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Gregory XVI (pope 1831‐46) pursued a policy in reaction against ’innovators’, meaning political liberalism and the French Revolution and all it stood for, setting the tone for the dislike of the modern world that characterized the papacy throughout the nineteenth century. Paradoxically, however, his assertion of the authoritarian power of the papacy came to be seen by Catholic minorities in Protestant states as the only source of defence of their rights and liberties. Gregory's papacy saw the condemnation of the liberal ideas of Lamennais and his followers in France and the beginnings of the long struggle between French Catholics and anti‐clericals over control of education. In Germany, where the Restoration settlement had created states with large confessional minorities, the papacy was in constant conflict with the Prussian government over the question of mixed marriages and the position of Catholics in the Rhineland. In Switzerland the religious conflict leading to the war of the Sonderbund strengthened the prestige of the papacy among Swiss Catholics. The pope, backed by a reactionary Curia, condemned the first stirrings of Italian nationalism and the compromise between Catholicism and nationalism proposed by the neo‐Guelf movement. Throughout his papacy Gregory was dependent on foreign troops, principally the Austrians, to suppress unrest in the papal states, as a result of which he died ’the most hated of popes’.

The 1850s were ’the last years of Catholic power in Europe’. In France the regime of Napoleon III was friendly and presided over a Catholic revival, but this sharpened divisions between Catholics and anti‐clericals. A new Concordat with Austria strengthened the identification of the Habsburg monarchy and the Church and papal influence in the Austrian Church, but this in turn encouraged anti‐papal feeling in the regions of Italy under Austrian rule. Similarly, the position of Catholicism was enhanced in the United States and Britain by Irish immigration and also reinforced in Canada among the francophone population. Pius IX used his power to impose new Church hierarchies in Britain and the Netherlands, to impose the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, and generally to disregard international opinion. The weakness of Catholic power lay in the papal states, where, although government improved, the pope's regime was increasingly seen as an anomaly, out of step with the rest of Europe.

This lecture attempts to reveal that the Inquisition and the Renaissance were two aspects of one phenomenon, which is the halting emergence of a new entity, the territorial state. The lecture first describes the Inquisition and how it affected the sixteenth-century Renaissance. The element of violence, or killing people, is also examined. The second part of the lecture has a brief word about the creation of the Inquisition. It reviews two important elements that resulted from the Inquisition and what happened to the Inquisition once it had been invented. The lecture ends by examining certain states, including France and the papal state in Italy.

This chapter examines the demise of the Papal States and the Roman Question—the Italian Risorgimento's threat to the territorial sovereignty of the papacy in the 1850s and 1860s. It first considers the lives and the friendship of Pauline Craven and Charles de Montalembert, with particular emphasis on their views regarding the Roman Question. It then explores how Pius IX's growing intransigence forced Craven and Montalembert both to reassess their relationship to the Roman leadership of their church. It also discusses Pius's 1864 Syllabus of Errors, which laid the groundwork for the proclamation of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council in 1870. Finally, it analyzes Craven and Montalembert's attitudes toward ultramontanism.

This chapter considers the problem that no pope could countenance a named successor in his lifetime so the cardinals had to negotiate a brief period without a pope every time a pope died. The College developed legal foundations for exercising authority independent of the pontiff, and for expressing and enforcing that authority. Until the fifteenth century this may not have mattered that much in practical terms, because the overall impact of papal government remained light. However, as the papal administration grew throughout the Papal States the need to preserve stability rose commensurately. To maintain the peace the cardinals partnered with potential rivals: communal authorities, the old nobility, and even the late pope’s family. Yet, the cardinals could not overcome a paradox: the more stable each vacancy, the greater the systemic threat from papal subjects who lacked other opportunities to express their grievances.

This chapter talks about the Terrible Year, which started a period of intense reflection on France, its past, and its spiritual and moral well-being. This was also the time when France went to war against Germany, and suffered defeat, invasion, and occupation that were surpassed only in 1940. The chapter discusses the War of 1840–71 and states that the Catholic hierarchy suspected that the military defeat suffered by the French forces had moral origins. Monsignor Fourier helped shape the effort of moral renewal, while Alexandre Legentil vowed to build a church dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus if the city was spared occupation. The partisans of Italian unity, the outrageous bargain struck by Napoleon III, the revolution in the papal states, and the battle in Loigny are also covered.

Making use of concepts such as “trauma” and “collective memory,” this chapter seeks to understand the Catholic Church’s hostile reaction to the French Revolution and its legacy in the nineteenth century, particularly as manifest in the Italian Risorgimento. It shows how ultramontanism and anticlericalism possessed a dialectical relationship, each enflamed by fear of the other. It analyzes the significance of scholarly treatments of the papacy during this time, respectively looking at the work of the political philosopher Joseph de Maistre and that of the historian Leopold von Ranke. Finally, it profiles the papacy as a “traumatized” institution in the early and mid-nineteenth century, culminating in a profile of the papacy of Pius IX (r. 1846–78). All of the aforementioned in turn serves to contextualize the intellectual development and early career of Ignaz von Döllinger as treated in Chapter 2.

This chapter explores the relationship between the papacy and Jews in Rome, the seat of the pope’s power not as Europe’s spiritual leader but as the city’s bishop. During the High Middle Ages Jewish communities in Europe were of limited relevance to popes whose primary aims were to provide leadership to the episcopacy, to develop pastoral care, to formulate doctrine and canon law, to engage in political life, and to control the papal states. We must not exaggerate papal interest in the Jewish communities of medieval Europe, and in particular the importance of such communities to popes. Yet in the papal states and in particular in Rome itself there was a flourishing Jewish community which enjoyed the most favourable conditions, by contemporary standards, of anywhere in Europe.

The “Roman Question” arose with the capture of Rome by the Italian Army on 20 September 1870, marking the dissolution of the Papal State and its annexation to the Kingdom of Italy. It was subsequently settled with the signing of a Treaty between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy on 11 February 1929, creating the Vatican City State. This chapter, while considering the historical background of the “Roman Question”, will examine it exclusively from the perspective of international law. Particular attention will be devoted to the debate on the international legal personality of the Holy See within the European context from 1870 to the early 1930s. The theories proposed by contemporary scholars can be regarded as a point of departure for discussions regarding the Holy See’s international legal personality and its union with the Vatican City State from the point of view of international law.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the political history of Rome. Rome's communal traditions and their emphasis on the city's autonomy were long-standing and vital. Yet, by the turn of the fifteenth century, the autonomous Roman commune was gone, replaced by papal dominion. Its institutions remained as mechanisms of papal governance, but the absence of autonomy or meaningful ideological commitment makes any appearance of communal vitality illusory. This transformation is notable in its own right, but its aftermath endows it with critical importance. Despite sometimes rocky relations with the city and its inhabitants, it was by and large from Rome that the popes would consolidate their power over the ever more robust Papal States, which have come to serve as an important case study for the emergence of early modern European states in general; for the evolution of sovereign power; and for the process and limits of secularization. This consolidation of papal power began in the fourteenth century and continued in the mid-fifteenth century, accelerating with the end of the Western Schism and the papacy of Martin V. Though the papacy is commonly credited with Rome's transformation, the book demonstrates that such an understanding of Italian, papal, and Roman history misses a fundamental, homegrown transformation of Rome's political culture, which preceded and enabled the consolidation of papal power.

In late medieval Bologna and Liège, urban warfare represented a particularly frequent mode of conflict. This was reflected, and in turn stimulated, by a political framework of rich, but highly unsettled, internal and external political units. Unusually politicized ecclesiastical institutions in Liège and a powerful university-related agency in Bologna, as well as guilds and parties or factions in both cities were well-resourced, but lacked integration into a coherent political framework. All this had the effect of stimulating or even forcing city dwellers to seek ever newly-configured political coalitions, which often relied on violence to establish themselves. Internal volatility was complemented by volatility outside the city walls: neighbouring cities in the hinterland of Liège and powerful forces in Bologna’s contado, external warfare and the Great Schism all contributed to this unstable environment, and fuelled the extraordinary frequency of revolt in Bologna and Liège.

This chapter considers how Tranquillo del Monte was aware that the Jewish reality of his contemporary Rome had no resemblance to that in places like France and the United States; nor that policies in the Papal State, especially conversionary ones, were sui generis. The discipline intended to break Roman Jews that had begun with Paul IV and peaked under Pius VI was having its effects. A variety of means was being used to bring the Roman Jewry to capitulate, such as the intentional weakening of their communal apparatus. From no later than the mid-seventeenth century, powers of internal self-discipline and governance were attacked. Lacking authorization for a formal rabbinic court, the Jews of Rome had cultivated self-governance by emphasizing and expanding the traditional practice of consensual arbitration and by adopting standardized forms of documentation created by Jewish notaries.

This introductory chapter explores the transformation in Jewish life that failed to occur in late eighteenth-century Rome. The French Revolution and the U.S. Constitution had established that Jews were citizens with full and equal legal rights. But in Rome, the capital of the then Papal State, no such proclamation occurred. Although Rome's Jews possessed rights in civil law, the discrimination determined by canon law was great. Roman Jews were forced to live in the ghetto decreed by Pope Paul IV in 1555, as part of a vigorous conversionary drive. People were taken to an institution known as the House of Converts, where they were held for periods of time, and most eventually converted. However, some did not, most notably Anna del Monte, who not only remained a Jew but also left a diary recounting her thirteen days in the Catecumeni, as Rome's Jews called the place.

This chapter discusses how the law confers privileges on the Jews as cives, except in the spiritual forum. Nonetheless, while in the Papal State, the privileges of being cives were never entirely erased. It was the burdens and the confessional aspects of ancient Roman Law that came ever more to the fore. To these burdens were added evolving legal interpretations that facilitated the “offerings” and denunciations that upended the life of Anna del Monte and many others. However, Jews were not the only ones affected. The demands of the burgeoning modern state fell ever more heavily, and in new ways, on all residents. Using the tools of ius commune to augment centralized authority, the state began to interfere unprecedentedly in the personal life of its residents.

A pope’s legitimacy—and the authority of papal officials—derived from his election. But the election process itself generated practical, logistical, legal, and political problems which all parties with a stake in the election’s outcome had to negotiate. The chapter lays out the book’s overall contention, namely that the papal office’s elective nature was as important in shaping papal history in the early modern period as the pope’s twin identities of temporal prince and universal pastor. It seeks to introduce the unique issues and complications of papal elections and the inherent difficulties that new popes faced in establishing themselves after an election. It also starts a discussion of decision-making within a political elite, in this case the one which occupied the highest levels of the Counter-Reformation Catholic Church.