Abstract
The Renaissance Papacy 1400–1600, edited by the eminent historian Nelson Minnich, covers substantial ground to provide a detailed examination of two centuries of the papacy. No fewer than thirty-three popes and antipopes claimed the throne of St Peter between 1400 and 1600. This period is a complicated one, encompassing the Great Schism (ended by the Council of Constance in 1417), the flourishing of Renaissance art and humanism, the Reformations of religion, numerous consequential councils (not least of all the Council of Trent), the sacking of Rome in 1527, and continuous efforts to increase papal power, tackle heresy, fight off the Ottoman threat, and work towards union with various Eastern and Oriental Christian Churches. All of these topics are addressed in great detail over the course of fourteen chapters written by prominent and established scholars.
Nelson Minnich starts the volume with a clear overview, explaining the book’s title and parameters and outlining an overall argument. In 1400, the papacy was, in Minnich’s words, “in shambles” (p. 4). With three men claiming the papal tiara, the city of Rome in dire shape, St Peter’s Basilica nearing collapse, and the Papal States politically weak, restoring the papacy was a serious task for the post-Schism popes. And while the average person might think more of the scandals and notoriety of some of the period’s more colourful popes, Minnich argues that by 1600, papal authority over matters both spiritual and secular was restored and indeed expanded. Many of the chapters that follow explicitly support this argument, while a few add nuance or complication to the overall picture of progress and development. Minnich’s introduction then turns to providing an overview of the popes themselves: they were mostly Italian, mostly the sons of elite men, often related to a prior pope or members of the Sacred College, all educated but in different settings and subjects, mostly from the secular clergy, almost all had prior experience in the Roman Curia or as nuncios or legates, and were on average in their late fifties when elected. When popes with very short reigns are removed, their average length of rule was 10.6 years.
Minnich’s introduction is followed by fourteen chapters, including two more contributions by Minnich and three posthumously published contributions (two by Agostino Borromeo (1944–2024) and one by John O’Malley (1927–2022)), possibly the final published works by two extremely eminent historians of early modern Catholicism. Each chapter addresses a particular theme across the entire Renaissance. Francis Oakley explores ecclesiologies of the period, demonstrating that popes were (unsurprisingly!) especially fond of theories that attributed greater powers to them in both spiritual and temporal realms. Turning theory to practice, Minnich contributes a chapter exploring the expansion of the papal bureaucracy and the sometimes problematic modes of financing this growth, which included everything from the sale of indulgences to heavy taxation of the Papal States, another entity which the popes wished to develop. This latter theme is taken up by Christine Shaw, who traces the ways in which popes regained control over and strengthened the Papal States. In this, she also challenges the argument that this development was the result of clear state-building plans; instead she sees this as more haphazard, with individual popes seeking solutions to particular problems rather than following a grand strategy. Two chapters then turn to the city of Rome, which was in a poor state at the start of the period and was transformed into a magnificent and opulent Renaissance capital by the end of it. Anna Esposito looks at demographic, social, and administrative changes, while Ingrid Rowland turns to the visual transformation of Rome through architecture and art. Returning to politics but leaving the Papal States, Silvano Giordano explores the relationships between the papacy and European rulers, arguing that by 1600 the papacy had good relationships with Catholic rulers.
The next few chapters of the volume look beyond Europe. Throughout the period, the Ottoman threat loomed large. As Margaret Meserve demonstrates, the popes frequently attempted (with infrequent success) to rally European states together with calls to crusade (a tool that of course could also be used against heretics, schismatics, and infidels closer to home). The other tool in the Church’s arsenal against heretics and infidels was mission, and Emanuele Colombo’s chapter looks at how popes engaged with Spanish and Portuguese missions in their colonies, which by the early 17th century would result in the establishment of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (1622). With regards to schismatics, the Renaissance Papacy also expended effort to bring eastern Orthodox, non-Chalcedonian Monophysite, and Syriac churches into union with Rome. These attempts are covered by three chapters (though two are numbered 11a and 11b), and in many ways sit awkwardly within the “Renaissance” umbrella of the volume, as that periodisation makes much more sense within a European context than beyond it. Nevertheless, these chapters make a valuable contribution, and provide readers with a solid overview of topics that might be less familiar to those not working on these particular topics. Yury Avvakumov and Charles Yost look at papal relations with Greek and Slavic Churches, Yost also provides an overview of relations with Armenian, Georgian, Coptic, and Ethiopian Churches, and finally Minnich steps in again to look at Syriac Churches.
The volume concludes with the three posthumous chapters. Agostino Borromeo‘s first covers European heretics (specifically Waldensians, Wycliffites and Lollards, Hussites, and Fraticelli, before turning to targets of the Spanish Inquisition and people accused of witchcraft) and the initial stages of print censorship. His second takes up the topic of the Protestant Reformation, surveying the papal response to Luther and his followers, the English reformation, and the French Wars of Religion, only briefly mentioning the Swiss reformers Zwingli and Calvin. This chapter also discusses the Council of Trent and the attempts of the Counter-Reformation papacy to repress Protestantism.
Fittingly, the book ends with a chapter by John O’Malley exploring the papacy’s attitude towards church reform and their complicated feelings towards councils in particular. While the Councils of Constance and Basel left popes wary of the power that councils could exert over them and the papal curia, O’Malley argues that the popes nevertheless were concerned about reforming the Church in other ways. Although many of the Renaissance popes are often depicted as lacking the spirituality one might hope for, O’Malley sees them as men who took their responsibility for the Church seriously; they were “ecclesiastical careerists” who saw no contradiction (or at least were not particularly scrupulous) in serving the Church while serving themselves and their families of origin (p. 379).
This, ultimately, is the other key argument of the volume as a whole. We can point to a whole host of examples of Renaissance popes failing to live up to both contemporary and current expectations: Alexander VI is probably the most obvious example, but not the sole one by far. But when we look at Renaissance popes and focus on their nepotism, their opulence, their sexual sins, or their war-mongering, we ignore both the political context of the Papal States which required them to be both pontiff and prince, and the social and familial cultures of the period, which made them keenly aware of their responsibilities to their relatives and clients. As Minnich and O’Malley argue most clearly in this volume, the contradictions between pontiff and prince, spiritual leader and elite man were, for most popes, navigable. Presumably their perceived talents in these areas were what rendered them papabile in the first place.
Like most edited volumes of this nature, this is not a book that most readers will likely read cover-to-cover. The amount of detail covered in each chapter is impressive, though sometimes at the expensive of historiographical interventions or strong arguments. Rather these are comprehensive surveys of two hundred years of developments in a particular area written by scholars with immense expertise, and as such will be an incredibly useful reference for anyone working on or teaching those topics.