Table of Contents:
  • A turning-point in the history of the factional system in the Sacred College: the power of pope and cardinals in the age of Alexander VI / Marco Pellegrini
  • Court and city in the ceremony of the possesso in the sixteenth century / Irene Fosi
  • 'Rome, workshop of all the practices of the world': from the letters of Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici to Cosimo I and Francesco I / Elena Fasano Guarini
  • The 'world's theatre': the court of Rome and politics in the first half of the seventeenth century / Mario Rosa
  • Factions in the Sacred College in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries / Maria Antonietta Visceglia
  • The Secretariat of State as the pope's special ministry / Antonio Menniti Ippolito
  • The cardinal-proctectors of the crowns in the Roman curia during the first half of the seventeenth century: the case of France / Olivier Poncet
  • The squadrone volante: 'independent' cardinals and European politics in the second half of the seventeenth century / Gianvittorio Signorotto
  • Roman avvisi: information and politics in the seventeenth century / Mario Infelise
  • Hegemony over the social scene and zealous popes (1676-1700) / Renata Ago.