Keepers of the keys of heaven - Roger Collins

According to Pope Innocent III, 'Nothing which happens in the world should escape the notice of the supreme pontiff', and for two millennia little has. Since its emergence from the ruins of the Roman Empire, the Papacy has represented the most extraordinary continuation of earthly power from the decline of the Roman empire to the collapse of Communism in the late twentieth century and beyond.

The Papacy has faced many crises - dangers from within and assaults from without. For many centuries it only survived by timely alliances and clandestine pacts with Europe's kings and princes. But it did survive - to organize the Crusades and the Counter-Reformation and send papal missions and missionaries throughout the world. After 1870 it lost the Papal States and became a spiritual institution rather than a temporal power.

This single-volume history of the Papacy is a rare achievement. The narrative describes the character and policies of individual popes, the development of the Curia, the administration of the Papal States, issues of theology and canon law, the papacy's relationship with the city of Rome, the long tradition of artistic patronage, and much more.

Roger Collins has mastered the vast literature on papal history and used the riches of the Vatican Library in Rome, as well as accounts by such outsiders as ambassadors and spies, to chronicle two thousand years of ambition, scandal, persecution, faith and glory. This is a vivid and revealing history of one of the most enduring and influential or human institutions.