Papal States

The Papal States (Gli Stati della Chiesa or Stati Pontificii, "States of the Church") was one of the major historical states of Italy before the boot-shaped peninsula was unified under the Piedmontese crown of Savoy (later a republic). The Papal States comprised those territories over which the Pope was the ruler in a civil as well as a spiritual sense before 1870. This governing power is commonly called the temporal power of the Pope, as opposed to his (unique and more essential) ecclestiastical primacy.

The Donation of Pippin and the Holy Roman Empire

When the Exarchate 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. Pope Stephen III acted to neutralize the Lombard threat by courting the de facto Frankish ruler, Pippin the Younger. Stephen gave church sanction to Pepin's desire to depose the Merovingian figurehead Childeric III and take the throne himself; he also granted Pippin the title Patrician of the Romans. In return, Pippin led a Frankish army into Italy in 754 and 756. Pippin conquered much of northern Italy and made a gift (called the Donation of Pippin) 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 Pentapolis, parts of the Duchy of Benevento, Tuscany, Corsica, Lombardy, along with 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" ('Augustus Romanorum').

Related Topics:
751 - Pope Stephen III - Frank - Pippin the Younger - Merovingian - Childeric III - Patrician - 754 - 756 - Donation of Pippin - 781 - Charlemagne - Pentapolis - Benevento - Tuscany - Corsica - Lombardy - 800 - Pope Leo III

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However, the precise nature of the relationship between the Popes and Emperors–and between the Papal States and the Empire–was not clear. Was the Pope a sovereign ruler of a separate realm in central Italy? Or were the Papal States just a part of the Frankish Empire over which the Popes had administrative control? Events in the ninth century postponed the conflict: the Frankish Empire collapsed as it was subdivided among Charlemagne's grandchildren, and the papacy's prestige declined into the condition later dubbed the pornocracy. 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 Lombard system of government, with many small counties and marquisates, each centered upon a fortified rocca.

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Over several campaigns in the mid-tenth 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, which guaranteed the independence of the Papal States. However, 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 Italy. But after the end of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, the German emperors rarely interfered in Italian affairs, and by 1300, the Papal States, along with the rest of the Italian principalities, were effectively independent.

Related Topics:
Tenth century - Otto I - Pope John XII - Diploma Ottonianum - Hohenstaufen

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