'TEMPORAL POWER (oF TEE POPE) is a phrase susceptible of two meanings, which are very distinct from each other, and the confusion of which has led to frequent and serious misunderstanding.
I. In one of these senses it means the sovereign power which the pope possessed as ruler of the so-called papal states (q.v.), and which, especially of late years, has been the subject of much controversy. The power which the pope exercised within his owe states, although modified in its exercise by his spiritual cuaracter, was in substance the same as that of any arbitrary sovereign. The history of its origin and progress, and of the variation of the limits within which it has been acknowledged, is briefly detailed under the head PAPAL STATES. The question as to the necessity or utility of such a power vested in the hands of a spiritual ruler, and even of its lawfulness and its com patibility with his spiritual duties, has been very warmly debated; nor is this contro versy of entirely recent origin. Many of the mediaeval sectaries put forward the princi ple of the incompatibility of the spiritual with the temporal power in the same person, not only in relation to the pope, but also as to the baron-bishops or other ecclesiastical.
- seigneurs of that age. Such were the doctrines of the Vaudois, of Pierre cia Bruis, and above all, of Arnold of Brescia. The last-named of these rendered himself specially obnox ious by the activity and even turbulence with which he propagated this view, and the sentence of death under which lie suffered was the penalty of rebellion quite as much as of heresy. Through the centuries which followed, the anti-papal controversies turned so entirely upon doctrine, that there was little room for the discussion of this question, and it is a mistake to suppose, as has not unfrequently been done, that it entered in way into the conflict of Galilean and Ultramontane principles. Even the great Galilean champion, Bossuet, not only admitted the lawfulness of the pope's temporal sovereignty, but contended that it was in sonic sense necessary to the free exercise of his spiritual power, and to the independence of his ecclesiastical government. It was not until the
aggression of the French republic upon Rome, and the annexation of the papal prov inces called the Legations to the Cisalpine republic, and afterward to the kingdom of Italy, by Bonaparte, that the controversy assumed any practical interest. During the later conflict between Pius V11. and Napoleon I., the design which the latter entertained of a still further annexation of papal territory was one of the main causes of dispute; and still more recently, after the re-annexation of nearly the same portions of the papal states to the kingdom of Italy, the question once more agitated the entire Catholic world. No formal and authoritative judgment of the Roman church was pronounced regarding it; but a strong and almost unanimous expression of opinion was tendered to the present pope, Pius IX., in the form of letters and addresses from bishops and others in every part of Catholic Christendom. The tenor of all these is nearly the same. They profess that the possession of temporal sovereignty is no essential part of the privileges of the successor of St. Peter; but they also regard the possession of a sovereignty inde pendent of any particular sovereign, as the means providentially established for the pro tection of the spiritual independence of the pope, and of the free exercise of his func tions as spiritual ruler of the church. The contrary opinion held by some distinguished members of the Roman church, although regarded with great disfavor, was not formally condemned by a doctrinal decision, nor was any action taken on it in the Vatican coun cil. The recent annexation of the city of Rome itself to the kingdom of Italy elicited a still stronger expression. The event is noticed in the article papal states (q.v:).
II. By the second signification of the phrase " temporal power of the pope" is under stood what would more properly be called the claim of the pope, in virtue of his office, to a power over the temporalities of other kings and states.