Book of Pontiffs, The: Liber Pontificalis

by Liverpool University Press

Overview

No complete translation of the Latin text of the Book of Pontiffs—the Liber Pontificalis of the Roman Church—exists in any language, though the work is indispensable to students of late antiquity and the early middle ages; this book provides an english version of the first ninety papal biographies, from St Peter down to AD 715. These lives were first compiled in the sixth century and then regularly brought up to date. In them the reader will find the curious mixture of fact and legend which had come by the Ostrogothic period to be accepted as history by the Church in Rome, and also the subsequent records maintained through to the early eighth century while Rome was under Byzantine sovereignty. In no sense was the Liber Pontificalis an 'official' chronicle of these centuries, and there emerge throughout the interests and prejudices of compilers who belonged, it seems, to the lower levels of the papal administration.

For this new edition the translation has been carefully emended, and in places the underlying text has been reconsidered. Vignoli section numbers have been added, as in the translator's later volumes of the Liber Pontificalis (ttH 13 and 20). The translation has been reset to distinguish more clearly the status and value of additions to the standard Liber Pontificalis text by the use of different type. There have been revisions and extensions to both the glossary and the bibliography, and material has been added to Appendix 3.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781846314766
Publisher:	Liverpool University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2001
Series:	Translated Texts for Historians LUP , #6
Edition description:	3
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Raymond Davis read Greats at University College, Oxford, where he subsequently took a BPhil degree in the Later Roman empire and wrote his Doctoral thesis on donations to churches during the fourth and fifth centuries recorded in the Liber Pontificalis. He is now Honorary Senior Research Fellow of Queen's University, Belfast, and having taken early retirement, he lives and works in Oxford, continuing to specialise in the Later empire and to delve ever deeper into his favourite text.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Early Papal Chronicles
The Liber Pontificalis
The complier and his continuators
The value of the early lives
The tombs of St Peter and the early Roman bishops
The compiler's chronology
Other 'formulaic' material
The early popes as martyrs
The Symmachan apocrypha
The Liber Pontificalis and the liturgy
Church foundations and endowments
The Constantinian church foundations
Other fourth-century church foundations
Church foundations in the fifth century
Ostrogothic Rome
Rome in the Byzantine epoch
Composition and date of the Liber Pontificalis
Translating the Liber Pontificalis

Select Bibliography
Texts and commentaries

Modern works
General
Specific topics
Legendary and forged material
Liturgy and related matters
Topography and history
Church foundations

The Book of Pontiffs
Peter
Linus, Cletus, Clement
Aneclitus, Evaristus, Alexander
Xystus I, Telephorus, Hyginus
Pius, Anicetus, Soter, Eleuther
Vistor, Zephyrinus
Callistus, Urban, Pontian
Anteros, Fabian, Cornelius
Lucius, Stephen I
Xystus II, Dionysius
Felix I, Eutychian, Gaius
Mercellinus, Mercellus
Eusebius, Miltiades
Silvester
Mark, Julius
Liberius
Felix II, Damasus
Siricius
Anastasius I, Innocentius
Zosimus, Boniface I
Celestine
Xystus III
Leo I
Hilarus
Simplicius, Felix III
Gelasius p41
Anastasius II, Symmachus
Hormisdas
John I
Felix IV
Boniface II, John II
Agapitus
Silverius
Vigilius
Pelagius I
John III
Benedict I, Pelagius II
Gregory I, Sabinian, Boniface III
Boniface IV, Deusdedit, Boniface V
Honorius
Severinus
John IV
Theodore
Martin
Eugene I, Vitalian
Adeodatus
Donus
Agatho
Leo II p76
Benedict II
John V
Conon
Sergius
John VI
John VII
Sisinnius, Constantine

Appendix 1: The Librarian Catalouge
Appendix 2: The Laurentian Fragment
Appendix 3: Extracts from the epitomes of the first edition of the Liber Pontificalis

Glossary of Technical Terms in the Translation
Index of Churches Mentioned
Maps

Editorial Reviews

"... a valuable updated translation of a significant document of early papalhistory."—The Catholic Historical Review

"... makes available to a wider readership a central text for the history of Christian Rome ... [Davis's] book is a job well and succinctly done."—The Classical Review

From the Publisher

"Davis’s book is a job well and succinctly done." — The Classical Review

The Classical Review