What did Catholics think of Wars with the Papal States?

[Plank of Wood]

So at many times, various states were at war with the Papal States itself, whilst simultaneously considering themselves Catholic and opposed to the Reformation. The Holy Roman Empire famously took the Pope prisoner during the War of the League of Cognac, which lead to the kerfuffle in England about divorce - but Charles V was still part of the counter-reformation and was very much a Catholic.

How did regular Catholics in these countries view war with the Pope, which under their beliefs should have been a terrible sacrilege? Did they view it as just another war, or was something more complex at work here?

 

[JodelDiplom]

Just another war. The pope was, after all, only a very high ranking bishop. Bishops were known to be powerful, ambitious men, who frequently got into quarrels with other powerful, ambitious men, and dragged their subjects into those quarrels as well. So, knowing that your king was at war with the pope wouldn't really upset peoples' spiritual conscience that much.

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

Mentally, there was a strict separation of the Pope as spiritual head of the church and Pope as temporal prince of the papal states.

They were rarely confused. Few popes dared invoke their spiritual status in temporal battles, as he would essentially be opening the door for the invading king to hold his own council of bishops and depose him as spiritual head (and vice-versa - you can rape the pope's lands, but if you "question" his spiritual status, you're opening yourself up to religious blowback.)

So long as the war remained strictly about land, it was fine.

Catholics felt more scandalized about attacks on religious places (e.g. monasteries) than the temporal lands of the pope. Papal-owned land is not itself sacred.

 

[profxyz]

Perhaps not the right timeframe, but in the 1848 revolutions there were very strong Italian undercurrents regarding the Pope as both head of the Catholic Church and also as Italy's liberal savior. How the various states in that upheaval viewed war with the Papal States really depended on how nationalist (and secularist) you were and vice versa. Generally speaking, most of the urban revolutionaries - Venice, Milan, etc. (to say nothing of Garibaldi) thought of the Pope primarily as another temporal leader, and when Pio Nono tried to screw around with the revolutions he was promptly considered an enemy. But the same thing probably couldn't be said for the peasantry, for which the role of the Pope as head of the Catholics was probably more important. Desertions and counter-revolution arose when Pius IX's revolutionary lust faded.

As for the Pope's early stance of war against Austria, that was considered by the Habsburgs to be a consequence of 'bad people' misinforming him and so in a sense the Pope was being forced into the war against his own better judgement (which was largely true). Certainly while the Pope was in exile in Gaeta during the Roman Republic Naples took pains to expose His Holiness to the reactionary points of view. This was also the case in France and Spain, with both countries eventually mounting expeditions against the Roman Republic to save the Pope from the depredations of the Italian revolutionaries, and thus satisfy public demand.

Indeed, in the 1848 revolutions the Pope was probably more scared of war with Austria than vice versa, primarily because he saw Austria as a staunch Catholic nation which had done very little to offend the Pope.

 

[Arilou]

Mentally, there was a strict separation of the Pope as spiritual head of the church and Pope as temporal prince of the papal states.

They were rarely confused. Few popes dared invoke their spiritual status in temporal battles, as he would essentially be opening the door for the invading king to hold his own council of bishops and depose him as spiritual head (and vice-versa - you can rape the pope's lands, but if you "question" his spiritual status, you're opening yourself up to religious blowback.)

So long as the war remained strictly about land, it was fine.

Catholics felt more scandalized about attacks on religious places (e.g. monasteries) than the temporal lands of the pope. Papal-owned land is not itself sacred.

It was also a fairly common POV (among supporters of Imperial authority, but also generally) that maybe the Pope shouldn't be running a state and instead be focusing on spiritual things. (Popes of course, tended to disagree)

 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

You also have to understand that the dichotomy between the Bishop of Rome as the spiritual head of the Catholic Church as prescribed by Augustine, and the Vicar of Christ on Earth as head of the Papal States, was one of the key factors behind the Reformation in the first place.

The basis of all Papal political power flows from The Donation of Constantine. This document is directly involved in both the Great Schism that broke the Christian Catholic Church into the branches of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy; and the Protestant Reformation.

The Donation appeared magically in 8th century when Rome was in desperate need of Frankish support to hold off a Lombard invasion, and to put this briefly allowed the Papacy to bless the Carolingian usurpation of the Merovingian throne, and later allowed the creation of the position of Holy Roman Emperor; simoultaneously, it morphed the spiritual power of the bishop of Rome into temporal authority to govern what became known as the Papal States.

When the Donation was proven to be fraudulent and a forgery in the late 15th century, the shock waves created by this revelation were one of the key factors in fomenting the Protestant Reformation. The Donation was the entire basis of the Papacy's ability to use spiritual authority to rule temporal realms, and granted to the Bishop of Rome the 'rights and regalia of Caesar'. And when the title allocated to the bishop of Rome by the Donation, 'Vicarius Filii Dei', 'The Substitute for the Son of God', was analyzed and someone noticed that the Latin numbers within the title added up to 666, the Protestants truly took up arms against their oppressor and the Holy War was on in earnest.

The war which followed is a long tale of power politics so bizarre at one point you have the Papacy providing funds for Protestant forces because, as the pope at the time said, 'Rome will not be diminished into the position of the chaplain of the court of Spain.'

The Donation remained on the books in Rome, iirc, until John Paul II finally dissolved it in the mid 80's about the time he sanctioned Freemasonry within Catholicism (P3) after taking that bullet. But the Lateran Treaty signed between Rome and the Fascist powers that established Vatican City rendered it moot and actually makes the nullification superficial. But that is another topic altogether.

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

It was also a fairly common POV (among supporters of Imperial authority, but also generally) that maybe the Pope shouldn't be running a state and instead be focusing on spiritual things. (Popes of course, tended to disagree)

Hm. I doubt that was common. Mainz, Trier and Cologne? Half the imperial diet was composed of ecclesiastical princes! If there is one thing they understood was a bishop in charge of temporal lands.

The alternative to papal control was not imperial control, but disintegration into the hands of the local Roman nobility. Doubt the imperial party wanted that. The Emperors couldn't impose imperial control on Lombardy, much less the papal states.

And you can see that's exactly what happened when the pope was taken to Avignon - pope was removed from the papal states. It did the imperialists no good. The Papal States disintegrated into the hands of insufferable local lords.

The pope was fine so long as the pope was theirs. He could be a very valuable agent for imperial interests, a watchdog and stabilizing power in Italy. And that was the original idea. Problem is the pope often had his own agenda. And took upon himself the role of pan-Italian champion.

 

[pithorr]

I don't know about the past but I'd be happy if someone would burn the Papal States with fire in present times, and especially get rid of all their agents along the world

 

[Finnishviking]

I don't know about the past but I'd be happy if someone would burn the Papal States with fire in present times, and especially get rid of all their agents along the world

 

[Tamerlan]

How did regular Catholics in these countries view war with the Pope, which under their beliefs should have been a terrible sacrilege? Did they view it as just another war, or was something more complex at work here?

Even though Catholics did consider the pope the "first" bishop of the catholic church, they did not necessarily consider him as God's anointed representative on earth : they had their own king or temporal ruler for that... Off course, this was a matter of controversy, but the position of the Pope as the uncontested "sole" and infaillible head of the Catholic church is rather recent and owes much to the decline of monarchies during the late 18th and the 19th century.

 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

Even though Catholics did consider the pope the "first" bishop of the catholic church, they did not necessarily consider him as God's anointed representative on earth : they had their own king or temporal ruler for that... Off course, this was a matter of controversy, but the position of the Pope as the uncontested "sole" and infaillible head of the Catholic church is rather recent and owes much to the decline of monarchies during the late 18th and the 19th century.

That statement is not entirely true. Papal Spiritual authority over political power was established early on in Augustine, and the spiritual authority was perverted into temporal authority over time. And it is crucial to understand that the Catholic Church (meaning the whole entirety of the Christian Church, and would include Orthodox and Protestants), and the Roman Catholic Church, are two distinct entities. The confusion inherent in the naming is entirely intentional.

Infallibility is another matter altogether, and while it existed in theory for centuries was only scripted and formalized after a long and contentious debate during Vatican I, and was brought about SPECIFICALLY by the most conservative elements of the Roman Church to refute the concepts of evolution as forwarded by Darwinism. Infallibility has nothing to do with secular authority, or the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome. When the Pope makes a statement speaking ex cathedra, it must be true, regardless of facts and logic. Needless to say, not all Roman Catholics believe this to be true.

 

[Rubidium]

I'd go a little against the grain here and say that some Catholics became concerned when they were fighting the Pope. That didn't necessarily stop it from happening, but did complicate diplomacy and encourage papal opponents to make peace.

 

[Orinsul]

Mentally, there was a strict separation of the Pope as spiritual head of the church and Pope as temporal prince of the papal states.

They were rarely confused. Few popes dared invoke their spiritual status in temporal battles, as he would essentially be opening the door for the invading king to hold his own council of bishops and depose him as spiritual head (and vice-versa - you can rape the pope's lands, but if you "question" his spiritual status, you're opening yourself up to religious blowback.)

So long as the war remained strictly about land, it was fine.

Catholics felt more scandalized about attacks on religious places (e.g. monasteries) than the temporal lands of the pope. Papal-owned land is not itself sacred.

I'm seconding this, when the Pope ran a nation, the world understood without anyone having to say that the Pope as 'king' of the Papal States and the Pope as Pope of the Church were wholly different things despite being the same person.
Like how David Tennant Marrying Doctor Who's daughter is ok, because people today understand that while David Tennant and the 10th Doctor are the same person, they're separate entities.

it's only now that the pope doesn't run a country that it get's confusing.
Like when V2 came out, alot of people complained that the Papal States could reform as they couldn't grasp that the Papal States with the Pope as HoS could have a parliamentary democracy without that also meaning that the Church would have the parliamentary democracy of a central italian state running it.
But in the era when it was a thing, everyone just understood the state was not the Church and the Church was not the State it so there was no problem, unless you were doing a Spain or Napoleon and warring not against the Pope of the Papal States, but against the Pope of the Catholic Church.

Infallibility is another matter altogether, and while it existed in theory for centuries was only scripted and formalized after a long and contentious debate during Vatican I, and was brought about SPECIFICALLY by the most conservative elements of the Roman Church to refute the concepts of evolution as forwarded by Darwinism.

Um, no. Infallibility was brought in by the Italian elements of the Church, to refute the idea of devolution to the French. Which is why it happened when the war with Italy cut the French bishops from getting to the council so the Italians pushed it through so the Pope could over-rule past councils and popular consensus to beat the French.
it has nothing to do with Darwinism, the Catholics didn't care about Darwinism until it became political and racist which was long after V1. The Church was one of the first organisations to officially endorse the theory of evolution.
Infallibility was entirely about infighting within the catholic hierarchy between Ultramontanism and Conciliarism, i.e. centralisation v decentralisation.
Just because your tin foil hat shines pretty in the sunlight, doesn't mean you have to wear it.