Trade paperback edition includes a reader's guide.

In Between Popes, Inquisitors and Princes Jessica Dalton uses extensive, original archival research to provide the first history of a unique and controversial papal privilege that allowed the first Jesuits to absolve heretics in sixteenth-century Italy without involving bishops or inquisitors. Dalton uses the story of this remarkable privilege to reconsider two central aspects of Jesuit history: their role in the Counter-Reformation and their relationship with the papacy. She convincingly argues that, in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, the Jesuits were valued collaborators of popes, inquisitors and princes not for their obedience and subservience but rather because they worked with an autonomy and flexibility that allowed them to convert heretics where political barriers and popular hostility hindered inquisitors and prelates.

This study reinterprets the relationship between the medieval papacy and independent states, suggesting that kings and governments were able to increase their effective power through close relationships with the international papacy, making the papacy integral to the creation of centralized national states and kingdoms in Europe.

The papacy has often resembled a secular European monarchy more than a divinely inspired institution. Roman pontiffs bestowed great wealth on their families and forged strategic alliances with other powerful families to increase their power. Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia), for example, forced his daughter Lucrezia into a series of marriages for political reasons. When her marital alliance was no longer advantageous, as was the case in her second marriage, her husband was brutally murdered. Many papal families also intermarried in hopes of forming a hereditary papacy; at least two members of the Fieschi, Piccolomini, Della Rovere, and Medici families served as pope. Papal families since the early history of the church are fully covered in this comprehensive work. Genealogical charts graphically show the descendants of the popes, presenting in many cases the interrelationships between the papal families and their relationships with many of the leading families of Europe. Detailed histories examine the impact of the papacy on each pope's family and how each influenced the history of the church.

The eleventh-century papal reform transformed western European Church and society and permanently altered the relations of Church and State in the west. The reform was inaugurated by Pope Leo IX (1048-54) and given a controversial change of direction by Pope Gregory VII (1073-85). This book contains the earliest biographies of both popes, presented here for the first time in English translation with detailed commentaries. The biographers of Leo IX were inspired by his universally acknowledged sanctity, whereas the biographers of Gregory VII wrote to defend his reputation against the hostility generated by his reforming methods and his conflict with King Henry IV. Also included is a translation of Book to a Friend, written by Bishop Bonizo of Sutri soon after the death of Gregory VII, as well as an extract from the violently anti-Gregorian polemic of Bishop Benzo of Alba (1085) and the short biography of Leo IX composed in the papal curia in the 1090s by Bishop Bruno of Segni. These fascinating narrative sources bear witness to the startling impact of the papal reform and of the 'Investiture Contest', the conflict of empire and papacy that was one of its consequences. An essential collection of translated texts for students of medieval history.