Curious about the evolution of the role of the Pope

[Petergee]

This is a highly romantic, although also (in my opinion) conflated and somewhat inaccurate commentary.

Please point out anything in it which you think is inaccurate.

Garibaldi is a thug?

You bet. And he’s been dead for a while. Wouldn’t you call someone who vuiciously oppressed the Church, throwing nuns out of convents and doing everything short of banning the Church completely, a thug? What would you call someone who ordered his army to invade a small neutral country which had done nothing to provoke the attack, slaughtered thousands of its citizens (which would have been many thousands more exceot that the Pope seeing his troops were hopelessly outgunned, ordered them to offer only token resistance) then occupied and annexed without compensation 99.9% of that country’s territory?

I noticed that you did not mention the all -important ‘donation’ of Constantine

because it’s a forgery.

a Pope used it to persuade the king of the Franks to give him the city and the surrounding countryside (after he demolished the Arian Lombard state), which is the actual foundation of the Papal States.

I referred to the origins of papal temporal power in the 5th century, not the formal beginning of the nation-state called the Papal States in the 9th century.