Eamon Duffy, professor of the history of Christianity and fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, is also the author of The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400--1580 and The Voices of Morebath, both published by Yale University Press.
[A] minor masterpiece which is everything good, popular history ought to be. . . . The most comprehensive single-volume history of the popes in print. -John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph (on the previous edition) [T]races the history of the papacy from its humble beginnings . . . with St. Peter, to the distinctly different institution . . . [of] today. -Washington Post Book World