The Roman Question
When you think of Italy, you of course think of Rome. Rome, known as the “Eternal City,” was not the eternal capital of Italy, however. For 1,394 years, Italy was a divided peninsula with various city states and petty kingdoms populating the peninsula. Greater European powers also fought over and captured whole swaths of the “boot” more times than we can breakdown in this article. It was not until the 1870 unification of Italy that Rome became the capital of the peninsula again for the first time since 476 CE. In this article we will outline the capture of Rome from the Papal States in 1870 and its effect on the Italian peninsula.
By the Western Roman Empire’s fragmentation in 476, Rome had already ceased to be what it once was and was a depopulated remnant. At its height, the city boasted a population of between 1-2 million people but was reduced to a mere 30,000 after the Imperial collapse. Rome would eventually recover due to the presence of the Catholic Church and the Popes calling it their home (for most of the Papal office’s history), with the city becoming the capital of the Papal States in 756 CE. The Papal States would continue to expand, grabbing territory in the modern Italian regions of Lazio, Marche, Umbria, and Emilia-Romagna. However, by the start of the 17th century, the Papal states started to erode with various European powers seizing chunks in their bid to dominate Italy. This eventually culminated in the dissolution of the Papal States in all but name by 1859, with only Rome and some surrounding territory remaining under temporal control of the Pope.
The new Kingdom of Italy, under the Sardinian house of Savoy and King Victor Emmanuel II, wished to crown its achievement of uniting the peninsula for the first time since the Roman Empire by making Rome their capital, but in their way was Pope Pius IX, who considered Rome his sovereign right and territory. The debate over Rome’s ownership became to be known as the Roman Question. This resulted in a standstill between the two factions as Italy did not want to storm Rome and oust the Pope, fearing a sharp religious backlash from its staunchly catholic population and an international public relations disaster. Additionally, a French garrison defended the city, preventing Italy from seizing it however this did not prevent the Kingdom from declaring in 1861 that Rome was its capital.
In 1870 the Franco-Prussian War erupted forcing Napoleon III to remove his troops from Rome, leaving an opportunity for Italy to seize the city. Fearing the backlash mentioned earlier of violently taking Rome from the Pope, King Victor Emmanuel II offered to “protect” the Pope in place of its previous French garrison, with the true aim of peacefully taking the city once Italian troops arrived. The Pope saw through this ruse and declined the offer of protection, causing Italy to formally declare war in September of 1870, besieging the city later that month. Although Pius IX knew that his greatly outnumbered could not successfully defend the city, he ordered his forces to put up some resistance to emphasize to the world that the Pope was not giving up Rome willingly. Pius IX did instruct his forces in their resistance however to not push back too hard in order to limit bloodshed on both sides, resulting in 12 dead amongst his men and 32 amongst the Italian forces. The city fell to Italian forces on September 20th, 1870, and the Pope entered a phase referred to as the “Prisoner in Rome.”
While a “prisoner” in Rome, the Pope confined himself to Vatican hill and the Apostolic Palace, still conducting diplomacy as if he was a sovereign. He further rejected any deal with the Italians to become an Italian subject or to negotiate any church holdings within the city away. This status existed until 1929, with the Pope refusing to leave Rome until then. The Lateran Treaty of 1929 ended this self-imposed house arrest, establishing Vatican hill as Vatican City, a wholly separate 17 sq mile nation from Italy and providing financial restitution to the Church for the seized territory of the Papal States, officially ending the “Roman Question.”
Today, Vatican City is the smallest nation on earth and is the smallest by population, with only around 750 residents. The Pope remains head of state of Vatican City and an easy peace/relationship has been maintained by Italy and Vatican City ever since, with the Pope giving up sovereign claim of Rome outside his territory.