This cultural and institutional history explores the careers of men who served in Rome's Office of Ceremonies during the papal court's growth period (c.1466-1528), in order to understand how the smallest papal college stands as a model of early modern curial advancement. The experiences and textual contributions of three ceremonialists, Agostino Patrizi, Johann Burchard, and Paris de' Grassi, show diverse strategies and origins, but similar concerns and achievements. In a period of heightened competition and increasing pressure for regularization and reform, the Office's professionalization and their combined office-holding, networks, and textual production, reveal how early modern curialists got ahead. This study shows the complexity of successful advancement strategies that were cultivated over decades and stretched far beyond papal support.

Postmodernity is a name that has been attached to our cultural milieu. Among its features are a sense of historical consciousness, a recognition of the social construction of knowledge, an appreciation for pluralism, and a suspicion of grand narratives. It is a cultural worldview that is naturally suspicious of Christian "mission." Meanwhile, conservative Catholics are equally suspicious of postmodernism, associating it with relativism, secularism, and syncretism). Drawing on his own mission training and experience, John Sivalon believes the gospel can and must be inculturated in any culture, and he believes that postmodernism, rather than rendering Christian mission meaningless, breathes fresh insight, vision, and life into Vatican II's notion that mission is centered in the very heart of God. Above all, postmodernism offers "the gift of uncertainty"--the ground of questioning, Why are we doing this? What should we do? How is it best done? With actual case studies that reflect the new face of mission, Fr. Sivalon offers a hopeful vision of how the Gospel retains its challenge and relevance in an age of uncertainty and change.