Word.ws English Dictionary

States of the Church

States of the Church proper noun: the Papal States.

Proper noun

the States of the Church pl (normally plural, singular State of the Church)

  1. (dated, historical, plural-normally) The Papal States.
    • It may be necessary to enquire into the origin and progress of the temporal authority of the Court of Rome—the means by which the aggrandizement of the States of the Church has been at different periods effected—and the only possible object with which a European congress can have replaced them...1832 July, “Political Condition of the Italian States”, in The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal, volume 55, number 110, page 381
    • On September 20, 1870, Victor Emmanuel captured Rome, and the inhabitants of the district voted one hundred and thirty-three thousand to one thousand five hundred for annexation to Italy. […] Thus came to an end the States of the Church, the oldest continuous secular sovereignty then existing in...1918, Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church, 1st edition, page 671

Forms of States of the Church

singularState of the Church

Questions about States of the Church

What does States of the Church mean?
States of the Church means the Papal States.
What part of speech is States of the Church?
States of the Church is a proper noun.

Words near States of the Church in the dictionary

  1. states of matter
  2. states of mind
  3. states of motion
  4. states of nature
  5. states of siege
  6. States of the Church
  7. states of war
  8. states the obvious
  9. states within a state
  10. states within states
  11. states' righter

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: States of the Church (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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