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Abstract: CONSPIRACIES AGAINST THE POPES IN THE MODERN TIMES. A GENERAL INTERPRETATION The article examines the use of the concept of “conspiracy” in recent historiography, particularly regarding the Pontifical State. It traces the events of the principal conspiracies against the popes which historians have identified between the 15th and 18th centuries, indicating their aspects of continuity and difference. On the whole, antipapal conspiracies are evidence of moments of settlement and internal rearrangements among the ruling classes within the political papal dominions where the role of the Roman Curia becomes central in the 15th century as that of the Pope as an individual monarch does by the end of the 16th century. By the end of the 16th century, this arrangement is no longer contested. Movements opposing this progressive concentration of the power become weaker and weaker and intertwine with various cultural traditions: humanistic ruling class republicanism, heterodox piety, recourse to magic and astrology. Only at the end of the “ancient regime”, the French invasion provides the conditions for an institutional and social turning point.