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History
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Origins
Donation of Pepin
Relationship with the Holy Roman Empire
Avignon Papacy
Renaissance
Reformation
Napoleonic era
Italian unification
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Papal States

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with the Papacy, the institution that ruled over the Papal
States.
State of the Church
Patrimonio di San Pietro/Stato Pontificio (Italian)
Patrimonium Sancti Petri/Status Ecclesiasticus (Latin)
754–1870[1][2][3]
Interregna (1798–1799, 1809–1814 and 1849–1850)
Flag of Papal States
Infantry colours and de facto civil flag (19th century)
Coat of arms (15th–19th cent.) Coat of arms (Sede vacante) of Papal States
Coat of arms
(15th–19th cent.)
Coat of arms of Papal States (sede vacante)
Coat of arms
(Sede vacante)
Anthem:
Marcia trionfale (1857–1870)[4]
Great Triumphal March
3:44
Papal Shield

The Papal States in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars

The Papal States in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars
Map of the Papal States (green) in 1789 before the French seized papal lands in
France, including its exclaves of Benevento and Pontecorvo in southern Italy, and
the Comtat Venaissin and Avignon in southern France
Map of the Papal States (green) in 1789 before the French seized papal lands in
France, including its exclaves of Benevento and Pontecorvo in southern Italy, and
the Comtat Venaissin and Avignon in southern France
Capital Rome
41°54′00″N 12°29′15″E
Common languages Latin, Italian, Occitan
Religion Roman Catholicism (state religion)
Government Feudal theocratic elective absolute monarchy
(756–1798; 1800–1809)
Unitary theocratic elective absolute monarchy
(1814–1848; 1850–1870)
Unitary theocratic elective semi-constitutional monarchy
(1848)
Pope
• 756–757 (first)
Stephen II
• 1846–1870 (last)
Pius IX
Cardinal Secretary of State
• 1551–1555 (first)
Girolamo Dandini
• 1848–1870 (last)
Giacomo Antonelli
Prime Minister
• 1847–1848 (first)
Gabriele Ferretti
• 1848–1849 (last)
C. E. Muzzarelli
Legislature Parliament (1848)
History
• Donation of Pepin
754
• Codification
781
• Treaty of Venice (independence from the Holy Roman Empire)
1177
• 1st disestablishment
18 February 1798
• Schönbrunn Palace Declarations
17 May 1809
• 2nd disestablishment
20 September 1870
• Vatican City
11 February 1929
Population
• 1853[5]
3,124,668
Currency
Papal States scudo (until 1866)
Papal lira (1866–1870)
Preceded by Succeeded by
Byzantine Empire under the Isaurian dynasty
Republic of Cospaia
Duchy of Parma and Piacenza
Tiberina Republic
Roman Republic (1798–1799)
First French Empire
Roman Republic (1849–1850)
Kingdom of Italy

Today part of
Italy
France
Vatican City
Vatican City
This article is part of a series on
Vatican City
History
Law
Politics and government
Papacy
Foreign relations
Economy
Symbols
Culture
Buildings/geography
Vatican Museums
OutlineIndexflag Vatican City portalicon Catholicism portal
vte
The Papal States (/ˈpeɪpəl/ PAY-pəl; Italian: Stato Pontificio; Latin: Dicio
Pontificia), officially the State of the Church (Italian: Stato della Chiesa
[ˈstaːto della ˈkjɛːza]; Latin: Status Ecclesiasticus),[6] were a series of
territories in the Italian Peninsula under the direct sovereign rule of the pope
from 756 until 1870.[7] They were among the major states of Italy from the 8th
century until the unification of Italy, between 1859 and 1870.

The state had its origins in the rise of Christianity throughout Italy, and with it
the rising influence of the Christian Church. By the mid-8th century, with the
decline of the Byzantine Empire in Italy, the Papacy became effectively sovereign.
Several Christian rulers, including the Frankish kings Charlemagne and Pepin the
Short, further donated lands to be governed by the Church.[8] During the
Renaissance, the papal territory expanded greatly and the pope became one of
Italy's most important secular rulers as well as the head of the Church. At their
zenith, the Papal States covered most of the modern Italian regions of Lazio (which
includes Rome), Marche, Umbria and Romagna, and portions of Emilia. These holdings
were considered to be a manifestation of the temporal power of the pope, as opposed
to his ecclesiastical primacy.

By 1861, much of the Papal States' territory had been conquered by the Kingdom of
Italy. Only Lazio, including Rome, remained under the pope's temporal control. In
1870, the pope lost Lazio and Rome and had no physical territory at all, except the
Leonine City of Rome, which the new Italian state did not occupy militarily,
despite annexation of Lazio. In 1929, the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini,
the head of the Italian government, ended the "Prisoner in the Vatican" problem
involving a unified Italy and the Holy See by negotiating the Lateran Treaty,
signed by the two parties. This treaty recognized the sovereignty of the Holy See
over a newly created international territorial entity, a city-state within Rome
limited to a token territory which became the Vatican City.

Name
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 also 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").[9] To some extent the name used
varied with the preferences and habits of the European languages in which it was
expressed.

History
Further information: History of Rome and History of the Papacy
Origins
Main articles: Duchy of Rome and Patrimonium Sancti Petri
For its first 300 years, within the Roman Empire, the Church was persecuted and
unrecognized, unable to hold or transfer property.[10] 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
nearby but landed estates, such as latifundia, whole or in part, across Italy and
beyond.[11]

This system began to change during the reign of the Emperor Constantine the Great,
who made Christianity lawful within the Roman Empire and restored to it any
properties that had been confiscated; in the larger cities of the empire this would
have been quite considerable, and the Roman patrimony not least among them.[10] The
Lateran Palace was the first significant new donation to the Church, most probably
a gift from Constantine himself.[10]

Other donations followed, primarily in mainland Italy but also in the provinces of
the Roman Empire. However, the 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 Arian
suzerainty during the reign of Odoacer and, later, the Ostrogoths. The Church
organization in Italy, with the pope at its head, submitted of necessity to their
sovereign authority, while asserting its spiritual primacy over the whole Church.
[12]

The seeds of the Papal States as a sovereign political entity were planted in the
6th century. Beginning in 535, under Emperor Justinian I, the Eastern Roman Empire
– referred to by most historians as the Byzantine Empire – launched the Gothic War
to reconquer Italy. This lasted until 554 and devastated Italy's political and
economic structures. Then 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 representative, or Exarch, was located, to Rome
and south to Naples, plus coastal exclaves.[13] North of Naples, the band of
Byzantine control contracted, and the borders of the "Rome-Ravenna corridor" were
extremely narrow.[14][15][16]

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.[17] While the popes legally
remained "Roman subjects" under Byzantine authority, in practice the Duchy of Rome,
an area roughly equivalent to Lazio, became an independent state ruled by the pope.
[18]

The Church's independence, aided by 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.[19]
Nevertheless, the pope and the exarch still worked together to check 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.[20] 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 embodied in the Lombard King
Liutprand's Donation of Sutri (728) to Pope Gregory II.[21]

Donation of Pepin
Main article: Donation of Pepin
When the Exarchate of Ravenna finally fell to the Lombards in 751,[22] 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. Pepin 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 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 as 'Emperor of the Romans'.

Relationship with the Holy Roman Empire

See also: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)
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 – is
disputed. 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, 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 (as a sort of archemperor) 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 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 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".[23]
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.[24] 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 made official the independence of the 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.

Avignon Papacy
Main article: Avignon Papacy

The domain of the Papal States c. 1430

From 1305 to 1378, the popes lived in the papal enclave of Avignon, surrounded by
Provence and under the influence of the French kings.[25][26][27][28][29] This
period was known as the "Avignonese" or "Babylonian Captivity".[30] 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[31])
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.[32]

In Rome itself, the Orsini and the Colonna struggled for supremacy,[33] 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,[34] and met a violent
death in early October 1354 as he was assassinated by supporters of the Colonna
family.[35] 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.[35] As Prof. 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."[35]

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 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
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.[36]

The Quirinal Palace, papal residence and home to the civil offices of the Papal
States from the Renaissance until their annexation
Renaissance
Main articles: Renaissance Papacy and Italian Renaissance
During the Renaissance, the Papal territory expanded greatly, notably under 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 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.[37] Julius II, the
"Warrior Pope", fought on their behalf.

Reformation
The Reformation began in 1517. In 1527, before the Holy Roman Empire fought the
Protestants, troops loyal to Emperor Charles V brutally sacked Rome and imprisoned
Pope Clement VII, as a side effect of battles over the Papal States.[38] Thus
Clement VII was forced to give up Parma, Modena, and several smaller territories.
[39][38] A generation later the armies of King Philip II of Spain defeated those of
Pope Paul IV in the Italian War of 1551–1559 fought to prevent growing Spanish
dominance in Italy.[40]

This period saw a gradual revival of the pope's temporal power in the Papal States.
Throughout the 16th century, virtually independent fiefs such as Rimini (a
possession of the Malatesta family) were brought back under Papal control. In 1512
the state of the church annexed Parma and Piacenza, which in 1545 became an
independent duchy under an illegitimate son of Pope Paul III. This process
culminated in the reclaiming of the Duchy of Ferrara in 1598,[41][42] and the Duchy
of Urbino in 1631.[43]

At its greatest extent, in the 18th century, the Papal States included most of
central Italy – Latium, Umbria, Marche, and the legations of Ravenna, Ferrara, and
Bologna extending north into the Romagna. It also included the small enclaves of
Benevento and Pontecorvo in southern Italy and the larger Comtat Venaissin around
Avignon in southern France.

Napoleonic era

Map of the Italian Peninsula in 1796, showing the Papal States before the
Napoleonic wars changed the face of the peninsula.
Map of Italy in 1843, showing the Papal States.
The French Revolution affected the temporal territories of the Papacy as well as
the Roman Church in general. In 1791 an election in Comtat Venaissin and Avignon
was followed by occupation by Revolutionary France.[44] Later, with the French
invasion of Italy in 1796, the Legations (the Papal States' northern
territories[44]) were seized and became part of the Cisalpine Republic.[44]

Two years later, French forces invaded the remaining area of the Papal States, and
in February 1798 General Louis-Alexandre Berthier declared a Roman Republic.[44]
Pope Pius VI fled from Rome to Siena and died in exile in Valence in 1799.[44] The
French Consulate restored the Papal States in June 1800, and the newly elected Pope
Pius VII took up residence in Rome, but in 1808 the French Empire under Napoleon
invaded again, and this time on 17 May 1809 the remainder of the States of the
Church were annexed to France,[44] forming the départements of Tibre and Trasimène.

Following the fall of the First French Empire in 1814, the Congress of Vienna
formally restored the Italian territories of the Papal States, but not the Comtat
Venaissin or Avignon, to Vatican control.[44]

Upon restitution of sovereignty to the Papal States, Pius VII decided to abolish
feudalism, transforming all the noble titles (temporarily abolished during the
Napoleonic occupation) into honorifics disconnected from territorial privileges. In
1853, Pius IX put an end to the centuries-old duality between the Papal nobility
and the Roman baronial families by equating the civic patriciate of the city of
Rome with the nobility created by the Pope.

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.

Italian unification
Main articles: Papal States under Pope Pius IX and Administrative subdivisions of
the Papal States from 1816 to 1871

Kingdom of Italy in 1870, showing the Papal States, before the Capture of Rome

Kingdom of Italy in 1871

Bond of the Papal States, issued 9 December 1818.[45]

Italian nationalism 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. 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 revolts in
1830 and in 1848, which were suppressed by the intervention of the Austrian army.

The nationalist and liberal revolutions of 1848 affected much of Europe. In

February 1849 a Roman Republic was declared,[46] and the hitherto liberally-
inclined Pope Pius IX had to flee the city. The revolution was suppressed with
French help in 1849 and Pius IX switched to a conservative line of government.
Until his return to Rome in 1850, the Papal States were governed by a group of
cardinals known as the Red Triumvirate.[47]

As a result of the Second Italian War of Independence, Piedmont-Sardinia annexed

Lombardy, while Giuseppe Garibaldi overthrew the Bourbon monarchy in the south.[48]
[49] Afraid that Garibaldi would set up a republican government, the Piedmontese
government petitioned French Emperor Napoleon III for permission to send troops
through the Papal States to gain control of the south. This was granted on the
condition that Rome be left undisturbed.

In 1860, with much of the region already in rebellion against Papal rule, Piedmont-
Sardinia invaded and conquered the eastern two-thirds of the Papal States,
cementing its hold on the south. Bologna, Ferrara, Umbria, the Marches, Benevento
and Pontecorvo were all formally annexed by November of the same year. While
considerably reduced, the Papal States nevertheless still covered the Latium and
large areas northwest of Rome.

The Breach of Porta Pia, on the right, in 1870.

A unified Kingdom of Italy was declared and in March 1861 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.

King Victor Emmanuel II at first aimed at a peaceful conquest of the city and
proposed sending troops into Rome, under the guise of offering protection to the
pope. When the pope refused, Italy declared war on 10 September 1870, and the
Italian Army, commanded by General Raffaele Cadorna, crossed the frontier of the
papal territory on September 11 and advanced slowly toward Rome.

The Italian Army reached the Aurelian Walls on September 19 and placed Rome under a
state of siege. Although the pope's tiny army was incapable of defending the city,
Pius IX ordered it to put up more than token resistance to emphasize that Italy was
acquiring Rome by force and not consent. This incidentally served the purposes of
the Italian State and gave rise to the myth of the Breach of Porta Pia, in reality,
a tame affair involving a cannonade at close range that demolished a 1600-year-old
wall in poor repair. The defence of Rome was not however bloodless, with 12 dead
and 47 wounded amongst the Papal forces and 32 dead plus 145 wounded of the Italian
troops.[50]

Pope Pius IX ordered the commander of the Papal forces to limit the defence of the
city in order to avoid bloodshed.[51] The city was captured on 20 September 1870.
Rome and what was left of the Papal States were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy as
a result of a plebiscite the following October. This marked the definite end of the
Papal States.[44]

Despite the fact that the traditionally Catholic powers did not come to the pope's
aid, the papacy rejected the 1871 "Law of Guarantees" and any substantial
accommodation with the Italian Kingdom, especially any proposal which required the
pope to become an Italian subject. Instead, the papacy confined itself (see
Prisoner in the Vatican) to the Apostolic Palace and adjacent buildings in the loop
of the ancient fortifications known as the 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. The Lateran Treaty with Italy (then ruled by the National Fascist Party
under Benito Mussolini[52]) was signed on 11 February 1929,[52] creating the State
of the Vatican City, forming the sovereign territory of the Holy See, which was
also indemnified to some degree for loss of territory.

Regional governors
Papal Zouaves pose in 1869.
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.
However, throughout the history of the Papal States, many warlords and even bandit
chieftains controlled cities and small duchies without having received any title
from the Pope of the day.

Papal military
Historically the Papal States maintained military forces composed of volunteers and
mercenaries, including Catholic military orders. Between 1860 and 1870 the Papal
Army (Esercito Pontificio in Italian) comprised two regiments of locally recruited
Italian infantry, two Swiss regiments and a battalion of Irish volunteers, plus
artillery and dragoons.[53] 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.[54]

The Papal Army was disbanded in 1870, leaving only the Palatine Guard, which was
itself disbanded on 14 September 1970 by Pope Paul VI;[55] the Noble Guard, which
also disbanded in 1970; and the Swiss Guard, which continues to serve both as a
ceremonial unit at the Vatican and as the pope's protective force.

A small Papal Navy was also maintained, based at Civitavecchia on the west coast
and Ancona on the east. With the fall of the Papal States in 1870, the last ships
of the flotilla were sailed to France, where they were sold after the death of Pius
IX.

See also
icon Catholicism portal
flag Italy portal
Captain General of the Church
Donation of Constantine
History of Rome
Index of Vatican City-related articles
Italian United Provinces
Roman Question
Unification of Italy
War of the Eight Saints
The clash between the Church and the Empire
References
Citations
World Monarchies and Dynasties
Rome: A History in Seven Sackings
Historical Time Line of Charlemagne – Medieval Legal History
"Inno Pontificio e la sua storia" (in Italian). Statto della città del Vaticano.
Archived from the original on 13 March 2010. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
Statistica della popolazione dello Stato pontificio dell'anno 1853 (PDF).
Ministero del commercio e lavori pubblici. 1857. p. xxii. Archived from the
original (PDF) on 2 March 2018. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
Frederik de Wit, "Status Ecclesiasticus et Magnus Ducatus Thoscanae" (1700)
Archived 2018-03-06 at the Wayback Machine
"Papal States". Encyclopædia Britannica. 30 April 2020. Archived from the original
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