The modern world has as its central characteristic the claim of man’s emancipation from submission to ecclesiastical authority. Born with the Enlightenment, this claim extended from the cultural level to many areas of social life during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This process has found significant expressions in movements such as liberalism, socialism, and nationalism, which have marked the history of that period. It is commonly believed that only the Second Vatican Council has produced a turning point: the recognition of the “iusta autonomia” of earthly realities has led the Church from confrontation to dialogue with modernity. The historical judgment must be more nuanced. From the Enlightenment onwards, the papacy has sought to safeguard the submission of men to ecclesiastical authority, but it has also endeavored to adapt Catholicism to the needs of modern men for autonomy in order to be able to better communicate its message of salvation to them.

After the First Vatican Council, some believed that a council was not necessary any more: the Pope alone was able to govern the Catholic Church. John XXIII’s decision to convene a council was surprising in this context. Considered by some as an extension of Vatican I, which originally was to produce a whole teaching on the Church in which the pope was to be situated, the Second Vatican Council teaching situates the pope in the people of God and within the College of Bishops, proclaiming the doctrine of collegiality. The two popes of the council were going to modify the figure and the style of the papacy. John XXIII, by developing fraternal ties with the non-Catholic Christians invited to the council and who came in large numbers; Paul VI gave worldwide influence to the papacy through his travels to Jerusalem, India, and to the United Nations headquarters in New York, establishing relationships with non-Christians.

Much has been written on whether the Ottoman Empire was a terrestrial or a maritime one. Lost in this binary is what lies in between, namely the terraqueous dimensions of imperial rule. Enquiring into the interaction between land and water, the chapter transcends this divide and explores the ecological and economic continuum of the seas, continents, coastlines, islands, rivers, and lakes that compose the Ottoman world. Neither completely terrestrial nor simply aquatic, they are best conceived as hybrid spaces where land and water interact. We posit three Ottoman terraqueous zones defined by four rivers and four seas: the Danube, the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea, and the Adriatic Sea in the north domains of the empire; the Nile, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Red Sea in the south; and Mesopotamia, from eastern Anatolia to the Persian Gulf in the east.

A new wave of scholarship has put the environment at the center of an array of questions about the social, economic, political, and cultural history of the Ottoman world. This chapter argues that Ottomanists have only begun to harness environmental methodologies, which should be part of every historian’s toolkit. Using examples from this new scholarship, it examines the two-pronged methodology of environmental history as both material and conceptual history. It points to ways in which the Ottoman Empire contributes uniquely to the broader historiography of the environment, and how ecological frameworks can inform questions concerning the construction of space and nature of power in Ottoman society. Above all, it emphasizes that although the subfield of Ottoman environmental history is now well cultivated, there is still fertile ground for inquiry that may help us fundamentally rethink the history of the Ottoman world and challenge the Eurocentric tendencies of environmental history as a whole.

This chapter examines the governance of the papacy prior to and following the Risorgimento, focusing on administrative reform, military affairs, and finances. It analyzes the domestic and foreign aspects of papal rule. Domestically, the papacy implemented administrative changes and faced opposition from local groups advocating for reform. This unrest led to increased reliance on foreign assistance, including military support from Austria and France. Financial burdens compelled the papacy to seek foreign loans from the Rothschilds, creating an unhealthy reliance on foreign means and powers. Ultimately, the papacy was unable to withstand a united opposition that resulted from these policies. The analysis highlights the tension between the Church and temporal government, influenced by religion and nationality. Local control and freedom from foreign interference emerged as key factors in advocating for change.

During the sixteenth century, the King in Parliament terminated the jurisdiction of the Papacy in England and established by law the Church of England, with the King as its head. One task was to institute a new system of canon law for the national Church. Parliamentary statute provided for a commission to reform the canon law. In the meantime, pre-Reformation Roman canon law was to continue to apply to the Church of England if it was not repugnant to the royal prerogative and the laws of the realm. The commission was never appointed. The Roman canon law continued to apply on the basis of both statute and custom as part of the King’s ecclesiastical law. This chapter explores how the post-Reformation English ecclesiastical lawyers understood this continuing Roman canon law, its legal basis, and the role of the doctrine of reception in all this.

The vestments and regalia worn by the pope have long been used to convey the role’s primacy and singularity in the Catholic Church as both temporal and spiritual sovereign. This chapter describes the evolution of papal garb, alongside their visual and textual representations, from the twelfth century to the present day. It also maps the changing sites of the reception of the pope’s appearance over eight centuries, considering how the papacy has mobilized clothing to convey meaning in different pastoral, political, and media contexts. Clothing and regalia have been used strategically and deliberately, at various times, to represent the pope’s spiritual humility, his wealth and prestige, his status as international diplomat, and his sovereignty.

This chapter delves into the production of scientific knowledge and its practice within the expansive temporal and geographical scope of the Ottoman Empire. Organized chronologically into two main sections, the chapter portrays the foundational scientific institutions and conventions while also introducing the textual and material facets of scientific enterprises. Through this focused lens, the chapter traces the enduring and evolving elements of scientific pursuits and their sociopolitical implications from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries.

The papacy played a central role in the development of Roman Catholic teaching about bioethics. Pope Pius XI’s Casti connubii (1930) condemned contraception, sterilization, and abortion. Papal teaching was broadly accepted by Catholics before the 1960s. Widespread dissent in the Church greatly increased after the publication of Pope Paul VI’s Humanae vitae (1968). The first successful IVF procedure in 1978 raised new bioethical issues relating to the status of human embryos outside the womb.

The Catholic hierarchy was more successful in lobbying politicians to enact restrictive laws, or obstruct liberal reforms, than in persuading the laity to accept its teaching on birth control and assisted human reproduction. A rift emerged between mainstream Catholic culture and the institutional Church. The Church is now circumscribed in meeting the challenges presented by complex ethical issues, such as surrogacy and assisted dying, because of the papacy’s inflexible stance on these matters.

While animals and plants have been part of Ottoman studies for a long time, the way students of history study them has changed over time. This chapter traces that change and its implications. It first describes the literature acknowledging the significance of plants and animals (such as wheat, cotton, tobacco, and sheep) as commodities in both domestic and world markets, but viewing their role in history as basically secondary to humans. Then it provides an overview of studies on the cultural representations of animals and plants, and finally focuses on recent historiography that sees nonhuman species as active agents of Ottoman history. The latter approach, the chapter argues, provides a more comprehensive and dynamic understanding of the past as it highlights the role played by nonhuman actors, ranging from crop plants to street dogs and mosquitos, in transformations that the empire underwent in the course of centuries.

Nepotism is a way to organize ecclesiastical power relations, in particular those of the papacy, under the conditions of celibacy on the basis of family relations. In the long run, however, the micro-policy of family was replaced by the micro-policy of bureaucracy, the cardinal-nephew by the secretary of state. But for more than a thousand years, family networks were the most reliable foundation of papal domination. On the other hand, therefore, massive maintenance of the pope’s family interest was a necessary consequence. For some time between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Roman nepotism even became an established quasi-institution, halfway between loosely structured family network and neutral Church bureaucracy. The papal system of government was stabilized through circular dependency of electors and elected heads, of cardinals and popes.

Studying the history of the Ottoman provinces is a complex undertaking, marked by the interplay between global processes and local specificities. This duality has been a major challenge, as researchers strive to reconcile large-scale trends with the particularities of each locality in the Ottoman Empire. This tension between a global, comparative approach and an emphasis on distinct local knowledge has persisted since the inception of Ottoman studies. Scholars have often grappled with the center–periphery framework, which tends to oversimplify the intricate relationships between the capital and the provinces. This oversimplification neglects the dynamic interactions and diverse sources of power at play. Ottoman provinciality defies simple categorizations, instead revealing a multifaceted fabric of relationships operating at various scales. Moreover, the notion of Ottomanness is not solely shaped by official codification, but is also influenced by local knowledge and practices. Ultimately, understanding Ottoman provincial history requires embracing the dissipated nature of sovereignty and acknowledging the shared experiences, movements, and cultural syntheses that occurred both within provinces and between the capital and the provinces.

This chapter analyzes the regulation of sexual desire as one aspect of the process of progressive centralization through which the papacy affirmed its control over the Catholic Church and society across the centuries. While the accusation of homosexual behavior was increasingly associated with forms of religious and social nonconformity, the prohibition of homosexual intercourse became an instrument for encouraging ecclesiastics’ and lay people’s increasing examination of their individual consciences. The control of same-sex desire thus favored the internalization of a disciplinary attitude that hierarchically emanated from the center to the periphery. As a response to the increased visibility of sexual and gender minorities, nowadays the issue of same-sex marriage is demanding increased attention. The issue has never been discussed more thoroughly by popes as it has been in the last decades. Despite some significative epistemological shifts, however, the doctrinal approach towards this matter has remained strikingly consistent, and homosexuality is still condemned by the Catholic Church as a disordered inclination.

The dynamic of simultaneous recognition and restriction of women’s leadership roles in the Church is not new for the papacy. This chapter employs the figures of Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary – the two “leading women” of the New Testament – to explore the surprising degree to which popes have recognized the pivotal role of women in salvation history. It also shows, however, that popes consistently crafted the identities of the Virgin and the Magdalene in a manner that de-emphasized any priestly function or Christ-like power. Both Marys, therefore, share traits connected to their lack of suitability for leadership within a male order. In constraining the roles of the Marys, popes have also limited the roles for ordained women in the Church, thereby maintaining their unique claims to primacy.