ABSTRACT
During the last four decades of the present century the temporal government of the papal states between the end of the Council of Trent and the outbreak of the French Revolution has been at least partly reassessed. An older, largely Italian but more generally also anti-clerical view, of an unmitigated decline, has been the subject of historical revision based on still far from comprehens ive new research into such questions as papal finance. The partial nature of such research naturally accounts for the variety of interim judgements. One recent review of essentially eighteenth-century papal government in the city of Rome defined the truly post-Tridentine age, with respect to that govern ment, as beginning only with Innocent XII, at the end of the preceding cen tury, but continued to distinguish this newly identified post-Tridentine period as one of gradual decline (though not conscious retrogression) and of relative secularization (as opposed to unwavering clericalism). Such a view was pre sented as being in line with the major arguments about papal sovereignty put forward by the Italian historian Prodi, according to whom one of the clearest contemporary analysts of that sovereignty and its post-Tridentine evolution was Cardinal De Luca, influential during the pontificate of Innocent XI from its start, and especially after his elevation to the college of cardinals in 1681 until his death in 1683.
