The origins of a papal state reach back to the patrimonies accumulated in late antiquity. In the eighth century, the papacy allied with the Franks who defeated the Lombards and forced them to donate lands to the papacy, most of which had formerly belonged to Byzantium. A series of documents down to the eleventh century (Pactum Ludovicianum, Constitutio Romana, Ottonianum, Henricianum) spelled out the territories assured to the popes and mutual papal and imperial rights in those lands. Political strife in Italy and then the Roman commune severely attenuated papal control of its territories. Innocent III began a process of “recuperation” based on the old documents and he inaugurated institutional reforms and innovations. Across the thirteenth century, judicial and financial reforms enhanced papal rule of a First Papal State while battles with the German Empire and then the Angevin kingdom in the south represented constant challenges.

I propose to situate my contribution in a long chronological sequence that goes from the pontificate of Pius IX to the “Vatican II moment” (including the pontificate of Paul VI). The chapter is structured around three axes. The first takes into account the doctrinal and dogmatic developments that sanction papal primacy without detaching them from the socio-political context. The second evaluates the refusals and acceptance of the model thus developed by questioning the concept of “romanity,” the practices that result from it and the institutional and doctrinal impasses, sensitive under the pontificate of Pius XII. The third axis analyzes the development of the idea of collegiality before the Council and evaluates the conciliar debates before understanding how the pontificate of Paul VI assumes and renews the pontifical heritage of the previous century in the context of the crisis of the 1960s and 1970s.

This chapter enlightens the papal martial power through three different questions. It first focuses on the military geography of the Pontifical States (Central Italy, Comtat Venaissin, Avignon). Strongholds were key in the affirmation of pontifical political authority. Their locations and features testify to the great care taken in their construction and management. The chapter then investigates the structure of the troops involved in both offensive and defensive enterprises. Cardinals acting as legates or vicars as well as papal officers were expected to exert strong control over companies led by potentially troublesome condottieri and local warlords. At sea, the popes relied mostly on private and foreign contractors. Finally, this chapter describes the socio-cultural composition of armies, intended as micro-societies defined by rules they adopted or developed themselves. Since they served the papacy just like lay principalities, they kept up with commonly shared knightly aspirations and military practices found across Europe.

It is a matter of historical record that the institution of the papacy has developed over the last two millennia, and thus it should not be surprising that the Christian East’s response to the papacy has evolved along with it. At the heart of this process were five key theological questions, including: Is the primacy of Rome grounded in the will of Christ or is it a concilliarly/imperially granted privilege? Is this primacy based on Rome’s apostolic pedigree or was it granted to Rome because of its political importance as capital of the empire? Can the primacy be lost either by imperial translation or the heresy of the Roman Bishop? Does this primacy of Rome grant to the Pope authority and power, or is it a “primacy of honor” that simply acknowledges Rome’s “Firstness” in the taxis (order) of the Church? Does the primacy of Rome involve a unique monarchical power as “mother of all Churches” or is Rome simply the “eldest sister” within the Church’s pentarchical and conciliar structure?

This chapter traces the development of perceptions and interactions within the Islamic world of the papacy from the beginnings of Islam in the seventh century until contemporary times. It explores how the first few centuries were marked by ignorance before Christian military victories and political and economic expansion led to increased contacts and knowledge after 1050. It then examines how relations developed between the three great Muslim empires of the early modern world – Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal – and the papacy between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, and well as how contacts expanded from the traditional area of the Mediterranean basin to also encompass Persia and India. Finally, it explores relations in the modern era, including diplomatic contacts between the papacy and the Ottoman sultans in the nineteenth century, the impact of the First World War, and the effects of decolonization on the Islamic world’s relations with the papal curia.

Five contexts conditioned papal relations to enslavement 1500–1800. (1) From Roman times, Christians understood enslavement as morally licit, and Christian thought was necessarily conservative when it came to social action. (2) Centuries of Christian–Muslim military conflict and mutual enslavement in the Mediterranean – and thus religious and not racial concerns – underwrote bulls authorizing Portuguese slaving in Africa. (3) While popes could make recommendations and excommunicate transgressors, the forces of state power and creeping secularism were infinitely greater. Thus, when popes called to cease or modify terms of enslavement, burgeoning capitalist goals often led colonial settlers and individual merchant opportunists to ignore these directives. (4) In Rome, the Papal States, and the early modern Mediterranean, popes employed slaves of various ethnicities to labor throughout their realms. (5) Both at home and overseas, papal will was extended, mediated, and at times altered by a broad universe of agents such as cardinals, nuncios, and missionaries.

This chapter argues that in the early medieval period, Catholic law both reflected and reinforced a largely “horizontal” Church structure, in which bishops played a central role, often in close engagement with secular lords and rulers. The first part of the chapter surveys the types of existing evidence for early medieval Church law, from the Carolingians up until the Gregorian Reform of circa 1050. The second part focuses on continuities between the Carolingian reforms and the tenth and early eleventh centuries. Recent scholarship has increasingly argued that the Carolingian reforms did not end with the fragmentation of the Carolingian empire. Building on that work, this chapter describes three examples of continuities between the Carolingian and Ottonian periods.

The Age of Revolutions marked the nadir in the fortunes of the papacy. Pius VI, despite his attempts to reform the Curia and embellish Rome, died a prisoner of the French in Valence in 1799. His successor, Pius VII, despite negotiating a groundbreaking concordat with Consular France in 1801, spent five years as the prisoner of Napoleon. This chapter examine the attempts at reform and survival of the Cesena popes in the face of the growing challenge of enlightened absolutism and revolutionary strife. The temporary loss of the Papal States from 1809 to 1814 was a grim harbinger of things to come in 1870. Although the papacy lost ground in temporal terms, ironically it gained a growing spiritual mastery over Catholicism globally.

In large part the role of the papacy as a legislative institution and a court system was its most significant contribution to Western jurisprudence. This chapter traces the long evolution of the papacy’s legal and legislative development from the late antique to the sixteenth century. It outlines the papacy’s influence over the first law schools in Europe, and the importance of the law schools in cultivating, teaching, and interpreting papal law.

This chapter outlines a historiography of the papacy and the environment and begins with several observations. First, papal approaches to the environment are shaped by the historical evolution of the papacy itself. Second, notions of environment and environmentalism are varied across secular, religious, and, by extension, papal discourse and action. Relatedly, these pluriform conceptions are influenced by locations that include geographic, epistemological, and socio-cultural. Thus informed, the chapter engages two distinct periods. The first is the sixth to the sixteenth centuries, wherein papal approaches to the environment were variously shaped by notions of wilderness, classical natural history, anthropocentrism, monastic spiritualities and activities, and expanding ecclesial infrastructure and temporal power. The second period begins with global industrialization around 1750 and continues through to today. Therein, papal environmentalism is especially expressed in modern Catholic social teaching that began with Leo XIII in 1891 and continues through Francis I, especially Laudato si’ in 2015.

Between 500 and 1500, the economy of Europe changed considerably. The papal court saw an equally radical change in the nature of their income, their expenditure, their administration, and their financial expectations. The papal court became the jurisdictional apex of the medieval Church and a major power in European secular politics. Consequently, the income of the Roman Curia increased radically, as did their expenditure. The papacy was a religious power first and foremost. Therefore, the accounting, income, and expenditure of the popes had to correspond to a model medieval Christianity thought good; the pope should look after his flock and spend appropriately on their welfare. There were times, however, when it was not clear to the Christian world that the pope was acting in an acceptable manner, as regards finance and wealth. Bitter satires followed, and the papacy gained a reputation for extravagance. It has never fully thrown off that reputation.