Abstract

The article considers the features of the works that since mid-nineteenth century onwards studied the princedom whose the Popes were political sovereigns, and it spots the main lack of this literature in the scarcity of studies about the staff of peripheral offices, who were instead the men that everyday represented the face of papal power in front of its subjects; then, it reconstructs chronology, prosopography and careers of the pontifical governors of Comacchio since the devolution of Ferrara duchy upon the Holy See (1598) up to Napoleonic era (1796) and it compares them with the ones of other kinds of pontifical officials, in order to understand what was the social outline of the staff who served the Pope in his capacity as a prince, how the members of the aforesaid staff differentiated according to the different roles they held, and in which ways the peripherical State administration, that gradually replaces bureaucratic to patronage attitudes, could be factor of political agreement and social cohesion to Pontifical State.