Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (Paperback)

~ Dr. Eamon Duffy (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, by Eamon Duffy, is a wonder of comprehensive compression--a sumptuously illustrated, one-volume history of one of the most influential human institutions in world history. Duffy's lively portraits of the 261 scholars, scoundrels, and spiritual guides who have led the Roman Catholic Church are embedded in six historical essays that proceed chronologically from St. Peter to John Paul II. Duffy, a reader in church history and fellow at Cambridge, writes in the mannered yet affable tone of an avuncular English don. His narrative and arguments convey his own Catholic conviction that "the story of the popes is a crucial dimension of the providential care of God for humankind throughout history." Yet he also offers candid assessments of papal moral failings, including spectacular failures such as the orchestration of the Spanish Inquisition and the willed ignorance of Germany's Third Reich. Duffy's glossary of theological terms ensures that no secular reader will be lost in Christian arcana, and his excellent bibliographical essay will help motivated students zero in on the best resources for learning more about any period of Catholic history. For readers primarily concerned with current events, his analysis of John Paul II's papacy is extraordinarily useful and refreshingly free of cant. "To many people Pope John Paul seems a backward-looking figure, a man attempting to force a champagne cork back into the bottle," Duffy writes. "To others, he points the way towards a recovery of balance, a restoration of order and true faith in the flux of time. Only time, and the next conclave, will reveal which of these directions in their long walk through history the heirs of St. Peter will take." --Michael Joseph Gross

From Library Journal

With characteristic flair, the sour Latinist Tertullian called Rome "the happy church on which the Apostles poured forth all their teaching together with their blood." Such emotional extremes, axiomatic of Tertullian, apply equally to papal histories, often given to the heights and depths of spiritual excitement. Duffy (Magdalene Coll., Cambridge) offers this abundantly illustrated, amiably presented history to accompany a multinational television series for Britain, France, and Ireland. Such a pedigree often provokes disdain among bookish sorts, but Duffy's scholarship and enthusiasm overcome the book's populist roots. While not necessarily uncovering anything strikingly new and more akin to a handbook than a treatise, this work merits applause for providing a people's papal retrospective. Those wishing for heavier intellectual discourse should seek out Owen Chadwick's The Popes and European Revolution (1981) or practically anything by Peter Hebblethwaite.?Sandra Collins, Northern Tier Lib., Pittsburgh
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (February 8, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300077998
• ISBN-13: 978-0300077995
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 7.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,041,496 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A good job, January 7, 2002

By	Schmerguls "schmerguls" (Sioux City, Ia USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

As one who has long reveled in papal history (I have read all 40 volumes of Ludwig von Pastor's magnificent and magisterial History of the Popes and all 19 volumes of Horace K. Mann's very readable and informative work on the medieval popes)I found that this book, despite its provocative title, does a good job telling the history of the Popes in 317 pages. When I first saw the book I expected to merely browse thru it but it caught me up and I read it all. I am giving it five stars not because I agree with all the author's judgments but because it is so well-written that there is not a dull page in the book. He tilts some to the "liberal" side, but that is to be expected, and I liked the fact, e.g., that he spent more time on Nicholas V than on Alexander VI. Incidentally, I did not have any trouble knowing which Leo or Gregory was being discussed, since they are all pretty individual persons one is not likely to confuse. An attention-holding and eminently readable work.

54 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Saints and Sinners Indeed, July 9, 2004

By	benjamin (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, Second Edition (Paperback)

Eamon Duffy's small tome - a contradiction in terms, admittedly, but such a contradiction aptly fits its subject matter - is probably about as detailed a history as one could have in slightly less than 400 pages. Duffy aims towards a fair, balanced view not only of the papacy's history, but of individual popes. The title of the book itself describes not only those that make up the history of the papacy, but the conflicting tendencies that existed within individual popes as well.

Part of the benefit of reading this book is that one not only learns the socio-historical elements of the papacy - and it should be remembered that the papacy is the most administrative and political element of the Roman Catholic church - but the development of the theology behind the papacy. The primacy of the bishop of Rome emerges as the most historically contentious issue. Duffy notes that the 2nd century Church Father Irenaeus gives the Church of Rome a place of primacy in his writings, but that the idea of the pope being successor of St. Peter the apostle is not documented until the 3rd century. The tensions between the bishop of Rome and the bishop of Constantinople begin to develop more after Constantine moves the center of the Roman Empire from Rome to Constantinople, wedding politics to religion in Constantinople in a new way.

Duffy writes that until Charlemagne, the Church of the East was not only the hotbed of the heresy, but also the hotbed of political dissidents; that such political-religious friction should exist in the capital of the Roman Empire, given the new union of religion to politics, is not surprising. Duffy tries to sort through the various political-religious controversies of this time period, but it becomes obvious that splitting religion from politics in the ancient Roman empire is difficult, if not impossible to do. The history of the papacy between 1054 (the Great Schism between the East and the West) through Napoleon is largely corrupt, however. Once the empire split in two, Rome becomes the political-religious center of the West and the papacy's spirituality degenerates as it is continually thrown to the highest bidder. The Reformation and the religious wars of the 17th century appear to be inevitable. The fragmentation of Europe into nation-states, although largely political, was not without theological ramifications.

Interestingly enough, the distance between the spiritual and secular-political elements of the papacy happens with the theological development of papal infallibility during Vatican I. The official teaching steered clear of the radical views of the Ultramontanists, who held that everything the pope taught was infallible - that revelation was "on tap", as Duffy puts it. Vatican I still gave to the papacy (the office, not the pope as an individual) a level of primacy and honor that has long been claimed by the bishop of Rome, but it rendered the pope's "infallibility" only in matters pertaining to faith and morals (therefore, not politics, science, art, etc.), of concern to the whole church and in consultation with other bishops; the pope will be guided by God should he speak "ex cathedra" - from the chair of Peter. Duffy immediately notes that this has only happened one time, on the issue of the assumption of Mary into heaven (which the vast majority of Christians have believed since at least the second century). Despite the controversy that this doctrine has brought about, Duffy's coverage of it causes it to seem rather anti-climactic.

The book may end seeming a bit dated to some, as the last chapter only goes through 1997 (with a passing reference, oddly enough, to 2002). Duffy covers the highly controversial papacy of Pius XII with a good bit of critical sympathy and then proceeds to discuss the period of Vatican II and what a watershed event it was. He notes the theological changes, the political tensions and the changes that occurred between popes John XXIII and Paul VI as the latter continued to convene the council. He concludes with the current pope, John Paul II, noting his philosophical brilliance, his desire for reunion with the Eastern Orthodox Church and his conservativism regarding the theology of the papacy. He notes that John Paul II is a complex figure, at once a humanist and theologically conservative, defying the simple labels of "liberal" or "conservative". Although John Paul II's full history has yet to be written, Duffy provides an excellent trajectory from where he has gone to where he is likely to go by the end of his life.

My only complaint with the book is that Duffy shows something of an ambivalent attachment style to most of the popes after 1054. While a "liberal" such as John XXIII garners heavy praise from him, other popes less conducive to the modern era are denigrated. The question is, "what makes the modern era so great and why should modernizing trends be seen as necessary and/or good?" In many ways, I agree with Duffy, but would also prefer to not have a pope praised at one point and then berated only a few pages later; at points Duffy sounds like a broken record as he oscillates between the two for one pope after another.

In the end, though, this is a very well written book. The appendices - a list of the popes, a glossary and how a pope is made today - are helpful. The history of the papacy is a thick one and Duffy does not make light of this, including at the end of his book a bibliographical essay that details secondary and primary sources that further illuminate each time period he covers. For a fuller understanding of Western political and/or religious history, historical theology and/or Roman Catholicism, this is a find edition to include in one's library.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful book bearing a fascinating narrative, April 27, 1998

By	[e-mail] (North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (Hardcover)

Saints & Sinners is a companion volume to a television series on the popes - but the book is much better than TV! And a bargain at Amazon's $24.50 price! Just the photography is stunning: inside and outside St. Peter's and the Vatican, historic frescoes, statues, paintings, remarkably clear maps and charts; S&S could take its place in art history. But there is much more. Eamon Duffy's narrative is engaging, never stuffy or dull, bringing to life a long but never dry story of the papacy. The popes mirror it all: exemplary holiness and disgusting corruption - which makes the very survival and resilience of the office all the more amazing. Duffy unfolds not just a chronicle of pope after pope, but the very broad sweep of Western history, always careful to explain behavior and events in terms of the cultural context of the day. We hear Urban II summon Europeans to a bloody Crusade against the Muslims; we see Innocent III's dream of a poor man of peace, who turns out to be St. Francis. Gregory the Great truly was; the Julius II, dubbed "il terribile," was aptly named as well. Our own century has seen a couple of the greatest of popes, including the beloved John XXIII and our current John Paul II. And Duffy even is exacting in his defense of Pius XII, too often demeaned as having done too little to protect the Jews in World War II. Saints & Sinners is really too good for the coffee-table; I'll put mine on my "favorites" shelf.