A History of the Papacy During the Period of the Reformation: Volume 3: The Italian Princes, 1464–1518

Mandell Creighton's five-volume study of the papacy during the Reformation was first published between 1882 and 1894. Lytton Strachey paid an indirect compliment to Creighton's work by remarking that 'the biscuit is certainly dry; but at any rate there are no weevils'. Creighton (1843–1901) was an academic and an ordained Anglican. Having studied at Oxford and spent time in the parish of Embleton in Northumberland, he was appointed the first Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge, became Bishop of Peterborough and ended his career as Bishop of London. Volume 3 (1887) concentrates on the half-century preceding the Reformation. This was a period of papal decline from the learned and energetic Pius II to a state of degeneracy and corruption which Luther and others attempted to reform. The volume ends with a detailed account of Alexander VI, the Borgia pope.