Pontiffs from the Middle Ages to the present have portrayed Islam in widely differing terms. Indeed, before the twentieth century, popes rarely employ the terms “Islam” and “Muslim,” preferring terms such as “Saracens,” “Turks,” or “Mohammedans.” The ways they portrayed Islam and Muslims varied according to the perceived doctrinal and military threat posed to the Roman Church and according to the individual inclinations of different popes. But they also varied (sometimes in the writings of the same pope) according to a variety of specific interests: the popes’ engagement with Islam and Muslims is alternately military, political, diplomatic, theological, or pastoral. Hence very different assessments of Islam and Muslims emerge from a great diversity of papal sources: crusading encyclicals, canon law texts dealing with the legal status of Muslims living in Christian lands, letters to Muslim rulers, correspondence with Church officials in Muslim territories (bishops, friars, missionaries, or others). This brief chronological survey examines the varying and evolving portrayals of Islam and Muslims in papal documents, from the early Middle Ages through Vatican II and until the pontificate of Francis I.

This chapter sets out the history of the process of electing the pope, including the development of voting rules, procedures, sites of election, and a wider electoral culture. The basic format for the modern papal election evolved gradually over a period from 1059 to the 1400s, with the first “conclaves” taking place in the mid-thirteenth century. In contrast to papal elections, papal resignations have been rare, with most occurring during the first Christian millennium. The question of how a pope might relinquish office nevertheless still interested canonists until long after this date, and rules about how popes might resign were incorporated into the twentieth-century codes of canon law even before Benedict XVI dramatically invoked them in 2013.

This chapter explains different ways of studying social networks in Ottoman history. The first vein of research mainly maps social networks in different areas of the Ottoman state and society such as transportation and communication, migration, credit and finance. In the second vein of research, the emphasis is on developing a network approach and methodology based on a relational approach. The chapter provides examples of literature in both types of research in Ottoman history. It introduces some social network concepts such as structural holes, bridge, and brokerage. It also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using qualitative and quantitative network analysis in historical research.

The chapter addresses the history of the Synod of Bishops, created by pope Paul VI in September 1965 and reformed by Francis I between 2018 and 2023, with an analysis of the different phases: from the proposals emerging from the bishops during the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), to the Synods’ assemblies of Paul VI (r. 1963–78), John Paul II (r. 1978–2005), and Benedict XVI (r. 2005–13). After half a century of its life, the Synod of Bishops has changed, especially during pope Francis I’s pontificate, from an expression of episcopal collegiality (representing the bishops only), useful as a device of papal primacy, to an institution of ecclesial synodality, giving voice to all kinds of members in the Catholic Church, including women and lay people.

Did the popes, through the medium of decretals, make law or not? Against a long-established tradition expressed forcefully by Walther Ullmann, Harold Berman, and many others, this chapter argues that the legal authority of the medieval papacy, manifested most spectacularly in the issue of thousands of decretal letters, represented not legislation but jurisdiction; that it was generated by the demands of appellants and consultants from across the whole of the Latin Church, from Trondheim (Norway) to Esztergom (Hungary) and Palermo (Sicily); and that the impetus to compile collections of these papal decisions began not in Rome but in the regions, for use in episcopal courts and in the nascent universities where canon law was studied. A selection of rescripts (replies to judicial appeals) and consultations (answers to questions) offers a fascinating insight into these dynamic processes, which helped to shape the development of European law.

The study of Ottoman rural history presents challenges in terms of both the sources available and the themes that are common to the entire empire. Researchers are particularly dependent on government administrative sources, and must make an effort to complement these with local court archives, foreign consular correspondence, and provincial chronicles if available. The principal themes these sources evoke are ultimately usually linked to revenue extraction, whether by state officials or by local notables acting on behalf of the state, making the history of Ottoman ruralism indissociable from the discussion of power relations and economic production. The main particularity of Ottoman rural history is the prominent role of pastoral nomadism and the resulting importance of tribal forms of social organization.

This chapter focuses on the practices of keeping and archiving Ottoman court records. It emphasizes that these archives, which historians have used as databases , were mainly kept as archives of the judges in their time and were notarial in character. In doing so, the chapter considers the use of court records as written documents in everyday life. In order to move beyond the long-debated question of whether these records were used as evidence in court proceedings, the chapter proposes to focus on the work of the court scribe, a humble yet neglected court employee. It thus moves the historian’s camera away from court proceedings and focuses on the practices of archive keeping. The notes left by the court scribes on the margins of court records reveal the notarial character of these archives. They also show that beyond the question of “oral” sources that have been considered as a privileged medium of agreement in the historiography, the everyday transactions were dominated by written documents throughout the empire.

Three factors – Rome’s peripheral position, its rivalry with other sees, and the role of Roman aristocrats – shaped the ecclesiastical policy of the popes in late antiquity. Their claims to ecclesiastical authority across the empire were based on the reputation of the City of Rome. In addition, the Petrine tradition became crucial for the representation of late antique popes. From an Eastern perspective, however, they were no more than the patriarchs of the West. As they were not under the direct grip of the emperor, the popes possessed more agency than Eastern bishops, but this made it more difficult for them to influence imperial politics directly. Therefore, they composed treatises about the relationship between emperor and bishop, which answered concrete challenges, but were interpreted as fundamental texts later. In retrospect and in retrospect only, late antique papacy was the first step of a scale towards universal papacy.

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.

Through patronage of art, architecture, and classical scholarship and through development of classically inspired rhetoric and ceremonies, the popes of the medieval and early modern periods promoted the recovery and reinterpretation of ancient Greek and Roman culture. Critics (including Roman civic leaders, Renaissance humanists, and Protestant reformers) pilloried the papal court as a symbol of corruption and cultural stagnation, but pontiffs and their advisers continued to adapt ancient and early Christian precedents to support their traditional claims to authority and to justify their new initiatives. This chapter argues that the papacy played a vital role in recovering and using the classical legacy throughout the (long) Middle Ages. It also argues that the venues and motivations for this appropriation remained more consistent than standard periodization of the medieval, Renaissance, and Counter Reformation papacy has suggested.

This chapter surveys the papacy’s struggles and historiography in the fourteenth and fifteen centuries, which were rich in far reaching events, questioning the “rhetoric” of crisis often attached to the period. Barred from Rome by widespread turmoil in Italy, seven consecutive popes – all of Gallic origin – resided at Avignon between 1309 and 1375. Criticized equally for “abandoning” Rome and for their perceived subservience to the French crown, the popes labored valiantly to end the Hundred Years War (albeit unsuccessfully) and to maintain an effective international ecclesiastical administration. The Schism (1378–1417) arose from the cardinals’ uncanonical attempt to depose the volatile Urban VI (r. 1378–89) and to elect Clement VII (r. 1378–94) in his place; eventually, three lines of popes (Roman, Avignonese, and Pisan) would bring deep divisions to Europe with their competing claims to legitimacy. The crisis only ended with the sui generis Council of Constance (1414–18) and the election of Martin V (r. 1417–31).

Ottoman imperial administration could not have functioned efficiently without the documents produced by the central secretarial service, from everyday registers of appointments, orders resolving disputes, and financial records, to imperial correspondence at the highest levels. To be a katib (secretary) in the imperial council was a crucial role. From a surprisingly small, relatively inconspicuous number in the early sixteenth century, the central secretarial body grew in size and significance until by the eighteenth century the bureaucracy had become a recognized third arm of government, alongside the military and the judiciary; it provided essential ministerial leadership in the nineteenth-century reform movement. Focusing on a critical period of change from the mid sixteenth to the mid seventeenth centuries, this chapter introduces aspects of secretarial recruitment, training, and output, concluding with a comparison of two major letter collections, one compiled c. 1574 by the reisülküttab (chief secretary) Feridun Bey, the other c. 1640 by a later reis Sarı Abdullah (d. 1660).

“Papal Rome” is an idea constructed through Rome’s physical topography and the built environment that enabled popes to govern Rome and its environs, and to project power outward. Rome cannot be called a papal city until the eighth century, but throughout the Middle Ages, the papacy’s control was regularly challenged and marginalized. The idea of Rome, its ideological, political, and religious significance, central to papal authority, was intertwined with Rome’s shifting and refashioned topography. Papal authority relied on a history invented in the early Middle Ages, and re-invented in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. To create “papal Rome,” popes rebuilt portions of Rome, and reshaped and reimagined Roman topography, the physical reality of Rome, and that idea, in turn, reshaped Europe and the Mediterranean. The Roman aristocracy and communal movement would draw from and attempt to redirect that symbolic topography as they challenged papal authority for control of the city.