Clericalism and Sexual Abuse: An Historical and Historiographical Perspective
December 2025
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Chapter
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Catholic Priests and the Matter of Sex: New Approaches to Clericalism
The growth and erasure of the papal beard
July 2025
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Journal article
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Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies
This article examines the curious phenomenon of papal beards between 1510 and 1700,analyzing how facial hair became a significant element in papal self-fashioning and religious sym-bolism. Beginning with Julius II’s beard, reportedly grown in protest after losing Bologna duringthe Italian Wars, the tradition of papal beards continued with Clement VII’s, cultivated after the1527 Sack of Rome. It solidified during Paul III’s long pontificate. Beards were transformed fromsituational aberrations to a normalized feature of papal presentation despite canonical prohibi-tions. This revolution in papal facial hair paralleled a broader Renaissance re-evaluation of beardsas symbols of classical virtue and masculine authority. Humanist defenses of clerical beards, par-ticularly Piero Valeriano’s 1531 Pro sacerdotum barbis, provided theological justification by se-lectively citing biblical precedents. The papal beard disappeared again under Clement XI in 1700,a shift that reflected further changes in the complex interplay between religious tradition, gender performance, and cultural context in early modern Europe.
Inventing the Early Modern Papacy: Four Paradigms
June 2025
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Chapter
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Inventing the Modern Papacy
Priests and their Wigs in Eighteenth-Century Rome
June 2025
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Journal article
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Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture
The wig was the quintessential accessory of eighteenth-century European culture, but the wearing of wigs by clerics became a subject of heated controversy across Catholic societies. Critics of clerical wig-wearing pointed to its inherent vanity, to Paul’s proscription against men covering their heads in Church in 1 Corinthians, and to its apparent denial of the tonsure’s importance as the visible outward sign of clerical status. However, defenders pointed to arguments about the need to cover up imperfections in the priest’s body and avoid scandal. Various bishops moved to restrict the use of wigs amongst their diocesan clergy. However, no bishop was more active in legislating than the bishops of Rome themselves. Popes from Clement IX (r. 1667–69) to Pius VI (r. 1775–99) all issued instructions about clerical wig-wearing and their legislation betrays shifting attitudes and approaches. The most zealous rules from the 1720s gradually gave way to more pragmatic ones which attest to the persistent desire of Roman clerics to engage in male status competition and to the growing difficulty that the Church’s leadership had in persuading them of the intrinsic superiority of their clerical status.
In Rome’s shadows, smoke and speculation: the conclave’s political ballet begins
May 2025
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Internet publication
What happens in the conclave stays there
May 2025
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Other
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Church Times
The papal conclave is a referendum on the Church's future
May 2025
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Internet publication
The point of the pope. Why His Holiness matters (even if you’re not a Catholic)
April 2025
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Internet publication
Locating the Renaissance Curia, c.1420–c.1530
April 2025
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Chapter
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A Companion to the History of the Roman Curia
Watching and waiting after the pope's death
April 2025
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Internet publication
The very model of a modern man of faith Pope Francis and the Church he leaves behind
April 2025
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Internet publication
What qualities are now required of a pontiff in the world of Donald Trump?
April 2025
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Other
For the Life of Faith: Catholicism's Gendered Draw
April 2025
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Other
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The Sydney Review of Books
A review of Sarah Gilbert's Unconventional Women and Patrick Mullins' The Divided Heart of Catherine Mackerras.
Barefoot in the Snow: Of Poetics and Papacy
April 2025
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Other
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Australian Book Review
A review of Pope Francis's autobiography, Hope.
Pope Francis is recovering... what happens now?
March 2025
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Internet publication
Conclave: A Historical Perspective
March 2025
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Other
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Catholic Historical Review
Acts of succession: the ups and downs of conclaves in the past
March 2025
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Other
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The Catholic Herald
Cambridge History of the Papacy, Vol 1: The Two Swords
February 2025
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Edited book
Papal elections and renunciations
February 2025
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Chapter
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Cambridge History of the Papacy Volume 1. The Two Swords
This chapter sets out the history of the process of electing the pope, including the development of voting rules, procedures, sites of election, and a wider electoral culture. The basic format for the modern papal election evolved gradually over a period from 1059 to the 1400s, with the first “conclaves” taking place in the mid-thirteenth century. In contrast to papal elections, papal resignations have been rare, with most occurring during the first Christian millennium. The question of how a pope might relinquish office nevertheless still interested canonists until long after this date, and rules about how popes might resign were incorporated into the twentieth-century codes of canon law even before Benedict XVI dramatically invoked them in 2013.
The Cambridge History of the Papacy. Vol 2: The Governance of the Church
February 2025
|
Edited book
This volume engages with the centrality of the popes within the Catholic Church and the claim of papal authority as it was exercised through the institution's various governing instruments. Addressing the history of the papacy in the longue durée, it highlights developments and the differences between the first and second millennium of the papacy. The chapters bring nuance to older historiographical models of papal supremacy, focusing on how apostolic primacy was contested and re-negotiated, and how the contours of power relationships shifted between center and periphery. The volume draws attention to questions about papal supremacy across time, place, and transnational lines; the function of law in the exercise of papal authority; the governance of the church in the form of the Curia, synods, and regional and ecumenical councils; the governance of the Papal States; the management of finances and church-state relations; and the relationship between papal temporal and spiritual authority.
The Cambridge History of the Papacy. Vol. 3: Civil Society
February 2025
|
Edited book
Historically, the papacy has had – and continues to have – significant and sustained influence on society and culture. In the contemporary world, this influence is felt far afield from the traditional geographic and cultural center of papal authority in western Europe, notably in the Global South. Volume 3 frames questions around the papacy's cultural influence, focusing on the influence that successive popes and various vectors of papal authority have had on a broad range of social and cultural developments in European and global societies. The range of topics covered here reflects the vast and expanding scope of papal influence on everything from architecture to the construction and contestation of gender norms to questions of papal fashion. That influence has waxed and waned over time as successive popes have had access to greater resources and have had stronger imperatives to use their powers of patronage and regulation to intervene in society at large.
The College of Cardinals
February 2025
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Chapter
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The Cambridge History of the Papacy Volume 2. The Governance of the Church
The College of Cardinals is a key constituent organ within the papacy, its members being charged with electing the pope and with advising him. Cardinals were originally priests and deacons who assisted the pope in his liturgical and charitable duties around the city of Rome during the first millennium and also the Bishops of Rome’s neighboring “suburbicarian” dioceses. These three orders of clerics cohered into a single College during the Gregorian reform of the eleventh and twelfth centuries: their status and role in papal affairs has waxed and waned in the centuries since. Today the College is more diverse and representative of global Catholicism than at any point in the past. However, it is also a larger and a less cohesive body, whose members are less familiar with each other – or with the pope – than their predecessors were.
canon law, cardinals, constitution, global Church, politics
General introduction
February 2025
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Chapter
|
Cambridge History of the Papacy Volume 1. The Two Swords
The Cambridge History of the Papacy is organized to provide readers with a critical–historical survey of the structural development of the papacy as an institution and as an actor in Church history, and in world history. It is hard to imagine a sphere of human activity over the past two millennia that has not been influenced by, and influenced in turn by, papal action – be it in the domains of religious belief and practice; social, cultural, and political thought; art, science, medicine, ethics, diplomacy, and international relations. Four questions – each addressed throughout the three volumes of the present work – have framed that vision across vast chronological and geographical expanses: the pope’s centrality within the Catholic Church, the primacy of papal power as an instrument of governance, the papacy’s cultural influence in society and culture, and the implications of secularity for its place in the lives of believers and non-believers alike. Each question – and the search for answers – converges around the fundamental question of papal authority: its original claims; the ebbs and flows of its effective reach; and the numerous ways in which claims, and expressions of papal authority and supremacy, have been contested within the Catholic tradition, and from without.
Ineligible to be pope? What Conclave teaches us about Church history
January 2025
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Other
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The Catholic Herald
The papal tiara in sacred historiography
December 2024
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Journal article
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Catholic Historical Review
This article sets out historiographical engagement with the papal tiara since the late
sixteenth century, examining the range of questions asked about the object and the motivations
behind them. Early Modern Catholic writers developed a consistent line of inquiry into the tiara
based on an evolving agenda to affirm the pope’s majesty. More recent scholars, though
motivated by very different concerns, have nevertheless retained many of their lines of
questioning. Indifference to practical questions about exactly how the tiara was used as a
ceremonial object has sometimes been a feature of this discourse. However, contemporary
discussion of the tiara medieval origins now integrates it. The oddity that tiaras have still been
produced for late twentieth- and twenty-first century popes needs to be included in the story told.
papacy, tiara, sacred historiography, early modern
Get ahead, get a hat: whatever happened to the papal tiara?
November 2024
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Other
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The Catholic Herald
The cult of gay relics and queer medievalism in 1980s Sydney
November 2024
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Journal article
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Past and Present
This article explains how the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of radical queer nuns, created gay ‘religious relics’ in San Francisco and Sydney, Australia, in the 1980s. The Sisters’ relics are a neglected part of twentieth-century queer history and reflect the role of urban spaces and sexual cultures in the formation of contemporary queer identities. They also represent an early effort to preserve and commemorate queer histories. The Sisters drew on deliberately archaic medieval models to preserve pieces of destroyed sex-on-premises venues and cruising sites that were important to gay men. During the early 1980s, arson and hostile civic authorities destroyed these places and the HIV/AIDS epidemic began to threaten the gay community which patronized them. In Sydney, the Sisters also held reliquary exhibitions which commemorated and defended gay identity and dignity through the veneration of campy pieces of popular culture and the reclamation of seemingly homophobic religious discourses and concepts. The refashioning of the medieval cult of relics into a vehicle for queer identity and history speaks to the ongoing role of imagined pasts in the formation of present selves, and of the erasure of certain kinds of sexual experience from mainstream presentations of queer history.
With his resignation, Archbishop Justin Welby leaves behind an Anglican church as precarious as his legacy
November 2024
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Internet publication
As Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby had considerable gifts. In the end, however, he did little to arrest the Church of England’s gradual, secular decline. Perhaps the saddest thing about his resignation is how lacking in momentousness it is.
Righting past wrongs: Can reparatory justice be reconciled with Christian understandings of non-heritable guilt?
November 2024
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Internet publication
The recent Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Samoa issued a communiqué stating that the time has come for a “meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation” about reparations for the Atlantic slave trade.
Hypocrisy and cant: Historicising Church notions of sexuality
October 2024
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Other
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Australian Book Review
A review of Diarmaid MacCulloch's Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity
The Roman Catholic War on Wigs
October 2024
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Journal article
|
HISTORY TODAY
The Catholic Church’s ban on wigs in the 18th century was as revealing of attitudes towards disability as vanity and sanctity.
Christians should think twice before engaging in competitive victimhood
July 2024
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Internet publication
As part of the Olympic opening ceremony, a troupe of drag queens staged a re-enactment of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper”. The howl of protest from Christian commentators that followed was predictable, and dismaying.
What to make of the Viganò Schism?
July 2024
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Internet publication
Soldiers, Pilgrims & Brigands: On the Roads to Rome
June 2024
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Other
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Literary Review
A review of Catherine Fletcher's The Roads to Rome: A History
Ancient Pasts & Truths: Decolonising Europe's History
June 2024
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Other
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Australian Book Review
A review of Josephine Quinn's How the World Made the West: A 4,000-Year History
Sodomites and catamites: An engaging history of European homosexuality
April 2024
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Other
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Australian Book Review
A review of Noel Malcolm's Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe (Oxford University Press, 2024)
Dressing Pope Francis: his public costume between pontifical, Jesuit, and Franciscan traditions
April 2024
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Journal article
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Journal of Jesuit Studies
When Jorge Bergoglio became the first Jesuit to be elected as a successor to St. Peter, it created a novel problem in papal and Jesuit history: how would a Jesuit interpret the long-standing but ever-evolving traditions of pontifical dress? This article sets out how Francis’s public sartorial choices have developed as he has negotiated his twin roles within the church. It further considers the influence of both Jesuit and Franciscan visual and material culture on the image he cultivates and the intersections between them and the imperatives of papal fashion. Finally, it considers the contribution of clothing to Francis’s image and reputation within the church and in popular media in Italy and in the wider world.
papacy , Jesuits , Franciscans , clothing , Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis , media image
Priests and their bodies after trent: (dis)abilities, masculinities, sexualities
April 2024
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Journal article
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Journal of Religious History
This article discusses the impact of a “corporeal turn” in early modern religious
history on recent publications in Counter-Reformation Catholic History. Scholars
increasingly look towards the Church’s legal archives in Rome as a source of information
about ecclesiastical and theological attitudes to the body and sexuality. The figure of the
priest has emerged as one of the most interesting subjects in that inquiry because of the
richness of material about clerics which those archives hold. Scholars are now engaged in
study of how past generations of theologians, ecclesiastical magistrates, and medics assessed
priestly abilities and disabilities, priests’ engagement in sexual acts, and their wider
performances of masculine identities. Rome’s role as a major centre in shaping Catholic
masculinities is reinforced in this scholarship but a new study underscores the blurred
boundaries between the lay and ecclesiastical in masculinities there. Overall, this research
provides much new material both for rethinking historical questions about Trent’s impact on
reform discourses and also for commenting on contemporary debates in theology and Church
politics about the nature of Christian priesthood.
Historicizing institutional mobility: the case of the Roman Catholic Church
March 2024
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Internet publication
Seeing is believing: the sham of Roman autocracy
March 2024
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Other
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Australian Book Review
A review of Mary Beard's Emperor of Rome (2023)
Book review: Carlos Eire, 'They flew: a history of the impossible'. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2023; pp. xx + 492
February 2024
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Other
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Journal of Religious History
Pope Francis counts his blessings
January 2024
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Internet publication
Review: Celeste McNamara, The Bishop’s Burden: Reforming the Catholic Church in Early Modern Italy
December 2023
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Other
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Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture
“A point of no return”: Pope Francis throws caution to the wind
October 2023
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Internet publication
Why the Middle Ages still matters to Middle Australia
September 2023
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Internet publication
Lament for the Catholic University
September 2023
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Internet publication
Pope Francis should stop cosying up to authoritarian regimes
September 2023
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Internet publication
The Last Conclave?
September 2023
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Internet publication
Medieval Orientalism and Pope Francis's Journey to the East
August 2023
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Internet publication
Pope Francis’ new cardinals
July 2023
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Internet publication
Catholic spectacle and Rome's Jews. Early modern conversion and resistance. By Emily Michelson. Pp. xvi + 333 incl. 11 ills. Princeton–Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2022. £30. 978 0 691 21133 6
July 2023
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Other
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History
5004 Religious Studies, 4303 Historical Studies, 50 Philosophy and Religious Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology
Remembering Fabian LoSchiavo (1949–2023): Australian nun
May 2023
|
Internet publication
Cut price Coronation: Why King Charles shouldn’t modernise the monarchy
April 2023
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Internet publication
“Fair play?” Gary Lineker, the BBC, and the complex demands of impartiality
March 2023
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Internet publication
Serious Christians don’t mind a Jesus joke
March 2023
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Internet publication
Death by a thousand cuts: a new study of a tainted pontiff
March 2023
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Other
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Australian Book Review
A review of David Kertzer's The Pope at War (2023)
Kate Forbes and the place of Christians in public life
March 2023
|
Internet publication
Monsignor Alfred Gilbey: remembering England’s “best-known priest”
March 2023
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Other
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The Catholic Herald
When two popes become one
February 2023
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Internet publication
Pope Francis’ “sin-crime distinction” and the history of Christian sexuality
January 2023
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Internet publication
Cardinal Pell’s losing game
January 2023
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Internet publication
For George Pell, the Church was nothing if not a bastion of conservatism
January 2023
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Internet publication
George Pell: a “political bruiser” whose Church legacy will be overshadowed by child abuse allegations
January 2023
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Internet publication
God’s Ruckman: Pell played Church politics hard but won few fans
January 2023
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Internet publication
Will History judge Benedict XVI more kindly than his contemporaries?
January 2023
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Internet publication
Benedict XVI: the "pope of paradox"
January 2023
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Internet publication
Benedict XVI (1927–2022): the pope of paradox
December 2022
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Internet publication
All in the best possible taste
December 2022
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Other
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The Catholic Herald
A review of Suzanna Ivanic's Catholica: The Visual Art of Catholicism (2022)
The “concordat” game: big data and the origins of the West
December 2022
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Other
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Australian Book Review
A review of Bruce Bueño de Mesquita's The Invention of Power (2022)
Gay suffering and divine love: a reflection for World A.I.D.S. Day
November 2022
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Internet publication
Church and State: Paolo Prodi’s Il sovrano pontefice
November 2022
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Other
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The Catholic Herald
“What a piece of artistry”: Oxford Between the Wars
November 2022
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Other
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Australian Book Review
A review of Daisy Dunn's Not Far From Brideshead (2022)
Regime change in Papal Rome: Pius IV and the Carafa (1559-1561)
September 2022
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Chapter
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The Culture and Politics of Regime Change in Italy, c.1494-c.1559
Review: Martin Luther and the Shaping of the Catholic Tradition, edited by Nelson Minnich and Michael Root
September 2022
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Other
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Cristianesimo nella Storia
Queen Elizabeth, the language of Christianity, and the "defence of the faith"
September 2022
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Internet publication
What the Queen meant to Christians
September 2022
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Internet publication
The “papalisation” of apology: what will be the significance of Pope Francis’s visit to Canada?
July 2022
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Internet publication
End Game: Pope Francis’ succession planning
June 2022
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Other
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The Catholic Herald
Gaspar Sanz's ‘Ecos Sagrados de la Fama Gloriosa de Innocencio XI’ (1681) and clerical cultures of diversion in Baroque Spain
June 2022
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Journal article
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Journal of Ecclesiastical History
This article analyses the Ecos sagrados de la fama gloriosa de Innocencio XI, an elaborate panegyric by the Spanish priest and musician Gaspar Sanz written in 1681 in praise of the reigning pope. The Ecos sagrados is built around the concept of an echo poem, which in turn inspires seven prose discourses that reflect on aspects of the pope's name and character. However, the text is also a unique resource for tracing transmission of ideas through the Spanish Church and for encountering a forgotten world of intellectual diversion amongst the priests of Baroque Madrid.
Europe’s dowager empress: Maria Theresa and the fate of the Habsburgs
June 2022
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Other
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Australian Book Review
A review of Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger's Maria Theresa (2021)
Roe vs Wade: the bishops’ dilemma
May 2022
|
Internet publication
Pope Francis’s remarks on pornography betray his equivocal position on sexual ethics
May 2022
|
Internet publication
Father Stu: the consolations of a calling
May 2022
|
Internet publication
Ringing in the papal restoration: Francesco Cancellieri's treatise on the Capitoline bells (1806)
April 2022
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Journal article
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Modern Italy
<p>In 1806 the antiquarian Francesco Cancellieri wrote a treatise on the new bells fabricated for the campanile of the Capitoline palaces, replacing earlier ones destroyed during the Roman Republic of 1798-9. Cancellieri's text, and the story of those bells which it contains, offers important insights into the significance of bells in early nineteenth-century Italian Catholicism and also about clerical responses to trauma and loss. Close reading shows how Cancellieri used historical techniques to reconstruct an auditory community around the bells, part of the wider programme of ‘resacralisation’ which took place in Rome at this time. His words also hint at a complex and nuanced perspective on how to reconcile Rome's papal and republican traditions, which contrasts to later, more reactionary endeavours.</p>
bells, Pius VII, Capitoline, Rome, cultural history, Francesco Cancellieri
History Lessons: what Australians can, and should, learn from the curious case of Tobias Rustat
March 2022
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Internet publication
Morrison’s narrow view of universities is alien to Menzies
March 2022
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Internet publication
“A path to self-destruction for the Church”: Cardinal George Pell and the status of gay Catholics
March 2022
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Internet publication
Forget Patrick: March 17 is also St Gertrude’s Day, commemorating the patron saint of cats
March 2022
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Internet publication
Pope Francis in War and Peace
March 2022
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Internet publication
War in Ukraine highlights lack of knowledge of European History
March 2022
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Internet publication
Olga of Kyiv is Ukraine’s patron saint of both defiance and vengeance
March 2022
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Internet publication
The theology of chocolate
March 2022
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Journal article
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History Today
The introduction of chocolate to the Catholic world caused a dilemma: could it be eaten? Should it be given up for Lent?
When baptism goes wrong: the Church’s rules in a new era of legalism
February 2022
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Internet publication
Historians and the Practice of History: a further response to John Dickson
February 2022
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Internet publication
Benedetta: Paul Verhoeven’s “convent life gone wrong”
February 2022
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Internet publication
Volcanoes, plague, famine and endless winter: Welcome to 536, the “worst year to be alive”’
February 2022
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Internet publication
An early modern historian plays (word)games
January 2022
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Internet publication
What now for senior clergy who covered up abuse?
January 2022
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Internet publication
On historians and the historicity of Jesus: a response to John Dickson
January 2022
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Internet publication
Pope Francis, pets, and the Christian ideal of marriage
January 2022
|
Internet publication
Papal Rome in lockdown: proximities, temporalities, and emotions during the im/mobility of the conclave
December 2021
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Journal article
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I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance
When Pope Francis Comes of Age
December 2021
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Internet publication
The dangers of elevating social ethos to religious orthodoxy
December 2021
|
Report
<p>We are grateful for the opportunity to make a submission to this inquiry. We support protection from discrimination based on a person’s religious beliefs. We are concerned, however, that this legislative package will have the perverse effect of increasing discrimination experienced by people of faith.</p>
<p>The proposed legislation risks elevating social ethos to the status of religious orthodoxy. It would have the perverse effect of increasing discrimination within religious traditions against people of faith who, in good conscience, hold differing views about social ethics.</p>
<p>We make this submission in our personal capacity as historians of religion, persecution, and social cohesion. This submission sets out our concerns, supporting them with historical examples. Our views do not necessarily represent the views of the Australian Catholic University or La Trobe University.</p>
The early modern cardinal: an historical appraisal
October 2021
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Chapter
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Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal
‘The Cardinal’ is among the most visual archetypes in European history. His rich red robes and ostentatious headgear betoken the leadership which the pope vests in him; his airs of primordial authority and sacerdotal noblesse instinctively draw the eye. Even an art historical layman can identify a cardinal immediately from the cut and colour of his cloth: scarlet, crimson, carmine, vermilion, ruby – even, as in the famous bespectacled portrait of Fernando Niño de Guevara (Plate 12), rosé – the shade of red matters not, for the association of iconography and office is so strong. Cardinals thus, ironically, would seem to enjoy a more straightforward visual identity than the popes whom they faithfully served – the pope's costume, by contrast, manifesting itself in rather more variable shades and emblematic designs than those available to his mere electors. Yet the single factor of colour has come to be so meaningful with the cardinal that it can feel as if almost the only filter through which to glimpse him. To delve deeper into who cardinals were, and why they mattered, we have to push past this primary association to interrogate the somewhat broader palette with which this extraordinarily varied group of individuals put a gloss on their lives.
<br>
Over 1,200 men became cardinals between 1417 and the end of the eighteenth century and many discharged their roles and responsibilities as porporati quite differently.
Review: Pascale Rihouet and Jennifer DeSilva (eds.), Eternal Ephemera: The Papal Possesso and its Legacies in Early Modern Rome
July 2021
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Other
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Renaissance and Reformation
If I could go anywhere: the “cathedral” at Blythburgh that rises from the marshes
June 2021
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Internet publication
George Pell’s “Prison Journals”: Can the Cardinal answer his critics?
May 2021
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Internet publication
Mano a mano: Napoleon and the papacy
April 2021
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Other
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Australian Book Review
A review of Ambrogio Cain's To Kidnap a Pope (2021)
The colour of money: Can Pope Francis curtail the wealth of the cardinals?
April 2021
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Internet publication
The ostentatious story of the “young pope” Leo X: his pet elephant, the cardinal he killed and his anal fistula
April 2021
|
Internet publication
A promiscuous she-pope with a dilated cervix: The legend of Pope Joan, who gave birth on a horse
February 2021
|
Internet publication
The Jesuit Giambattista Tolomei (1653–1726): cardinal and philosopher
July 2020
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Journal article
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Journal of Jesuit Studies
This article sets out what is known of the life of Giambattista Tolomei (1653–1726), sometime rector of the Jesuit school in Ragusa (Dubrovnik), of the Collegio Romano, and the Collegio Germanico, cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, philosopher, theologian, bibliophile, and philologist. Tolomei’s life intersected a series of significant events in the church’s history and that of the Society of Jesus: on-going conflict with Jansenism, the Chinese Rites controversy, significant innovations in the Society’s intellectual curriculum, and its renewed incorporation within the upper echelons of the Roman Curia. Tolomei played a key part in all those developments, and his role in what transpired is explored here—placed in context to establish his significance to the Society’s history in the early eighteenth century and beyond.
Collegio Romano, Roman Curia, Giambattista Tolomei , Chinese Rites controversy, Jansenism , Jesuit cardinal , Concilio Romano
Introduction
July 2020
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Chapter
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A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal
Review: Emily O’Brien, The Commentaries of Pope Pius II (1458–1464) and the Crisis of the Fifteenth-Century Papacy
July 2020
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Other
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Archivum historiae pontificiae
A companion to the early modern cardinal
January 2020
|
Edited book
Cardinals and the Non-Christian World
December 2019
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Chapter
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A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal
Introduction
December 2019
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Chapter
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A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal
The College of Cardinals
December 2019
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Chapter
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A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal
The Early Modern Historiography of Early Modern Cardinals
December 2019
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Chapter
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A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal
Review: Felicia Rosu, Elective Monarchy in Transylvania and Poland-Lithuania, 1569–1587
December 2019
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Other
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American Historical Review
Felicia Roşu. Elective Monarchy in Transylvania and Poland-Lithuania, 1569–1587.
April 2019
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Other
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The American Historical Review
4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology
The Pope Who Would be King: The Exile of Pius IX and the Emergence of Modern Europe, David I. Kertzer, Oxford University Press, 2018 (ISBN 978‐0‐19‐882749‐8), xxx + 480 pp., hb £25
April 2019
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Other
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Reviews in Religion and Theology
4404 Development Studies, 44 Human Society
Rome and Home: putting a positive spin on Anglo-Papal Relations
February 2019
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Other
A review of Stella Fletcher, The Popes and Britain
The Roman Curia
January 2019
|
Chapter
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Brill's Companions to European History
Review: Kimberly Lynn and Erin Kathleen Rowe (eds.), The Early Modern Hispanic World: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Approaches (CUP, 2017)
November 2018
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Other
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Renaissance Studies
My review of Kimberly Lynn and Erin Kathleen Rowe (eds.), The Early Modern Hispanic World: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Approaches (CUP, 2017)
Review: John Hunt, The Vacant See in Early Modern Rome: A Social History of the Papal Interregnum. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
May 2018
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Other
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Renaissance Studies
My review of John Hunt, The Vacant See in Early Modern Rome: A Social History of the Papal Interregnum.
Woolf: The First Blockchain University
March 2018
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Other
Woolf will be the first blockchain-powered university with its own native token. The design has been developed by an independent group of academics (mostly from the University of Oxford), and experienced academics will form the first college in the collegiate university.
Woolf will be a borderless, digital educational society which reimagines how teachers and students connect. It will rely on blockchains and smart contracts to guarantee relationships between students and educators. For students, it will be the Uber of degree courses; for teachers, it will be the Airbnb of course hosting, but for both parties the use of blockchain technology will provide the contractual stability needed to complete a full course of study.
It is our view that the model set out in this white paper will disrupt the economics of higher education and provide new opportunities for both students and academics. Blockchains with smart contracts can automate administrative processes and reduce overhead costs. Students can study with lower tuition and academics can be paid higher salaries.
It is our ambition that Woolf be a revolution without precedent in the history of the university. But at its core, Woolf makes possible the oldest and most venerable form of human education: direct personal, individual apprenticeships in thinking. And Woolf brings that transformative experience to the world. We believe such a personal education will be increasingly valuable as artificial intelligence and robotics gain an ever-greater share of the current jobs.
Antonio de Fuenmayor’s Life of Pius V: A Pope in Early Modern Spanish Historiography
March 2018
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Journal article
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Renaissance Studies
Antonio de Fuenmayor’s Vida y Hechos de Pío V (1595) is one of the earliest hagiographic texts written about Pius V, the most famous of Counter-Reformation popes and the victor of the Battle of Lepanto (1571). But, because Fuenmayor wrote in Spanish rather than Italian, his text has never received much attention. This article presents it in its context for the first time and argues that it highlights an important problem in developing genre of early modern Spanish historiography: how to incorporate the pope in the national histories promoted by Philip II, III, and IV? Contemporary Spaniards praised the Vida y Hechos de Pío V highly, a fact which may have had as much to do with its highly political role as a critical rebuke of Clement VIII and, later, of Urban VIII as it did with the text’s literary qualities. The fact that Fuenmayor’s depiction of Pius V is just as interesting and carefully constructed as the better-known Italian examples reminds us to be careful how we prioritize such examples of Counter-Reformation hagiography. Moreover, its existence underlines how Italians, who staffed most of the papacy’s offices at this time, hardly held a monopoly on projecting or defining the papacy’s image. Other Catholics, in this case the Spanish Monarchy and its agents, in order to further their own political interests, put forward rival visions that were at odds with those emanating from Rome.
Review: Massimo Rospocher, Il papa guerriero: Giulio II nello spazio pubblico europeo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015)
February 2018
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Other
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The English Historical Review
My review of Massimo Rospocher, Il papa guerriero: Giulio II nello spazio pubblico europeo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015)
The Pope and the Professor: Pius IX, Ignaz von Döllinger, and the Quandary of the Modern Age, Thomas Albert Howard, Oxford University Press, 2017 (ISBN 978-0-198-72919-8), xx + 346 pp., hb £35
January 2018
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Other
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Reviews in Religion and Theology
My review of Thomas Albert Howard, The Pope and the Professor: Pius IX, Ignaz von Döllinger, and the Quandary of the Modern Age (Oxford University Press, 2017)
Book review: The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate
January 2018
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Other
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Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses
A review of A. Edward Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate (Oxford University Press, 2017)
Cultures of secrecy in pre-modern papal elections
January 2018
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Chapter
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Cultures of Voting in Pre-Modern Europe
This chapter focuses on the theme of secrecy – an important subject for inquiry in its own right. It looks at how political and theological factors interacted to shape attitudes to secrecy in various forms over an extended period. The chapter shows how the evolving culture of secrecy reflected the strange hybrid constitution that gave rise to it: an elective monarchy with elements drawn from contemporary ideas about princes, older ecclesiastical strata and even the political practices of the ancient Roman Republic. It addresses changing understandings of secrecy and their immediate impact; they explain how theology justified – or even mandated – such understandings and how they interacted with the political calculations that all cardinals had to make individually or corporately. The chapter considers how secrecy impacted the ceremonies associated with the election, ongoing papal administration during it and the attitude of the Roman populace to what they saw taking place.
Francisco Vargas
December 2017
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Other
A reference entry on Francisco de Vargas y Mexia (d.1566), Imperial ambassador at the Council of Trent
Cultures of Voting in Pre-Modern Europe
December 2017
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Edited book
Cultures of Voting investigates the political practices through which Pre-Modern Europeans expressed collective opinions and took collective decisions. The twenty contributors to this volume offer case studies from Ancient Greece to the Batavian Republic which demonstrate voting’s long-standing centrality to Europe’s societies and political cultures and how voting shaped both intra- and inter-communal relationships. Contemporary debates about the effectiveness of ‘democratic’ electoral procedures, the attraction and limits of assembly politics, and the relationship between ideas of popular sovereignty sometimes seem to operate in an historical vacuum. However, these case studies show the persistence of such problems and the range and complexity of pre-modern responses to them. Through analyses which combine traditional constitutional history with social and cultural history, the history of material culture and the history of political thought, they explain the influence of ancient models and traditions on medieval and early modern polities and document cultural exchange between them. Above all, they delineate a new aspect to Europe’s common political heritage and raise questions about how far pre-modern cultures contributed to institutional developments in voting in the Age of Revolutions and beyond.
Review: Dissolving Royal Marriages: A Documentary History, 860–1600, by David d’Avray (CUP, 2014) and Papacy, Monarchy and Marriage, 860–1600, by David d’Avray (CUP, 2015)
December 2017
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Other
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The English Historical Review
My review of David d'Avray Dissolving Royal Marriages: A Documentary History, 860–1600 (CUP, 2014) and Papacy, Monarchy and Marriage, 860–1600, by David d’Avray (CUP, 2015)
Review: Fabrizio d'Avenia, La Chiesa del re: Monarchia e Papato nella Sicilia spagnola (secc. XVI–XVII) (Studi Storico Carocci, no. 256.) Rome: Carocci editore, 2015. Pp. 183
December 2017
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Other
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American Historical Review
Review: The Other Catholics: Remaking America's Largest Religion, Julie Byrne, Columbia University Press, 2016 (ISBN 978-0-231-16676-8), xx + 412 pp., hb $29.95
October 2017
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Other
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Reviews in Religion and Theology
Review: Harald E.Braun and Jesús Pérez-Magallón (eds.), The Transatlantic Hispanic Baroque: Complex Identities in the Atlantic World. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. xiv + 315 pp. £80.00. ISBN: 978-1472427502 (hb).
August 2017
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Other
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Renaissance Studies
A review of Harald E.Braun and Jesús Pérez-Magallón (eds.), The Transatlantic Hispanic Baroque: Complex Identities in the Atlantic World. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.
Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700
July 2017
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Book
Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700 reassesses 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 theatre, but, until now, no one has analysed 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.
Local Church, Global Church: Catholic Activism in Latin America from Rerum Novarum to Vatican II, Stephen J. C. Andes and Julia G. Young (eds), Catholic University of America Press, 2016 (ISBN 978‐0‐8132‐2791‐7), xxx + 353 pp. hb $52.50
July 2017
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Other
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Reviews in Religion and Theology
4404 Development Studies, 5005 Theology, 50 Philosophy and Religious Studies, 44 Human Society
Book Review: Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment: Art, Science, and Spirituality
December 2016
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Other
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Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses
5004 Religious Studies, 4401 Anthropology, 50 Philosophy and Religious Studies, 44 Human Society
Review: The Global City: On the Streets of Renaissance Lisbon. By Annemarie Jordan Gschwend and K.J.P. Lowe (eds) London: Paul Holberton, 2015.
December 2016
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Other
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Sixteenth Century Journal: journal of early modern studies
My review of The Global City: On the Streets of Renaissance Lisbon. By Annemarie Jordan Gschwend and K.J.P. Lowe (eds) London: Paul Holberton, 2015.
The Accolti Conspiracy (1564)
December 2016
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Other
A reference entry on the Accolti Conspiracy (1564).
The Carafa Trial (1560-1561)
December 2016
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Other
A reference entry on the Carafa Trial.
Review: The Reception of Machiavelli in Early Modern Spain. By Keith David Howard. Woodbridge: Tamesis. 2014.
November 2016
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Other
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Hispanic Research Journal
A review of The Reception of Machiavelli in Early Modern Spain by Keith David Howard.
The Reception of Machiavelli in Early Modern Spain
November 2016
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Other
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Hispanic Research Journal
47 Language, Communication and Culture, 3601 Art History, Theory and Criticism, 4705 Literary Studies, 36 Creative Arts and Writing
Thomas F. Mayer (1951-2014) and the Roman Inquisition: a review essay
June 2016
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Journal article
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Reviews in Religion and Theology
This review article appraises the recent trilogy of books on the Roman Inquisition written by the late Thomas F. Mayer. It explains the context in which Mayer came to write these works, the research questions which guided him and the nature of the outputs he delivered before his untimely death. Mayer's principal theme of the importance of process in guiding inquisitors' actions and activities, is traced through his three volumes: the first a general reconstruction of how the Holy Office operated, the second an application of his insights to specific cases of importance throughout late sixteenth‐ and early seventeenth‐century Italy, the third on the Galileo trial itself. Other scholars have received Mayer's work in a number of different ways, some favorable, others less so. Here, this essay summarizes parameters of the debate which Mayer catalyzed, in particular between scholars of Galileo and of the Inquisition; it also explains the further questions that has risen. Finally, it assesses how, as colleagues, we might extend Mayer's inquires and evaluates the wider impact his work deserves to have in historical studies and, indeed, in contemporary academic discourse. Mayer's insistance on the need to understand the methods and processes of censorship seems especially timely given the general assault on free speech which we currently face on many university campuses. On that basis, his scholarship should continue to resonate with all of us, perhaps in some uncomfortable ways.
History of Science, Inquisition, Censorship, Galileo, Thomas F. Mayer, Maurice Finocchiaro
From Ambassador to Cardinal? Francisco de Vargas at the papal court (1559-63)
April 2016
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Chapter
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Encuentros culturales, diplomacia informal y prácticas ceremoniales en la Monarquía Hispánica
Scholars of diplomacy have shown how the embassy in early modern Europe was a forum for exchanges: not just of gifts and communiqués, but of statuses, loyalties and of political ambition too. Diplomats and agents sought to win friends for their princes abroad, but could also find themselves as part of new networks, institutions and alliances. Nowhere was this more the case than at the papal court, where opportunities often opened up for ambassadors to enter papal service and advance their careers in ways that would not have been possible at home.
Rome as a ‘spanish avignon’? The spanish faction and the monarchy of philip II
January 2016
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Chapter
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The Spanish Presence in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Images of Iberia
This chapter addresses the tomb monument of Don Pedro lvarez de Toledo, younger brother of the Duke of Alba and Spanish viceroy of the Regno di Napoli from 1532. The iconography and patronage of Spanish tomb monuments are today topics of vital interest among historians and art historians. Historians of sculpture have lately done path-breaking work on formal and iconographic aspects of Don Pedro's tomb. Don Pedro had, however, already commissioned a splendid tomb for himself and his wife that remains in Naples in the church of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli, a church built on Don Pedro's instructions in a strategic position overlooking the harbour and close to the Spanish Quarter. This handsome tomb has only lately drawn considerable scholarly attention. If the chapter pause to reflect on how modern scholarship has acquired its knowledge of early modern funeral monuments, broadly speaking it has added little to the analysis of English antiquary John Weever's Ancient funerall monuments, published in 1631.
Review: Machiavelli: A Portrait. By Christopher Celenza (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
December 2015
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Other
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Sixteenth Century Journal: journal of early modern studies
A review of Machiavelli: A Portrait. By Christopher Celenza (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
Review: Sacred communities, shared devotions. Gender, material culture, and monasticism in late medieval Germany. By June L. Mecham (ed. Alison I. Beach, Constance H. Berman and Lisa M. Bitel). (Medieval Women. Texts and C...
October 2015
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Other
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History
A review of Sacred communities, shared devotions. Gender, material culture, and monasticism in late medieval Germany. By June L. Mecham (ed. Alison I. Beach, Constance H. Berman and Lisa M. Bitel). Turnhout: Brepols, 2014.
Review: Morte e elezione del papa: Norme, riti e conflitti. Il medioevo, by Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Rome: Viella, 2013).
April 2015
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Other
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The English Historical Review
A review of Morte e elezione del papa: Norme, riti e conflitti. Il medioevo, by Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Rome: Viella, 2013).
Rome as a 'Spanish Avignon'? The Spanish Faction and the Monarchy of Philip II
December 2014
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Chapter
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The Spanish Presence in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Images of Iberia
The Spanish Presence in Sixteenth-Century Italy
December 2014
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Edited book
The sixteenth century was a critical period both for Spain’s formation and for the imperial dominance of her Crown. Spanish monarchs ruled far and wide, spreading agents and culture across Europe and the wider world. Yet in Italy they encountered another culture whose achievements were even prouder and whose aspirations often even grander than their own. Italians, the nominally subaltern group, did not readily accept Spanish dominance and exercised considerable agency over how imperial Spanish identity developed within their borders. In the end Italians’ views sometimes even shaped how their Spanish colonizers eventually came to see themselves. The essays collected here evaluate the broad range of contexts in which Spaniards were present in early modern Italy. They consider diplomacy, sanctity, art, politics and even popular verse. Each essay excavates how Italians who came into contact with the Spanish crown’s power perceived and interacted with the wider range of identities brought amongst them by its servants and subjects. Together they demonstrate what influenced and what determined Italians’ responses to Spain; they show Spanish Italy in its full transcultural glory and how its inhabitants projected its culture - throughout the sixteenth century and beyond.
Art
Review: The Career of Cardinal Giovanni Morone (1509-1580): Between Council and Inquisition by Adam Patrick Robinson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012).
November 2013
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Other
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The Catholic Historical Review
A review of The Career of Cardinal Giovanni Morone (1509-1580): Between Council and Inquisition by Adam Patrick Robinson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012).
The Conclaves of 1590 to 1592: An Electoral Crisis of the Early Modern Papacy?
June 2013
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Journal article
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Sixteenth Century Journal
4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology
Pius IV and the Fall of The Carafa
March 2013
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Book
The Carafa family, nephews of pope Paul IV (1555-59), were the only papal family to be impeached for corruption and wrongdoing in the early modern period. This book, based on new archival research, reconstructs the trial process against them and places it in the context of papal politics at the start of Pius IV's reign (1559-65) and the pope's problematic relationship with the Council and the College of Cardinals.
History
Review: Papal Justice: Subjects and Courts in the Papal State, 1500–1750 . By Irene Fosi. Translated by Thomas V. Cohen. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011. Pp. xiv+272. $29.95
August 2012
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Other
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The Medieval Review
A review of Papal Justice: Subjects and Courts in the Papal State, 1500–1750 . By Irene Fosi. Translated by Thomas V. Cohen. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011.
Review: The Papacy since 1500: From Italian Prince to Universal Pastor - Edited by James Corkery and Thomas Worcester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
January 2012
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Other
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History
A review of The Papacy since 1500: From Italian Prince to Universal Pastor - Edited by James Corkery and Thomas Worcester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Review: M.E. Bratchel, Medieval Lucca and the Evolution of the Renaissance State. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. xxi + 249pp. Maps. £65.00.David S. Peterson and Daniel E. Bornstein (eds.), Florence and Beyond: Cul...
May 2011
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Other
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Urban History
A short review essay, discussing M.E. Bratchel, Medieval Lucca and the Evolution of the Renaissance State. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008; David S. Peterson and Daniel E. Bornstein (eds.), Florence and Beyond: Culture, Society and Politics in Renaissance Italy: Essays in Honour of John M. Najemy. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2008; and Alick M. McLean, Prato: Architecture, Piety, and Political Identity in a Tuscan City-State. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
Review: Klöster und Landschaft. Das kulturräumliche Erbe der Orden. Edited by Johannes Meier. (Schriftenreihe des Westfälischen Heimatbundes.) Pp. 144 incl. 74 ills. Münster: Aschendorff, 2010. €19,80. 978 3 402 12786 5
October 2010
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Other
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History
A review of Klöster und Landschaft. Das kulturräumliche Erbe der Orden. Edited by Johannes Meier. Münster: Aschendorff, 2010.
Review: Creating Clare of Assisi. Female Franciscan identities in later medieval Italy. By Lezlie S. Knox. (The Medieval Franciscans, 5.) Pp. xv+227. Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2008. €89. 978 90 04 16651 6; 1572 6991
January 2010
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Other
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History
A review of Creating Clare of Assisi. Female Franciscan identities in later medieval Italy. By Lezlie S. Knox. Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2008.
Governor and government in sixteenth-century Rome
November 2009
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Journal article
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Papers of the British School at Rome
During the course of the sixteenth century, the Governor of Rome emerged as the city’s most powerful magistrate, and his tribunal held a jurisdictional competence that far exceeded those of other judges. The records left by his court are some of the most important sources for both the society and the politics of the period. Amongst the thousands of surviving folios are testimonies about lives from every corner of Roman society. Prosecutions against local thugs, over-adventurous fishwives and dishonest merchants rest alongside those against noblemen, cardinals and even the King of Spain.This article reconstructs how the Governor's tribunal operated, arguing that its primary benefit was to those who staffed its offices, not to the pope nor to those for whom it dispensed justice.
Rome Scholarship: The politics of nepotism in sixteenth-century Rome: Paul IV and the fall of the Carafa
November 2008
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Report
4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology
The canonisation of Clare of Assisi and early Franciscan history
Corpus Lives is the first attempt to chronicle the history of the College through the lives of the Old Members. The authors examine anew the major themes and events in the 650 years of the College's existence, drawing on the rich traditions of scholarship and recordkeeping with which it has long been associated. The brief biographies reveal a wide variety of individuals whose collective achievements have helped to make the College what it is today and whose legacy continues to influence generations of Corpus men and women. Corpus Lives is the first attempt to chronicle the history of the College through the lives of the Old Members. The authors examine anew the major themes and events in the 650 years of the College's existence, drawing on the rich traditions of scholarship and recordkeeping with which it has long been associated. The brief biographies reveal a wide variety of individuals whose collective achievements have helped to make the College what it is today and whose legacy continues to influence generations of Corpus men and women.
