From Peter to John Paul II

Abstract

Saints s Sinners: A History of Popes. By Eamon Duffy. (New Haven: Yale University Press.1997. Pp. ix, 326. $37.50 clothbound; $ 18.95 paperback.) The Papacy. By Paul Johnson. Edited by Michael Walsh. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.1997. Pp. 224.) Duffy takes advantage of single-authorship to lend his narrative a boldness of conception and argument which volumes such as that edited by Michael Walsh simply cannot aspire to (notwithstanding distinguished contributions by R. A. Markus and Sheridan Gilley). With only a single volume at his disposition and where two hundred-plus (imaginatively chosen) illustrations reduce space available to him even more, Duffy has pulled off nothing less than a miracle of concision. This has been achieved without sacrificing anything of author's well-known talent for narrative, which is matched by a rare capacity (shared with Peter Brown) to put intangible into words, together with an unerring eye for telling detail. Moreover, Duffy is acutely aware of hubris implicit in his solo enterprise and insists right from start that there cannot be a single story line since the papacy has been at centre of too many human stories and enterprises (p. ix). Nevertheless, in reality, his approach would appear to be substantially indebted to a single idea: Hans Kung's belief that unity of Church must be understood not institutionally but theologically and that, indeed, unity of Church presupposes a multiplicity of churches. From this derives overarching argument of his book: that by historicizing Papacy and its origins one surely rules any absolutist understanding of nature of papal authority. These words are actually taken not from book under review but from Duffy's 1998 Tablet Open Day Lecture,The papacy and burden of history (printed in an abridged form in Tablet of July 4, 1998, pp. 871-873; quotation at p. 872), reading of which is essential for those who wish to understand rhyme of Duffy's reason. This brings him to conclude that the papacy is way things have worked out (p. 873); a conclusion which goes beyond historian's duty to rehabilitate contingent by questioning Divine institution of Papcy itself and to posit in its place a foundation myth (p. 871). For in his book he views emergence of a single bishop of Rome as not predating mid-second century and as being, above all, a response to pressure of heresy and seething diversity of multicultural city of Rome. In particular, Christian organization reflected, in its decentralized authority, Jewish community of which it had grown (p.6). It would appear from correspondence in Tablet provoked by his lecture, however, that Duffy has now modified his argument in crucial respects. (See in particular his letter in Tablet of October 24,1998, p.1397, where he concedes,So it seems likely that of Roman presbyters had special responsibility for relations with other Churches of [Roman] Empire.) The question at issue here is not Duffy's masterly evocation of ritual and doctrinal confusion which characterized Early Christian Rome, but rather whether there is anything in historical fact which negates faith enshrined in sixfoot high rendition of Matthew 16:18-19 that encircles dome of St Peter's and with which Duffy opens his first chapter: Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam et tibi dabo claves regni caelorum. Duffy thus predictably devotes considerable attention to how papacy met challenge of constructing continuity with its apostolic origins. A particularly striking and concrete early example of this is crypt of popes (begun ca. 230 AD..) in Catacombs of S. Callisto, situated off Appian Way just outside city walls: a three-dimensional counterpart to episcopal succession list drawn up in late-second century by Irenaeus of Lyon. …