Prisoner in the Vatican
A prisoner in the Vatican is what
Pope Pius IX called himself after the invading armies of
King Victor Emmanuel II captured the
Papal States and ended the millenial temporal rule of the popes over
Rome and central
Italy on
September 20,
1870 (see
Italian unification). The appellation is also applied to his successors through
Pope Pius XI. Early in the following year,
1871, the Italian capital was moved from
Florence to
Rome. The Italian government intended to allow the pope to keep that part of Rome called the
Leonine City as a small remaining Papal State, but
Pope Pius IX would not accept that arrangement (like the inhabitants of the rione of
Borgo, part of the Leonine City, which unanimously voted to join Italy). For the next 59 years, the popes refused to recognize the new
Italian state and refused to leave the
Vatican. The Italian
Law of Guarantees required the pope to be accorded honors similar to those given the king, and guaranteed him the right to send and receive ambassadors.
Following the fall of Rome, no diplomatic relations existed between the popes and the Italian State. The Italian rulers took up residence in the pope's
Quirinal Palace, and seized church property throughout Rome and Italy, but did not have the political support to seize the Vatican. Even prior to the fall of Rome, Italian
republicans had sought to eliminate the papacy, with
Giuseppe Garibaldi seeking international support for that end at an
1867 congress in
Vienna, where he proposed "The papacy, being the most harmful of all secret societies, ought to be abolished." (Giuseppe Guerzoni,
Garibaldi: con documenti editi e inediti, Florence, 1882, Vol. 11, 485.) However, unlike the earlier invasions of Italy by
Napoléon, when
Pope Pius VI died in French captivity, and
Pius VII was taken captive for six years, the tension between the Italian state and the Papacy continued for 59 years, during which time the popes claimed to be unable to leave the Vatican. While some of the Italian revolutionaries thought that the papacy would disappear without the continuance of the papal states, the popes, relieved of their temporal concerns, grew in stature during their years of "imprisonment." Eventually, it became impossible for the Italian state not to recognize the independence of the Vatican, and on
February 11,
1929, the
Lateran treaties established political relations between Italy and
Vatican City.
