Dr Miles Pattenden

Dr Miles Pattenden

Senior Research Fellow
Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Areas of expertise: Catholic Church; papacy; early modern Italy; early modern Spain

HDR Supervisor accreditation status: Full

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-0750-9454

Email: miles.pattenden@acu.edu.au 

MA (Cantab); MA (Toronto); DPhil (Oxon); BD (Cantab)

Miles Pattenden studies the history of the papacy and the Catholic Church from the later Middle Ages into modern times. Before joining ACU, he taught at University College Cork (2009-10) and the University of Oxford (2010-19), where he held fellowships at St Hugh’s College and at Wolfson College.

Miles’ work explores the nature of politics in papal Rome and of diverse Catholic clerical and intellectual cultures during the Counter-Reformation and Enlightenment. His first monograph Pius IV and the Fall of the Carafa reconstructed the events surrounding a notorious treason trial in which one pope ordered his predecessor’s nephews to be impeached for corruption. His second, Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy analyzed the political culture of the papal conclave as it evolved over a two-hundred-and-fifty-year period.

Current research projects include:

  • Catholic Medievalisms
  • Catholic Clerical Subcultures
  • Global Latinity
  • The Papacy in World History
  • European History in Australia

Miles is a co-editor of The Journal of Religious History and of The Cambridge History of the Papacy. He is very interested in hearing from prospective research students with projects that focus on Italy, France, the Mediterranean or the Iberian Worlds.

View CV

Select publications

Monographs

  • (2017) Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700 (Oxford University Press).
  • (2013) Pius IV and the Fall of the Carafa: Nepotism and Papal Authority in Counter-Reformation Rome (Oxford University Press).

Edited books

  • (2020) Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. with Mary Hollingsworth and Arnold Witte (Brill).
  • (2018) Cultures of Voting in Pre-Modern Europe, ed. with Serena Ferente and Lovro Kuncevic (Routledge).
  • (2015; paperback 2018) The Spanish Presence in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Images of Iberia, ed. with Piers Baker-Bates (Ashgate).

Journal articles

  • (2022) ‘Ringing in the Papal Restoration: Francesco Cancellieris Treatise on the Capitoline Bells (1806)’, Modern Italy 27, 207-23.
  • (2022) 'Gaspar Sanz’s Ecos sagrados de la fama gloriosa de Innocencio XI (1681) and Clerical Cultures of Diversion in Baroque Spain’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, early view online.
  • (2021) ‘Papal Rome in Lockdown: Proximities, Temporalities, and Emotions during the Im/mobility of the Conclave’, I Tatti Studies 24, 291-309.
  • (2020) ‘The Jesuit Giambattista Tolomei (1653–1726): Cardinal and Philosopher’, Journal of Jesuit Studies 7, 570-91.
  • (2018) ‘Antonio de Fuenmayor’s Life of Pius V: a pope in early modern Spanish Historiography’, Renaissance Studies 32, 183-200.
  • (2013) ‘The Conclaves of 1590 to 1592: An Electoral Crisis of the Early Modern Papacy?’, Sixteenth Century Journal 44, 391-410.
  • (2009) ‘Governor and Government in Sixteenth-Century Rome’, Papers of the British School at Rome 77, 257-72.
  • (2008) ‘The Canonisation of Clare of Assisi and Early Franciscan History’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 59, 208-226.

Book chapters

  • (2022) ‘Regime Change in Papal Rome: Pius IV and the Carafa (1559-61)’, in The Culture and Politics of Regime Change in Italy, c.1494-c.1559, ed. Alexander Lee and Brian Maxson (Routledge), 75-93.
  • (2021) ‘The Early Modern Cardinal: An Historical Appraisal’, in Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. Piers Baker-Bates and Irene Brooke, (Amsterdam University Press), 43-65.
  • (2020) ‘The College of Cardinals’, in Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden and Arnold Witte (Brill), 23-39.
  • (2020) ‘Cardinals and the non-Christian World’, in Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden and Arnold Witte (Brill), 375-92.
  • (2020) ‘The Early Modern Historiography of Early Modern Cardinals’, co-written with Arnold Witte, in Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden and Arnold Witte (Brill), 435-52.
  • (2019) ‘The Roman Curia’, in A Companion to Early Modern Rome: 1492-1692, ed. Pamela Jones, Simon Ditchfield, and Barbara Wisch (Brill), 44-59.
  • (2018) ‘Cultures of Secrecy in Pre-Modern Papal Elections’, in Cultures of Voting in Pre-Modern Europe, ed. Serena Ferente, Lovro Kuncevic and Miles Pattenden (Routledge), 94-112.
  • (2016) ‘From Ambassador to Cardinal? Francisco de Vargas at the papal court (1559-63)’, in Embajadores culturales. Transferencias y lealtades de la diplomacia española de la edad moderna, ed. Diana Carrió-Invernizzi (Editorial UNED), 139-56.
  • (2015) ‘Rome as a “Spanish Avignon”? The Spanish Faction and the Monarchy of Philip II’, in The Spanish Presence in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Images of Iberia, ed. Piers Baker-Bates and Miles Pattenden (Ashgate), 65-84.

Projects

  • ACU Research Fund, ‘Religious Mobilities: Europe and the Medieval and Early Modern World’, 2021-25.
  • Government of Spain, Programa Estatal de Fomento de la Investigación Científica y Técnica de Excelencia, ‘Poder y representación en la edad moderna. Agentes diplomáticos como mediadores culturales en los siglos XVI-XVIII’, 2016-20.
  • British Academy/Leverhulme Trust, ‘The Early Modern Cardinal’, 2016-17.
  • British Academy/Leverhulme Trust, ‘Cultures of Voting in Pre-Modern Europe and the Mediterranean’, 2013-14.
  • Government of Spain, Programa Estatal de Fomento de la Investigación Científica y Técnica de Excelencia, ‘Poder y representaciones en la edad moderna: redes diplomáticas y encuentros culturales en la Monarquía Hispánica’, 2013-15.

Accolades and awards

  • Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
  • Visiting Fellow, Humanities Research Centre, The Australian National University
  • Visiting Fellow, Madrid Institute for Advanced Study
  • Visiting Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Università di Bologna
  • Marie Curie Visiting Fellow, Università Ca’ Foscari, Venice
  • Rome Scholar, British School at Rome

Editorial roles

  • Co-editor, The Journal of Religious History.
  • Co-editor, The Cambridge History of the Papacy. Vol III: The Papacy and Global Affairs and IV: Society and Culture.
  • International advisory board, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society.
  • Public engagement

     

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