Aprisoner in the Vatican (Italian:Prigioniero nel Vaticano;Latin:Captivus Vaticani) orprisoner of the Vatican described the situation of thepope with respect to theKingdom of Italy during the period from thecapture of Rome by theRoyal Italian Army on 20 September 1870 until theLateran Treaty of 11 February 1929.[1] Part of the process of theunification of Italy, the city's capture ended the millennium-oldtemporal rule of the popes over Central Italy and allowed Rome to be designated the capital of the new country. Although the Italians did not occupy the territories ofVatican Hill delimited by theLeonine walls and offered the creation of a city-state in the area, the popes fromPius IX toPius XI refused the proposal and described themselves as prisoners of the new Italian state.[2]
Asnationalism sweptItaly in the 19th century, efforts to unify the nation were blocked in part by thePapal States, which ran through the middle of the Italian peninsula and included theancient capital Rome. The Papal States were able to fend off efforts to conquer them largely through the pope's influence over the leaders of stronger European powers such asFrance andAustria. When Italian troops entered Rome, the Italian government reportedly intended to let the pope keep the part of Rome on Vatican Hill west of theTiber, calledLeonine City due to its walls built byPope Leo IV, a small remaining Papal State, but Pius IX refused.[3] One week after entering Rome, the Italian troops had taken the entire city save for the territories of Vatican Hill;[4] the inhabitants of Rome then voted to join Italy (those living in the Vatican were allowed to vote outside of the Leonine walls).[5][6]
For the next 59 years, the popes refused to leave the Vatican in order to avoid any appearance of accepting the authority wielded by the Italian government over Rome as a whole. During this period, popes also refused to appear atSaint Peter's Square or at the balcony ofSt. Peter's Basilica facing it. Popes granted theUrbi et Orbi blessings from a balcony facing a courtyard, or from inside the basilica, andpapal coronations were instead held at theSistine Chapel.
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The 13 May 1871 Italian Law of Guarantees, passed eight months after the capture of Rome, was an attempt to solve the problem by making the pope a subject of the Kingdom of Italy, not an independent sovereign, while guaranteeing him certain honours similar to those given to the king and the right to send and receive ambassadors.
The popes—Pius IX (died 1878) and his successorsLeo XIII (reigned 1878–1903),Pius X (1903–14),Benedict XV (1914–22), andPius XI (from 1922 until the issue was resolved in 1929)—refused to accept this unilateral decision, which, they felt, could be reversed by the same power that granted it, and which did not ensure that their decisions would be clearly seen to be free from interference by a political power. They claimed that total sovereignty was needed so that a civil government would never attempt to interfere in the governance of the universal Roman Church. Therefore, even after the Law of Guarantees, Pope Pius IX and his successors up to and including Pius XI decided not to leave the Palace of the Vatican, so as not to submit to the authority of the Italian State. As a result of the crisis, Pope Pius IXexcommunicated the Italian kingVictor Emmanuel II.
Especially in the strongly Roman Catholic rural areas of Italy, there was great tension between the Church and state. The newly unified Kingdom of Italy did not recognise the validity of Churchweddings, while the Church maintained that the Kingdom was illegitimate and Church weddings were sufficient before God.
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Following the fall of Rome, most countries continued to accredit diplomatic representatives to theHoly See, seeing it as an entity ofpublic international law with which they desired such relations, while they withdrew their consuls, whose work had been connected instead with the temporal power of the papacy, which was now ended; however, no diplomatic relations existed between the Holy See and the Italian state.
According toJasper Ridley,[7] at the 1867Congress of Peace in Geneva,Giuseppe Garibaldi referred to "that pestilential institution which is called the Papacy" and proposed giving "the final blow to the monster". This was a reflection of the bitterness that had been generated by the struggle against Pope Pius IX in 1849 and 1860, and it was in sharp contrast to the letter that Garibaldi had written to the pope fromMontevideo in 1847, before those events.
The stand-off was ended on 11 February 1929, when theLateran Pacts created a newmicrostate, that ofVatican City, and opened the way for diplomatic relations between Italy and the Holy See. The Holy See in turn recognised theKingdom of Italy, with Rome as its capital, thus ending the situation whereby the popes had felt constrained to remain within the Vatican. Subsequently, the popes resumed visiting their cathedral, theArchbasilica of Saint John Lateran, situated on the opposite side of the city of Rome, and to travel regularly to their summer residence atCastel Gandolfo, 30 kilometres (19 mi) from Rome.
