Ten Popes Who Shook the World

By Eamon Duffy

“Simply brilliant” essays on the leaders who have most powerfully shaped not just the Church itself, but the course of human history (Catholic Library World).
The Bishops of Rome have been Christianity’s most powerful leaders for nearly two millennia, and their influence has extended far beyond the purely spiritual. The popes have played a central role in the history of Europe and the wider world, not only shouldering the spiritual burdens of their ancient office, but also contending with—and sometimes precipitating—the cultural and political crises of their times.
In an acclaimed series of BBC radio broadcasts, Eamon Duffy explored the impact of ten popes he judged to be among the most influential in history. With this “enlightening” book (Booklist), readers may now also enjoy Duffy’s portraits of these ten exceptional men who shook the world. Beginning with St. Peter, the Rock upon whom the Catholic Church was built, he follows with Leo the Great (fifth century), Gregory the Great (sixth century), Gregory VII (eleventh century), Innocent III (thirteenth century), Paul III (sixteenth century), and Pius IX (nineteenth century). Among twentieth-century popes, Duffy examines the lives and contributions of Pius XII, who was elected on the eve of the Second World War, the kindly John XXIII, who captured the world’s imagination, and John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in 450 years. Each of these ten extraordinary individuals, Duffy shows, shaped their own worlds—and in the process, helped to create ours.
“The author is an accomplished writer who is able to make history read like a dramatic novel…Those looking for a concise and even entertaining primer to the papacy will find this collection, if not infallible, at least very worthwhile.”—Publishers Weekly

• Language: English
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Release date: Nov 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9780300184273

Eamon Duffy

Professor Eamon Duffy is Emeritus Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Magdalene College. He is the author of The Stripping of the Altars, Reformation Divided and Royal Books and Holy Bones and appears regularly on radio and television as an authority on religion and the Reformation in England.

Book preview

TEN POPES WHO SHOOK THE WORLD

TEN POPES

WHO SHOOK

THE WORLD

EAMON DUFFY

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by sections 107 and 108 of the US Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.

Copyright © 2011 Eamon Duffy

By arrangement with the BBC

The BBC logo is a trade mark of the British Broadcasting Corporation and is used under licence

BBC logo © BBC 1996

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the UK by TJ International

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Data Duffy, Eamon.

Ten popes who shook the world / Eamon Duffy.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-300-17688-9 (alk. paper)

1. Papacy--History. 2. Papacy--Biography. 3. Catholic Church--History. 4. Church history. I. Title.

BX955.3.D84 2011

282.092’2--dc23

[B]

2011029717

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

ST PETER

LEO THE GREAT

GREGORY THE GREAT

GREGORY VII

INNOCENT III

PAUL III

PIO NONO

PIUS XII

JOHN XXIII

JOHN PAUL II

FURTHER READING

INDEX

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The pink granite Egyptian obelisk erected in AD 37 in the Vatican circus by Caligula was moved to its present position in the centre of St Peter’s Square by Pope Sixtus V in 1586. It was traditionally believed to be the last object seen by the dying St Peter.

INTRODUCTION

The papacy is an institution that matters, whether or not one is a religious believer. The succession of the popes, all 262 of them, is the world’s most ancient dynasty. The Roman Empire was young when the popes first emerged onto the stage of history, and the earliest references to them, in the late second century, already claim for the bishop of Rome a status greater than that of any other Christian leader. Eighteen centuries on, the popes exercise a quasi-monarchic rule over the world’s largest religious organisation. They touch the consciences, or at any rate the opinions, of almost a fifth of the human race. The papacy has endured and flourished under emperors, kings and robber barons, under republican senates and colonial occupations, in confrontation or collaboration with demagogues and democrats. And by hook or by crook, it has survived them all.

How does one represent in the space of ten short chapters a history that straddles two thousand years and includes a succession of more than 260 office-holders? How does one sum up an institution whose mindset and structures derive more or less equally from the sacred books of ancient Israel and the law codes of ancient Rome, yet which has evolved into one of the world’s most successful global corporations? Does papal history follow its own distinctive rhythms, or are the popes best understood as players in world politics and chronicled therefore in relation to the rise and fall of secular dynasties, the waxing and waning of empires or political revolutions? Is the history of the popes the institutional unfolding of a single set of ideas, or a chronicle of happenstance, opportunism and serendipity? Is the papacy a coherent project, or an historical conglomerate whose only consistency lies in its protean capacity for survival by adaptation?

The popes themselves have never been in doubt about the coherence of papal history, or its source. From the beginning they have claimed divine warrant for their office as an institution established by Christ himself, destined to endure as long as the human race. In the key papal text from St Matthew’s Gospel, the papacy (in the person of St Peter) is described as the rock on which the Church is founded, ‘and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it’.

Historians, whether or not they concede the religious claim, have been inclined to agree about the institutional consistency. The great Cambridge medievalist Walter Ullmann, arguably the most influential papal historian of recent times, found it in a single guiding idea. He argued that by the end of the fourth century

Reviews for Ten Popes Who Shook the World

[stillatim · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Taken as what it is (more or less notes for a radio show) this is really great. It's kind of a tasting menu of Papal history- not much depth, it won't fill you with Papal knowledge, and sometimes the chapters seem a little free-floating. But then if you want all that, you can read his 'Saints and Sinners' instead. Here Duffy does a good job showing you the pros and cons of most of the popes, although there aren't many cons for John XIII, and you can see he's working really hard to find nice things to say about Pius IX. Method is radio friendly: he takes the one thing a given pope is best known for, tells that story, and moves on. Very well written; it makes me want to re-read S&S, which I probably didn't spend enough time on the first time around.