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This book is a study of the transformation of the role of the pope in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries.

"The Popes and the Baltic Crusades" examines the formulation of papal policy on the crusades and missions in the Baltic region in the central Middle Ages and analyses why and how the crusade concept was extended from the Holy Land to the Baltic region.

Among the issues that continue to divide the Catholic Church from the Orthodox Church—the two largest Christian bodies in the world, together comprising well over a billion faithful—the question of the papacy is widely acknowledged to be the most significant stumbling block to their unification. For nearly forty years, commentators, theologians, and hierarchs, from popes and patriarchs to ordinary believers of both churches, have acknowledged the problems posed by the papacy. In Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity, Adam A. J. DeVille offers the first comprehensive examination of the papacy from an Orthodox perspective that also seeks to find a way beyond this impasse, toward full Orthodox-Catholic unity. He first surveys the major postwar Orthodox and Catholic theological perspectives on the Roman papacy and on patriarchates, enumerating Orthodox problems with the papacy and reviewing how Orthodox patriarchates function and are structured. In response to Pope John Paul II’s 1995 request for a dialogue on Christian unity, set forth in the encyclical letter Ut Unum Sint, DeVille proposes a new model for the exercise of papal primacy. DeVille suggests the establishment of a permanent ecumenical synod consisting of all the patriarchal heads of Churches under a papal presidency, and discusses how the pope qua pope would function in a reunited Church of both East and West, in full communion. His analysis, involving the most detailed plan for Orthodox-Catholic unity yet offered by an Orthodox theologian, could not be more timely.

Kriston R. Rennie examines the origins and development of medieval papal representation by exploring the legate's wider historical, legal, diplomatic, and administrative impact on medieval European law and society. This critical study is key to understanding the growth and power of the medieval Church and papacy in the early Middle Ages.

Christianity is the world’s largest religion, and has had a profound impact on the course of civilization. Introduction to the History of Christianity is a beautifully crafted and clearly written introduction to Christianity over its 2000 year history. The broad underlying theme of the book is the interaction between Christianity and the secular world, exploring how one has shaped and been shaped by the other. The volume does not attempt to cover the whole of Christian history in detail. It focuses on three key chronological periods pivotal in the development of Christianity: Christ and Caesar, Christianity circa 300–500; Expansion and Order, Latin Christendom, circa 1050–1250; and Grace and Authority, Western Christianity, circa 1450–1650, as well as a concluding section on Christianity in the modern world, providing illustrative snapshots of the tradition over the course of its long development. In addition, the volume includes maps, timelines, quotations from primary source material, a glossary, and a further reading section. No staid, laborious introduction to its subject, Introduction to the History of Christianity offers an inviting and informative overview of this rich religious tradition.

From a bold new historian comes a vibrant history of Rome as seen through its most influential persona throughout the centuries: the pope. Rome is a city of echoes, where the voice of the people has chimed and clashed with the words of princes, emperors, and insurgents across the centuries. In this authoritative new history, Jessica Wärnberg tells the story of Rome’s longest standing figurehead and interlocutor—the pope—revealing how his presence over the centuries has transformed the fate of the city of Rome. Emerging as the anonymous leader of a marginal cult in the humblest quarters of the city, the pope began as the pastor of a maligned and largely foreign flock. Less than 300 years later, he sat enthroned in a lofty, heavily gilt basilica, a religious leader endorsed (and financed) by the emperor himself. Eventually, the Roman pontiff would supplant even the emperors as de facto ruler of Rome and pre-eminent leader of the Christian world. By the nineteenth century, it would take an army to wrest the city from the pontiff’s grip. As the first-ever account of how the popes’ presence has shaped the history of Rome, City of Echoes not only illuminates the lives of the remarkable (and unremarkable) men who have sat on the throne of Saint Peter, but also reveals the bold and curious actions of the men, women, and children who have shaped the city with them, from antiquity to today. In doing so, the book tells the history of Rome as it has never been told before. During the course of this fascinating story, City of Echoes also answers a compelling question: how did a man—and institution—whose authority rested on the blood and bones of martyrs defeat emperors, revolutionaries, and fascists to give Rome its most enduring identity?