Papacy Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The papacy is the institution of the pope of the Roman Catholic Church, based in Rome. As the official seat of the head of the Roman Catholic Church, the papacy has historic prestige and global authority. The papacy has long boasted a unique role as both a religious and political institution.

According to Roman Catholic tradition, the apostle Peter was the founding bishop of the Christian Church in Rome. It also holds that Peter was appointed by Jesus Christ to lead the Christian Church based on a passage in Matthew 16:18, in which Jesus tells Peter that he is the rock upon which Jesus will build the church. This has been interpreted to mean that the office of the bishop of Rome is the ultimate authority of the Catholic (universal) Church. While the Roman Catholic Church maintains that this authority was implicit from the foundation of the church in Rome, historic evidence suggests that it arose over time, based upon the practice of appealing to the bishop of Rome for arbitration in disputes regarding doctrine and competing claims for authority.

Theodosius, in 381, recognized Papal preeminence, and by the sixth century, the practice of endowment of lands upon the death of parishioners had made the Catholic Church one of the greatest landowners in the Italian peninsula. The Catholic Church developed political power over large areas of Italian territory even as Roman power was in decline. Pope Gregory the Great (590–604) led the reorganization and reinvigoration of the Catholic Church, which spread to the barbarian regions of northern Europe. The political alliance of the papacy with northern European kings reached a high point with the establishment of the Carolingian dynasty under Pepin, king of the Franks. Pepin’s intervention in Italy, in 756, led to the formal establishment of the Papal States, kingdoms under the temporal authority of the Pope, and the designation of Pepin’s son Charlemagne as the new Holy Roman Emperor. This mixture of political and spiritual power proved to be damaging to the papacy. By the tenth century, the papal office had been captured by a group of venal aristocrats who brought it into great disrepute.

The Medieval Papacy

The papacy was reborn under a succession of activist popes during the eleventh century. Under Leo IX (1049–1054), the Eastern Orthodox Church finally split from the Roman Catholic Church in the “great schism.” In response to the erosion of Roman authority in the east and the expanding threat coming from Muslim invasions of Asia Minor, Pope Urban II called for the first crusade in Clermont in 1095. Several more followed over the next three centuries.

From 1309 to 1377, the popes were compelled to take up residence in Avignon in response to political instability in Rome. The Avignon papacy ushered in a period of intense controversy over the papal office. The Italian popes of the fifteenth century restored the stability of the papal office but also oversaw a church that had not reformed despite the growth of education and culture that took place during the Renaissance. From 1517, a growing number of opponents to papal authority followed in the footsteps of Martin Luther, bringing about the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation challenged the supremacy of the Catholic Church throughout Europe, with tremendous political and religious consequences. The power of the papacy was undermined by Protestant claims that the church had no authority to forgive sins or to mediate the relationship between God and believers. Protestants countered the legitimacy of leadership through apostolic succession from Peter with the claim that justification before God was through faith alone.

Under Paul III (1534–1549), the Council of Trent was convened to respond to the theological challenges of the Reformers and to codify Roman Catholic teaching. During the attendant Counter-Reformation the Catholic Church refashioned itself to constrain the growth of the Protestant Church. Perhaps most notable of these developments was the establishment of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) by Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) in 1534. This religious order dedicated itself to extending Roman Catholic presence through missionary and educational work, thereby limiting the spread of the Protestant Reformation.

The Modern Papacy

The following four centuries saw the gradual rollback of papal authority in both spiritual and political spheres. The Peace of Westphalia effectively limited the author ity of the church in favor of raisons d’état, or national interest. Reformation teaching likewise strengthened the notion of the separation of church and state. Internal divisions within the church arose due to pressures from state authorities, leading to the suppression of the Jesuits from 1769. Throughout Europe, anticlerical attitudes pervaded Enlightenment philosophy and charged the revolutionary movements of the day. The introduction of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790 brought severe constraints against the church in France. Under Napoleon in 1798, French troops invaded Rome and abducted Pope Pius VI, who died in custody in 1799. His successor was likewise imprisoned by the French, later to be restored to his authority in Rome after Napoleon’s defeat.

Italian nationalism arose as the next challenge to the power of the papacy. While the Papal States had been defended against annexation by threatening neighbors throughout the 1800s, the defeat of France (then defending Papal States’s independence) and the Italian annexation of the Papal States’s territories in 1870 brought an end to the independence of the Papal States. However, it was not until Pope Pius XI signed the Lateran Treaty with Mussolini’s government in 1929 that the Papacy negotiated its final status in Italy. Under the treaty, the Pope was granted a small independent state known as the Vatican City inside the city of Rome.

The modern papacy is shaped strongly by the limitations and rights of the Lateran Treaty. The institutions of the papacy are granted both spiritual and temporal importance by virtue of representing both the worldwide Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican City. The pope, once elected by a conclave, becomes the ex officio ruler of the Vatican City. The bureaucracy of the Holy See known as the Roman Curia support the pope’s role, and he is represented abroad by official legations and permanent special representatives known as nuncios. The Holy See maintains observer status at the United Nations and several other major international gatherings.

In the last three decades, the papacy has been increasingly involved in international diplomacy. It has played an important part in mediating conflicts in areas such as the Middle East and South America and has lent support to democratic transition in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. Recent popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have enjoyed worldwide renown as promoters of ecumenical dialogue and conservative social doctrine.

Bibliography:

Corbett, James A. The Papacy. Princeton:Van Nostrand Rienhold, 1956.
Coulombe, Charles A. A History of the Popes: Vicars of Christ, New York: MJF Books, 2003.
De Rosa, Peter. Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy. New York: Bantam Books, 1988.
Duffy, Eamon. Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes. New Haven: Yale Nota Bene, 2002.
Kent, Peter C., and John F. Pollard, eds. Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1994.
La Due,William J.. The Chair of Saint Peter: A History of the Papacy. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1999.
McBrien, Richard P. Lives of the Popes. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997.
Reese,Thomas J. Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996.
Ullman,Walter. A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2003.

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