When did the Papal States exist?

The Papal States existed 756–1870. On this map they are drawn AD 755–1870.

How large were the Papal States?

At their greatest extent drawn on this map, the Papal States covered about 42,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives them across the years they are drawn, not necessarily their greatest extent in history.

Europe · The successor kingdoms

Papal States

756–1870

See it on the map → Wikipedia ↗

Existed: 756–1870
Shown on the map: AD 755–1870
Peak area: 42k km²
Region: Europe

Overview

The Papal States (Stato Pontificio; also the States of the Church) were the territories in central Italy under the temporal sovereignty of the pope. Their conventional founding is 756, via the Donation of Pepin: after Pepin the Short (King of the Franks) defeated the Lombards, he granted the reconquered territories (the Exarchate of Ravenna, including Ravenna, and the Duchy of Rome) to the papacy rather than returning them to Byzantium, giving the pope temporal rule. At their pre-1859 extent the states covered roughly 44,000 km² (17,000 sq mi) across central Italy, per the English Wikipedia "Papal States" infobox (Wikidata gives 41,407 km² as of 1859), with a recorded 1853 population of 3,124,668.

History

Papal temporal claims were long bolstered by the Donation of Constantine, a document purporting to record Emperor Constantine's grant of the western empire to Pope Sylvester I in gratitude for his conversion and cure from leprosy. This is a proven forgery, almost certainly composed in the 8th century (c. 751–756), most likely to legitimize the papal territorial position — framing Pepin's grant as a "restoration" rather than a novel gift (the illiterate Pepin could not have verified any document). Its fraudulence was definitively demonstrated by the humanist Lorenzo Valla in 1440 (on grounds of anachronistic Latin, plagiarism from a 5th-century life of Sylvester, and the absence of any corroborating administrative change), though its spuriousness had been suspected earlier.

Decline and legacy

The Papal States endured for over a millennium, surviving the medieval struggles with the Empire, the Avignon papacy, and the Renaissance. They were briefly abolished during the French Revolutionary period (the Roman Republic of 1798–1799) and reduced by Napoleon (annexed 1809–1814), then restored. During Italian unification (Risorgimento), the states were progressively annexed by the Kingdom of Italy; the end came with the Capture of Rome on 20 September 1870 and annexation on 9 October 1870. The pope thereafter considered himself the "Prisoner in the Vatican," and the "Roman Question" (the dispute over papal sovereignty) remained unresolved until the Lateran Treaty of 1929 created Vatican City.

Common questions

What were the Papal States?: The Papal States (Stato Pontificio; also the States of the Church) were the territories in central Italy under the temporal sovereignty of the pope. Their conventional founding is 756, via the Donation of Pepin: after Pepin the Short (King of the Franks) defeated the Lombards, he granted the reconquered territories (the Exarchate of Ravenna, including Ravenna, and the Duchy of Rome) to the papacy rather than returning them to Byzantium, giving the pope temporal rule.
When did the Papal States exist?: The Papal States existed 756–1870. On this map they are drawn AD 755–1870.
How large were the Papal States?: At their greatest extent drawn on this map, the Papal States covered about 42,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives them across the years they are drawn, not necessarily their greatest extent in history.
Who ruled the Papal States?: Papal temporal claims were long bolstered by the Donation of Constantine, a document purporting to record Emperor Constantine's grant of the western empire to Pope Sylvester I in gratitude for his conversion and cure from leprosy.
How did the Papal States end?: The Papal States endured for over a millennium, surviving the medieval struggles with the Empire, the Avignon papacy, and the Renaissance. They were briefly abolished during the French Revolutionary period (the Roman Republic of 1798–1799) and reduced by Napoleon (annexed 1809–1814), then restored.

Sources

This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each polity as the primary basis, cross-checked against Encyclopædia Britannica and the World History Encyclopedia, while flagging entries built on thin or contested evidence — Samo's Empire on a single Fredegar passage, Venice's 697 founding date as legendary, the Pacta conventa as a probable forgery. The article this entry is anchored on:

Wikipedia — Papal States en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_States

This entry was last updated 27 September 2026.

This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made

Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.

Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).

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