1st Edition
Popes and Princes 1417–1517 Politics and Polity in the Late Medieval Church
Part 1: Theories of Authority in the Fifteenth Century 1. Papal and Conciliar Authority 2. Nationality and Sovereignty Part 2: The Administrative and Political Problems of the Papacy 3. The College of Cardinals 4. The Financial Problems of the Papacy 5. The Administration of the Church 6. The Political Problems of the Papacy Part 3: Secular Rulers and the Administration of the Church 7. Spheres of Conflict, I: Benefices and Provisions 8. Spheres of Conflict, II: Taxation 9. Spheres of Conflict, III: Jurisdiction 10. The Working of the System.
Biography
John A. F. Thomson (1934 – 2004) was born in Edinburgh, and educated at the University of Edinburgh (MA Hons.) and Balliol College, Oxford (DPhil). In1960, he was appointed Lecturer at the University of Glasgow, where he became Professor of Mediaeval History in 1994. His principal area of research was fifteenth-century British and European history, especially church history, which formed the subject matter of four of his five monographs: The Later Lollards (1965), Popes and Princes (1980), The Early Tudor Church and Society 1485-1529 (1993), and The Western Church in the Middle Ages (1998). His third monograph, The Transformation of Medieval England 1370-1529 (1983), the first volume of the textbook series Foundations of Modern Britain, provides a more general purview of late-medieval England. He also edited Towns and Townspeople in the Fifteenth Century (1988), a set of proceedings from the annual Fifteenth Century Conference, which he had organised in Glasgow in 1986. A sixth monograph, The Genesis of Modern Europe, that examined the contribution made by northern European countries to the Renaissance, was left incomplete at his death. In 2013, a volume of reprints of his scholarly articles from 1963 to 2001 was published as Piety and Politics in Britain, 14th – 15th Centuries: The Essays of John A. F. Thomson, edited by Professor Graeme Small.
Original Review of Popes and Princes:
‘Here is the first complete mapping of papal political history…with a wealth of revealing detail…’ Daniel Williman, Speculum Vol 57, No. 1 (1982).
