Rome and the Papacy

Excerpt from Rome and the Papacy: An Essay on the Relations Between Church and State A Considerable portion of this book was written before the Lateran Treaty between the Italian Government and the Vatican put an end to the 'Roman Question' and inaugurated a new period in the history of the Italian Church. The material and still more the moral importance of this event is very great, yet it has hardly influenced to the slightest degree the course of my argument. Its importance is more domestic than international; in the Speech from the Throne the King of Italy rightly declared that the Lateran Treaty completes and perfects the union of Italy. Together with the late war it marks the end of the 'Risorgimento.' At the present day, however, the relations between Church and State - and in this case I mean by the former organized religion as a whole, not merely the Roman Catholic Church - have assumed fresh importance all over the world. On the continent of Europe, where, during the last century, Liberalism had been able almost everywhere to separate Church from State, the ideal of the 'Lay State' seems to have been definitely abandoned. The governments of Europe, both new and old, have found it to be both necessary and expedient to resume or inaugurate diplomatic relations with the Vatican and to grant to their national Churches a considerable measure of political authority and personality. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.