Miles
Pattenden
Historian of the Catholic Church, the papacy and European culture.
Understanding
Catholic histories
My work asks how Catholic institutions and identities have been made, contested and remade across time. I am particularly interested in the papacy and its politics; the cultures of priests and clergy; gender and sexuality; and the ways Catholic history is continually reimagined and reinterpreted.
These questions take me from Renaissance Rome and the politics of papal elections to modern Catholic cultures, queer medievalisms and contemporary debates about religion, authority and identity.
Explore my research →Selected writing
Universities and the Faculty of Judgment
Universities & Education
Read →The Holy Ghost in the Machine: Pope Leo confronts AI
Catholicism
Read →Conclave Diary: la dolce vita
Catholicism
Read →An American pope? Has Hell Frozen Over?
Catholicism
Read →The Roman Catholic War on Wigs
History & Culture
Read →Serious Christians don’t mind a Jesus joke
Religion & Society
Read →History in the news
Expert commentary on the papacy, Catholicism, European history, religion and public life.
Watch, listen & read →Available for television, radio and podcast interviews in English and Spanish.
The Catholic Past: Institutions & Identities
Papacy, politics & institutions
Conclaves, cardinals, the Curia, papal government, authority and institutional structures.
Priests, masculinity & sexuality
Clerical cultures, bodies, masculinity, sexuality, clericalism and abuse.
Catholic histories & medievalisms
How Catholic histories are constructed, appropriated and reinterpreted.
Queer cultures & identities
Queer Catholicism, sexuality, identity, activism and queer medievalisms.
Recent scholarship
Clericalism and Sexual Abuse: A Historical and Historiographical Perspective
In Philip McCosker, Luigi Gioia and Travis LaCouter (eds.), Catholic Priests and the Matter of Sex: New Approaches to Clericalism (Cambridge University Press, 2026), 39–62.
Read →The Cult of Gay Relics and Queer Medievalism in 1980s Sydney
Past & Present 269 (2025), 277–324. With Michael D. Barbezat.
Read →Priests and their Wigs in Eighteenth-Century Rome
Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 93 (2024), 272–91.
Read →
