Description

By (author) Bauer, Stefan

Short /annotation:
The Catholic Church is among the oldest, most secretive, institutions in the world, but in the sixteenth century a friar, Onofrio Panvinio, undertook ground-breaking investigations into the Church”s history from Christ to the Renaissance. This study shows how his writings impacted on church and society, but also how he changed historical writing.

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How was the history of post-classical Rome and of the Church written in the Catholic Reformation? Historical texts composed in Rome at this time have been considered secondary to the city”s significance for the history of art. The Invention of Papal History corrects this distorting emphasis and shows how historical writing became part of a comprehensive formation of the image and self-perception of the papacy. By presenting and fully contextualising the path-breaking works of the Augustinian historian Onofrio Panvinio (1530-1568), Stefan Bauer shows what type of historical research was possible in the late Renaissance and the Catholic Reformation. Crucial questions were, for example: How were the pontiffs elected? How many popes had been puppets of emperors? Could any of the past machinations, schisms, and disorder in the history of the Church be admitted to the reading public? Historiography in this period by no means consisted entirely of commissioned works written for patrons; rather, a creative interplay existed between, on the one hand, the endeavours of authors to explore the past and, on the other hand, the constraints of ideology and censorship placed on them. The Invention of Papal History sheds new light on the changing priorities, mentalities, and cultural standards that flourished in the transition from the Renaissance to the Catholic Reformation.

Table of contents:
Introduction1: ”The Clouds roar”: Panvinio”s Early Career2: Between Church and Empire: Panvinio”s Final Decade3: Panvinio”s History of Papal Elections4: Church History, Censorship, and ConfessionalizationEpilogueAppendixBibliography

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This important and fascinating book … is essential reading for those interested in the sixteenth-century Catholic Church as well as those interested in the evolution of historical scholarship.

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Bauer provides a comprehensive and enlightening examination of Panvinio”s labors.

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this excellent study … is likely to remain the definitive work on Panvinio for years to come.

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a very well researched, important, and constantly interesting book which adds greatly to our knowledge of sixteenth-century Rome. It is, in many respects, a model of what the history of scholarship should be.

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This is an exemplary monograph on an individual scholar

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the book offers in compact form valuable insight into an important part of the evolution of European historiography. The book will be especially valuable to early modern European and Church historians, but is accessible to non-specialists as well.

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It is mandatory reading for anyone interested in historical scholarship in sixteenth-century Italy.

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a much needed contribution on the roots of a tradition of studies, in order to understand also the standing and the status of church history and papal history today.

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…meticulously researched book…

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Stefan Bauer”s The Invention of Papal History is an admirably readable and fascinating portrait, not only of its principal subject, Panvinio, but also of the culture of late Renaissance humanism at a time of profound instability in Europe. It is a significant achievement by this author, who, one hopes, has a great deal more such scholarship ahead of him…

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