Liber Pontificalis

The Liber Pontificalis, Latin for Book of the Popes, is a collection of biographies of the popes from Saint Peter through the fifteenth century. It grew over more than a thousand years, beginning as a simple list of bishops in the third century, developing into a biographical series compiled mainly between the sixth and ninth centuries, and later extended between roughly 1100 and the fifteenth century, with most scholars placing its first substantial compilation in the fifth or sixth century. Each biographical entry typically records a pope's birth name and his father's name, birthplace, occupation before his election, the length of his pontificate, notable theological pronouncements and decrees, administrative achievements such as building projects, and details of his ordinations, death and burial. The original core of the work ended around the pontificates of Adrian the Second or Stephen the Fifth in the ninth century, and later continuators extended the record down to Pope Pius the Second in the fifteenth century.