Everything about The Papal States totally explained
The
Papal States,
State(s) of the Church or
Pontifical States (in Italian
Stato Ecclesiastico,
Stato della Chiesa,
Stati della Chiesa or
Stati Pontificii) were one of the major
historical states of Italy before the Italian peninsula was unified in 1861 by the
kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia (after which the Papal States, in less territorially extensive form, continued to exist until 1870). The Papal States comprised those territories over which the
Pope was the ruler in a civil as well as a spiritual sense before
1870. This governing power is commonly called the
temporal power of the Pope, as opposed to his ecclesiastical primacy.
The plural
Papal States is usually preferred; the singular
Papal State (equally correct since it wasn't a mere personal union) is rather used (normally with lower-case letters) for the modern
State of Vatican City, an enclave within Italy's national capital, Rome. Vatican City was founded in
1929, again allowing the
Holy See the practical benefits of territorial
sovereignty.
Origins
The
Christian Church spent its first three centuries as an outlawed organization and was thus unable to hold or transfer property. Early Christian churches congregated in the audience halls of well-to-do individuals, and a number of
Early Christian churches built round the edges of
Ancient Rome were ascribed to patrons who held the property in custody for the Church: see
titulus. After the ban was lifted by the Emperor
Constantine I, the Church's private property grew quickly through the donations of the pious and the wealthy; the
Lateran Palace was the first significant donation, a gift of Constantine himself. Other donations soon followed, mainly in mainland
Italy but also in the provinces, but the Church held all of these lands as a private landowner, not as a sovereign entity. When in the
fifth century the Italian peninsula passed under the control of first
Odoacer and then the
Ostrogoths, the church organization in Italy, and the bishop of
Rome as its head, submitted to their sovereign authority while beginning to assert spiritual supremacy.
The seeds of the Papal States as a sovereign political entity were planted in the
sixth century. The Eastern Roman (or
Byzantine) government in
Constantinople launched a reconquest of Italy that took decades and devastated the country's political and economic structures; just as those wars wound down, the
Lombards entered the peninsula from the north and conquered much of the countryside. By the seventh century, Byzantine authority was largely limited to a diagonal band running roughly from
Ravenna, where the Emperor's representative, or
Exarch, was located, to Rome and south to Naples. With effective Byzantine power weighted at the northeast end of this territory, the Bishop of Rome, as the largest landowner and most prestigious figure in Italy, began by default to take on much of the ruling authority that Byzantines were unable to project to the area around the city of Rome. While the Bishops of Rome — now beginning to be referred to as the
Popes — remained
de jure Byzantine subjects, in practice the Duchy of Rome, an area roughly equivalent to
modern-day Latium, became an independent state ruled by the Church.
The Church's relative independence, combined with popular support for the Papacy in Italy, enabled various Popes to defy the will of the Byzantine emperor;
Pope Gregory II even
excommunicated emperor
Leo III the Isaurian. Nevertheless the Pope and the Exarch still worked together to control the rising power of the Lombards in Italy. As Byzantine power weakened, though, the Papacy took an ever larger role in defending Rome from the Lombards, usually through
diplomacy, threats and
bribery. In practice, the papal efforts served to focus Lombard aggrandizement on the Exarch and Ravenna. A climactic moment in the founding of the Papal States was the agreement over boundaries embodied in the
Lombard king
Liutprand's
Donation of Sutri (728) to
Pope Gregory II (External Link
).
The Donation of Pepin and the Holy Roman Empire
When the
Exarchate finally fell to the Lombards in
751, the Duchy of Rome was completely cut off from the Byzantine Empire, of which it was theoretically still a part.
Pope Stephen II acted to neutralize the Lombard threat by courting the de facto
Frankish ruler,
Pepin the Short. With the urging of
Pope Zachary to depose the
Merovingian figurehead
Childeric III, Pepin was crowned in 751 by
Saint Boniface. Stephen later granted Pepin the title
Patrician of the Romans. Pepin led a Frankish army into Italy in
754 and
756. Pepin defeated the Lombard's taking control of northern Italy and made a gift (called the
Donation of Pepin) of the properties formerly constituting the Exarchate of Ravenna to the Pope. In
781,
Charlemagne codified the regions over which the Pope would be temporal sovereign: the Duchy of Rome was key, but the territory was expanded to include Ravenna, the
Pentapolis, parts of the
Duchy of Benevento,
Tuscany,
Corsica,
Lombardy and a number of Italian cities. The cooperation between the Papacy and the Carolingian dynasty climaxed in
800, when
Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne the first "Emperor of the Romans" ('Augustus Romanorum').
However, the precise nature of the relationship between the Popes and Emperors — and between the Papal States and the Empire — wasn't clear. Was the Pope a sovereign ruler of a separate realm in central Italy, or were the Papal States just a part of the Frankish Empire over which the Popes had administrative control? Events in the
9th century postponed the conflict: the Frankish Empire collapsed as it was subdivided among Charlemagne's grandchildren, and the papacy's prestige declined, with the tyranny of the local Roman nobility in the tenth century, into the condition later dubbed the
pornocracy, or "rule by harlots". In practice, the Popes were unable to exercise effective sovereignty over the extensive and mountainous territories of the Papal States, and the region preserved its old Lombard system of government, with many small countships and marquisates, each centered upon a fortified
rocca.
Over several campaigns in the mid-
tenth century, the German ruler
Otto I conquered northern Italy;
Pope John XII crowned him emperor (the first so crowned in more than forty years), and the two of them ratified the
Diploma Ottonianum, which guaranteed the independence of the Papal States. Yet over the next two centuries, Popes and Emperors squabbled over a variety of issues, and the German rulers routinely treated the Papal States as part of their realms on those occasions when they projected power into Italy. A major motivation for the
Gregorian Reform was to free the administration of the Papal States from imperial interference, and after the extirpation of the
Hohenstaufen dynasty, the German emperors rarely interfered in Italian affairs. By
1300, the Papal States, along with the rest of the Italian principalities, were effectively independent.
From
1305 to
1378, the Popes lived in
Avignon, in what is now France, and were under the influence of the French kings in what was known as the 'Babylonian Captivity'. During this
Avignon Papacy, however, much of the Papal States in Italy remained only formally under Papal control; in fact, 1357 marks a watershed in the legal history of the Papal States, when
Cardinal Albornoz promulgated the
Constitutiones Sanctæ Matris Ecclesiæ, which replaced the mosaic of local law and accumulated traditional 'liberties' with a uniform code of civil law. The promulgation of the
Constitutiones Egidiane followed the military progress of Albornoz and his
condottieri heading a small mercenary army. Having received the support of the archbishop of Milan and
Giovanni Visconti, he defeated
Giovanni di Vico, lord of Viterbo, moving against
Galeotto Malatesta of Rimini and the
Ordelaffi of Forlì, the
Montefeltro of
Urbino and the da Polenta of
Ravenna, and against the cities of
Senigallia and
Ancona. The last holdouts against full papal control were
Giovanni Manfredi of Faenza and
Francesco II Ordelaffi of Forlì. Albornoz, at the point of being recalled in 1357, in a meeting with all the Papal vicars, 29 April 1357, issued the
Constitutiones; they remained in effect until 1816.
During this period the city of Avignon itself was added to the Papal States; it remained a papal possession even after the popes returned to Rome, only passing back to France during the
French Revolution.
The Renaissance
During the
Renaissance, the papal territory expanded greatly, notably under Popes
Alexander VI and
Julius II. The Pope became one of Italy's most important secular rulers as well as the head of the Church, signing treaties with other sovereigns and fighting wars. In practice, though, most of the Papal States was still only nominally controlled by the Pope, and much of the territory was ruled by minor princes. Control was always contested; indeed it took until the
16th century for the Pope to have any genuine control over all his territories.
At its greatest extent, in the
18th century, the Papal States included most of Central Italy —
Latium,
Umbria,
Marche and the
Legations of
Ravenna,
Ferrara and
Bologna extending north into the
Romagna. It also included the small enclaves of
Benevento and
Pontecorvo in southern Italy and the larger
Comtat Venaissin around
Avignon in southern France.
The era of the French Revolution and Napoleon
The
French Revolution proved as disastrous for the temporal territories of the Papacy as it was for the Catholic Church in general. In
1791 the
Comtat Venaissin and
Avignon were annexed by France. Later, with the French invasion of Italy in
1796, the Legations were seized and became part of the revolutionary
Cisalpine Republic. Two years later, the Papal States as a whole were invaded by French forces, who declared a
Roman Republic.
Pope Pius VI died in exile in France in
1799. The Papal States were restored in June of
1800 and
Pope Pius VII returned, but the French again invaded in
1808, and this time the remainder of the States of the Church were annexed to France, forming the
départements of
Tibre and
Trasimène.
With the fall of the Napoleonic system in
1814, the Papal States were restored. From 1814 until the death of
Pope Gregory XVI in
1846, the Popes followed a harshly
reactionary policy in the Papal States. For instance, the city of Rome maintained the last
Jewish ghetto in Western Europe. There were hopes that this would change when
Pope Pius IX was elected to succeed Gregory and began to introduce liberal reforms.
Italian nationalism and the end of the Papal States
Italian
nationalism had been stoked during the Napoleonic period but dashed by the settlement of the
Congress of Vienna (
1814–
15), which left Italy divided and largely under
Habsburg Austrian domination. In
1848, nationalist and liberal revolutions began to break out across Europe; in
1849, a
Roman Republic was declared and the Pope fled the city.
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, recently elected president of the newly declared
French Second Republic, saw an opportunity to assuage conservative Catholic opinion in France, and in cooperation with Austria sent troops to restore Papal rule in Rome. After some hard fighting (in which
Giuseppe Garibaldi distinguished himself on the Italian side), Pius was returned to Rome, and repenting of his previous liberal tendencies pursued a harsh, conservative policy even more repressive than that of his predecessors. However, Pius did continue to build railroads, telegraphs, and gas lights.
In the years that followed, Italian nationalists — both those who wished to unify the country under the
Kingdom of Sardinia and its ruling
House of Savoy and those who favored a republican solution — saw the Papal States as the chief obstacle to Italian unity. Louis Napoleon, who had now seized control of France as
Emperor Napoleon III, tried to play a double game, simultaneously forming an alliance with Sardinia and playing on his famous uncle's nationalist credentials on the one hand and maintaining French troops in Rome to protect the Pope's rights on the other.
After the
Second Italian War of Independence, much of northern Italy was unified under the House of Savoy's government; in the aftermath, Garibaldi's
expedition of the Thousand overthrew the
Bourbon monarchy in the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Afraid that Garibaldi would set up a republican government in the south, the Sardinians petitioned Napoleon for permission to send troops through the Papal States to gain control of the Two Sicilies, which was granted on the condition that Rome was left undisturbed. In
1860, with much of the region already in rebellion against Papal rule, Sardinia conquered the eastern two-thirds of the Papal States and cemented its hold on the south. Bologna, Ferrara, Umbria, the Marches, Benevento and Pontecorvo were all formally annexed by November of the same year, and a unified Kingdom of
Italy was declared. The Papal States were reduced to the
Latium region surrounding Rome, raising the
Roman Question.
Rome was declared the capital of Italy in March 1861, when the first Italian Parliament met in the kingdom's old capital
Turin in Piedmont. However, the Italian Government couldn't take possession of its capital, because
Napoleon III kept a French garrison in Rome protecting
Pope Pius IX. The opportunity to eliminate the last vestige of the Papal States came when the
Franco-Prussian War began in July 1870. Emperor
Napoleon III had to recall his garrison from Rome for France's own defence and could no longer protect the pope. Following the collapse of the Second French Empire at the
battle of Sedan, widespread public demonstrations demanded that the Italian Government take Rome. King
Victor Emmanuel II sent Count Ponza di San Martino to Pius IX with a personal letter offering a face-saving proposal that would have allowed the peaceful entry of the Italian Army into Rome, under the guise of offering protection to the pope.
» The Pope’s reception of San Martino (
10 September 1870) was unfriendly. Pius IX allowed violent outbursts to escape him. Throwing the King’s letter upon the table he exclaimed: "Fine loyalty! You are all a set of vipers, of whited sepulchres, and wanting in faith." He was perhaps alluding to other letters received from the King. After, growing calmer, he exclaimed: "I am no prophet, nor son of a prophet, but I tell you, you'll never enter Rome!" San Martino was so mortified that he left the next day.
On
September 10, Italy declared war on the Papal States, and the Italian Army, commanded by General
Raffaele Cadorna, crossed the papal frontier on
11 September and advanced slowly toward Rome, hoping that a peaceful entry could be negotiated. The Italian Army reached the
Aurelian Walls on
19 September and placed Rome under a state of siege. Although the pope's tiny army was incapable of defending the city, Pius IX ordered it to put up at least a token resistance to emphasize that Italy was acquiring Rome by force and not consent. The
city was captured on
September 20 1870. Rome and Latium were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy after a
plebiscite held in the following October.
According to Raffaele De Cesare:
- The Roman Question was the stone tied to Napoleon’s feet — that dragged him into the abyss. He never forgot, even in August 1870, a month before Sedan, that he was a sovereign of a Catholic country, that he'd been made Emperor, and was supported by the votes of the Conservatives and the influence of the clergy; and that it was his supreme duty not to abandon the Pontiff. [p.440]
For twenty years Napoleon III had been the true sovereign of Rome, where he'd many friends and relations… Without him the temporal power would never have been reconstituted, nor, being reconstituted, would have endured. [p.443]
This event, described in Italian history books as a liberation, was taken very bitterly by the Pope. The Italian government had offered to allow the Pope to retain control of the Leonine City on the west bank of the Tiber, but Pius rejected the overture. Early the following year, the capital of Italy was moved from Florence to Rome. The Pope, whose previous residence, the Quirinal Palace, had become the royal palace of the Kings of Italy, withdrew in protest into the Vatican, where he lived as a self-proclaimed "prisoner", refusing to leave or to set foot in St. Peter's Square, and forbidding (Non Expedit) Catholics on pain of excommunication to participate in elections in the new Italian state.
However the new Italian control of Rome didn't wither, nor did the Catholic world come to the Pope's aid, as Pius IX had expected. In the 1920s, the papacy — then Pius XI — renounced the bulk of the Papal States and signed the Lateran Treaty (or Concordat with Rome) of 1929, which created the State of the Vatican City, forming the sovereign territory of the Holy See (which is also a subject under international law in its own right). Vatican City can be seen as the modern descendent of the Papal States.
Institutions
As the plural name Papal States indicates, the various regional components, usually former independent states, retained their identity under papal rule. The papal 'state' was represented in each(?) province by a governor, either styled papal legate, as in the former principality of Benevento, or Bologna, Romagna, and the March of Ancona; or papal delegate, as in the former duchy of Pontecorvo.
The police force, known as sbirri ("cops" in modern Italian slang), was stationed in private houses (normally a practice of military occupation) and enforced order quite rigorously.
For the defence of the states an international Catholic volunteer corps, called zouaves after a kind of French colonial native Algerian infantry, and imitating their uniform type, was created.Further Information
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