1.
Pope Adrian I
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Pope Adrian I was Pope from 1 February 772 to his death in 795. He was the son of Theodore, a Roman nobleman, Charlemagne besieged Desiderius in his capital of Pavia. After taking the town, he banished the Lombard king to the Abbey of Corbie in France, while the Lombards had always been openly respectful of the papacy, the popes distrusted them. The popes had sought aid from the Eastern Roman Empire to keep these barbarians in check, because the East could offer no direct aid, Adrian then looked to the Franks to offset the power of the Lombards. Friendly relations between pope and king were not disturbed by the dispute about the veneration of icons. In 787, Second Council of Nicaea, approved by Pope Adrian, had confirmed the practice and he also had his theologians, including Theodulf of Orleans, compose the more comprehensive Libri Carolini. Pope Adrian reacted to the Capitulare with a defense of the Council, in 794, a synod held at Frankfurt in 794 discussed the issue but refused to receive the Libri and content itself with condemning extreme forms of veneration of icons. He gave the Lichfield bishop Hygeberht the pallium in 788 and he also encouraged Charlemagne to lead his troops into Spain against the Muslims there and was generally interested in expanding Christian influence and eliminating Muslim control. An epitaph written by Charlemagne in verse, in which he styles Adrian father, is still to be seen at the door of the Vatican basilica. At the time of his death at the age of 95, only three other popes – Pius IX, Leo XIII, and John Paul II – have reigned for longer periods since. List of popes by length of reign Partial letter from Pope Adrian to the 2nd session of the Seventh Ecumenical Council
2.
Pope Stephen IV
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Pope Stephen IV was Pope from June 816 to his death in 817. The son of a Roman noble called Marinus, Stephen IV belonged to the family which also produced the Popes Sergius II. Very popular among the Roman people, within ten days of Leo III’s death, he was escorted to Saint Peter’s Basilica and it has been conjectured that his rapid election was an attempt by the Roman clergy to ensure that the Roman emperor could not interfere in the election. With Louis’ invitation, Stephen left Rome in August 816, crossing the Alps together with Bernard, the King of the Lombards, in early October, the Pope and Emperor met at Rheims, where Louis prostrated himself three times before Stephen. At Mass on Sunday,5 October 816, Stephen consecrated and anointed Louis as emperor, at the same time he also crowned Louis’ wife Ermengarde of Hesbaye, and saluted her as Augusta. This event has seen as an attempt by the Papacy to establish a role in the creation of an emperor. While with Louis, the emperor gave Stephen a number of presents and they also renewed the pact between the Popes and the kings of the Franks, confirming the privileges of the Roman church, and the continued existence of the recently emerged Papal States. It is also believed that Stephen asked Louis to enforce reforms for the clergy who lived under the Rule of Chrodegang. This included ensuring that the men and women who lived there were to stay in separate convents, and he also regulated how much food and wine they could consume. After visiting Ravenna on his way back from Rheims, Stephen returned to Rome before the end of November 816, here, he apparently discontinued Leo III’s policies of favouring clergy over lay aristocracy. He was buried at St. Peter’s, and was succeeded by Pope Paschal I, at some point, Stephen was canonized as a saint of the Catholic Church. List of Catholic saints List of popes Duffy, Eamon, Saints and Sinners, A History of the Popes, Yale University Press Mann, Horace K. The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, Vol. II, The Popes During the Carolingian Empire, 795–858 Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Stephen
3.
Rome
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Rome is a special comune and the capital of Italy. Rome also serves as the capital of the Lazio region, with 2,873,598 residents in 1,285 km2, it is also the countrys largest and most populated comune and fourth-most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the center of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4.3 million residents, the city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio, along the shores of the Tiber. Romes history spans more than 2,500 years, while Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at only around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe. The citys early population originated from a mix of Latins, Etruscans and it was first called The Eternal City by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, and the expression was also taken up by Ovid, Virgil, and Livy. Rome is also called the Caput Mundi, due to that, Rome became first one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance, and then the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism. Famous artists, painters, sculptors and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, in 1871 Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and in 1946 that of the Italian Republic. Rome has the status of a global city, Rome ranked in 2014 as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, and the most popular tourist attraction in Italy. Its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, monuments and museums such as the Vatican Museums and the Colosseum are among the worlds most visited tourist destinations with both locations receiving millions of tourists a year. Rome hosted the 1960 Summer Olympics and is the seat of United Nations Food, however, it is a possibility that the name Romulus was actually derived from Rome itself. As early as the 4th century, there have been alternate theories proposed on the origin of the name Roma. There is archaeological evidence of occupation of the Rome area from approximately 14,000 years ago. Evidence of stone tools, pottery and stone weapons attest to about 10,000 years of human presence, several excavations support the view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built above the area of the future Roman Forum. Between the end of the age and the beginning of the Iron age. However, none of them had yet an urban quality, nowadays, there is a wide consensus that the city was gradually born through the aggregation of several villages around the largest one, placed above the Palatine. All these happenings, which according to the excavations took place more or less around the mid of the 8th century BC. Despite recent excavations at the Palatine hill, the view that Rome has been indeed founded with an act of will as the legend suggests in the middle of the 8th century BC remains a fringe hypothesis. Traditional stories handed down by the ancient Romans themselves explain the earliest history of their city in terms of legend and myth
4.
Exarchate of Ravenna
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The Exarchate of Ravenna or of Italy was a center of Byzantine power in Italy, from 584 to 751, when the last exarch was put to death by the Lombards. Ravenna became the capital of the Western Roman Empire in 402 under Honorius, due to its harbour with access to the Adriatic. The city remained the capital of the Empire until its dissolution in 476, when it became the capital of Odoacer and it remained the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom, but in 540 during the Gothic War, Ravenna was occupied by the East Roman general Belisarius. After this reconquest it became the seat of the provincial governor, at that time, the administrative structure of Italy followed, with some modifications, the old system established by Emperor Diocletian, and retained by Odoacer and the Goths. In 568, the Lombards under their king Alboin, together with other Germanic allies, the area had only a few years ago been completely pacified, and had suffered greatly during the long Gothic War. The local Roman forces were weak, and after taking several towns and they took Pavia after a three-year siege in 572, and made it their capital. In subsequent years, they took Tuscany, others, under Faroald and Zotto, penetrated into Central and Southern Italy, where they established the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. However, after Alboins murder in 573, the Lombards fragmented into several autonomous duchies, Emperor Justin II tried to take advantage of this, and in 576 he sent his son-in-law, Baduarius, to Italy. However, he was defeated and killed in battle, and the crises in the Balkans. Thus by the end of the 6th century the new order of powers had settled into a stable pattern, the exarchate was organised into a group of duchies which were mainly the coastal cities in the Italian peninsula since the Lombards held the advantage in the hinterland. The civil and military head of these possessions, the exarch himself, was the representative at Ravenna of the emperor in Constantinople. All this territory lies on the flank of the Apennines. Surrounding territories were governed by dukes and magistri militium more or less subject to his authority, from the perspective of Constantinople, the Exarchate consisted of the province of Italy. The Exarchate of Ravenna was not the sole Byzantine province in Italy, Byzantine Sicily formed a separate government, and Corsica and Sardinia, while they remained Byzantine, belonged to the Exarchate of Africa. The Lombards had their capital at Pavia and controlled the valley of the Po. The Lombard wedge in Italy spread to the south, and established duchies at Spoleto and Beneventum, they controlled the interior, in Rome, the pope was the real master. At the end,740, the Exarchate consisted of Istria, Venetia, Ferrara, Ravenna, with the Pentapolis, the relationship between the Pope in Rome and the Exarch in Ravenna was a dynamic that could hurt or help the empire. The Papacy could be a vehicle for local discontent, the old Roman senatorial aristocracy resented being governed by an Exarch who was considered by many a meddlesome foreigner
5.
Byzantine Empire
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It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, several signal events from the 4th to 6th centuries mark the period of transition during which the Roman Empires Greek East and Latin West divided. Constantine I reorganised the empire, made Constantinople the new capital, under Theodosius I, Christianity became the Empires official state religion and other religious practices were proscribed. Finally, under the reign of Heraclius, the Empires military, the borders of the Empire evolved significantly over its existence, as it went through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of Maurice, the Empires eastern frontier was expanded, in a matter of years the Empire lost its richest provinces, Egypt and Syria, to the Arabs. This battle opened the way for the Turks to settle in Anatolia, the Empire recovered again during the Komnenian restoration, such that by the 12th century Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest European city. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire remained only one of several small states in the area for the final two centuries of its existence. Its remaining territories were annexed by the Ottomans over the 15th century. The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 finally ended the Byzantine Empire, the term comes from Byzantium, the name of the city of Constantinople before it became Constantines capital. This older name of the city would rarely be used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts. The publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre, and in 1680 of Du Canges Historia Byzantina further popularised the use of Byzantine among French authors, however, it was not until the mid-19th century that the term came into general use in the Western world. The Byzantine Empire was known to its inhabitants as the Roman Empire, the Empire of the Romans, Romania, the Roman Republic, Graikia, and also as Rhōmais. The inhabitants called themselves Romaioi and Graikoi, and even as late as the 19th century Greeks typically referred to modern Greek as Romaika and Graikika. The authority of the Byzantine emperor as the legitimate Roman emperor was challenged by the coronation of Charlemagne as Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III in the year 800. No such distinction existed in the Islamic and Slavic worlds, where the Empire was more seen as the continuation of the Roman Empire. In the Islamic world, the Roman Empire was known primarily as Rûm, the Roman army succeeded in conquering many territories covering the entire Mediterranean region and coastal regions in southwestern Europe and north Africa. These territories were home to different cultural groups, both urban populations and rural populations. The West also suffered heavily from the instability of the 3rd century AD
6.
Papal States
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The Papal States, officially the State of the Church, were territories in the Italian Peninsula under the sovereign direct rule of the pope, from the 8th century until 1870. They were among the states of Italy from roughly the 8th century until the Italian Peninsula was unified in 1861 by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. At their zenith, they covered most of the modern Italian regions of Lazio, Marche, Umbria and Romagna and 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 Popes temporal control. In 1870, the pope lost Lazio and Rome and had no physical territory at all, Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini ended the crisis between unified Italy and the Vatican by signing the Lateran Treaty, granting the Vatican City State sovereignty. The Papal States were also known as the Papal State, the territories were also referred to variously as the State of the Church, the Pontifical States, the Ecclesiastical States, or the Roman States. For its first 300 years the Catholic Church was persecuted and unrecognized and this system began to change during the reign of the emperor Constantine I, who made Christianity legal within the Roman Empire, and restoring to it any properties that had been confiscated. The Lateran Palace was the first significant new donation to the Church, other donations followed, primarily in mainland Italy but also in the provinces of the Roman Empire. But the Church held all of these lands as a private landowner, 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 Italys political, just as these wars wound down, the Lombards entered the peninsula from the north and conquered much of the countryside. While the popes remained Byzantine subjects, in practice the Duchy of Rome, nevertheless, the pope and the exarch still worked together to control the rising power of the Lombards in Italy. As Byzantine power weakened, though, the took a ever larger role in defending Rome from the Lombards. In practice, the papal efforts served to focus Lombard aggrandizement on the exarch, a climactic moment in the founding of the Papal States was the agreement over boundaries embodied in the Lombard king Liutprands Donation of Sutri to Pope Gregory II. When the Exarchate of Ravenna finally fell to the Lombards in 751, the popes renewed earlier attempts to secure the support of the Franks. In 751, Pope Zachary had Pepin the Younger crowned king in place of the powerless Merovingian figurehead king Childeric III, zacharys successor, Pope Stephen II, later granted Pepin the title Patrician of the Romans. Pepin led a Frankish army into Italy in 754 and 756, Pepin defeated the Lombards – taking control of northern Italy – and made a gift of the properties formerly constituting the Exarchate of Ravenna to the pope. The cooperation between the papacy and the Carolingian dynasty climaxed in 800, when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor, the precise nature of the relationship between the popes and emperors – and between the Papal States and the Empire – is disputed. Events in the 9th century postponed the conflict, the Holy Roman Empire in its Frankish form collapsed as it was subdivided among Charlemagnes grandchildren
7.
Santa Susanna
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The Church of Saint Susanna at the Baths of Diocletian is a Roman Catholic parish church located on the Quirinal Hill in Rome, Italy. There has been a titular church associated to its site as far back as A. D.280, the current church was rebuilt from 1585 to 1603 for a monastery of Cistercian nuns founded on the site in 1587 which still exists there. About 280, an early Christian house of worship was established on this site, according to the 6th-century acta of Susanna, the domus belonged to two brothers named Caius and Gabinus, prominent Christians. Caius has been identified both with Pope Saint Caius and with Caius the presbyter, who was a prefect and who is a source of information on early Christianity, Gabinus or Gabinius is the name given to the father of the semi-legendary Saint Susanna. It is mentioned in connection with a Roman synod of 499, the Church of Santa Susanna is one of the oldest titles in the city of Rome. According to tradition, the Church was erected on Susannas House, in the 4th century it was marked with the designation ad duas domos. This first three-aisled basilica was almost certainly built under the pontificate of Pope Leo III, according to tradition, the structure became a church around 330, under Emperor Constantine I, when the basilicas of numerous house churches came to be adapted for liturgical use. The basilica was T-shaped with a nave with twelve columns on each side. All that is left of two side aisles, after the late 16th-century rebuilding, are the two side chapels of the basilica church. In the Synod of 565, the church is first referred to as the title of Susanna, a façade, in travertine, remained to be constructed. In 1603, Maderno completed the façade, an influential early Baroque design. The dynamic rhythm of columns and pilasters, crowding centrally, notice the interplay of relationships, none exactly symmetric on any one mirror side. The entrance and roof are surrounded by triangular pediments, the windows are replaced by niches. There is an incipient playfulness with the rules of classic design, the statues of the higher level are by Giovanni Antonio Paracea, those of the lower level are by Stefano Maderno. The church of Santa Susanna was accounted so successful that in 1605 Pope Paul V named Maderno architect of Saint Peters Basilica, Pope Sixtus IV proceeded to rebuild the Church, probably a single nave with two side chapels. In 1588 it became the last great rebuilding effort of Cardinal Girolamo Rusticucci, Cardinal protector of the Cistercian Order, one of the objectives pursued with greater commitment from Rusticucci as the Vicar General of Pope Sixtus V was to renew the life of the religious Orders. A reflection of that action can be seen in a figurative program decorating the walls of the Church, the main themes are, Defense of chastity against corruption of morals and the victory of the true faith over any temptation to idolatry and heresy. They were joined by the exaltation of the choice of St. Susanna
8.
Canonization
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Originally, persons were recognized as saints without any formal process. Later, different processes were developed, such as used today in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The first persons honored as saints were the martyrs, pious legends of their deaths were considered affirmations of the truth of their faith in Christ. The Roman Rites Canon of the Mass contains only the names of martyrs, along with that of the Blessed Virgin Mary and, since 1962, that of St. Joseph her spouse. By the fourth century, however, confessors—people who had confessed their faith not by dying but by word, examples of such people are Saint Hilarion and Saint Ephrem the Syrian in the East, and Saint Martin of Tours and Saint Hilary of Poitiers in the West. Their names were inserted in the diptychs, the lists of saints venerated in the liturgy. Since the witness of their lives was not as unequivocal as that of the martyrs and this process is often referred to as local canonization. This approval was required even for veneration of a reputed martyr, and Saint Cyprian recommended that the utmost diligence be observed in investigating the claims of those who were said to have died for the faith. Evidence was sought from the records of the trials or from people who had been present at the trials. Saint Augustine of Hippo tells of the procedure which was followed in his day for the recognition of a martyr, the bishop of the diocese in which the martyrdom took place set up a canonical process for conducting the inquiry with the utmost severity. Other churches still use the older practice, in the Catholic Church, canonization is a decree that allows universal veneration of the saint in the liturgy of the Roman Rite. For permission to venerate merely locally, only beatification is needed, only acceptance of the cultus by the Pope made the cultus universal, because he alone can rule the universal Catholic Church. In the Medieval West, the Apostolic See was asked to intervene in the question of canonizations so as to more authoritative decisions. Swibert by Pope Leo III in 804, thereafter, recourse to the judgment of the Pope was had more frequently. Pope Urban II, Pope Calixtus II, and Pope Eugene III conformed to this discipline, a decree of Pope Alexander III1170 gave the prerogative to the ope thenceforth, so far as the Western Church was concerned. However, the procedure initiated by the decretal of Pope Alexander III was confirmed by a bull of Pope Innocent III issued on the occasion of the canonization of St. Cunegunda in 1200. The bull of Pope Innocent III resulted in increasingly elaborate inquiries to the Apostolic See concerning canonizations and he further regulated both of these acts by issuing his Decreta servanda in beatificatione et canonizatione Sanctorum on 12 March 1642. His work published from 1734-8 governed the proceedings until 1917, the article Beatification and canonization process in 1914 describes the procedures followed until the promulgation of the Codex of 1917
Mann, Horace Kinder (1910). "Pope St. Leo III". In Herbermann, Charles. Catholic Encyclopedia. 9. New York: Robert Appleton.
