Frédéric Gabriel, currently a Directeur de Recherche at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and affiliated with the Institut d’histoire des représentations et des idées dans les modernités in Lyon, had previously visited the Robbins Collection Research Center for an academic conference approximately 15 years ago. Familiar with the advantages of conducting research at the Center, he embraced the opportunity to spend the summer of 2024 delving deeper into its collection.
Gabriel’s current research focuses on the Latin term vicar or vicarius, exploring the historical construction of the Catholic Church’s institutional structure in the 16th and 17th centuries. “For Catholics, ‘vicar’ is a way to project law and institutional functional structure within the New Testament, even though the word ‘vicar’ is not employed in the New Testament,” he explains. “I am interested in the split between Reform and Catholic thinkers in the 16th and 17th centuries, with this exegetical construction of ‘vicar’ or ‘vicarius’ serving as the basis of the institution.” As Catholics began to look to a singular officeholder—the Pope—for authority on matters of divine law, Gabriel notes that vicar could be used to describe the evolving hierarchical relationship between the Catholic Church and its subjects, distinguishing it from other churches of the period. “For the very centralized Catholic Church, the community is established by the vicar, the Pope. Reformed thinkers wanted to destroy this absolutism centered on the Pope. I am interested in analyzing the main structure of the idea of vicar and what it stands for in the construction of the social institution of the Church,” Gabriel states.
In his “Habilitation”, he previously examined the early modern development of institutional functions within a Christian framework. However, he did not have the opportunity at that time to focus on the juridical role of vicars. He now aims to publish a comprehensive book that will encompass both aspects of his research: the study of Exegesis and the history of canon law relating to vicars.
The Robbins Collection Research Center’s library offers a wealth of treatises, historical legal dictionaries, and other materials that examine the role of the vicarius in canon law. Specifically, Gabriel came to examine holdings such as Hugo Babler’s Vicarius Canonicus: Seu de Officio Vicarii, ad Titulum XXVIII Libri I Decretalium, Gianbattista Bassi’s De Vicario Apostolico, and Cosmus Philiarcus’s De Officio Sacerdotis: Christo Summo et Aeterno Sacerdoti et Eius in Terris Vicario, among others. Gabriel emphasizes that his fellowship was enhanced by the ease of availability of books related to his research. “Here we can find books we don’t have in France, especially on the history of canon law in the 16th and 17th centuries. In most libraries in France, you must place a request for a specific book. But if you don’t know that some of the books exist, you can’t request them,” he says. Gabriel praises the Robbins librarians for their exceptional assistance, describing the collection as ‘the ideal environment for conducting legal and historical scholarship’.