Description: The papacy is commonly referred to as the world's oldest surviving institution and its capacity for survival and residual strength have long fascinated historians. This Cambridge History explores how and why the papacy has endured across the centuries. It examines its role as an instrument of authority, governance, and social and cultural influence, even as many other powerful institutions, empires, and states have disappeared or been reduced to largely ceremonial functions. Topics discussed include the papacy's relationship to secular power, including global events and political movements throughout history; its place in the governance of the Catholic Church, including its own internal structures and relationship with the Catholic hierarchy; and its entanglement in histories of art, culture, spirituality, gender, sexuality, bioethics, the environment, fashion, science, medicine, and the body. Providing new insights into how successive popes have interpreted the role of the papacy, this Cambridge History also reveals how that papal power has been contested in each historical period.
Brief description: Joëlle Rollo-Koster has published widely on the social, cultural, religious, and political history of the late Middle Ages. She is a specialist of the Avignon Papacy and of the Great Western Schism and is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. Her most recent publications are Avignon and its Papacy, 1309-1417: Popes, Institutions, and Society (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); The Great Western Schism, 1378-1417: Performing Legitimacy, Performing Unity (Cambridge University Press, 2022); and, as editor, Death in Medieval Europe: Death Scripted and Death Choreographed (Routledge, 2016). She was knighted Chevalier de l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques in 2016.
Review Quotes: 'The Cambridge History of the Papacy offers a new sweeping and critical overview of the papacy as a multifaceted institution whose evolution over two millennia defies simplistic narratives of continuity or survival. Rather than presenting the papacy as a monolithic or static entity, the editors argue for a nuanced understanding of its historical trajectory as one marked by continual reinvention, adaptation, and contestation ... These three volumes are a remarkable achievement for which the editors should be congratulated.' Simone Maghenzani, Journal of Religious History