I didn't know the Ka'ba existed before Islam, nice to learn a thing or two from this.
As I like to say, my AARs can be a learning experience as much as it is about the game I played itself. Or as
@stnylan noted, digging through the authorial voice to also glean all the nitty gritty stuff that's going on in between the lines.
First off, fantastic AAR, can't wait to read more.
Secondly, what is your opinion on John Julius Norwich's 'The Popes: A history book'?
Thanks! Glad that you're enjoying it and have found it "fantastic!"
JJN isn't worth reading if you want a "scholarly" work that you can actually pride yourself having read from which you'll be more attune to the actual practice of history and current trends in historiographical scholarship. Norwich is the perfect example of a dilettante, who has garnered his success -- to his credit -- because he is an easy reader. Admittedly, I know this from experience, professional academics don't always have the gift of easy writing. That said, he's not as bad as some of the other popular journalist historian types, but he really peddles in all of his works I've read (his three volume (full) history of the Byzantines,
Short History of Byzantium,
Absolute Monarchs (also titled
The Popes: A History), and
History of Venice) jibberish and nonsense that the academy doesn't hold to. Now, we might say, some of those works are a bit dated. True, but even then his works on the Byzantines and Venice which came out in the 80s and 90s should have been attune to all the changes in Mediterranean and Late Antique/Late Antiquity studies that emerged in the Anglosphere beginning in the 1960s and 1970s. His lack of languages, as far as I can tell from his bibliographies, also hurts him since the continent has never had the same "Dark Age" prejudice as the English-speaking world. If he knew French or German he could have easily included the hundreds of years of Byzantine scholarship from French and German scholars, which he doesn't. (My guess being because he's unable to read that scholarship since it's slow going in the translation world which is why we need to learn so many languages for the purposes of historiography in other parts of the world.) Although he does have some funny things to say about the mythological stories that are quite humorous, like with "Pope Joan" the female mystic who got elected Pope by pretending to be a man (story is 100% untrue but Norwich talks about it because, frankly, it shows that even Medievals had a sense of humor and poked fun at their own institutions). But then again, he often prefaces his works by saying stuff like "I'm not a scholar," or "I'm not a historian" so I suppose he can get brownie points for saying that.
His book in question is a perfect example of a writer who can't hide when he loves a Pope (John XXIII for instance), and Popes he hates or loathes. If you want a better book on the history of the Popes, read John O'Malley's
A History of the Popes. It's even a bit shorter than Norwich's work iirc and O'Malley still presents the same picture, and is a far more thoughtful work. If you want a book comparable to Norwich that isn't so much a history as it describes what the Popes were doing during their tenures, Richard McBrian's
Lives of the Popes is a good read. A bit dated since he published that in the late 90s but still a fun read. That said, I'm not really aware of any "scholarly" works on the topics. Both O'Malley and McBrian are one volume "introduction"-esque works. The real scholarly works would be if you read all the individual biographies of the Popes. But that means you'd have to have a lot of time on your hand.
Let's just be clear, the popular histories are popular for obvious reasons. And I own many of them from across many subject fields. But when you read them, don't have illusions that you're suddenly "enlightened" on the topic.
There are some wonderful popular/journalistic histories that come out from time to time too, but those are few and far between.