Papal ceremonial acted as a language through which the pope and clergy described Catholic identity, history, and moral ideals, establishing a liturgy and ceremonial practice that could be adapted to changing circumstances in Rome and beyond. Topography did not restrict papal ceremonial but enhanced it. Rather than seeing the pope as a prisoner of his ceremonial, as some stereotypes do, this chapter explores papal ceremonial as a language that articulated narratives of authority, responded to crises, and bridged gaps. From late antiquity through the twenty-first century, liturgy, politics, urban administration, and pilgrimage/tourism grew together in cities across the Christian world. As technology has eased communication and travel, the pope has sought more direct ways to speak to Catholics, yet the public maintains an interest in the papacy that grew out of fascination with its premodern ceremonial character.

This chapter explores the potential of digital history, geographic information systems (GIS), and spatial humanities in Ottoman studies, with a focus on a historical geographic information system (HGIS) application. It highlights the transformative impact of digital humanities (DH) on historical knowledge production, enabling replication and deeper research. Incorporating GIS into DH has led to geospatial humanities and spatial history, opening new research avenues. Ottoman studies are relatively new to these approaches, with limited data-driven research. The chapter addresses challenges arising from the historical disconnect between history and geography in Ottoman studies, emphasizing the significance of gazetteers and historical population data for large-scale HGIS applications. Presenting a case study analyzing historical census data for two Bulgarian regions, it assesses HGIS benefits and limitations. The chapter advocates a transparent, replicable, and cautious interpretation of digital and spatial historical analyses, calling for the continued development of geospatial methods in south-east Europe for long-term historical population geography insights.

The Cambridge History of the Papacy is organized to provide readers with a critical–historical survey of the structural development of the papacy as an institution and as an actor in Church history, and in world history. It is hard to imagine a sphere of human activity over the past two millennia that has not been influenced by, and influenced in turn by, papal action – be it in the domains of religious belief and practice; social, cultural, and political thought; art, science, medicine, ethics, diplomacy, and international relations. Four questions – each addressed throughout the three volumes of the present work – have framed that vision across vast chronological and geographical expanses: the pope’s centrality within the Catholic Church, the primacy of papal power as an instrument of governance, the papacy’s cultural influence in society and culture, and the implications of secularity for its place in the lives of believers and non-believers alike. Each question – and the search for answers – converges around the fundamental question of papal authority: its original claims; the ebbs and flows of its effective reach; and the numerous ways in which claims, and expressions of papal authority and supremacy, have been contested within the Catholic tradition, and from without.

This chapter explores the intricate world of Ottoman archives by focusing on the perceptions, challenges, and methodologies encountered by historians when engaging with these vast repositories. It delves into the comprehensiveness of administrative records maintained by the Ottoman Empire, highlighting the immense volume of documents produced and preserved. It underscores the balance between preservation and access, as well as the evolution of archival practices over time. The chapter delineates various approaches historians employ when utilizing archives by discussing different methodologies applied to archival research, including fact-centered narratives, clue-centered microhistory, data-centered quantitative analysis, concept-centered semantics, and code-centered interpretation. Historians’ use of archives is shaped by scholarly tradition, editorial practices, and the broader sociopolitical context. As such, historical engagement with archives necessarily develops within the wider complex relationship between scholarly inquiry and political agendas. By shedding light on the multifaceted nature of Ottoman archives and the diverse ways historians engage with them, this chapter offers insights into the challenges, opportunities, and ongoing debates within the field of Ottoman historical research.

Why study Ottoman history? What are the available sources? And how can researchers begin locating, reading, and interpreting these? The Cambridge Companion to Ottoman History provides a broad introduction to the field, offering readers accessible outlines of its varied methods and approaches. Bringing together contributions from leading researchers, the volume considers the theoretical, methodological, and practical challenges faced by Ottoman historians. Including chapters from specialists in areas ranging from intellectual history to labor history and gender history, the Companion critically examines prior developments in the field and indicates potential paths for future research. Beginning with a thorough grounding in the primary sources available, the Companion then turns to the perspectives and critical frames of the discipline. This volume is an essential teaching guide and an invaluable entry point to the breadth and the possibilities of Ottoman history.

This chapter examines the papacy’s positioning vis-à-vis colonization and decolonization, defined both as a political changeover from European to African governance and as a longer, subtler, and more complex process of rejecting European influence and authority in both the public and private spheres, including religion. It investigates Vatican approaches to Catholic missions in Africa during the colonial period, how successive popes navigated the political changes of decolonization, and how they sought to make Catholicism more hospitable to Africans. Finally, it underlines how Africans themselves, such as the prominent intellectual Alioune Diop, played a central role in instigating papal action to make the Church less Eurocentric and more welcoming to other peoples and cultures.

The Ottoman Empire left a rich and multilingual legacy in history writing, one that scholars are only starting to explore. Eclipsed for a time after the opening of the Ottoman state archives, chronicles attract intense interest not only as sources to be mined for facts, but for what these works can tell us about wider issues – from elite and popular worldviews to politics and patronage, literary history, intellectual horizons, and others. But if the study of the past through reading, writing, copying, and listening to works of history was hugely popular in the empire, Ottoman views of history are not entirely like our own, especially in their conceptual baggage. This chapter surveys some of these issues: What are the sources? How can we access them? What kinds of practical or methodological issues do they raise? Last, what paths do chronicles offer for future research in Ottoman studies?

This chapter reviews how gender and sexuality in early modern Ottoman society have been studied and analyzed in Ottoman historiography. Recent historical studies on Ottoman society and the everyday experiences of women and men reveal that individual experiences differ according not only to gender but also to class, age, ethnicity, and religion on a temporal and geographical basis. This chapter focuses on how scholars working on the archival sources made women, men, and children from different corners of the empire visible by mobilizing a “history from below” approach and utilizing sources creatively and comparatively to explore gender hierarchies, power relations, and sexual manifestations. It also discusses the representation of these hierarchies and relations as reflected in literary and narrative sources to reveal the diversity of gendered and erotic encounters and experiences. A closer reading of sources aims to provide a multifaceted representation of women from different classes, ethnicities, and religions, but also opens new questions on what constituted womanhood and manhood in various places and periods of the Ottoman Empire.

We associate “crusaders” with the medieval world and those who took part in military campaigns during the period 1095–1291, the “golden age of crusading.” This chapter examines why groups of men and women throughout history have been described as “crusaders.” For many historians, “crusaders” are not just those who fought against Muslims, but those who took part in papally inspired campaigns in various theatres-of-war against diverse enemies, for which they took vows and enjoyed special privileges. We further use the word “crusader” to describe those whom popes encouraged to take part in military ventures, for example against the Ottomans, over a much wider chronological period – from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. In modern times, crusade rhetoric has also been a key feature of both Western and Eastern religious and political discourse. Hence the chapter explores how our idea of “crusaders” has developed since the original use of the word.

The pontificate of Leo XIII (r. 1878–1903) was decisive in shaping the Catholic response to modernity. His primary aim was to guide the Church in coming to terms with the modern world by making a clear distinction between unchangeable truths and other teachings that could be legitimately adapted to fit the scientific, democratic, and industrial world. The centerpiece of Leo’s approach was a Thomistic revival that included several elements: (1) Thomas’ view of the universe as an ordered hierarchy of being, governed by law; (2) Thomas’ view of natural law combined with Suarez’s “transfer theory of power” that permits a variety of legitimate regimes; (3) Thomas’ teaching on private property in service to the common good combined with Locke’s natural rights to property; and (4) a notion of the rights of workers as persons that points toward twentieth-century Christian personalism. I conclude by surveying the scholarly debates about Leo’s contribution to modern Thomism and Catholic social teaching.

During the eighth and ninth centuries the papacy extricated itself from the Byzantine world and allied with the Franks. The alliance secured protection from the Lombards and aided the formation of the first independent Papal State in Italy. Secular and ecclesiastical institutional structures inherited from late antiquity matured and created a recognizable medieval papacy. The popes supported the expansion of Latin Christianity in Scandinavia and eastern Europe. Peace brought prosperity to Italy and the popes both built and restored numerous churches and installed frescoes, mosaics, and liturgical fixtures all over Rome. Nicholas I, Adrian II, and John VIII made powerful ecclesiological statements that hinted at future claims. Toward the end of the period aristocratic strife in Rome foreshadowed the tumultuous tenth century.

This chapter places the history of late Ottoman labor within critical histories of empire, industrial development, and class/social movements. Departing from earlier perspectives dominant within the field that highlighted the politics of male, industrial, urban workers, it argues that the history of Ottoman labor encompassed a broader segment of the Ottoman population, including artisans, peddlers, female and child outworkers, and enslaved people. Although a substantial majority of those who worked in the late Ottoman world did not call themselves factory workers, they nonetheless experienced the full effects of wage labor, including dispossession, loss of control over means of production, and precarity. Ottoman women and children in particular bore the brunt of economic change through their involvement in seasonal and extremely exploitative sectors. In surveying recent studies of Ottoman labor, the chapter introduces the latest perspectives on Ottoman guilds, industrial survival, and labor unrest. It also discusses the role played by ethnicity and religion in shaping the politics of Ottoman laborers.

Popes’ relationship with modern media can be assumed as a prism through which the cultural, social, and political transformations of the twentieth-century papacy can be observed. Cinema, radio, and television were means through which the voice and the image of the popes were almost known simultaneously for the first time in history throughout the world. Internet and social media were exploited by the Holy See adapting the apostolate to the new way of communicating. Each pope’s choice to use new media reflected how they conceived the role of the papacy and more generally the Church. In other words, the adoption of the new media and therefore the way through which the papacy decided to communicate to its flock had ecclesiological, theological, and of course political reflections. The chapter provides an overview of the relationship between the popes and the means of mass communication from Pius XI to Francis I. It shows that even when the popes were imbued with an anti-modern culture, they grasped the opportunity to fulfill their task of Catholic propaganda instead of demonizing the new inventions.

The relations between medieval and early modern Jews and the popes rested on consistently applied canonical and Roman law principles, alongside Pauline theology, which was itself bifurcated. These principles were fundamentally restrictive, and the restrictions became tighter over time. To speak of a mild early Middle Ages, driven by Augustinian principles, which turned radically hostile after the First Crusade, is a distortion. Nobody mentioned Augustine until Innocent III. There were forced conversions even in the early Middle Ages. Similarly, the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 was not a turning point, but a culmination. Subsequent attacks on literature were new, but not papally initiated. Beginning with Benedict XIII in 1415, a move to press conversion – without ignoring old limits, theoretically – began to grow, which culminated in Paul IV’s foundation of the Roman ghetto in 1555, intended be a cauldron of conversion achieved through repression. The policy failed.

This chapter focuses on the evolution of papal finances during the sixteenth century, a period of radical change, which was characterized by seminal moments such as the creation of the Monte della Fede (public debt) in 1526, the imposition of the Triennial Subsidy (an attempt to charge a universal direct tax) of 1543, and others. It also looks at the consequences that these changes brought about in the seventeenth century. After a brief literature review, the transition between the medieval and the early modern period is also explained, followed by an analysis of the public debt and venal offices. The chapter then discusses the relations between central and peripheral powers and ends with an overview of the role played by merchant bankers.