Author: John Miley

Publisher: Rarebooksclub.com

Published: 2012-05

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 9781458921918

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACE. In the volumes now placed before the public, the reader will find the attempt for the first time made to give a history of the Papal States, ?to do that which hitherto has been left altogether undone. Such is the author's apology?his sole, and he hopes, it may be regarded as his sufficient apology, for the three volumes now issued from the press. Histories of the Roman Catholic Church, there are, of all sorts, in every dialect and in every form; and though the same cannot be said of the History of the Popes, (there being, as yet, no work that properly deserves that name), nevertheless, the series of Papal biography may be regarded as complete, and works of rare merit, produced within the present century to illustrate the lives and times of those amongst the Pontiffs who make the greatest figure in history, have, on that subject, also, left but comparatively little to be desired. A history, however, of that region of Central Italy, ?of that realm over which the Popes have swayed the sceptre for more than a thousand years, one may search for in vain. In no language, dead or living, in no shape, ? whether of a consecutive narrative or as a digest of materials, ?under no title, is any such work to be met with. From the importanceand rare attractions of thesub- XI PREFACE. ject, it may well be matter of surprise, it is true, that such a theme should have been so long overlooked or so utterly neglected; nevertheless, let the question be put to the most eminent Bibliopolists of London, Paris, Vienna, Rome, ?their answer will be?there is no such book as a History of the Papal States. Make the round of the great libraries, from the British Museum to the Vatican, the answer will be still the same. It is not, therefore, as an improvement on any pre-existing work that