BOOK: Donald S. PRUDLO (ed.), A Companion to the History of the Roman Curia [Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition, ed. Christopher M. BELLITTO; 107] (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2025), XVI+390 p. ISBN: 9789004184626, € 251,22

(Image source: Brill)

About the book:

The Roman Curia is the oldest extant body of institutional administration in the world. Indeed, it was the prototype for the development of centralized government in the monarchies of the Middle Ages. Further, it was the administrative backbone of the first worldwide organization in human history. It developed policies, laws, and procedures that continue to affect the entire world. This book offers scholarly contributions from the origins of the Curia to the early modern period.

Table of contents:

The Early Evolution of the Structures of the Roman Curia

1. The Versatility of the Early Medieval Papal Officials in the Light of the Liber pontificalis (Rosamond McKitterick)

2. Laying Down Papal Law: Archiving Controversy in the Letters of the Collectio Avellana (Bronwen Neil)

3. The Bishop of Rome and His Entourage: the Origins of the Papal Curia (Rita Lizzi Testa)

4. Ex codicibus et ex antiquis polypticis scrinii Sanctae Sedis Apostolicae: Canonical Collections and Archives of the Church of Rome in Antiquity (Dominic Moreau)

Forming the Medieval Curia

5. “Time and Money”: Regulating Appeals to the Roman Curia in the Second Half of the Twelfth Century (Bruce Brasington)

6. Papal Councils and the Curia in the ‘Long’ Twelfth Century, 1088–1215 (Danica Summerlin)

7. A Most Fortuitous Alliance: the Roman Curia and the Mendicant Orders in the Thirteenth Century (Donald S. Prudlo)

Roman Church Governance in the Late Medieval Period

8. Nepotism and the Papal Curia between the Eleventh and the Fifteenth Centuries (Sandro Carocci)

9. From the lectores curie romane to the Magistri Sancti Palatii: Education at the Medieval Roman Curia (Anthony John Lappin)

10. The Papal Penitentiary in the Later Middle Ages (Peter D. Clarke)

11. Administrative and Diplomatic Practices at the Papal Curia between the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: the Chancery (Barbara Bombi)

12. Sacra Romana Rota – the Papal Tribunal of Tribunals? (Kirsi Salonen)

The Curia in the Early Modern World

13. Locating the Renaissance Curia, c.1420–c.1530 (Miles Pattenden)

14. Europe and the Roman Curia: Conflicts of the Counter Reformation (Elena Bonora)

15. The Congregation of the Council and the Worldwide Provincial Councils, 1564–1622 (Maria Teresa Fattori)

16. The Roman Curia and the Eastern Churches, 1500–1800: Diplomacy, Cultural Policy, Mission, and Confessional Control (Cesare Santus)

17. Two Bodies and One Soul: Papal Finances in the Modern Age (1564–1800) (Massimo Carlo Giannini)

18. The New World by Francesco Ingoli, First Secretary of Propaganda Fide (Giovanni Pizzorusso)

On the editor:

Donald S. Prudlo, Ph.D. (2004, University of Virginia) holds the Warren Chair of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa. His research focuses on medieval religious history and thought, on saints and sainthood, and on the Dominican order. He is the author of Thomas Aquinas: A Historical, Theological, and Environmental Portrait (2020), Certain Sainthood (2015), and The Martyred Inquisitor (2009).

More information can be found here: DOI 10.1163/9789004723665.