IN

The two Papal Souls and the Rise of an Early Modern State System

Autore: Heinz Schilling
In: I libri di Viella. 153
Abstract

On the basis of Paolo Prodi’s well-known interpretation of the Early Modern History of the Papacy as an expression of a two-souls-status of the papal prince, the paper analyses the role played by the popes within the Early Modern system of power states in three steps: 1) the fundamental challenge to the pope’s claims to secular power launched by Luther beginning in the 1520s; 2) the pope’s offensive reaction to Luther’s theological de-legitimization of his double sovereignty; 3) the consequences for the scope of papal action in international affairs, in which the real dimensions of the pontiffs’ political and diplomatic actions, let alone their military ones, declined dramatically from the middle of the Seventeenth century, notwithstanding the impressive re-emergence of the theory of the popes’ dual nature and the effective symbolic representation of their universal program.