[117] The primate is the ranking archbishop of a country.
[118] "Exemption" was the practice by which monastic houses were withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the bishops and made directly subject to the pope. The practice seems to have originated in the X Century with the famous monastery of Cluny (918), but it was almost universal in the case of the houses of the mendicant orders. The bishops made it a constant subject of complaint, and the Lateran Council (Dec. 19, 1516) passed a decree abolishing all monastic exemptions, though the decree does not seem to have been effective. See Creighton, History of the Papacy, V, 266.
[119] i. e., Antichrist. See above, p. 73, note 2.
[120] The papal interference in the conduct of the local Church courts was as flagrant as in the appointments, of which Luther has heretofore spoken. At Worms (1521) it was complained that cases were cited to Rome as a court of first instance, and the demand was made that a regular course of appeals should be re-established. Wrede, op. cit., II, 672, 718.
[121] The reference is Canon V of the Council of Sardica (A. D. 343), incorporated in the canon law as a canon of Nicaea (Pt. II, qu. 6, c. 5). See Köhler, L. und die Kg., 151.
[122] i. e., Appealed to Rome for decision. This is the subject of the first of the 102 Gravamina of 1521 (Wrede, op. cit., II, 672).
[123] The judges in the bishops' courts. The complaint is that they interfere with the administration of justice by citing into their courts cases which properly belong in the lay courts, and enforce their verdicts (usually fines) by means of ecclesiastical censures. The charges against these courts are specified in the Gravamina of 1521, Nos. 73-100 (Wrede, op. cit., II, 694-703).
[124] The signatura gratiae and the signatura justitiae were the bureaus through which the pope regulated those matters of administration which belonged to his own special prerogative.
[125] See above, pp. 88 f.
[126] See above, p. 88, note 3.