methodological problems

Scholars who have tried to work their way through the intricate web of relationships that characterized the Roman curia at different times in its history have often been faced with a complex situation because historians dealing with the several agencies that made up the curia have often tended to assess each agency independently from the rest, as though it were isolated from the general context. One example will suffice to illustrate this point. Madelaine Laurain-Portemer, in her work (which is of considerable importance) on the cardinal-nephew superintendent of the ecclesiastical state, confines her attention to that office and thus ends by neglecting all the other curial offices (notably the Secretariat of State). It is remarkable how many studies on the Roman curia insist on the competition between the various offices and dwell on the overwhelming power of one over the rest rather than on the balance between them – as though this latter approach were out of the question, and the very life of government agencies were not normally (and, for obvious reasons, necessarily) based on some form of equilibrium.

This approach has produced a strong tendency toward the fragmentation of research and has influenced the latter in the way I have just described, focusing attention on one specific aspect while neglecting others, or promoting studies (some of them quite significant) on broader topics, but above all on individual pontificates.