This is a study of papal bureaucracy during the Renaissance, a time when the Pope was among the most powerful of European rulers. The men who ran the Renaissance Papacy were an important and talented group, including among their number luminaries of Italian humanist literature and scholarship, distinguished church leaders, and statesmen of far-reaching influence.

Based on extensive research in Italian archives, The Pope's Men explores the bureaucracy of an early modern state, and the patronage network which permeated and in many ways controlled it. Peter Partner sets the ruling elite of the Renaissance Papacy in its social and political context, and analyses its composition and the ways it operated. He shows the struggle for power in Rome among the competing Italian regions and families. This is a fascinating and scholarly study of men who could be scholars, poets, thinkers, and patrons of the arts, as well as servants of a state of great spiritual and temporal power.