Miles Pattenden

Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700 is the first major study of early modern papal elections and uses them as an opening for re-assessing the papacy's wider history in the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. This was a momentous period for the papacy, which saw them acquire a temporal state, lose half a Church, see their state tip into decline, and then found them coming full circle by burnishing their pastoral credentials once more. Theceremonial pomp and high drama that accompanied early modern papal elections make compelling theatre and are documented here in detail for the first time in English. This study, however, is more than just anarrative account of interesting anecdotes: through the figures of these cardinals, it offers us a unique case study for observing the approaches to decision-making and problem-solving within an elite political group.

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