Historically, the papacy has had – and continues to have – significant and sustained influence on society and culture. In the contemporary world, this influence is felt far afield from the traditional geographic and cultural center of papal authority in western Europe, notably in the Global South.
Volume 3 frames questions around the papacy's cultural influence, focusing on the influence that successive popes and various vectors of papal authority have had on a broad range of social and cultural developments in European and global societies.
The range of topics covered here reflects the vast and expanding scope of papal influence on everything from architecture to the construction and contestation of gender norms to questions of papal fashion. That influence has waxed and waned over time as successive popes have had access to greater resources and have had stronger imperatives to use their powers of patronage and regulation to intervene in society at large.
General Introduction Joëlle Rollo-Koster, Robert A. Ventresca, Melodie Eichbauer and Miles Pattenden; Part I. Spaces, Liturgies, Travels: 1. Papal Rome in the Middle Ages Louis I. Hamilton; 2. Urbi et Orbi. The Pope, Rome, and the modern world Antonella De Michelis; 3. Papal travels Jan De Volder; 4. Papal ceremonial: from Christian liturgy to social media Jennifer DeSilva; 5. Papal tombs in the Middle Ages Nicolas Bock; 6. Charity and the Papacy Tiffany A. Ziegler; Part II. Women, Gender, Sexuality: 7. The myth of Pope Joan Jan Machielsen; 8. The keys to two Marys: Popes and the women of scripture Kate E. Bush and Vanessa Corcoran; 9. Popes and sexuality within and outside marriage Fernanda Alfieri; 10. Papacy and marriage David d'Avray; 11. Popes, contraception and abortion Lucia Pozzi; 12. The papacy, homosexuality, and same-sex marriage Umberto Grassi and Vincenzo Lagioia; 13. Clerical sexual abuse and papal power Jo Renée Formicola; Part III. Science, Medicine, Technology: 14. Medicine in the court of the Avignon papacy Caley McCarthy; 15. Popes, the body, medicine, and the cult of saints after Trent Rebecca Messbarger; 16. Catholic bioethics from Pius XI to Pope Francis Don O'Leary; 17. The Popes, and magic Matteo Duni; 18. Heavens: the papacy, astrology and astronomy to 1800 C. Philipp E. Nothaft; 19. Care for our common home: the papacy and the environment Daniel R. DiLeo and Christopher Hamlin; 20. Popes and the media Raffaella Perin; Part IV. Education, Culture, Arts: 21. Papal patronage and the reception of classicism in medieval Rome Elizabeth McCahill; 22. Books, libraries and texts Ambrogio Maria Piazzoni; 23. The papacy and printing (1564–1633) Paolo Sachet; 24. Papal patronage and the arts: from the early Christian period to the twentieth century Arnold Witte; 25. The papacy and music Richard Sherr; 26. The Popes and education in early modern Europe, 1400–1800 David Salomoni; 27. The Papal Wardrobe Clare Monagle; Bibliography.
Joëlle Rollo-Koster has published widely on the social, cultural, religious, and political history of the late Middle Ages. She is a specialist of the Avignon Papacy and of the Great Western Schism and is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. Her most recent publications are Avignon and its Papacy, 1309–1417: Popes, Institutions, and Society (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); The Great Western Schism, 1378–1417: Performing Legitimacy, Performing Unity (Cambridge University Press, 2022); and, as editor, Death in Medieval Europe: Death Scripted and Death Choreographed (Routledge, 2016). She was knighted Chevalier de l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques in 2016. Robert A. Ventresca has published widely on a diverse range of topics including the papacy in the era of the two world wars and the Holocaust. His book Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII (Harvard University Press, 2013) was awarded the 2014 Harry C. Koenig Prize by the American Catholic Historical Association. He is a member of the Committee on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Melodie H. Eichbauer is Professor of Medieval History at Florida Gulf Coast University. Her research focuses on the dissemination of legal knowledge and the interpretation of law, and the ways in which social, political, and intellectual developments and trends shaped both between c.1000 and c.1500. She is the author of Medieval Canon Law, 2nd ed. (an expanded and revised version of the 1st edition by James A. Brundage) (Routledge, 2022); editor of A Cultural History of Genocide, vol. 2, The Middle Ages (Bloomsbury Academic Publishers, 2021); the co-editor, with Danica Summerlin, of The Use of Canon Law in Ecclesiastical Administration, 1000–1250 (Brill, 2018); and the co-editor, with Kenneth Pennington, of Law as Profession and Practice in Medieval Europe: Essays in Honor of James A. Brundage (Ashgate, 2011). Miles Pattenden has published widely on the papacy and the Catholic Church in the Counter-Reformation and Enlightenment. He is the author of Pius IV and the Fall of the Carafa: Nepotism and Papal Authority in Counter-Reformation Rome (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450–1700 (Oxford University Press, 2017), and is writing a general history of the Catholic Church for Princeton University Press.
