Papal States (redirected from Ecclesiastical States)

Papal States, Ital. Lo Stato della Chiesa, from 754 to 1870 an independent territory under the temporal rule of the popes, also called the States of the Church and the Pontifical States. The territory varied in size at different times; in 1859 it included c.16,000 sq mi (41,440 sq km) extending north-south on the Italian peninsula, from the Adriatic Sea and lower course of the Po River to the Tyrrhenian Sea, thus including the present regions of Latium, Umbria, Marche, and eastern Emilia-Romagna.

Accumulation of Land

The nucleus of the states consisted of endowments given to the popes from the 4th cent. in and around Rome, in other areas of the Italian mainland, and in Sicily, Sardinia, and other lands; these came to be called the Patrimony of St. Peter. The popes gradually lost their more distant lands, but in the duchy of Rome papal power became stronger and increasingly independent of the Eastern emperors and of the other states in Italy.

In 754 (confirmed 756), Pepin the Short gave to Pope Stephen II the exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis (Rimini, Ancona, Fano, Pesaro, and Senigallia). (Like Pope Zacharias, Pope Stephen II had recognized Pepin as rightful king of the Franks, and Pepin now needed papal assistance against the Lombards.) Over these vast territories the popes were long unable to exercise effective temporal sovereignty. In 774, Charlemagne confirmed the donation of his father, Pepin the Short; moreover, to give the papal claim to temporal power greater antiquity, the so-called Donation of Constantine (see Constantine, Donation of) to Pope Sylvester I was forged. On its basis later popes also claimed suzerainty over Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. In 1115, Countess Matilda of Tuscany, by leaving her territories to the church, helped to precipitate a long struggle between popes and emperors.

In Rome itself, the popes' temporal power, almost nonexistent in the 10th cent., remained greatly limited until the 14th cent. by the interference of the emperors, by the power of the nobles, and by the ambitions of the commune of Rome, which contended that its authority also extended over the Papal States. In the 13th and 14th cent., the emperors renounced their claims to the duchy of Spoleto, the Romagna, and the March of Ancona; however, the free communes and petty tyrannies that dominated these regions long resisted effective papal control. The Comtat Venaissin, a papal possession in S France until 1791 (though not a part of the Papal States), was acquired in 1274; in 1309, Avignon became the seat of the popes. From 1309 to 1417, during the "Babylonian Captivity" at Avignon and the Great Schism, the Papal States were in chaotic condition, only temporarily relieved by the efforts of Cardinal Albornoz.

Control of the Territories

Actual control by the papacy of its territories began in the 16th cent., when Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI, conquered the petty states of the Romagna and Marche; after his fall (1503) most of them passed directly under papal rule. In the early 16th cent., Pope Julius II consolidated papal power by abolishing local autonomies and by participating effectively in the Italian Wars. The last principalities to lose their autonomy to the popes were Ferrara (1598) and Urbino (1631). The duchy of Castro was added in 1649. Parma and Piacenza were alienated (1545) through the nepotism of Pope Paul III.

Dissolution and Resolution

After the Counter Reformation (16th cent.) the spiritual power of the papacy grew while its political power waned. Papal troops, mostly Swiss and other mercenaries, offered almost no resistance to the French invaders under Napoleon Bonaparte (see Napoleon I) in 1796. Pius VI and his successor, Pius VII, saw their states curtailed, occupied, and twice abolished between 1796 and 1814. The Congress of Vienna fully restored (1815) the states of the papacy and placed them under Austrian protection.

Conspiracies and revolutions (notably of 1831 and 1848–49) characterized the following decades. Pius IX was liberal at his accession and granted his states a constitution, but the events of 1848 turned him against the revolutionists. During the Risorgimento, only French intervention at Rome prevented the total absorption of the Papal States. After the Austrians left (1859) Bologna and the Romagna, both united (1860) with the kingdom of Sardinia, as did Marche and Umbria. Giuseppe Garibaldi invaded the remaining Papal States twice but was prevented from taking Rome—in 1862 by the intervention of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, and in 1867 by Napoleon III.

The fall of Napoleon permitted Victor Emmanuel to seize Rome in 1870. However, Pius IX refused to recognize the loss of temporal power and became a "prisoner" in the Vatican; his successors followed his example. The so-called Roman Question was only resolved in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty, which, among other things, established Vatican City.

Bibliography

See L. M. Duchesne, The Beginnings of the Temporal Sovereignty of the Popes, A.D. 754–1073 (1898, tr. 1908); D. P. Waley, The Papal State under Martin V (1958); P. Partner, The Lands of St. Peter: The Papal State in the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance (1972). See also bibliography under papacy.

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Papal States

 Italian Stati Pontifici

Territories of central Italy over which the pope had sovereignty from 756 to 1870. The extent of the territory and the degree of papal control varied over the centuries. As early as the 4th century, the popes had acquired considerable property around Rome (called the Patrimony of St. Peter). From the 5th century, with the breakdown of Roman imperial authority in the West, the popes' influence in central Italy increased as the people of the area relied on them for protection against the barbarian invasions. When the Lombards threatened to take over the whole peninsula in the 750s, Pope Stephen II (or III) appealed for aid to the Frankish ruler Pippin III (the Short). On intervening, Pippin “restored” the lands of central Italy to the Roman see, ignoring the claim of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire to sovereignty there. This Donation of Pippin (754) provided the basis for the papal claim to temporal power. More land was gained when the papacy acquired the duchy of Benevento in 1077, and Popes Innocent III and Julius II further expanded the papal domain. The rise of communes and rule by local families weakened papal authority in the towns, and by the 16th century the papal territory was one of a number of petty Italian states. They were an obstacle to Italian unity until 1870, when Rome was taken by Italian forces and became the capital of Italy. In 1929 the Lateran Treaty settled the pope's relation to the Italian state and set up an independent city-state (see Vatican City).

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Papal States 

(Stato Pontificio), from the eighth through 19th centuries, a theocratic state located in central Italy and headed by the pope. The capital of the Papal States was Rome.

The Frankish king Pepin the Short laid the foundation for the Papal States in 756, when he donated to Pope Stephen II the area around Rome, part of the territory of the former Exarchate of Ravenna, and the Pentapolis. The Papal States were originally located within the Carolingian Empire, but in 962 they became part of the Holy Roman Empire. Under Pope Innocent III (ruled 1198–1216) they became independent of the emperors, and in 1274 the Hapsburg emperor Rudolf I officially proclaimed their sovereignty. The borders of the Papal States changed frequently.

The secular power of the popes in the Papal States was insignificant, except during certain periods when the papacy was relatively strong. In the tenth through 12th centuries only the territory of Rome and its surrounding districts were actually under papal authority. The antipapal uprising of 1143 led to the collapse of the pope’s secular authority in Rome. Pope Innocent III restored and significantly broadened the papal authority over the former territory of the Papal States.

During the Middle Ages the Papal States were economically among the most backward regions of northern and central Italy. Only some of the cities (Bologna, Perugia, Spoleto, and Rome) had highly developed handicrafts and a significant volume of trade. In general, serfdom survived longer in the Papal States than in other parts of Italy. The population suffered from the wars between the popes and the emperors and from the feudal wars between the popes and the aristocracy. In the 14th century the secular authority of the pope in the Papal States was undermined by the uprising led by Cola di Rienzi in Rome and by antipapal uprisings in a number of towns and cities, including Perugia (1368–69, 1371, and 1375) and Bologna (1376). Of the cities in the Papal States, only Rome and Rimini remained under papal authority by 1377.

From the 15th century the popes concentrated on territorial expansion. In the 16th through 18th centuries an absolutist regime developed in the Papal States. During the period of Napoleonic rule in Italy (late 18th century to 1814), the Roman Republic (1798–99) was established on papal territory. A large part of the Papal States was incorporated into France in 1809. After the restoration of the Papal States by the Congress of Vienna (1814–15), the feudal-clerical reaction was stronger there than in any other region of Italy. At the same time, the Papal States became a focal point for revolutionary ferment (secret societies, conspiracies, and uprisings). In 1848–49 papal Rome became one of the chief centers of the bourgeois revolution in Italy. The papal authority was overthrown in February 1849, and a Roman republic was proclaimed. After the suppression of the revolution and the overthrow of the republic, the secular authority of the pope in the Papal States was maintained by the troops of the French interventionists. During the Revolution of 1859–60, Romagna (March 1860), as well as Umbria and Marche (November 1860), broke away from the Papal States and became part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. The Papal States ceased to exist in 1870, when Rome was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy (created in 1861). A small papal state was reestablished on part of the territory of the city of Rome in 1929, in accordance with the Lateran Treaty.