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, AD 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.

Papal States

The states where the Catholic pope held direct “temporal” authority in central Italy, beginning in the middle of the eighth century, and where papal sovereignty ended with the unification of Italy in 1870. The fall of Rome in the fifth century left the popes as the strongest power in the city and its surrounding region. When Italy was under the threat of total conquest by the Lombards, Pope Stephen II sent for help from the Franks and their king Pepin the Short. The Franks invaded Italy despite the efforts by the eastern Roman (Byzantine) empire to establish rule over the peninsula and restore the empire. In 756, the Franks turned over territories under their control to the church, an event known as the Donation of Pepin. The domains of the popes expanded in the Middle Ages, to include Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia under Pope Sylvester I, and Tuscany in the early twelfth century. From 1305, the seat of the Papacy was in Avignon, France, and the Papal States fell under the authority of secular princes.

The restoration of the Papacy in Rome led to the expansion of papal authority in central Italy, beginning in the late fifteenth century. Pope Alexander VI sanctioned a campaign by his son Cesare Borgia to conquer these small principalities, which did not have effective defenses against Borgia's large and disciplined forces. Cities of the Romagna, a region centered in the valley of the Po River in northern Italy, and the Marches, along the central Adriatic coast, came directly under the pope's authority. The power of the Papacy was strengthened in the late Renaissance, after Pope Julius II and later popes abolished secular governments in several key cities, including Ferrara and Urbino. The Papal States remained independent of more powerful states that were emerging in the north (such as Venice and Tuscany) and the south (including Naples). In 1796 a French army under Napoléon Bonaparte, a determined opponent of the church's civic authority, invaded and disbanded the Papal States, which were restored for a last time in 1815. The last remnant of the Papal States is Vatican City, a small enclave in Rome that is the seat of the modern Catholic Church.

See Also: Italy; Julius II; Papacy

Papal States A part of central Italy held between 756 and 1870 by the Catholic Church, corresponding to the modern regions of Emilia-Romagna, Marche, Umbria, and Latium. Taken from the Lombards by the Frankish king Pepin III, the states were given to the papacy as a strategy to undermine Lombard expansionism. Greatly extended by Pope Innocent III in the early 13th century and by Pope Julius II in the 16th century, they were incorporated into the newly unified Italy in 1860 and 1870. Their annexation to Italy deprived the papacy of its temporal powers until the Lateran Treaty of 1929 recognized the sovereignty of the Vatican City.

Papal States Territories of central Italy under the rule of the popes (756–1870). In the 15th century, the papal government displaced the feudal magnates who had ruled the Papal States in the Middle Ages and imposed direct control from Rome. The territory was temporarily lost during the Napoleonic period, restored to the papacy in 1815, and annexed by the Italian nationalists during the Risorgimento. The Lateran Treaty of 1929 restored the small area comprising the Vatican in Rome to papal rule.

Papal States (Stati Pontifici) That part of central Italy over which the Pope had sovereignty between 756 and 1870. Although the area varied in size, it corresponded to the modern regions of Emilia‐Romagna, Lazio, Marche, and Umbria.