In a historical or geopolitical sense the term usually refers collectively to Christian majority countries or countries in which Christianity dominates or was a territorial phenomenon .“ Christendom is originally a medieval concept steadily to have evolved since the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the gradual rise of the Papacy more in religio-temporal implication practically during and after the reign of Charlemagne ; and the concept let itself to be lulled in the minds of the staunch believers to the archetype of a holy religious space inhabited by Christians, blessed by God, the Heavenly Father, ruled by Christ through the Church and protected by the Spirit-body of Christ ; no wonder, this concept, as included the whole of Europe and then the expanding Christian territories on earth, strengthened the roots of Romance of the greatness of Christianity in the world .”

By 751, the Merovingian dynasty which until then had ruled the Franks by right was deprived of this right with the consent of the Papacy and the aristocracy and a Carolingian, Pepin the Short, was crowned King of the Franks.

Upon Leo's death, the Papacy passed to Adrian VI, who ruled until 1523.

The Crescentii clan ( in modern Italian Crescenzi ) — if they were an extended family — essentially ruled Rome and controlled the Papacy from the middle of the 10th century until the nearly simultaneous deaths of their puppet pope Sergius IV and the patricius of the clan in 1012.

Since the Norman Invasion no native Irish king, has ruled as a united sovereign Irish kingdom or state, although the Kingdom of Tyrconnell maintained occasional international relations and exchanged ambassadors with the Royal Courts of Scotland, Spain, and the Papacy.

Isabella died in 1455 and Afonso married again ( although not recognized by the Papacy ) in 1475, this time to Joanna of Castile ( known as " La Beltraneja "), daughter of Henry IV of Castile and Joan of Portugal.

Alfonso, by formally submitting his reign to the Papacy, obtained the consent of Pope Eugene IV that the Kingdom of Naples would go to his immature son Ferdinand.

* Discussion of the Papacy by Scott Hahn

At the foundation of the new rule, they were called Hermits of St Damiano, or Moronites ( or Murronites ), and did not assume the appellation of Celestines until after the election of their founder to the Papacy as Celestine V. The fame of the holy life and the austerities practised by the hermit in his solitude on the Mountain of Majella, near Sulmona, attracted many visitors, several of whom were moved to remain and share his mode of life.

The Avignon Papacy occurring several centuries after the Concordat indicated there was continued interference in the papacy by kings.

" It is likely that we have only a partial view of their beliefs, because the writings of the Cathars were mostly destroyed due to the doctrinal threat perceived by the Papacy ; much of our existing knowledge of the Cathars is derived from their opponents.

Thereupon the commission by Gregory XII authorizing his proxy to resign the Papacy on his behalf was read and Malatesta, acting in the name of Gregory XII, pronounced the resignation of the papacy by Gregory XII and handed a written copy of the resignation to the assembly.

In the wake of the Cluniac Reforms, this involvement was increasingly seen as inappropriate by the Papacy.

He also embroiled himself in another conflict with the Papacy by supporting a candidate elected by a minority against Pope Alexander III ( 1159 – 81 ).

In recognition of his successes and his political support for the Papacy, Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Romans, or Roman Emperor in the West, by Pope Leo III in 800.

The missionary bishopric started by Jordan in 968 used the Latin liturgy and was directly subordinate to the Papacy.

As a satellite of Siena since the Battle of Montaperti in 1260, Montalcino was deeply involved and affected by the conflicts in which Siena became embroiled, particularly in those with the city of Florence in the 14th and 15th centuries, and like many other cities in central and northern Italy, the town was also caught up in the internecine wars between the Ghibellines ( supporters of the Holy Roman Empire ) and the Guelphs ( supporters of the Papacy ).

Until the time of the Avignon Papacy, the residence of the Pope was the Lateran Palace, donated by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great.

The Papacy was never on good terms with the Normans of Sicily, except when under duress by the threat of direct military action.

He was the only pope during the Byzantine Papacy whose election was not approved by a iussio from Constantinople.

Few of the records of transactions outside Rome that could help us understand the history of this Papacy survive from Benedict's reign, and because of the disruptions caused by the Lombards in Italy, perhaps few ever existed.

His Papacy began in a time of great difficulties, chiefly caused by the disputes between Catholic rulers and the Papacy about governmental demands to nominate bishops rather than leaving the appointment to the Church.

The estrangement between the secular and the spiritual authority which Ganganelli strove to avert is now irreparable, and his pontificate remains an exceptional episode in the general history of the Papacy, and a proof how little the logical sequence of events can be modified by the virtues and abilities of an individual.

* 1412 – The Medici family is appointed official banker of the Papacy.

On being elected to the Papacy Julius raised the now 17-year old but still uncouth and quasi-illiterate Innocenzo to the cardinalate, appointed him cardinal-nephew, and showering the boy with benefices – Abbot commendatario of the abbeys of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, S. Zeno in Verona, June 1552, later of the abbeys of S. Saba, Miramondo, and of Grottaferrata, Frascati, and other appointments – to the point where his income was one of the highest in Europe.

Formerly known as Papal Chamberlains of The Sword and Cape () before the Second Vatican Council, many came from families that had long served the Papal Court over the course of several centuries, while others were appointed as a high honor, one of the highest the Papacy conferred on Catholic laymen ( often prominent politicians or wealthy philanthropists ).

After the Avignon Papacy the church administration moved to Vatican Hill and the papal palace was ( until 1871 ) the Quirinal Palace, upon the Quirinal Hill.

The fall of the palace from this position of glory was the result of the departure of the popes from Rome during the Avignon Papacy.

He continued as Archbishop, remaining out of communion with the Papacy.

All these suppressions enjoyed Papal approval, though successive 15th century Popes continued to press for assurances that, now that the Avignon Papacy had been defeated, the confiscated monastic property would revert to religious and educational uses.

Manfred first, and later his infant son Conradin, continued the struggle with the Papacy, although unsuccessfully.

Clement moved the Papacy from Italy to Poitiers, France, where Philip continued to assert more dominance over the Papacy and the Templars.

The issue of religious and political rivalry continued during the two Desmond Rebellions ( 1569 – 83 ) and the Nine Years ' War ( 1594 – 1603 ), both of which overlapped with the Anglo-Spanish War ( 1585 – 1604 ), during which some rebellious Irish nobles were helped by the Papacy and by Elizabeth's arch-enemy Philip II of Spain.

During the reign of Afonso II, when the king continued to provoke the ire of the Papacy, Portuguese knights attacked the Galician tenancy of his half-brother Martin Sanches ( who lived in the kingdom of Alfonso IX of León ), possibly since the Bishop of Braga had estates in that region.

The Blacks continued to support the Papacy, while the Whites were opposed to Papal influence, specifically the influence of Pope Boniface VIII.

The Blacks continued to support the Papacy, while the Whites were opposed to Papal influence,

After the unification of Italy in the 19th century the Papal States had become formally part of the Kingdom of Italy, but the Vatican disputed this claim of geographic authority, and the Papacy continued to exercise de facto political control over an area around St Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Elena Lourie ( 1975 ) suggested instead that it was Alfonso's attempt to neutralize the papacy's interest in a disputed succession — Aragon had been a fief of the Papacy since 1068 — and to fend off Urraca's son from her first marriage, Alfonso VII of Castile, for the Papacy would be bound to press the terms of such a pious testament.

Peter, however, cannot be accused of ambition or the lust of power when a monastic superior, any more than when he insisted on divesting himself of the Papacy, to which he was subsequently raised.

It brought to an end the first phase of the power struggle between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Emperors and has been interpreted as containing within itself the germ of nation-based sovereignty that would one day be confirmed in the Treaty of Westphalia ( 1648 ); in part this was an unforeseen result of strategic maneuvering between the Church and the European sovereigns over political control within their domains.

Niccolò Machiavelli cites Cesare's dependence on the good will of the Papacy, under the control of his father, to be the principal weakness of his rule.

Lucrezia's family later came to epitomize the ruthless Machiavellian politics and sexual corruption alleged to be characteristic of the Renaissance Papacy.

But the decision proved the precursor of the long Avignon Papacy, the " Babylonian captivity " ( 1309 – 77 ), in Petrarch's phrase, and marks a point from which the decay of the strictly Catholic conception of the pope as universal bishop may be dated.

He proved to be an able Pope, with an unlimited capacity for work and a lawyer's eye for detail, and a wise statesman, the general object of whose policy was to free the Papacy from its dependence upon Spain.

Gregory was chosen at Rome in 1406 by a conclave consisting of only fifteen cardinals under the express condition that, should Antipope Benedict XIII ( 1394 – 1423 ), the rival papal claimant at Avignon, renounce all claim to the Papacy, he would also renounce his, so that a fresh election might be made and the Western Schism ( 1378 – 1417 ) could be ended.

Tsar Kaloyan ( 1197 – 1207 ) entered a union with the Papacy, thereby securing the recognition of his title of " Rex " although he desired to be recognized as " Emperor " or " Tsar ".

Cyprus therefore sided with the Avignon Papacy in the Western Schism, in the hope that the French would be able to drive out the Italians.

Pope John XXII himself held heterodox views about the Last Judgement and was a very political pope asserting excessive authority over the Emperor whilst continuing to maintain the Avignon exile, itself a scandal to the Papacy since the Pope must be Bishop of Rome and must, by canon law, live in his Diocese.

Henry VIII changed his title because the Lordship of Ireland had been granted to the Norman monarchy by the Papacy ; Henry had been excommunicated by the Catholic Church and worried that his title could be withdrawn by the Holy See.

The Papacy has condemned racism in any form ... Jesus died for the sins of all times, and I'll be the first on the line for culpability ".

Paul had proposed a general Church council be held as early as 1536 but was unable to hold it until 1545 due to the vulnerability of the Papacy.

John V was the first pope of the Byzantine Papacy allowed to be consecrated by the Byzantine Emperor without prior consent, and the first in a line of ten consecutive popes of Eastern origin.

Cyprus therefore sided with the Avignon Papacy in the Great Schism, in the hope that the French would be able to drive out the Italians.

In 1297, Pope Boniface VIII, intervening between the Houses of Anjou and Aragon in the war called Sicilian Vespers, established on paper a regnum Sardiniae et Corsicae that would be a fief of the Papacy, but in the island, however, already existed native state entities.

This may be linked to Simeon's diplomatic relations with the Papacy between 924 and 926, during which he demanded and received Pope John X's recognition of his title as " Emperor of the Romans ", truly equal to the Byzantine emperor, and possibly the confirmation of a patriarchal dignity for the head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

In countries where the Reformation was successful, this often lay in the perception that Catholics retained allegiance to a ' foreign ' power ( the Papacy ), causing them to be regarded with suspicion.

The Council of Constance proclaimed the Concordat to be the regular form of governing relations between the Papacy and foreign kingdoms.