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This lively overview of the papal justice system reaches a transatlantic readership and makes available the fruit of Fosi's decades-long research in unpublished archives in Rome and the Vatican.

For centuries, the Renaissance papacy has been celebrated for its generous patronage of the arts. Pope Leo X, son of the legendary Lorenzo "the Magnificent" de'Medici, is widely understood to be one of the greatest patrons of music in European history, and one of the emblematic figures of the Italian Renaissance.

The Lion's Ear is the first full-length scholarly treatment of the musical patronage of a Renaissance pope and provides an evocative picture of the musical life of the pre-Reformation papacy. The various uses of music in early modern Rome---music for public festivals, such as carnival; for the liturgical ceremonies of the Sistine Chapel; to accompany daily dining and festive banqueting; for the celebration of saints' feast days; and for theatrical performances---are vividly described and analyzed and give a detailed understanding of the place of music in the life of one of its most important early modern benefactors.

Anthony M. Cummings takes an interdisciplinary approach to his subject matter, bringing together the history of music, art, philosophy, and ecclesiastical history to locate the music in its broadest and deepest contexts. Through materials such as diplomatic correspondence, the book aims to reconstruct the atmosphere of the musical life in Leo X's court, presenting the subject matter in a way that will appeal to scholars and students of musicology and early modern history.

Art historians, ecclesiastical historians, and specialists from many other disciplines have long produced scholarly findings useful for understanding the pre-Reformation papacy, its alliance with the Italian Renaissance, and the extraordinary artistic legacy of that alliance. Anthony M. Cummings complements that scholarship with his thorough and imaginative account of music's relationship with that vibrant and fascinating culture, the first by a specialist in the musical life of early modern Europe.

The Mortara case refers to Pope Pius IX’s 1858 removal of a six-year-old Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara, from his parents in Bologna, Italy. Six years after Edgardo was born, it was reported that the family’s Christian housekeeper had baptized the boy after he had fallen ill as an infant and was allegedly in danger of death. Since canon law and civil law stipulated that a baptized child must be raised Catholic, Pius IX used his power as head of the papal states to remove the boy. In advocating for the return of the child, the Mortaras submitted to the Vatican a two-part document, which appealed to the teachings of Thomas Aquinas against baptism of Jewish children invitis parentibus (against the will of the parents). The papal counsel’s reply denied the request, citing Aquinas’s teaching to argue that Edgardo’s baptism was valid, and that he belonged to the Church. Today, some Catholic theologians defend or at least excuse the Pope’s decision with appeal to the works of Aquinas. Which side had the correct interpretation of Aquinas’s teaching? And how does this answer impact Catholic theology and Catholic Jewish-relations today? The Mortara Case and St. Thomas Aquinas's Defense of Jewish Parental Authority adjudicates the claims of both sides of the debate through an analysis of Aquinas’s teaching as it is interpreted in the Italian and Latin original documents from the 1858 case, which are housed in the Vatican Apostolic Archives, and reproduced here, with facing English translations, for the first time. Tapie demonstrates that, for Aquinas, Jewish parental rights are an order of the natural law, which Aquinas likened to a spiritualis uterus (spiritual womb). Through the metaphor of the spiritual womb, Aquinas merged the Roman institution of parental rights with the theological concept of the natural law. Tapie concludes by examining baptism invitis parentibus in the current Code of Canon Law with attention to the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on religious freedom and the Jewish people.