Helmet of Civic Guard Officer PIO IX Papal State, 1848

Officer's helmet, supplied to the Civic Guard of the Papal State, under the regency of Pope Pius IX.

With the revolutionary uprisings of 1848 (Unification of Italy) the use of these "Pre-unification" helmets declined.

The Papal State, also called the State of the Church (the latter was the official name until 1815-16) or the Ecclesiastical State, was the state entity made up of all the territories over which the Holy See exercised its temporal power from 752 to 1870, or more than a millennium.

Its prestige and influence on the European political scene experienced periods of weight during the millennium of its existence; its international projection went beyond the territorial limits that historical circumstances had assigned to it within the Holy Roman Empire, between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age.

The vassalage constraints dictated by the Holy See sometimes influenced important autonomous states such as the Kingdom of Sicily, the Kingdom of Naples, the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of France, the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of Portugal, the Crown of Aragon , the Kingdom of Hungary and other states relating to the period of vassal relationship with the ruler of the Papal State, the Pope, to whom several kings and emperors had to prostrate themselves.

The Papal State ended its existence in 1870, with the conquest following repeated attacks by the Royal Savoy Army (which in the two-year period 1859-1860 took away three legations), with the capture of Rome and the subsequent annexation of the fourth legation and the surrounding area of Rome.