This chapter explores Percy Shelley’s lifelong engagement with ‘empire’ by focusing on some of his major poems. His fascination with the ruins of empires, both ancient and modern, leads to a thorough critical examination of imperial violence. In Prometheus Unbound, Shelley redefines ‘empire’ as self-government that limits imperial dominance, which has far-reaching and international repercussions, as seen in the Gandhians’ resistance against British rule. Shelley goes on to examine the nature of empire in his final unfinished poem, ‘The Triumph of Life’, in which a triumphal chariot, the relentless force of empire originating from ‘Imperial Rome’, continues the cycle of subjugation throughout history. Against this chariot, Shelley places a resisting poet/narrator, who is asked, along with the readers of contemporary and future generations, to undertake the difficult task of envisioning a future unbound by imperial chains after the collapse of ‘empire’.

Archdeacon Hildebrand, who became Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073–85), is associated with a radical and swift change in the Roman Church. The vision of a Christendom jointly administered by emperor and clergy, the famous model advanced by Pope Gelasius II (r. 492–96), was transformed into a new order where regnum and sacerdotium occupied separate stacked spheres, with the spiritual claiming superiority. Unlike tenth-century reform movements, the later eleventh-century Roman reforms centered on the papacy. Popes assembled a curia featuring more professional officials, legates, councils, and other technologies of power. The reformed Church cultivated trained lawyers and sympathetic lay leaders. It has been credited with launching a legal “big bang,” the invention of propaganda, the creation of a semi-institutionalized public sphere, and the formation of a persecuting society. Closer examination of institutional changes helps reveal the achievements and limits of this “new world order.”

Papal tombs are a primary source for the study of papal politics. This chapter gives a chronological overview of papal burials, from early Christendom to the end of the fifteenth century. It addresses questions of burial preferences, church topography (especially in St. Peter’s and St. John Lateran in Rome), as well as the individual appearance of each monument. For the late Middle Ages, the importance of artists to formal innovation is underlined (Arnolfo di Cambio) and set in relation to the patron’s choice of traditions the monument is meant to refer to in its placement and appearance – to antique, French, or Italian models. The increasing number of funeral monuments for members of the Church hierarchy, as well as for laymen, kings, and nobles, starting in the thirteenth century, stiffened the competition in monumental burial and increased the need to develop appropriate papal features.

This chapter delves into the intricate social, political, and theological mechanisms that progressively linked the historical figure of Saint Peter the Apostle to the city of Rome, and, more specifically, the Roman Church, from the late fourth to the late sixth centuries. The central argument posits that the escalations of papal authority during this era, especially those rhetorically justified by ties to the historical Peter, were predominantly aspirational. These escalations often surfaced as a direct counter-response to local or international humiliations. Consequently, this chapter challenges the traditional historiographical narrative of a perpetually powerful and assertive late-ancient papacy that ushered the Church into the Middle Ages from a vantage point of strength and acknowledged authority. It presents a nuanced perspective that acknowledges the complexities and realities of the time.

During the thirteenth century, stories began to circulate in Rome of the existence of a female pope. What likely began as popular satire was eagerly picked up by monastic chroniclers who had their own axes to grind. For the papacy, the existence of a female pope – most commonly called Joan – only became problematic after the Reformation, when Protestants saw an opportunity to use these medieval (and therefore Catholic) authorities to challenge the papal apostolic succession and identify the papacy with the biblical Whore of Babylon. The arguments employed by both sides are hugely revealing of how Catholics and Protestants saw themselves and each other. More recently, Pope Joan has moved into the realm of fiction: in film and literature she became a feminist icon. Transgender readings – Joan as man in a woman’s body, rather than a woman in a man’s garment – are bound to inspire new interpretations of her story.

The cooperative relationship between pope and city is the subject of this chapter. First, this chapter examines the political maneuvers necessary to execute change in Rome’s built environment and traces the conflict over jurisdiction between civic and papal polities, particularly over matters of urban improvements, licensing, and taxation. The papacy has long been a catalyst for transformation in Rome’s complex and layered urban landscape. Second, this chapter considers the ideology of the cityscape and the tradition of pilgrimage, historically and in our global age. From Martin V’s return in 1420, the papacy aimed to establish Rome as the epicenter of Christendom through its temporal and spiritual authority. As Christendom expanded through exploration and missionary efforts, so too did its capital. Popes continued to influence public space during the tumultuous period after the Unification of Italy, when fierce political rivalry materialized in the spaces of the city.

Papal ceremonial acted as a language through which the pope and clergy described Catholic identity, history, and moral ideals, establishing a liturgy and ceremonial practice that could be adapted to changing circumstances in Rome and beyond. Topography did not restrict papal ceremonial but enhanced it. Rather than seeing the pope as a prisoner of his ceremonial, as some stereotypes do, this chapter explores papal ceremonial as a language that articulated narratives of authority, responded to crises, and bridged gaps. From late antiquity through the twenty-first century, liturgy, politics, urban administration, and pilgrimage/tourism grew together in cities across the Christian world. As technology has eased communication and travel, the pope has sought more direct ways to speak to Catholics, yet the public maintains an interest in the papacy that grew out of fascination with its premodern ceremonial character.

Chapter 6 takes as its subject the relatively sudden proliferation of narrative images of the virtuous deeds and dramatic martyrdom of the saints that became popular themes for altarpieces in the second half of the sixteenth century. These transformations to the altarpiece were the result of earlier artistic developments, but they were also shaped by the context of the Reformations.

For over 400 years, Sassanid Persia was the greatest state in Asia. To the east, the Kushan Empire was already in decline. The only strong opponent of Iran was the Roman Empire in the west. Military competition for influence in northern Mesopotamia, Armenia and the Caucasus region dominated Iranian–Roman relations, orienting the strategic activities of the early Sassanids to the western fringes of the empire. The breakthrough came in the mid-fourth century, with the emergence of the Kidara Huns in the east. Iran faced a ‘strategic dilemma’: it was crucial to avoid wars on multiple fronts. The Hephthalites or White Huns, became the most important enemy of the Sassanians until the end of the following century; the adoption of such a strategic paradigm enforced the maintenance of peace with the Roman Empire in the west. However, the Sassanian ruler, having secured the eastern territories, was able to move against Iran’s age-old enemy, Rome, this way beginning a period of wars in the west that, with few interruptions, lasted almost until the collapse of the Persian state. Defending such an enormous area was a challenge, as was preventing it from centrifugal tendencies, typical for multi-ethnic states. Despite these factors, the Iranian state managed to assure the territorial integrity of its core areas for four centuries. The tool to achieve this was the army – mobile, efficient, disciplined and motivated.

Avowing that love awakens one’s attention to the material world and to one another, Corinne provides a theory for establishing human–nonhuman connection, the energizing and curative praxis of belonging with. The heroine’s thing therapy positively associates women with materiality and, while exercising her right to connect with things, she sustains her élan vital. This chapter argues that she harnesses her feminist thing theory to teach her lover to respect the female body’s integrity and rights and to challenge his repressive politics: If Oswald could belong with materiality by sensuously responding to things, he could remedy his commitment to abstraction and his nationalistic gender proscriptions. Diagnosing Oswald’s melancholy as also emerging from his identification with “modern” (post Renaissance) art, associated with Napoleon’s tyranny and a self-absorptive grief that paralyzes creative potential, Corinne offers a remedy: companionship with classical art. Her thing theory has political ramifications, for it provides a workshop for practicing an embodied cosmopolitanism that itself ameliorates nationalism’s intolerances.

Rome’s was a politics of all five senses. It was a city of noise, of refuse and bodies in the street, of massive crowds, of massive construction, and a size and opulence not equaled in Europe again for more than a millennium. In maps and inscriptions, Rome was the center of the world. How did Rome become this way? This chapter looks to intercity relations to resolve this puzzle. The Roman Empire was in effect a network of cities in the core–periphery mode – the ultimate “consumer city” supplied by vast hinterlands. Lacking the perfect local environment, Rome imported the commodities – and people – needed to construct an alpha city. The city grew as haphazardly and violently as the Empire itself. The greater the resources of the Empire, the larger the foundation for Rome’s growth. This hit crisis point in the Late Republic, as an increasingly dispossessed agrarian peasantry migrated en-masse to cities alongside inhabitants from across the world. In short, the context for Rome’s growth was a hitherto unparalleled age of globalization in the first and second centuries CE.