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A review by siria
Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy by John Julius Norwich
2.0
This is a very ambitious project—attempting to cover some 2000 years of history and more than 250 pontificates in less than 500 pages. While it's very readable, and Norwich did fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge (pretty much from the end of the Middle Ages to Vatican II), Absolute Monarchs isn't a successful book overall. Norwich writes well and with occasional bursts of the wry humour which made his history of Byzantium so enjoyable to read, but perhaps unsurprisingly given its scope, the book does drag at points and is very much confined to considering the papacy as a political institution.
That this isn't an area of Norwich's particular expertise is also evident just from looking at the bibliography, which relies heavily on older scholarship, largely English-language monographs. Why does Norwich use the Cambridge Medieval History (1911-36), one wonders, rather than the New Cambridge Medieval History (1995-2005), its updated successor, which would provide him with much more up-to-date scholarship upon which to draw? Why Kantorowicz on Frederick II, and not Abulafia? I was left with the impression that Norwich's research for Absolute Monarchs was confined to whichever books he had to hand in his own private collection and didn't stray very far from that. So a relatively quick read if you're interested in the history of the papacy over the longue durée, but not one which can be regarded as authoritative.
That this isn't an area of Norwich's particular expertise is also evident just from looking at the bibliography, which relies heavily on older scholarship, largely English-language monographs. Why does Norwich use the Cambridge Medieval History (1911-36), one wonders, rather than the New Cambridge Medieval History (1995-2005), its updated successor, which would provide him with much more up-to-date scholarship upon which to draw? Why Kantorowicz on Frederick II, and not Abulafia? I was left with the impression that Norwich's research for Absolute Monarchs was confined to whichever books he had to hand in his own private collection and didn't stray very far from that. So a relatively quick read if you're interested in the history of the papacy over the longue durée, but not one which can be regarded as authoritative.