Abstract
The place occupied by the papacy in medieval history under went profound change after the 1850s. The existing intellectual references on the medieval characteristics of the papal temporal power were considered generic and insufficient. A new interpretive model took shape surpassing the application of documentary critical method and claiming scientific credentials, this model has set the later centuries to the year 1000 as the period of the Roman Church institutionalization, ie its transformation into a papal monarchy. With this work, we seek to clarify how this historiographical foundation occurs, analyzing the importance of the work of the French scholar Paul Fabre and the publication of the modern edition of Liber Censuum. The central argument is guided by a hypothesis: this epistemological shift naturalized certain nineteenth-century political categories in the writing of medieval history.
Keywords:
medieval history; papal monarchy; historiography.