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 STATES

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STATES

Byzantine emperors subsequently were less liberal in their gifts; the wars with the Ix)mbards likewise had an unfavourable effect, and there remained few families in a position to bequeath large estates. Apart from a number of scattered possessions in the Orient, Dalmatia, Gaul, and Africa, the patrimonies were naturally for the most part situated in Italy and on the adjacent islands. The most valuable and most extensive pos.sessions were those in Sicily, about Syracuse and Palermo. The revenues from the properties in Sicily and Lower Italy in the eighth century, when Leo the Isaurian confiscated them, were estimated at three and one-half talents of gold. But the patrimonies in the vicinity of Rome were the most numerous and, after most of the remote patri- monies had been lost in the eighth century, were managed with especial care. Of other patrimonies may be mentioned the Neapolitan with the Island of Capri, that of Gaeta, the Tuscan, the Palrimonium Tiburtinum in the vicinity of Tivoli, estates about Otranto, Osimo, Ancona, Umana, estates near Ravenna and Genoa, and lastly properties in Istria, Sardinia, and Corsica.

With these landed possessions, scattered and varied as they were, the pope was the largest land- owner in Italy. For this reason every ruler of Italy was compelled of necessity to reckon with him first of all ; on the other hand he was also the first to feel the political and economical disturbances that dis- tressed the country. A good insight into the prob- lems that required the attention of the pope in the administration of his patrimonies can be obtained from the letters of Gregory the Great (Mon. Germ. Epist., I). The revenues from the patrimonies were employed, not only for administrative purposes, for the maintenance and construction of church edifices, for the equipment of convents, for the household of the pope, and the support of the clergy, but also to a great extent to relieve public and private want. Numerous poorhouses, hospitals, orphanages, and hos- pices for pilgrims were maintained out of the revenues of the patrimonies, many individuals were supported directly or indirectly, and slaves were ransomed from the possession of Jews and heathens. But, aboveall, the popes reheved the emperors of the responsibility of pro- viding Rome wil h food, and later also assumed the task of warding off the Lombards, an undertaking generally involving financial obligations. The pope thus be- came the champion of all the oppressed, the political champion of all those who were unwilling to submit to foreign domination, who were unwilling to become Lombards or yet wholly Byzantines, preferring to remain Romans.

(2) Political Position of the Papacy. — This political aspect of the papacy became in time very prominent, inasmuch as Rome, after the removal of the im- perial residence to the East, was no longer the seat of any of the higher political officials. Even after the partition of the empire, the Western emperors preferred to make the better-protected Ravenna their residence. Here was the centre of Odoacer's power and of the Ostrogothic rule; here also, after the fall of the Ostrogoths, the viceroy of the Byzantine em- peror in Italy, the exarch, resided. In Rome, on the other hand, the pope appears with ever-increasing frequency as the advocate of the needy population; thus Leo 1 intercedes with Attila and Geiserich, and Gelasius with Thcodoric. Cassiodorus as prcejfectus pratorio under the Ostrogothic supremacy actually entrusted the care of the temporal affairs to Pope John II. When Emperor Justinian issued the Prag- matic Sanction (55-t), the i)ope together with the Senate was entrusted with the control of weights and measures. Thenceforth for two centuries the popes were most loyal supporters of the Byzantine Govern- ment against the eiicroHchiiiciits of the Lombards, and were all the more indispensable, because after

603 the Senate disappeared. They, too, were the only court of judicature at which the Roman popula- tion, exposed as it was to the extortion of the Byzan- tine functionaries and officers, could find protection and defence. No wonder then that at scarcely any other time was the papacy so popular in Central Italy, and there was no cause which the native popu- lation, who had again begun to organize themselves into bodies of militia, espoused with greater zeal then the freedom and independence of the Roman See. And naturally so, for they took part in the election of the pope as a separate electoral body.

When the Byzantine emperors, infected with csesaro-papist tendencies, attempted to crush the papacy also, they found in the Roman miUtia an opposition against which they were able to accom- plish nothing. The particularism of Italy awoke and concentrated itself about the pope. WTien Emperor Justinian II in 692 attempted to have Pope Sergius II (as formerly the unfortunate Martin I) forcibly conveyed to Constantinople to extract from him his assent to the canons of the Trullan Council, convoked by the ernperor, the militia of Ravenna and of the Duchy of Pentapolis lying immediately to the south assembled, marched into Rome, and com- pelled the departure of the emperor's plenipotentiary. Such occurrences were repeated and acquired signifi- cance as indicating the popular feeling. When Pope Constantine, the last pope to go to Constanti- nople (710), rejected the confession of faith of the new emperor, Bardanas, the Romans protested, and refused to acknowledge the emperor or the dux (military ruler) sent by him. Not until news was brought that the heretical emperor had been replaced by one of the true Faith was the dux allowed to assume his office. That was in 713. Two years later the papal chair, which had last been occupied by seven Oriental popes, was filled by a Roman, Gregory II, who was destined to oppose Leo III the Isaurian in the Iconoclastic conflict. The time was ripening for Rome to abandon the East, turn toward the West, and enter into that alliance with the Germano-Romanic nations, on which is based our Western civilization, of which one consequence was the formation of the States of the Church. It would have been easy for the popes to throw off the Byzantine yoke in Central Italy as early as the time of Iconoclasm. If they resisted the impulse, it was because they correctly recognized that such an attempt would have been premature. They foresaw that the end of the Byzantine supremacy and the beginning of the Lombard power would have been encompassed at the same time. It was necess;iry first to estabUsh the fact that the Byzantines could no longer protect the pope and the Romans against the Lombards, and then to find a power that could protect them. Both of these conditions were fulfilled in the middle of the eighth century.

(3) Collapse of the Byzantine Poirer in Central Italy. — The strange shape which the States of the Church were destined to assume from the beginning is explained by the fact that these were the districts in which the population of Central Italy had defended itself to the very last against the Lombards. The two chief districts were the country about Ravenna, the exarchate, where the exarch was the centre of the opposition, and the Duchy of Rome, which em- braced the lands of Roman Tuscany north of the Tiber, and to the south the Campagna a.s far a.s the Garigliano, where the pope himself was the soul of the opposition. Furthermore, the greatest pains were taken, as long as it was at all possible, to retain control of the intervening districts and with them communication over the Apennines. Hence the strategic importance of the Duchy of the Pentapolis (Himini, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia, Ancona) and iVrugia. If this strategic connexion were broken,