By John Julius Norwich

ISBN-10: 0679604995

ISBN-13: 9780679604990

“Absolute Monarchs sprawls throughout Europe and the Levant, over millenniums, and with an impossibly big forged: 265 popes, feral hordes of Vandals, Huns and Visigoths, expansionist emperors, Byzantine intriguers, Borgias and Medicis, heretic zealots, conspiring clerics, bestial inquisitors and extra. Norwich manages to arrange this crowded degree and convey a rollicking narrative. He retains issues relocating at approximately beach-read pace.”
—Bill Keller, New York Times e-book overview, disguise review
 
“Renowned historian Norwich bargains a rollicking account of the lads who held the papal place of work, their shortcomings and their virtues, and the influence of the papacy on global background. He conducts us masterfully on a travel of the lives of the popes from Peter to Benedict XVI. . . . exciting and deeply researched, Norwich’s historical past deals an excellent creation to papal lives.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Historian, trip author, and tv documentarian Norwich provides an very good, usually spectacular background of that 2,000-year-old institution….he makes a speciality of political background as he lines the evolution of the papacy as an establishment, whereas while offering pleasing profiles of the main traditionally major popes….An notable old survey.”
—Booklist
 
“When Norwich writes, I learn; this member of the home of Lords is a impressive and engrossing historian, possibly most sensible identified for his huge examine of Byzantium. right here he deals a background of the approximately two-millennia-old papacy that might be well-liked by many readers.”
—Library Journal
 
“A lively, concise chronicle of the accomplishments of the main noteworthy popes. . . . Norwich doesn’t skirt controversies, historic and current, during this large, clear-eyed assessment.”
—Kirkus Reviews
 
With the papacy embattled in recent times, it truly is necessary to have the point of view of 1 of the world’s such a lot complete historians. In Absolute Monarchs, John Julius Norwich captures approximately thousand years of suggestion and devotion, intrigue and scandal. the boys (and perhaps one girl) who've held this place of infallible strength over hundreds of thousands have ranged from heroes to rogues, admirably clever to absolutely decadent. Norwich, who knew popes and had deepest audiences with others, recounts in riveting element the histories of the main major popes and what they intended politically, culturally, and socially to Rome and to the world.

Norwich provides such courageous popes as blameless I, who within the 5th century effectively negotiated with Alaric the Goth, an invader civil specialists couldn't defeat, and Leo I, who 20 years later tamed (and possibly paid off) Attila the Hun. right here, too, are the scandalous figures: Pope Joan, the mythic girl acknowledged (without any substantiation) to were elected in 855, and the notorious “pornocracy,” the 5 libertines who have been descendants or enthusiasts of Marozia, debauched daughter of 1 of Rome’s strongest families.

Absolute Monarchs brilliantly portrays reformers equivalent to Pope Paul III, “the maximum pontiff of the 16th century,” who reinterpreted the Church’s educating and self-discipline, and John XXIII, who in 5 brief years beginning in 1958 “opened up the church to the 20th century,” instituting reforms that resulted in Vatican II. Norwich brings the tale to the current day with Benedict XVI, who's dealing with a world priest intercourse scandal.

Epic and compelling, Absolute Monarchs is the excellent tale of a few of history’s so much respected and reviled figures, males who nonetheless forged gentle and shadows at the Vatican and the area this present day.