Round-up – Papal Classics

Ten literary pontiffs to mark the election of Leo XIV

May 12, 2025

Dear classics readers,

On Thursday last week, Leo XIV was elected 267th Bishop of Rome, sovereign of the Vatican City State and head of the Catholic Church.

To mark his inauguration this coming Sunday, here are ten popes from literature, including another Leo, two Gregorys, a Boniface, a Joan, and Johns XXIV and XXIX.

There’s been something of a flurry of papal publishing recently – especially since the abdication of Benedict XVI in 2013 – so I’ve tried to look beyond more recent titles, such as Piers Paul Read’s The Death of a Pope (2010), Dario Fo’s The Pope’s Daughter (2014) and Robert Harris’s Conclave (2016).

In the titles below, watch out for corruption, seduction, castrations, executions, cats, mules and rhinoceroses . . .

The Alteration by Kingsley Amis (1976)

Hubert Anvil is a 10-year-old boy blessed with the voice of an angel. The Church hierarchy decrees that Hubert should be turned into a castrato - an alteration that could bring Hubert fame and fortune, but would also cut him off from an adult world he is curious to discover. In a dystopian world where Martin Luther never reformed and where the Holy Office’s power is absolute – in the form of a Machiavellian Yorkshireman, Pope John XIV – where will Hubert turn if he decides to defy their wishes?

[UK:] Vintage Classics | 240 pages
[US:] NYRB Classics | 256 pages | introduced by William Gibson

Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess (1980)

Kenneth Toomey is an eminent novelist of dubious talent; Don Carlo Campanati is a man of God, a shrewd manipulator who rises through the Vatican to become the architect of church revolution, Pope Gregory XVII and a candidate for sainthood. These two men are linked not only by family ties but by a common understanding of mankind’s frailties. In this epic masterpiece, Anthony Burgess plumbs the depths of the essence of power and the lengths men will go for it.

[UK / US:] Vintage Classics | 656 pages

Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Baron Corvo (Fr. Rolfe) (1904)

Part novel, part daydream, part diatribe, this strange masterpiece tells the story of George Arthur Rose, a poor, frustrated writer who lives in a shabby bedsit, saving his cigarette ends and eating soup - until one day he is made Pope. As the first English pontiff in five centuries, he is a mass of contradictions: infallible and petulant, humble and despotic. Yet Hadrian the Seventh is really a knowing self-portrait of its flamboyant author Baron Corvo, a would-be priest with aristocratic pretensions, and one of the greatest eccentrics of English literature.

[UK:] Penguin Classics | 368 pages
[US:] NYRB Classics | 424 pages | introduced by Alexander Theroux

Pope Joan by Diana Woolfolk Cross (1996)

For a thousand years her existence has been denied. She is the legend that will not die — Pope Joan, the ninth-century woman who disguised herself as a man and rose to become the only female ever to sit on the throne of St. Peter. Now in this riveting novel, Cross paints a sweeping portrait of an unforgettable heroine who struggles against restrictions her soul cannot accept.

[UK / US:] Crown | 432 pages

‘The Pope’s Mule’ in Letters From My Windmill by Alphonse Daudet (1869)

Throughout his working life in Paris Daudet never lost his almost umbilical attachment to Provence. These tales of that region are characterised by a tenderness and delicacy, a wistfulness and wry humour, which give moving substance to his claim that to invent, for him, was to remember. In ‘La Mule de Pape’ the animal in question waits patiently for seven years to repay the man who mistreated her.

[UK / US:] Penguin Classics | 224 pages | translated by Frederick Davies

The Samurai by Shūsaku Endō (1980)

In 17th-century Japan, a diplomatic mission sets sail for the West. Among those facing the combined perils of the sea and foreign courts are ambitious Spanish missionary Pedro Velasco, and Hasekura Rokuemon, a disregarded samurai determined to recover his family’s standing. They travel to Mexico City, Rome (where they visit Pope Paul V) and back – but Japan’s new rulers are persecuting Christians, and if the men survive the journey, they may not survive their homecoming. This true story of courage and endurance is told with Endo’s signature power and simplicity.

[UK:] Pushkin Press Classics | 368 pages | translated by Van C. Gessel
[US:] New Directions | 272 pages | translated by Van C. Gessel

‘The Last Word’ in Complete Short Stories by Graham Greene (1988)

Greene’s last short story is about the last Pope, John XXIX, who was overthrown more than twenty years ago when General Megrim established a new world government. The pope is now a frail old man, living in obscurity under house arrest, ignored by his neighbours and forbidden to keep any religious items. All he has left is a book, possibly a Bible, which he has managed to hide, and a crucifix with an arm broken off.

[UK / US:] Penguin Classics | 624 pages | introduced by Pico Iyer

The Holy Sinner by Thomas Mann (1951)

In this reimagining of the medieval epic poem Gregorius, Gregory is the incestuous offspring of a brother and sister, the son and daughter of the Duke of Flanders. Abandoned at sea, he survives and returns like Oedipus to marry his mother, before eventually becoming Pope.

[US:] University of California Press | 336 pages | translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter | introduced by Russell A. Berman

The Pope’s Rhinoceros by Lawrence Norfolk (1996)

In February 1516, a Portugese ship sank with the loss of all hands a mile off the coast of Italy. The Nostra Senora da Adjuda had sailed 14,000 miles from the Indian kingdom of Gujarat: her mission, to deliver a rhinoceros to Pope Leo X. The Pope’s Rhinoceros tells the stories which culminate in this bizarre incident. Ranging from the Baltic Sea to a flyblown colony in India, from a tribe hidden in the African rain forest to atrocities committed in an obscure town in Tuscany, Norfolk’s brilliant novel holds up the true history of the rhinoceros as a mirror to the fantasies and obsessions of the Renaissance.

[UK:] Vintage | 768 pages
[US:] Grove Press | 574 pages

The Family by Mario Puzo (2001)

Fifteenth-century Italy. The Renaissance is in full swing, heralding a new golden age for Europe. But where there is gold – and power – there are those who are willing to do anything to get their hands on them. Enter the Borgias. Headed by Rodrigo Borgia, better known as Pope Alexander VI, this tight-knit family is fighting to keep its iron grip on Italy – but theirs is a lethal game, and the cost of failure is surely death.

[UK:] Arrow (Cornerstone) | 432 pages | completed by Carol Gino
[US:] William Morrow | 432 pages | completed by Carol Gino

Are there any other literary popes you would recommend? Let me know in a comment below.

Round-up – Papal Classics

Ten literary pontiffs to mark the election of Leo XIV

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