TEMPORAL POWER (tat. tcmporalis, re lating to time, from tempos, time, season; con nected with Icel. Paint), an out-stretching, Lith. temphi, I extend) OF THE POPE. The sovereign power which the Pope possessed as ruler of the Papal States (q.v.), which, although modified in its exercise by his spiritual character, was in substance the same as that of any arbitrary sov ereign. 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 compatibility with his spiritual duties, has been very warmly debated. Many of the mediaeval sectaries put forward the principle of the in compatibility of the spiritual with the temporal power in the same person, not only in relation to the Pope, but also as to the other ecclesiastics who were feudal lords. Such were the doctrines of the Vaudois, of Pierre de Bruys, and above all of Arnold of Brescia (qq.v.). Through the centuries which followed, the anti-Papal con troversies 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 any way into the conflict of Gallivan and Ultra montane principles. Even the great Galilean champion Bossuet (q.v.) not only admitted the
lawfulness of the Pope's temporal sovereignty, but contended that it was in some sense neces sary to the free exercise of his spiritual power, and to the independence of his ecclesiastical gov ernment. It was not until the aggression of the French Republic upon Rome, and the annexation of the Papal provinces called the Legations to the Cisalpine Republic, and afterwards to the Kingdom of Italy, by Bonaparte, that the con troversy assumed any practical interest. For a few years all of the Papal territories were in the hands of Napoleon. More recently, upon the incorporation of the whole of the Papal States in the Kingdom of Italy, the question once more agitated the entire Catholic world, and is still, a generation later, a practical one. Most Roman Catholics, while admitting that the possession of temporal sovereignty is no essential part of the privileges of the successor of Saint Peter. regard the possession of a sovereignty independent of any particular sovereign as the means provi dentially established for the protection of the spiritual independence of the Pope, and of the free exercise of his functions as spiritual ruler of the Church.