Papal States - History
When the Law of Nations began to grow up among the States of Christendom, the Pope was the monarch of one of those States - namely, the so-called Papal States. The territories comprised in the Papal States had been acquired at various periods, by inheritance, by cession, and by conquest. In the eighth century, the Duchy of Rome, which constituted the first temporal possession of the Holy See, was conferred by Pepin the Short [Pepin le Bref] and his son Charlemagne in gratitude to the Popes Stephen II and Adrian I, who crowned them as Kings of the Franks. This State included a large portion of the exarchate of Ravenna, which they had conquered from the Lombards. The duchy extended along the sea-coast, from Terracina to the mouth of the Tiber, and includes the southern Campagna, the Pontine marshes, and the Sabine and Volscian hills.
In the eleventh century the Duchy of Benevento became the property of the Holy See, by the cession of the emperor Henry II. to Leo IX., in exchange for the revenues of the city of Bamberg. In the twelfth century, the allodial possessions of the countess Matilda passed by inheritance to the church ; that portion of them, which is well known as the Patrimony of St. Peter, extended from Rome to Bolsena, including the coast line from the mouth of the Tiber to the Tuscan frontier. The inarch of Ancona and the duchy of Spoleto were also included in this famous donation.
By their settlement in Avignon, the popes relinquished their protectorate of Italian liberties, and lost tneir position as Italian potentates. Rienzi's revolution in Rome (1347-1354), and his establishment of a republic upon a fantastic basis, half classical, half feudal, proved the temper of the times ; while the rise of dynastic families in the cities of the church, claiming the title of papal vicars, but acting in their own interests, weakened the authority of the Holy See. The predatory expeditions of Uertrand du Poiet and Robert of Geneva were as ineffective as the descents of the emperors; and, though the cardinal Albornoz conquered Romagna and the March in 1364, the legates who resided in those districts were not long able to hold them against their despots.
At last Gregory XI returned to Rome; and Urban VI, elected in 1378, put a final end to the Avignonian exile. Still the Great Schism, which now distracted Western Christendom, so enfeebled the papacy, and kept the Roman pontiffs so engaged in ecclesiastical disputes, that they had neither power nor leisure to occupy themselves seriously with their temporal affairs. The threatening presence of the two princely houses of Orsini and Colonna, alike dangerous as friends or foes, rendered Rome an unsafe residence. Even when the schism was nominally terminated in 1415 by the council of Constance, the next two popes held but a precarious grasp upon their Italian domains. Martin V (1417-1431) resided principally at Florence. Eugenius IV (1431-1447) followed his example; and what Martin managed to regain Euigenius lost.
At the same time, the change which had now come over Italian politics, the desire on all sides for a settlement, and the growing conviction that a federation was necessary, proved advantageous to the popes as sovereigns. They gradually entered into the spirit of their age, assumed the style of despots, and made use of the humanistic movement, then at its height, to place themselves in a new relation to Italy.
The election of Nicholas V in 1447 determined this revolution in the papacy, and opened a period of temporal splendor, which ended with the establishment of the popes as sovereigns. Thomas of Sarzana was a distinguished humanist. Humbly born, he had been tutor in the house of the Albizzi, and afterward librarian of the Medici at Florence, where he imbibed the politics together with the culture of the Renaissance. Soon after assuming the tiara, he found himself without a rival in the church; for the schism ended by Felix V's resignation in 1449. Nicholas fixed his residence in Rome, which he began to rebuild and to fortify, determining to render the Eternal City once more a capital worthy of its high place in Europe. The Romans were flattered ; and, though his reign was disturbed by republican conspiracy, Nicholas V was able before his death in 1455 to secure the modern status of the pontiff as a splendid patron and a wealthy temporal potentate.
On the return of the popes from Avignon, and on the subsequent subjection of the petty princes of Romagna and Umbria, other important districts gradually fell under the power of the church. In 1463 the popes obtained possession of the principality of Pontecorvo, in the kingdom of Naples ; and about the same period Perugia, Orvieto, Citta di Castello, and numerous dependent towns acknowledged the papal sovereignty: and the conquests of Julius II. added to the dominions of the Holy See the important districts of Bologna and Kavcnna. Ancona was occupied by the Papal troops in 1532; Ferrara was seized in 1597; the Duke of Urbino abdicated in favour of the church in 1626 ; and a few years later the Papal States received their last additions in the fiefs of Castro and Uonciglione, which were wrested from the Farnese by Innocent X. Such were the temporal possessions of the popes when the French revolution upset the whole system of Italian government.
It remained in the hands of the Popes till 1798, when it became a Republic for about three years. In 1801 the former order of things was re-established, but in 1809 it became a part of the Napoleonic Empire. Into the changes produced by that event in the states of the church, it is unnecessary to enter in detail : it is sufficient to say that the popes were restored to their possessions at the close of the European war in 1814, and that the temporal states of the Holy See from that time remained much as they were settled by article 103 of the Treaty of Vienna. This article restored to the Holy See the Marshes, with Camerino and their dependencies, the duchy of Beneveuto and the principality of Pontecorvo. In virtue of the same article, the Holy See regained possession of the legations of Ravenna, Bologna, and Ferrara, save, however, that part of Ferrara situated on the left bank of the Po, which Austria secured to herself, together with the right of garrisoning the places of Ferrara and Commacchio. The protest made by Cardinal Consalvi at the Congress of Vienna, in favour of the ancient possessions of the church, has hitherto remained a dead letter; but the occupation of the city as well as the citadel by Austria in 1817, on the ground that the word place in the treaty applied to the entire city, roused a spirit of nationality in the Papal States, and a feeling of sympathy throughout Europe, which eventually restored Ferrara and its garrison to the Pope.
For some decades thereafter, to regain the temporal power, the Vatican's first line of policy was to intrigue with foreign governments, especially with France, and this was one of the chief causes of the rivalry between that country and Italy. It was hoped by the Clericals that France, or some other power, could be induced to intervene in Italy, break up the union, and re-establish the States of the Church. Now, however, that Clericalism is on the decline in France, and that the other governments of Europe see in the increase of Clerical influence a danger for their own authority, the Vaticanists have had to seek elsewhere for support.
The reason why the Vatican was prepared to go such lengths for the sake of re-establishing its temporal authority is that by the end of the 19h Century its hold on all classes was far greater abroad than it is in Italy itself. The larger part of Peter's Pence was provided by foreign Catholics. Were the Pope to become reconciled with the Italian Government without the temporal power, the Clericals feared that he would be regarded abroad as "a chaplain of the House of Savoy," and lose much of his influence among non-Italian Catholics. Thus they were prepared to see their country dismembered by a foreign invader, or a prey to internal revolution, that the Pope may become the sovereign of a state about the size of Montenegro.
Throughout the existence of the Papal States, the Popes were monarchs, and, as such, equals of all other monarchs. Their position was, however, even then anomalous, as their influence and the privileges granted to them by the different States were due, not alone to their being monarchs of a State, but to their being the head of the Roman Catholic Church. But this anomaly did not create any real difficulty, since the privileges granted to the Popes existed within the province of precedence only.
When, in 1870, Italy annexed the Papal States and made Rome her capital, she had to undertake the Guaranty, task of creating a position for the Holy See and the Pope which was consonant with the importance of the latter to the Roman Catholic Church. It seemed impossible that the Pope should become an ordinary Italian subject and that the Holy See should be an institution under the territorial supremacy of Italy. For many reasons no alteration was desirable in the administration by the Holy See of the affairs of the Roman Catholic Church or in the position of the Pope as the inviolable head of that Church. To meet the case the Italian Parliament passed an Act regarding the guaranties granted to the Pope and the Holy See, which is commonly called the 'Law of Guaranty.'
Disputes between a series of popes and Italy were resolved in 1929 by three Lateran Treaties, which established the independent state of Vatican City out of the former Papal States and granted Roman Catholicism special status in Italy.
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