Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes; Fourth Edition

by Eamon Duffy

  On the Great Schism and the Conciliar Movement: W. Ullmann, The Origins of the Great Schism, London 1948; J. H. Smith, The Great Schism, 1378, London 1970; B. Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory, Cambridge 1955; E. F. Jacob, Essays in the Conciliar Epoch, Manchester 1963; the first volume of H. Jedin, A History of the Council of Trent, London 1949; J. Gill, The Council of Florence, Cambridge 1959; G. Alberigo (ed.), Christian Unity: The Council of Ferrara/Florence 1438–9, Leuven 1991; Francis Oakley’s, The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church, 1300–1870, Oxford 2003, traces the afterlife of these Conciliar debates in the subsequent history of church and papacy. The best general text-book on the Church in the period is E. Delaruelle, E. R. Laband and P. Ourliac, L’Eglise au temps du Grand Schisme et la Crise Conciliaire, Paris 1952–5; there is a shorter but still excellent survey in English by Francis Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages, Cornell 1979. Documents in C. M. D. Crowder, Unity, Heresy and Reform 1378– 1460: the Conciliar Response to the Great Schism, London 1977. For Italy and the Papal State: Partner, Lands of St Peter, and the same author’s The Papal State under Martin V, London 1958; excellent discussion of the impact of the schism on the papacy and the Italian church in D. Hay, The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century, Cambridge 1977, pp. 26–48.

  CHAPTER FOUR: PROTEST AND DIVISION

  The Renaissance has generated an immense literature of its own, which cannot even be touched on here. J. Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance, London 1993, is a good introduction. The Italian background is sketched in D. Hay and J. Law, Italy in the Age of the Renaissance 1380–1530, London 1989. The religious history of the period is covered in all the standard histories (see General section above), in Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages, and in Hay, The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century. John Bossy’s Christianity in the West 1400–1700, Oxarchitecture of the period are comprehensively surveyed in F. Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance Art, London 1987.

  The fundamental quarry for any account of the papacy from the fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries is L. Pastor, History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, London 1912–1952 (40 volumes). Pastor was an ultramontane Austrian Catholic who wrote from a strongly papalist point of view, but his immense and detailed work is based on profound acquaintance with the sources. It is the starting-place for any study of the Catholic Church in the period, and in most cases Pastor’s biographies of individual popes remain the most thorough treatment available.

  Survey of the institutions and activities of the Renaissance popes in J. A. F. Thomson, Popes and Princes, 1417–1517: Politics and Policy in the Late Medieval Church, London 1980; further exploration of the political dimension in P. Prodi, The Papal Prince, Cambridge 1987 and K. P. Lowe, Church and Politics in Renaissance Italy, Cambridge 1993.

  For Rome on the eve of the Renaissance, P. Partner, Renaissance Rome 1500–1559: a Portrait of a Society, Berkeley 1976; Loren Partridge, The Renaissance in Rome 1400–1600, London 1996, sketches the art and architectural patronage.

  On Nicholas V and the re-planning of Rome: C. W. Westfall, In this most Perfect Paradise:Alberti, Nicholas V and the Invention of Conscious Urban Planning in Rome 1447–55, Pennsylvania 1974; P. A. Ramsey (ed.), Rome in the Renaissance, the City and the Myth, Binghampton, New York 1982. On Bernardino of Sienna: Iris Origo, The World of San Bernardino, London 1963.

  On the Renaissance and the papal court more generally: C. L. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, Bloomington, Indiana 1985; J. F. D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome: Humanists and Churchmen on the Eve of the Reformation, Baltimore and London 1983; E. Lee, Sixtus IV and Men of Letters, Rome 1978; A. Grafton (ed.), Rome Reborn:The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture, New Haven and London 1993; J. W. O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court 1450–1521, Durham, NC 1979.

  On the Sistine Chapel: C. Pietrangeli et al, The Sistine Chapel:The Art, the History and the Restoration, New York 1986 and Pietrangeli is also the editor of the lavishly illustrated Paintings in the Vatican, Boston, New York, Toronto and London 1996; L. D. Ettlinger, The Sistine Chapel before Michelangelo: Religious Imagery and Papal Primacy, Oxford 1965; C. F. Lewine, The Sistine Chapel Walls and the Roman Liturgy, Pennsylvania 1993.

  On Pius II the old work by C. M. Ady, Pius II, London 1913, remains useful; his entertaining autobiographical Commentaries were translated in an abridged form by F. A. Gragg, Memoirs of a Renaissance Pope:The Commentaries of Pius II, London 1960. The aspirations of another of the renaissance popes to appear as the renovators of the city and see of Rome are explored in Jill E. Blondin, ‘Power Made Visible: Pope Sixtus IV as Urbis Restaurator in Quattrocento Rome’, Catholic Historical Review CXI (2005), pp. 1– 25. For Julius II there are two good modern lives: C. Shaw, Julius II, the Warrior Pope, Oxford 1988, and I. Cloulas, Jules II, Paris 1990; for Callistus III and Alexander VI, see M. Mallet, The Borgias, London 1969.

  On the papacy and Crusade: N. Housley, The Later Crusades 1274–1580, Oxford 1992; C. A. Frazee, Catholics and Sultans:The Church and the Ottoman Empire 1453–1923, Cambridge 1983.

  On the Renaissance cardinalate and the Curia: P. Partner, The Pope’s Men:The Papal Civil Service in the Renaissance, Oxford 1990; Lowe, Church and Politics, pp. 46–52; A. V. Antonovics, ‘Counter-Reformation Cardinals 1534–1590’ European Studies Review 2 (1970), pp. 301– 27; D. S. Chambers, Cardinal Bainbridge in the Court of Rome 1509–1514, Oxford 1965, and the same writer’s ‘The Economic Predicament of Renaissance Cardinals’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 3 (1966); B. M. Hallman, Italian Cardinals, Reform, and the Church as Property, Berkeley 1985.

  For papal finance: J. Delumeau, Vie Economique et Sociale de Rome dans la Seconde Moitié du XVIe Siècle, Paris 1957– 9 (2 volumes); some of Delumeau’s conclusions are summarized in his article ‘Rome: Political and Administrative Centralization in the Papal State in the Sixteenth Century’ in E. Cochrane (ed.), The Late Italian Reniassance 1525–1630, New York 1970, pp. 287– 304; F. Gilbert, The Pope, his Banker and Venice, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1980, deals with the funding of Julius II’s pontificate. The most important recent contribution to understanding of the economics of the early-modern papacy is P. Partner, ‘Papal Financial Policy in the Renaissance and Counter-Reformation’, Past and Present (1980), pp. 17–60.

  For Savonarola: R. Ridolfi, The Life of Girolamo Savonarola, New York 1959; D. Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance, Princeton, New Jersey 1970. Catholic reforming texts in J. C. Olin (ed.), The Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola: Reform in the Church 1495–1540, New York 1969.

  There are hundreds of books on Erasmus: R. H. Bainton, Erasmus of Rotterdam, New York 1969, is a basic narrative: see also R. J. Schoeck, Erasmus and Europe: The Making of a Humanist, Edinburgh 1990; A. G. Dickens and W. R. D. Jones, Erasmus the Reformer, London 1994. In some ways the liveliest introduction is still the delightfully prejudiced and vivid Victorian life, copiously illustrated from the letters, by J. A. Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus, London 1895. There is an English translation of the Julius Exclusus by J. Kelley Sowards, The Julius Exclusus of Erasmus, Bloomington, Indiana 1968.

  On Lateran V and Trent, see H. Jedin, History of the Council of Trent, London 1957–, although only two of the five volumes have been translated into English, they are available in French and Italian, as well as German.

  There are hundreds of books on Luther. A good introduction is E. G. Rupp, Luther’s Progress to the Diet of Worms, 1521, London 1951; good biography by R. H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, New York 1950; the German context (and anti-papalism) explored in A. G. Dickens, The German Nation and Martin Luther, London 1974. Overviews of the reformation in S. Ozment, The Age of Reform, New Haven and London 1980 and H. J. Grimm, The Reformation Era, 1500–1650, London 1973. German pictorial propaganda dealt
with in R. W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation, Cambridge 1981.

  On the Sack of Rome: J. Hook, The Sack of Rome, London 1972; A. Chastel, The Sack of Rome 1527, Princeton, New Jersey 1983; the account in volume 9 of Pastor, History of the Popes is vivid and remains worth reading.

  There are several good short overviews of the Counter-Reformation, of which the best is probably Robert Bireley, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450–1700, London 1999; R, Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal 1540–1770, Cambridge 1998; M. D. W. Jones, The Counterreformation: Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge 1995, presents a well-chosen anthology of documents; J. Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire, London 1977, is brilliant and gripping, but extreme in its interpretation of the ‘newness’ of Counter-Reformation Catholicism; H. O. Evennett, The Spirit of the Counter-Reformation, Cambridge 1968, is a set of brilliant interpretative lectures, but not very useful for beginners.

  The best treatment of the ‘Spirituali’ is D. Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy, Cambridge 1972; of the Jesuits by J. W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1993. In some ways (and until Fenlon’s projected biography of Philip Neri appears) the best work on the religion of sixteenth-century Rome is L. Ponnelle and L. Bordet, St. Philip Neri and the Roman Society of His Times 1515-1595, London 1932. A fascinating and indispensable contemporary assessment of Rome in the years immediately after the Jubilee of 1575 is Gregory Martin’s Roma Sancta 1581, Rome 1969, which is edited by G. B. Parks.

  The crucial final phase of the Council of Trent has been treated briefly and brilliantly by H. Jedin in Crisis and Closure of the Council of Trent, London 1967. For Borromeo, the papacy and the Council, J. M. Headley and J. B. Tomaro, San Carlo Borromeo: Catholic Reform and Ecclesiastical Politics in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century, Washington 1984, pp. 47– 63.

  Surprisingly few of the Counter-Reformation popes have evoked good biographies and, apart from the relevant volumes of Pastor, there is nothing recent in English: N. Lemaître, Saint Pie V, Paris 1994; I. de Feo, Sisto V: Un Grande Papa tra Rinascimento e Barocco, Milan 1987. For the Counter-Reformation reconstruction of Rome: G. Labrot, L’Image de Rome. Une Arme pour la Contre-Reforme 1534–1677, Seyssel 1987; H. Gamrath, Roma Sancta Renovata, Rome 1987(on Sixtus V’s projects); S. Ostrow, Art and Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Rome, Cambridge 1996; J. Freiberg, The Lateran in 1600: Christian Concord in Counter-Reformation Rome, Cambridge 1995; L. Rice, The Altars and Altarpieces of New St Peter’s: Outfitting the Basilica 1621–1666, Cambridge 1997; Torgil Magnuson, Rome in the Age of Bernini, Stockholm and Atlantic Heights, New Jersey 1982–6 (2 volumes); R. Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600– 1750, Harmondsworth 1980. Irene Polverini Fosi, ‘Justice and its Image: Political Propaganda and Judicial Reality in the Pontificate of Sixtus V’, Sixteenth Century Journal 24 (1993), pp. 75–95, examines the propagandist myth that Sixtus rid the Papal States of banditry, and in the process illuminates the objectives and self-understanding of the Counter-Reformation Papacy: the issues are explored more fully in the same author’s La Societa Violenta. Il banditismo nello Stato pontificio nella seconda metà del Cinquecento, Rome 1985. A. D. Wright’s The Early Modern Papacy: from the Council of Trent to the French Revolution, 1564–1789, London 2000, is an invaluable overview of the workings of the papacy in the Ancien Régime. A valuable survey of recent work on the Counter-Reformation papacy is provided by Simon Ditchfield in ‘In Search of Local Knowledge: Rewriting Early Modern Italian Religious History’, Cristianesimo nella Storia 19 (1998), pp. 255–296. The Papal Court is discussed in H. D. Fernandez, ‘The Papal Court at Rome c.1450–1700’ in John Adamson (ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe, London 1999, pp. 141– 63, and is set in a wider context in the essays gathered in G. Signorotto and M. A. Viscaglia (eds.), Court and Politics in Papal Rome,1492–1700, Cambridge 2002.

  On the religious situation in the Empire in the age of the Counterreformation, R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700, Oxford 1979. For Venice, W. J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty, Berkeley 1968, and P. F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press 1540–1605, Princeton, New Jersey 1977. For the confessional polarising of politics and the Thirty Years War: J. Lecler, Toleration and the Reformation, London 1960(2 volumes); C. C. Eckhardt, The Papacy and World Affairs as Reflected in the Secularization of Politics, Chicago 1937; G. Parker (ed.), The Thirty Years War, London 1984 (good political narrative and interpretation); R. Bireley, Religion and Politics in the Age of the Counterreformation: Emperor Ferdinand II,William Lamormaini SJ, and the Formation of Imperial Policy, Chapel Hill 1981.

  On Propaganda Fide and papal missionary involvement: Delumeau, Catholicism, and R. H. Song, The Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, Washington 1961; see also the invaluable commemorative collection, Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide Memoria Rerum, Freiburg 1971– 6 (3 volumes in 5).

  On the pontificate of Urban VIII and Baroque Rome: Wittkower, Art and Architecture; F. Haskell, Patrons and Painters: Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque, London 1963; A. Leman, Urbain VIII et la rivalité de la France et de la Maison d’Autriche de 1631 à 1635, Lille 1920; J. Grisar, Päpstliche Finanzen, Nepotismus und Kirchenrecht unter Urban VIII, Rome 1943; brief treatment of the Galileo affair, with bibliographies, Stillman Drake, Galileo, Oxford 1980; documents in M. A. Finnochiaro, The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History, Berkeley 1989; Vatican symposium in G. V. Coyne (ed.), The Galileo Affair:A Meeting of Science and Faith, Vatican City 1985.

  Papal involvement in the Jansenist debates is best followed through successive volumes of Pastor, but an overview of the issues can be gained from: N. J. Abercrombie, The Origins of Jansenism, Oxford 1936; L. Cognet, Le Jansénisme, Paris 1961; A. Sedgwick, Jansenism in Seventeenth-Century France, Charlottesville 1977; on Unigenitus, there is a useful overview by J. M. Gres-Gayer, ‘The Unigenitus of Clement XI: a Fresh Look at the Issues’ in Theological Studies 49 (1988), pp. 259–82 and an older work, A. le Roy, La France et Rome de 1700 à 1715, Paris 1892. On Innocent XI: J. Orcibal, Louis XIV contre Innocent XI, Paris 1949; L. O’Brien, Innocent XI and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Berkeley 1930.

  For the eighteenth-century Church and papacy, apart from the general works indicated in Section A, and Wright’s Early Modern Papacy, three books in English provide basic orientation and flesh out the detail: W. J. Callahan and D. Higgs (eds.), Church and Society in Catholic Europe of the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge 1979, contains excellent essays with good bibliographies; Owen Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution, Oxford 1981, is a wonderfully detailed and entertaining book which despite its title is mostly devoted to the eighteenth century; Hanns Gross, Rome in the Age of Enlightenment: The Post-Tridentine Syndrome and the Ancien Regime, Cambridge 1990, is particularly good on social context. C. M. S. Johns, Papal Art and Cultural Politics: Rome in the Age of Clement XI, Cambridge 1993, throws light on ideology and papal patronage in the early eighteenth century; F. Heyer’s The Catholic Church from 1648 to 1870, London 1969, is brief and sometimes inaccurate, but has a good deal of material on papal relations with Germany which is not otherwise easily available in English. Volume 1 of an older work, F. Nielsen, The History of the Papacy in the Nineteenth Century, London 1906, is devoted to the later eighteenth-century popes. S. J. Miller, Portugal and Rome c.1748–1830: An Aspect of the Catholic Enlightenment, Rome 1978, provides a useful case-study. For Benedict XIV, Pastor’s account in volumes 35 and 36 is full and very good; R. Haynes, Philosopher King:The Humanist Pope Benedict XIV, London 1970, is light-weight. There is a valuable collection of papers delivered at a convention on Benedict XIV in Bologna in December 1979, dealing with every aspect of his work, as canonist, bishop and pope, in M. Cecchelli (ed.), Benedetto XIV (Prospero Lambertini), Ferrara 1981 (3 volumes).

  On the dissolution of the Jesuits, volume 38 of
Pastor on Clement XIV is the fullest and fairest account. Chapter 5 of Chadwick, Popes and European Revolution, is a balanced and compassionate survey, and chapters 5 and 6 of W. J. Bangert, A History of the Society of Jesus, St Louis 1986, cover the affair from a Jesuit perspective.

  CHAPTER FIVE: ‘THE POPE AND THE PEOPLE’

  In addition to the multi-volume histories recommended in Section A, there is good coverage of the papacy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in F. Nielsen, The History of the Papacy in the Nineteenth Century, London 1906; E. E. Y. Hales’s Revolution and Papacy, Notre Dame, Indiana 1966, is a lively and judicious narrative, and Chadwick’s The Popes and European Revolution is also indispensable. Chadwick has continued his overview of the papacy in his delightful and weighty A History of the Popes 1830–1914, Oxford 1998. F. J. Coppa’s The Modern Papacy since 1789, London 1998, is a little colourless in its judgements, but is based on a wide range of valuable material. The best biography of Pius VI is that in the final volumes (39 and 40) of Pastor, but see also A. Latreille, L’Eglise Catholique et la Revolution Française, Paris 1946–50. Jeffrey Collins’s Papacy and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Rome: Pius VI and the Arts, Cambridge 2004, explores an important and hitherto neglected aspect of Pius VI’s pontificate. On Josephinism, in addition to Chadwick and Hales: T. C. W. Blanning, Joseph II and Enlightened Despotism, London 1970; S. K. Padover, The Revolutionary Emperor: Joseph II of Austria, London 1967; M. C. Goodwin, The Papal Conflict with Josephinism, New York 1938. On Scipio Ricci and the Synod of Pistoia, C. A. Bolton, Church Reform in Eighteenth Century Italy, The Hague 1969.