Conclusion
Against this doctrinal background, our understanding of Charles iv's liturgical gesture at Christmas mass gains new depth and perspective. Legal and politiÂcal authors in the Middle Ages, as we have seen, put the beginning of the secÂond chapter of Luke's Gospel to a variety of hermeneutic uses, mainly reinterÂpreting it to claim the legitimacy, independence, and universality of imperial authority and its law, as challenged by the Church and regional polities.
And, in opposing the emperor's liturgical performance on French territory, Charles v was probably well aware of this long exegetical tradition. This historical overview has made the case for reassessing and further investigating the politiÂcal value of Luke's pericope in medieval political and juridical thought. The passage indisputably played a role in the debate on imperial authority, providÂing authors with biblical material to defend the empire's universality and leÂgitimacy. The pericope therefore deserves its place alongside other biblical references - such as Matthew 22:21, Rom 13:1-7, 1Pet 2:13-14, John 19:11 - that were so importantly used in discussions of both the extent of political subjecÂtion and the relationship between spiritual and temporal authority from ChrisÂtian perspectives. This overview has also revealed the imbrication of political authority with the census. These were seen as intrinsically complementary noÂtions - with the latter recognised as an expression of the former - since archaic times, as Benveniste has shown.[664] [665] More precisely, it is to be seen how the deÂclaredly universal authority of the emperor has a close historical link to the institution of the census. It is additionally remarkable that Luke's words found place on geographical maps - as the thirteenth century Hereford map61 - which described the imperial territory, literally complying with the descriptio ordered by (or attributed to) Augustus. From multiple perspectives, then, the universal census, while undoubtedly but one element among many in the mulÂtifaceted history of the concept of â€?empire', is also - in its intertwining of poliÂtics, theology, and law - a significant one.Acknowledgement
This chapter is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skfodowska-Curie grant agreement No 665958.