of a good emperor, consisting essentially in a thorough reform of the system of Church law.1

§ XIII.-The College of Cardinals.

The two main pillars of the new Papacy, and, at the same time, the two institutions which knew how to fetter the Popes themselves, and make them subservient to their own interests, were the College of Cardinals and the Curia. In proportion as the rupture, partly conscious, partly unconscious, between the Papacy and the old Church order and legislation was consummated, the College or Senate of Cardinals took shape, and in 1059, when the right of papal election was transferred to it, became a body of electors.2 Through the Legations, and their share in the administration of what had become

1 Rog. Bacon, Compend. Stud. ed. Brewer, pp. 339-403. "Totus clerus vacat superbiæ, luxuriæ, avaritiæ," etc. Here, too, he dwells on the decay of all learning for forty years past, attributing it principally to the corruption of Church law.

2 [Before 1059, the right of election resided in the whole body of Roman clergy, down to the acolytes, with the concurrence of the magistrates and the citizens. Nicolas II., acting under Hildebrand's advice, issued a Bull conferring the elective franchise exclusively on the College of Cardinals, reserving, however, to the German Emperor the right of confirmation. By a Bull of Alexander III., in the third Lateran Council (1179), two-thirds of the votes were required for a valid election, and this regulation is still in force. See Cartwright's Papal Conclaves, pp. 11-16, and cf. Hemans's Medieval Christianity, pp. 73, 101, where the Bull of Nicolas is quoted at length. The forms to be observed in Conclave, still in force, were fixed by a constitution of Gregory X. in the Second Council of Lyons, 1272. -Cartwright, pp. 20 seq.; Hemans, pp. 362-3.—TR.]

an unlimited sovereignty, the cardinals rapidly rose to a height from which they looked down on the bishops, who, as late as the eleventh century, took precedence of them in Councils. While the new system of

Papalism was yet in its birth-throes, in 1054, the cardinal-bishops claimed precedence of archbishops; but in 1196 the archbishops still always took precedence of them. At the Synod of Lyons, in 1245, the precedence of all cardinals, even presbyters and deacons, to all the bishops of the Christian world was first fixed, and never afterwards disputed. By degrees it came to this, that bishops could only venture to speak to cardinals on their knees, and were treated by them as servants.1

It was not without set purpose that the Gregorians, Anselm and Gregory of Padua, and Gratian after them, had incorporated into their codes those passages of St. Jerome which affirm the original equality of bishops and presbyters, and reduce the superiority of bishops to mere customary law. These short-sighted architects of the papal system did not perceive that they were thereby laying the axe to the root of the Roman Primacy; all they wanted was to pave the way for

1 See an anonymous French writing of the end of the fourteenth century, given in Paulin Paris, Manuscr. Franc. vi. 265.

the superiority of cardinals, and with it the domination of the Curia, and to build up the papal system on the ruins of the ancient episcopal system. As their views of the Church and the hierarchy were drawn exclusively from Gratian, bishops towards the end of the thirteenth century were brought to allow themselves to be made cardinal-presbyters, and even to regard as a promotion this degradation of the Episcopate to the Presbyterate, which in the first centuries of the Church would have been thought a monstrosity. In the palmy days of exemptions, of the overthrow of all ancient Church laws, and the loosening of the diocesan tie, at a time when the parochial system was torn to pieces by the strolling mendicant monks, this too became part of the system.

The rival principles of a cardinal oligarchy and of papal absolutism were long trembling in the balance in the Roman Church. There were Popes like Martin IV. and Clement V. who carried out their French policy against the resistance of the Italian cardinals; Popes before whom the cardinals scarcely dared to lift their eyes or utter a word, like Boniface VIII. and Paul IV.; Popes who put to death their cardinals, like Urban VI., Alexander VI., and Leo x. But, as a rule, the College

of Cardinals, to which the Pope owed his election, and which preserved the interests and traditions of the papal system, took the lead. They took care that the Popes should give up nothing of the accepted principles or let drop any particle of the plenary authority Rome had gained, and took in fact, as well as in theory, their full part in the government of the Church. They contrived to make the Popes in many cases the mere executive of their will. The later and still prevalent device, of carrying out plans the majority are opposed to with the aid of two or three cardinals like-minded with the Pope, and without consulting the College, was hardly adopted in the thirteenth century, or only under Martin IV. But Boniface VIII., Clement V., and John XXII., and the Popes after the middle of the fifteenth century, nearly all understood and adopted it energetically, and the more securely as they held the greater part of the body in their hands, through the dispensation of benefices and emoluments.

The struggle between absolute monarchy, and oligarchy lasted really for two centuries. The cardinals wanted the Pope to be absolute and omnipotent in his external rule over national Churches, but they sought to bind him by conditions at the time of

election, and by a recognised share in the government in the name of the Curia. Innocent VI., in 1353, had repudiated any such conditions, on the ground that the papal power bestowed by God in all its plenitude could not be limited. But the attempt was constantly renewed. A series of articles was put forward in conclave, which the new Pope, immediately after his election, and before consecration, swore to observe, partly drawn up in the interests of the cardinals, as, e.g., for a participation of revenues between the Pope and cardinals, and their being irremoveable, partly with a view of restricting the worst acts of extravagance and arbitrary power on the part of the Popes, by requiring the assent of the cardinals. Eugenius IV. confirmed these articles without thereby really binding himself.1 Pius II. took a similar oath, and swore to reform the Roman Curia. It was an urgent necessity to keep secret these capitulations, which in themselves presented a gloomy picture of the misgovernment of the Church, as the Popes of that age, in addition to all the other bitter complaints against them, would have been charged on all sides with perjury. Pius II., in spite of the articles he had sworn to, acted just as arbitrarily as his predecessors. Nevertheless 1 Raynald. Annal. ann. 1431.