*Vatican City [https://en.wikipedia.] is the smallest country in the world; an independent city-state. Vatican City is governed as an absolute monarchy with the pope at its head; a walled enclave within the city of Rome. The independent city-state came into existence in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and Italy, not as a vestige of the much larger Papal States (758-1870), which had previously encompassed much of central Italy. According to the terms of the treaty, the Holy See has “full ownership, exclusive dominion, and sovereign authority and jurisdiction” over the city-state. Within Vatican City are religious and cultural sites such as St. Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican Museums. The unique economy of Vatican City is supported financially by the sale of postage stamps and tourist mementos, fees for admission to museums, and the sale of publications.
Papal States. Popes gradually came to have a secular role as governors of regions near Rome. They ruled the Papal States, which covered a large portion of the Italian peninsula, for more than a thousand years until the mid-19th century, when all the territory belonging to the papacy was seized by the newly created Kingdom of Italy.
World War II. The Holy See, which ruled Vatican City, pursued a policy of neutrality during WWII. Although German troops occupied the city of Rome after the 1943 Armistice of Cassibile, and the Allies from 1944, they respected Vatican City as neutral territory.
Governance. The politics of Vatican City takes place in an absolute elective monarchy, in which the head of the Roman Catholic Church takes power. The Pope exercises principal legislative, executive, and judicial power over the State of Vatican City (an entity distinct from the Holy See), which is a rare case of non-hereditary monarchy. Vatican City is one of the few widely recognized independent states that has not become a member of the United Nations. The Holy See has permanent observer status with all the rights of a full member except for a vote in the UN General Assembly.
Political system. The Pope is the sovereign of the state. Legislative authority is vested in the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, a body of cardinals appointed by the Pope for five-year periods. Executive power is in the hands of the President of that commission, assisted by the General Secretary and Deputy General Secretary. The state’s foreign relations are entrusted to the Holy See’s Secretariat of State and diplomatic service. Nevertheless, the pope has absolute power in the executive, legislative and judicial branches over Vatican City. He is currently the only absolute monarch in Europe.
Defense and security. As the Vatican City is an enclave within Italy, its military defence is provided by the Italian armed forces. However, there is no formal defence treaty with Italy, as the Vatican City is a neutral state. Vatican City has no armed forces of its own, although the Swiss Guard is a military corps of the Holy See responsible for the personal security of the Pope, and resident in the state. Soldiers of the Swiss Guard are entitled to hold Vatican City State passports and nationality… the Pontifical Swiss Guard was founded 1/22/1506 as the pope’s personal bodyguard and continues to fulfill that function… Recruitment is arranged by a special agreement between the Holy See and Switzerland. All recruits must be Catholic, unmarried males with Swiss citizenship who have completed their basic training with the Swiss Armed Forces… the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict theoretically renders it immune to armed attack. (photo, left) Pontifical Swiss Guard
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*Papal States [https://en.wikipedia.], officially the State of the Church, were territories in the Italian Peninsula under the sovereign direct rule of the pope, from the 8th century until 1870 (the Italian Peninsula was unified in 1861). These holdings were considered to be a manifestation of the temporal power of the pope, as opposed to his ecclesiastical primacy… 1929, Lateran Treaty, granting the Vatican City State sovereignty.
Origins. For its first 300 years the Catholic Church was persecuted and unrecognized, unable to hold or transfer property. 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. Nonetheless, the properties held nominally or actually by individual members of the Roman churches would usually be considered 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 attached to the churches at Rome, and thus under its ruling bishop, became quite considerable, including as it did not only houses etc in Rome or near by but landed estates, whole or in part, across Italy and beyond. This system began to change during the reign of the emperor Constantine I, who made Christianity legal within the Roman Empire, and restoring to it any properties that had been confiscated. The Lateran Palace was the first significant new donation to the Church, most probably a gift from Constantine himself.... 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.
The seeds of the Papal States as a sovereign political entity were planted in the 6th century. Beginning in 535, the Byzantine Empire… 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… to Rome and south to Naples… 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. 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.
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…
Donation of Pepin. When the Exarchate of Ravenna finally fell to the Lombards in 751, the Duchy of Rome was completely cut off from the Byzantine Empire… 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; he 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 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. 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… 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.
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 (“rule by harlots”).
Over several campaigns in the mid-10th century, the German ruler Otto I conquered northern Italy; Pope John XII crowned him emperor (the first in more than 40 yrs) 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, pope 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 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.
The Avignon Papacy. From 1305 to 1378, the popes lived in the papal enclave of Avignon, surrounded by Provence and under the influence of the French kings (“Babylonian Captivity”). During this time, local despots took advantage of the absence of the popes to establish themselves in nominally papal cities… (which) gave nominal acknowledgement to their papal overlords and were declared vicars of the Church… 4/29/1357, promulgated the Constitutiones Sanctae Matris Ecclesiae, 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.
Renaissance. During the Renaissance, the papal territory expanded greatly, notable 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.
Reformation. Began in 1517. Before the Holy Roman Empire fought the Protestants, its soldiers sacked Rome as a side effect of battles over the Papal States. A generation later the armies of King Philip II of Spain defeated those of Pope Paul IV over the same issues.
This period saw a gradual revival of the pope’s temporal power in the Papal States… As its greatest extent, in the 18th century, the Papal States included most of Central Italy…
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Napoleonic era. The French Revolution proved as disastrous for the temporal territories of the Papacy as it was for the Roman Church in general… 1796, French invasion of Italy, the Legations were seized… 1798, the Papal States as a whole were invaded by French forces, who declared a Roman Republic (Pope Pius VI fled to Siena)... 1809, the remainder of the States of the Church were annexed to France… 1814, fall of the Napoleonic system, the Papal States were restored. 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 and began to introduce liberal reforms.
Italian unification. had been stoked during the Napoleonic period but dashed by the settlement of the Congress of Vienna (1814-15), 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.
The nationalist and liberal revolution of 1848 affected much of Europe, and in Feb. 1849, a Roman Republic was declared, 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… 1861, a unified Kingdom of Italy was declared, 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… 1870, the Italian Army crossed the frontier of the papal territory and advanced toward Rome… the city was captured and what was left of the Papal States were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy (end of the Papal States)... the papacy confined itself to the Apostolic Palace, 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 was signed on Feb. 11, 1929, creating the State of the Vatican City, forming the sovereign territory of the Holy See, which also indemnified to some degree for loss of territory.
Regional governors. (Papal States) the various regional components retained their identity under papal rule. The pope was represented in each province by a governor, a number of styles arose… However, throughout the Papal States’ history many warlords and even bandit chieftains ruled cities and small duchies with no title bestowed by the Pope.
Papal army. Historically the Papal States maintained military forces composed of volunteers and mercenaries. Between 1860 and 1870 the Papal Army comprised two regiments of locally recruited Italian infantry, two Swiss regiments and a battalion of Irish volunteers, plus artillery and dragoons [mounted infantry, cavalry]. 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, italian patriots, and finally the forces of the newly united Italy. The Papal Army was disbanded in 1870, leaving only the Palatine Guard, which was itself disbanded on 9/14/1970 by Pope Paul VI, and the Swiss Guard, which continues to serve both as a ceremonial unit at the Vatican and as the pope’s protective force.
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*Temporal power [https://en.wikipedia] of the popes is the political and secular governmental activity of the popes of the Roman Catholic Church, as distinguished from their spiritual and pastoral activity… The temporal power was abolished by Napoleon Bonaparte, who dissolved the Papal States and incorporated Rome and Latium into his French Empire in 1809. The temporal power was restored by the Great Powers at the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in the 1815 Congress of Vienna. The Napoleonic civil laws were abolished, and most civil servants were removed from office. Popular opposition to the reconstituted corrupt clerical government led to numerous revolts, which were suppressed by the intervention of the Austrian army. A young Roman priest (1849) Abbe Arduini, described the temporal power of the popes as a “historical lie, a political imposture, and a religious immorality.” The newly elected Roman Assembly proclaimed the Roman Republic; its constitution abolished the temporal power, although the independence of the pope as head of the Catholic Church was guaranteed.
*Holy See [https://en.wikipedia.], is the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, the episcopal see of the Pope, and an independent sovereign entity. It serves as the central point of reference for the Catholic Church everywhere and the focal point of communion due to its position as the preeminent episcopal see of the universal church. Today, it is responsible for the governance of all Catholics…
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Related, Catholic Church, Temporal Power.
[https://en.wikipedia.] Constantine the Great, 57th Emperor of the Roman Empire (306-337 AD), aka Saint Constantine, Equal-to-the-Apostles in the Orthodox Church. In 313, he played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan, which decreed tolerance for Christianity in the empire. He called the First Council of Nicaea in 325, at which the Nicene Creed was adopted by Christians… He built a new imperial residence at Byzantium and renamed the city Constantinople after himself… The medieval church upheld him as a paragon of virtue while secular rulers invoked him as a prototype -symbol of imperial legitimacy and identity.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on his orders at the purported site of Jesus’ tomb in Jerusalem. The Papal claim to temporal power in the High Middle Ages was based on the supposed Donation of Constantine. He is venerated as a saint by Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholics… scholars debate his actual beliefs or even his actual comprehension of the Christian faith itself (he was not even baptised until just before his death).
Donation of Constantine… by the 4th century, a legend had emerged that Pope Sylvester I (314-335) had cured the pagan emperor (Constantine) from leprosy… Constantine was soon baptized, and began the construction of a church in the Lateran Palace. In the 8th century, most likely during the pontificate of Stephen II (752-757), a document called the Donation of Constantine first appeared, in which the freshly converted Constantine hands the temporal rule over “the city of Rome and all the provinces, districts, and cities of Italy and the Western regions” to Sylvester and his successors. In the High Middle Ages, this document was used as accepted as the basis for the Pope’s temporal power, though it was denounced as a forgery by Emperor Otto III and lamented by the poet Dante Alighieri. The 15th century philologist Lorenzo Valla proved the document was indeed a forgery.
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