The Pope Encyclopedia: An A to Z of the Holy See

by Matthew Bunson

Containing more than 2,000 entries in handy alphabetical format, this provocative, illustrated book explores the whole lively and entertaining history of the Vatican and its rulers.

396 pages, Paperback

First published September 26, 1995

About the author

Matthew Bunson (born 1966) is an American author of more than fifty books, a historian, professor, editor, Roman Catholic theologian, Senior Contributor for EWTN, the Catholic multimedia network, Senior Fellow at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, and Faculty Chair at Catholic Distance University.
He is the author of the books Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire, The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, The Vampire Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, and Pope Francis, the first English-language biography of Pope Francis in 2013.
Bunson has a B.A. in history, an M.A. in Theology, a Master of Divinity, a Doctorate in Ministry and a Ph.D. in Church History from the Graduate Theological Foundation. He is on the faculty of the Catholic Distance University where he teaches Church History, including Roman Catholic-Islamic relations and Medieval and American Catholic History, and Catholic Social Teaching. He is a Senior Fellow of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.

Reviews

[Carl · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book covers the papacy in more than 2000 alphabetized entries, from "Academy of Sciences, Pontifical," to "Zuchetto." Special topics such as assassinated pontiffs and papal quotations are given full-page treatment, and the text is supplemented by black-and-white photographs and appendixes consisting of a chronological list of popes, the role of the Roman Curia, and descriptions of Vatican museums. Some entries read as if they were lifted from the Oxford Dictionary of Popes (LJ 9/15/86), while others are laced with inane comments, e.g., Gregory XIV brought "relief to the Romans from the chronic outbreaks of unrest, famine, and plague. He also passed a decree forbidding all betting on papal elections." There are factual inconsistencies; spelling and grammatical and logical errors; arbitrary entries. [LJ]

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible resource on the history of the Papacy. Everything one would want to know about any of the popes grace the pages of Bunson's book. Every Pope has a description that will allow the reader enough information to gain a basic understanding of his history. Not a greatly in-depth rendering of Papal history (it is an encyclopedia) but there is so much information on every page that I feel the book is indispensible reference to any religous/historical library.