Yet an income of--if we make allowance for the unrecorded sums--something like £200,000 a year, at a time when the patrimonies were mostly alienated, was enormous, and there is no reason to doubt the statement of all historians that it came largely from tainted sources. John's fiscal policy is a stage in the degeneration of the Papacy. Clement IV. had, in 1267, reserved to the Pope the income of the benefices of clerks who died at Rome, and Boniface VIII. had enlarged this by including all who died within a two days' journey of Rome. John extended the law throughout the Church and demanded three years' revenue for each that fell vacant. By his Bull _Execrabilis_ he ordered all clerks (except his cardinals) who held several benefices to select one and surrender the rest to the Apostolic See. He created bishoprics--he made six out of the bishopric of Toulouse--by subdividing actual sees (on the plea, of course, that the duties would be better discharged), and by an astute system of promotions he, when a see fell vacant, contrived to move several men and secure the "first fruits" on their appointments: a vacant archbishopric, for instance, would be filled by a higher bishop, the higher bishopric by a lower bishop, and so on. It was possible to put a complexion of reform on all these measures, but clergy and laity muttered a charge of avarice. Then there were the incomes from kingdoms and duchies (England, Aragon, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and Spoleto) which owed an annual tribute, the yield of the surviving patrimonies, the taxes on dispensations and grants, and a certain beginning of the sale of indulgences which, unfortunately, we cannot closely ascertain. John was not wholly immersed in finance and insensible of higher duties. He created universities at Cahors and Perugia, regulated the studies at Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris, and even (as we shall see) concerned himself with the state of the East. But the only council we trace under his control (held at St. Ruf, in 1326) was almost entirely concerned with ecclesiastical property and immunities, and his correspondence is, in effect, almost wholly fiscal and political. He greatly enlarged the Rota (or legal and business part of the Curia), and filled it with a cosmopolitan staff of clerks, to deal with this large and lucrative side of his affairs. It is pleaded that the Papacy could not discharge its duties without this wealth and power; and it must seem unfortunate that the acquisition and maintenance of the wealth and power left so little time for the duties they were to enable the Pope to discharge.