Vatican City
Vatican City Vatican City State, is an independent city-state enclaved within Rome, Italy. Established with the Lateran Treaty, it is distinct from yet under "full ownership, exclusive dominion, sovereign authority and jurisdiction" of the Holy See. With an area of 44 hectares, a population of about 1,000, it is the smallest state in the world by both area and population; the Vatican City is an ecclesiastical or sacerdotal-monarchical state ruled by the pope who is, religiously speaking, the bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church. The highest state functionaries are all Catholic clergy of various national origins. Since the return of the popes from Avignon in 1377, they have resided at the Apostolic Palace within what is now Vatican City, although at times residing instead in the Quirinal Palace in Rome or elsewhere; the Holy See dates back to early Christianity, is the primate episcopal see of the Catholic Church, with 1.3 billion Catholics around the world distributed in the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches.
The independent Vatican City-state, on the other hand, came into existence in 11 February 1929 by the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and Italy, which spoke of it as a new creation, not as a vestige of the much larger Papal States, which had encompassed much of central Italy. Within the Vatican City are religious and cultural sites such as St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican Museums, they feature some of sculptures. The unique economy of Vatican City is supported financially by the sale of postage stamps and souvenirs, fees for admission to museums, sales of publications; the name Vatican City was first used in the Lateran Treaty, signed on 11 February 1929, which established the modern city-state. The name is taken from the geographic location of the state. "Vatican" is derived from the name of an Etruscan settlement, Vatica or Vaticum meaning garden, located in the general area the Romans called vaticanus ager, "Vatican territory". The official Italian name of the city is Città del Vaticano or, more formally, Stato della Città del Vaticano, meaning "Vatican City State".
Although the Holy See and the Catholic Church use Ecclesiastical Latin in official documents, the Vatican City uses Italian. The Latin name is Status Civitatis Vaticanæ; the name "Vatican" was in use in the time of the Roman Republic for a marshy area on the west bank of the Tiber across from the city of Rome. Under the Roman Empire, many villas were constructed there, after Agrippina the Elder drained the area and laid out her gardens in the early 1st century AD. In AD 40, her son, Emperor Caligula built in her gardens a circus for charioteers, completed by Nero, the Circus Gaii et Neronis called the Circus of Nero. Before the arrival of Christianity, it is supposed that this uninhabited part of Rome had long been considered sacred, or at least not available for habitation. A shrine dedicated to the Phrygian goddess Cybele and her consort Attis remained active long after the Constantinian Basilica of St. Peter was built nearby; the low quality of Vatican water after the reclamation of the area, was commented on by the poet Martial.
Tacitus wrote, that in AD 69, the Year of the Four Emperors, when the northern army that brought Vitellius to power arrived in Rome, "a large proportion camped in the unhealthy districts of the Vatican, which resulted in many deaths among the common soldiery. The Vatican Obelisk was taken by Caligula from Heliopolis in Egypt to decorate the spina of his circus and is thus its last visible remnant; this area became the site of martyrdom of many Christians after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64. Ancient tradition holds. Opposite the circus was a cemetery separated by the Via Cornelia. Funeral monuments and mausoleums and small tombs as well as altars to pagan gods of all kinds of polytheistic religions were constructed lasting until before the construction of the Constantinian Basilica of St. Peter's in the first half of the 4th century. Remains of this ancient necropolis were brought to light sporadically during renovations by various popes throughout the centuries, increasing in frequency during the Renaissance until it was systematically excavated by orders of Pope Pius XII from 1939 to 1941.
The Constantinian basilica was built in 326 over what was believed to be the tomb of Saint Peter, buried in that cemetery. From on, the area became more populated in connection with activity at the basilica. A palace was constructed nearby as early as the 5th century during the pontificate of Pope Symmachus. Popes came to have a secular role as governors of regions near Rome, they ruled the Papal States, which covered a large portion of the Italian peninsula, for more than a thousand years until the mid-19th century, when all the territory belonging to the papacy was seized by the newly created Kingdom of Italy. For most of this time the popes did not live at the Vatican; the Lateran Palace, on the opposite side
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
Vatican City in World War II
Vatican City pursued a policy of neutrality during World War II, under the leadership of Pope Pius XII. Although the city of Rome was occupied by Germany from 1943 and the Allies from 1944, Vatican City itself was not occupied; the Vatican organised extensive humanitarian aid throughout the duration of the conflict. The Lateran Treaty of 1929 with Italy recognized the sovereignty of Vatican City, it declared Vatican City a neutral country in international relations, required the Pope to abstain from mediation unless requested by all parties. In 1939, the city state was recognized by thirty-eight nations, with a diplomatic corps of thirteen full ambassadors and twenty-five ministers; as early as April 1939, Pius XII announced a plan for peace, hoping to mediate a negotiation between the major European powers on the brink of war. The first leader contacted was Benito Mussolini, via Pius XII's usual go-between, Jesuit Father Tacchi Venturi. With Mussolini's approval, the next day Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione contacted the nuncios in Paris and Berlin and the Apostolic Delegate in London.
The proposed Vatican meeting accomplished little of substance: if there was any coherent position espoused by the Vatican among its various communications, it was that of appeasement. In particular, the Pope attempted to get Poland to accept the secession of the Free City of Danzig to Nazi Germany, a position Polish ambassador Kazimierz Papée and the Polish government could not accept. In his 24 August 1939 Radio Message, just a week before war, Pius warned: "The danger is imminent, but there is still time. Nothing is lost with peace. With Poland overrun, but France and the Low Countries yet to be attacked, Pius continued to hope for a negotiated peace to prevent the spread of the conflict; the minded US President Franklin D. Roosevelt re-established American diplomatic relations with the Vatican after a seventy-year hiatus and dispatched Myron C. Taylor as his personal representative. Despite the early collapse of peace hopes, the Taylor mission continued at the Vatican. Despite intense behind the scenes actions, Pius XII was resolved not to issue any public pronouncement that took sides in the conflict.
Early on, Pius XII believed that the "rapid destruction of Poland meant the end of the war". Summi Pontificatus, issued 20 October 1939, was the first papal encyclical issued by Pope Pius XII, established some of the themes of his papacy. According to Chadwick, Summi Pontificatus exemplified both "the hesitancy and the care" of the pontiff. During the drafting of the letter, the Second World War commenced with the Nazi/Soviet invasion of Catholic Poland. Though couched in diplomatic language, Pius endorses Catholic resistance, states his disapproval of the war, anti-semitism, the Nazi/Soviet invasion of Poland and the persecutions of the Church. With Italy not yet an ally of Himmler in the war, Italians were called upon to remain faithful to the Church. Pius avoided naming the belligerent allies Hitler and Stalin as the evildoers, establishing the "impartial" public tone, to be a hallmark of his pontificate: "A full statement of the doctrinal stand to be taken in face of the errors of today, if necessary, can be put off to another time unless there is disturbance by calamitous external events.
The Pope wrote of "anti-Christian movements" bringing forth a crop "poignant disasters" and called for love and compassion against the "deluge of discord". Following themes addressed in Non abbiamo bisogno, he wrote of "Christians more in name than in fact" having shown "cowardice" in the face of persecution by these creeds, he endorsed resistance: Who among "the Soldiers of Christ" – ecclesiastic or layman – does not feel himself incited and spurred on to a greater vigilance, to a more determined resistance, by the sight of the ever-increasing host of Christ's enemies. Pius wrote of a persecuted Church and a time requiring "charity" for victims who had a "right" to compassion. Against the invasion of Poland and killing of civilians he wrote: The blood of countless human beings noncombatants, raises a piteous dirge over a nation such as Our dear Poland, for its fidelity to the Church, for its services in the defense of Christian civilization, written in indelible charact
Vatican Historical Museum
The Vatican Historical Museum is one of the sections of the Vatican Museums. It was founded in 1973 at the behest of Pope Paul VI, was hosted in environments under the Square Garden. In 1987 it was moved to the main floor of the Apostolic Palace of the Lateran and opened in March 1991; the Vatican Historical Museum has a unique collection of portraits of the Popes from the sixteenth century to date, the memorable items of the Papal Military Corps of the 16–17th centuries and old religious paraphernalia related to rituals of the papacy. On display on the lower floor are the papamobili; the Lateran Palace, next to the Basilica of Saint John Lateran to its left within the courtyard of the church with a common entry gate, is a large apartment complex of the Pope. Domenico Fontana was the architect of this palace, built to his design in 1586. Right at the entrance the staircase is a massive and impressive structure with the ceiling decorated with frescoes, it had been refurbished by Pope Paul IV into ten halls.
The hall known as the Conciliation, was provided with allegories related to the papacy of Sixtus V. The other halls were named Constantine, Hall of Apostles, Popes Room and so forth; the fresco decorations were on themes of the History of Rome, episodes of the Bible related to Daniel, Solomon and others, related to the Gospel. Several colourful tapestries and Goblins added to the aesthetic elegance of the halls. Before the History Museum decided to relocate here to a more luxurious locale, none of the rooms had been allowed to be used for any general public purpose. Since 1991, these rooms have been used as exhibition or display rooms for the exhibits moved from the Vatican Museums; the museum has been arranged into two wings. The principal wing is the museum of all artistic and historic importance starting with the paintings of the history of the Papal States, portraits of Popes till date, memorabilia of the Papal Military Corps including the navy, documents related to ceremonial orders of Popes, the Papal household items, various ceremonial regalia and religious vessels and insignia not in use.
The second wing is an annex wing on the ground floor. Index of Vatican City-related articles Media related to Vatican Historical Museum at Wikimedia Commons
Foreign relations of the Holy See
The Holy See has long been recognised as a subject of international law and as an active participant in international relations. One observer has stated that its interaction with the world has, in the period since World War II, been at its highest level ever, it is distinct from the city-state of the Vatican City, over which the Holy See has "full ownership, exclusive dominion, sovereign authority and jurisdiction". The diplomatic activities of the Holy See are directed by the Secretariat of State, through the Section for Relations with States; the Holy See recognizes all UN member states, except for the People's Republic of China and North Korea. The Holy See recognizes the State of Palestine, the only other non-UN member it recognizes besides Taiwan; the term "Vatican Diplomatic Corps", by contrast with the diplomatic service of the Holy See, properly refers to all those diplomats accredited to the Holy See, not those who represent its interests to other nations and international bodies. Since medieval times the episcopal see.
Earlier, there were papal representatives to the Emperors of Constantinople, beginning in 453, but they were not thought of as ambassadors. In the eleventh century the sending of papal representatives to princes, on a temporary or permanent mission, became frequent. In the fifteenth century it became customary for states to accredit permanent resident ambassadors to the Pope in Rome; the first permanent papal nunciature was established in 1500 in Venice. Their number grew in the course of the sixteenth century to thirteen, while internuncios were sent to less-powerful states. After enjoying a brilliant period in the first half of the seventeenth century, papal diplomacy declined after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, being assailed by royalists and Gallicans, the number of functioning nuncios was reduced to two in the time of Napoleon, although in the same period, in 1805, Prussia became the first Protestant state to send an ambassador to Rome. There was a revival after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, while laying down that, in general, the order of precedence between ambassadors would be determined by the date of their arrival, allowed special precedence to be given to the nuncio, by which he would always be the dean of the diplomatic corps.
In spite of the extinction of the Papal States in 1870, the consequent loss of territorial sovereignty, in spite of some uncertainty among jurists as to whether it could continue to act as an independent personality in international matters, the Holy See continued in fact to exercise the right to send and receive diplomatic representatives, maintaining relations with states that included the major powers of Russia and Austria-Hungary. Countries continued to receive nuncios as diplomatic representatives of full rank, where, in accordance with the decision of the 1815 Congress of Vienna, the Nuncio was not only a member of the Diplomatic Corps but its dean, this arrangement continued to be accepted by the other ambassadors. With the First World War and its aftermath the number of states with diplomatic relations with the Holy See increased. For the first time since relations were broken between the Pope and Queen Elizabeth I of England, a British diplomatic mission to the Holy See was opened in 1914.
The result was that, instead of diminishing, the number of diplomats accredited to the Holy See grew from sixteen in 1871 to twenty-seven in 1929 before it again acquired territorial sovereignty with the founding of the State of Vatican City. In the same period, the Holy See concluded a total of twenty-nine concordats and other agreements with states, including Austro-Hungary in 1881, Russia in 1882 and 1907, France in 1886 and 1923. Two of these concordats were registered at the League of Nations at the request of the countries involved. While bereft of territorial sovereignty, the Holy See accepted requests to act as arbitrator between countries, including a dispute between Germany and Spain over the Caroline Islands; the Lateran Treaty of 1929 and the founding of the Vatican City State was not followed by any great immediate increase in the number of states with which the Holy See had official relations. This came especially after the Second World War; the Holy See, as a non-state sovereign entity and full subject of international law, started establishing diplomatic relations with sovereign states in the 15th century.
It had the territory of the States of the Church under its direct sovereign rule since centuries before that time. It has the territory of the State of the Vatican City under its direct sovereign rule. In the period of 1870-1929 between the annexation of Rome by the Kingdom of Italy and the ratification of the Lateran Treaty establishing the current Vatican City State, the Holy See was devoid of territory. In this period some states suspended their diplomatic relations, but others retained them, so that the number of states that did have diplomatic relations with the Holy See doubled in the period between 1871 and 1929; the Holy See has diplomatic relations with 183 sovereign states and, in addition, with the sovereign entity Order of Malta and the supranational union European Union. The Holy See has established official diplomatic relations with the State of Palestine. By agreement with the government of Vietnam, it has a non-resident papal representative to that country, it has official forma
Vatican during the Savoyard era (1870–1929)
Vatican during the Savoyard Era 1870-1929 describes the relation of the Vatican to Italy, after 1870, which marked the end of the Papal State and 1929, when the papacy regained autonomy in the Lateran Treaty, a period dominated by the Roman Question. In the years that followed the revolutions of 1848, Italian nationalists–both those who wished to unify the country under the Kingdom of Sardinia and its ruling House of Savoy and those who favored a republican solution–saw the Papal States as the chief obstacle to Italian unity. Louis Napoleon, who had now seized control of France as Emperor Napoleon III, tried to play a double game forming an alliance with Sardinia and playing on his famous uncle's nationalist credentials on the one hand and maintaining French troops in Rome to protect the Pope's rights on the other. After the Austro-Sardinian War of 1859, much of northern Italy was unified under the House of Savoy's government. Afraid that Garibaldi would set up a republican government in the south, the Sardinians petitioned Napoleon for permission to send troops through the Papal States to gain control of the Two Sicilies, granted on the condition that Rome was left undisturbed.
In 1860, with much of the region in rebellion against Papal rule, Sardinia conquered the eastern two-thirds of the Papal States and cemented its hold on the south. Bologna, Umbria, the Marches and Pontecorvo were all formally annexed by November of the same year, a unified Kingdom of Italy was declared; the Papal States were reduced to the immediate neighborhood of Rome. Rome was declared Capital of Italy in March 1861, when the first Italian Parliament met in the kingdom's old capital Turin in Piemonte. However, the Italian Government could not take possession of its capital because Napoleon III kept a French garrison in Rome protecting Pope Pius IX; the opportunity to eliminate the last vestige of the Papal States came when the Franco-Prussian War began in July 1870. Emperor Napoleon III had to recall his garrison from Rome for France's own defence and could no longer protect the pope. Following the collapse of the Second French Empire at the battle of Sedan, widespread public demonstrations demanded that the Italian Government take Rome.
King Victor Emmanuel II sent Count Gustavo Ponza di San Martino to Pius IX with a personal letter offering a face-saving proposal that would have allowed the peaceful entry of the Italian Army into Rome, under the guise of offering protection to the pope. According to Raffaele De Cesare: The Pope’s reception of San Martino was unfriendly. Pius IX allowed violent outbursts to escape him. Throwing the King’s letter upon the table he exclaimed, "Fine loyalty! You are all a set of vipers, of whited sepulchres, wanting in faith." He was alluding to other letters received from the King. After, growing calmer, he exclaimed: "I am no prophet, nor son of a prophet, but I tell you, you will never enter Rome!" San Martino was so mortified. On September 10, Italy declared war on the Papal States, the Italian Army, commanded by General Raffaele Cadorna, crossed the papal frontier on 11 September and advanced toward Rome, hoping that a peaceful entry could be negotiated; the Italian Army placed Rome under a state of siege.
Although the pope's tiny army was incapable of defending the city, Pius IX ordered it to put up at least a token resistance to emphasize that Italy was acquiring Rome by force and not consent. On September 20, the Bersaglieri entered Rome and marched down Via Pia, subsequently renamed Via XX Settembre. Rome and Latium were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy after a plebiscite. In Chapter XXXIV, De Cesare made the following observations: The Roman question was the stone tied to Napoleon’s feet—that dragged him into the abyss, he never forgot in August 1870, a month before Sedan, that he was a sovereign of a Catholic country, that he had been made Emperor, was supported by the votes of the Conservatives and the influence of the clergy. For twenty years Napoleon III had been the true sovereign of Rome, where he had many friends and relations... Without him the temporal power would never have been reconstituted, being reconstituted, would have endured; this event, described in Italian history books as a liberation, was taken bitterly by the Pope.
The Italian government had offered to allow the Pope to retain control of the Leonine City on the west bank of the Tiber, but Pius rejected the overture. Early the following year, the capital of Italy was moved from Florence to Rome; the Pope, whose previous residence, the Quirinal Palace, had become the royal palace of the Kings of Italy, withdrew in protest into the Vatican, where he lived as a self-proclaimed "prisoner", refusing to leave or to set foot in St. Peter's Square, forbidding Catholics on pain of excommunication to participate in elections in the new Italian state. In October, a plebiscite in Rome and the surrounding Campagna resulted in a vote for union with the kingdom of Italy. Pius IX refused to accept this act of force majeure, he remained in his palace. However the new Italian control of Rome did not wither, nor did the Catholic world come to the Pope's aid, as Pius IX had expected; the provisional capital of Italy had been Florence since 1865. In 1871, the Italian government moved to the banks of the Tiber.
Victor Emmanuel installed himself in the Quirinale Palace. Rome became once again, for the first time in thirteen centuries, the capital city of a united I
Acta Apostolicae Sedis
Acta Apostolicae Sedis cited as AAS, is the official gazette of the Holy See, appearing about twelve times a year. It was established by Pope Pius X on 29 September 1908 with the decree Promulgandi Pontificias Constitutiones, publication began in January 1909, it contains all the principal decrees, encyclical letters, decisions of Roman congregations, notices of ecclesiastical appointments. The laws contained in it are to be considered promulgated when published, effective three months from date of issue, unless a shorter or longer time is specified in the law, it replaced a similar publication that had existed since 1865, under the title of Acta Sanctae Sedis. Though not designated as the official means of promulgating laws of the Holy See, this was on 23 May 1904 declared an organ of the Holy See to the extent that all documents printed in it were considered "authentic and official"; as indicated above, the Acta Sanctae Sedis ceased publication four years later. Acta Apostolicae Sedis is published in Latin.
Since 1929, Acta Apostolicae Sedis carries a supplement in Italian, called Supplemento per le leggi e disposizioni dello Stato della Città del Vaticano, containing laws and regulations of Vatican City, the city-state founded in that year. In accordance with paragraph 2 of the Legge sulle fonti del diritto of 7 June 1929, the laws of the state are promulgated by being included in this supplement. Index of Vatican City-related articles Beal, John P. James A. Coriden, Thomas J. Green. New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law: Commissioned by the Canon Law Society of America. Acta Apostolicae Sedis
