Constructing a Renaissance Pope

Abstract

This book examines the rhetoric and ceremony of the papal court during the pontificate of Pope Leo X (1513–21). Earlier assessments of Leo X have celebrated him as a knowledgeable aesthete or excoriated him as a prodigal nepotist. Conversely, this study analyzes the collaborative efforts of curial officials, humanists, and ceremonialists to project papal authority in an era of rapid spiritual, social, and political change; it is not a biography but a study of premodern image construction. Weaving together material from Paris de’ Grassi’s diaries and manuals, and a variety of letters, orations, and other humanist texts, the book situates papal image-making within the broader context of Renaissance culture. It argues that the scripted rites on which the papal court spent so much time and money served as tools of persuasion and created a rarefied arena in which power, hierarchy, and tradition were continually negotiated. By embedding both rhetoric and ceremony within the geopolitical and cultural landscape of early sixteenth-century Europe, the book reveals how the curia sought to sustain the illusion of timeless authority even as new technologies, political norms, and religious dissent conspired to destabilize the papal role.