Apostolic Signatura
The Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura is the highest judicial authority in the Catholic Church. In addition, it oversees the administration of justice in the Church; the Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura is Cardinal Dominique Mamberti, who had replaced Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke. The Secretary is Bishop Giuseppe Sciacca; the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura is housed in the Italian Renaissance-era Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome, the headquarters and meeting place of the Roman Catholic Church's other two Tribunals. The Apostolic Signatura only hears appeals from these two tribunals if some process was in error or there is an inter-agency conflict, not in regard to the judgment, made or the merits of the case; the two other Tribunals located there are the Sacred Roman Rota, the Apostolic Penitentiary. The Roman Rota is the ordinary appellate tribunal of the Apostolic See; the Signatura's competence covers: complaints of nullity and petitions for total reinstatement against sentences of the Roman Rota.
Apart from these judicial matters, the Signatura has competence as an administrative tribunal to deal with controversies over administrative decisions made by or approved by departments of the Roman Curia if it is contended that the decision violated some law, either in the decision-making process or in the procedure used. It can deal with administrative controversies referred to it by the Pope or those departments, with conflicts of competence between the departments. A third field of competence for the Signatura is that of overseeing all the tribunals of the Catholic Church, with power to extend the jurisdiction of tribunals, to grant dispensations from procedural laws, to establish interdiocesan tribunals, to discipline canonical advocates; the Cardinal Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura serves ex officio as the President of the Supreme Court of Vatican City. The two other members of the Supreme Court are Cardinals of the Apostolic Signatura and are chosen by the Cardinal Prefect on a yearly basis.
In the thirteenth century the Popes made use of "referendarii" to investigate and prepare the signing - hence the name signatura - of petitions and other cases presented to the Holy See. Pope Eugene IV entrusted these referendaries with authority to sign certain petitions and thereby established a permanent office for this purpose. Under Popes Alexander VI, Sixtus IV and Julius II this office was divided into two, the Signatura gratiae for examining petitions for favours, the Signatura iustitiae for contentious cases; the honourable office of referendary came to be conferred as a honorary title, but Pope Sixtus V put a limit on their number, Pope Alexander VII combined the limited number of voting referendaries into a college, assisted by the simple referendaries, who had only a consultative position. The Signatura gratiae lost its functions to other bodies, the growth of the work of the Roman Rota, the foundation of the Congregations of Cardinals resulted in the Signatura iustitiae becoming a Supreme Court of the Papal States.
On 29 June 1908, Pope Pius X reestablished a single Apostolic Signatura consisting of six cardinals, one of whom acted as its prefect. On 28 June 1915, Pope Benedict XV reconstituted the college of the voting referendaries and simple referendaries with consultative functions and the 1917 Code of Canon Law removed the limitation of the number of cardinals members of this Supreme Tribunal; the present competence of the Apostolic Signatura is that laid down in the apostolic constitution Pastor Bonus of 28 June 1988. Vincenzo Vannutelli Michele Lega Augusto Silj Francesco Ragonesi Bonaventura Cerretti Enrico Gasparri Massimo Massimi Giuseppe Bruno Gaetano Cicognani Francesco Roberti Dino Staffa Pericle Felici Aurelio Sabattani Achille Silvestrini Gilberto Agustoni Zenon Grocholewski Mario Francesco Pompedda Agostino Vallini Raymond Leo Burke Dominique Mamberti The members of the Apostolic Signatura are:Cardinals Dominique Mamberti, Prefect Agostino Vallini, Prefect Emeritus Raymond Leo Burke, Prefect Emeritus Béchara Boutros Raï Antonio Maria Rouco Varela Zenon Grocholewski Attilio Nicor
Crodo
Crodo is a comune in the Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola in the Italian region Piedmont, located about 140 kilometres northeast of Turin and about 35 kilometres northwest of Verbania. As of 31 December 2004, it had a population of 1,487 and an area of 61.8 square kilometres. The municipality of Crodo contains the frazioni Alpiano, Molinetto, Cravegna, Emo, Viceno, Quategno and Maglioggio. Crodo borders the following municipalities: Baceno, Montecrestese, Varzo. In the district Foppiano of Crodo there's a woodland, famous for the many boulders that were found among the trees. In fact the area is a notorious climbing spot among bouldering climbers and the boulder "Sass Fendù" has become a symbol of this place; the valley is known for climbing since the late 90s because of the many gathering and competitions that have been arranged there. Www.comune.crodo.vb.it/
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire known in Western Europe as the Turkish Empire or Turkey, was a state that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt by the Oghuz Turkish tribal leader Osman I. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire; the Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror. During the 16th and 17th centuries, at the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire was a multinational, multilingual empire controlling most of Southeast Europe, parts of Central Europe, Western Asia, parts of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. At the beginning of the 17th century, the empire contained numerous vassal states; some of these were absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries.
With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. While the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians; the empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy and military throughout the 17th and much of the 18th century. However, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian empires; the Ottomans suffered severe military defeats in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which prompted them to initiate a comprehensive process of reform and modernisation known as the Tanzimat. Thus, over the course of the 19th century, the Ottoman state became vastly more powerful and organised, despite suffering further territorial losses in the Balkans, where a number of new states emerged.
The empire allied with Germany in the early 20th century, hoping to escape from the diplomatic isolation which had contributed to its recent territorial losses, thus joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent with the Arab Revolt in its Arabian holdings. During this time, atrocities were committed by the Young Turk government against the Armenians and Pontic Greeks; the Empire's defeat and the occupation of part of its territory by the Allied Powers in the aftermath of World War I resulted in its partitioning and the loss of its Middle Eastern territories, which were divided between the United Kingdom and France. The successful Turkish War of Independence against the occupying Allies led to the emergence of the Republic of Turkey in the Anatolian heartland and the abolition of the Ottoman monarchy; the word Ottoman is a historical anglicisation of the name of Osman I, the founder of the Empire and of the ruling House of Osman.
Osman's name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān. In Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı Devleti; the Turkish word for "Ottoman" referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, subsequently came to be used to refer to the empire's military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term "Turk" was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, was seen as a disparaging term when applied to urban, educated individuals. In the early modern period, an educated urban-dwelling Turkish-speaker, not a member of the military-administrative class would refer to himself neither as an Osmanlı nor as a Türk, but rather as a Rūmī, or "Roman", meaning an inhabitant of the territory of the former Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia; the term Rūmī was used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond.
In Western Europe, the two names "Ottoman Empire" and "Turkey" were used interchangeably, with "Turkey" being favoured both in formal and informal situations. This dichotomy was ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms "Turkey", "Turks", "Turkish" when referring to the Ottomans, due to the empire's multinational character; as the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman I, a figure of obscure origins from whom the name Ottoman is derived. Osman's early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River.
It is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their
Diplomat
A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with one or more other states or international organizations. The main functions of diplomats are: representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state. Seasoned diplomats of international repute are used in international organizations as well as multinational companies for their experience in management and negotiating skills. Diplomats are diplomatic corps of various nations of the world. Diplomats are the oldest form of any of the foreign policy institutions of the state, predating by centuries foreign ministers and ministerial offices, they have diplomatic immunity. The regular use of permanent diplomatic representation began between the states of fifteenth century Italy; however the terms ‘diplomacy’ and ‘diplomat’ appeared in the French Revolution. Diplomat is derived from the Greek διπλωμάτης, the holder of a diploma, referring to diplomats' documents of accreditation from their sovereign. Diplomats themselves and historians refer to the foreign ministry by its address: the Ballhausplatz, the Quai d’Orsay, the Wilhelmstraße.
For imperial Russia to 1917 it was the Choristers’ Bridge. The Italian ministry was called "the Consulta." Though any person can be appointed by the state's national government to conduct said state's relations with other states or international organisations, a number of states maintain an institutionalised group of career diplomats—that is, public servants with a steady professional connection to the country's foreign ministry. The term career diplomat is used worldwide in opposition to political appointees. While posted to an embassy or delegation in a foreign country or accredited to an international organisation, both career diplomats and political appointees enjoy the same diplomatic immunities. Ceremonial heads of state act as diplomats on behalf of their nation following instructions from their head of Government. Whether being a career diplomat or a political appointee, every diplomat, while posted abroad, will be classified in one of the ranks of diplomats as regulated by international law.
Diplomats can be contrasted with consuls and attachés, who represent their state in a number of administrative ways, but who don't have the diplomat's political functions. Diplomats in posts collect and report information that could affect national interests with advice about how the home-country government should respond. Once any policy response has been decided in the home country's capital, posts bear major responsibility for implementing it. Diplomats have the job of conveying, in the most persuasive way possible, the views of the home government to the governments to which they are accredited and, in doing so, of trying to convince those governments to act in ways that suit home-country interests. In this way, diplomats are part of the beginning and the end of each loop in the continuous process through which foreign policy develops. In general, it has become harder for diplomats to act autonomously. Diplomats have to seize secure communication systems and mobile telephones can be tracked down and instruct the most reclusive head of mission.
The same technology in reverse gives diplomats the capacity for more immediate input about the policy-making processes in the home capital. Secure email has transformed the contact between the ministry, it is less to leak, enables more personal contact than the formal cablegram, with its wide distribution and impersonal style. The home country will send instructions to a diplomatic post on what foreign policy goals to pursue, but decisions on tactics – who needs to be influenced, what will best persuade them, who are potential allies and adversaries, how it can be done - are for the diplomats overseas to make. In this operation, the intelligence, cultural understanding, energy of individual diplomats become critical. If competent, they will have developed relationships grounded in trust and mutual understanding with influential members of the country in which they are accredited, they will have worked hard to understand the motives, thought patterns and culture of the other side. The diplomat should be an excellent negotiator but, above all, a catalyst for peace and understanding between peoples.
The diplomat's principal role is to foster peaceful relations between states. This role takes on heightened importance. Negotiation must continue – but within altered contexts. Most career diplomats have university degrees in international relations, political science, economics, or law. Diplomats have been considered members of an exclusive and prestigious profession; the public image of diplomats has been described as "a caricature of pinstriped men gliding their way around a never-ending global cocktail party". J. W. Burton has noted that "despite the absence of any specific professional training, diplomacy has a high professional status, due to a degree of secrecy and mystery that its practitioners self-consciously promote." The state supports the high status and self-esteem of its diplomats in order to
Council of Trent
The Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563 in Trent, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation, it has been described as the embodiment of the Counter-Reformation; the Council issued condemnations of what it defined to be heresies committed by proponents of Protestantism, issued key statements and clarifications of the Church's doctrine and teachings, including scripture, the Biblical canon, sacred tradition, original sin, salvation, the sacraments, the Mass, the veneration of saints. The Council met for twenty-five sessions between 13 December 1545 and 4 December 1563. Pope Paul III, who convoked the Council, oversaw the first eight sessions, while the twelfth to sixteenth sessions were overseen by Pope Julius III and the seventeenth to twenty-fifth sessions by Pope Pius IV; the consequences of the Council were significant in regards to the Church's liturgy and practices. During its deliberations, the Council made the Vulgate the official example of the Biblical canon and commissioned the creation of a standard version, although this was not achieved until the 1590s.
In 1565, a year after the Council finished its work, Pius IV issued the Tridentine Creed and his successor Pius V issued the Roman Catechism and revisions of the Breviary and Missal in 1566, 1568 and 1570. These, in turn, led to the codification of the Tridentine Mass, which remained the Church's primary form of the Mass for the next four hundred years. More than three hundred years passed until the next ecumenical council, the First Vatican Council, was convened in 1869. On 15 March 1517, the Fifth Council of the Lateran closed its activities with a number of reform proposals but not on the major problems that confronted the Church in Germany and other parts of Europe. A few months on 31 October 1517, Martin Luther issued his 95 Theses in Wittenberg. Luther's position on ecumenical councils shifted over time, but in 1520 he appealed to the German princes to oppose the papal Church, if necessary with a council in Germany and free of the Papacy. After the Pope condemned in Exsurge Domine fifty-two of Luther's theses as heresy, German opinion considered a council the best method to reconcile existing differences.
German Catholics, diminished in number, hoped for a council to clarify matters. It took a generation for the council to materialise because of papal reluctance, given that a Lutheran demand was the exclusion of the papacy from the Council, because of ongoing political rivalries between France and Germany and the Turkish dangers in the Mediterranean. Under Pope Clement VII, troops of the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sacked Papal Rome in 1527, "raping, burning, the like had not been seen since the Vandals". Saint Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel were used for horses. This, together with the Pontiff's ambivalence between Germany, led to his hesitation. Charles V favoured a council, but needed the support of King Francis I of France, who attacked him militarily. Francis I opposed a general council due to partial support of the Protestant cause within France. In 1532 he agreed to the Nuremberg Religious Peace granting religious liberty to the Protestants, in 1533 he further complicated matters when suggesting a general council to include both Catholic and Protestant rulers of Europe that would devise a compromise between the two theological systems.
This proposal met the opposition of the Pope for it gave recognition to Protestants and elevated the secular Princes of Europe above the clergy on church matters. Faced with a Turkish attack, Charles held the support of the Protestant German rulers, all of whom delayed the opening of the Council of Trent. In reply to the Papal bull Exsurge Domine of Pope Leo X, Martin Luther burned the document and appealed for a general council. In 1522 German diets joined in the appeal, with Charles V seconding and pressing for a council as a means of reunifying the Church and settling the Reformation controversies. Pope Clement VII was vehemently against the idea of a council, agreeing with Francis I of France, after Pope Pius II, in his bull Execrabilis and his reply to the University of Cologne, set aside the theory of the supremacy of general councils laid down by the Council of Constance. Pope Paul III, seeing that the Protestant Reformation was no longer confined to a few preachers, but had won over various princes in Germany, to its ideas, desired a council.
Yet when he proposed the idea to his cardinals, it was unanimously opposed. Nonetheless, he sent nuncios throughout Europe to propose the idea. Paul III issued a decree for a general council to be held in Mantua, Italy, to begin on 23 May 1537. Martin Luther wrote the Smalcald Articles in preparation for the general council; the Smalcald Articles were designed to define where the Lutherans could and could not compromise. The council was ordered by the Emperor and Pope Paul III to convene in Mantua on 23 May 1537, it failed to convene after another war broke out between France and Charles V, resulting in a non-attendance of French prelates. Protestants refused to attend as well. Financial difficulties in Mantua led the Pope in the autumn of 1537 to move the council to Vicenza, where participation was poor; the Council was postponed indefinitely on 21 May 1539. Pope Paul III initiated several internal Church reforms while Emperor Charles V convened with Protestants at an imperial diet in Regensburg, to reconcile differences.
Unity failed betw
French Wars of Religion
The French Wars of Religion were a prolonged period of war and popular unrest between Roman Catholics and Huguenots in the Kingdom of France between 1562 and 1598. It is estimated that three million people perished in this period from violence, famine, or disease in what is considered the second deadliest religious war in European history. Much of the conflict took place during the long regency of Queen Catherine de' Medici, widow of Henry II of France, for her minor sons, it involved a dynastic power struggle between powerful noble families in the line for succession to the French throne: the wealthy and fervently Roman Catholic ducal House of Guise and their ally Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France versus the less wealthy House of Condé, princes of the blood in the line of succession to the throne who were sympathetic to Calvinism. Foreign allies provided financing and other assistance to both sides, with Habsburg Spain and the Duchy of Savoy supporting the Guises, England supporting the Protestant side led by the Condés and by the Protestant Jeanne d'Albret, wife of Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre, her son, Henry of Navarre.
Moderates associated with the French Valois monarchy and its advisers, tried to balance the situation and avoid open bloodshed. This group put their hopes in the ability of a strong centralized government to maintain order and harmony. In contrast to the previous hardline policies of Henri II and his father Francis I, they began introducing gradual concessions to Huguenots. A most notable moderate, at least was the queen mother, Catherine de' Medici. Catherine, however hardened her stance and, at the time of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, sided with the Guises; this pivotal historical event involved a complete breakdown of state control resulting in series of riots and massacres in which Catholic mobs killed between 5,000 and 30,000 Protestants over a period of weeks throughout the entire kingdom. At the conclusion of the conflict in 1598, the Protestant Henry of Navarre, heir to the French throne, converted to Catholicism and was crowned Henry IV of France, he issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted Huguenots substantial rights and freedoms though this did not end Catholic hostility towards them or towards him, personally.
The wars of religion threatened the authority of the monarchy fragile under the rule of Catherine's three sons and the last Valois kings: Francis II, Charles IX, Henry III. This changed under the reign of their Bourbon successor Henry IV; the edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685 with the Edict of Fontainebleau by Louis XIV of France. Henry IV's wise governance and selection of able administrators did leave a legacy of a strong centralized government and economic prosperity that has gained him the reputation as France's best and most beloved monarch, earning him the designation "Good King Henry". Along with French Wars of Religion and Huguenot Wars, the wars have been variously described as the "Eight Wars of Religion", or the "Wars of Religion"; the exact number of wars and their respective dates are subject to continued debate by historians: some assert that the Edict of Nantes in 1598 concluded the wars, while the ensuing resurgence of rebellious activity leads some to believe the Peace of Alès in 1629 is the actual conclusion.
However, the agreed upon beginning of the wars is the Massacre of Wassy in 1562, the Edict of Nantes at least ended this series of conflicts. During this time, complex diplomatic negotiations and agreements of peace were followed by renewed conflict and power struggles. Humanism, which began much earlier in Italy, arrived in France in the early sixteenth century, coinciding with the beginning of the French Protestant Reformation; the Italian revival of art and classical learning interested Francis I, who established royal professorships in Paris, equipping more people with the knowledge necessary to understand ancient literature. Francis I, had no quarrel with the established religious order and did not support reformation. Indeed, Pope Leo X, through the Concordat of Bologna increased the king's control over the French church, granting him the power of nominating the clergy and levying taxes on church property. In France, unlike in Germany, the nobles supported the policies and the status quo of their time.
The emphasis of Renaissance Humanism on ad fontes, the return to the sources, had spread from the study and reconstruction of secular Greek and Latin texts, with a view to artistic and linguistic renewal, to the reading and translation of the Church Fathers and the New Testament itself, with a view to religious renewal and reform. Humanist scholars, who approached theology from a new critical and comparative perspective, argued that exegesis of Scripture must be based on an accurate understanding of the language and grammar used in writing the Greek scriptures and later, the Hebrew Scriptures, rather than relying on the Vulgate - a Latin translation of the Bible, as in the Medieval period. In 1495 the Venetian Aldus Manutius began using the newly invented printing press to produce small, pocket editions of Greek and vernacular literature, making knowledge in all disciplines available for the first time to a wide public. Printing in mass editions allowed theological and religious ideas to be disseminated at an u
Papal States
The Papal States the State of the Church, were a series of territories in the Italian Peninsula under the direct sovereign rule of the Pope, from the 8th century until 1870. They were among the major states of Italy from the 8th century until the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia unified the Italian Peninsula by conquest in a campaign concluded in 1861 and definitively in 1870. At their zenith, the Papal States covered most of the modern Italian regions of Lazio, Marche and Romagna, 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 Basilica of St Peter and the papal residence and related buildings around the Vatican quarter of Rome, which the new Italian state did not occupy militarily.
In 1929 the head of the Italian government, at the time the Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, ended the crisis between unified Italy and the Holy See by negotiating the Lateran Treaty, signed by the two parties. This recognized the sovereignty of the Holy See over a newly created international territorial entity, the Vatican City State, limited to a token territory; the Papal States were known as the Papal State. The territories were referred to variously as the State of the Church, the Pontifical States, the Ecclesiastical States, or the Roman States. To some extent the name used varied with the preferences and habits of the European languages in which it was expressed. For its first 300 years the Catholic Church was persecuted and unrecognized, unable to hold or transfer property. Early congregations met in rooms set aside for that purpose in the homes of well-to-do individuals, 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 by individual members of the Roman churches would be considered as a common patrimony handed over successively to the legitimate "heir" of that property its senior deacons, who were, in turn, assistants to the local bishop. This common patrimony attached to the churches at Rome, 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 latifundias, whole or in part, across Italy and beyond. This system began to change during the reign of the emperor Constantine I, who made Christianity legal within the Roman Empire, restoring to it any properties, confiscated; the Lateran Palace was the first significant new donation to the Church, most a gift from Constantine himself. Other donations followed in mainland Italy but in the provinces of the Roman Empire, but the Church held all of these lands as a private landowner, not as a sovereign entity. When in the 5th century the Italian peninsula passed under the control of Odoacer and 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.
The seeds of the Papal States as a sovereign political entity were planted in the 6th century. Beginning in 535, the Byzantine Empire, under emperor Justinian I, launched a reconquest of Italy that took decades and devastated Italy's political and economic structures. Just as these wars wound down, the Lombards entered the peninsula from the north and conquered much of the countryside. By the 7th century, Byzantine authority was limited to a diagonal band running from Ravenna, where the Emperor's representative, or Exarch, was located, to Rome and south to Naples, plus coastal enclaves. 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 Byzantines were unable to project to the area around the city of Rome. While the popes remained Byzantine subjects, in practice the Duchy of Rome, an area equivalent to modern-day Latium, became an independent state ruled by the pope.
The Church's independence, combined with popular support for the papacy in Italy, enabled various popes to defy the will of the Byzantine emperor. The pope and the exarch still worked together to control the rising power of the Lombards in Italy; as Byzantine power weakened, the papacy took an ever-larger role in defending Rome from the Lombards through diplomacy. In practice, the papal efforts served to focus Lombard aggrandizement on 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 to Pope Gregory II; when the Exarchate of
Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). 
