Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.
Title: Absolute Monarchs
Subtitle: A History of the Papacy
Author: John Julius Norwich
Narrator: Michael Page
Format: Unabridged
Length: 19 hrs
Language: English
Release date: 09-14-11
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 207 votes
Genres: History, World
Publisher's Summary:
With the papacy embattled in recent years, it is essential to have the perspective of one of the world's most accomplished historians. In Absolute Monarchs, John Julius Norwich captures nearly 2,000 years of inspiration and devotion, intrigue, and scandal. The men (and maybe one woman) who have held this position of infallible power over millions have ranged from heroes to rogues, admirably wise to utterly decadent.
Norwich, who knew two popes and had private audiences with two others, recounts in riveting detail the histories of the most significant popes and what they meant politically, culturally, and socially to Rome and to the world. He presents such brave popes as Innocent I, who in the fifth century successfully negotiated with Alaric the Goth, an invader civil authorities could not defeat, and Leo I, who two decades later tamed (and perhaps paid off) Atilla the Hun.
Here, too, are the scandalous figures: Pope Joan, the mythic woman said (without any substantiation) to have been elected in 855, and the infamous "pornocracy", the five libertines who were descendants or lovers of Marozia, debauched daughter of one of Rome's most powerful families.
Absolute Monarchs brilliantly portrays such reformers as Pope Paul III, "the greatest pontiff of the sixteenth century", who reinterpreted the Church's teaching and discipline, and John XXIII, who in five short years, starting in 1958, "opened the church to the the twentieth century", instituting reforms that led to Vatican II. Norwich brings the story to the present day with Benedict XVI, who is coping with a global priest sex scandal.
Epic and compelling, Absolute Monarchs is the astonishing story of some of history's most revered and reviled figures, men who still cast light and shadows on the Vatican and the world today.
Critic Reviews:
"Norwich doesn't skirt controversies, ancient and present, in this broad, clear-eyed assessment." (Kirkus)
Members Reviews:
A relentless succession of very old men
This must have been a hard book to write, and it's therefore something of a hard book to review. There are a lot of Popes, over a long time, and this is not ultimately that long of a book. Something had to be sacrificed, and I supposed the author should get credit for not sacrificing any of the Popes. They are all here, and they all have their moment. They all get a biography and a judgement of their reign, even if it only lasts a few lines. Choices are then made about which Popes are the more important and/or interesting Popes, and these Popes get a little more attention. How were these greater Popes chosen? Not difficult, as they are the same Popes every historian considers important and/or interesting. The author makes no attempt to be neutral, as he is not a Catholic and is unapologetically modern in his outlook, but the judgments never take over. If a Pope kept mistresses, built palaces for each of his twenty nephews, started a few wars, and killed some Jews, the author goes ahead and calls that a "bad Pope" and moves on, although such a Pope might get some grudging respect for building a fine library or reorganizing some bureaucracy. If a Pope does warrant a lot of contextual history, that history is almost invariably an account of the wars in which they were involved. And that is the book, pretty much: Names, dates, wars, and the judgments of an elderly British aristocrat.
