Il Secondo Concilio di Orange. Gli esiti di un laboratorio secolare

This article focuses on a decisive stage in the Gallic struggle (with an international importance) on divine grace and man’s free will, namely the Second Council of Orange (529), which reached an almost definitive solution to the issue, within the Catholic Church. The investigation casts a light on the council as the final segment of a secular crisis, showing that doctrine itself is a cultural and historical product. Indeed, the documentation related to the council of Orange proves how the debates activated by the so-called heretical movements were an essential and unavoidable part of the processes related to the definition of Catholic doctrine. The results of the Council show that, in the light of history, orthodoxy emerges as an outcome among others, not as the only possible one.