The Early Modern Historiography of Early Modern Cardinals

The historiography of the cardinal began in the form of biographical compendia, which sought to document all known cardinals in encyclopedic fashion. Early modern cardinals are distinct from their medieval counterparts in that they formed the subjects of such compendia, in many cases within their own lifetimes, which is one reason why we typically have far more reliable information about their names, backgrounds, and accomplishments than we have for their predecessors before 1400. These compendia, the earliest of which began to appear around the mid-16th century, were part of the new enterprise of constructing Sacred History. But at another level books about cardinals also reflected wider trends brought about by the proliferation of print. A fascination with who cardinals were, and what their historical identities might reveal about the Church’s legitimate traditions, is surely also an important, but perhaps underacknowledged, feature of early modern Catholicism – a concomitant to, or constituent of the growing papal role within the image of Catholicism and Catholic identity. The following chapter sets out how forms of writing about cardinals – in particular, biographical forms – developed, focusing both on key authors and on what motivated their endeavours. It explains the difference between two kinds of texts which predominate early modern accounts of cardinals’ lives: 1. those which sought comprehensiveness as a means of chronicling and validating the Church’s traditions; and 2. those with a more didactic purpose which saw the lives of particular cardinals as especially noteworthy (though not necessarily for entirely positive reasons).