Legates, another instrument of the papal power, were divided into two classes: the first, chosen in the very places in which they exercised their functions; the second, dispatched from the bosom of the Roman court, like arms extended by St. Peter, over the wide extent of Christendom. Among the former are also distinguished those who received an express and personal mission, and those who born, as it may be said, legates, held this title from a privilege annexed to the episcopal or metropolitan see which they filled. Of all these various ministers, or commissaries of the pontifical government, the most powerful would always have been detached from their proper centre, if the very excess of their pomp and power had not too often humbled, in every kingdom, the prelates they came to eclipse and to rule. Their splendour, defrayed in each place by the churches, the monasteries, and the people, excited less of admiration than of murmurs; and even, after the third council of the Lateran had reduced them to twenty-five horses, they were still considered burdensome. It became necessary to dispose of sacred vases in order to make them presents; and to purchase at enormous prices the decisions, answers, favours, commissions, one had occasion to demand of them. “The legations, says Fleury²⁵⁴ were mines of gold to the cardinals, and they usually returned from them loaded with riches.” Their avarice was so notorious and so unchangeable, that St. Bernard²⁵⁵ speaks of a disinterested legate as a prodigy; but their pride, more intolerable still, displayed too openly beneath the eyes of monarchs, the pretensions of the court of Rome, and provoked a signal resistance. Very early these Legates ‘a latere’ became unacceptable in France, and it was ruled, that none should be received there, save when they should have been demanded and approved of by the king: this is one of the articles of the Gallican liberties. ²⁵⁵ 4th Disc, on Ecclesiastical History, no. 11. ²⁵⁶ De Consider. 1. 4, p 4, 5. The thirteenth century is that in which the popes arrived at their highest pitch of power: councils, crusades, anathemas, canonical codes, monastic orders, legates, missionaries, inquisitors, all the spiritual arms, re-tempered and sharpened by Innocent III. were, during this century, directed against thrones, and often triumphed over them. Innocent bequeathed a universal monarchy to his successors: they have been unacquainted with the means of fully preserving this empire; but, in the year 1300, some small portion of wisdom had sufficed to Boniface VIII. to have been still the first potentate in Europe, and, notwithstanding the disgrace of this last pontificate, the influence of the Holy See still continued to sway that of other courts. CHAPTER VII. FOURTEENTH CENTURY