Thesis advisor: Patrick Byrne / This dissertation proposes to give an expanded reading and interpretation of the work of Bernard Lonergan, SJ, in political theory around the question of political legitimation: What does it mean for a governing entity to exercise coercive power legitimately? To answer this question from Lonergan’s thought requires that we do several things: understand the historical context in which we find ourselves (Chapters 1-2), understand what Lonergan means by authenticity (Chapter 3), and how that relates to legitimate authority, which is an authentically operating matrix of authentic individuals participating in authentic communities governed by and utilizing authentic institutions and institutional sub-communities (Chapters 4-6). We come out at the Conclusion with a method for evaluating governmental legitimacy that expands on Lonergan’s approach.The history of the conversation concerning political legitimation is capacious, complex, confused, and contradictory, and I do not propose to recount it here in full. But with so much already said, what does Lonergan bring to the table distinct from the previous conversation? What is new is his philosophical focus, emphasizing method over concrete content or legislative procedure, which leads to an account of legitimation as authenticity. What matters is how individuals, communities, and institutions, including governments, are operating, not what particular form they take. Granting that his account of legitimation as authenticity is unique, why do we need authenticity to make sense of legitimate political authority? What does it add that the myriad other available accounts of legitimation do not already have? Available accounts of legitimation meander through the shoals of history, and it’s usually only through trial and error that a navigable passage connecting power to legitimate authority is found. In brief, what Lonergan’s thought provides is a way to skim over the shoals of history so that no matter what new features may form beneath the waves, legitimate authority will always be possible and recognizable. We begin with an extensive but partial mapping of those shoals and pointing to some of the major shipwrecks of previous theories, the better to distinguish Lonergan’s view of legitimation as rooted in authenticity of individual, community, and institution in subsequent chapters. This will also give us examples for practical evaluation to show how Lonergan’s method might work in action. Lonergan is not a cultural relativist, but he does claim that his understanding of legitimacy will be applicable in all times and for all peoples and that, by extension, legitimate government is always possible, no matter what form it takes. He gives a retrospective evaluation method, looking at the progress or decline of a culture, a nation, a civilization, a people as a proxy for the legitimacy of their leadership. “Inquiry into the legitimacy of authority or authorities is complex, lengthy, tedious, and often inconclusive” because direct evaluation of authenticity is complex, lengthy, tedious, and often inconclusive. (Bernard Lonergan, “Dialectic of Authority,” in A Third Collection, ed. Robert Doran and John Dadosky, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 6) But “[t]he fruit of authenticity is progress” and “[t]he fruit of unauthenticity is decline”, and the meat of this work is to spell out in detail the authentic operations of individuals, communities, and institutions (and institutional sub-communities). (Lonergan, “Dialectic of Authority”, 6, 7) These are what produce the progress or decline, and we conclude by supplementing Lonergan’s method with an approach that concurrently evaluates the operations of individuals, communities, and institutions and their sub-communities to see whether they are operating unauthentically (because unauthenticity is easier to recognize than authenticity in concurrent evaluation) and so, likely to produce either progress or decline. This is not as reliable as the retrospective method because not everything going on at a given time can be known to the contemporaneous observer and evaluator, but it is also more useful for creating concrete critiques of what is, in fact, going forward. (Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology, 2nd ed., ed. Robert Doran and John Dadosky (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 168) / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Cette recherche interroge la monarchie française en situation de crise en partant d’un pari politique hors norme, celui des prélats catholiques qui misèrent sur Henri IV, roi protestant. Elle étudie les diverses facettes de l’action politique de ces hommes et reconstruit les mécanismes de leur travail de légitimation du premier Bourbon, en privilégiant les premières années du règne. Centrer l’enquête sur ces années permet de restituer à cette période sa dimension d’incertitude vécue par les acteurs de la monarchie, qui se trouve généralement écrasée par le poids de l’histoire de la pacification, après l’édit de Nantes. Ce choix d’un temps court rend possible l’étude attentive des cérémonies possédant une grande importance symbolique, tels que l’abjuration et le sacre royaux. Trop souvent ces événements sont uniquement décrits, racontés par l’historiographie. L’analyse proposée ici s’attache à l’inverse à leur redonner leur dimension problématique, à réfléchir sur les choix stratégiques faits par le pouvoir, notamment en ce qui concerne leur publication, comme une seconde mise en scène, imprimée. En adoptant un angle d’observation centré sur l’engagement, tantôt exposé, tantôt discret du groupe de prélats (Jacques du Perron, Claude d’Angennes et leurs pairs), il devient possible d’appréhender la monarchie en tant qu’œuvre collective d’acteurs multiples qui agissent pour assurer sa survie. En proposant ainsi une alternative à la vision navarro-centrée qui domine largement l’historiographie, cette approche permet d’aborder d’une nouvelle façon la sortie des guerres de Religion et de révéler des acteurs peu connus, qui néanmoins jouent un rôle crucial dans ce processus. / This dissertation investigates the French monarchy during a moment of crisis, focusing on an exceptional political bet made by a number of catholic prelates who chose to support Henri IV, a Protestant king. Their varied political actions are studied here, and the mechanisms of their work of legitimation of the first Bourbon are reconstructed, with a particular attention to the first years of his reign. The emphasis on these years offers the opportunity to give back to this period its dimension of uncertainty, as lived by the actors of the monarchy, a dimension that is generally erased under the weight of the history of the pacification, beginning with the Edict of Nantes. The choice of a short period allows a careful analysis of ceremonies of great symbolic importance, such as the royal abjuration and coronation. Too often these events have been merely narrated by historiography. This analysis, however, seeks to reconstruct their problematic dimension. Specific attention will be paid to the choices made when these events were published, which constituted a second staging of the act in printed form. With the focal point placed on the political commitment of the prelates, which at times was explicit, and at other times remained discreetly hidden away, it becomes possible to understand the monarchy as the collective work of multiple actors who endeavoured to ensure its survival. Thus, by proposing an alternative reading of events to the Navarro-centric vision that largely dominates historiography, this approach discusses the end of the Wars of Religion from a new perspective, which uncovers lesser known actors, who nonetheless played a crucial role in this process.