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:
“In abnormal times like our own, when institutions are changing rapidly in several directions at once and the traditional framework of society has broken down, it becomes more and more difficult to measure any type of behavior against any other.”
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“So far as laws and institutions avail, men should have equality of opportunity for happiness; that is, of education, wealth, power. These make happiness secure. An equal diffusion of happiness so far as laws and institutions avail.”
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