The Medieval Papacy

During the Middle Ages, the popes of Rome claimed both spiritual authority and worldly powers, vying with emperors for supremacy, ruling over the Papal States, and legislating the norms of Christian society. They also faced profound challenges to their proclaimed primacy over Christendom. The Medieval Papacy explores the unique role that the Roman Church and its papal leadership played in the historical development of medieval Europe. Brett Edward Whalen pays special attention to the religious, intellectual and political significance of the papacy from the first century through to the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Ideal for students, scholars and general readers alike, this approachable survey helps us to understand the origins of an idea and institution that continue to shape our modern world.

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

The medieval papacy is treated as a historical phenomenon developing and changing in response to changing historical circumstances.

During the Middle Ages, the popes of Rome claimed both spiritual authority and worldly powers, vying with emperors for supremacy, ruling over the Papal States, and legislating the norms of Christian society. They also faced profound challenges to their proclaimed primacy over Christendom. The Medieval Papacy explores the unique role that the Roman Church and its papal leadership played in the historical development of medieval Europe. Brett Edward Whalen pays special attention to the religious, intellectual and political significance of the papacy from the first century through to the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Ideal for students, scholars and general readers alike, this approachable survey helps us to understand the origins of an idea and institution that continue to shape our modern world.

An English Protestant authority on papal history examines the medieval church as an historical phenomenon to show that the growth of papal authority and its legal and administrative machinery militated against spiritual leadership.

This classic text outlines the development of the Papacy as an institution in the Middle Ages. With profound knowledge, insight and sophistication, Walter Ullmann traces the course of papal history from the late Roman Empire to its eventual decline in the Renaissance. The focus of this survey is on the institution and the idea of papacy rather than individual figures, recognizing the shaping power of the popes' roles that made them outstanding personalities. The transpersonal idea, Ullmann argues, sprang from Christianity itself and led to the Papacy as an institution sui generis.

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.

This volume explores papal communication and its reception in the period c.1100–1300; it presents a range of interdisciplinary approaches and original insights into the construction of papal authority and local perceptions of papal power in the central Middle Ages. Some of the chapters in this book focus on the visual, ritual and spatial communication that visitors encountered when they met the peripatetic papal curia in Rome or elsewhere, and how this informed their experience of papal self-representation. The essays analyse papal clothing as well as the iconography, architecture and use of space in papal palaces and the titular churches of Rome. Other chapters explore communication over long distances and analyse the role of gifts and texts such as letters, sermons and historical writings in relation to papal communication. Importantly, this book emphasises the plurality of responses to papal communication by engaging with the reception of papal messages by different audiences, both secular and ecclesiastical, and in relation to several geographic regions including England, France, Ireland, Italy and Switzerland. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History.