NCR Reduces Christ’s Vicar to Real Estate Speculator
The NCR portal publishes an article by Alyssa Rusonik, a PhD candidate in finance at HEC Paris, which reduces the glorious restoration of Rome under the Vicars of Christ to a mere exercise in game theory and real estate economics. Drawing on a quantitative dataset of palace construction, the author argues that the Renaissance urban revival depended not on the supernatural mission of the Papacy but on a “credible commitment mechanism” inaugurated by Sixtus IV’s bull *Etsi Universis* (1475), which aligned cardinals’ financial self-interest with the Pope’s permanent residence. The piece culminates in a paean to modern institutional economics, citing Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu, to explain the “irreversibility of institutional change.” This secularist reductionism, masquerading as historical scholarship, exposes the naturalistic bankruptcy of the conciliar sect’s intellectual class, which views the Bride of Christ through the lens of a hedge fund manager.