Cambridge History of the Papacy, Vol 1: The Two Swords
February 2025
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Edited book
General Introduction
February 2025
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Chapter
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The Cambridge History of the Papacy, Vol. 1: The Two Swords
Papal elections and resignations
February 2025
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Chapter
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The Cambridge History of the Papacy. Vol 1: The Two Swords
The Cambridge History of the Papacy. Vol 2: The Governance of the church
February 2025
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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
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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, Vol 2: The Governance of the Church
Inventing the Early Modern Papacy: Four Paradigms
December 2024
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Chapter
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Inventing the Modern Papacy
Locating the Renaissance Curia, c.1420–c.1530
December 2024
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Chapter
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A Companion to the History of the Roman Curia
Historicizing institutional mobility: the case of the Roman Catholic Church
March 2024
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Internet publication
<a href=""></a>
Pope Francis counts his blessings
January 2024
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Internet publication
<a href=""></a>
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
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Why the Middle Ages still matters to Middle Australia
September 2023
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Internet publication
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Lament for the Catholic University
September 2023
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Internet publication
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Pope Francis should stop cosying up to authoritarian regimes
September 2023
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Internet publication
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The Last Conclave?
September 2023
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Internet publication
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Medieval Orientalism and Pope Francis's Journey to the East
August 2023
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Internet publication
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Pope Francis’ new cardinals
July 2023
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Internet publication
<a href=""></a>
Review: Emily Michelson, Catholic Spectacle and Rome’s Jews: Early Modern Conversion and Resistance
July 2023
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Other
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History
Remembering Fabian LoSchiavo (1949–2023): Australian nun
May 2023
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Internet publication
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Cut price Coronation: Why King Charles shouldn’t modernise the monarchy
April 2023
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Internet publication
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“Fair play?” Gary Lineker, the BBC, and the complex demands of impartiality
March 2023
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Internet publication
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Serious Christians don’t mind a Jesus joke
March 2023
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Internet publication
<a href=""></a>
Kate Forbes and the place of Christians in public life
March 2023
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Internet publication
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When two popes become one
February 2023
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Internet publication
<a href=""></a>
18. ‘Pope Francis’ “sin-crime distinction” and the history of Christian sexuality
January 2023
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Internet publication
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Cardinal Pell’s losing game
January 2023
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Internet publication
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For George Pell, the Church was nothing if not a bastion of conservatism
January 2023
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Internet publication
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George Pell: a “political bruiser” whose Church legacy will be overshadowed by child abuse allegations
January 2023
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Internet publication
<a href=""></a>
God’s Ruckman: Pell played Church politics hard but won few fans
January 2023
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Internet publication
<a href=""></a>
Will History judge Benedict XVI more kindly than his contemporaries?
January 2023
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Internet publication
<a href=""></a>
Benedict XVI: the pope of paradox’
January 2023
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Internet publication
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Benedict XVI (1927–2022): the pope of paradox
December 2022
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Internet publication
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Gay suffering and divine love: a reflection for World A.I.D.S. Day
November 2022
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Internet publication
<a href=""></a>
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
Queen Elizabeth, the language of Christianity, and the "defence of the faith"
September 2022
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Internet publication
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What the Queen meant to Christians
September 2022
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Internet publication
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The “papalisation” of apology: what will be the significance of Pope Francis’s visit to Canada?
July 2022
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Internet publication
<a href=""></a>
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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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History
<jats:p>This article analyses the <jats:italic>Ecos sagrados de la fama gloriosa de Innocencio <jats:sc>xi</jats:sc></jats:italic>, an elaborate panegyric by the Spanish priest and musician Gaspar Sanz written in 1681 in praise of the reigning pope. The <jats:italic>Ecos sagrados</jats:italic> 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.</jats:p>
Roe vs Wade: the bishops’ dilemma
May 2022
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Internet publication
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Pope Francis’s remarks on pornography betray his equivocal position on sexual ethics
May 2022
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Internet publication
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Father Stu: the consolations of a calling
May 2022
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Internet publication
<a href=""></a>
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
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>In 1806 the antiquarian Francesco Cancellieri wrote a treatise on the new bells fabricated for the<jats:italic>campanile</jats:italic>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.</jats:p>
History Lessons: what Australians can, and should, learn from the curious case of Tobias Rustat
March 2022
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Internet publication
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Morrison’s narrow view of universities is alien to Menzies
March 2022
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Internet publication
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“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
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Forget Patrick: March 17 is also St Gertrude’s Day, commemorating the patron saint of cats
March 2022
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Internet publication
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Pope Francis in War and Peace
March 2022
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Internet publication
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War in Ukraine highlights lack of knowledge of European History
March 2022
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Internet publication
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Olga of Kyiv is Ukraine’s patron saint of both defiance and vengeance
March 2022
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Internet publication
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When baptism goes wrong: the Church’s rules in a new era of legalism
February 2022
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Internet publication
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Historians and the Practice of History: a further response to John Dickson
February 2022
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Internet publication
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Benedetta: Paul Verhoeven’s “convent life gone wrong”
February 2022
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Internet publication
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Volcanoes, plague, famine and endless winter: Welcome to 536, the “worst year to be alive”’
February 2022
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Internet publication
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An early modern historian plays (word)games
January 2022
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Internet publication
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What now for senior clergy who covered up abuse?
January 2022
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Internet publication
<a href=""></a>
On historians and the historicity of Jesus: a response to John Dickson
January 2022
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Internet publication
<a href=""></a>
Pope Francis, pets, and the Christian ideal of marriage
January 2022
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Internet publication
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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
FFR
When Pope Francis Comes of Age
December 2021
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Internet publication
<a href=""></a>
The dangers of elevating social ethos to religious orthodoxy
December 2021
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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
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George Pell’s “Prison Journals”: Can the Cardinal answer his critics?
May 2021
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Internet publication
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The colour of money: Can Pope Francis curtail the wealth of the cardinals?
April 2021
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Internet publication
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The ostentatious story of the “young pope” Leo X: his pet elephant, the cardinal he killed and his anal fistula
April 2021
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Internet publication
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A promiscuous she-pope with a dilated cervix: The legend of Pope Joan, who gave birth on a horse
February 2021
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Internet publication
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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
<jats:p>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.</jats:p>
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
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Edited book
Cardinals and the non-Christian world
January 2020
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Chapter
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Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition
The college of cardinals
January 2020
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Chapter
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Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition
The early modern historiography of early modern cardinals
January 2020
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Chapter
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Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition
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
Review: David Kertzer, The Pope who would be King: the exile of Pius IX and the emergence of Modern Europe
September 2019
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Other
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Reviews in Religion and Theology
The Meaning of Creation
September 2019
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Internet publication
<a href=""></a>
5005 Theology, 50 Philosophy and Religious Studies
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
February 2019
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Chapter
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A Companion to Early Modern Rome: 1492-1692
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.
Review: Stephen J. C. Andes and Julia G. Young (eds), Local Church, Global Church: Catholic Activism in Latin America from Rerum Novarum to Vatican II. Catholic University of America Press, 2016.
July 2017
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Other
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Reviews in Religion and Theology
My review of Stephen J. C. Andes and Julia G. Young (eds), Local Church, Global Church: Catholic Activism in Latin America from Rerum Novarum to Vatican II.
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.
Review: Rebecca Messbarger, Christopher M.S. Johns and Philip Gavitt (eds), Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment: Art, Science, and Spirituality. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. 505pp.
November 2016
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Other
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Studies in Religion
A review of Rebecca Messbarger, Christopher M.S. Johns and Philip Gavitt (eds), Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment: Art, Science, and Spirituality. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. 505pp.
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.
Thomas F. Mayer, Galileo, History of Science, Maurice Finocchiaro, Censorship, Inquisition
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).
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
This article reconstructs the politics behind the four papal elections that took place between 1590 and 1592, an apparently unusual period during which the papacy seems to have been undergoing an electoral crisis. It argues, however, that the impulse to select weak and short-lived candidates was in fact a rational response to the unusually fraught political situation in Europe as the only way to balance the competing needs of continuity in Rome and stability in the wider Catholic Church. The cardinals' readiness to adopt this approach suggests that their selection of popes was more sophisticated than has sometimes been credited and that they recognized that strong government was not always a desirable end in the complex world of Roman politics.
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.
Research Report (Rome Scholarship): The Politics of Nepotism in Sixteenth-Century Rome
November 2008
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Report
A research report
The Canonisation of Clare of Assisi and Early Franciscan History
April 2008
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Journal article
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History
This article examines the canonisation process of Clare of Assisi and seeks to contextualise it within the currents of early Franciscan history. It refutes recent scholarship on Clare that has focused upon her place in the history of medieval women and draws on Italian scholarship to argue for a more nuanced reading of the texts surrounding Clare that takes into account the deep-set divisions between the papacy and the friars about the role of women in the Franciscan order and compares the post-mortem treatment of Clare to that of Francis.
Corpus Lives 1352-2002
January 2003
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Book
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.
History
All in the best possible taste
Other
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The Catholic Herald
A review of Suzanna Ivanic's Catholica (2022)
Church and State: Paolo Prodi’s Il sovrano pontefice
Other
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The Catholic Herald
Dressing Pope Francis: his public costume between pontifical, Jesuit, and Franciscan traditions
Journal article
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Journal of Jesuit Studies
End Game: Pope Francis’ succession planning
Other
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The Catholic Herald
Monsignor Alfred Gilbey: remembering England’s “best-known priest”
Other
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The Catholic Herald
Priests and their bodies after trent: (dis)abilities, masculinities, sexualities
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.
FFR
Review: Carlos Eire, They Flew: A History of the Impossible
Other
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Journal of Religious History
Review: Death by a thousand cuts: a new study of a tainted pontiff
Other
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Australian Book Review
A review of David Kertzer's The Pope at War (2023)
Review: Europe’s dowager empress: Maria Theresa and the fate of the Habsburgs
Other
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Australian Book Review
A review of Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger's Maria Theresa (2021)
Review: Mano a mano: Napoleon and the papacy
Other
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Australian Book Review
A review of Ambrogio Cain's To Kidnap a Pope (2021)
Review: Seeing is believing: the sham of Roman autocracy
Other
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Australian Book Review
A review of Mary Beard's Emperor of Rome (2023)
Review: The “concordat” game: big data and the origins of the West
Other
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Australian Book Review
A review of Bruce Bueño de Mesquita's The Invention of Power (2022)
Review: “What a piece of artistry”
Other
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Australian Book Review
A review of Daisy Dunn's Not Far From Brideshead (2022)