Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy

by Roger Collins

Basic Books. 566 p $35

This is a well-researched, thorough and eminently readable account of the history of an institution that has survived for nearly two thousand years worthy to stand along with Eamon Duffy’s critically acclaimed history of the papacy, Saints and Sinners. Roger Collins, a distinguished religion scholar, is Honorary Fellow at Edinburgh University, is on the advisory board of The Journal of International History and author of several other books.

As the author notes in his preface, “the papacy’s significance in modern times has been enormous,” but that was not always the case. “Its story is a long and complicated one, full of incident, ideas and the interplay of personalities.” General readers and students of history will welcome this sweeping history as an essential resource and an informative chronicle of two millennia of “ambition, scandal, persecution, and glory.” In a forthcoming review of the book for America, Msgr. Thomas J. Shelley hails Keepers as a “surefooted précis of papal history.”

This article appears in March 23 2009.