Miles Pattenden
2017-2018
University of Oxford
The Pope beyond Rome
Research project
The Pope beyond Rome is a project to investigate the papacy’s role as a cultural force and an agent of transnational exchange within early modern Catholicism. Acceptance of the pope’s authority was the single most important belief to unite Catholics and distinguish them from other Christians in this period. Yet papal historians have rarely engaged with the texts, images, artefacts and cultural practices by which many Catholics, especially those outside Italy, articulated that belief. The pope is thus a surprisingly marginal figure in many key discourses about early modern Catholicism as a religious and cultural system: its expressions of piety and sanctity, its evangelizing missions, its concepts of political economy and its understandings of categories like the self, community, tradition and knowledge. This project proposes to excavate and analyse the disparate range of sources needed to restore the pope to wider discussions about wider early modern Catholic culture, not merely as a patron of specific initiatives but as a sacred and authoritative figure in his own right.
Selected Publications
- Pius IV and the Fall of the Carafa: Nepotism and Papal Authority in Counter-Reformation Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
- Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
