Institutions
- As the plural name Papal States indicates, the various regional components, usually former independent states, retained their identity under papal rule. The Pope was represented in each province by a governor, either styled papal legate, as in the former principality of Benevento, or Bologna, Romagna, and the March of Ancona; or papal delegate, as in the former duchy of Pontecorvo and in the Campagne and Maritime Province.
- The police force, known as sbirri ("cops" in modern Italian slang), was billeted in private houses (normally a practice of military occupation) and enforced order quite rigorously.
- For the defence of the states against the nascent Italian state in the last years of papal territorial autonomy, an international Catholic volunteer corps, called Papal Zouaves after a kind of French colonial native Algerian infantry, and imitating their uniform type, was created and fought in many engagements with great courage against superior odds in men and equipment.
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Famous quotes containing the word institutions:
“Each man must have his “I;” it is more necessary to him than bread; and if he does not find scope for it within the existing institutions he will be likely to make trouble.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of man, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Have we no culture, no refinement,—but skill only to live coarsely and serve the Devil?—to acquire a little worldly wealth, or fame, or liberty, and make a false show with it, as if we were all husk and shell, with no tender and living kernel to us? Shall our institutions be like those chestnut burs which contain abortive nuts, perfect only to prick the fingers?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)