The Capture of Rome (Italian: Presa di Roma) occurred on 20 September 1870, as forces of the Kingdom of Italy took control of the city and of the Papal States. After a plebiscite held on 2 October 1870, Rome was officially made capital of Italy on 3 February 1871, completing the unification of Italy (Risorgimento).
The capture of Rome by the Royal Italian Army brought an end to the Papal States, which had existed since the Donation of Pepin in 756, along with the temporal power of the Holy See, and led to the establishment of Rome as the capital of unified Italy. It is widely commemorated in Italy, especially in cathedral cities, by naming streets for the date: Via XX Settembre (spoken form: "Via Venti Settembre").
Background
The Kingdom of Italy (azure) and the Papal States (purple) in early 1870
The first Prime Minister of Italy, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour,[4] died soon after the proclamation of Italian national unity, leaving to his successors the solution of the knotty Venetian and Roman problems. Cavour had firmly believed that without Rome as the capital, Italy's unification would be incomplete.[5] "To go to Rome", said his successor, Bettino Ricasoli, "is not merely a right; it is an inexorable necessity." In regard to the future relations between church and state, Cavour's famous dictum was, "A free Church in a free State"; by which he meant that the former should be entirely free to exercise her spiritual powers and leave politics entirely to the latter.[5]
On 27 March 1861, the new Italian Parliament met in Turin and declared Rome the capital of Italy.[2] However, the Italian government could not take its seat in Rome because it did not control the territory.[2] Also, a French garrison was maintained in the city by Emperor Napoleon III in support of Pope Pius IX, who was determined not to hand over temporal power in the State of the Church.
Franco-Prussian War
In July 1870, the Franco-Prussian War began, and by early August, Napoleon III recalled his garrison from Rome.[6] The French not only needed the troops to defend their homeland, but were concerned that Italy might use the French presence in Rome as a pretext to join the war against France. In the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Italy had allied with Prussia, and Italian public opinion favored the Prussian side at the start of the Franco-Prussian War.[7] The removal of the French garrison allowed Italy to remain neutral and eased tensions between France and Italy.
It was only after the surrender of Napoleon III and his army at the Battle of Sedan on 2 September that the situation changed radically. The French Emperor was captured and deposed. The best French units had been captured by the Prussians, who quickly followed up their success at Sedan by marching on Paris. Faced with a pressing need to defend the capital with its remaining forces, the provisional government of the newly proclaimed French Republic was clearly not in a military position to retaliate against Italy. In any case, the republican government was far less sympathetic to the Holy See than the Empire and did not possess the political will to protect the pope's position.[8]
Pope Pius IX blesses his troops for the last time, at St. Peter's Square, 25 April 1870
In early September 1870, King Victor Emmanuel II sent Count Gustavo Ponza di San Martino to Pope Pius IX offering a face-saving proposal that agreed to the peaceful entry of the Italian army into Rome, under the guise of protecting the pope.[9] Along with this letter, Ponza carried a list of provisions from Italian Prime Minister Giovanni Lanza, setting out ten articles as the basis of an agreement between Italy and the Holy See.[9]
The Pope would retain his sovereign inviolability and prerogatives.[10] The Leonine City would remain "under the full jurisdiction and sovereignty of the Pontiff".[10] The Italian state would guarantee the pope's freedom to communicate with the Catholic world, as well as diplomatic immunity both for papal nuncios and envoys in foreign lands and for foreign diplomats at the Holy See.[10] The government would supply a permanent annual fund for the pope and the cardinals, equal to the amount currently assigned to them by the budget of the pontifical state, and would assume all Papal civil servants and soldiers onto the state payroll, with full pensions as long as they were Italian.[10]
According to Raffaele De Cesare:
The Pope's reception of San Martino [10 September 1870] 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, and wanting in faith." He was perhaps alluding to other letters received from the King. After, growing calmer, he exclaimed: "I am no prophet, nor son of a prophet,[11] but I tell you, you will never enter Rome!" San Martino was so mortified that he left the next day.[12]
Ponza then informed Lanza of the pope's refusal of the ultimatum.[13] The next day, 11 September, Italian troops led by General Raffaele Cadorna entered the Papal States with the objective of taking Rome, occupying the port city of Civitavecchia on 16 September.[8] The papal garrisons had retreated from Orvieto, Viterbo, Alatri, Frosinone and other strongholds in Lazio.[14] Under instructions from the Italian government, which still hoped to avoid seizing the capital by force, Cadorna sent a final appeal to the Papacy later the same day for the peaceful surrender of Rome.[15] In a letter addressed to General Hermann Kanzler, commander of the Papal troops in Rome, he highlighted "the strength of the forces involved in the attack compared to those on the defense", and renewed the request that the Papal army offered no resistance.[16] Kanzler refused, responding to Cadorna that he and the Italian government would be responsible, "before God and before the tribunal of history", for any casualties that would result from an attack.[16]
The capture of Rome
Bersaglieri at the capture of Porta Pia, by Michele Cammarano (1871)The breach in the Aurelian Walls (right), near Porta Pia (left), opened by Italian artillery fire during the Capture of Rome, in a contemporary photographThe flag that flew over Porta Pia during the fall of the city, it was preserved by the Ruspoli princes of the black nobility, first of all by Princess Cristina, and was preserved by the noble family for almost 141 years, until Prince Sforza Ruspoli handed it back to the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone on the occasion of the anniversary of Saint Michael Archangel, patron saint of the Vatican Gerdarmerie corps, in 2011
On 18 September, Minister of War Cesare Ricotti-Magnani gave Cadorna the order to attack Rome, but informed that the Leonine City, which would be reserved for the pope, should be spared, while also advising moderation.[18] The plan of attack was left entirely up to the general.[18] When the Italian army approached the city's ancient Aurelian Walls, the Papal force, commanded by General Kanzler, was composed of the Swiss Guard, the Palatine Guard and the Papal Zouaves—volunteers from France, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, and other countries—for a total of 13,157 defenders against some 50,000 Italians.[19] The American consul in Rome, Maitland Armstrong, described the civilian population as unwilling to defend the pope's rule, and only two hundred people in the whole city answered the papacy's call for volunteers.[20]
The Italian army reached the Aurelian Walls on 19 September and placed Rome under siege. Pius IX decided that the surrender of the city would only be granted after his troops had put up enough resistance, to make it plain that the Italian takeover was achieved through force and not freely accepted.[20] At 5 a.m. on 20 September, Italian artillery began firing at the city walls.[20] Cadorna commanded the major line of assault, while troops on the other side of the city, charged with creating a distraction, were led by General Nino Bixio.[21] After a few hours, the Italian army breached the Aurelian Walls near Porta Pia, through where the troops flooded into Rome.[22] 49 Italian soldiers and 19 Papal soldiers died in the fighting.[1] According to slightly different figures in a 2009 history of the Vatican military, the defence of Rome was far from bloodless, leaving 12 dead and 47 wounded among the Papal forces and 32 dead plus 145 wounded of the regular Italian troops.[23]
By 6am, one hour after the attack began, foreign envoys began to arrive at the Apostolic Palace to meet the pope, including the ambassadors of France, Austria-Hungary and Prussia.[24] Pius, members of his entourage, and the diplomatic corps later gathered at his library, where, at around 9am,[25] he received the news from Kanzler's chief of staff of the opening of the breach near Porta Pia.[24] Shortly afterwards, the terms of the Act of Capitulation were presented by Cadorna and signed by Kanzler at Villa Albani,[26] by which all of Rome, excluding the Leonine City, came under control of the Royal Italian Army.[27] A white flag was hoisted from the dome of St. Peter's Basilica,[21] and the defeated Papal forces were escorted to St. Peter's Square by Italian troops.[28]
Aftermath
Celebration outside the Palazzo Senatorio, in 1871, of the Roman plebiscite of 2 October 1870, which confirmed the city's incorporation into Italy
As part of the terms of surrender, the Papal Army was disbanded and its foreign soldiers were immediately repatriated.[29] The pope was allowed to retain the Swiss, Noble, and Palatine guard units.[30] With most of the papal military demobilized, protests against Pius took place in the Leonine City on 21 September.[26]
To legitimize the city's annexation, Prime Minister Lanza held a plebiscite[it] in Rome on 2 October 1870.[26] Out of 167,548 eligible voters, an overwhelming majority of 133,681 voted in favor of union with Italy, with 1,507 votes against.[26] On 9 October, a royal decree confirmed the incorporation of Rome and surrounding Lazio into the Kingdom of Italy.[26] Pius denounced the plebiscite's result and instances of electoral violence employed to secure it.[26] The pope issued the encyclicalRespicientes on 1 November, in which he proclaimed a mass excommunication of the invaders, including King Victor Emmanuel II.[26]
The Italian government promised Pius sovereignty over the Leonine City and gave him assurances of his inviolability, but the pope still would not agree to give up his claims to a broader territory,[26] and claimed that since his army had been disbanded, apart from a few guards, he was unable to ensure public order even in such a small area.[30] On 13 May 1871, the Italian Parliament passed the Law of Guarantees, granting the pope extensive prerogatives, such as independence on foreign affairs and an annual grant from the Italian government.[31] While these measures satisfied the international community, including the Catholic countries, Pius refused to accept the law, proclaiming himself a "prisoner in the Vatican".[31][32]
Monument and victory column to the Capture of Rome, at the site of the breach near Porta Pia
For nearly sixty years thereafter, relations between the Papacy and the Italian government were hostile, and the status of the Pope became known as the "Roman Question".
Negotiations for the settlement of the Roman Question began in 1926 between the government of Fascist Italy and the Holy See, and culminated in the Lateran Pacts, signed for King Victor Emmanuel III by Benito Mussolini, Prime Minister and Head of Government, and for Pope Pius XI by Pietro Gasparri, Cardinal Secretary of State, on 11 February 1929.[33] The agreements were signed in the Lateran Palace, from which they take their name. In the first article of the treaty, Italy reaffirmed the principle established in the 1848 Constitution of the Kingdom of Italy, that "the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Religion is the only religion of the State".[34] To commemorate the successful conclusion of the negotiations, Mussolini commissioned the Via della Conciliazione (Road of the Conciliation), which would symbolically link the Vatican City to the heart of Rome.
The post-World War II Constitution of the Italian Republic, adopted in 1948, states that relations between the State and the Catholic Church "are regulated by the Lateran Treaties".[35] In 1984, the concordat was significantly revised. Both sides declared: "The principle of the Catholic religion as the sole religion of the Italian State, originally referred to by the Lateran Pacts, shall be considered to be no longer in force".[36] The exclusive state financial support for the Church was also ended, and replaced by financing through a dedicated personal income tax called the otto per mille, to which other religious groups, Christian and non-Christian, also have access.
↑ Schapiro, J. Salwyn, PhD, Modern and Contemporary European History (1815–1921) (Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1921, Revised Edition), p. 208
1 2 Schapiro, J. Salwyn, PhD, Modern and Contemporary European History (1815–1921) (Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1921, Revised Edition), p. 218
↑ "Vatican City turns 91". Vatican News. 11 February 2020. Retrieved 2 September 2021. The world's smallest sovereign state was born on February 11, 1929, with the signing of the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy
The First Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the First Vatican Council or Vatican I, was the 20th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, held three centuries after the preceding Council of Trent which was adjourned in 1563. The council was convoked by Pope Pius IX on 29 June 1868, under the rising threat of the Kingdom of Italy encroaching on the Papal States. It opened on 8 December 1869 and was adjourned on 20 September 1870 after the Italian Capture of Rome. Its best-known decision is its definition of papal infallibility.
The Vatican City State is a neutral nation, which has not engaged in any war since its formation in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty. It has no formal military compact or agreement with neighbouring Italy, although responsibility for defending the Vatican City from an international aggressor is likely to lie primarily with the Italian Armed Forces. When presenting the Lateran Treaty to the Italian parliament in 1929, Benito Mussolini declared: "It is evident that we [the Italian state] will be the necessary guarantors of this neutrality and inviolability [of Vatican City], since, in the remote hypothesis someone wanted to hurt her, he would first have to violate our territory." Although the Vatican City state has never been at war, it was exposed, together with properties of the Holy See in Rome, to bombings during World War II.
Pope Pius IX was head of the Catholic Church from 1846 to 1878. His reign of nearly 32 years is the longest of any pope in history. He was notable for convoking the First Vatican Council in 1868 and for permanently losing control of the Papal States in 1870 to the Kingdom of Italy. Thereafter, he refused to leave Vatican City, declaring himself a "prisoner in the Vatican".
The Papal States, officially the State of the Church, were a conglomeration of territories on the Italian Peninsula under the direct sovereign rule of the Pope from 756 to 1870. They were among the major states of Italy from the 8th century until the Unification of Italy, which took place between 1859 and 1870, and culminated in their demise.
The Lateran Treaty was one component of the Lateran Pacts of 1929, agreements between the Kingdom of Italy under King Victor Emmanuel III and the Holy See under Pope Pius XI to settle the long-standing Roman question. The treaty and associated pacts were named after the Lateran Palace where they were signed on 11 February 1929, and the Italian parliament ratified them on 7 June 1929. The treaty recognised Vatican City as an independent state under the sovereignty of the Holy See. The Italian government also agreed to give the Roman Catholic Church financial compensation for the loss of the Papal States. In 1948, the Lateran Treaty was recognized in the Constitution of Italy as regulating the relations between the state and the Catholic Church. The treaty was significantly revised in 1984, ending the status of Catholicism as the sole state religion.
The Holy See exercised sovereign and secular power, as distinguished from its spiritual and pastoral activity, while the pope ruled the Papal States in central Italy.
The Roman Republic was a short-lived state declared on 9 February 1849, when the government of the Papal States was temporarily replaced by a republican government due to Pope Pius IX's departure to Gaeta. The republic was led by Carlo Armellini, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Aurelio Saffi. Together they formed a triumvirate, a reflection of a form of government during the first century BC crisis of the Roman Republic.
A prisoner in the Vatican or prisoner of the Vatican described the situation of the pope with respect to the Kingdom of Italy during the period from the capture of Rome by the Royal Italian Army on 20 September 1870 until the Lateran Treaty of 11 February 1929. Part of the process of the unification of Italy, the city's capture ended the millennium-old temporal rule of the popes over Central Italy and allowed Rome to be designated the capital of the new nation. Although the Italians did not occupy the territories of Vatican Hill delimited by the Leonine walls and offered the creation of a city-state in the area, the popes from Pius IX to Pius XI refused the proposal and described themselves as prisoners of the new Italian state.
Giacomo Antonelli was an Italian Catholic prelate who served as Cardinal Secretary of State for the Holy See from 1848 until his death. He played a key role in Italian politics, resisting the unification of Italy and affecting Catholic interests in European affairs. He was often called the "Italian Richelieu" and the "Red Pope."
Pietro Gasparri was a Roman Catholic cardinal, diplomat and politician in the Roman Curia and the signatory of the Lateran Pacts. He served also as Cardinal Secretary of State under Popes Benedict XV and Pope Pius XI.
The September Convention was a treaty, signed on 15 September 1864, between the Kingdom of Italy and the French Empire, under which:
The Leonine City is the part of the city of Rome which, during the Middle Ages, was enclosed with the Leonine Wall, built by order of Pope Leo IV in the 9th century.
The Roman question was a dispute regarding the temporal power of the popes as rulers of a civil territory in the context of the Italian Risorgimento. It ended with the Lateran Pacts between King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and Pope Pius XI in 1929.
The black nobility or black aristocracy are Roman aristocratic families who sided with the Papacy under Pope Pius IX after the Savoy family-led army of the Kingdom of Italy entered Rome on 20 September 1870, overthrew the pope and the Papal States, and took over the Quirinal Palace, and any nobles subsequently ennobled by the pope prior to the 1929 Lateran Treaty.
Vatican during the Savoyard era describes the relation of the Vatican to Italy, after 1870, which marked the end of the Papal States, and 1929, when the papacy regained autonomy in the Lateran Treaty, a period dominated by the Roman Question.
The Papal Zouaves were an infantry battalion, later regiment, dedicated to defending the Papal States. Named after the French zouave regiments, the Zuavi Pontifici were mainly young men, unmarried and Catholic, who volunteered to assist Pope Pius IX in his struggle against the Italian unificationist Risorgimento.
Foreign relations between Pope Pius IX and Italy were characterized by an extensive political and diplomatic conflict over Italian unification and the subsequent status of Rome after the victory of the liberal revolutionaries.
The Papal States under Pope Pius IX assumed a much more modern and secular character than had been seen under previous pontificates, and yet this progressive modernization was not nearly sufficient in resisting the tide of political liberalization and unification in Italy during the middle of the 19th century.
Hermann Kanzler was a German general who commanded the Army of the Papal States and was the arms minister during the reign of Pope Pius IX. He led Papal forces during the Battle of Mentana against Italian troops.
The Law of Guarantees, sometimes also called the Law of Papal Guarantees, was the name given to the law passed by the senate and chamber of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy, 13 May 1871, concerning the prerogatives of the Holy See, and the relations between state and church in the Kingdom of Italy. It guaranteed sovereign prerogatives to the pope, who had been deprived of the territory of the Papal States. The popes refused to accept the law, as it was enacted by a foreign government and could therefore be revoked at will, leaving the popes without a full claim to sovereign status. In response, the popes declared themselves prisoners of the Vatican. The ensuing Roman Question was not resolved until the Lateran Pacts of 1929.
Schapiro, J. Salwyn, PhD, Modern and Contemporary European History (1815–1921) (Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1921, Revised Edition)
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