§ 9. FINANCIAL POLICY OF THE AVIGNON POPES. 83
mercialisrn in the dispensation of papal appointments sown in preceding centuries grew to ripe fruitage. Simony was an old sin. Gregory VII. fought against it. John legalized its practice.
Freewill offerings and Peter's pence had been made to popes from of old. States, held as fiefs of the papal chair, had paid fixed tribute. For the expenses of the crusades, Innocent III. had inaugurated the system of taxing the entire Church. The receipts from this source developed the love of money at the papal court and showed its power, and, no matter how abstemious a pope might be in his own habits, greed grew like a weed in his ecclesiastical household. St. Bernard, d. 1153, complained bitterly of the cupidity of the Romans, who made every possible monetary gain out of the spiritual favors of which the Vatican was the dispenser. By indulgence, this appetite became more and more exacting, and under John and his successors the exploitation^f Christendom was reduced by the curia to a fine art.
The theorj- of ecclesiastical appointments^ held in, the Avignon ^erio^d, was that, by reason of the fulness^of j)Ow^r which resides in the Apostolic See, the pope may dispense tijl fhe dignities and benefices of the Cliristiaa w^rld. The pope is absolute in his own house, that is, the Church.
This principle had received its full statement from Clement IV., 1265.1 Clement's bull declared that the supreme pontiff is superior to any customs which were in vogue of filling Church offices and conflicted with his prerogative. In particular he made it a law that all offices, dignities, and benefices were subject to papal appointment which became vacant apud sedem apostolicam or in curia, that is, while the holders were visiting the papal court. This law was modified by Gregory X. at the Council of Lyons, 1274, in such a way as to restore the right of election, provided the pope failed to make an appointment within a month. ^ Boniface VIII., 1295, again ex-
1 Licet ecdesiarum. See Lib. sextus, III. 4, 2. Friedberg's ed., II. 102, Lux, p. 5, says romanus poiitifex supremus collator, ad quern plenaria de omnibus totius orbis beneficiis eccles. dispositio jure nature pertinet, etc.
2 Lux, p. 12 ; Hefele : Conciliengesch. VI. 151.
84 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
tended the enactment by putting in the pope's hands all livings whose occupants died within two days' journey of the curia, wherever it might at the time be.^ Innocent IV. was the first pope to exercise the right of reservation or collation on a large scale. In 1248, out of 20 places in the cathedral of Constance, 17 were occupied by papal appointees, and there were 14 " expectants " under appointment in advance of the deaths of the occupants. In 1255, Alexander IV. limited the number of such expectants to 4 for each church. In 1265, Clement IV. forbade all elections in England in the usual way until his commands were complied with, and reserved tliem to himself. The same pontiff, on the pretext of disturbances going on in Sicily, made a general reservation of all appointments in the realm, otherwise subject to episcopal or capitular choice. Urban IV. withdrew the right of election from the Ghibelline cities of Lombardy ; Martin IV. and Honorius IV. ajjplied the same rule to the cathedral appointments of Sicily and Aragon ; Honorius IV. monopolized all the appointments of the Latin Church in the East; andBoniface Vni.,in viewof Philip IV. 's resistance, reserved to himself the appointments to all " cathedral and regular churches" in France. Of 16 French sees which became vacant, 1295-1301, only one was filled in the usual way by election.2
With the haughty assumption of Clement IV. 's bull and the practice of later popes, papal writers fell in. Augustinus Triumphus, writing in 1324, asserted that the pope is above all canon law and has the right to dispose of all ecclesiastical places. 3 The papal system of appointments included provisions, expectances, and reservations.^
1 Lux, p. 13 ; Friedberg : Eeservationen in Herzog, XVI. 672.
2 Lux, p. 17 sqq., and Ilaller, p. 38, with autliorities.
3 Verum super ipsuin jus, potest dispensare, etc. Quoted by Gieseler, IL 123.
* A provision, that is, providere ecclesice de episcopo signified in the first instance a promotion, and afterwards the papal right to supersede appointments made in the usual way by the pope's own arbitrary appointment. The methods of papal appointment are given in Liber sextns, I. 16, 18 ; Friedberg's ed., II. n5'.>. See Stubbs, Const. Hist., III. 320. "Collations" was also used as a general term to cover this papal privilege. The formulas