Divinity Atlas

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Italy

Also Known As Italian
Europe

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Italy holds Vatican City, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church, within Rome itself, and the country's religious history runs from pre-Christian Roman polytheism through the empire's adoption of Christianity under Constantine to the papacy's long temporal and spiritual authority over the peninsula. Assisi, Padua and countless other towns hold major pilgrimage sites tied to founding figures of Catholic monastic orders, including Francis and Anthony, and Italian Renaissance art is inseparable from Catholic religious patronage. Rome's earlier Mithraic and Isis cult sites, and its role as a center of Hermetic and Neoplatonic revival during the Renaissance under figures such as Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, are also covered here. A small but ancient Jewish community, one of Europe's oldest, has lived continuously in Rome since before the Common Era.

Facts
Law and State
Establishment Status
Disestablished 3
The 1929 Lateran Treaty, revised by a 1984 concordat, ended Catholicism's status as Italy's official state religion.
State Funding Mechanism
Recognised religions are funded through a taxpayer designated otto per mille scheme created by the 1984 revision of the Lateran Treaty; Islam has never secured the formal state intesa needed to participate. 3
Apostasy or Blasphemy Law
Italy decriminalized blasphemy against God, bestemmia, in 1999, reducing Article 724 of the Penal Code from a crime to an administrative offense carrying a fine of 51 to 309 euros. Publicly insulting a religion in a way that expresses contempt for those who profess it remains a criminal offense under Article 403, punishable by a fine of 1,000 to 5,000 euros. 4
Registration or Recognition Regime
The Catholic Church holds its own constitutional relationship to the state under the 1929 Lateran Pacts, revised by the 1984 Villa Madama accord. Every other denomination's relationship to the state runs through Article 8 of the constitution, under which a denomination may negotiate an intesa, a bilateral agreement with the government ratified by parliament, setting the terms of its recognition including access to the optional eight per mille tax designation; the Waldensian Church signed the first intesa in 1984, and more than a dozen denominations, including major Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist and Orthodox bodies, have signed one since. A denomination with no intesa may still seek recognition as an admitted cult under the 1929 law (No. 1159), a lesser status carrying legal personality but none of an intesa's negotiated privileges; a group with neither status is an ordinary civil association under the general code. 3
Concordat Basis
The Lateran Treaty of 11 February 1929 between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See ended Catholicism's status as Italy's official state religion of the pre-unification era by formalizing it instead, establishing Vatican City as a sovereign state and settling the "Roman Question." Its concordat provisions were substantially revised by the Villa Madama Accord of 18 February 1984, which removed Catholicism's status as the official state religion outright, ended mandatory Catholic religious instruction in state schools (making it optional), and replaced direct clergy salaries with the otto per mille scheme, letting taxpayers direct eight per thousand of their income tax to the Catholic Church or another participating recognized religion. 3
Geography
Latitude
41.9 degrees north 2
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.
Longitude
12.6 degrees east 2
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.
Status
Legal Status
The 1929 Lateran Treaty, revised by a 1984 concordat, ended Catholicism's status as official state religion and funds recognized religions through a taxpayer-designated otto per mille scheme; Islam has never secured a formal state intesa (understanding). 3
Demographics
Religious Composition
About 78-80% Catholic; religious practice has declined and religiously unaffiliated Italians form a growing minority; small Muslim, Protestant and Orthodox communities (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020). 1
Government
Capital
Rome 2
Government Type
parliamentary republic 2
Sovereignty Status
Sovereign UN member state 2
Established Year
1861 2
17 March 1861
Location
Location of Italy Afghanistan Albania Algeria Angola Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Federated States of Micronesia Fiji Finland France French Polynesia Gabon Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Guam Guatemala Haiti Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Ivory Coast Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Laos Latvia Lebanon Libya Lithuania Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Mali Malta Mauritius Mexico Moldova Mongolia Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria North Macedonia Norway Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tanzania Thailand Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican City Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe
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Religion and History in Italy

Italy remains majority Catholic, around 78 to 80 percent by most estimates including Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020, though religious practice has declined significantly and religiously unaffiliated Italians now form a substantial and growing minority, alongside small Muslim, Protestant and Orthodox Christian communities. Rome has been the seat of the Catholic papacy since antiquity, and the Vatican, an independent city-state since the 1929 Lateran Treaty resolved decades of dispute following the loss of the Papal States during Italian unification in 1870, sits within Italy's capital as the church's sovereign headquarters.

Italy's religious landscape reflects deep regional variation, from the historically strong Catholic institutional presence in the south and the Veneto to more secular traditions in parts of the industrial north, and the country's Waldensians, one of Europe's oldest surviving pre-Reformation dissenting Christian movements founded in the twelfth century, maintained a persecuted minority presence for centuries before gaining full legal equality only in the twentieth century. Italy's ancient Jewish community, one of Europe's oldest with continuous presence since Roman times, suffered severe persecution under Mussolini's 1938 racial laws and the subsequent Holocaust deportations after the German occupation from 1943.

The Lateran Treaty and Church-State Relations in Italy

The 1929 Lateran Treaty between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See resolved the Roman Question, decades of unresolved dispute following the Papal States' loss during unification, by recognizing Vatican City as a sovereign state and granting the Catholic Church various privileges within Italy, including recognition of Catholic religious marriage and compulsory Catholic religious education in public schools; a 1984 revised concordat under Prime Minister Bettino Craxi ended Catholicism's status as Italy's official state religion, made religious education optional, and redirected state funding to religious bodies through an annual taxpayer-designated contribution scheme, the otto per mille, that Italians can also direct to other recognized religions or secular welfare causes. Italy has since extended formal understandings, called intese, to a growing list of other religious communities, including Jewish, Protestant and Buddhist bodies, though Islam, Italy's second largest religion by adherents given large-scale immigration since the late twentieth century, has never secured a formal intesa, leaving mosque construction and Muslim religious practice more dependent on local and regional regulation than the more secure legal footing enjoyed by intesa-holding faiths.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Italy directly: "A Norman nobleman of southern Italy, son of Robert Guiscard, who joined the First Crusade with a force of Normans from Sicily and Apulia."

Source God's War: A New History of the CrusadesChristopher Tyerman

This source names Italy directly: "Christian relations in early modern Italy, and the book's authority rests on close use of Vatican and Italian archival sources to trace the theological reasoning behind specific papal policies..."

About 78 to 80% Catholic; home to Vatican City, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church, within Rome itself.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

This source names Italy directly: "France-Presse, carried by The Local Italy."

The kingdom unified the Italian peninsula between 1859 and 1870 and was replaced by a republic in 1946.

This source names Italy directly: "the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy, resolving the Roman Question and establishing Vatican City as a sovereign state."

This source names Italy directly: "the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy, is the primary diplomatic instrument that established the modern Vatican City State and resolved the decades-long Roman Question between the papacy and the..."

Source Lateran TreatyThe Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy

This source names Italy directly: "places in fifteenth century Italy as a playing card game with no Egyptian or Hebrew connection."

Source Le Monde primitif, analyse et compare avec le monde moderne, Volume VIIIAntoine Court de Gebelin, with an essay by the Comte de Mellet

This source names Italy directly: "he practiced and taught in northern Italy, not independent scholarship testing whether the methods he sets out actually predict anything."

Source Liber AstronomiaeGuido Bonatti

This source names Italy directly: "an international co-production of Italy, France and Britain on a $35 million budget."

Source Little Buddha (1993 film) (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Italy directly: "reaching Syria, North Africa and Italy."

Forms much of the sea's northern shore and hosts Rome

Penates, Deities

This source names Italy directly: "Aeneas carried the Penates of Troy to Italy, where they became ancestral guardians of the Roman people as a whole as well as of individual households."

Source The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th editionSimon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.)

This source names Italy directly: "Church of Reconciliation in Caserta, Italy, a Pentecostal congregation."

This source names Italy directly: "Church of Reconciliation in Caserta, Italy, the first such visit by a pope to a Pentecostal church."

This source names Italy directly: "published 10 March 2019, on the Rome Italy Temple dedication, confirming President Nelson's 9 March 2019 meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican the day before, the first meeting in history between..."

This source names Italy directly: "in Erba, in the Diocese of Milan, Italy, in 1983."

This source names Italy directly: "10 March 2019 dedication of the Rome Italy Temple by President Russell M."

This source names Italy directly: "Carried out of Spain after the 1492 expulsion, it surfaced in Italy by the sixteenth century and was purchased by the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo in 1894."

Source National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo Haggadah Catalogue RecordNational Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovinathe holders' own account

This source names Italy directly: "to the Penates on his arrival in Italy."

This source names Italy directly: "The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars, T."

This source names Italy directly: "a barite mineral found near Bologna, Italy and discovered around 1602 by the shoemaker and alchemist Vincenzo Cascariolo to glow after exposure to sunlight, one of the earliest documented..."

This source names Italy directly: "flowering in Languedoc and northern Italy to its destruction by crusade and inquisition."

Source The Cathars (Lambert, Blackwell, 1998)Malcolm Lambert

This source names Italy directly: "The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Jacob Burckhardt's 1860 study, is the foundational historical work that first framed the Italian Renaissance as a distinct cultural era with its own..."

The relic is kept in Naples Cathedral.

This source names Italy directly: "living in the Piedmont valleys of Italy and in Argentina, Uruguay and the United States."

This source names Italy directly: "1745, addressed to the bishops of Italy, restating that profit demanded from a loan contract alone remains sinful usury while confirming that "extrinsic titles," legitimate reasons entirely separate..."

This source names Italy directly: "the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Russia, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and historian Micheal Clodfelter's reference compilation for its noncombatant..."

Source World War I Casualties (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Italy directly: "marble bust was uncovered at Otricoli, Italy, in 1775, during an excavation financed by Pope Pius VI, and has stood since in the Sala Rotonda of the Museo Pio-Clementino at the Vatican Museums..."

Source Wikipedia, "Zeus of Otricoli"Wikipedia contributors

Contains

Assisi, Cities
Florence, Cities
Milan, Cities
Naples, Cities
Rome, Cities

Rome is the capital of modern Italy, and Vatican City, a separate sovereign state, lies within it.

Source Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A HistoryMary Beard, John North and Simon Price

Its own text: "the freestanding campanile of Pisa Cathedral," built in the Pisan Romanesque style.

Trent, Cities

Trent is in the Adige valley in northern Italy.

Source Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 volumesNorman P. Tanner (ed.)
Turin, Cities
Venice, Cities

Originated Here

Modern Italy holds Rome, the Pantheon and the fabric of the old religion.

Etruscans, Cultures

A Roman feast of the fifth to sixth century, later the English quarter day.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Spread Events Here

The city of Rome.

Source Tacitus, Annals, Book XVPublius Cornelius Tacitus

Anchored to Italy as the seat of the Roman Empire the edict governed, matching this atlas's own existing convention for empire-wide Roman religious policy.

Sicily, no dedicated Sicily entity exists in this catalog; anchored to Italy, the nearest real place entity, an approximation named rather than silently rounded.

Source Emirate of Sicily (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Anchored to Italy as the seat of the imperial authority issuing each edict; both persecutions were enforced empire-wide, and Decius's edict and the harshest enforcement of the Great Persecution under Galerius and Maximinus Daia were felt most heavily in Egypt and the eastern provinces, not in Italy itself, an approximation named here rather than rounded silently.

Mediolanum, modern Milan, applied empire-wide.

Source Codex Theodosianus (The Theodosian Code)Compiled under Theodosius II
Sources
1. Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020
Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2025View the Source
2. The World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency)
Central Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence AgencyView the Source
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
4. International Religious Freedom Report
United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom, US Department of State, 2023View the Source
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
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