The Papal States: Papal Territorial Rule in Medieval and Early Modern Italy

The Papal States were territories in central Italy governed by the pope as a temporal ruler. This authority over land and its inhabitants was distinct from the pope’s spiritual leadership of the Catholic Church. The state took legal shape in the eighth century, but its borders and the strength of its government changed repeatedly. From the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries, papal rule depended not only on officials appointed from Rome but also on local cities, noble families and negotiations with other powers.

At its greatest extent in the seventeenth century, the state included much of central Italy, including Lazio, Umbria, the Marches and Romagna, as well as parts of Emilia. It also held the southern enclaves of Benevento and Pontecorvo and, beyond Italy, Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin for a time. These territories did not form a uniform administrative unit. Local customs, privileges and political conditions shaped how papal authority worked from one region to another.

On this page5 sections

From church landholdings to territorial rule

The roots of papal territory lay partly in property held by the Roman Church. A law issued under Constantine in 321 allowed the Church to possess property and restored some confiscated holdings. Over time, the church in Rome acquired houses and landed estates in Italy and elsewhere. These possessions made it a major landholder, but they did not by themselves make the pope a sovereign ruler. Under Roman and later Gothic rule, the Church remained subject to the political authorities of the day.

That arrangement changed as Byzantine power in Italy weakened. The Byzantine Empire had recovered much of the peninsula from the Ostrogoths in the sixth century, but the Lombards invaded from the north in 568 and took much of the territory. By the seventh century, Byzantine control was concentrated in a narrowing corridor between Ravenna and Rome, with other areas farther south. In and around Rome, the pope increasingly took on practical governing responsibilities where imperial officials had limited power. The city’s duchy remained formally Byzantine, but in practice it gained substantial autonomy.

A territorial agreement associated with the Lombard king Liutprand’s grant of Sutri to Pope Gregory II in 728 marked an early step in this shift. When the Lombards captured Ravenna in 751, Rome was cut off from the main Byzantine administration. The popes then sought Frankish support. In 756, after Frankish king Pepin the Short campaigned against the Lombards, he transferred lands formerly held by the Byzantine exarchate of Ravenna to the pope. This grant, known as the Donation of Pepin, established the basis for the Papal States as a territorial polity.

Competing claims and the problem of sovereignty

Papal rule developed alongside, and sometimes in conflict with, claims by Frankish and German rulers. From the ninth to the twelfth centuries, the relationship between the papacy and the empire remained contested: rulers and churchmen disagreed over whether the Papal States were an independent realm or part of an imperial order. In the tenth century, Otto I’s intervention in Italy and his coronation as emperor by Pope John XII were followed by an agreement that made the emperor a guarantor of papal independence. Such arrangements did not settle every question of authority.

The dispute mattered in practice because emperors could still project power into northern and central Italy, while popes sought to protect their territorial rights and freedom from imperial interference. In 1177, the Treaty of Venice recognized papal rights of possession, though it left some imperial claims concerning Rome unresolved. By around 1300, the Papal States, like other Italian principalities, were effectively independent. The pope’s authority within them, however, was not always direct or secure.

Rome itself was often shaped by the power of noble families. During the early tenth century, the Theophylacti family exercised substantial influence over papal politics. Later, the Orsini and Colonna competed for control in the city. More broadly, local lords and city elites could maintain considerable power even when they formally acknowledged the pope as their overlord. Papal sovereignty therefore often involved a distinction between the legal claim to rule and the ability to enforce decisions across the territory.

Local rulers, papal agents and provincial government

The popes relied on appointed representatives to govern provinces and important cities. A papal legate or delegate acted in the pope’s name, but the titles and arrangements varied by place and period. Some local governments also retained privileges and customary rights. The result was not a single, uniformly administered state, but a collection of jurisdictions in which papal officials had to work with existing institutions and powerful local interests.

During the Avignon period, when popes resided in Avignon for much of the fourteenth century, local rulers expanded their influence in nominally papal cities. The Pepoli in Bologna, the Ordelaffi in Forlì, the Manfredi in Faenza and the Malatesta in Rimini acknowledged papal overlordship while exercising local power. In Ferrara, Pope Clement V tried to bring the city under direct rule after the Este family lost its ruler in 1308. The city later recalled the Este, and in 1332 the pope appointed three Este brothers as his vicars. A vicar governed locally on the pope’s behalf, but the arrangement also allowed a powerful family to remain in control.

Cardinal Albornoz used campaigns and agreements to restore papal authority in the mid-fourteenth century. At Fano in 1357 he promulgated the Constitutiones Aegidianae, or Egidian Constitutions, which organised earlier legislation into a general framework for governing church territories. They defined provincial offices, jurisdictions and procedures. Local statutes continued where compatible with this higher law, allowing towns to retain particular rules within papal sovereignty.

Traditional provincial divisions included the Patrimony of Saint Peter in Tuscia, Campagna and Marittima, the Duchy of Spoleto, the March of Ancona and Romagna. The borders of these jurisdictions were not always clearly settled. Provincial officials represented papal authority, while cities and local elites continued to shape administration. In Romagna, for example, a cardinal legate based in Bologna governed the northern territories for a period. Provincial finances were largely handled within the provinces, with Rome providing coordination rather than directing every local matter from a single centre.

Benevento illustrates the practical sharing of authority in a papal enclave. After the last Lombard prince’s death in 1077, two rectors governed the city. A charter of 1082 shows them acting jointly, each able to block the other’s decision. Selected among local notables with papal approval, they represented both the pope and the civic community.

Renaissance expansion and the limits of central control

During the Renaissance, popes acted as rulers among the competing powers of Italy. They negotiated treaties and fought wars as well as exercising ecclesiastical authority. The territorial reach of the state grew under popes including Alexander VI and Julius II, but many districts remained only nominally controlled from Rome. Local princes could hold territory as papal vicars or fief-holders, combining local authority with formal recognition of papal sovereignty.

European conflicts could weaken papal control. In 1527, troops serving Emperor Charles V sacked Rome and imprisoned Pope Clement VII. In the political aftermath, Clement was forced to give up Parma, Modena and other territories. During the Italian War of 1551–1559, the armies of Spain defeated those of Pope Paul IV. These episodes show that papal territorial rule was affected by the wider struggle among the Holy Roman Empire, Spain and other powers for influence in Italy.

At the same time, the papacy recovered several territories. Parma and Piacenza, annexed by the Papal States in 1512, became a duchy in 1545 under a son of Pope Paul III, but remained a papal fief. The Duchy of Ferrara returned to papal rule in 1598, and the Duchy of Urbino in 1631. In 1649, the annexation of the Duchy of Castro brought the state to its greatest extent. Expansion did not erase local differences: the government continued to depend on a central body of papal officials and on urban elites and territorial lords in the provinces.

Territorial loss and the end of the state

French occupation interrupted papal government at the end of the eighteenth century. French forces declared a Roman Republic in 1798, and the Papal States were restored in 1800 before further Napoleonic annexations. The Congress of Vienna restored the Italian territories to papal rule in 1814–1815, but not Avignon or the Comtat Venaissin. During Italian unification, the Kingdom of Sardinia took much of the Papal States in 1860. Rome and the remaining territory were annexed by the Kingdom of Italy in 1870, ending the Papal States as a territorial polity.

For the wider setting, see Italian States: Political Power from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Era.