Under Nicholas II. Hildebrand changed the mode of electing the popes. Until his time, all the Romans, clergy, nobles, and people, had assisted in these elections. It was ruled that for the future they should be selected by the cardinal bishops alone, to whom the cardinal clerks should afterwards be united, and they were to close the matter by demanding the approbation of the rest of the clergy, and even that of the body of the faithful. The cardinal bishops are no others than the seven bishops of the Roman territory: Nicholas, in the same decree calls them his fellow countrymen, “comprovinciales episcopi.¹⁴⁴ With respect to the cardinal priests or clerks, it was those who administered the offices of the twenty-eight principal churches of the city of Rome. Long before Nicholas, these twenty-eight priests and these bishops, had been designated by the appellation of ‘cardinals’; but now for the first time, behold them invested with the exclusive and determinate privilege of nominating the new popes: the rest of the clergy and the people preserve no more than the power of rejecting the proposed. Such was the origin of the Electoral College of Cardinals; a college, however, which received subsequently, and by degrees, its present organization. It had, as we see, for its first founder, Nicholas II. or rather Hildebrand. Let us not omit the clause which terminates this decree:¹⁴⁵ ¹⁴⁴ Mabillon. Mus. Italic, v. 2. p. 114.—Fra. Pagi. Breviar. Pontif. Roman, vol. 2, p. 374.—Thomassin. Dicipl. vet. et nor. 1.2, c. lid, 116.—Muratori. de origine Cardinalatus. Ant Ital. v. 6. p. 156. ¹⁴⁵ Concilior. tom. 9. p. 11,36.—Fleury Hiat.Eccles. 1.60 n 31. ‘saving the honour and respect due to king Henry, ‘future emperor, to whom the Apostolic See has given ‘the personal privilege of concurring in the election ‘by consent.’ The rights of the emperor were as yet too firmly founded to permit being silent on them: they satisfy themselves by misrepresenting them, and by referring to them as a concession granted by the Holy See, as a personal privilege with which it was pleased to gratify Henry.