People are endlessly fascinated by Popes, the papacy and the Vatican, the sacred seat of power on the Tiber. Think of Frederick Rolfe’s Hadrian (Hadrian the Seventh), Robert Hugh Benson’s Silvester III (Lord of the World), Morris West’s Kiril I (Shoes of the Fisherman) and Anthony Burgess’s Gregory XVII (Earthly Powers), or recent riffs on Vatican intrigue such as Ralph McInerny’s The Third Revelation or Piers Paul Read's The Death of a Pope. This is but a modest sampling; and these are but fictional popes and fictional events.
Anthony F. D’Elia’s Paul II, in contrast, is the stuff of history. Be assured, however, that this pope had no less a fraught life than these fictional equivalents.
A Sudden Terror: The Plot to Murder the Pope in Renaissance Rome is a skillful investigation by this Queen’s University historian into the circumstances surrounding an alleged plot to assassinate the...
Michael W. Higgins is the author of, most recently, A Synod Diary: Sixty Days That Shook the Church.
Advertisement
Advertisement