During the Middle Ages, the popes of Rome claimed both spiritual authority and worldly powers, vying with emperors for supremacy, ruling over the Papal States, and legislating the norms of Christian society. They also faced profound challenges to their proclaimed primacy over Christendom. The Medieval Papacy explores the unique role that the Roman Church and its papal leadership played in the historical development of medieval Europe. Brett Edward Whalen pays special attention to the religious, intellectual and political significance of the papacy from the first century through to the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Ideal for students, scholars and general readers alike, this approachable survey helps us to understand the origins of an idea and institution that continue to shape our modern world.

This classic text outlines the development of the Papacy as an institution in the Middle Ages. With profound knowledge, insight and sophistication, Walter Ullmann traces the course of papal history from the late Roman Empire to its eventual decline in the Renaissance. The focus of this survey is on the institution and the idea of papacy rather than individual figures, recognizing the shaping power of the popes' roles that made them outstanding personalities. The transpersonal idea, Ullmann argues, sprang from Christianity itself and led to the Papacy as an institution sui generis.

A Companion to the Medieval Papacy brings together an international group of experts on various aspects of the medieval papacy. Each chapter provides an up-to-date introduction to and scholarly interpretation of topics of crucial importance to the development of the papacy’s thinking about its place in the medieval world and of its institutional structures. Topics covered include: the Papal States; the Gregorian Reform; papal artistic self-representation; hierocratic theory; canon law; decretals; councils; legates and judges delegate; the apostolic camera, chancery, penitentiary, and Rota; relations with Constantinople; crusades; missions. The volume includes an introductory chapter by Thomas F.X. Noble on the historiographical challenges of writing medieval papal history. Contributors are: Sandro Carocci, Atria A. Larson, Andrew Louth, Jehangir Malegam, Andreas Meyer, Harald Müller, Thomas F.X. Noble, Francesca Pomarici, Rebecca Rist, Kirsi Salonen, Felicitas Schmieder, Keith Sisson, Danica Summerlin, and Stefan Weiß.

Of the twenty-five essays in this volume, most were published between 1961 and 2013, but four are printed here for the first time. They represent the work of a great and original scholar in Mediterranean history whose unflagging interest in Frederick II and his world consistently led him out into broader fields, which he always viewed in original ways. In an age often called that of papal monarchy and secular-minded rulers, Powell found popes with complex agendas and extensive pastoral concerns, a rather more Christian Frederick II, the human personnel and mechanics of the Fifth Crusade, the sermons of the devout urban layman Albertanus of Brescia, and Muslims under Christian rule. His studies here assert a continuity between the pontificates of Innocent III and Honorius III as well as the pragmatic necessity that only secular rulers could launch and direct crusading expeditions. His interest in the northern Italian communes relates their devotional culture to the ideals of virtuous government and communal identity. The devotional culture of the communes was to be the subject of his next book, now unfinished; several parts of it could be rescued and are now included here.

This is the first comprehensive study in English about the medieval imperial abbey of Farfa, which played a key role in the period of ecclesiastical reform, beginning in the mid-eleventh century. Its main sources are the Register and Chronicle, compiled by Gregory of Catino, a partisan monk. Controlling strategic property in central Rome and along the coast of Latium, Farfa functioned as a quasi-imperial embassy, supporting the empire in its struggle with the papacy for hegemony. Imperial ties and internal conflicts led to Farfa's loss of liberties and dependency upon the papacy. The book both depicts the competition between the empire and the papacy, and charts Farfa's losing struggle to maintain Benedictine standards and its independence from an expansive papacy.

This book surveys royal marriage cases to explore how popes dealt with the marriage problems of kings, especially dissolutions and dispensations.

This book examines the Synagoga-Ecclesia motif in the thirteenth century and argues that the figures conveyed a political message of Christian ascendancy and Jewish submission.