The Papacy and Italian Politics

The link between the papacy and the Italian peninsula is one that dates back to the very dawn of Christianity. Rome, the capital of the empire, was the seat of an ancient Christian community. According to tradition, the eternal city was where Peter and Paul were martyred, and it was on the relics of these two pillars of Christianity that the primacy of the Roman see was built. Despite the ecclesiastical and jurisdictional primacy recognized by those who presided over the patriarchal see of Rome from the first centuries of the Christian era, it was only from the eleventh century