Papacy
The Papacy is the office of the pope. Besides its religious role as the official Catholic order, it acted as a government ruling over a large part of Italy (of which only remains today the Vatican city-state enclaved in Rome). Its capital was Rome.
Historically, the Papacy has been the subject of urban legend and ancient controversy. Tales of secret 'behind-the-scenes' power-brokers have caught the attention of modern fiction, with Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code weaving the Catholic Church and the Papacy into a story that casts them as conspirators attempting to cover up a secret so powerful that it risks destroying Christianity as a whole. Brown's other work, Angels and Demons, sheds light on the Papacy's history of intolerance toward cultural, philosophical, or scientific change, and how such a policy comes back to haunt them with death and murder throughout Rome itself.
While the Pope is, by tradition, always male, stories have been told of at least one woman that was elected to the position; nicknamed 'Pope Joan', written accounts consider her to be a fair-minded and well-liked Pope. However, her secret was revealed in an unspecified way; some versions of the story say that she gave birth on a crowded street during a Papal procession. Other more 'generous' stories say that she lived comfortably, well into her later years. Whether she lived or died is largely irrelevant, however -- to this day, historians are divided on whether she even existed in the first place.
The Papacy was, in the centuries before Italy's unification as a single nation-state, the official government to which all other Italian cities answered. The Pope is no longer considered to be the Italian head of state, but is still recognized as a major player in world politics today.