Today is the anniversary of the demise of the last clerical government in Europe.

On 20 September 1870, the army of the Kingdom of Italy entered Rome and put an end to the anachronistic entity known as the Papal States – in modern terms, a kind of western Iran.

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From the eighth century CE onwards, the popes ruled over a collection of territories in central and northern Italy. The extraordinary thing is that this arrangement endured into the last third of the nineteenth century: as late as 1870, the Supreme Pontiff was governing an earthly kingdom as an absolute monarch, although by then his territories had shrunk to Rome and the lands around it. Only with the fall of Rome, 155 years ago today, was the papal government extinguished.

In some ways, the political structure of the Papal States was not especially unusual. They were a fairly typical pre-modern aristocratic society. In the best traditions of European feudalism, they were dominated by landowners who were at once arrogant and stupid (although the full feudal system was abolished in the nineteenth century).

What made the place unique was the central role of the Catholic Church. The higher positions in public life were reserved for clerics – some of whom were distinctly ‘secular’ – and the pope ruled over the realm as both spiritual leader and temporal king. The ecclesiastical hierarchy, from the College of Cardinals down to simple priests, ran in parallel to the feudal social hierarchy. The aristocracy itself was divided (until 1853) between the old indigenous nobility and families which had been awarded their titles by the pope.

The church and the secular ruling class were linked together. The Holy See was a major landowner in its own right. Priests were confidants of the big families, and young noblemen went into the church. At the same time, the church provided opportunities for social mobility: even some cardinals were of humble origin.

By the latter part of the nineteenth century, the time warp was coming to an end. The papal regime was unstable: it faced opposition from both constitutionalist liberals and violent revolutionaries. History had caught up with the popes. A few decades previously, Napoleon had temporarily smashed through the old structures, in a series of events which form the backdrop to Puccini’s opera Tosca. There had also been internal uprisings. In 1848, during a brief liberalising experiment, Pope Pius IX had brought laymen into the government and had even conceded a constitution – only to be overthrown in a popular revolt. The rebels were defeated in 1849, and Pius returned from exile in 1850.

Pius was fated to be the last monarch of the Papal States. His method of dealing with the political storms that were sweeping through his kingdom – and the rest of Europe – consisted of a mixture of ignoring them and condemning them. After his return in 1850, he ignored his own constitution and continued for the most part to govern as if it was still the Middle Ages. This was not a tenable strategy. His regime did have some popular support, but there was stiff opposition, which extended even into the clergy and the aristocracy.

The regime tried to survive through coercion. The press and the theatre were censored. The police were repressive. There was corruption in the courts, and political defendants faced obstacles which normal criminals did not. Dissidents were sometimes punished without trial.

Naturally, the Papal States were religiously repressive too. Even the Lenten fast was enforced by law. Protestants were discriminated against; and papal policy towards the Jews was awful. Rome had the dubious distinction of maintaining the last of the Jewish Ghettos in Europe (excepting the Nazis’ attempts to revive them). Many of the Roman Ghetto’s inhabitants lived in poverty. Old humiliating customs were still a recent memory – for example, until 1847 Roman Jews were forced to listen to weekly sermons aimed at converting them.

Ironically, the papal government’s financial problems meant that the popes repeatedly needed to seek loans from the Rothschild banking family. The Rothschilds made some attempts to push for improvements to the position of the Jews under papal rule, but without much success.

The financial problems of the Papal States were real. For all their glorious classical and Catholic history, they were something of a backwater: economically underdeveloped and plagued by crime. Under the rule of the popes, the Eternal City itself was a poor, dirty, unhealthy place. The population of the city in 1870 was less than a quarter of a million (the largest city in Italy, Naples, had 450,000 inhabitants, while Paris had 1.85 million and London 3.25 million). One astonishing sign of the unsatisfactory condition of papal Rome is that it lacked good restaurants. A travellers’ guide from 1843 reported:

Many persons, particularly bachelors, prefer dining at the trattoria; but although there are many of these establishments, they are far inferior to those of other Italian capitals; and a good restaurateur is still one of the desiderata of Rome.

We must not go too far, however. Some stories about the backwardness of the Papal States can be regarded as anticlerical myths. It is sometimes said that Pope Leo XII (1823-1829) banned smallpox vaccinations as an affront to God. This seems to be untrue: vaccinations were already an accepted practice before his reign, and he did nothing to stop them. The claim derives from a remark that he made while a cardinal to the effect that vaccinations were “bestial”. Likewise, a story that Gregory XVI (1831-1846) banned the modern practice of street lighting seems to be an exaggeration based on an administrative measure that was quickly reversed.

Less easy to explain away is Gregory’s refusal to allow telegraph lines or railways, two of the most important technological developments of the age. He was said to have coined the French pun “Chemin de fer, chemin d’enfer”, “Railway – road to hell”. This resistance to railways was derided at the time: it served as a symbol of a refusal to allow the modern world to enter the papal realms.

Nevertheless, there were some signs of modernisation and economic development. The period of Napoleonic rule left its mark in this regard. Other reforms came from the papal government itself. In 1801, Pius VII had taken some steps towards a modern market economy in his decree Le più colte; and his reforming Secretary of State, Cardinal Ercole Consalvi, had attempted to stimulate growth. Some regions came to be reasonably prosperous, including Umbria and the area around Bologna. After Gregory XVI died, the anti-railway policy was lifted: the first rail line in the papal territories became operational in 1856. Progress was made in other areas too, including telegraphs, banking and the postal service.

There is a revisionist view to the effect that the backward condition of the Papal States is an Italian nationalist myth – a classic case of history being written by the victors. The Catholic cleric and theologian Owen F. Cummings has written:

When it comes to the social and economic circumstances of the citizens of the Papal States, it has been pointed out that they were certainly no worse off than the working classes of European democracies, and in some respects were better off. There was no parallel in the Papal States, for example, to the Great Famine in Ireland (1845-52), largely mismanaged by the “enlightened” British government.

Yet the apologetic case can only go so far. Even at the time, Catholics in other countries did not necessarily feel that the peoples of the Papal States were well served by their government; and the economic advances that took place had somewhat limited impact. It has even been claimed that the non-agricultural part of the economy shrank in the first half of the nineteenth century. Rome itself remained surprisingly underdeveloped. It has been estimated that “half of [the city’s] population was essentially dependent upon governmental and Church hand-outs” [John F. Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy, p24.] In this context, it is interesting that the world of international capitalism was happy with the demise of the pope’s earthly power. After the fall of Rome, a report on the London stock market stated:

Markets opened quiet, but soon improved, closing good, especially for Foreign Stocks.

Italians – 1 higher, on reported capture of Rome.

The market had spoken.

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The demise of the Papal States came in a military conflict between the 50,000-strong Italian army under King Victor Emmanuel and the 13,000 troops of Pope Pius IX (many of whom were zouaves, or foreign Catholic volunteers from Europe and the Americas). The result of the conflict was never in doubt. Rome and its surrounding areas were captured within days.

The fall of Rome to the Kingdom of Italy was the final piece in the jigsaw that was the unification of Italy. Until modern times, Italy was a collection of separate states under different sovereigns. As late as 1847, the Austrian leader Metternich could write that “Italy is a geographical term”.* This changed in the following years as a united Italian state emerged through a mixture of war and diplomacy, in a process known as the Risorgimento (Resurgence). This process was largely complete by 1861, when the Kingdom of Italy was formally established. By that point, only Rome and the territories closest to it remained under papal rule.

[* = Metternich was not impartial on this subject, and he was being a bit naughty here. Italy did have a longstanding collective identity alongside all the local particularism. The standard form of the Italian language is older than standard English.]

In earlier times, the pontifical state had been a significant military power. By 1870, those days were well and truly gone. Ominously, the pope was dependent on French arms. The French ruler, Napoleon III, did not deploy his soldiers to the Papal States out of the goodness of his heart. He did it because his regime needed the support of conservative Catholics: he had alienated just about everybody else. The ultra-Catholic faction – who included his wife, the Empress Eugenie – were intransigent on the issue of protecting the pope with French rifles and bayonets, even if that meant leaving the homeland itself vulnerable to its enemies: “Rather the Prussians in Paris than the Italians in Rome”.

It ended up being both. In July 1870, France declared war on Prussia. Maintaining a garrison in Rome became a luxury that Napoleon III could no longer afford. On 27 July, the French ambassador informed the papal government that France was withdrawing its troops.

Up to the last moment, the Vatican was in denial about what was going to happen. The French soldiers themselves were not sorry to be leaving. The historian David Kertzer writes in his book Prisoner of the Vatican:

Reports coming in from Civitavecchia, the port from which the troops were leaving, told that, as they boarded their ships, some shouted “Down with the pope! Down with the government of the priests! Vive l’Italie!” Embarrassed, the French commander, still in his nightclothes, had had to run into the streets to silence them.

Pius commented that he hoped that the French would never come back. He got his wish. On 2 September, France was defeated at the battle of Sedan, and it became clear that French support for the papal regime had disappeared for good. Even clerics did not attempt to hide their satisfaction.

The Italians tried to give the pope a dignified way out. A representative of the king, Count Ponza di San Martino, came to Rome with a face-saving proposal. The Italian army would enter the city with the pope’s consent on the pretext of suppressing revolutionary agitation. Pius did not take this diplomatic hypocrisy well. At an audience on 10 September, he lost his temper with Ponza, telling him bluntly: “you will never enter Rome”.

The Italian army invaded the papal territories the next day.

The pope ordered three days of special prayers. It seems that he genuinely hoped for divine intervention.

For a number of days, the Italian forces hung back from Rome itself. They hoped until the last minute that a rebellion would break out within the city or that the pope’s army would defect to their side.

Finally, at 5.15 am on 20 September, the Italians opened fire on the city’s defences.

Shortly after the assault began, the diplomatic corps assembled at the Vatican. The diplomats were invited to attend the pope’s private Mass, which took place amid the sounds of cannons and grenades. After Mass, Pius complained to them about the sacrilege that he was suffering. After 9 o’clock, the cannon fire became louder. Pius had ordered his forces to put up only token resistance in order to make the point that the Italians were taking the city by force and without his consent. The noise suggested that his orders had been disobeyed: he became angry and ordered that the white flag be flown from St Peter’s. Firing soon ceased.

The instrument of surrender was formally signed later that day, at 3 pm.

While he was waiting for the end, the pope spent his time composing a riddle (sciarada) on the word tremare (tremble). Writing riddles was one of his hobbies. This is what he came up with:

Il tre non oltrepassa il mio primiero,

È l’altro molto vasto e molto infido

Che spesso spesso fa provar l’intero.

Which means something like:

The three (tre) does not go beyond my first part.

The rest (mare, sea) is vast and treacherous,

And it very often makes the whole word happen.

It is said that the riddle was subsequently passed around the officials of the papal court.

The Italian historical writer Raffaele De Cesare summed up the end:

On the morning of September 21 Pius IX., informed that the disarming of the troops was accomplished at Porta San Pancrazio, that the Papal flag was lowered at Castel San Angelo, that his army and his State no longer existed, wrote this letter to his nephew Luigi, at Senigallia:

“From the Vatican, September 21.

Dear Nephew, — All is over! Without liberty it is impossible to govern the Church. Pray for me, all of you. I bless you.

Pius P.P. IX.”

This proved to be a false prophecy.

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When Rome fell to the Italians, it was the end of over a thousand years of papal rule. It was also the start of a dispute between the papacy and the Italian state which rumbled on for several decades.

The capture of Rome meant that the pope’s power as a temporal sovereign came to an end – although he retained a special status in international law through the ecclesiastical entity known as the Holy See. The pope’s supporters argued that only full sovereignty, in the form of kingship over a discrete territorial unit, would allow the pope to govern the church with total independence, free from the influence of secular governments.

The Italians enacted the ‘Law of Guarantees’, a compromise measure which sought to give the pope some of the attributes of sovereignty, along with financial compensation. Part of the deal was that the pontiff would have a small area of western Rome – the Leonine City – as his own territory. But the terms did not go far enough for Pius or his successors. They refused all accommodation with the royal government and shut themselves into the Vatican estate – they became, in a widely used Catholic phrase, ‘prisoners of the Vatican’. Successive popes refused to emerge into the public areas of Rome, where they would be subject to the protection and control of the Italian government and police. New popes didn’t even go onto the balcony of St Peter’s to greet the crowds after their election.

There was worse. The popes tried to take the Italian political system down with them. The Holy See regarded the infant Italian state as illegitimate and forbade Catholic citizens from voting in elections. As papal pronouncements go, this one was about as realistic as the ban on condoms. It was weakened in 1905 and lifted in 1918.

The papacy’s extended sulk lasted until 1929, by which time Italy was ruled by a Fascist government which needed the support of rightwing Catholics. Mussolini found it convenient to solve the ‘Roman Question’ by signing a set of agreements known as the Lateran Pacts. The Vatican City State was created as a new mini-realm for the pope: the world’s smallest sovereign entity, which today has its own passports, internet domain and football team. The territory conferred on the pope by the treaty – and the associated financial compensation – was smaller than what the Italian government had originally offered in 1871 under the Law of Guarantees. That’s what happens when you don’t quit while you’re behind.

The events of 20 September are still vividly remembered in Italy. To this day, many towns and cities have a Via XX Settembre; it is often the street leading up to the cathedral.