The existence of the Ecclesiastical Courts, in which Canon law was administered, we have already mentioned in discussing the quarrel of Henry II of England and Thomas Becket.[22] Founded originally to deal with purely ecclesiastical cases and officials, they tended in time to draw within their competence any one over whom the Church could claim protection and any causes that affected the rites of the Catholic Church. It was a wide net with a very small mesh, as the Angevin Henry II and other lay rulers of Europe found. The protection that spread its wings over priests and clerks stretched also to crusaders, widows, and orphans: the jurisdiction of the Church Courts claimed not merely moral questions such as heresy, sacrilege, and perjury, but all matters connected with probate of wills, marriage and divorce, and even libel. Rome became a hive of ecclesiastical lawyers, with the Pope, like the Roman emperors of old, the supreme law-giver and final court of appeal for all Church Courts of Europe. His rule was absolute, at least in theory, for by his power of ‘dispensation’ he could set aside, if he considered advisable, the very Canon law his officials administered. He could also summon to his _curia_, or papal court, any case on which he wished to pronounce judgement, at whatever stage in its litigation in an inferior ecclesiastical court. Under the Pope in an ordered hierarchy, corresponding to the feudal arrangement of lay society, came the metropolitans, who received from his hand or from those of his legates the narrow woollen scarf, or _pallium_, that was the symbol of their authority. Next in order came the diocesan bishops with their ‘officials’, the archdeacons and rural deans, each with their own court and measure of jurisdiction. The Pope’s will went forth to Christendom in the form of letters called ‘bulls’, from the _bulla_ or heavy seal that was attached to them. Against those who paid no heed to their contents he could hurl either the weapon of excommunication--that is, of personal outlawry from the Church--or else, if the offender were a king or a city, the still more blasting ‘interdict’ that fell on ruler and ruled alike. The land that groaned under an interdict was bereft of all spiritual comfort: no priest might say public Mass, baptize a new-born child, perform the marriage service, console the dying with ‘supreme unction’, or bury the dead. The very church bells would ring no more.