One was said to have been a woman – and an English woman at that – her sex being revealed only when she improvidently gave birth to a baby during a papal procession. Of the 280-odd holders of the supreme office, some have unquestionably been saints others have wallowed in unspeakable iniquity. The Enlightenment confirmed the Papacy in retreat.Well known for his histories of Norman Sicily, Venice, the Byzantine Empire and the Mediterranean, John Julius Norwich has now turned his attention to the oldest continuing institution in the world, tracing the papal line down the centuries from St Peter himself – traditionally (though by no means historically) the first pope – to the present Benedict XVI. Classical monuments were restored and Greek was studied again in the Vatican.
It would get bloody again with Protestantism, the Jesuits and the Counter Reformation but the Renaissance had put Europe back on the right track. Men with grand worldly appetites and surnames such as Colonna, Borgia and Medici began to build the Rome we see today with the help of geniuses such as Michelangelo and Bernini.
One of the problems was that until the Reformation the Pope alone could confer legitimacy on the clashing rulers of Europe and therefore the Papacy was permanently under siege.Īn ill-conceived “Holy Roman Empire” guaranteed near permanent warfare over huge swathes of the Continent and whenever peace threatened someone would start a crusade to recapture the Holy Land from the heathen.Īgainst this background of ceaseless violence the monster Popes of the Renaissance come almost as a relief. He established monasticism in the West and sent Saint Augustine to Canterbury.
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