La varietà della santa Chiesa. Unità di fede e pluralità di forme di vita cristiana in Anselmo di Havelberg

In 1149 Pope Eugene III asked the bishop of Havelberg, Anselm, for a work that presented the contents of some theological disputes that more than a decade earlier the same prelate had in Constantinople with Nicetas, the Greek archbishop of Nicomedia. Thus the bishop composed the Antikeimenon or Dialogi, where the memory of those discussions becomes the narrative frame of a complex theological argument according to which the history of salvation is based on the irreducible polarity between the unity and uniqueness of the Christian faith and the plurality of liturgical and institutional forms that that faith produces through time and space. Using both the Greek theological culture, known in the journey to Constantinople, as well as the doctrinal reflection of the schools of Latin Europe, marked by the teaching of figures such as Anselm of Canterbury and Peter Abelard, the author of the Antikeimenon not only makes a contribution to the dialogue between Rome and Constantinople, but he also takes part to the theological elaboration that characterizes the so-called “Renaissance of the 12th century”.