The Invention of Papal History by Stefan Bauer

His later work largely focused on the history of the papacy and papal elections. Panvinio’s earlier work on ancient Rome was pioneering in its use of multiple sources and methods, from literary works and epigraphy to numismatics and archaeology. Panvinio’s constant need to find wealthy and politically powerful patrons-for the most part within the Church hierarchy-offers further evidence of what was required to have the luxury of research and writing.

Indeed, ecclesiastical interest in history was so great at the time that Panvinio’s order was willing to release him from its normal constraints to travel broadly in search of historical materials and to devote his life to historical scholarship. The focus on Panvinio’s life also allows insight into the pressures and opportunities faced by historians of the sixteenth century in attempting to work on church history in general and papal history in particular. The book’s title refers to Bauer’s thesis that Panvinio’s ambitious collection of primary source material, together with his source criticism and willingness to ask hard questions about the nature of change in the Church’s past, amounted to the invention of modern papal history. Panvinio, who left few published works but many manuscripts at his death, accomplished a remarkable amount of historical research during his short life and, as Bauer demonstrates, was an important innovator in historical method.

Bauer uses the case of Onofrio Panvinio (1530–1568), an Augustinian friar, to shed light on the development of history writing in early modern Rome as well as on the historiography of the papacy.

The Invention of Papal History by Stefan Bauer