Papal States

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 referred to variously as the State(s) of the Church, the Pontifical States, the Ecclesiastical States, the Patrimony of St Peter 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 "papal rule"). In English they were also referred to as the Popedom.

For its first 300 years, within the Roman Empire, the Church was persecuted and unable to hold or transfer property. Early congregations met in rooms set aside for the purpose in the homes of wealthy adherents, and a number of titular churches located on the outskirts of Rome were held as property by individuals, rather than by any corporate body. Nonetheless, the property held nominally or actually by individual members of the Roman churches would usually be treated as a common patrimony handed over successively to the legitimate "heir" of that property, often its senior deacons, who were, in turn, assistants to the local bishop. This common patrimony became quite considerable, including as it did not only include houses etc. in Rome or nearby but also landed estates, such as latifundia, whole or in part, across Italy and beyond.

A law of Constantine the Great, promulgated in 321, allowed the Christian Church to possess property and restored to it any property formerly confiscated; in the larger cities of this empire the property restored would have been quite considerable, the Roman patrimony not least among them. The Lateran Palace was gifted to the patrimony, most probably from Constantine himself.

Other donations followed, primarily in mainland Italy but also in the provinces of the Roman Empire. However, the Roman Church held all of these lands as a private landowner, not as a sovereign entity. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the papacy found itself increasingly placed in a precarious and vulnerable position. As central Roman authority disintegrated throughout the late 5th century, control over the Italian Peninsula repeatedly changed hands, falling under the Arian suzerainty of Odoacer in 473, and in 493, Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths. The Ostrogothic kings would continue to rule much of Italy until 554. The Roman Church submitted of necessity to their sovereign authority, while asserting its spiritual primacy over the whole of Christendom.

Beginning in 535, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I launched a series of campaigns to wrest Italy from the Ostrogoths which continued until 554 and devastated Italy's political and economic structures. The Byzantines established the Exarchate of Ravenna of which the Duchy of Rome, an area roughly coterminous with modern day Lazio, was an administrative division. In 568 the Lombards entered the peninsula from the north, establishing their own Italian kingdom, and over the next two centuries would conquer most of the Italian territory recently regained by Byzantium. By the 7th century, Byzantine authority was largely limited to a diagonal band running roughly from Ravenna, where the emperor's governor, or exarch, was located, to Rome and south to Naples, plus coastal exclaves. North of Naples, the band of Byzantine control contracted, and the borders of the Rome-Ravenna corridor became extremely narrow.

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 the Byzantines were unable to exercise in the areas surrounding the city of Rome. While the popes legally remained "Roman subjects" under Byzantine authority, in practice the Duchy of Rome became an independent state.

Popular support for the popes in Italy enabled several to defy the will of the Byzantine emperor: Pope Gregory II excommunicated Emperor Leo III during the Iconoclastic Controversy. Nevertheless, the Pope and the exarch still worked together to limit the rising power of the Lombards in Italy. As Byzantine power weakened, though, the papacy assumed an ever-larger role in protecting Rome from the Lombards, but lacking direct control over sizable military assets, the pope relied mainly on diplomacy to achieve as much. In practice, these 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 contained in the Lombardic King Liutprand's Donation of Sutri (728) to Pope Gregory II.

When the Exarchate of Ravenna 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. The popes renewed earlier attempts to secure the support of the Franks. In 751, Pope Zachary had Pepin the Short 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, defeated the Lombards, thus taking control of northern Italy, and made a gift of the lands formerly constituting the Exarchate of Ravenna to the pope.

Some later claimed that in 781, Charlemagne extended the regions over which the pope would be temporal sovereign: the Duchy of Rome, 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 of the Romans'.

From the 9th century to the 12th century, the precise nature of the relationship between the popes and emperors – and between the Papal States and the Empire – was disputed. It was unclear whether the Papal States were a separate realm with the Pope as their sovereign ruler, or 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 ruling Christendom, with the Pope directly responsible only for the environs of Rome and spiritual duties.

The Holy Roman Empire in its Frankish form collapsed when 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 passed to 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".

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. 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 Northern and Central 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 was signed in 1177. In the treaty, the rights of the Crown in Rome and in the Patrimony of Saint Peter were left vague, while papal rights of possession, including the Prefecture of the City of Rome, were recognized but "saving all the rights of the empire". By 1300, the Papal States, along with the rest of the Italian principalities, were effectively independent.

From 1305 to 1378, the popes lived in the papal enclave of Avignon, surrounded by Provence and under the influence of the French kings. This period was known as the "Avignonese" or "Babylonian Captivity". During this period the city of Avignon itself and the surrounding Comtat Venaissin 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 the 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 Forlì, the Manfredi in Faenza, and the Malatesta in Rimini all gave nominal acknowledgment to their papal overlords and were declared vicars of the Church.

In Ferrara, the death of Azzo VIII d'Este without legitimate heirs (1308) encouraged Pope Clement V to bring Ferrara under his direct rule: however, it was governed by his appointed vicar, King Robert of Naples, for only nine years before the citizens recalled the Este from exile (1317). Interdiction and excommunications were in vain because in 1332, John XXII was obliged to name three Este brothers as his vicars in Ferrara.

In Rome itself, the Orsini and the Colonna struggled for supremacy, 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, and met a violent death in early October 1354 as he was assassinated by supporters of the Colonna family. 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. As 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."

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 Gil Álvarez Carrillo de Albornoz, who was appointed papal legate, and his condottieri heading a small mercenary army. Having received the support of the archbishop of Milan, 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 a meeting with all the Papal vicars on 29 April 1357, promulgated the Constitutiones Sanctæ Matris Ecclesiæ, which replaced the mosaic of local law and accumulated traditional 'liberties' with a uniform code of civil law. These Constitutiones Aegidianae (as they are informally known) 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.

During the Renaissance, the Papal territory expanded greatly, notably under Popes Alexander VI and Julius II. As well as already being the head of the Church, the Pope became one of Italy's most important secular rulers, signing treaties with other sovereigns and fighting wars. In practice, though, most of the Papal States were 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 in conflict. The Papal States were involved in at least three wars in the first two decades of the 16th century. Julius II, the "Warrior Pope", fought on their behalf.

The Reformation began in 1517.

The Papal States occupied a central position in the Italian Peninsula, extending roughly between 41°13′N and 45°N latitude. To the north, the territory reached the Po River from Bondeno to its mouths on the Adriatic Sea. To the east, it bordered the Adriatic coast from the area of Mesola southward to the mouth of the Tronto. The southern boundary followed the Abruzzo mountains of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, while to the west the frontier ran along the Tyrrhenian coast from the Mount Circeo to Monte Argentario and then northward along the borders with Tuscany and Modena.

The Apennine Mountains crossed much of the territory. The northern Apennines, from the source of the Reno to that of the Tiber, formed a natural division between Tuscan lands and the northern Papal domains. The central Apennines ran from Montecoronaro to Monte Velino, with important passes such as those of Furlo and Colfiorito. Secondary ranges and spurs extended toward the Adriatic, including Monte Conero near Ancona, and toward the Tyrrhenian through the sub-Apennine systems of Tuscany and Rome. Apart from the Umbrian Valley and the coastal plains, much of the territory was mountainous or hilly.

The principal river of the Papal States was the Tiber, which flowed westward to the Tyrrhenian Sea and formed the main fluvial axis of the territory. Among its most important tributaries were the Nera and the Aniene. On the Adriatic side, the most significant rivers included the Reno in the north and the Tronto in the south, together with major central Adriatic streams such as the Metauro and the Esino.

Major lakes included Lake Trasimeno and Lake Bolsena, followed by those of Bracciano and Nemi, and smaller lakes such as Lake Piediluco and Lake Vico. Coastal lagoons were also present between Civitavecchia and Terracina, including those of Fogliano and Paola.

Agricultural conditions varied across the territory. While parts of the Roman Campagna and the Tyrrhenian littoral were affected by under-cultivation and unhealthy marshes, other regions (such as Umbria, the Marches, Romagna, and the Bolognese area) were described as fertile and well cultivated.

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, who bore one of a number of titles. These included "papal legate", as in the former principality of Benevento, or at Bologna, in Romagna, and the March of Ancona; and "papal delegate", as in the former Duchy of Pontecorvo and in the Campagne and Maritime Province. Other titles like "Papal Vicar", "Vicar General", and also several titles of nobility, such as "count" or even "prince" were used.

Until the 17th century, the administrative organization of the Papal States was based on the Egidian Constitutions, which divided the territory in 5 traditional provinces or legations:

Patrimony of Saint Peter in Tuscia, with its seat in Montefiascone, later in Viterbo

Campagna e Marittima Province, seat in Ferentino (in Frosinone from 1589 onwards)

Duchy of Spoleto, seat in Spoleto, later in Perugia

March of Ancona, seat in Macerata (Fermo until the 15th century)

Romagna Province, seat in Faenza or Cesena, later in Bologna and Ravenna

The provinces were financially self-sufficient; Rome only exercised coordination. The supreme authority of each individual province was the Papal Legate, who operated with full powers in the name of the Pontiff. The legate governed together with the Rector. The territorial physiognomy of the various provinces remained uncertain for a long time. Only under Pope Pius IV (1559–1565) was a certain and specific identification established for each province.

Until 1540 all the northern territories (Romagna) were administered by a single papal legation. The Cardinal Legate, head of the local government, resided in Bologna, the largest city in the region which became de facto capital.

In 1627, a Congregation for Borders was created. This body was responsible for preventing abuses and mediating frequent disputes regarding territorial jurisdiction between the various provinces and, within these, between dioceses or municipalities.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Clement XI and his successor, Innocent XIII, acknowledging the changes that had occurred in the previous century, gave further and more decisive impetus to the process of reforming the political and administrative structure of the state, with the creation of new provinces and the reorganization of the various constituencies on a more homogeneous territorial basis. The aim was to achieve more widespread control over the territory and mitigate the harmful effects of the many aristocratic and municipal privileges that impeded the proper functioning of the state.

The new and more detailed provincial division, not yet drawn up in 1701, at the time of the first (partial) census of the 18th century, would find full implementation in the twenty years that followed and would be entirely reflected in the subsequent census (1767–1769). This division was composed of:

Twelve provinces: Lazio, Patrimony of St. Peter, Campagna and Marittima, Sabina, Duchy of Spoleto, Perugia, March of Ancona, Urbino, Montefeltro, Romagna, Bologna and Ferrara;

An extra-territorial legation: Avignon;

A county: Comtat Venaissin;

Two dependent territories: Benevento and Pontecorvo.

They were further subdivided into:

Legations:

of Bologna, Romagna or Ravenna, Ferrara, Urbino and Pesaro, Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin;

Patrimony of St. Peter, Campagna and Marittima, Lazio or Campagna Romana;

Delegations: Fano, Camerino, Iesi;

Rectorates: Montefeltro and Pennabilli, Sabina;

Governments: Perugia, Città di Castello, Pontecorvo;

Titled Countries (governments): Duchy of Spoleto, Duchy of Castro and Ronciglione, Duchy of Bracciano, Duchy of Benevento, March of Ancona, March of Fermo, Prefecture of the Mountain (Norcia);

Autonomous fiefdoms:

Duchy of Salci, to the Benelli Ghislieri princes (1568–1816)

County of Castiglione de' Gatti, to the Pepoli (1340–1796)

County of Bagni di Porretta, to the Ranuzzi (1474–1797)

County of Civitella Ranieri, to the Ranieri (1078–1816)

County of Piobbico, to the Brancaleoni (1100–1816)

County of Reschio, to the Bichi Ruspoli (1355–1817)

The Papal States were ruled under the Pope's temporal power, comprising thirteen provinces in central and northern Italy. These provinces were administered through a hierarchical system of papal officials.

By the mid-18th century, major provinces were governed chiefly by cardinal legates (legati a latere), while provincial and principal city governments were entrusted to prelates of the Roman Curia. Lesser jurisdictions were administered by legally trained governors, who could be removed or transferred according to administrative need. Certain territories outside Italy, such as Benevento and Avignon, were likewise governed by papal prelates holding gubernatorial or vice-legatine authority.

The Papal States were governed through a centralized curial system of cardinal-led congregations. Executive and judicial business was handled by standing and ad-hoc congregations composed of cardinals, prelates and ministers appointed by the Pope. Each congregation was headed by a cardinal prefect (sometimes the Pope himself), assisted by a prelate secretary who prepared business and submitted decisions for papal approval. Matters requiring expedited or sensitive handling were referred to an Extraordinary Congregation of State, convened at the Pope's discretion with a small number of selected cardinals. Questions normally destined for full consistory were first examined within the Congregation of the Consistory, which investigated, heard contradictions and resolved affairs to avoid protracted debate in consistory.

Civil government was exercised through the Congregazione del buon governo , a papal tribunal entrusted with civil, political and economic authority. Its function was to safeguard the public economy by supervising the financial administration of subject communities and preventing fiscal harm to the state. The congregation directed how communal revenues were managed and reviewed local financial conditions to ensure compliance with papal oversight. It possessed authority to authorize taxation and to intervene in disputes involving municipalities. The congregation was composed of a cardinal prefect, several cardinals, a prelate secretary, and additional prelates (ponenti) and met regularly to conduct its business. Certain territories, notably Bologna, were exempt by papal privilege.

Alongside directly administered lands, the Papal States included numerous luoghi baronali held by ecclesiastical institutions and noble families, whose lords exercised local jurisdiction while remaining subject to papal sovereignty. In 1701 these territories contained about 264,000 inhabitants in more than 500 parishes, with a large share controlled by leading aristocratic houses such as the abbot of Subiaco, Barberini, Pamphili, Borghese, and Colonna. After the papal restoration in 1815, feudal jurisdictions were abolished in several provinces and progressively curtailed elsewhere. Reforms in 1816 introduced administrative uniformity and encouraged the gradual renunciation of remaining baronial powers.

Population counts in the Papal States began relatively late compared to other Italian states. While parts of Italy carried out censuses as early as the 15th century, the Roman State followed this example only in the mid-17th century.

During the 17th century the Papal States experienced marked population decline. Contemporary observers reported significant reductions in several provinces and dioceses, with some areas losing up to a third of their inhabitants within a few decades. By the 1670s it was claimed that in less than 40 years the state had lost about one third of its subjects.

In 1656 the first general census ordered by Pope Alexander VII recorded about 1.8 million inhabitants. The census of 1701 recorded about 1.95 million inhabitants. Population growth between 1656 and 1701 was modest at a few thousand persons per year. A further census in 1708 showed only a slight increase to nearly 1.96 million inhabitants, as grain shortages and epidemics at the beginning of the 18th century slowed demographic expansion.

Between 1708 and 1736 overall population growth remained modest. By 1736 the state had about 2 million inhabitants. Growth was driven mainly by Rome while the provinces increased only slightly. By 1769 the population reached about 2.2 million, and by 1782 about 2.35 million with a marked acceleration after 1769 as the provinces gained more than 150,000 inhabitants in little over a decade.

The population of the Papal States grew steadily during the first half of the 19th century, rising from about 2.36 million inhabitants in 1816 to roughly 2.73 million in 1833, 2.93 million in 1844, and just over 3.13 million by 1853.

According to the 1853 census, 99.7% of the population was Catholic. Jews were the largest non-Catholic group, numbering 9,237, and were concentrated mainly in the Comarca of Rome and the provinces of Ancona, Ferrara, and Pesaro e Urbino. All other non-Catholic groups combined accounted for 263 people.

In the mid-19th century, the largest city in the Papal States was Rome, with about 170,000 inhabitants, far surpassing all others. It was followed at a distance by Bologna, with around 71,000, and Perugia, with about 30,000.

A second tier of sizeable towns included Ancona and Ferrara, each with roughly 24,000 inhabitants, and Benevento with about 18,000. Ravenna also stood among the more populous centers, with around 16,000.

Below these were a number of smaller provincial cities such as Viterbo, Rieti, Macerata, and Ascoli, each with populations of about 12,000 to 13,000, while towns like Orvieto, Loreto, and Civitavecchia ranged between roughly 7,000 and 8,000 inhabitants.