Relationship With The Holy Roman Empire
The precise nature of the relationship between the Popes and Emperors – and between the Papal States and the Empire – was disputed. Was the Pope a sovereign ruler of a separate realm in central Italy, or were the Papal States just a part of the Frankish Empire over which the Popes had administrative control? (This last was the view of the late 9th-century Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma.) Or were the Holy Roman Emperors vicars of the Pope (as a sort of Archemperor) ruling Christendom, with the Pope directly responsible only for the environs of Rome and spiritual duties?
Events in the 9th century postponed the conflict: the Holy Roman Empire in its Frankish form collapsed as it was subdivided among Charlemagne's grandchildren. Imperial power in Italy waned and the papacy's prestige declined. This led to a rise in the power of the local Roman nobility, and the control of the Papal States during the early tenth century by a powerful and corrupt aristocratic family, the Theophylacti. This period was later dubbed the Saeculum obscurum or "dark age of the papacy", and sometimes as the "rule by harlots". In practice, the Popes were unable to exercise effective sovereignty over the extensive and mountainous territories of the Papal States, and the region preserved its old system of government, with many small countships and marquisates, each centered upon a fortified rocca.
Over several campaigns in the mid-tenth century, the German ruler Otto I conquered northern Italy; Pope John XII crowned him emperor (the first so crowned in more than forty years), and the two of them ratified the Diploma Ottonianum, which guaranteed the independence of the Papal States. Yet over the next two centuries, Popes and Emperors squabbled over a variety of issues, and the German rulers routinely treated the Papal States as part of their realms on those occasions when they projected power into Italy. A major motivation for the Gregorian Reform was to free the administration of the Papal States from imperial interference, and after the extirpation of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, the German emperors rarely interfered in Italian affairs. By 1300, the Papal States, along with the rest of the Italian principalities, were effectively independent. During the Renaissance the Spanish Emperors fought wars over the Papal States, often against the Pope.
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