This Element explores the papacy's engagement in authorial publishing in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. The opening discussion demonstrates that throughout the medieval period, papal involvement in the publication of new works was a phenomenon, which surged in the eleventh century. The efforts by four authors to use their papal connexions in the interests of publicity are examined as case studies. The first two are St Jerome and Arator, late antique writers who became highly influential partly due to their declaration that their literary projects enjoyed papal sanction. Appreciation of their publication strategies sets the scene for a comparison with two eleventh-century authors, Fulcoius of Beauvais and St Anselm. This Element argues that papal involvement in publication constituted a powerful promotional technique. It is a hermeneutic that brings insights into both the aspirations and concerns of medieval authors. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

By emphasizing the ways the Bishops of Rome first leveraged the cult of St. Peter to their advantage, George E. Demacopoulos constructs an alternate account of papal history that challenges the dominant narrative of an inevitable and unbroken rise in papal power from late antiquity through the Middle Ages.

There has been a tendency to the view the history of the early medieval papacy predominantly in ideological terms, which has resulted in the over-exaggeration of the idea of the papal monarchy. In this study, first published in 1979, Jeffrey Richards questions this view, arguing that whilst the papacy’s power and responsibility grew during the period under discussion, it did so by a series of historical accidents rather than a coherent radical design. The title redresses the imbalance implicit in the monarchical interpretation, and emphasizes other important political, administrative and social aspects of papal history. As such it will be of particular value to students interested in the history of the Church; in particular, the development of the early medieval papacy, and the shifting policies and characteristics of the popes themselves.

Bringing together ancient and medieval history, Papal Jurisprudence, c. 385-c. 1234 explains why bishops sought judgments from the papacy long before it exerted its influence through religious fear, traces the reception of those judgments to the mid-thirteenth century, and analyses the relation between the decretals c. 400 and c. 1200.

Explains the rise in demand for papal judgments from the 4th century to the 13th century, and how these decretals were later understood.

A guide to key aspects of the development of the ideology of the papacy and papal institutions c.1050-1500.