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Days after the assassination of his prime minister in the middle of Rome in November 1848, Pope Pius IX found himself a virtual prisoner in his own palace. The wave of revolution that had swept through Europe now seemed poised to put an end to the popes' thousand-year reign over the Papal States, if not indeed to the papacy itself. Disguising himself as a simple parish priest, Pius escaped through a back door. Climbing inside the Bavarian ambassador's carriage, he embarked on a journey into a fateful exile.Only two years earlier Pius's election had triggered a wave of optimism across Italy. After the repressive reign of the dour Pope Gregory XVI, Italians saw the youthful, benevolent new pope as the man who would at last bring the Papal States into modern times and help create a new, unified Italian nation. But Pius found himself caught between a desire to please his subjects and a fear--stoked by the cardinals--that heeding the people's pleas would destroy the church. The resulting drama--with a colorful cast of characters, from Louis Napoleon and his rabble-rousing cousin Charles Bonaparte to Garibaldi, Tocqueville, and Metternich--was rife with treachery, tragedy, and international power politics.David Kertzer is one of the world's foremost experts on the history of Italy and the Vatican, and has a rare ability to bring history vividly to life. With a combination of gripping, cinematic storytelling, and keen historical analysis rooted in an unprecedented richness of archival sources, The Pope Who Would Be King sheds fascinating new light on the end of rule by divine right in the west and the emergence of modern Europe.
From the acclaimed author of Brunelleschi's Dome and Leonardo and the Last Supper, the riveting story of how Michelangelo, against all odds, created the masterpiece that has ever since adorned the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo Buonarroti to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel in Rome. Despite having completed his masterful statue David four years earlier, he had little experience as a painter, even less working in the delicate medium of fresco, and none with challenging curved surfaces such as the Sistine ceiling's vaults. The temperamental Michelangelo was himself reluctant: He stormed away from Rome, incurring Julius's wrath, before he was eventually persuaded to begin. Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling recounts the fascinating story of the four extraordinary years he spent laboring over the twelve thousand square feet of the vast ceiling, while war and the power politics and personal rivalries that abounded in Rome swirled around him. A panorama of illustrious figures intersected during this time-the brilliant young painter Raphael, with whom Michelangelo formed a rivalry; the fiery preacher Girolamo Savonarola and the great Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus; a youthful Martin Luther, who made his only trip to Rome at this time and was disgusted by the corruption all around him. Ross King blends these figures into a magnificent tapestry of day-to-day life on the ingenious Sistine scaffolding and outside in the upheaval of early-sixteenth-century Italy, while also offering uncommon insight into the connection between art and history.
The compelling story of Pope Pius XI's secret relations with Benito Mussolini. A ground-breaking work, based on seven years of research in the Vatican and Fascist archives by US National Book Award-finalist David Kertzer, it will forever change our understanding of the Vatican's role in the rise of Fascism in Europe.
In this meticulously researched, unflinching, and reasoned study, National Book Award finalist David I. Kertzer presents shocking revelations about the role played by the Vatican in the development of modern anti-Semitism. Working in long-sealed Vatican archives, Kertzer unearths startling evidence to undermine the Church’s argument that it played no direct role in the spread of modern anti-Semitism. In doing so, he challenges the Vatican’s recent official statement on the subject, We Remember. Kertzer tells an unsettling story that has stirred up controversy around the world and sheds a much-needed light on the past.
In the tradition of Why Nations Fail, this book solves one of the great puzzles of history: Why did the West become the most powerful civilization in the world? Western exceptionalism—the idea that European civilizations are freer, wealthier, and less violent—is a widespread and powerful political idea. It has been a source of peace and prosperity in some societies, and of ethnic cleansing and havoc in others. Yet in The Invention of Power, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita draws on his expertise in political maneuvering, deal-making, and game theory to present a revolutionary new theory of Western exceptionalism: that a single, rarely discussed event in the twelfth century changed the course of European and world history. By creating a compromise between churches and nation-states that, in effect, traded money for power and power for money, the 1122 Concordat of Worms incentivized economic growth, facilitated secularization, and improved the lot of the citizenry, all of which set European countries on a course for prosperity. In the centuries since, countries that have had a similar dynamic of competition between church and state have been consistently better off than those that have not. The Invention of Power upends conventional thinking about European culture, religion, and race and presents a persuasive new vision of world history.
A study of the personal religion of King John, presenting a more complex picture of his actions and attitude.
A Pulitzer Prize winner’s “fascinating” account of the political battles that led to the end of the Papal States (Entertainment Weekly). From a National Book Award–nominated author, this absorbing history chronicles the birth of modern Italy and the clandestine politics behind the Vatican’s last stand in the battle between the church and the newly created Italian state. When Italy’s armies seized the Holy City and claimed it for the Italian capital, Pope Pius IX, outraged, retreated to the Vatican and declared himself a prisoner, calling on foreign powers to force the Italians out of Rome. The action set in motion decades of political intrigue that hinged on such fascinating characters as Garibaldi, King Viktor Emmanuel, Napoleon III, and Chancellor Bismarck. Drawing on a wealth of secret documents long buried in the Vatican archives, David I. Kertzer reveals a fascinating story of outrageous accusations, mutual denunciations, and secret dealings that will leave readers hard-pressed to ever think of Italy, or the Vatican, in the same way again. “A rousing tale of clerical skullduggery and topsy-turvy politics, laced with plenty of cross-border intrigue.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"This book describes the roots of a set of ideals that effected a radical transformation of eleventh-century European society that led to the confrontation between church and monarchy known as the investiture struggle or Gregorian reform. Ideas cannot be divorced from reality, especially not in the Middle Ages. I present them, therefore, in their contemporary political, social, and cultural context."—from the Preface
Filled with discoveries, this is the dramatic story of Pope Pius XII's struggle to response to the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Nazi domination of Europe.The Pope at War is the third in a trilogy of books about Pope Pius XII's response to the rise of Fascism and Nazism. It tells the dramatic story of Pope Pius XII's struggle to respond to the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the ongoing Nazi attempts to exterminate the Jews of Europe. It is the first book dealing with the war to make extensive use of the newly opened Vatican archives for the war years. It is based, as well, on thousands of documents from the Italian, German,French, British, and American archives. Among the many new discoveries brought to light is the discovery that within weeks of becoming pope in 1939, Pius XII entered into secret negotiations with Hitler through Hitler's emissary, a Nazi Prince who was married to the daughter of the King of Italy and who was veryclose to Hitler. The negotiations were kept so secret that not even the German ambassador to the Holy See was informed of them. The book also offers new insight into the thinking behind Pius XII's decision to maintain good relations with the German government during the war, including keeping the Germans happy while they occupied Rome in 1943-1944. And throughout, David I. Kertzer shows the active role of the Italian Church hierarchy in promoting the Axis war while the pope, who as bishop ofRome was responsible for the Italian hierarchy, offered his silent blessings and cast his public speeches in such a way that both sides could claim support for their cause.