there still exists the court of the spiritual potentate which in
1879 consisted of 1821 persons. Protestants number some
65,000, of whom half are Italian and half foreign. Of the former
22,500 are Waldensians. The number of Jews was returned
as 36,000, but is certainly higher. There are, besides, in Italy
some 2500 members of the Greek Orthodox Church. There
were in 1901 20,707 parishes in Italy, 68,444 secular clergy and
48,043 regulars (monks, lay brothers and nuns). The size of
parishes varies from province to province, Sicily having larger
parishes in virtue of the old Sicilian church laws, and Naples,
and some parts of central Italy, having the smallest. The
Italian parishes had in 1901 a total gross revenue, including
assignments from the public worship endowment fund, of
£1,280,000 or an average of £63 per parish; 51% of this gross
sum consists of revenue from glebe lands.
The kingdom is divided into 264 sees and ten abbeys, or prelatures nullius dioceseos. The dioceses are as follows:—
A. 6 suburbicarian sees—Ostia and Velletri, Porto and Sta Rufina, Albano, Frascati, Palestrina, Sabina—all held by cardinal bishops.
B. 74 sees immediately subject to the Holy See, of which 12 are archiepiscopal and 61 episcopal.
C. 37 ecclesiastical provinces, each under a metropolitan, composed of 148 suffragan dioceses. Their position is indicated in the following table:—
| Metropolitans. | Suffragans. |
| Acerenza-Matera | Anglona-Tursi, Tricarico, Venosa. |
| Bari | Conversano, Ruvo-Bitonto. |
| Benevento | S. Agata de’ Goti, Alife, Ariano, Ascoli Satriano Cerignola, Avellino, Bojano, Bovino, Larino, Lucera, S. Severo, Telese (Cerreto), Termoli. |
| Bologna | Faenza, Imola. |
| Brindisi and Ostuni | No suffragan. |
| Cagliari | Galtelli-Nuoro, Iglesias, Ogliastra. |
| Capua | Caiazzo, Calvi-Teano, Caserta, Isernia-Venafro, Sessa. |
| Chieti and Vasto | No suffragan. |
| Conza and Campagna | S. Angelo de’ Lombardi-Bisaccia, Lacedonia, Muro Lucano. |
| Fermo | Macerata-Tolentino, Montalto, Ripatransone, S. Severino. |
| Florence | Borgo S. Sepolcro, Colle di Val d’Elsa, Fiesole, S. Miniato, Modigliana, Pistoia-Prato. |
| Genoa | Albenga, Bobbio, Chiavari, Savona-Noli, Tortona, Ventimiglia. |
| Lanciano and Ortona | No suffragan. |
| Manfredonia and Viesti | No suffragan. |
| Messina | Lipari, Nicosia, Patti. |
| Milan | Bergamo, Brescia, Como, Crema, Cremona, Lodi, Mantua, Pavia. |
| Modena | Carpi, Guastalla, Massa-Carrara, Reggio. |
| Monreale | Caltanisetta, Girgenti. |
| Naples | Acerra, Ischia, Nola, Pozzuoli. |
| Oristano | Ales-Terralba. |
| Otranto | Gallipoli, Lecce, Ugento. |
| Palermo | Cefalù, Mazzara, Trapani. |
| Pisa | Leghorn, Pescia, Pontremoli, Volterra. |
| Ravenna | Bertinoro, Cervia, Cesena, Comacchio, Forlì, Rimini, Sarsina. |
| Reggio Calabria | Bova, Cassano, Catanzaro, Cotrone, Gerace, Nicastro, Oppido, Nicotera-Tropea, Squillace. |
| Salerno | Acerno, Capaccio-Vallo, Diano, Marsico-Nuovo and Potenza, Nocera dei Pagani, Nusco, Policastro. |
| Sassari | Alghero, Ampurias and Tempio, Bisarhio, Bosa. |
| S. Severino | Cariati. |
| Siena | Chiusi-Pienza, Grosseto, Massa Marittima, Sovana-Pitigliano. |
| Syracuse | Caltagirone, Noto, Piazza-Armerina. |
| Sorrento | Castellammare. |
| Taranto | Castellaneta, Oria. |
| Trani-Nazareth-Barletta, Bisceglie | Andria. |
| Turin | Acqui, Alba, Aosta, Asti, Cuneo, Fossano, Ivrea, Mondovi, Pinerolo, Saluzzo, Susa. |
| Urbino | S. Angelo in Vado-Urbania, Cagli-Pergola, Fossombrone, Montefeltro, Pesaro, Sinigaglia. |
| Venice (patriarch) | Adria, Belluno-Feltre, Ceneda (Vittorio), Chioggia, Concordia-Portogruaro, Padua, Treviso, Verona, Vicenza. |
| Vercelli | Alessandria della Paglia, Biella, Casale, Monferrato, Novara, Vigevano. |
Twelve archbishops and sixty-one bishops are independent of all metropolitan supervision, and hold directly of the Holy See. The archbishops are those of Amalfi, Aquila, Camerino and Treia, Catania, Cosenza, Ferrara, Gaeta, Lucca, Perugia, Rossano, Spoleto, and Udine, and the bishops those of Acireale, Acquapendente, Alatri, Amelia, Anagni, Ancona-Umana, Aquino-Sora-Pontecorvo, Arezzo, Ascoli, Assisi, Aversa, Bagnorea, Borgo San Donnino, Cava-Sarno, Città di Castello, Città della Pieve, Cività Castellana-Orte-Gallese, Corneto-Civita Vecchia, Cortona, Fabriano-Matelica, Fano, Ferentino, Foggia, Foligno, Gravina-Montepeloso, Gubbio, Jesi, Luni-Sarzana and Bragnato, S. Marco-Bisignano, Marsi (Pescina), Melfi-Rapolla, Mileto, Molfetta-Terlizzi-Giovennazzo, Monopoli, Montalcino, Montefiascone, Montepulciano, Nardo, Narni, Nocera in Umbria, Norcia, Orvieto, Osimo-Cingoli, Parma, Penne-Atri, Piacenza, Poggio Mirteto, Recanati-Loreto, Rieti, Segni, Sutri-Nepi, Teramo, Terni, Terracina-Piperno-Sezze, Tivoli, Todi, Trivento, Troia, Valva-Sulmona, Veroli, Viterbo-Toscanella. Excluding the diocese of Rome and suburbicarian sees, each see has an average area of 430 sq. m. and a population of 121,285 souls. The largest sees exist in Venetia and Lombardy, and the smallest in the provinces of Naples, Leghorn, Forlì, Ancona, Pesaro, Urbino, Caserta, Avellino and Ascoli. The Italian sees (exclusive of Rome and of the suburbicarian sees) have a total annual revenue of £206,000 equal to an average of £800 per see. The richest is that of Girgenti, with £6304, and the poorest that of Porto Maurizio, with only £246. In each diocese is a seminary or diocesan school.
In 1855 an act was passed in the Sardinian states for the disestablishment of all houses of the religious orders not engaged in preaching, teaching or the care of the sick, of all chapters of collegiate churches not having a cure of souls or existing in towns of less than 20,000 inhabitants, and of all private Religious Foundations. benefices for which no service was paid by the holders. The property and money thus obtained were used to form an ecclesiastical fund (Cassa Ecclesiastica) distinct from the finances of the state. This act resulted in the suppression of 274 monasteries with 3733 friars, of 61 nunneries with 1756 nuns and of 2722 chapters and benefices. In 1860 and 1861 the royal commissioners (even before the constitution of the new kingdom of Italy had been formally declared) issued decrees by which there were abolished—(1) in Umbria, 197 monasteries and 102 convents with 1809 male and 2393 female associates, and 836 chapters or benefices; (2) in the Marches, 292 monasteries and 127 convents with 2950 male and 2728 female associates; (3) in the Neapolitan provinces, 747 monasteries and 275 convents with 8787 male and 7493 female associates. There were thus disestablished in seven or eight years 2075 houses of the regular clergy occupied by 31,649 persons; and the confiscated property yielded a revenue of £398,298. And at the same time there had been suppressed 11,889 chapters and benefices of the secular clergy, which yielded an annual income of £199,149. The value of the capital thus potentially freed was estimated at £12,000,000; though hitherto the ecclesiastical possessions in Lombardy, Emilia, Tuscany and Sicily had been untouched. As yet the Cassa Ecclesiastica had no right to dispose of the property thus entrusted to it; but in 1862 an act was passed by which it transferred all its real property to the national domain, and was credited with a corresponding amount by the exchequer. The property could now be disposed of like the other property of the domain; and except in Sicily, where the system of emphyteusis was adopted, the church lands began to be sold by auction. To encourage the poorer classes of the people to become landholders, it was decided that the lots offered for sale should be small, and that the purchaser should be allowed to pay by five or ten yearly instalments. By a new act in 1866 the process of secularization was extended to the whole kingdom. All the members of the suppressed communities received full exercise of all the ordinary political and civil rights of laymen; and annuities were granted to all those who had taken permanent religious vows prior to the 18th of January 1864. To priests and choristers, for example, of the proprietary or endowed orders were assigned £24 per annum if they were upwards of sixty years of age, £16 if upwards of 40, and £14, 8s. if younger. The Cassa Ecclesiastica was abolished, and in its stead was instituted a Fondo pel Culto, or public worship fund. From the general confiscation were exempted the buildings actually used for public worship, as episcopal residences or seminaries, &c., or which had been appropriated to the use of schools, poorhouses, hospitals, &c.; as well as the buildings, appurtenances, and movable property of the abbeys of Monte Casino, Della Cava dei Tirreni, San Martino della Scala, Monreale, Certosa near Pavia, and other establishments of the same kind of importance as architectural or historical monuments. An annuity equal to the ascertained revenue of the suppressed institutions was placed to the credit of the fund in the government 5% consols. A fourth of this sum was to be handed to the communes to be employed on works of beneficence or education as soon as a surplus was obtained from that part of the annuity assigned for the payment of monastic pensions; and in Sicily, 209 communes entered on their privileges as soon as the patrimony was liquidated. Another act in 1867 decreed the suppression of certain foundations which had escaped the action of previous measures, put an extraordinary tax of 30% on the whole of the patrimony of the church, and granted the government the right of issuing 5% bonds sufficient to bring into the treasury £16,000,000,
