As its subtitle states, John M. Hunt's monograph offers ‘a social history of the papal interregnum’, exploring how the citizens of Rome experienced these sporadic periods of turmoil. The author rightly sees himself continuing the type of studies produced by Carlo Ginzburg and Laurie Nussdorfer on popular responses to the sede vacante, as well as Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani on the nature of the pope's body.

The book argues that the vacant see provided a unique opportunity to Romans: with no papal government in place and confusion as to who filled that power vacuum, the sede vacante became akin to Carnival, a period of misrule when authorities could be freely criticised and social and legal norms went unenforced. Drawing primarily on judicial and criminal sources, Hunt details the (frequently violent) acts carried out by everyday Romans against their fellow citizens and ecclesiastical authorities. However, the interregnum never devolved into all-out chaos. Hunt is careful to underline the ritual procedures that Romans followed during the sede vacante and how such rituals worked to mitigate conflict rather than provoke additional violence.

Chapter i outlines the competing factions that sought to assert their authority in the wake of the pope's death, including the Sacred College of Cardinals, the Popolo Romano and the Roman barons. The author highlights the confused nature of authority during the vacancy, which was often exposed in concrete situations – who would monitor the city gates or patrol rioni? Who had the authority to issue bandi? Chapter ii describes the rituals that were followed at the end of a pope's life, including rumours of his pending death, his actual death and the subsequent burial of his body.

Chapters iii and iv are the heart of the book and offer a vivid portrait of the chaos and violence that could erupt during the vacancy. Already a city disproportionately full of males, the Roman situation was exacerbated during interregna when additional troops and guards entered the city, all of whom, despite being hired for security, brought with them even more weapons and more opportunities for conflict – what Hunt calls the ‘paradox of protection’. The best efforts of the Sacred College, the city governor and the Popolo Romano to curb such violence proved ineffective, as evidenced by the many unobserved bandi issued by a variety of governing bodies. One sympathises with the man arrested for carrying a sword who explained: ‘I bought the sword because I heard that it was the vacant see’ (p. 102). Hunt uses criminal records with great success here, detailing how Romans used the upheaval of the vacant see to seek vengeance on their enemies, and he traces the conflicts that frequently arose between creditors and debtors, landlords and tenants, and even within marriages, as individuals saw the ‘liberty’ of the interregnum as freeing them from many of their previous obligations.

The final two chapters explore the relationship between the people of Rome and the institution of the papacy. Chapter v investigates critiques of the pope and the papal family made during interregna, studying in particular the many pasquinades written by anonymous authors and attacks made on papal statues. Chapter vi centres on the conclave. Hunt underlines its ‘porous’ nature and the consistent leak of information from the conclave into the populace, where such information (including balloting results) proved to be a valuable commodity.

The author's stated purpose is to offer a ‘social history’ of papal interregna. This is a rewarding approach that provides a fresh perspective on the sede vacante. Still, further engagement with institutional histories of the Roman Curia might contribute to an even more compelling narrative. For example, Hunt claims that the sede vacante ‘witness[ed] the abrupt decline in the influence of [the pope's] house’ (p. 27), but Wolfgang Reinhard and others have demonstrated how early modern popes often strengthened their family's position in anticipation of their own deaths, using dispensations to siphon off lands and money from ecclesiastical control and placing them in the control of their own lay relatives for posterity. Likewise, while Hunt delineates distinct centres of power during the vacant see, in practice there could be significant overlap between these groups. The Colonna, for instance, had long been one of the most powerful Roman families, highly involved in the city's politics since the Middle Ages. Three of their family members were created cardinal during the period covered in this study, and as Thomas Dandelet has shown, both the family in general and those cardinals in particular were known to be supporters of Spanish interests in Rome, working with and sometimes being paid by Spanish ambassadors. Thus, one could ask how a family like the Colonna used these disparate channels during the sede vacante, acting either in concert with or in opposition to other groups.

Finally, readers might wonder about change over time. This study is highly synchronic; the examples cited in each chapter are drawn from various interregna from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century. Aside from remarks about the establishment of the congregation of ‘Buon Governo’ and noting particularly violent reactions to the deaths of Paul iv and Sixtus v, there is no analysis of how and why different vacant sees played out the way they did. Once again the book's title is telling: it is not a social history of papal interregna, plural, but ‘the vacant see’ and ‘the papal interregnum’, singular.

To be sure, these points do not disprove any of Hunt's claims, and he is not aiming to produce yet another institutional history of the early modern papacy. They would, however, help to nuance and refine an already informative study. While not an ecclesiastical history in the traditional sense, readers of this Journal should take note of Hunt's book, since its wealth of detail will undoubtedly help scholars better to understand the early modern vacant see.