1633: Pope Urban VIII, who had once been a friend of Italian physicist Galileo Galilei, orders he be put on trial for theorizing that the earth revolves around the sun. Galileo is found guilty of heresy. This is part of what is called The Inquisition, a centuries-long crackdown on heretics and nonbelievers (essentially anyone disagreeing with church doctrine and especially Protestants). Many are imprisoned, tortured or killed..
1799: Pope Pius VI dies in prison. He had denounced Napoleon during the French Revolution and Napoleon had him thrown in prison when he invaded Italy. At the time, many feared Pius was to be the last pope.
1870: As part of the unification of Italy, the church loses dominion over Rome. Also, the demise of the Papal States in central Italy led Pope Pius IX to call himself a "prisoner of the Vatican. For the next 59 years, popes would not leave the Vatican because they did not accept the Italian government's claims to the surrounding area.
The 1929 Lateran Treaty established Vatican City as the Roman Catholic Church's sovereign domain.
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