If Dante thought Boniface was damnable, what language would have been strong enough to describe the Renaissance popes, had he lived in the time of, say, the Borgia excesses?

It then spread south, having an especially significant impact on Rome, which was largely rebuilt by the Renaissance popes.

(In his time he was probably justified; think about the magnificent buildings full of statues and paintings built by the Renaissance popes and their families.)

In 1420, the papacy returned to Rome under Martin V. The Renaissance popes pursued the temporal interests of the Papal States in Italian politics aggressively.

It was during this trip that Creighton made firm his intention to study the Renaissance popes for his life's research.

Her overall assessment of Julius is strongly negative, and she attributes the Protestant Reformation to his and other Renaissance popes' abuses.

Minnich (2005) notes that the position of Renaissance popes towards slavery, a common institution in contemporary cultures, varied.

Again, in Germany, there were no princely patrons of arts and learning to be compared in intelligence and munificence to the Renaissance popes and the Medici.

However, his intention was weakened by the fact that this injunction was not consistently invoked by subsequent Renaissance popes in response to the various manifestations of conciliarist tendencies.

Under the influence of the Renaissance popes, Rome became a center of culture, a magnet for painters, sculptors, musicians and scholars.