Protestant attacks against papal corruption of the cult of saints and falsification of miracles led the Post-Tridentine Church to reform the processes of saint-making through an intensified collaboration with medical science. The alignment of faith and science at the nexus of the human body culminated in the eighteenth century under Benedict XIV Lambertini (r. 1740–58). Benedict published a monumental treatise, still influential today, that codified canonization proceedings on the basis of modern medical expertise, and he was a preeminent patron of scientific and medical institutions and practitioners for the advancement of medical knowledge and public health. The imperatives of the Counter-Reformation, canon law, experimental science and medicine, and the burgeoning Enlightenment coalesced, albeit uneasily, in his vision of a reformed Church, for which natural and saintly bodies became primary emblems in defense of the authority of the Catholic Church in a world increasingly resistant to it.

In recent years, the history of emotions has acquired an epistemological maturity that has established its legitimacy in the historiographic field. But what is an emotion? Although "emotion" is not a medieval word, the great historian of emotions, Barbara H. Rosenwein, refuses the semantic fixity of the vocables, by slipping voluntarily on the terms and by the playing of the synonymies. Emotional expressionism is the mark of the late Middle Ages in religious life but also in the political, ecclesial, and social worlds. The social sharing of emotions fulfills the function of strengthening the collective identity. In a sense, to rewrite the history of the Great Schism from the perspective of the history of emotions is to consider the great fresco of ecclesiastical passions in their experiences, their discursivity, and their subsequent reception. Passions were often silenced a posteriori by the great official narrative of the Church. That is the gap between archives and narratives.

Archdeacon Hildebrand, who became Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073–85), is associated with a radical and swift change in the Roman Church. The vision of a Christendom jointly administered by emperor and clergy, the famous model advanced by Pope Gelasius II (r. 492–96), was transformed into a new order where regnum and sacerdotium occupied separate stacked spheres, with the spiritual claiming superiority. Unlike tenth-century reform movements, the later eleventh-century Roman reforms centered on the papacy. Popes assembled a curia featuring more professional officials, legates, councils, and other technologies of power. The reformed Church cultivated trained lawyers and sympathetic lay leaders. It has been credited with launching a legal “big bang,” the invention of propaganda, the creation of a semi-institutionalized public sphere, and the formation of a persecuting society. Closer examination of institutional changes helps reveal the achievements and limits of this “new world order.”

The relationship of Catholic hierarchies with the medium of printing has always been multifarious, and even in early modern times it was far more complex than most current studies maintain. This chapter attempts to draw a concise and unbiased picture of the papacy’s publishing and censoring practices from the 1460s to the 1630s. It starts with the arrival of the first printers in Italy on the outskirts of Rome and ends with the Galileo Galilei affair, analyzing all intervening attempts to use moveable type in support of papal policy and the development of the Index of Forbidden Books. Highlighting the interconnections between prohibition and promotion, it proposes a unified interpretation of these two lines of action rather than present them in opposition, as is often the case.

The Christian community of Rome, since its origins, was adamant in preserving written texts. Documents and books of multiple kinds were treated as important, precious objects. The history of the popes’ libraries exemplifies this approach. In addition to spreading Christianity and keeping records of discussions and decisions taken by the Church, the library was intended as a repository not only of religious books but also of literary and scientific texts of non-Christian traditions, including pagan classics and others. The mission of ensuring the conservation and spreading of the knowledge was clearly stated during humanism, when the current Vatican Apostolic Library was founded. Books were there made accessible “for the common benefit of the learned.” Such a mission continues today. The papacy considers the Library and its books to be the “heritage of mankind,” one that needs to be made available for generations through continuous technological innovations and cutting-edge preservation strategies.

This chapter examines the role of the papacy in the history of marriage regulation in a long-term perspective. The core theme of corporeality is investigated between doctrine and practice. On the one hand, the body is a central good whose rights of use are mutually exchanged by the spouses within the framework of the marriage contract; on the other hand, it is a deadly burden, the place where the flesh manifests itself with its law that contradicts reason. In the light of this tension, the position of papal authority – in particular the power to bind and dissolve – is addressed by examining its pronouncements, especially the Decretales, conciliar legislation, and the publication of encyclicals and apostolic exhortations up to the most recent on the subject: Amoris laetitia, by Pope Francis I. Finally, some cases that have been dealt with by courts such as the Penitentiary, the Holy Office, and the Rota are examined.

For nearly two centuries after the French Revolution, papal attitudes towards Judaism remained rooted in theological notions of the Jews as deicidal “others” whose salvation would only be achieved through repentance and conversion to Catholicism. Enlightenment notions of religious freedom and tolerance offered Jews an emancipation based on secular citizenship and assimilation, a development which repudiated the Church’s theological and eschatological views of Judaism. As a result, papal attitudes towards the Jews hardened through the nineteenth century, as popes associated emancipated Jews with liberalism, freemasonry, socialism, and democracy, the very ideologies which had undermined papal authority. It was not until the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) that the Church definitely repudiated its negation of the Abrahamic Covenant and the Jewish people. The council document Nostra aetate disavowed anti-Semitism in all forms and recognized Judaism as the wellspring from which the Church emerged, creating a template of interfaith kinship and cooperation which the modern papacy has embraced and expanded upon.

The chapter examines the intricate relationship established between the papacy and pre-university education in the early modern age, roughly spanning from 1400 to 1800. The focus lies on the connection between the pontiffs who most promoted the educational activities of the religious teaching orders during the centuries when Catholic identity was primarily defined by its educational dimension. This gave rise to a pedagogical experimentation that was, perhaps, unprecedented in Western history.

The emergence of religious teaching orders, including the Jesuits, Somascans, Barnabites, and Piarists, to mention only the most renowned, wasn’t always directed solely towards educational pastoral work. Instead, it was often at the direct behest of the popes that these congregations embraced the educational path. A similar argument can be applied to female education, which is also addressed in this chapter and is a fundamental part of Catholic education in the early modern age.

This chapter sketches the philological and codicological work on Gratian’s Decretum and how that work is being employed in new ways. It begins by briefly touching on the collection’s wider dissemination as a way of placing it within an overall context of the Corpus iuris canonici. It then sketches the contributions of Stephan Kuttner and Peter Landau followed by the Redaktionsgeschichte of the text. The role the Decretum played in the transmission and fluidity of legal knowledge is analyzed through the lens of two case studies: Gratian’s balancing of the spiritual and secular roles of the feudal bishop, first, and, second, a unique case found only in one manuscript.

Pope Gregory VII and his personal views as expressed in the Dictatus papae and his references to the forged “Donation of Constantine” opened the way for the debated papal monarchy of the twelfth century. The gradual reversal of the ancient Gelasian doctrine of the relationship between spiritual and worldly powers was achieved and furthered by division within the Salian dynasty and the general social evolution and feudalization of Western society. It was not a revolution. Against the background of the council of Sutri of 1046, when Emperor Henry III arranged for the settlement of disputed papal elections, this chapter focuses on the internal changes – especially since the time of Leo IX (d.1054) – leading to a reformed papacy prior to Gregory VII (including monastic and clerical renewal as well as eventually organizational changes within the Church, such as, in no particular order: the College of Cardinals, the use of legates, the use of privileges, revival of ancient canon law, a camera along the pattern of Cluny, oaths of obedience, etc.). These changes enabled the papacy to challenge in particular the claims to sacrality first of all by the Salian monarchy but eventually of all monarchies.

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.

Beginning in 1492, two years before the outbreak of the Italian Wars (1494–1559), Rodrigo Borgia’s papacy was dominated by conflict and a consequent need to focus on temporal matters. While the Borgia popes are prominent among those who used Rome as a power base for securing family dynasties, they were far from alone in that: in a sense they were the pioneers whose eventual failure in Italy illustrated how others might succeed. This chapter reassesses Alexander VI’s papacy in comparison to those of his predecessors and successors, considering four interrelated issues that confronted him: his response to the rise of Girolamo Savonarola in Florence; his management of the defense of the Papal States; expectations of patronage; and European encounters with the New World. It considers to what extent this papacy should be regarded as a turning-point in the history of the popes. Finally, it addresses the Borgia mythology.