The Stones of Rome reveals the hidden thoughts of a Sovereign Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church during the Renaissance. Between what a Chief of State thinks and does, space and time intervene, shrouded in ambiguities and contradictions that the machinery of government does not always record. This novel intersperses confidential accounts of an agnostic humanist who exposes himself as a man as he rises to become the Pope. He is the man behind the curtain of unquestionable religious power. The dwarf Serapica, knowledgeable of Latin and Greek, would have been the custodian of the secrets, confidential revelations, regrets and loves that his master and lord, Giovani de Medici — Pope Leo X — shared with his most intimate friends, Raphael and Michelangelo. The novel is based on fragments of the life of the first Florentine pope, restless, indecisive, a patron of art and literature.
