Michel de Certeau placed at the centre of his historiographical investigations both the attempts of the spiritual theologians of the 17th century to accredit the mystical experience within the Christian tradition, and the desire for the "return to the sources" (Ressourcement) which marked the theological and spiritual climate around Vatican II. In both cases, according to the French historian, the problem of origins (of a meaning, of a use, of a source, of a norm) is accompanied by numerous doctrinal diatribes and institutional crises. Starting from this polemical framework, Certeau problematizes the concept of origin by placing it not simply on the level of the objective discovery of a fact from the past that the course of events would later have forgotten, nor even on the hermeneutic level aimed at restoring understanding, in its entirety, a primordial intention deformed by subsequent reworkings or contaminations. With his historiographical perspective, Certeau interprets origin as the result of a fabrication implemented by institutions continually subjected to the pressures of the present (challenges, crises, expectations, values and identities). Pointed to starting from a present, the origin moves with it over time, thus assuming an elusive and ambivalent character.