The Papal Monarchy

Professor Morris has written a massively impressive book. It is difficult to know what to praise first: its comprehensive coverage, its masterful synthesis, its relentless good sense, or its felicitous prose ... a superb book that will for a very long time dominate teaching and thinking about the church in the high Middle Ages.

• I: The Papal Reform Movement and the Conflict with the Empire (c. 1046-1122): Christian Society in the Middle of the Eleventh Century; The Pattern of Social Change; Monastic Growth and Change; The Papal Reform (1046-1073); The Discord of Empire and Papacy (1073-1099); Greeks and Saracens; The Conflict Renewed: The Question of Investiture (1099-1122); II: The Growth of Christendom: The Roman Church and the Empire in the Twelfth Century; The Government of the Church in the Twelfth Century; The New Monastic Orders; The Christian Frontier; The Message of the Churches; Christianity and Social Ideas; Dissent; The Formulation of Faith; Property, Privilege, and Law; III: The Thirteenth Century: The Pontificate of Innocent III (1198-1216); Friars, Beguines, and the Action Against Heresy; Proclaiming the Faith; Reason and Hope in a Changing World; The Structure of Government; The Roman Church and the Lay Power in the Thirteenth Century; Conclusions.