A history of the Papacy covering the vital period from the Renaissance through the Counter Reformation to the period of the French Revolution. Its a broad survey analysing the influence of Papal power not only across Europe but the wider world also.

Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700 offers a radical reassessment of the history of early modern papacy, constructed through the first major analytical treatment of papal elections in English. Papal elections, with their ceremonial pomp and high drama, are compelling theater, but, until now, no one has analyzed them on the basis of the problems they created for cardinals: how were they to agree rules and enforce them? How should they manage the interregnum? How did they decide for whom to vote? How was the new pope to assert himself over a group of men who, until just moments before, had been his equals and peers? This study traces how the cardinals' responses to these problems evolved over the period from Martin V's return to Rome in 1420 to Pius VI's departure from it in 1798, placing them in the context of the papacy's wider institutional developments. Miles Pattenden argues not only that the elective nature of the papal office was crucial to how papal history unfolded but also that the cardinals of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries present us with a unique case study for observing the approaches to decision-making and problem-solving within an elite political group.

In The Vacant See in Early Modern Rome John M. Hunt offers a social history of the papal interregnum from 1559 to 1655. The study concentrates on the Roman people’s relationship with their sacred ruler. Using criminal sources from the Archivio di Stato di Roma and Vatican sources, Hunt emphasizes the violent and tumultuous nature of the lapse in papal authority that followed the pope’s death. The vacant see was a time in which Romans of modest social backgrounds claimed unprecedented power. From personal acts of revenge to collective protests staged at the Capitol Hill and citywide discussions of the papal election the vacant see provided Romans with a unique opportunity for political involvement in an age of omnipresent hierarchy.

Counter Reformation, Catholic Reformation, the Baroque Age, the Tridentine Age, the Confessional Age: why does Catholicism in the early modern era go by so many names? And what political situations, what religious and cultural prejudices in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave rise to this confusion? Taking up these questions, John O'Malley works out a remarkable guide to the intellectual and historical developments behind the concepts of Catholic reform, the Counter Reformation, and, in his felicitous term, Early Modern Catholicism. The result is the single best overview of scholarship on Catholicism in early modern Europe, delivered in a pithy, lucid, and entertaining style. Although its subject is fundamental to virtually all other issues relating to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, there is no other book like this in any language. More than a historiographical review, Trent and All That makes a compelling case for subsuming the present confusion of terminology under the concept of Early Modern Catholicism. The term indicates clearly what this book so eloquently demonstrates: that Early Modern Catholicism was an aspect of early modern history, which it strongly influenced and by which it was itself in large measure determined. As a reviewer commented, O'Malley's discussion of terminology opens up a different way of conceiving of the whole history of Catholicism between the Reformation and the French Revolution.

"Can Christian clergy - supposedly men of peace - also be warriors? In this lively and compelling history D.S. Chambers examines the popes and cardinals over several centuries who not only preached war but also put it into practice as military leaders. Satirised by Erasmus, the most notorious - Julius II - was even refused entrance to heaven because he was 'bristling and clanking with bloodstained armour'. Popes, Cardinals and War investigates the unexpected commitment of the Roman Church, at its highest level of authority, to military force and war as well as - or rather than - peace-making and the avoidance of bloodshed. Although the book focuses particularly on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a notoriously belligerent period in the history of the papacy, Chambers also demonstrates an extraordinary continuity in papal use of force, showing how it was of vital importance to papal policy from the early Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. Popes, Cardinals and War looks at the papacy's stimulus and support of war against Muslim powers and Christian heretics but lays more emphasis on wars waged in defence of the Church's political and territorial interests in Italy. It includes many vivid portraits of the warlike clergy, placing the exceptional commitment to warfare of Julius II in the context of the warlike activities and interests of other popes and cardinals both earlier and later. Engaging and stimulating, and using references to scripture and canon law as well as a large range of historical sources, Chambers throws light on these extraordinary and paradoxical figures - men who were peaceful by vocation but contributed to the process of war with surprising directness and brutality - at the same time as he illuminates many aspects of the political history of the Church."--Bloomsbury publishing.

The first comprehensive overview of its subject in any language. Its thirty-five essays explain who cardinals were, what they did in Rome and beyond, for the Church and for wider society.

How was the history of post-classical Rome and of the Church written in the Catholic Reformation? Historical texts composed in Rome at this time have been considered secondary to the city's significance for the history of art. The Invention of Papal History corrects this distorting emphasis and shows how historical writing became part of a comprehensive formation of the image and self-perception of the papacy. By presenting and fully contextualising the path-breaking works of the Augustinian historian Onofrio Panvinio (1530-1568), Stefan Bauer shows what type of historical research was possible in the late Renaissance and the Catholic Reformation. Crucial questions were, for example: How were the pontiffs elected? How many popes had been puppets of emperors? Could any of the past machinations, schisms, and disorder in the history of the Church be admitted to the reading public? Historiography in this period by no means consisted entirely of commissioned works written for patrons; rather, a creative interplay existed between, on the one hand, the endeavours of authors to explore the past and, on the other hand, the constraints of ideology and censorship placed on them. The Invention of Papal History sheds new light on the changing priorities, mentalities, and cultural standards that flourished in the transition from the Renaissance to the Catholic Reformation.