Saints and Sinners

This history of the papacy follows the bishops of Rome from the early Christian centuries through medieval theocracy, schism, and Renaissance courts, then through Reformation, Catholic recovery, and the modern popes. Duffy treats the office as both a religious claim and a political institution: elections, territorial rule in Italy, doctrine, and the changing relationship with secular states. Individual pontiffs appear as examples of how the role was used, not as a gallery of lives for their own sake. The narrative runs to the late twentieth century. It is a history of an institution, not a work of devotion.

Bound in monochrome and colour plates. Five maps. Endleaves printed with detail from fifteenth-century fresco. Bound in red buckram blocked on cover and spine in gold and black with design by Neil Gower. Black slipcase.