologie et Histoire", Annales HS 53:6 (1998), 1243-1249 ("note critique" on David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence [Princeton, 1996])
  • "The Book of Kings: Nicholas of Lyra's mirror of princes", in Philip D.W. Krey and Lesley Smith, eds., Nicholas of Lyra (Leiden: Brill, 2000)
  • "Ritual and interpretation: the early medieval case", Early Medieval Europe 9:2 (2000)
  • The Dangers of Ritual. Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (Princeton U. Press, 2001), French translation as Dangereux rituel (Presses universitaires de France, 2003)
  • The bibliography, absent from the PUP edition, can be accessed at Bibliography; See as well Introduction to Dangers of Rituals, PDF format ; Introduction to Dangers of Rituals, HTML format
  • "Rituel politique et imaginaire politique au haut Moyen Age", Revue historique 305:4 (2001) In German, on-line:http://trivium.revues.org/index1652.html
  • "Political ritual: medieval and modern interpretations", in Hans-Werner Goetz, ed., Die Aktualität des Mittelalters (Bochum: D. Winkler Verlag, 2000)
  • "Violence and Terror in the Western Christian Tradition" (in Arabic) in Religions and Violence, ed. A. Ismaili Alaoui (Rabat: Az-Zaman, 2002)
  • "1701 in medieval perspective: Monarchical rituals between the Middle Ages and Modernity", Majestas 10 (2002)
  • "Conclusions" to Culture politique des Plantagenet (1154-1224) (Poitiers: CESEM, 2003)
  • "Noch einmal 919. Of the ritualized demise of kings and of political rituals in general", in Gerd Althoff, ed., Rituale, Zeichen, Werte (Münster, 2004)
  • "Nach 754: Warum weniger die Handelnden selbst als eher die Chronisten das politische Ritual erzeugten -- und warum es niemandem auf die wahre Geschichte ankam", in Bernhard Jussen, ed., Die Macht des Königs. Herrschaft in Europa vom Frühmittelalter bis in die Neuzeit (Munich, 2005), 28-38.
  • "La vengeance de Dieu: De l'exégèse patristique à la Réforme ecclésiastique et la Première Croisade", in La vengeance, 400-1200, ed. Dominique Barthélemy, François Bougard & Régine Le Jan (Collection de l'École française de Rome 357, Rome, 2006), 451-486.
  • "The monster and the critics: A ritual reply", Early Medieval Europe 15:4 (2007), 441-452.
  • "Some thoughts on the Christian theology of violence, medieval and modern, from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution", Rivista di storia del cristianesimo 5:1 (2008).

Awards:

  • Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, 1996
  • Fellow, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, 1997-08
  • Fellow, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Geschichte, Summer 1999
  • Gastprofessor, Heidelberg, Summer semester 2004
  • ACLS fellowship, 2005-06
  • Davies Family Fellow in Undergraduate Education, 2008-2013

University Service:

  • Director, Medieval Studies, 1998-2001, 2003
  • Deans' Curriculum Committee, 2003-2005
  • Writing and Rhetoric Committee, 2003-2005
  • Faculty Senate, 2007-