"The Popes and the Baltic Crusades" examines the formulation of papal policy on the crusades and missions in the Baltic region in the central Middle Ages and analyses why and how the crusade concept was extended from the Holy Land to the Baltic region.
How did the papacy govern European religious life without a proper bureaucracy and the normal resources of a state? The Power of Protocol explores how the demand for papal services was met and examines the genesis and structure of papal documents from the Roman empire to after the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century.
This book condenses and updates the author's two-volume work, The Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues (Brill, 1987), surveying and clarifying the controversy which that work rekindled. It presents the internal and external evidence showing cogently that the famous book which is the sole source of knowledge about the life of St. Benedict was not written by St. Gregory the Great as is traditionally supposed, but by a later counterfeiter. It makes an essential contribution to the current reassessment of early Benedictine history. It also throws much new light on the life and times of St. Gregory, and confutes the age-old accusation that he was "the father of superstition" who by writing the Dialogues corrupted the faith and piety of medieval Christendom.