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albertomdh's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting initial approach to such a broad topic. Norwich's prose is agile and flows from one story to another with ease, leaving the reader wanting to delve into many of them (a great virtue in a book of this nature) The problem of the book is its own thematic breadth, which creates a lack of focus and reveals some gaps in the author's knowledge, producing errors, minor but irritating (as an example: he places the death of Mussolini in 1943) Fortunately these errors do not seem to affect the core of the book (As far as my knowledge of the issue allows me to know)
library_jones's review against another edition
It was a little boring and I had several other books waiting to be read. I may pick it back up at another time.
berenikeasteria's review against another edition
3.0
Well, the book definitely is somewhat of a slog to get through, and that’s even after the author has admitted that he has omitted and simplified events. A comprehensive history of the papacy over two millennia is just so dense and complex that you could hardly expect it to be otherwise. As a result I often found myself picking this up episodically – just a chapter at a time, and then putting it down again. It wasn’t immensely readable or a page-turner, so to speak. I admit I skimmed over the modern times section at the end, since I picked the book up for a historical portrait. But, the book does a good job of presenting the bigger picture and pulling together a great many disparate strands and explaining how, when, and why they fit together. It’s a good book for grounding European history, as a primer to a more specialised focus. I would recommend picking up the appropriate chapter, reading it, and then moving on to more particular concerns, so from that point of view it works well as a reference book.
6 out of 10
elfboy486's review against another edition
dark
funny
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
4.25
This book is a brief history of the papacy.
It is a nice introduction to the history of the Popes of the Catholic church.
Parts of it are wonderfully written and full of interesting details. Other parts cover so much time that I would get lost as to when we were in time.
This is not written to be a scholarly text. It is written more for a general reader, so it doesn't go into exhaustive detail about each of the popes. As there isn't much first-hand information about the earliest centuries of the Catholic church, the book doesn't send a lot of time discussing them.
There are a few incidences of papal history that were not discussed that I thought deserved at least a mention. The Cadaver Synod for instance. If you don't already know about it, look it up. It is insane.
The book does tend to focus on the more significant or controversial popes in history. Pius XII (the Pope during WWII) gets an entire chapter to himself, but John Paul II the second is shoved in the final chapter with four or five other Popes (admittedly, John Paul II was the third pope in the latest "Year of Three Popes"). Even Pope Joan (a fictitious female Pope) get a whole chapter. Additionally, the book is somewhat older, being written during the first couple years of Benedict XVI's pontificate.
This book did make me stop a number of times and read sections to my wife because of some of the rather salacious events that have occurred throughout the history. It is amazing to me what lengths the Papacy went to keep Italy from uniting into a single country.
Overall, the books is well-written and -researched. I enjoyed it quite a lot and would recommend it to others. I even gave my copy to my mother-in-law (who is Catholic) after I finished reading it.
It is a nice introduction to the history of the Popes of the Catholic church.
Parts of it are wonderfully written and full of interesting details. Other parts cover so much time that I would get lost as to when we were in time.
This is not written to be a scholarly text. It is written more for a general reader, so it doesn't go into exhaustive detail about each of the popes. As there isn't much first-hand information about the earliest centuries of the Catholic church, the book doesn't send a lot of time discussing them.
There are a few incidences of papal history that were not discussed that I thought deserved at least a mention. The Cadaver Synod for instance. If you don't already know about it, look it up. It is insane.
The book does tend to focus on the more significant or controversial popes in history. Pius XII (the Pope during WWII) gets an entire chapter to himself, but John Paul II the second is shoved in the final chapter with four or five other Popes (admittedly, John Paul II was the third pope in the latest "Year of Three Popes"). Even Pope Joan (a fictitious female Pope) get a whole chapter. Additionally, the book is somewhat older, being written during the first couple years of Benedict XVI's pontificate.
This book did make me stop a number of times and read sections to my wife because of some of the rather salacious events that have occurred throughout the history. It is amazing to me what lengths the Papacy went to keep Italy from uniting into a single country.
Overall, the books is well-written and -researched. I enjoyed it quite a lot and would recommend it to others. I even gave my copy to my mother-in-law (who is Catholic) after I finished reading it.
Content Warnings
This book was a highly enjoyable, fast-paced, reductionist history of the papacy. It is quite enjoyable, though a bit on the simpler side. This book is a wonderful introduction to the history of the papacy.
However, it is just that: an introduction. There are numerous examples of popes, individuals, circumstances, and events that I wish the author would spend more time discussing. But, this is not that type of book. It is an overview, a skimming of nearly 2000 years of history, much of which is lost in the vagaries of time. A number of the early popes are not even mentioned (probably because there is little or no documentary evidence of their actions), and some of the later popes are only given a few pages of text, despite having a pontificate of many years.
The author does not position this book as a scholarly tome, and it certainly is not that. While it is well-researched, -documented, and -written, it is obviously written more for the masses than for serious papal scholars. Which is not a bad thing. I'm not a serious scholar of this subject. It is merely something that caught my attention, so I decided to look into it a bit. This book was a good start to understanding the history of the papacy.
There were some absolute bastards (literally and figuratively) who held this office thoughout time; and there were some absolute saints (again, literally and figuratively) who held it. This book did a good job illuminating both sets of popes. It glossed over mostly what are generally held to be "placeholder" popes, those who would hold the pontificate for a brief time before it is passed off to a more worthy holder. I would love to see a book about the internal politics of the election of the pope throughout time, but I doubt records of that will ever be released by the Vatican archives, even if such records actually exist. Some of the elections seem so improbable.
Anyway, the book was quite enjoyable. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the papacy, the Papal States, or the history of the Catholic religion.
caitlinmchugh24's review against another edition
2.0
2. 5 stars. The history of the papacy is an ambitious goal for one historian and to be contained in one book. However, the author's biases and opinions came through frequently and although it gets to Pope Benedict, the book is already seems dated with its history and sources. The book itself was interesting and engaging with a good pace, but I would not recommend. Will look for other historical books about the papacy that are more fact-based and balanced.
wescovington's review against another edition
3.0
Norwich tries to take an exhaustive look at the political power of the Papacy, but the work is somewhat exhausting. As he tries to cover something about EVERY pope, you get bogged down in the weeds of medieval history, which even someone who likes that era, had a hard time following.
The book ends with Pope Benedict still in charge. In the final chapters, Norwich takes a much more confrontational stance against Popes he felt were not (and they weren't very good) with Pius XII given even harsher treatment than the Borgia and Medici popes of the Renaissance. John XXIII gets a surprisingly short treatment despite his rather large impact on the Catholic Church today.
The book ends with Pope Benedict still in charge. In the final chapters, Norwich takes a much more confrontational stance against Popes he felt were not (and they weren't very good) with Pius XII given even harsher treatment than the Borgia and Medici popes of the Renaissance. John XXIII gets a surprisingly short treatment despite his rather large impact on the Catholic Church today.
liliya_klein's review against another edition
2.0
Rushed through the book - the historical stories were fast and hard to keep track of. But that's understandable since it covers 2000 years of the papacy.