On this day 141 years ago the Italian Army captured the city of Rome, effectively ending one thousand years of temporal power exercised by the popes. The temporal power dates back to 754 AD, when Pepin the Short, the King of the Franks who was the son of Charles Martel and father of Charlemagne, agreed to give the Pope certain territories in Italy after having become the first recorded king to have been crowned by the Pope.
The area covered by the Papal States was expanded by Charlemagne to include the Duchy of Rome, Ravenna, the Pentapolis and a number of other regions and cities in northern Italy. In 800 AD, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne the first Emperor of the Romans. In the following centuries there was some ambiguity as to whether the Papal States were fully independent or subject to the rule of the Holy Roman Empire.
The exercise of temporal power was an unfortunate mis-step in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, and as a result the Church became involved in activities designed to preserve and enhance temporal power, which were at odds with the Church’s spiritual mission. Temporal power was briefly removed after Napoleon conquered Italy, and then gradually eroded during the 19th Century before essentially being ended with the conquest of Rome in 1870, although Vatican City persists as an independent state.