In 1420, after more than one hundred years of the Avignon Exile and the Western Schism, the papal court returned to Rome, which had become depopulated, dangerous, and impoverished in the papacy's absence. Reviving the Eternal City examines the culture of Rome and the papal court during the first half of the fifteenth century, a crucial transitional period before the city's rebirth. As Elizabeth McCahill explains, during these decades Rome and the Curia were caught between conflicting realities--between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, between conciliarism and papalism, between an image of Rome as a restored republic and a dream of the city as a papal capital.

Through the testimony of humanists' rhetorical texts and surviving archival materials, McCahill reconstructs the niche that scholars carved for themselves as they penned vivid descriptions of Rome and offered remedies for contemporary social, economic, religious, and political problems. In addition to analyzing the humanists' intellectual and professional program, McCahill investigates the different agendas that popes Martin V (1417-1431) and Eugenius IV (1431-1447) and their cardinals had for the post-Schism pontificate. Reviving the Eternal City illuminates an urban environment in transition and explores the ways in which curialists collaborated and competed to develop Rome's ancient legacy into a potent cultural myth.

About the Author
Elizabeth McCahill is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Reviews
In this masterful, original, and fluidly-written study of the intellectual and cultural milieu of the early Roman Renaissance, Elizabeth McCahill provides a rich and nuanced context for some of the most important humanist and artistic projects of the age. Readers of this book cannot help but come away with a richer and deeper appreciation of this foundational but surprisingly neglected era in early modern history. -- Brian Curran, Pennsylvania State University
Meticulous and riveting, Reviving the Eternal City offers a multifaceted history of the Roman Curia under Martin V and Eugenius IV. Through incisive readings of sources as diverse as a vintner's diary, the letters of established (and struggling) humanists, papal bulls and Filarete's bronze doors, McCahill proves that Rome's renewal began long before the first 'Renaissance' pope donned the tiara. -- Sarah Ross, Boston College
Using unknown and little-studied sources, Elizabeth McCahill argues that Rome in the first half of the fifteenth century represented a site of intense study, contemporary cultural fascination, and, above all, interpretation. She offers readers access to worlds often hidden, from backstairs intrigue at the papal court to the desks of solitary scholars. This book is a fine example of socially-informed intellectual history, written with exemplary clarity and incisive intelligence. -- Christopher Celenza, Johns Hopkins University


Awards
Nominated for Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Book Prize 2015 and Herbert Baxter Adams Prize 2014 and Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize 2014.



Book Information
ISBN 9780674724532
Author Elizabeth McCahill
Format Hardback
Page Count 302
Imprint Harvard University Press
Publisher Harvard University Press