Perhaps surprisingly for a history of the bishops of Rome, the reader does not find the word ‘papacy’ anywhere in this volume. Nor is this book a modern-day Liber Pontificalis, as its six chronological chapters, each subdivided into sections via the popes who reigned in that period, might imply. Instead, M. set out to ‘write the history of a Christian community in late antiquity’ (p. xii), taking care to place developments in Rome in their wider cultural context, particularly the world of Constantinople and the Eastern Mediterranean. In the period surveyed, from 440 to 752, the city of Rome was alternatively under the sway of western Roman emperors, ‘barbarian’ kings of Italy and a revanchist Constantinople after Justinian's reconquest – before finally becoming estranged from the eastern empire in the eighth century. It is, in many ways, a well-known story, but M.’s focus on the wider cultural milieu of the Mediterranean helpfully highlights aspects of papal history, such as its continuity with the imperial past (and present), that have perhaps been neglected, with the papacy's ‘rise’ in Late Antiquity to its more institutionalised medieval incarnation still a common narrative, particularly in texts accessible to students.
M. begins with an overview of the bishops of Rome's responsibilities and always complex relationship with their secular rulers, before embarking on a biography of Leo the Great (440–461). The narrative then continues, pope by pope, until the pontificate of Zacharias (741–752), with each chapter covering roughly 50 years. Understandably, much of the narrative derives from the Liber Pontificalis, although the necessary Latin and Greek sources are cited throughout to supplement the evidence from this series of papal biographies. In some cases, though, more could be drawn from non-Roman sources, as for some popes the Liber Pontificalis does not tell the full story. M.’s account of Pope Agatho (678–681), for instance, largely focuses on the Sixth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople (pp. 198–200), following the lead of the pope's contemporary biographer. Agatho's short tenure, however, was also noted in England. In 679 Wilfrid, a deposed Northumbrian bishop, arrived in Rome to petition the pope for his restoration – alongside an envoy from the archbishop of Canterbury (also a figure appointed by the pope) arguing for the opposite (Stephen, Life of Wilfrid, 29). Agatho's handling of this affair, alongside his preparations for the Ecumenical Council, tells us a great deal about how the papacy had to face both East and West simultaneously, adding to M.’s broader argument.
Beyond the narrative, sections dedicated to particular themes appear throughout the volume. The reign of Gregory the Great (590–603) receives special attention given the breadth of the available evidence, and it is skilfully used as a springboard to discuss wider issues linked to the pope's surviving letter collection, including a particularly far-ranging discussion on the role of women in papal history (pp. 120–8). Other important topics are addressed, most crucially the discussion of the Liber Pontificalis (pp. 76–8) and the city and its visitors, with the attitudes of those from Spain and England highlighted in particular (pp. 213–38). Both the narrative and the excursuses are ably supported by references to the existing scholarship in the endnotes of each chapter, making this book an invaluable resource for years to come.
As M. acknowledges, he ‘pays less attention to their relations with western rulers than some accounts do’ (p. xii), which is an advantage in that it results in more coverage for the papacy's ‘special relationship’ with emperors, especially within the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire, a topic that has received less attention in previous overviews of the papacy. Gregory the Great and his compatriots did hold a special place in the hearts of some western Latin Christians, particularly in England, but they were at the same time imperial bishops whose experiences surely paralleled that of the patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria. Occasional missteps, for example mistaking Emperor Constans II's official name, Constantine, as an error by a scribe working on the Liber Pontificalis and so interpreted by M. as a hint of the papacy's dismissive attitude towards the emperor (p. 197), do not detract from the solid picture of imperial history presented overall, which will prove to be useful for specialists of western church history looking eastwards via the papacy.
In religious matters, it is encouraging to find that doctrinal disputes in the eastern empire over Christology, whether the Three Chapters controversy of the sixth century or the monothelete ‘heresy’ of the seventh century, both long the bane of medievalists specialising in the West, are discussed in some depth. The use of the term ‘miaphysite’, increasingly favoured by late-antique historians to refer to non-Chalcedonian Christians rather than the misnomer ‘monophysite’, throughout the volume is another minor, but indicative, choice. M. is therefore to be applauded for writing a balanced account of the papacy's place within the imperial church, addressing some of the gaps in existing studies and making recent developments in historiography available to scholars who work in other fields.
Beyond the debates at the highest level of imperial politics and the imperial church, however, M. does not discuss to the same extent how other easterners, whether bishops, monks or pilgrims, saw Rome. This is a noticeable omission in his survey of pilgrims to the city, based largely on Latin sources, and warrants further discussion for the seventh century in particular. In the Cilician monk John Moschos’ Spiritual Meadow, composed perhaps in the 630s, both Leo the Great and Gregory the Great were lauded as orthodox heroes, with the latter praised in an intriguing anecdote involving a certain ‘John the Persian’, who travelled to Rome as a pilgrim (Moschos, Spiritual Meadow 147–9, 151 and 192). The presence of eastern monks in the city, perhaps coming from as diverse places as Armenia, Cilicia and Palestine, is also visible in records of the Lateran Council of 649, and, although alluded to briefly (p. 236), a fuller discussion could have made for a helpful comparison to their western counterparts travelling from Anglo-Saxon England and Visigothic Spain. Having covered the imperial involvement in papal history (and papal involvement in imperial history) in some detail, one wishes that M. could have examined broader eastern attitudes to the papacy to the same depth as their western contemporaries. As he argues throughout, popes in Late Antiquity looked both to the East and to the West, and it is perhaps a missed opportunity not to explore the full spectrum of connections Rome had with the wider world.
This, of course, is entirely understandable. The popes of Late Antiquity were all things to all people, at once leaders, competitors and models to be admired from afar. To write a history of the papacy in Late Antiquity, by necessity, touches on events and communities ranging from Britain to Mesopotamia, and each pope's tenure was shaped by their own experiences and contexts. Any history of such a group as well as of the nascent institution that developed around them will be a selective one. Moreover, the points raised here do not hinder M.’s argument, instead strengthening his case for examining papal history beyond institutions, to read papal history as both shaping and being shaped by the diverse world of Late Antiquity. Though there have long been calls to integrate the history of the papacy into that of the empire, students and scholars alike do not have ready access to a narrative that takes full advantage of shifts in the historiography of Late Antiquity. M.’s book is therefore a timely intervention and provides both newcomers and experts with a refreshing account of an often-told story, one that skilfully navigates the blurry line between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
