Violent conflict was a feature of the early papacy as theological factions or Roman families contested the Throne of Saint Peter and as popes responded to the collapse of Roman authority by assuming responsibility for the defense of Rome. By 1000 CE, popes were temporal rulers, and like their secular counterparts they considered military force a legitimate instrument. The papacy participated in the Crusades, principally as propagandist and financier, and engaged militarily in the “Italian Wars” (1494–1559). Subsequently, papal military capabilities declined and during the Napoleonic Wars the papacy offered little resistance against French armies that twice seized Rome. Under Pius IX, serious efforts to improve the papal military were insufficient to prevent the absorption of Rome and the Papal States into the kingdom of Italy. Reduced to a handful of palace guards, subsequent pontiffs abandoned any martial posture, although these household guards protected the Vatican during World Wars I and II.

The era of the Reformation profoundly changed the papal institution. In Italy, it allowed for the assertion of primatial authority and a greater oversight of the Italian Church as well as a capacity to influence popular and elite culture through the medium of the Inquisition and the Index. Rather than attempting to achieve Italian liberty, it now strove to protect the peace and religious orthodoxy of the peninsula. In the wider European sphere, during this period the papacy effectively lost contact with most of Protestant Europe, but through an articulated system of nunciatures and, from 1622, through Propaganda Fide, it remained an important influence throughout the Catholic world, projecting itself as a peacemaker among secular powers, the foe of heresy and Islam, the upholder of the decrees of Trent – conceived, however, as a prescriptive set of disciplinary and doctrinal norms – and the defender of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and privileges.

An overview of representations in church decoration, legal texts, romances, chronicles, and political allegories – notwithstanding the differences of these contexts – can help us to recognize additional patterns. On one end of the spectrum, we find the question of religious imagery. In Last Judgement scenes naked female (and male) figures are represented in large numbers. Physical aggression against the human body is explicit and, in this respect, women suffer violence comparable to sodomites. The use of force is endorsed. Although the imagery is intended to denounce lustful acts, the paintings themselves effectively promote sex crimes. This subversive scenario can lead to the sanitization of the violent encounter between women and their tormentors (missing in the case of sodomites). The two political allegories in Padua and Siena mark the other end of the spectrum. I would like to believe that Giotto di Bondone’s Injustice comes closest to a universal denunciation of rape. Here the display of the naked female victim reinforces the explicit rendering of sexual aggression. The scene is carefully contextualized, which discards sanitizing readings. The radicalism of this fresco is striking even compared to Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s War, where, instead of nudity, an equally general denunciation relies on the indicators of bridal status and abduction. Because of its reference to marriage, Lorenzetti’s work is closer to patriarchal structures than Giotto’s. Nevertheless, these two allegories constitute the pinnacle of visualizing civic political thought in the epoch and sketch the utopia of a rape-free society.