CHURCH OF ROME. See Roman Catholic Chorcr
CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. See Scotland; Scotland, Freb Chubgh of.
CHURCH POLITY. See EocLBSLisncAL Pol-
ITT.
CHURCH, PRESBYTERIAN. See Prbbbttb- BLAN Church.
CHURCH, PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL. See Protestant Episcopal Church.
CHURCH, REFORMED. See Reformed Church.
CHURCH, REFORMED PRESBYTERLiN. See Presbyterian (Reformed) Church.
CHURCH, STATES OF THE (Patrimonium Petri), the territory governed by the Pope as secular prince.
I. History, — ^The Church of Rome, which became at an early date one of the chief Christian churches of the world, received in 821, by a special edict of the emperor Constantine, the right to accept legacies. The story, however, that Constantine presented bishop Sylvester and the Roman Church with the city of Rome and other territories is an invention, and the pretended document of donation is a late forgery, taken from the so-called Constituium Sylvestri,^ which was compUed from the Gesta beati Sylvestri (see MOnch [Rom. Cath.], Ueber die erdichtete Schenkung Constan- tin des Grossen, Freiburg, 1824 ; Biener, de donatione a Constantino M, impenttore in Sylvestntm pontificem col- lata, in his work de cottectionibus canonum ecdesia Graces, Berlin, 1827). Under the later emperors, a large amount of property of every description, includ- ing many landed estates in various parts of Italy and France, was presented to the Roman Church; and, moreover, the emperors conferred upon the bishops of Rome many lucrative privileges, as Gratian upon Da- masus in 878, Valentinian upon Leo the Great in 445, etc. The ecclesiastical prerogatives which the popes claimed as heads of the Church, and which were grad- ually conceded by the emperors and acquiesced in by the bishops, greatly enlarged the seculac power and
CHURCH, STATES OF THE 340 CHURCH, STATES OP THE
wealth of the popes. Under Gregory I the landed property belonging to the Roman Church was very extensivoi esp^ially in Sicily and Gaol. But until the eighth century the Boman bishops held all this landed property subject to the sorereign authority of the emperors. The first independent possession of the popes was the town of Sutri, which Gritfory II, in 728, obtained from the Longobardian king Luitprand, who had wrested it, with other territories, from the Byzan- tine emperors. The friendly relations between the Ro- man See and Luitprand ceased under Gregory III (781- 741), and most of the papal terrritory was reoccupied by the Longobardians. The pope invoked the intercesr sion of Charles Martel, in consequence of which Luit- prand, in 742, restored to Pope Zachaiy not only the former property of the Roman bishops, but also the four Byzantine towns of Amelia, Orta, Bomarzo, and Bieda. The pope even succeeded in disposing the king amicably toward the exarch, in reward for which he received from the Byzantine emperor two villas. King Aistulph conceived the plan of conquering and annex- ing all Italy, and thus forced Pope Stephen II (752- 757) to invoke again the aid of the Franks. Pepin, who owed his crown partly to the influence of the pope, twice (754 and 755) undertook a campaign into Italy, declined the "demand of the Byzantine emperor to restore to him his former Italikn possessions, gave to the pope, in addition to his former possessions, the Exarchate and the Pentapolis (the five cities of Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia, and Ancona), and assumed himself the title of patricins (patron) of Rome. The original document of donation is no longer extant. The Longobardian king Deaiderius found means to put off the complete execution of the stipulations made by Pepin, and ultimately new hostilities broke out, which induced Adrian I to invoke the aid of Charlemagne, who in 744 put an end to the Longobardian kingdom, and enlarged the donations of his fathers. As the original deeds of these donations are lost, their extent can no longer be fixed with entire accuracy. The ex- tant document in which Louis le Debonnaire sanc- tions the donations of Charlemagne is a forgery. In consequence of the coronation of Charlemagne as em- peror by Leo III, in 800, the connection of the pope with the Eastern empire entirely ceased, and the pa- pal documents were henceforth dated after the be- ginning of the reign of the new emperor. The king of the Franks, as Roman emperor, had thus become the real sovereign of Rome, who had to sanction the election of a pope. The temporal power of the popes rapidly increased under the weak Carlovingians, after whose extinction (888) the imperial dignity was, until 923, conferred upon Italian grandees, and subsequently was for some time discontinued altogether. When Otto I, in 952, reassumed the dignity of Roman em- peror, he at once confirmed the papal possessions (the original document is lost, but a copy somewhat modi- fied in the eleventh century is extant). A document containing a donation ftt>m Otto III to Sylvester II is a forgery, and there are no other reasons for the exist- ence of that pretended donation. In 1052 the Roman See obtained feudal right over Benevento. The count- ess Matilda of Tuscany promised to the pope to be- queath to him her extensive territory ; but on her death the property became the subject of a violent and pro- tracted dispute, and the claims of the popes were not recognised until 1201, by Otto lY. In the agreement between Otto and the pope the following territory was designated as papal possessions : the country frx>m the defiles of Ceperano (on the frontier of Naples), as for as the fort of Radicofono (on the Tuscan f^ntier), the exarchate of Ravenna, the Pentapolis (see above), the Marches, the duchy of Spoleto, the possessions of the countess Matilda, the county of Brittenoriuro, with other adjacent lands expressly mentioned in the doc- uments of the emperors from the times of Louis (which ^attcr clauses recognised the contents of a number of