Liber pontificalis

About “Liber pontificalis”

The Liber Pontificalis is a collection of biographies of popes from Saint Peter to the 15th century. It was originally published up to Pope Adrian II or Pope Stephen V, but later additions were made in a different style, continuing through Pope Eugene IV and Pope Pius II. For centuries, the text was quoted without critical analysis, but modern scholarship has examined its content. Scholars like Louis Duchesne have identified various motivations behind different sections of the work. However, the diversity of these motivations makes it unlikely that the Liber Pontificalis was a single, unified tool for papal propaganda. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.)