Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 282.0922
EAN: 9780300115970
ISBN: 0300115970
Label: Yale University Press
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 496
Publication Date: 2006-08-09
Publisher: Yale University Press
Studio: Yale University Press

Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, by Eamon Duffy, is a wonder of comprehensive compression--a sumptuously illustrated, one-volume history of one of the most influential human institutions in world history. Duffy's lively portraits of the 261 scholars, scoundrels, and spiritual guides who have led the Roman Catholic Church are embedded in six historical essays that proceed chronologically from St. Peter to John Paul II. Duffy, a reader in church history and fellow at Cambridge, writes in the mannered yet affable tone of an avuncular English don. His narrative and arguments convey his own Catholic conviction that "the story of the popes is a crucial dimension of the providential care of God for humankind throughout history." Yet he also offers candid assessments of papal moral failings, including spectacular failures such as the orchestration of the Spanish Inquisition and the willed ignorance of Germany's Third Reich. Duffy's glossary of theological terms ensures that no secular reader will be lost in Christian arcana, and his excellent bibliographical essay will help motivated students zero in on the best resources for learning more about any period of Catholic history. For readers primarily concerned with current events, his analysis of John Paul II's papacy is extraordinarily useful and refreshingly free of cant. "To many people Pope John Paul seems a backward-looking figure, a man attempting to force a champagne cork back into the bottle," Duffy writes. "To others, he points the way towards a recovery of balance, a restoration of order and true faith in the flux of time. Only time, and the next conclave, will reveal which of these directions in their long walk through history the heirs of St. Peter will take." --Michael Joseph Gross

Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent Reread
Comment: I have read this book before and it is worth rereading. You get an excellent view of the ups and downs of the papacy for the last 2000 years.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: not sure
Comment: Not sure I liked this as much as I 'should have,' given the reviews, many by people I admire. The appendices are highly useful, but at under 400 pages the text could have easily been twice as long. The book focuses so intently on the papacy that too much of the wider world remains off stage. Persons of whom I have read, like Hildebrand or Urban II, this didn't add anything, and persons with whom I was unfamiliar, remain just names. The book doesn't really slow down and attempt to bring a pope to life until Pius IX (1846), and the last fourth of the text is the best. If, however, you are most interested in the middle ages, either bring a solid grasp of general history, or consider this a point of departure for further study.

The author's view here is fairly steely-eyed, and I wonder if he hasn't set the bar a bit high. At the end I am left wondering just what in the author's mind would constitute a 'good' pope. Paul VI, executor of Vatican II, appears to come close, affirming Duffy's 'liberal' credentials. To be fair, the author resists any urge to pile on Alexander VI and the renaissance popes, but then, the first 3/4 of the book concerns the papacy, not the popes. I found the section on John Paul II to be overly negative / contrarian / skeptical (take your pick). Neutral on the renaissance popes, Duffy is openly rooting for modernism here. It's always amusing when commentators seem surprised that the pope really is catholic.

For all this, the book is eminently readable, and some sections kept me up late into the night. It left me wanting more, just not all in a good way.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: saints and sinners:a history of the popes
Comment: an extensive overview of the Popes,excellent reading,in-depth and still enjoy the book and will always use it for future references.i highly recommend this reading to anyone who wants to read about the Holy fathers.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: An Informative Window on the Origins of Modern Christianity
Comment: Mr. Duffy does a fine and scholarly job of throwing light on the early days and evolution of Christianity following the deaths of the Apostles.

Though a declared Catholic himself, the author does not shirk his scholarly duty or flinch in portraying the corrupt and sordid turmoil which traditional, institutional Christianity asks us to believe was the historical conduit - now two thousand years long - through which the truth about Jesus Christ and his teachings has been conveyed to the modern world.

With the historical record before us in such credible scholarly works as Mr. Duffy's, who but a total fool could believe for a minute that what we have received from this debauched and corrupt tradition is a trustworthy and dependable rendering of the religion of Jesus Christ?

What reasonable person could believe that any of the outrageous historical shenanigans depicted in Mr. Duffy's book were authorized, empowered and approved by the God of either the Old or New Testatment, or would have been looked upon with favor by the humble Man of Nazarath himself?

By what distortion or corruption of logic and common sense could a person living today be asked to believe that, having traveled long and only lately emerged - if indeed it has emerged - from the very sewer of history, this tradition does, in its many modern institutional varieties and variations, Catholic, Protestant and Othodox, somehow accurately and thoroughly convey to us the mind and will of God and the "good news" of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Not likely, friends.

Ron Jones
Sandy, Utah

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Customer Rating:
Summary: very good
Comment: i am pleased with this purchase. i just wish that more books of this nature were available in larger print. overall i am very pleased

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