Download Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy AudioBook Free
Together with the papacy embattled in recent years, it is essential to really have the perspective of 1 of the world's most attained historians. In Total Monarchs, John Julius Norwich catches nearly 2,000 many years of motivation and devotion, intrigue, and scandal. The men (and perhaps one girl) who have held this position of infallible power over hundreds of thousands have ranged from heroes to rogues, admirably smart to utterly decadent. Norwich, who recognized two popes and had private audiences with two others, recounts in riveting aspect the histories of the most significant popes and what they intended politically, culturally, and socially to Rome and the world. He reveals such brave popes as Innocent I, who in the fifth hundred years efficiently negotiated with Alaric the Goth, an invader civil specialists could not defeat, and Leo I, who 2 decades later tamed (as well as perhaps paid) Atilla the Hun. Here, too, are the scandalous characters: Pope Joan, the mythic girl said (without the substantiation) to obtain been elected in 855, and the infamous "pornocracy", the five libertines who were descendants or buffs of Marozia, debauched princess of 1 of Rome's most effective families. Total Monarchs brilliantly portrays such reformers as Pope Paul III, "the best pontiff of the sixteenth hundred years", who reinterpreted the Church's coaching and self-discipline, and John XXIII, who in five brief years, starting in 1958, "opened up the church to the the twentieth hundred years", instituting reforms that led to Vatican II. Norwich brings the storyplot for this day with Benedict XVI, who is coping with a worldwide priest sex scandal. Epic and powerful, Total Monarchs is the amazing story of some of history's most revered and reviled characters, men who still cast light and shadows on the Vatican and the world today.
