es Last, but not final, considerations Si pontifices dumtaxat pontificia agerent, dormientibus oculis nos ipsos totos ipsis committeremus; sed quia iam pontifices saecularia et laica ultra quam laicaliter prosequuntur, oculos aperimus et nobis prospicimus diligenter.* (De Dominis, b, p. 36) Finally, it is impossible in this work to come to any true and proper conclusions. This has already been pointed out in the introduction and is a result of the methodology adopted. The promise of the original hypothesis summarised in De Dominis's sentence which is quoted above’ has, however, been fulfilled: that in the early modern period, the papacy helped to bring a sense of awareness to the State-builders in European politics. The papacy itself was not merely a huge residue from the preceding period which the new organisms had to confront and destroy in order to assert themselves in their battle against every universalistic order; nor was it simply the creator of an abstract theory of ‘plenitudo potestasis', of a sovereignty of which others would then take possession in different historical contexts. It was the active element in the laicising process which led to the new political synthesis. The European system of states was constructed out of the ruins of the respublica christiana, and the papacy, which had indubitably been part of this ruin - the greatest and most impressive monument among the debris — actively contributed to the development of the new system. Perception of this induced von Ranke to take an interest in the history of the papacy and to see it beyond the confessional arguments, as an popes do nothing but conduct their papal ofice, let us totally commit ourselves ‘our eyes closed. But since now popes engage in secular and lay affairs beyond Taity themselves, we open our eyes and take careful notice for ourselves.183 Last, but not final, considerations indispensable element in our understanding of the development of the West inits entirety. The major part of the questions implicit in this approach have not however been developed by later historiography, and the reasons are to be sought both on the methodological front (through the scant attention given to the papacy and Italy by those who carried the discussion of the history of institutions and social discipline north of the Alps), and on the ideological front (the lay-Catholic diatribe acting perfectly as blinkers, prevented Italian historiography in particular from having a wider perspective). Until now we have therefore adhered to the eighteenth- century arguments which began the historiographical discussion, and have restricted ourselves to considering the externals of the State-Church relationship or the aspects of an ideological battle far removed from the evolution of the historical reality in order to interpret the dialectic between State and Church in the modern period. In his Di una riforma d'Italia, Carl Antonio Pilati (1733-1802) determined “to be able to push the pope's authority, both ecclesiastical and temporal, within the boundaries of the Roman state’. This was neither a facile slogan nor a revolutionary programme resulting from eighteenth-century en- lightenment, but rather the perception (with the coupling of ecclesiastical/temporal authority within the Papal State as in all states) of an already secular historical process which in Italy had not been able fully to mature (as it had elsewhere in the most differing forms, from the Anglican and Gallican Churches to Spanish or Hapsburg regalism) but which had paradoxically one of its roots in the papacy and in the Roman State itself.? The delimitation and development of Papal State authority in the territories of central Italy were not peripheral but an element in the process which led to the new redistribution of power and gave a new face to the Church of modern times and to the relationship between politics and religion. Ithas not been the task of this first exploration to study consequences and developments. These may be listed as follows: the incapacity of the Papal State to accept the logic of the national State both internally — with regard to the emerging classes — and externally, in the increasingly difficult game of the balance of power; its decline; the somewhat pathetic and ever more abstract attempts to modernise the papacy, separating the ecclesiastical government from State administration;? and, finally, the defeat of the Risorgimental illusion that it would have been enough to dismantle the external structures of the Church State to wipe out its presence in Italy; and the opening of religious wounds, ideal and political, which have continued up till the present day. The presumption which has led me on is that amore profound examination of the problems only suggested or referred to here184 The Papal Prince can bring greater understanding of even these subsequent developments and reduce many ambiguities. Thus also, as far as the exercise of the primatial and universal role of the papacy of the last centuries is concerned, the various theses, for the most part by jurists lacking a historical grounding, concerning the Holy See's sovereign personality in inter- national law, appear to need reviewing. The sovereign personality seems neither a legacy of the medieval papacy of Boniface VIII (the latter was victor of the duel with the Empire) nor a consequence of the sixteenth- century religious break, but resulted from the papacy’s ambiguous inclusion in the early formation of the European State system. The papacy entered into this system with well-defined initiatives and structures which played a decisive role, atleast up until Westphalia, even if the initiatives and structures were already showing their weaknesses by the middle of the following century.* The development of the Jus publicum ecclesiasticum from the end ofthe seventeenth century, which profoundly changed the canonist tradition in its exaltation of the Church as societas perfecta and of canon law as the primary rule, already had before it the new model of the State, in which it claimed the right to participate. Within this framework, the popes’ temporal power, with its sovereign characteristic, became, even in the period of its decline and also after its actual end, an integral part of an ecclesiology which tended to defend in a certain way the Church's rivalry with the State rather than its divergence from it. In the sixth edition of his work, in 1874 (a few years after the end of the Papal State and first Vatican Council), von Ranke, despite the fact that he did not modify his approach, explicitly reviewed his starting-point, expressed forty years earlier, that the papacy no longer exercised any essential power over the present, and stated that a new period had opened in the latter's history. With the end of the Papal State, in effect not only wasit shown that the papacy could survive but also that it might continue to bea component in world history, in the sense already expressed by von Ranke himself, independently from the coexistence of both structures, ‘Church’ and ‘State’, within the papacy's one body. What have certainly continued to exist, however, are the two ‘souls’, the application of the papacy’s State structures to the ecclesiological sphere, which remained supreme even after the end of the Papal State, up until Pius XII’s concordats and until the second Vatican Council, even if, at a theoretical level, the take-over could be said to have occurred with the shift from Pius IX’s theory of the theological necessity of the Papal State to the more recent reductive approach.’ In fact the most interesting phenomenon to follow the end of the popes’ temporal power has perhaps been, as noted in a recent essay,* the Church's reappropriation of the concept of sovereignty which it had passed on to the secular states centuries earlier. Research into these changes, whichLast, but not final, considerations continue to this day with the discussion over the reform of the codex of canon law and the project of the Church's constitutional law (the so-called lex {undamentalis’), could be extremely important at the political as well as ecclesiological level. Even for an outside observer with scientific motivations, there is ecclesiologically, a visible split between the structures inherited from the centuries of the modern period and the new perspectives of the particular or local churches, which are quite different from the territorial churches which arose out of the Reformation or Counter-Reformation. Politologi- cally, new perspectives have been opened up through awareness of the crises of the modern State and concern with the social sphere for its own sake, no longer from a retrospective and medieval point of view. With the period of the Counter-Reformation behind us, we are also leaving the era of the modern State as an expression of political individualism and monopoly of power and juridical rule.” It is therefore easier for us to understand than for our precedessors, not simply through refinement of the methodology of inquiry, the process which occurred in the modern period, of the secularisation of the Church and clericalisation of the State. With the end of the respublica christiana, temporalia and spiritualia have tended to fuse, within and without the temporal dominion of the popes, in the emerging power of the modern State, ° and, with the secularisation of the State, religion has been fully integrated into the political system to form a hierarchical and complete unity.' A reflection on the recent past can help us to feel less constricted and to experience in new forms the dualism between religion, as the absolute expression of individual and collective conscience, and the organisation of, or battle for, power. This duality has never ceased even in the tensions and decline of the last centuries, and in its dialectic it still forms one of the fundamental supports which Christianity has given and continues to give to human civilisation.