Absolute Monarchs
About This Book
John Julius Norwich traces the papacy across almost two thousand years, asking what the men who held the office meant for Rome and for the wider world. He looks at their politics, their cultural influence and their effect on society, and he tells the story as a long run of ambition, faith, scandal and survival. The early popes sometimes held ground where secular rulers had failed. In the fifth century Innocent I negotiated with Alaric the Goth, an invader the civil authorities could not defeat. Some twenty years later Leo I faced Attila the Hun and talked him down, though Norwich allows that money may have helped. Later come the darker chapters, including the so-called pornocracy, a run of five libertine popes who were descendants or lovers of Marozia, the debauched daughter of one of Rome's most powerful families. The account then moves toward reform and the modern age. Paul III, called the greatest pontiff of the sixteenth century, reinterpreted the Church's teaching and discipline. John XXIII, in just five years from 1958, set in motion the changes that led to Vatican II. The story closes with Benedict XVI, who had to contend with the global scandal over sexual abuse by priests. This is a sweeping history of the papacy, written for general readers by a historian known for his storytelling.
ISBN: 9780812978841
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