Table of Contents

Introduction
1: 'The Clouds roar': Panvinio's Early Career
2: Between Church and Empire: Panvinio's Final Decade
3: Panvinio's History of Papal Elections
4: Church History, Censorship, and Confessionalization
Epilogue
Appendix
Bibliography

About the Author

Dr Stefan Bauer (PhD, Warburg Institute) is a Lecturer in Early Modern History at King's College London. He is an intellectual and cultural historian of early modern Europe; his research interests cover humanism, religious polemic, church history and censorship. In 2021, he was elected to the Council of the Royal Historical Society. He previously held academic positions at the Universities of Warwick and York, the German Historical Institute in Rome and the
Italian-German Historical Institute in Trent.

His previous publications include A Renaissance Reclaimed: Jacob Burckhardt's 'Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy' Reconsidered (OUP for the British Academy, 2022) and The Censorship and Fortuna of Platina's 'Lives of the Popes' in the Sixteenth Century (Brepols, 2007).

Reviews

This important and fascinating book ... is essential reading for those interested in the sixteenth-century Catholic Church as well as those interested in the evolution of historical scholarship.
*Elizabeth McCahill, University of Massachusetts, Boston, Journal of Modern History*

Bauer provides a comprehensive and enlightening examination of Panvinio's labors.
*Thomas M. Izbicki, Rutgers University, American Historical Review*

this excellent study ... is likely to remain the definitive work on Panvinio for years to come.
*Katherine Van Liere, Calvin University, Sixteenth Century Journal*

a very well researched, important, and constantly interesting book which adds greatly to our knowledge of sixteenth-century Rome. It is, in many respects, a model of what the history of scholarship should be.
*Jean-Louis Quantin, École pratique des Hautes Études, Erudition and the Republic of Letters*

This is an exemplary monograph on an individual scholar
*Peter Burke, University of Cambridge, English Historical Review*

the book offers in compact form valuable insight into an important part of the evolution of European historiography. The book will be especially valuable to early modern European and Church historians, but is accessible to non-specialists as well.
*David Kertzer, Brown University, Journal of Interdisciplinary History*

It is mandatory reading for anyone interested in historical scholarship in sixteenth-century Italy.
*Jetze Touber, History of Humanities*

a much needed contribution on the roots of a tradition of studies, in order to understand also the standing and the status of church history and papal history today.
*Massimo Faggioli, Theologische Revue*

...meticulously researched book...
*Stefania Tutino, Church History*

Stefan Bauer's The Invention of Papal History is an admirably readable and fascinating portrait, not only of its principal subject, Panvinio, but also of the culture of late Renaissance humanism at a time of profound instability in Europe. It is a significant achievement by this author, who, one hopes, has a great deal more such scholarship ahead of him...
*Daniel Woolf, Queen's University, Marginalia Los Angeles Review of Books*

Stefan Bauer's study of Onofrio Panvinio's complex contribution and intellectual legacy should be praised for its clarity, in-depth research and useful reflection on the complicated past.
*Jennifer Mara DeSilva, Ball State University, LSE Review of Books*

The erudition diffused across Bauer's book is impressive and the arguments are delivered with convincing elegance... a joy to read.
*Fabien Montcher, Saint Louis University, Journal of Jesuit Studies*

...insightful and enlightening... should inform all future investigations into the historiography, and especially the religious historiography, of this period
*William Stenhouse, Yeshiva University, Revista de historiografía*

The Invention of Papal History fulfills its objectives. It presents a biography that supersedes earlier lives of Panvinio, elucidates his historical method, and demonstrates how this method differed from those of earlier and later Catholic histories ... it is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of a period of historiography
*Sam Kennerley, Reformation*

The Invention of Papal History is an impressive work. Stefan Bauer has scoured the European libraries and archives with extraordinary competenceand thoroughness. His work ranges far beyond the figure of Panvinio, dealing with the confessional pressures to which historians were subjected, the various aspects of patronage, the ins and outs of censorship, as well as the far broader matter of Catholic historiography in the early modern period. It will remain a major contribution.
*Alastair Hamilton, The Warburg Institute, Church History and Religious Culture*

this important book helps us to better see papal history-writing not simply as polemical or as a chronicle of events, but as a dynamic intellectual field with its own critical methods.
*Robert John Clines, Western Carolina University, Renaissance Studies*

This thoughtful and judicious monograph is to be welcomed for the considerable light it sheds on confessionalisation of historiography and the cultural politics of papal Rome.
*Peter Marshall, University of Warwick, History Today*

Stefan Bauer has written an outstanding study of one of the most important Catholic historians in early modern Europe...This exceptional new book promises to do much to shape future work on history writing in early modern Europe.
*Crawford Gribben, Queen's University Belfast, New Books Network*