The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The republic of Venice came next in antiquity; but the republic of Venice was modern when compared to the Papacy; and the republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigor.

So wrote Macaulay more than 150 years ago. The occasion for this memorable essay, published in the Edinburgh Review in 1840, was the appearance of an English version of Leopold von Ranke's The Ecclesiastical and Political History of the Popes of Rome During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Neither Ranke nor Macaulay entertained any intrinsic sympathy for the Church of Rome; both were Protestants, though it is probably safe to say that Ranke took his Lutheranism rather more seriously than Macaulay did the evangelical Anglicanism in which he had been reared. Macaulay at any rate tempered his appreciation of the papacy's "youthful vigor" with puzzlement: "The stronger our conviction that reason and scripture were decidedly on the side of Protestantism, the greater is the reluctant admiration with which we regard that system of tactics against which reason and scripture were employed in vain."

More to the point, perhaps, is the fact that both men, in quite different ways, stood at the cutting edge of the writing of history in their day, both represented the first generation of historians who consciously modeled their work on the inductive method of the physical sciences. Taking as their exemplar the physicist in his laboratory, this new breed of researchers into the past pulled away the straitjacket of moral uplift into which their discipline had been bound since Aristotle's time. They repudiated the traditional wisdom that history functioned as a barely respectable species of ethics, teaching virtue by examples. For Ranke, what mattered was to ransack the archives and to find the documentary sources that would make it possible to reconstruct the past "wie es eigentlich gewensen—as it had really happened"; for Macaulay, what mattered was a reconstruction of the past that would provide a literate and plausible explanation of the institutional realities of the present.

It cannot be surprising, therefore, that both of them, despite whatever confessional or intellectual distaste they may have felt, were fascinated by the papal phenomenon, by its antiquity, by its phoenixlike capacity to recover from calamity. Brought time and again to the brink of dissolution, most recently—indeed, within the living memory of them both—by the seemingly irresistible assault of Voltaire and Robespierre, of the Enlightenment and the Revolution, popery had emerged stronger than before. "It is not strange," Macaulay wrote, "that in the year 1799 even sagacious observers should have thought that, at length, the hour of the Church of Rome was come. … But the end was not yet. Again doomed

to death, the milk white hind was still fated not to die. Even before the funeral rites had been performed over the ashes of Pius VI, a great reaction had commenced, which, after the lapse of more than 40 years, appears still to be in progress." The "milk white hind" was, of course, Dryden's metaphor in The Hind and the Panther, which still rang with Catholic defiance of a Protestant culture: "In Pope and Council who denies the place, / Assisted from above with God's unfailing grace."

If by some wizardry Macaulay were suddenly to reappear a century and a half after he had paid his reluctant tribute to the staying power of papal Rome, he would have had no difficulty expanding his original induction. All sorts of individuals and movements since 1840 have signaled the Roman church's impending demise. Freemasons and Libertins, apostate intellectuals, radical traditionalists on the Right and liberation theologians on the Left, Nazis and Communists, blood-stained altars in the Mexico of the 1920s and the brutish cruelty of the gulag in the China of the 1990s—but none of them has succeeded any more than did Voltaire and Robespierre. "How many divisions has the pope?" Stalin asked contemptuously. But—to paraphrase Macaulay—the Soviet Union, like the Republic of Venice, is gone, and the papacy remains.

Why this should have happened involves an intriguing riddle, the solution to which may well depend on the eye of the beholder. Macaulay, for his part, had no doubts. "Tactics," he maintained, shrewd "human policy," a unique ability, for instance, to channel and control the passionate zeal of genius. "Place John Wesley at Rome [and] he is certain to be the first General of a new society devoted to the interests and honor of the Church. Place St. Teresa [of Avila] in London [and] her restless enthusiasm ferments into madness, not untinctured with craft." But this explanation, and any like it, sounds unpersuasive to a Catholic who wonders why "tactics" or "human policy" did not likewise save the Caesars, the Ming dynasty, the sultans of Constantinople, the British Empire, the first, second, third, and fourth French republics, and the Whig Party U.S.A. Indeed, any Christian who believes in Providence, however reserved he may be about this or that papal pretension, can hardly judge it absurd that Catholics should find in this, humanly speaking, incredible succession evidence of a moral miracle that betokens the continuation within the church of the Petrine office. "Simon Peter," Jesus said, "do you love me more than these? Then feed my sheep."

Debate on this point will go on, no doubt, till the Second Coming. Meanwhile, the grand sweep of papal history continues to fascinate inquirers, as it does Eamon Duffy and Richard P. McBrien.

In Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, Duffy, reader in Church History and fellow of Magdalen College, Cambridge, attempts, he tells us, "to provide an overview of the whole history of the papacy from the apostle Peter to Pope John Paul II." "This is a history of the popes," he adds sensibly; "it cannot claim to be the history of the popes. No one-volume survey of an institution so ancient and so embedded in human history and culture can be anything more than a sketch." Father McBrien, Crowley-O'Brien-Walter Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, shows himself similarly diffident in tendering to the reading public his Lives of the Popes: "I cannot imagine any individual historian today writing a truly complete and comprehensive history of each of the more than 260 pontificates spread over the course of almost 2000 years."

With such disclaimers in hand, what have these books to offer us? Take Duffy's first. Saints and Sinners, it should be noted, is linked to a six-part television series shown in Britain, Australia, and the United States, and the book itself, with its abundance of plates and photographs, most of them in color, furnishes a marvelous feast for the eye. In the midst of this visual elegance, Duffy carries his narrative forward through six chapters, each divided into four sections, presumably an arrangement conforming to the demands of the television series.

Appended are a chronological list of popes, a glossary of terms, a bibliographical essay, and a few pro forma end notes. Though there is nothing original in Duffy's text, it exhibits adequate acquaintance with the usual secondary sources. The prose reads smoothly for the most part, and surely no one can blame Duffy for emphasizing what he had chosen to emphasize. All in all, this is a useful volume, and certainly one that would grace any coffee table.

There are, however, problems, some of them related to careless editing. Thus it is disconcerting to find a ludicrous numerical error in the opening sentence of the preface to Saints and Sinners—the very first sentence in the book. But more fundamental difficulties arise naturally from the genre itself. To write a survey of this kind requires the author to deal with subjects outside his demonstrated field of expertise—in Duffy's case, the Reformation in England—and yet to speak of them with enough confidence to earn the reader's trust. There is a fine line here between modesty and presumption, and Duffy does not always walk it nimbly. He would have done better had he displayed more reserve about his own capacity to discern the elements of thorny issues like the spread of Monophysitism (p. 41) or the character of Americanism (241-42) or the philosophical component of what Pius X condemned as "Modernism" (249-51).

Small errors of fact in a study of this scope—for instance, the date of Constantine's death (p. 23), the identity of the tribe that sacked Rome in 410 (p. 36), the means by which Italy paid compensation to the Holy See in 1929 (p. 258)—are probably inevitable. Not so, however, the gossipy and condescending treatment of Pius XII's last days (p. 268) or the witless description of Sen. Joseph McCarthy as defender of a "right-wing" Catholicism (p. 266). Not so either the barrage of cliches that resounds especially through Duffy's early chapters: "If the fourth century papacy had not existed, it would have had to be invented" (p. 27); "For [Pope] Vigilius, however, chickens now began to come home to roost" (p. 43); "The relationship with Charlemagne was not all roses" (p. 73); "Unable to beat them, [Pope] Hadrian joined them" (p. 109). Perhaps these trite sayings as well as the frequent use of hyperbolic expressions—"nightmare complexities of eastern theological debates" (p. 25), "volcanic reaction" to a heretical proposition (p. 42), the "wildly extravagant" Avignon popes (p. 125)—are best explained by the connection of Saints and Sinners to its televised accompaniment. However that may be, Duffy, though a relatively young man, has already acquired the veteran academic's skill in composing a bibliographical essay that suggests an almost preternatural knowledge of the sources: If one wants to know the "best account of Constantine's religious beliefs," "the best treatment of the 'Spirituali' " of the sixteenth century, or the "best biography of Pius VI," one need only consult Saints and Sinners, pp. 308, 313, and 314.

Father McBrien, by contrast, virtually disdains critical bibliography or other conventional scholarly apparatus. His "Select Bibliography" takes up but three pages (and includes a mistitle for Pastor's celebrated History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages), but in his own way he intimates that he, no less than Duffy, has pretty well mastered the "voluminous" literature. "The listing of titles," McBrien says, "is [meant] to provide a representative sample of scholarly, encyclopedic, and popular works" (p. 489). Whether it does so may be open to question, but more important is an assertion on the same page that expresses the raison d'utre for Lives of the Popes: "If the author of this book could recommend another comprehensive, one-volume, historical, theological, canonical, and pastoral treatment of the popes and the papacy geared to the non-specialist reader, he would do so. But that is precisely the gap this book is intended to fill."

McBrien's book is not a history, like Duffy's—not, that is, a narrative concerned with context and transition. Lives of the Popes is rather a kind of catalogue or Who Was Who, supplemented by various lists, tables, and expanded explanations. Some of these latter are quite helpful, like the chronological rosters of popes and antipopes (pp. 443-50 and 466 respectively), a register of "key papal encyclicals" (458-65), and a description of the ways popes have been chosen over the centuries (403-16). Another appendix, "Rating the Popes" (429-42), can only be called—to put the kindest word on it—idiosyncratic. McBrien's own minimalist views about the papacy are clearly reflected in this section. Of the 262 pontiffs, he finds only two who were "outstanding": John XXIII (d. 1963) and Gregory I (d. 604). He adds another 12 who were "good or above average." The "worst of the worst"—an interestingly provocative phrase—number 24. It is intriguing that McBrien includes in this rogues gallery Gregory XVI (d. 1846), who was pope at the time Macaulay thought the Roman church was "full of life and youthful vigor."

The bulk of Father McBrien's book (367 pp.), however, is composed of sketches of the individual popes, and here there arises an extremely troubling problem. In his preface (p. 2), Father McBrien concedes that he has "relied on Kelly throughout"—the reference is to J. N. D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (Oxford University Press, 1986; 347 pp.). "But this book," asserts McBrien, referring to his own, "differs from Kelly's in that it offers more than summaries of each pope's life and pontificate." This claim is legitimate only in the sense that the "more on" offer is McBrien's sometimes fatuous, usually debatable, and almost always unhistorical commentary. As far as quantity of information about the popes is concerned, Canon Kelly wins hands down. Moreover, the information McBrien does provide echoes almost to the word what Kelly published 12 years ago. In dealing with this admittedly delicate matter, only a comparison of texts will suffice.

"Profiting by the peaceful conditions ensured by Charlemagne, [Pope] Hadrian not only built, restored, or beautified an extraordinary number of Roman churches, but renewed the city's walls, strengthened the embankments of the Tiber, and completely reconstructed four great aqueducts" (Kelly, p. 97); "In Rome, the pope took advantage of the peaceful conditions made possible by Charlemagne and built and restored many churches, strengthened the walls of the city and the embankments of the Tiber River … and completely reconstructed four great aqueducts" (McBrien, p. 126). "Although a harsh and divisive pontiff, [Pope Leo III] was included in the catalogue of saints in 1673 because of the presumed miracle of the restoration of his eyes and tongue" (Kelly, p. 99); "In spite of his severe, divisive, and morally dubious pontificate, [Leo III] was included in a catalogue of saints in 1673, because of the presumed 'miracle' of the restoration of his eyes and tongue" (McBrien, p. 131). "[Pope Martin V] showed unusual moderation towards the Jews, denouncing (1422 and 1429) violent anti-Jewish preaching and forbidding compulsory baptism of Jewish children under twelve. … In Rome he carried out a vast program of reconstruction of ruined churches and public building" (Kelly, p. 240); "[Martin V] displayed unusual sensitivity toward Jews. He denounced anti-Jewish preaching and forbade the compulsory baptism of Jewish children under the age of 12. In Rome he organized a vast program of reconstruction of ruined churches and public buildings" (McBrien, p. 255).

This sample could be replicated many times over. Which raises the question: why should Father McBrien's account be preferred to Canon Kelly's, when the former has clearly embraced the material in the latter—in a host of instances almost word-for-word—and when the latter has conscientiously identified its sources for each entry while the former has not? McBrien's answer (p. 2) is that Canon Kelly, an Anglican, "may have been under greater constraint than a tenured Roman Catholic theologian, lest he [Kelly] cross the line of ecumenical propriety by raising awkward questions regarding papal claims or the implications of actions taken by individual popes."

One may doubt that the throne of Peter, after nearly 2,000 years, will tremble at the prospect of "awkward questions," even when raised by so formidable an authority as "a tenured Roman Catholic theologian." One may wonder too at this theologian's implicit charge that Kelly, a distinguished historian, has consciously repressed information found in his sources for the sake of "propriety." This is chutzpah at its least endearing. In short, if a reader wants to know what opinions Father McBrien holds about the papacy in 1998, this is the book for him; but if a reader wants to know about the lives of the popes, he should look elsewhere.

Macaulay concluded his colorful tribute to the longevity of the Roman church with an arresting image: "She may still exist in undiminished vigor when some traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." One hundred fifty years later, vibrant London belies this bit of whimsy, and Saint Paul's Cathedral still stands in all the splendor Christopher Wren gave it. But the London Bridge of Macaulay's day has indeed fallen down and has been erected again as a tourist attraction under the shadow of the Mohave Mountains, in far-western Arizona. Perhaps the whimsy contained a splinter of discernment after all.

Marvin R. O'Connell is professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame. He is author most recently of Blaise Pascal: Reasons of the Heart (Eerdmans)

Copyright © 1998 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture Magazine. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or e-mail bceditor@BooksAndCulture.com.