Popes and Emperors 445 The popes had, therefore, many difficulties to overcome in the gigantic task which they undertook of making the Church a great international monarchy, like the Roman Empire, with its capital at Rome. The control exercised by kings and feudal lords in the selection of Church officials had to be done away with. Simony with its degrading effects had to be abolished. The marriage of the clergy had to be checked, for fear that the property and wealth of the Church would go to their families and so be lost to the Church. The first sreat step toward the freeing of the Church from Pope Nicho- ^ ^ las II places the control of the kings and feudal lords was taken by ir'ope the election Nicholas II. In 1059 he issued a remarkable decree which j^^JhlhaTS took the election of the head of the Church once for all out of ^^^j^J'^^^^^"'^^- the hands of both the Emperor and the people of Rome, and placed it definitely and forever in the hands of the cardmals, who represented the Roman clergy. ^ Obviously the object of this decree was to prevent all interference, whether of the dis- tant Emperor, of the local nobility, or of the Roman mob. The college of cardinals still exists and still elects the Pope. The reform party which directed the policy of the popes Opposition to , , J. further had, it hoped, freed the head of the Church from the control ot reforms worldly men by putting his election in the hands of the Roman clergy. It now proposed to emancipate the Church as a whole from the base entanglements of earth: first, by strictly for- bidding the married clergy to perform religious functions and by exhorting their flocks to refuse to attend their ministrations; and secondly, by depriving the kings and feudal lords of their influence over the choice of the bishops and abbots, since this 1 The word " cardinal" (Latin cardinalis, " principal ") was applied to the priests of the various parishes in Rome, to the several deacons connected with the Lateran, — which was the cathedral church of the Roman bishopric, — and, lastly, to six or seven suburban bishops who officiated in turn in the Lateran. The title became a very distinguished one and was sought by ambitious foreign prelates and ecclesiastical statesmen, like Wolsey, Richelieu, and Mazarin. If their official titles were examined, it would be found that each was nominally a cardinal bishop, priest, or deacon of some Roman Church. The number of cardinals varied until fixed, in 1586, at six bishops, fifty priests, and fourteen deacon^.
