Introduced, annotated and translated splendidly by Raymond Davis in recent times in The Liverpool University Press Translated Texts for Historians, the Liber Pontificalis (LP) is one of the most accessible texts for students of Christian Rome from the Apostolic to the Carolingian Age. Now, under examination by Rosamund McKitterick, a new and complex understanding both of the text and — just as important — of its journey through time and space show it to embody a dynamism that is uniquely informative on the creation of a key aspect of Roman Christian identity.

At its core, the book seeks to explore ‘the problematic relationship between reality, representation and reception, and the papacy itself as orchestrator of a new understanding of the Bishop of Rome both within and beyond the city’ (2). The substance of the LP's text, its 112 ‘lives’, two prefatory (and probably spurious) letters of introduction between Saints Jerome and Damasus, and its phases of composition are outlined and the point is rightly made that the LP takes its place in the genre of accessible biography-writing long popular in both pagan and Christian Rome. But the subjects of the LP are bishops now, not emperors, and we have the first intimation of the text as an agent of transformation. The immediate context of the LP's composition is a sixth-century Italy negotiating the precise identity of those in power and, in the immediate world of the bishops of Rome, unsettled by the Acacian and Laurentian schisms, each of which generated a shower of texts. Into this world came ‘the determined narrative’ (31) of the LP, an arrival that is likely to have seemed to many of the period as taking place at precisely the right time. The LP was thus an agent in the crises of the day, serving above all to consolidate the ideological position of the papacy.

That, however, required the successful communication of the authority, identity and governing persona of the Pope. Accordingly, the ‘Romanness’ of the bishops of Rome as portrayed determinedly by the LP receives attention in ch. 2. The bishops have led a real people, living and dead together, and the LP's readiness to identify the Roman Christian populus bolsters the depiction of the Papacy as a substantial task and its holders as leaders of substance. That leadership required significant material patronage, with the LP recording not only the early organisation by its Popes of physical space in the ecclesiastical regiones, but also gifts and buildings, creating a ‘virtual Rome’, ‘grafting its bishops onto the foundations of the ancient city’ (60).

But establishing Papal authority also required the bringing to order of the history of the institution (ch. 3). Petrine succession is the unshakeable structure that serves to contain assertions including the bishop as author, or near-author, of the Gospel of Mark, as well as the bester of Simon Magus, and champion of orthodoxy. The author/authors of the text show an awareness of heresy, but there is no need to offer much theological detail; emphasis is on real-world leadership, not disputation. Accordingly, the bishop of Rome's historic interest in sacerdotal ministry and pastoral care are stressed in the lives of Peter's earliest successors, with the capacity for the designation of successors (election lies ahead in the eighth century) legitimised through such demonstrable leadership.

Interestingly, the LP (cf. Lives of Peter and Cornelius (a.d. 251–3) respectively) preserves the several strands of memory in Rome on the resting-place of Peter himself, but the intention to emphasise the status of the Vatican basilica is unequivocal. Given the accessible documents available to readers of the LP, from Jerome's de viris illustribus to Rufinus’ Latin version of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, McKitterick can envisage the LP almost as a ‘mnemonic’, prompting recollection of stories long known in the city (87).

With Constantine comes transformation (ch. 4) and with it a more extensive and worldly power. Audaciously giving the bishop of Rome a central role in the most dramatic developments of the age, the LP asserts that Sylvester (bishop a.d. 314–335) baptises Constantine and convenes the Council of Nicaea. The character of the biography marks a change too, with the bishop of Rome, even as Constantine's great basilicae rise, a builder in his own right, as well a donor of gifts — activity that mirrors the pattern of the Christian emperor.

McKitterick proceeds to chart both interest and leadership in the more intimate setting of liturgy and right belief (ch. 5). In essence, the LP offers ‘a fabricated history of the liturgy’ (169), with bishops of the city depicted as ordering liturgical time, fixing feast-days, deciding on readings and mapping the cycle of ‘stational masses’ onto the topography of the city. The fact that many of the details are probably spurious or invented matters less than the dynamic. On the law of the Church, McKitterick finds the LP ‘oddly sketchy’ and ‘allusive’ (145), but she has done enough herself to establish that the authors of the text do not actually need to go into detail; those who want more information can find the documents for themselves; it is sufficient to record these powerful Popes decreeing what must be done.

In her final chapter, McKitterick turns to the peculiar journey made by the text of the LP itself. Most of the surviving copies come from Francia, and the LP offered what was demonstrably a successful template, finding imitators, including Gregory of Tours. Deftly interweaving palaeological and codicological assessments with consideration of the reception of the LP in contexts significantly different from sixth-century Rome, the LP emerges as a dynamic text, surviving in what are clearly distinctive versions: subject to ‘Frankish interpolations’ (210), a ‘Lombard’ form (181), and ‘Modena abridgment’ (186), and even epitomisation. McKitterick is right to assess the journey of the text as constituting an ‘intensively creative reception’ (201). Monsignor Duchesne would have been delighted.