[Sidenote: Papal Legates.]
The most manifest agents and organs of papal authority throughout Christendom were the legates. The Pope had appointed permanent representatives called Apocrisiaries at Constantinople, and had sent emissaries to General Councils and for other special matters. But from the time of Leo IX legates began to be appointed with a general commission to visit the churches; and Gregory VII developed this method of interference with the local authorities into a regular system. In some cases local hostility was disarmed by the appointment of the Metropolitan as ordinary legate, and the position was accepted with the object of retaining the chief authority upon the spot. Such the Archbishop of Canterbury became after 1135. But the existence of this official did not prevent the despatch from time to time of legates à latere, as they were called. The ordinary legate exercised the concurrent jurisdiction claimed by the Pope, that is, the right of interference in every diocese; these legates coming from the side of the Pope were armed with the power of exercising most of the rights specially reserved for the personal authority of the Pope. The Dictatus Papae asserts that the Pope's legates take precedence of all bishops in a council even though they may be of inferior rank, and Gregory VII applies to their authority the text "He that heareth you heareth me." In 1125 John of Crema, a legate sent to England, presided at a Council at Westminster, where were present ecclesiastics from the archbishops downwards and a number of nobility; and "on Easterday he celebrated the office of the day in the mother church in place of the supreme pontiff, and although he was not a bishop, but merely a Cardinal Priest, he used pontifical insignia." A Metropolitan in his oath of loyalty to the Pope was made to swear that he would treat with all honour the Roman legates in their coming and going, and would help them in their needs; and the procuration or maintenance from all countries which they not only visited, but merely passed through, was arbitrarily assessed. Innocent III enforces it by directing against ecclesiastics who were contumacious a sentence of distraint of goods without any right of appeal. The burden was no light one. Wichmann, Archbishop of Magdeburg, writing on behalf of Frederick I, tells the Pope that the whole Church of the Empire is subject to such heavy exactions at the hands of the papal officials, that both churches and monasteries, which have not enough to supply their own daily wants, are yet compelled "beyond their utmost possibility" to find money for the use of these legates, sustenance for their train of attendants, and accommodation for their horses. In more picturesque language John of Salisbury describes the legates of the Apostolic See as "sometimes raging in the provinces as if Satan had gone forth from the presence of the Lord in order to scourge the Church." It is true that Alexander IV commanded an enquiry into the amount which his legates had demanded under pretext of procuration, and which he heard they had enforced by the sacrilegious use of the powers of excommunication, suspension, and interdict. But the parallel which Clement IV drew between the ordinary legates and the proconsuls and provincial presidents of the early Empire showed how little likelihood there was of redress being got from the Papacy itself.
[Sidenote: Increase of papal ceremony.]
The effect of this absorption of power by the Papacy is to be traced in many directions. Here we may take notice of two of the most remarkable. In the first place, he who had grown from the Vicar of St. Peter to be directly the Vicar of God naturally surrounded himself with an increasing amount of ceremony. The Dictatus Papae claims that the Pope alone can use imperial insignia, and that it is his feet alone that all princes should kiss. We have noticed the disputes which arose when the Pope demanded from Lothair and from Frederick I that the Emperor should perform the office of groom to the Pope—hold his stirrup as he mounted and walk by the side of the mule. St. Bernard rightly points out that in thus appearing in public adorned in jewels and silks, covered with gold, riding a white horse, and surrounded with guards, the Pope was the successor not of Peter, but of Constantine. And if he required so much state outside the Church, much more did he insist upon a special ceremony in the services. Thus at the Mass the Pope received the elements not kneeling at the altar, but seated and on his throne; while the Host was carried before him in procession whenever the Pope went outside his palace.
[Sidenote: Papal infallibility.]
A far more important result of the supreme position accorded to the Papacy was the gradual emergence of the doctrine of papal infallibility. "The Church of Rome," says Gregory VII, "through St. Peter, as it were by some privilege, is from the very beginnings of the faith reckoned by the Holy Fathers the Mother of all the Churches and will so be considered to the very end; for in her no heretic is discerned to have had the rule, and we believe that none such will ever be set over her according to the Lord's special promise. For the Lord Jesus says, 'I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.'" And in accordance with this principle the Dictatus Papae lays it down that "the Roman Church has never erred, nor, as Scripture testifies, will it ever err." Innocent III pertinently asks how he could confirm others in the faith, which is recognised as a special duty of his office, unless he himself were firm in the faith. But many writers, including Innocent himself, believed that it was possible for a Pope to err in some individual point, and that it was the duty of the Church to convert him. Thomas Aquinas, while holding it certain that the judgment of the Church Universal cannot err in these matters which belong to the faith, gives to the Pope alone, as the authority by whom synods are summoned, the final determination of those things which are of faith. Yet even he allows that in matters of fact, such as questions of ownership and criminal charges, false witnesses may lead the judgment of the Church astray.
[Sidenote: Kings and papal claims.]
We have seen that the Papacy did not attain its supremacy without encountering much opposition. But the protests on the part of bishops were unavailing, and they were themselves largely to blame for the height to which the papal power had grown. Such effective remonstrance as there was came from the Kings, though even they were often ready to invoke the papal aid to obtain an advantage against their own ecclesiastics or even their own subjects. Thus in England William II agreed with Urban II that no legate should be sent to the country unless the King was willing to receive him; while Henry II, in the Constitutions of Clarendon, lays it down that no one should appeal to Rome without permission of the King. But Henry's submission after Becket's murder nullified the Constitutions, and John's humiliating surrender made it difficult to object to the exercise of any papal power in England. During the minority of Henry III the papal legate was the most important member of the Council of Regency; and at a later stage, when Henry had quarrelled with his barons, he was glad to obtain the papal support against them. In Germany Hadrian IV complained that Frederick I used force in order to prevent any of his subjects from carrying their causes to Rome; and Otto IV was obliged to swear in 1209 that no hindrance should be placed to ecclesiastical appeals to Rome, a promise subsequently exacted also from Frederick II and from Rudolf.
Not dissimilar was the submission of Alfonso X of Castile, who set his seal to the papal encroachments; but his object was to obtain the support of Rome in his campaign against the local liberties in his kingdom. In his code of law known as "Siete Partidas" power was given to the Pope to deal as he liked with bishops and with benefices and to receive all appeals. On the other hand, St. Louis was not above a bargain with Rome. He refused to the Pope the tithes of the French Church for three years for the object of carrying on the war against Frederick II; but in 1267 he himself obtained the papal consent to take these tithes for the purpose of crusade.