Of the duties, offices, and jurisdictions of the pope, few responsibilities were as crucial and esteemed as charity. This chapter surveys papal concern for and response to charity (500–1800 CE). The initial direction, speed, and efficacy of papal charity depended largely on individual popes and the contexts in which they operated. Charity became more regular with early Church councils and with the personal efforts of certain popes, but these endeavors remained informal until the Gregorian Reform and the Lateran Councils of the high Middle Ages. By the later Middle Ages, centralized charitable care emerged under the charge of the papacy: popes approved the creation of hospitals, protected pilgrims and prostitutes, and made regular charitable donations in kind and in coins. These efforts continued during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, despite significant changes for the Church. Papal concern for charity never waned: from its beginnings to the modern period, the papacy embodied the Christian tenant to love one’s neighbor.

From its very origins as a semi-nomadic community seeking to establish itself as an early modern state, large flows of migrants, exiles, and refugees found an accommodating Ottoman Empire. Indeed, the conditions under which migrants settled allowed for many to thrive as the empire encouraged migration as a manner to expand its territorial reach beyond the core Anatolian and Balkan regions. The ethnic and religious diversity of these migrants helped regularly energize Ottoman political, economic, and cultural life. At other moments, in different settings, other migrants destabilized the empire as peasants were uprooted by administrative attempts at settling the new arrivals. Arriving as the empire replaced previous ruling structures to adjust to political, cultural, and economic changes in the larger world, refugees from neighboring empires were thus seen as threats by many while they were welcomed by other constituencies within the Ottoman state, a pattern of settlement that shaped the 600-year history of the empire.

Usage of the title “Vicar of Christ” and the extent of powers implied in it supposedly peaked with Innocent III (r. 1198–1216) and Boniface VIII (r. 1294–1303); the image of popes as monarchic hegemons suited the attempts of legal, political, and constitutional historians to portray the growth of royal power, bureaucracy, and “nations” in competition with other forms of identity. More recently, the medieval papacy has been characterized as responsive and dialogic. Popes’ multiple roles as leader of the universal Church, Bishop of Rome, and ruler of the Papal States meant continual dialogue between center (Rome) and periphery in terms of appeals and petitions presented to the papal curia. Papal opinion and legal rulings mattered precisely because they were sought by regional churches and by secular rulers, and popes relied heavily on the College of Cardinals, judges delegate, and papal legates to represent papal decision-making. While the papal claim to the vicariate of Christ was often challenged by secular powers, this typically occurred in instances where earthly powers sensed that the vicariate of Christ was being wielded to intervene in matters critical to a definition of overlapping and occasionally competing spheres of government.

This chapter presents the main themes that emerge from a survey of the scholarly work that has been undertaken on the history of papal involvement with music. Seven centuries of papal pronouncements on music in the liturgy show a remarkable consistency of concerns, which could be summed up in the word “decorum.” Liturgical music must serve the Word, it must be solemn, it must be serious, it must not be there simply to be enjoyed, and it must not remind the congregation of secular matters. Yet it is striking how limited and how ineffective most papal decrees were. While popes consistently claimed global authority over all sorts of religious matters, only two issued decrees on music addressed to the entire Church. Even the papacy’s greatest contribution to the history of music, the creation of the plainchant repertory, was for the popes a local matter.

The College of Cardinals is a key constituent organ within the papacy, its members being charged with electing the pope and with advising him. Cardinals were originally priests and deacons who assisted the pope in his liturgical and charitable duties around the city of Rome during the first millennium and also the Bishops of Rome’s neighboring “suburbicarian” dioceses. These three orders of clerics cohered into a single College during the Gregorian reform of the eleventh and twelfth centuries: their status and role in papal affairs has waxed and waned in the centuries since. Today the College is more diverse and representative of global Catholicism than at any point in the past. However, it is also a larger and a less cohesive body, whose members are less familiar with each other – or with the pope – than their predecessors were.

The cooperative relationship between pope and city is the subject of this chapter. First, this chapter examines the political maneuvers necessary to execute change in Rome’s built environment and traces the conflict over jurisdiction between civic and papal polities, particularly over matters of urban improvements, licensing, and taxation. The papacy has long been a catalyst for transformation in Rome’s complex and layered urban landscape. Second, this chapter considers the ideology of the cityscape and the tradition of pilgrimage, historically and in our global age. From Martin V’s return in 1420, the papacy aimed to establish Rome as the epicenter of Christendom through its temporal and spiritual authority. As Christendom expanded through exploration and missionary efforts, so too did its capital. Popes continued to influence public space during the tumultuous period after the Unification of Italy, when fierce political rivalry materialized in the spaces of the city.

In the late Roman empire, the papacy’s endorsement of marriage as a divine institution was already explicita. From the mid-fifth century, fundamental importance was attached to the signification by marriage of Christ’s union of the Church, a value shaping the social practice of marriage, underpinning the creation in Roman Catholicism of a marriage system unique in the history of literate societies, one which banned both polygamy and divorce. More flexible laws limited marriage within the “forbidden degrees” of relationship. The aim was to foster social cohesion. These rules could be changed, or dispensed with, in individual cases. Marriage was made by consent, and only from the Council of Trent was the presence of a priest required. Christianity in general and papal law in particular slowly transformed the relationship between slavery and marriage.

This chapter examines the relationship between medicine and the papacy in the Middle Ages. It considers the historiographical debate amongst historians regarding whether popes were primarily adversaries to or advocates of the study and evolution of medicine. Focusing on the Avignon popes and their courts, it suggests that these individuals and their spaces increasingly became cultural centres for the production, transmission, and consumption of medical ideas and practices throughout the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. With the rise of medicine as a profession – and the sociocultural value this process bestowed on its practice – a pope’s patronage of medical activities granted prestige both to his court and to his beneficiaries.

The papacy’s long-standing entanglements with the twin disciplines of astronomy and astrology can be summarized along three thematic strands. One revolves around the ecclesiastical calendar and the astronomical exigencies of the reckoning of Easter, whose historical ramifications range from late antique Easter controversies to the Gregorian reform of the calendar (1582) and the beginnings of the Vatican Observatory. Another is the more general role of popes as patrons of astronomical research as well as their more anomalous involvement in scientific censorship during the cosmological controversies of the early modern period, as exemplified by the trial against Galileo Galilei (1616/33). A third is the complex relationship between the Roman Curia and astrology, which includes episodes of patronage as much as instances of sharp anti-divinatory legislation, with the latter culminating in the trial against Orazio Morandi (1630).

Religion in the Ottoman world did not follow a consistent trajectory towards national consciousness. This path was full of twists and turns, and if the nation-state was eventually an all-mighty political entity firmly established in the post-Ottoman world by the twentieth century, it became so by building on the legacy of notions, practices, institutions, and mentalities rooted in the Ottoman past, causing many inconsistencies and contradictions within a seemingly impermeable narrative. Comparing the Muslim and non-Muslim transition to the nation-state, this chapter posits that (1) orthodoxy was always a contested issue, reflecting social tensions that undermined cohesion; (2) religion is not an issue solely understandable by theological treatises: it is closely connected to social and economic factors; and (3) the millet system, far from a centuries-long Ottoman institution, was rather short-lived and much more modern than post-Ottoman national historiographies would have it.

When and how did the Schism between the Western Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches take place? The West commonly associates it with an incident in 1054 CE. Of the many points of difference and dispute between East and West in 1054, only two remain current: the ultimate theological authority of either ecumenical councils or the papacy, and the West’s insertion of the filioque (“and the Son”) into the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 CE. This chapter discusses both the origin of the filioque and the subsequent rise of monarchic papal authority in the West. The insertion of the filioque is sometimes incorrectly attributed to the Third Council of Toledo (589 CE), but it was definitively added to the creed by the Carolingians at a council in Aachen in 809 CE in close association with Charlemagne’s claim to be the only legitimate Roman emperor, and that change in the creed prevailed despite opposition at the time by Pope Leo III.

European diplomacy changed significantly during the Ancien Régime. Sovereign powers made increasing use of different categories of ambassadors while grappling with religious division, international conflict, and emerging globalization. Papal diplomacy was itself hardly new, although it too evolved in these challenging circumstances. In various respects, the structures of papal diplomacy mirrored those of Europe’s dynastic states. Popes were nevertheless supposed to abide by certain ideological values as paternal figureheads, maintaining peace amongst warring Catholic powers while extending authority beyond Europe. This was problematic, as the papacy sought to square its own political interests with its moral duties. Given early modern Europe’s changing political landscape it is also unsurprising that the papacy’s supranational power was under increasing pressure. That was evident by the mid-eighteenth century, and the upheavals of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period, although today it retains its traditional identity as a neutral diplomatic actor.

Regardless of the intellectual coherence of hierocratic theory and the pope’s formal status as head of the universal Catholic Church and lynchpin of its central administration, the practical reality of papal monarchy had to reconcile that curial centralism with the logistical impossibility of exercising and enforcing direct control over all of Catholic Europe. Configured by local variables and interests, the integration of regional churches and polities within the papal network rested insecurely on a delicate balance combining delegation of authority, administrative decentralization, and local acquiescence. Incomplete subjection left space for local agency to exploit the perceived benefits of papal authority and obstruct its unwelcome intrusions. Using England as a case study, this chapter considers various manifestation of those complex ties (the activities of papal emissaries, and responses to and exploitation of the legal, fiscal, and dispensatory claims and structures), emphasizing the bottom-up perspective on medieval papal monarchy.

Ottoman literary culture encompasses a diverse collection of texts, primarily composed in verse, which explore a wide range of life’s facets and contribute significantly to intellectual discourse. Participation in this literary discourse was a notable marker of distinction among the educated elite, signifying membership of an exclusive circle. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of Ottoman literary culture, with a specific focus on poetry, serving as an invaluable asset to Ottoman studies. Various literary forms and genres pertinent to historical research – such as poetry, prose, divans, mecmuas, mesnevis, versified and prosimetrum history books, tezkires, hagiographies, surnames, sergüzeştnames, and tevarih manzumes – are succinctly introduced. Additionally, annotated references are provided to facilitate further study. Overall, this chapter seeks to enrich our comprehension of Ottoman literary culture and illuminate its paramount significance within the realm of Ottoman studies.

Canon law has played a role in the life of the Church since its earliest days. For many centuries, it was largely customary and local. However, from the sixth century on, the Roman pontiff played an increasingly prominent role in shaping and applying this law in the West. This tendency to centralize authority in the hands of the Roman pontiff reached its culmination with the promulgation of the first Code of Canon Law in 1917. Cut off from the law’s roots in history and theology, this code derived its force from the will of the pontiff who enacted it. The Second Vatican Council, from 1962 to 1965, attempted to balance the role of the pope with that of the College of Bishops and to move toward decentralization of authority by enhancing the figure of the diocesan bishop and creating episcopal conferences. These conciliar efforts have been implemented, at least in part, in the revised Latin code of 1983 and the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches of 1990. Nevertheless, subsequent legislating has come largely through the unilateral action of the Roman pontiff.