La papauté à la Renaissance (review)

The thirty-two essays in this volume (inclusive of the introduction) were originally presented in conjunction with a 2003 conference sponsored by the Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance de Tours. Combined, these essays offer readers a multidisciplinary perspective on the history of the papacy during the Renaissance as represented in the research of senior as well as junior European and Anglo-American scholars. Eighteen of the essays are in French, eight in Italian, four in English, and one in German, and the topics, arrayed under eight section headings, range over the literary and historiographical, the political and institutional, and the broadly cultural, with contributions in this latter area by musicologists, art historians, and historians of science and religion. Although the book's title reflects the occasion of the 2003 conference, and while the editors probably did not wish to privilege the work of any single participant at the conference, the title of the introduction by N. Lemaitre "La papauté de la Renaissance entre mythes et réalités," with the attention it calls to the interplay between représentation and actuality at the heart of many of the essays, would have better advertised this volume to its potential readership.

As with most conferences, one explicit purpose of this one was to engage in the assessment of the preceding generation of research and "provoquer nouvelles interrogations" (11). As many specialists in the history of the Renaissance papacy know, the past generation of research was inspired and shaped in large part by the publication of Paolo Prodi's Il Sovrano Pontefice (1982). Although the editors cite the influence of the recent studies of Massimo Miglio on the culture of the papal court, Agostini Baglioni on images and symbols, and Antonio Ippolito on nepotism and papal administration, Alazard and La Brasca seem to accord Prodi's work first place in the "liberation" of the study of the Renaissance papacy from the "black legend" of confessional and Enlightenment historiography (7). Although subsequent scholarship has not unanimously aligned itself with the full range of theses proposed by Prodi, still his work (along with that of Miglio, Baglioni, and Ippolito) has laid down the main "track" that many scholars are following.

What are some of the other assessments that accompany this essential one? At least two deserve mention. First, viewed as a whole, the essays show that traditional areas of focus retain their hold on researchers. This is true whether in the guise of leading actors; individual popes like Nicholas V, Julius II, and Leo X; well-known observers, critics, and commentators like Valla, Cusa, Erasmus, Luther, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Castiglione, Aretino, and Sarpi; or subjects like the Fifth Lateran Council, the Avignon administrative structure, papal patronage of artists and humanists, and papal diplomacy. The handing of this material does not offer to specialists much in the way that is new. Somewhat disappointingly, several essays simply expose what are by now the well-known weaknesses of many of Prodi's original arguments. If there is anything new in this, it is to show the extent to which Prodi's work itself has become part of the "myth and reality" of the history of the Renaissance papacy. Second, and more positively, new and relatively neglected subjects have been pursued. Musicians at the papal court now stand beside their artistic and humanist brethren to provide insight into the political, social, and cultural world of the Curia; medical texts and their publication provide insight into the religious outlook of the papal court; coats of arms illustrate the new paleo Christian scholarship pursued at the papal court, while also functioning as a legitimating strategy for this nonhereditary monarchy.

In sum, despite some shortcomings, this volume does make the case that the study of the Renaissance papacy will continue to provide fertile ground for historical scholarship over the next generation. [End Page 133...