Capital Punishment in Vatican City - History of The Statute

History of The Statute

The Lateran Treaty of 1929 copied from the contemporaneous Italian legal code (concerning attempted assassinations of the King of Italy), providing for capital punishment for anyone who attempted to assassinate the pope within Vatican City. Article 8 of the Lateran Treaty provides:

Considering the person of the Supreme Pontiff to be sacred and inviolable, Italy declares any attempt against His person or any incitement to commit such attempt to be punishable by the same penalties as all similar attempts and incitements to commit the same against the person of the King.
All offences or public insults committed within Italian territory against the person of the Supreme Pontiff, whether by means of speeches, acts, or writings, shall be punished in the same manner as offences and insults against the person of the King.

There were no attempted assassinations of the pope within Vatican City while the statute was on the books.

Read more about this topic:  Capital Punishment In Vatican City

Famous quotes containing the words history of the, history of, history and/or statute:

    Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.
    Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)

    What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.
    Josiah Royce (1855–1916)

    Now a Jew, in the dictionary, is one who is descended from the ancient tribes of Judea, or one who is regarded as descended from that tribe. That’s what it says in the dictionary; but you and I know what a Jew is—One Who Killed Our Lord.... And although there should be a statute of limitations for that crime, it seems that those who neither have the actions nor the gait of Christians, pagan or not, will bust us out, unrelenting dues, for another deuce.
    Lenny Bruce (1925–1966)