Temporal power
Encyclopedia
The temporal power of the Pope
s is the political and governmental activity of the Pope
s of the Roman Catholic Church
, as distinguished from their spiritual and pastoral activity, which by Catholics is sometimes also called eternal power, to contrast it with the Church's secular power, that is, power exercised within time
rather than in eternity
.
For centuries, its secular activities brought the Papal States
into a status as a country bearing some relation with other countries of the world. Some historians identify the crowning of Charlemagne
in 800 as the moment in which the Church started having an international importance in a modern sense, although the temporal power can be traced even earlier to either the Donation of Pepin
in 754, or the crowning of Pepin by Pope Zachary
in 752 which was the first time a secular sovereign was crowned by a Pope. In his Pastoral Care
, Pope Gregory the Great (died 604) had discussed the extensive range of duties that bishops owed their flock as huius saeculi potentes, "the powers of these ages"; hence some historians prefer to see the origins of secular powers in the age of the Byzantine suzerainty over the bishop of Rome. Yet "Justinian I
succeeded in imposing his ecclesiastical policies on the papacy and Pope Gregory the Great maintained an attitude of political loyalty to the empire."
Charlemagne's crowning, however, was perhaps the first moment in which the Church was generally granted a power
of control of the imperial dignity, thus demonstrating a sort of power of international veto
. Subsequently, the Donation of Constantine
was forged to provide a legal basis for the temporal power.
The temporal power has often been discussed in politics, in philosophy and in theology, mainly given that its practical effects were often very far from the official religious doctrine. The same story with the inquisition
, quite commonly considered as a mere instrument of the temporal power (therefore with no accepted religious meaning); it is perhaps the moment of the greatest distance between the Gospel
and the Roman curia
. The common reply to critics usually considers that the final goal of spreading the Good News (working for the diffusion of the Catholic faith), was so important that some "unavoidable" passages had to be crossed, practicing at times some of Machiavelli
's political lessons.
The temporal power was abolished by Napoleon Bonaparte
, who dissolved the Papal States and incorporated Rome and Latium into his French Empire. The temporal power was restored by the Great Powers at 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.
G. S. Godkin wrote the following about Leo XII, who succeeded Pius VII in 1823.
When Pius IX was elected pope in 1846, one of his first acts was to grant an amnesty to more than 2,000 political prisoners. In November 1848, following the assassination of his minister Pellegrino Rossi, Pius IX fled Rome. During a political rally in February 1849, a young Roman priest, the Abbé Arduini, described the temporal power of the popes as a "historical lie, a political imposture, and a religious immorality." On 9 February 1849, the newly-elected Roman Assembly proclaimed the Roman Republic (19th century)
. Subsequently, the Constitution of the Roman Republic abolished the temporal power, although the independence of the pope as head of the Catholic Church was guaranteed by article 8 of the "Principi fondamentali." Religious freedom was guaranteed by article 7, while the death penalty was abolished by article 5, and free public education was provided by article 8 of the "Titolo I".
At the end of June 1849, the Roman Republic was crushed by 40,000 French troops sent by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (later Napoleon III), at the urging of the rabid ultramontane French clerical party. The temporal power was restored and propped up by a French garrison.
In 1859–60, the Papal States lost Romagna, Marche and Umbria. These regions were incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy, and the temporal power was reduced to Rome and the region of Lazio. At this point, some ultramontane
groups proposed that the temporal power be elevated into a dogma. According to Raffaele De Cesare:
However, following the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, Austria had recognized the Kingdom of Italy. Consequently, because of this and other substantial political changes: "The Civiltà Cattolica suggested that the Papal Infallibility
should be substituted for the dogma of temporal power ..."
For practical purposes, the temporal power of the popes ended on 20 September 1870, when the Italian Army breached the Aurelian Walls
at Porta Pia
and entered Rome
. This completed the Risorgimento.
On 20 September 2000, there was an item in the Catholic publication Avvenire, which stated:
Formally, the temporal power was restored in 1929 with the treaty between the Vatican State and Italy
(Concordat
), when the papacy accepted to have no more interests on Italy, its closest neighbor, and therefore on any other country. Of course, the influence of the Vatican still is relevant and evident, even now, and is mostly considered as a spiritual voice.
Some small degree of temporal power persists in the formal government of the Vatican City
as an independent state.
Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
s is the political and governmental activity of the Pope
Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
s of the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
, as distinguished from their spiritual and pastoral activity, which by Catholics is sometimes also called eternal power, to contrast it with the Church's secular power, that is, power exercised within time
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
rather than in eternity
Eternity
While in the popular mind, eternity often simply means existence for a limitless amount of time, many have used it to refer to a timeless existence altogether outside time. By contrast, infinite temporal existence is then called sempiternity. Something eternal exists outside time; by contrast,...
.
For centuries, its secular activities brought the Papal States
Papal States
The Papal State, State of the Church, or Pontifical States were among the major historical states of Italy from roughly the 6th century until the Italian peninsula was unified in 1861 by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia .The Papal States comprised territories under...
into a status as a country bearing some relation with other countries of the world. Some historians identify the crowning of Charlemagne
Charlemagne
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...
in 800 as the moment in which the Church started having an international importance in a modern sense, although the temporal power can be traced even earlier to either the Donation of Pepin
Donation of Pepin
The "Donation of Pepin", the first in 754, and second in 756, provided a legal basis for the formal organizing of the Papal States, which inaugurated papal temporal rule over civil authorities...
in 754, or the crowning of Pepin by Pope Zachary
Pope Zachary
Pope Saint Zachary was Pope of the Catholic Church from 741 to 752. A Greek from Calabria, he was the last pope of the Byzantine Papacy...
in 752 which was the first time a secular sovereign was crowned by a Pope. In his Pastoral Care
Pastoral Care
Liber Regulae Pastoralis or Regula Pastoralis is a treatise on the responsibilities of the clergy written by Pope Gregory I around the year 590, shortly after his papal inauguration...
, Pope Gregory the Great (died 604) had discussed the extensive range of duties that bishops owed their flock as huius saeculi potentes, "the powers of these ages"; hence some historians prefer to see the origins of secular powers in the age of the Byzantine suzerainty over the bishop of Rome. Yet "Justinian I
Justinian I
Justinian I ; , ; 483– 13 or 14 November 565), commonly known as Justinian the Great, was Byzantine Emperor from 527 to 565. During his reign, Justinian sought to revive the Empire's greatness and reconquer the lost western half of the classical Roman Empire.One of the most important figures of...
succeeded in imposing his ecclesiastical policies on the papacy and Pope Gregory the Great maintained an attitude of political loyalty to the empire."
Charlemagne's crowning, however, was perhaps the first moment in which the Church was generally granted a power
Power (sociology)
Power is a measurement of an entity's ability to control its environment, including the behavior of other entities. The term authority is often used for power perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to...
of control of the imperial dignity, thus demonstrating a sort of power of international veto
Veto
A veto, Latin for "I forbid", is the power of an officer of the state to unilaterally stop an official action, especially enactment of a piece of legislation...
. Subsequently, the Donation of Constantine
Donation of Constantine
The Donation of Constantine is a forged Roman imperial decree by which the emperor Constantine I supposedly transferred authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to the pope. During the Middle Ages, the document was often cited in support of the Roman Church's claims to...
was forged to provide a legal basis for the temporal power.
The temporal power has often been discussed in politics, in philosophy and in theology, mainly given that its practical effects were often very far from the official religious doctrine. The same story with the inquisition
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
, quite commonly considered as a mere instrument of the temporal power (therefore with no accepted religious meaning); it is perhaps the moment of the greatest distance between the Gospel
Gospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
and the Roman curia
Roman Curia
The Roman Curia is the administrative apparatus of the Holy See and the central governing body of the entire Catholic Church, together with the Pope...
. The common reply to critics usually considers that the final goal of spreading the Good News (working for the diffusion of the Catholic faith), was so important that some "unavoidable" passages had to be crossed, practicing at times some of Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian historian, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic...
's political lessons.
The temporal power was abolished by Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon I
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
, who dissolved the Papal States and incorporated Rome and Latium into his French Empire. The temporal power was restored by the Great Powers at 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.
G. S. Godkin wrote the following about Leo XII, who succeeded Pius VII in 1823.
- "He was a ferocious fanatic, whose object was to destroy all the improvements of modern times, and force society back to the government, customs, and ideas of medieval days. In his insensate rage against progress he stopped vaccination; consequently, small-pox devastated the Roman provinces during his reign, along with many other curses which his brutal ignorance brought upon the inhabitants of those beautiful and fertile regions. He curtailed the old privileges of the municipalities, granted new privileges to the religious communities, and enlarged the power of the clergy to the extent that bishops and cardinals had the power of life and death in their hands. He set the Inquisition to work with new vigor; and though torture had been nominally abolished in 1815, new kinds of torment were invented, quite as effectual as the cord, the thumbscrew, and the rack of old times. He renewed the persecution of the Jews; drove them back into the Ghetto from whence they had begun to emerge, rebuilt its walls, and had them locked in at night; and issued an edict ordering all Israelites to sell their goods within a given time on pain of confiscation."
When Pius IX was elected pope in 1846, one of his first acts was to grant an amnesty to more than 2,000 political prisoners. In November 1848, following the assassination of his minister Pellegrino Rossi, Pius IX fled Rome. During a political rally in February 1849, a young Roman priest, the Abbé Arduini, described the temporal power of the popes as a "historical lie, a political imposture, and a religious immorality." On 9 February 1849, the newly-elected Roman Assembly proclaimed the Roman Republic (19th century)
Roman Republic (19th century)
The Roman Republic was a state declared on February 9, 1849, when the government of Papal States was temporarily substituted by a republican government due to Pope Pius IX's flight to Gaeta. The republic was led by Carlo Armellini, Giuseppe Mazzini and Aurelio Saffi...
. Subsequently, the Constitution of the Roman Republic abolished the temporal power, although the independence of the pope as head of the Catholic Church was guaranteed by article 8 of the "Principi fondamentali." Religious freedom was guaranteed by article 7, while the death penalty was abolished by article 5, and free public education was provided by article 8 of the "Titolo I".
At the end of June 1849, the Roman Republic was crushed by 40,000 French troops sent by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (later Napoleon III), at the urging of the rabid ultramontane French clerical party. The temporal power was restored and propped up by a French garrison.
In 1859–60, the Papal States lost Romagna, Marche and Umbria. These regions were incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy, and the temporal power was reduced to Rome and the region of Lazio. At this point, some ultramontane
Ultramontanism
Ultramontanism is a religious philosophy within the Roman Catholic community that places strong emphasis on the prerogatives and powers of the Pope...
groups proposed that the temporal power be elevated into a dogma. According to Raffaele De Cesare:
However, following the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, Austria had recognized the Kingdom of Italy. Consequently, because of this and other substantial political changes: "The Civiltà Cattolica suggested that the Papal Infallibility
Papal infallibility
Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Catholic Church which states that, by action of the Holy Spirit, the Pope is preserved from even the possibility of error when in his official capacity he solemnly declares or promulgates to the universal Church a dogmatic teaching on faith or morals...
should be substituted for the dogma of temporal power ..."
For practical purposes, the temporal power of the popes ended on 20 September 1870, when the Italian Army breached the Aurelian Walls
Aurelian Walls
The Aurelian Walls is a line of city walls built between 271 and 275 in Rome, Italy, during the reign of the Roman Emperors Aurelian and Probus....
at Porta Pia
Porta Pia
Porta Pia is a gate in the Aurelian Walls of Rome, Italy. One of Pope Pius IV's civic improvements to the city, it is named after him. Situated at the end of a new street, the Via Pia, it was designed by Michelangelo in replacement for the Porta Nomentana situated several hundred meters...
and entered Rome
Capture of Rome
The Capture of Rome was the final event of the long process of Italian unification known as the Risorgimento, which finally unified the Italian peninsula under King Victor Emmanuel II of the House of Savoy...
. This completed the Risorgimento.
On 20 September 2000, there was an item in the Catholic publication Avvenire, which stated:
Formally, the temporal power was restored in 1929 with the treaty between the Vatican State and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
(Concordat
Lateran treaties
The Lateran Treaty is one of the Lateran Pacts of 1929 or Lateran Accords, three agreements made in 1929 between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See, ratified June 7, 1929, ending the "Roman Question"...
), when the papacy accepted to have no more interests on Italy, its closest neighbor, and therefore on any other country. Of course, the influence of the Vatican still is relevant and evident, even now, and is mostly considered as a spiritual voice.
Some small degree of temporal power persists in the formal government of the Vatican City
Vatican City
Vatican City , or Vatican City State, in Italian officially Stato della Città del Vaticano , which translates literally as State of the City of the Vatican, is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, Italy. It has an area of...
as an independent state.