Papal States

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

States of the Church

Stato della Chiesa
Status Pontificius
7541870

Interregnums (1798
1799, 1809-1814 and
1849)

Coat of arms until 19th

century
Anthem
Noi vogliam Dio, Vergine Maria ( 1857)
Flag in 1870

(Italian)
"We want God, Virgin Mary"

Marcia trionfale (18571870)

(Italian)
"Great Triumphal March"

The Papal States in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars

Map of the Papal States (green) in 1700,

including its exclaves of Benevento and
Pontecorvo in Southern Italy, and the Comtat
Venaissin and Avignon in Southern France.

Capital
Languages
Religion
Government

Rome
Latin, Italian, Occitan
Roman Catholic
Theocratic absolute
elective monarchy

Pope
754757
Stephen II (first)
18461870
Pius IX (last)
Cardinal Secretary
of State
Girolamo Dandini
15511555
(first)

18481870
Prime Minister
1848
1848
History
Establishment
Codification
Treaty of Venice
(Independence

from the Holy

Roman Empire)
1st

Disestablishment
Schnbrunn
Palace
Declarations
2nd

Disestablishment
Vatican City
Currency

Giacomo Antonelli
(last)

Gabriele Ferretti (first)

Giuseppe Galletti
(last)

754
781

1177
February 15, 1798
May 17, 1809
September 20, 1870
February 11, 1929
Papal States scudo

(until 1866)

Papal States lira

(18661870)

Preceded by
Byzantine
Empire
Kingdom of Italy
(medieval)
Roman Republic
(18th century)
First French
Empire
Roman Republic
(19th century)
Kingdom of Italy
(Napoleonic)

Today part of

Succeeded by
Roman
Republic
(18th
century)
First French
Empire
Roman
Republic
(19th
century)
Kingdom of
Italy
Prisoner in
the Vatican
France
Italy
Vatican City

The Papal States were territories in the Italian Peninsula under the sovereign direct rule of
the pope, from the 8th century until 1870. They were among the major states of Italy from
roughly the 8th century until the Italian Peninsula was unified in 1861 by the Kingdom of
Piedmont-Sardinia. At their zenith, they covered most of the modern Italian regions of Lazio
(which includes Rome), Marche, Umbria and Romagna, and portions of Emilia. These
holdings were considered to be a manifestation of the temporal power of the pope, as opposed
to his ecclesiastical primacy.
By 1861, much of the Papal States' territory had been conquered by the Kingdom of Italy.
Only Lazio, including Rome, remained under the Pope's temporal control. In 1870, the pope
lost Lazio and Rome and had no physical territory at all, not even the Vatican. Italian Fascist
leader Benito Mussolini solved the crisis between unified Italy and the Vatican by signing the
Lateran Treaty granting the Vatican City State sovereignty.

Contents

1 Name
2 Origins

3 Donation of Pepin

4 Relationship with the Holy Roman Empire

5 History
o

5.1 The Avignon papacy

5.2 Renaissance

5.3 French Revolution and Napoleonic era

5.4 Italian nationalism and the end of the Papal States

6 Regional governors

7 Papal army

8 See also

9 References

10 Sources

11 External links

Name
The Papal States were also known as the Papal State (although the plural is usually preferred,
the singular is equally correct as the polity was more than a mere personal union). The
territories were also referred to variously as the State(s) of the Church, the Pontifical
States, the Ecclesiastical States, or the Roman States (Italian: Stato Pontificio, also Stato
della Chiesa, Stati della Chiesa, Stati Pontifici, and Stato Ecclesiastico; Latin: Status
Pontificius, also Dicio Pontificia).[1]

Origins
Main articles: Duchy of Rome and Patrimonium Sancti Petri
For its first 300 years the Catholic Church was persecuted and unrecognized, unable to hold
or transfer property.[2] Early congregations met in rooms set aside for that purpose in the
homes of well-to-do individuals, and a number of early churches, known as titular churches
and located on the outskirts of Ancient Rome, were held as property by individuals, rather
than by the Church itself. This system began to change during the reign of the emperor
Constantine I, who made Christianity legal within the Roman Empire.[2] The Lateran Palace
was the first significant donation to the Church, most probably a gift from Constantine
himself.[2]
Other donations followed, primarily in mainland Italy but also in the provinces of the Roman
Empire. But the Church held all of these lands as a private landowner, not as a sovereign
entity. When in the 5th century the Italian peninsula passed under the control of Odoacer and,
later, the Ostrogoths, the church organization in Italy, with the pope at its head, submitted to
their sovereign authority while asserting their spiritual primacy over the whole Church.[citation
needed]

The seeds of the Papal States as a sovereign political entity were planted in the 6th century.
The Byzantine Empire based in Constantinople launched a reconquest of Italy that took
decades and devastated Italy's political and economic structures. Just as these wars wound
down, the Lombards entered the peninsula from the north and conquered much of the
countryside. By the 7th 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 (the "Rome-Ravenna corridor"[3][4][5]), plus coastal enclaves.[6]
With effective Byzantine power weighted at the northeast end of this territory, the pope, 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.[citation needed] While the popes remained Byzantine subjects, in practice the Duchy of
Rome, an area roughly equivalent to modern-day Latium, became an independent state ruled
by the pope.[7]
The Church's 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 during the Iconoclastic Controversy.[citation needed]
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.[citation needed] 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.[8]

Donation of Pepin
Main article: Donation of Pepin

The Quirinal Palace, papal residence and home to the civil offices of the Papal States from
the Renaissance until their annexation
When the Exarchate of Ravenna finally fell to the Lombards in 751,[9] the Duchy of Rome
was completely cut off from the Byzantine Empire, of which it was theoretically still a part.
The popes renewed earlier attempts to secure the support of the Franks. In 751, Pope Zachary
had Pepin the Younger crowned king in place of the powerless Merovingian figurehead king
Childeric III. Zachary's successor, Pope Stephen II, later granted Pepin the title Patrician of
the Romans. Pepin led a Frankish army into Italy in 754 and 756. Pepin defeated the
Lombards 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 Duchy
of 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 Emperor.

Relationship with the Holy Roman Empire

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The precise nature of the relationship between the popes and emperors and between the
Papal States and the Empire is disputed. It was unclear whether the Papal States were a
separate realm with the pope as their sovereign ruler, merely a part of the Frankish Empire
over which the popes had administrative control, as suggested in the late 9th century treatise
Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma, or whether the Holy Roman Emperors were
vicars of the pope (as a sort of Archemperor) ruling Christendom, with the pope directly
responsible only for the environs of Rome and spiritual duties.
Events in the 9th century postponed the conflict. The Holy Roman Empire in its Frankish
form collapsed as it was subdivided among Charlemagne's grandchildren. Imperial power in
Italy waned and the papacy's prestige declined. This led to a rise in the power of the local
Roman nobility, and the control of the Papal States during the early 10th century by a
powerful and corrupt aristocratic family, the Theophylacti. This period was later dubbed the
Saeculum obscurum ("dark age"), and sometimes as the "rule by harlots".[10]

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 system of
government, with many small countships and marquisates, each centred upon a fortified
rocca.
Over several campaigns in the mid-10th 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, by which the emperor became the
guarantor of the independence of the Papal States.[11] 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.
As the Gregorian Reform worked to free the administration of the church from imperial
interference, the independence of the Papal States increased in importance. After the
extinction of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, the German emperors rarely interfered in Italian
affairs. In response to the struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, the Treaty of Venice
made official the independence of Papal States from the Holy Roman Empire in 1177. By
1300, the Papal States, along with the rest of the Italian principalities, were effectively
independent.

History
Further information: History of Rome and History of the Papacy

The Avignon papacy

Main article: Avignon Papacy
From 1305 to 1378, the popes lived in the papal enclave of Avignon, surrounded by
Provence, and were under the influence of the French kings in the "Avignonese Captivity" or
otherwise named as the "Babylonian Captivity" (1308/9-1377).[12][13][14][15][16][17] During this
period the city of Avignon itself was added to the Papal States; it remained a papal possession
for some 400 years even after the popes returned to Rome, until it was seized and
incorporated into the French state during the French Revolution.
During this Avignon Papacy, local despots took advantage of the absence of the popes to
establish themselves in nominally papal cities: the Pepoli in Bologna, the Ordelaffi in Forl,
the Manfredi in Faenza, the Malatesta in Rimini all gave nominal acknowledgement to their
papal overlords and were declared vicars of the Church.
In Ferrara, the death of Azzo VIII d'Este without legitimate heirs (1308[18]) encouraged Pope
Clement V to bring Ferrara under his direct rule: however, it was governed by his appointed
vicar, Robert d'Anjou, King of Naples, for only nine years before the citizens recalled the
Este from exile (1317); interdiction and excommunications were in vain: in 1332 John XXII
was obliged to name three Este brothers as his vicars in Ferrara.[19]
In Rome itself the Orsini and the Colonna struggled for supremacy,[20] dividing the city's rioni
between them. The resulting aristocratic anarchy in the city provided the setting for the
fantastic dreams of universal democracy of Cola di Rienzo, who was acclaimed Tribune of
the People in 1347,[21] and met a violent death in early October 1354 as he was assassinated

by supporters of the Colonna family.[22] To many, rather than an ancient Roman tribune
reborn, he had become just another tyrant using the rhetoric of Roman renewal and rebirth to
mask his grab for power.[22] As Prof. Guido Ruggiero states, "even with the support of
Petrarch, his return to first times and the rebirth of ancient Rome was one that would not
prevail."[22]
The Rienzo episode engendered renewed attempts from the absentee papacy to re-establish
order in the dissolving Papal States, resulting in the military progress of Cardinal Egidio
Albornoz, who was appointed papal legate, 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 Forl, 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 Forl. Albornoz, at the point of
being recalled, in a meeting with all the Papal vicars on April 29, 1357, promulgated the
Constitutiones Sanct Matris Ecclesi, which replaced the mosaic of local law and
accumulated traditional 'liberties' with a uniform code of civil law. These Constitutiones
Egidiane mark a watershed in the legal history of the Papal States; they remained in effect
until 1816. Pope Urban V ventured a return to Italy in 1367 that proved premature; he
returned to Avignon in 1370 just before his death.[23]

Antichristus (1521) by Lucas Cranach the Elder is a woodcut of the Papal States at war
during the Renaissance.

Renaissance
During the Renaissance, the papal territory expanded greatly, notably under the 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.

Papal responsibilities were often (as in the early 16th century) in conflict. The Papal States
were involved in at least 3 wars in the first 2 decades.[24] Pope Julius II, the "Warrior Pope",
fought on their behalf.
The Reformation began in 1517. Before the Holy Roman Empire fought the Protestants, its
soldiers (including many Protestants), sacked Rome as a side effect of battles over the Papal
States.[25] A generation later the armies of King Philip II of Spain defeated those of Pope Paul
IV over the same issues.[26]
This period saw a gradual revival of the pope's temporal power in the Papal States.
Throughout the 16th century virtually independent fiefs such as Rimini (a possession of the
Malatesta family) were brought back under Papal control. In 1512 the state of the church
annexed Parma and Piacenza, which in 1545 became an independent ducate under an
illegitimate son of Pope Paul III. This process culminated in the reclaiming of the Duchy of
Ferrara in 1598,[27][28] and the Duchy of Urbino in 1631.[29]
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.

French Revolution and Napoleonic era

Map of the Italian Peninsula in 1796, showing the Papal States before the Napoleonic wars
changed the face of the peninsula.

The French Revolution proved as disastrous for the temporal territories of the Papacy as it
was for the Roman Church in general. In 1791 the Comtat Venaissin and Avignon were
annexed by France.[30] Later, with the French invasion of Italy in 1796, the Legations (the
Papal States' northern territories[30]) were seized and became part of the Cisalpine Republic.[30]
Two years later, the Papal States as a whole were invaded by French forces, who declared a
Roman Republic.[30] Pope Pius VI fled to Siena, and died in exile in Valence (France) in 1799.
[30]
The Papal States were restored in June 1800 and Pope Pius VII took up residency once
again, but the French under Napoleon again invaded in 1808, and this time the remainder of
the States of the Church were annexed to France,[30] forming the dpartements of Tibre and
Trasimne.
With the fall of the Napoleonic system in 1814, the Papal States were restored once more.[30]
From 1814 until the death of Pope Gregory XVI in 1846, the popes followed a 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

Main article: Papal States under Pope Pius IX
Italian nationalism had been stoked during the Napoleonic period but dashed by the
settlement of the Congress of Vienna (181415), which sought to restore the pre-Napoleonic
conditions: most of northern Italy was under the rule of junior branches of the Habsburgs and
the Bourbons, with the House of Savoy in Sardinia-Piedmont constituting the only
independent Italian state. The Papal States in central Italy and the Bourbon Kingdom of the
Two Sicilies in the south were both restored. Popular opposition to the reconstituted and
corrupt clerical government led to numerous revolts, which were suppressed by the
intervention of the Austrian army.
In 1848, nationalist and liberal revolutions began to break out across Europe; in February
1849, a Roman Republic was declared,[31] and the hitherto liberally-inclined Pope Pius IX had
to flee the city. The revolution was suppressed with French help in 1850 and Pius IX switched
to a conservative line of government.
As a result of the Austro-Sardinian War of 1859, Sardinia-Piedmont annexed Lombardy,
while Giuseppe Garibaldi overthrew the Bourbon monarchy in the south.[32][33] Afraid that
Garibaldi would set up a republican government, the Piedmont government petitioned French
Emperor Napoleon III for permission to send troops through the Papal States to gain control
of the south. This was granted on the condition that Rome be left undisturbed. In 1860, with
much of the region already in rebellion against Papal rule, Sardinia-Piedmont 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. While considerably reduced, the Papal States nevertheless still covered the
Latium and large areas northwest of Rome.

The Breach of Porta Pia, on the right, in 1870.

The Papal States, 18601870.

A unified Kingdom of Italy was declared and in March 1861, the first Italian parliament,
which met in Turin, the old capital of Piedmont, declared Rome the capital of the new
Kingdom. However, the Italian government could not take possession of the city because a
French garrison in Rome protected Pope Pius IX. The opportunity for the Kingdom of Italy to
eliminate the Papal States came in 1870; the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in July
prompted Napoleon III to recall his garrison from Rome and the collapse of the Second
French Empire at the Battle of Sedan deprived Rome of its French protector. King Victor
Emmanuel II at first aimed at a peaceful conquest of the city and proposed sending troops
into Rome, under the guise of offering protection to the pope. When the pope refused, Italy
declared war on September 10, 1870, and the Italian Army, commanded by General Raffaele
Cadorna, crossed the frontier of the papal territory on September 11 and advanced slowly
toward Rome. The Italian Army reached the Aurelian Walls on September 19 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. This incidentally served the purposes of the Italian
State and gave rise to the myth of the Breach of Porta Pia, in reality a tame affair involving a
cannonade at close range that demolished a 1600-year-old wall in poor repair. The city was
captured on September 20, 1870. Rome and what was left of the Papal States were annexed to
the Kingdom of Italy as a result of a plebiscite the following October. This marked the
definite end of the Papal States.[30]
Despite the fact that the traditionally Catholic powers did not come to the pope's aid, the
papacy rejected any substantial accommodation with the Italian Kingdom, especially any
proposal which required the pope to become an Italian subject. Instead the papacy confined
itself (see Prisoner in the Vatican) to the Apostolic Palace and adjacent buildings in the loop
of the ancient fortifications known as the Leonine City, on Vatican Hill. From there it

maintained a number of features pertaining to sovereignty, such as diplomatic relations, since

in canon law these were inherent in the papacy. In the 1920s, the papacy then under Pius XI
renounced the bulk of the Papal States and the Lateran Treaty with Italy (then ruled by the
National Fascist Party under Benito Mussolini[34]) was signed on February 11 1929,[34]
creating the State of the Vatican City, forming the sovereign territory of the Holy See, which
was also indemnified to some degree for loss of territory.

Regional governors

Papal Zouaves pose in 1869.

As the plural name Papal States indicates, the various regional components retained their
identity under papal rule. The pope 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 and in the
Campagne and Maritime Province.

Papal army
Historically the Papal States maintained military forces composed of volunteers and
mercenaries. Between 1860 and 1870 the Papal Army (l'Esercito Pontificio) comprised two
regiments of locally recruited Italian infantry, two Swiss regiments and a battalion of Irish
volunteers, plus artillery and dragoons.[35] In 1861 an international Catholic volunteer corps,
called Papal Zouaves after a kind of French colonial native Algerian infantry, and imitating
their uniform type, was created. Predominantly made up of Dutch, French and Belgian
volunteers, this corps saw service against Garibaldi's Redshirts, local brigands, and finally the
forces of the newly united Italy.[36]
The Papal Army was disbanded in 1870, leaving only the Palatine Guard, which was itself
disbanded on 14 September 1970 by Pope Paul VI,[37] and the Swiss Guard, which continues
to serve both as a ceremonial unit at the Vatican and as the pope's protective force.