About the book: 2014 / Sir John Julius Norwich is one of the most famous British historians, a specialist in the Italian Middle Ages and the Renaissance, author of the bestsellers "History of Byzantium" and "History of Venice" Republic."More than two hundred and eighty people have sat on the Holy See from the time of St. Peter to the present day. Among them were saints and murderers, ascetics and libertines, unprincipled intriguers and great politicians, obscurantists and free-thinking intellectuals. John Julius Norwich in his brilliant study does not ignore either the periods of the rise of the papacy or the periods of its fall and allows us to see the complete picture of the history of the pontificate, the existence of which has lasted for almost two thousand years.