Foundations of The Anglican Church XIX

Cardinal Burke's robes don't come cheap and

somebody has to pay for them.

In 1306 Parliament, under King Edward I, enacted the Statute of Provisors which prohibited monies belonging to the Church being sent out of realm as any form of tribute or fee due to a foreign prelate.  This was primarily intended to stop monies being paid to the papacy in return for papal appointment to office in England or for appeals made to Rome for judgments in ecclesiastical cases.  A second Stature of Provisors was enacted in 1350. 
The problem was this.  Traditionally offices were filled either by election—normally bishops and abbots were elected by their cathedral or monastic chapters—or by appointment by the individual with the right of patronage.  Rectors (pastors) were appointed to parish churches, not by the bishop, but by the individual having the right of appointment which was called the advowson.  If, by way of fictitious example, the Earl of Grantham built a church for the peoples on his land, he had the right of advowson and “presented” the candidate for Rector to the bishop for approval.  The bishop had very limited rights of refusal and almost always had to accept the presentation.  Lord Grantham could give that advowson to another—perhaps it could be part of Lady Mary’s dowry.  Or he could give to the nuns or monks of a nearby abbey.  Most parish churches were filled by such rights of presentation and, as the candidate presented then began collecting the rector’s income—which could be quite handsome—it was a valuable gift to be named rector of a Church.  The advowson itself was valuable too as the person with the right of presentation also collected a share of the Church income. 
There were other ecclesiastical offices that were also “in the gift” of various prelates, nobles, or the Crown.  The head of a hospital or a college, a canonry, a chaplaincy, a chantry in a cathedral, and other positions—all with an endowed income—might be filled by the person, secular or religious, having the right of presentation.  (A chantry was a chapel to which a priest was appointed to offer masses and other prayers at various times in return for a salary.)    
One of the reasons that the Statutes of Provisors were enacted is that popes had begun appointing people to these positions while the incumbents were still alive.  In other words, the pope might appoint a Rector to Lord Grantham’s parish church to succeed the current rector upon his death or advancement to another post.  This papal appointment would thus deprive Lord Grantham of his right to appoint whomever he would choose.  So the Pope appoints the Reverend Dominus John Smith to be the Rector of Downton village Church upon the death of the Reverend Dominus Michael Jones.  (In the Middle Ages secular priests were not called “Father” but usually “Dominus” which is the Latin for “Lord.” This survives in the Italian and Spanish “Don.”)  In return for the appointment, R.D. John Smith sends the Pope ₤50 sterling.  Lord Grantham is completely shut out of his right to appoint the rector (and receive whatever gratuity the new rector might see fit to make.)   The papacy was raking in money from the usurped appointments. 
A variation on this was the matter of Rome naming bishops to English Sees in violation of the right of the respective chapters to elect.  Of course, elections were rarely free for if the Pope was not telling the chapter whom to elect, the King most likely was.  And then, whoever was elected, had to appeal to Rome for the bulls authorizing his consecration and installation to the see.  All this meant considerable money going to Rome.  By the time of the Reformation the amount being paid to Rome for the confirmation of a bishop in his see was called an Annate—from the Latin, Annus, a year.  This is because the fee was generally the bishops’ first year’s income from his diocese—something measured in thousands of pounds, or in today’s money, millions of dollars.     
Another problem the statute addressed was that Lady Mary Crawley wished to marry her cousin, Matthew Crawley, Esq., but being cousins, such marriage was prohibited under canon law.  No problem.  Papal letters of dispensation can be obtained.   ₤20 sterling will nicely cover the costs of notaries and scribes.  (The ₤ sterling was worth far more in purchasing power in the Middle Ages than today. ₤ 20 would be worth several thousand today.)  
The Statutes of Provisors were meant to stop cash from leaving England for Rome but they were also attempts to limit ever increasing papal power and keep the authority of the English Church in English hands.  
Finally in 1353 Parliament enacted the Statute of Praemunire declaring that “ the right of recovering the presentments to churches, prebends, and other benefices . . . belongs only to the king’s court of the old right of his crown, used and approved in the time of all his progenitors kings of England."  It then went on to declare that “if any purchase or pursue, or cause to be purchased or pursued in the court of Rome, or elsewhere, any such translations, processes, and sentences of excommunications, bulls, instruments or any other things whatsoever ... he and his notaries, abettors and counsellors shall be put out of the king's protection, and their lands escheat.”   “Translations” here refers to moving a person from one ecclesiastical office to another—as in Justin Welby was “translated” from the Bishopric of Durham to the Archbishopric of Canterbury.   This provision prohibited an English prelate from purchasing a position from the papacy.  Escheat means forfeit so that if Justin Welby had paid Pope Francis to advance him from Bishop of Durham to Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Welby’s lands would be forfeit to the Crown.  Of course these days Pope Francis doesn’t get any say in who is Archbishop of Canterbury, but we will get to that part of the story down the line. 
I hope this isn’t too confusing.  We don’t have advowsons in America, though they still exist occasionally in the Church of England.   We do have something similar to it, however, as a Religious Order that has charge of a parish still presents a candidate to the bishop who then names the candidate the pastor.  Like the advowson, the bishop must have grave reasons to decline the nomination.  However today newly named prelates—Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, and monsignors typically make appropriate (or inappropriate) gratuities to the Holy See upon their appointments.    Bishops are still translated from one see to another.  Timothy Dolan was translated from Milwaukee to New York.  And such “translations” are generally steps “up the ladder.”  Handsome gifts are still presented to the Holy See or to individual prelates who work there by individuals seeking various favors. (Cardinal Burke’s scarlet silk and fur trimmed cappa magna probably cost in the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars.) 
The Statutes of Provisors and of Praemunire will come back with great importance when Henry VIII will use them to force the Bishops of England to break with the Holy See. 

The Reform of Papal Elections, Part 2

A medieval manuscript from Krakow shows

a pope surrounded by members of his court, or

in Latin, his Curia

In our last posting we looked at the evolution of the papal election process from the second century up through the tenth.  Rome, like other local Churches, elected their bishops—the clergy (priests and deacons) voting, first presenting the candidate to the faithful for their approval and then presenting the bishop-elect to the surrounding bishops for consecration.  Those neighboring bishops could refuse consecration to the bishop-elect if they had serious question about his orthodoxy, his morals, or other suitability issues.  As we have seen in a number of postings, the system ceased working well in Rome by the ninth century when the “faithful” turned into mobs controlled by Rome’s leading families who were vying to place their candidates on the papal throne in order to control the wealth and the power of the Church for their own family benefit.  This led to a succession of notably bad Roman bishops in the ninth and tenth centuries.  There were exceptions—Nicholas I (858-867), Adrian III (884-885), Theodore II (897), John IX (898-900) and Benedict IV (900-903), but by and large this was a time of tremendous scandals in the papacy.  (check out entries for January 15^th, June 5^th, 6^th, 9^th, August 5^th among others) with stories of papal adultery, gay popes, murders to become pope, conspiracies and even the exhumation and  posthumous trial of a dead pope.   The Ottonian Emperors cleaned it up, but only by usurping the traditional privilege of papal election and appointing their candidates.  At first this was done with the façade of election, but then—as we saw in the reign of Henry III—it became mere appointment (see entry of August 13^th).  Imperial appointment actually gave the Church a number of excellent popes but it also created a dangerous precedent.  In the first place it clearly subordinated the Church to the political power.  Had this not been corrected the Catholic Church would have found itself in the same position that first the Greek Church and then the Russian Church found itself in with regard to the Byzantine Emperors and Russian Tsars respectively.  The popes would have ended up meaning no more than mere chaplains to the Emperors and the Emperors would have been the heads of the Church.  Indeed, as we shall see in a future post, Henry VIII would make the claim that since “the Crown of England is and ought by right to be a Crown Imperial” that he, the wearer of that crown, was by right head of the Church in his “imperial” realm.  But that is for later.  No sooner had the Emperors cleaned up the papacy than that very reformed papacy knew it had to break the imperial power over the Church.  That would lead to the investiture conflict, but before we go there let’s stay focused to the matter of papal elections.  Nicholas II in the papal bull, In Nomine Domini, moved to establish a definite protocol of election.  In the first place the Emperor was given no right of nomination.  The process began with the Cardinal Bishops as Nicholas empowered the seven Cardinal Bishops to select a candidate to be presented to the Cardinal Priests and Cardinal Deacons for their “election.”  This candidate would then be presented to the Roman people for their acclamation.  Only then did the Emperor have voice, having a right of confirmation; but the process was so structured that power remained with the Cardinals and their choice; there was no practical way for the Emperor to overturn the fait accompli.  By the end of the eleventh century, the separate roles of the Cardinal Bishops on the one hand and the Cardinal Deacons and Priests on the other melded so that all Cardinals participated equally in the election.  This was almost inevitable given the relatively small size of the Sacred College—rarely as many as thirty and often only a dozen or so. Remember too that at this stage of history, the Cardinal Bishops, Priests, and Deacons were all actual bishops, pastors and deacons of the Diocese of Rome who (normally) lived there and were key in administering the local Church.  They were not the international assortment they are now. 
     The Emperors were not happy with losing their right of nomination and, in fact, it was only in 1122 at the Council of Worms that they conceded the loss of that right.  As late as 1903 in the election that produced Pope Saint Pius X the Emperor (by then of Austria—the Holy Roman Empire having been terminated in 1806 when Francis I of Austria abdicated the throne of the Holy Roman Empire (where he had been Francis II) following defeat by Napoleon and loss of territories to France) Franz-Josef vetoed the impending election of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla.  Pius abolished the imperial right of veto as one of the first acts of his pontificate.  We will look more at this problem of Imperial interference in papal elections in our next posting.  For now, let’s go back to the election process.
     The right of the Roman people to “acclaim” the election persisted well into the Middle Ages but it gradually ceased to have any determinative role in determining the legitimacy of the papal selection.  The fact that in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries any number of papal elections were held outside Rome whether at Perugia, Viterbo, Naples, or Avignon and that automatically excluded the Roman crowd from participation.   Nevertheless, remember that when the papacy returned to Rome after the Avignon “Babylonian Captivity” in 1378 it was still deemed necessary to present a candidate acceptable to the Roman Populace.  By a century later that would no longer be any concern and the Roman populace was openly hostile to various popes in the sixteenth century. 
     The custom of the conclave began in the thirteenth century when, on occasion, prolonged meetings of the Cardinals failed to produce a candidate due to internal divisions among the electors.  Sometimes the papal office was left empty for over a year!  Upon the death of Innocent III in 1216 the city of Perugia—where the election was being held—blockaded the cardinals into the bishop’s palace until they came up with a pope.  After the death of Celestine IV in 1241, civil officials in Rome did the same to the cardinal electors when after 19 months they had not made a choice.  Clement IV died in 1268 and two years and ten months passed before the Cardinals came up with a pope.  The citizens of Viterbo not only barricaded the cardinals inside but first tore the roof from the building and then permitted only bread and water to be passed to the electors within.  The pope elected at that conclave, Gregory X, established the norm that the Cardinals would be secluded under relatively austere conditions until an election was forthcoming.  It didn’t always work but that is for future postings. 
    The key point we want to observe is that the Church broke the imperial hold on the selection of popes.  This was an important step in freeing the papacy from political power.  At times, it would find itself again beneath the thumb of some emperor or king but for the most part, the pope has played at least as an equal to the political forces in the world around him.  the next task would be to free the bishops from imperial and royal control.     

The Reform of Papal Elections--part I

Santa Maria in Cosmedin, one of

the seven ancient diaconal Churches

that served as a food distribution

station for Rome's poor in the ealry

and central Middle Ages

Let’s take a look at papal elections as the eleventh century reforms in this procedure are essential to the Gregorian Reform.  You may recall from a wide number of previous entries that one of the chief problems facing the Church in the ninth and tenth centuries was the unstable manner the Romans had of selecting a bishop for themselves.  The process had degenerated into mob violence with the various factions of the Roman mob controlled by any one of several Roman families, most notably the Theophylact clan who were Dukes of Spoleto and Counts of Tusculum and the Crescentii—an ancient Roman family.  For the most part it didn’t matter which family won out in the struggle—the papacy and the Church suffered either way.  The great Roman families all wanted control of the papacy in order to control the vast wealth that had come to the Roman Church and the political power—since the Pope was (usually) not only the spiritual leader of the Roman Diocese but the temporal ruler of much of central Italy. 
     Ever since the earliest days of the Church, not only at Rome but throughout Christendom, bishops were elected by the clergy and faithful of their diocese and then confirmed by the bishops of the surrounding Churches who gathered to consecrate the new bishop through the laying-on-of-hands and the invocation of the Holy Spirit.  As the centuries went on this process often degenerated into mob activity.  One of the most famous examples was the election of a bishop in Milan in 374 when competing factions—one Arian, the other orthodox, were fighting in the streets and the civil magistrate sent to put down the disturbance, a catechumen named Ambrose, ended up being chosen despite the fact that not only was he not a priest but he was not even yet baptized.  It was, of course, a great choice—Saint Ambrose is one of the great bishops of the Church.  Most of the time, and especially in Rome, the outcome was not so fortunate.  Part of this was that the electoral process was out of control.  The clergy numbered in the hundreds and the faithful of the Roman Church was nothing more than a mob. Changes had to be made.
    By the early Middle Ages, the seventh or eighth centuries, in Rome the election devolved on the priests in charge of the principle churches of the city as well as the seven deacons attached to the papal household, and the deacons who headed up the seven diaconal churches.  These diaconal churches were not parish churches, or even primarily worship sites; they were  centers where relief was given to the poor—like Catholic Charities centers today.  One of their most important functions was distribution of grain to the poor—grain from the vast papal estates in Sicily and southern Italy was brought to Rome for poor-relief.  In addition to the principle priests and deacons—there were many more priests and deacons in the city other than these ones who had greater responsibility—the bishops of Rome’s seven suburbican (adjoining) sees formed part of the electoral process.  It fell to them to ordain the new pope if he were not a priest and to consecrate him a bishop if and when he was.  It was very rare in the early Middle Ages for the new pope to be a bishop as there were canons which forbad a bishop to move from one diocese to another—even to Rome and the papacy.  A bishop was considered “married” to the Church of which he was bishop and being consecrated a bishop was a life-long commitment.  This helped avoid some of the ambitious ladder-climbing that too often mars the hierarchy today.  Sometimes, but in those early years, not often, this canon was overlooked.  Election of the Roman bishop by the city’s principal priests, deacons, and the suburbican bishops was not sufficient however.  Before the candidate could be consecrated and enthroned, he had to be presented to the faithful for their acclamation.  This is where the mob violence often came in.   
There had been an attempt in the fifth century to replace the popular election process by having a pope appoint his successor.  Anastasius II who reigned from 496-498 prohibited this practice and insisted that the pope, like other bishops, had to be elected by the clergy and people.  In the seventh an d eighth centuries The Emperors at Constantinople claimed the right to confirm the papal election but this practice fell into disuse after Zachary I in 741.  Emperors also claimed the right to depose popes and while a number were forced to resign,  by the end of the eighth century the actual power of the Byzantine Emperors to enforce their decrees in central or Northern Italy was nil.  (Southern Italy was a different story and remained under Greek control into the tenth century.)  As the Constantinople emperors lost control of Italy and Rome, it created a power vacuum that the Roman mobs filled.  We saw what happened at the end of the ninth and into the early tenth centuries when the papacy went through what was probably its absolute low-point with the “pornacracy” of the Theophylact family controlling the papacy through the machinations of the mother-daughter team of papal mistresses, mothers, grandmothers of Theodora and Marozia. 
     Stephen III was the pope (768-772) who first used the term “cardinal” to describe the priests and deacons who appointment to the principal churches gave them voice in selecting the new pope.  It came from the Latin, cardo, for hinge or pivot—the idea being that the priests of the principal churches and the deacons in charge of the seven diaconal charity stations were the operational pieces of the administrative machinery of the Roman Church that held it together. From the fifth century onwards, Rome had seen a surplus of churches being built as monastic foundations were made inside the city, as prominent citizens decided to build family churches for their special events—especially for burial, and as various civic organizations built churches in which their members could gather for prayers.  Wealthy individuals whose petitions had been answered through the invocation of a particular martyr or saint often built a church as a thank-offering to their heavenly patron.  In the same way, the number of clergy was growing fast as the elaborate papal ceremonial developed and as these various new churches needed clergy to carry on the services.  Many of these clergy came to Rome from all over Europe and had no history with the Roman Church.  Morevover, it became impractical to allow a clergy numbering in the hundreds, between priests and deacons, to have a voice in selecting the papal candidate to present to the faithful for acclamation.   (The lesser clergy—subdeacons, acolytes, exorcists, lectors, etc. never had a voice in the selection process.)  Thus by designating certain churches, the older and more important, as cardinal churches and their clergy as cardinal priests or cardinal deacons to whom the right of nomination was reserved a more manageable system was devised.  But it would still be almost three centuries before the right was exclusively theirs.  It still resided with the Roman faithful—or as we have seen, the Roman mob—to accept the candidate offered.   Further changes were still needed if Rome was to have decent popes. 

Of German Popes and American Bishops

Cardinal Sean O'Malley, Archbishop of Boston

with Boston College President, Father William

Leahy,SJ

We have been talking about the German Reform popes and I just want to share one or two reflections on the eleventh century reforms of the Church that might give us something to think about for reform and renewal in the contemporary Church. 
    In a few days I want to review the system of papal elections as one of the chief innovations—or reforms—of the Gregorian Reform was to define the exclusive right of the cardinal clergy of the Diocese of Rome to select a pope.  There were two problems.  One problem was that the custom had arisen of the Emperor, as Vicar of Christ, to appoint the popes.  Fortunately these papal appointees—Sylvester II,  Clement II, Damasus II, Leo IX—were good men and men ardent for Reform.  In fact, the reason the Emperors usurped the ancient rights of the clergy and people of Rome to elect their pope was that the Romans had a tendency to elect men who blocked reform.   Nevertheless, as we shall see, these very same reform minded popes came to see the danger of outside appointment—that the papacy could get caught in politics and the Church might be used for political purposes rather than be allowed to perform its own function given it by its Lord of continuing His work of proclaiming the Kingdom of God.  
     I think this should give us some thought for today in regard to the selection of bishops.  At one time, being a historian, I favored a return to the ancient practice that bishops be elected by the clergy and faithful.  As I am older—and either wiser or more cynical, I am not sure which—I have come to believe that this would be disastrous at least in our American environment.  The danger is that the election of bishops would devolve into the most crass forms of partisan politics. One of the reasons for the failure of “parish councils” to be effective in most American parishes is that we Americans automatically think “majority rules” and we failed to understand that councils were meant to be an opportunity for discernment rather than governance.   Americans seemingly cannot help but becoming caught in the whirlpools of politics and then devolve into partisan factions.  The fact that American Catholics are already quite divided into social (and political) liberals and conservatives is a harbinger of impending schism should “democracy” be introduced into Church structures.  In a culture that has given us the Tea Party, and the recent denouements of the irresolvable debt crisis, the Church would tear itself to shreds in such episcopal elections.  We see the issues being faced by the Episcopal Church and to some extent the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America today and I believe this is no time to experiment with democracy in the life of our Church.  In fact, I am not sure that Americans any longer merit democracy in their government.  In saying this, I certainly do not want to change our form of government, but I would like to see our citizenry wake up to their political responsibilities to be informed about the issues and civil in their political discourse. I remember the words of Benjamin Franklin to a woman who asked him, at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, what sort of government we were to have under the new Constitution.  Franklin replied: “A Republic, madam, if you can keep it.”  A Republic demands a responsible citizenship that is informed and educated on the issues before it.  Without mentioning names or espousing one political party over another, it is clear that today’s Americans depend on 15 second sound-bites for their information about some very complex questions.  It would be even worse if the Church with its two millennia of rich and vibrant theological Tradition fell into this trap.  American Catholics—clergy and faithful alike—are too often frightfully ignorant of what it means to be Catholic and fall into the trap of believing what they hear on a “Catholic” radio or TV station or read in blog (even this blog) that portends to speak for the Church.   (This blog has always clearly established that it speaks for no one but its author and that it limits its statements to the historical and make no claim of theological competence.)   
   In expressing my reservations about electing bishops, I am not saying that a process by which clergy and faithful would have a voice in the selection of bishops would not work.  I think the system needs change to permit a genuine discernment process.  But the easy fix of election of bishops would be, I believe, even worse than the current system of papal appointment.  Frankly, it is hard to think of a worse system than the system we now have, but open election would surely be among the possible suggestions.  Papal appointment of bishops is an innovation in Catholic practice, for the most part dating only from the early nineteenth century when, after the defeat of Napoleon, the papacy made a series of concordats with the newly reconstituted European States giving the Holy See the right to appoint bishops in their territory.  For most of history, bishops were elected.  In the early Church they were elected by an assembly of clergy and laity; in the Middle Ages the election tended to fall to the Cathedral Chapters, bodies of clergy that were appointed to staff the Cathedral and often also held the pastorates of the principle churches in the cathedral city.  John Carroll, the first American Catholic bishop, was elected by the Catholic clergy of the new republic and he hoped that future bishops would likewise be elected. Alas, this was the very time that the papacy was wresting the right of election away from the European clergy and was hardly going to grant it to the Americans whose overthrow of monarchy was a challenge to everything the Holy See believed in regarding authority and its Divine Right to govern both in the civil and religious spheres. 
     I think we need to look at the American episcopacy and ask ourselves—and the Holy See—if this is the best they could give us.  Granted we have some outstanding men.  Sean O’Malley of Boston is heads and shoulders above his peers.  Donald Trautman of Erie has a too often overlooked perspicacity.  “Teddy” McCarrick, emeritus of Washington and Cardinal-none-the-less, while sly and ambitious, is a man of unparalleled talents who has well served both the Holy See and the American government in many behind the scenes diplomatic maneuvers.  A trained sociologist, McCarrick has his hand on the pulse of the American Catholic, but alas has gone unheeded by both his mitered peers and Rome.  In fact, the Holy See could not have been more happy to accept his resignation when his 75^th birthday came round some years back.    Another bright boy whose intelligence won him no friends in Rome is John Quinn who took an early retirement (to the relief of Rome and American conservatives) from his post as Archbishop of San Francisco.  Howard Hubbard of Albany and Matthew Clark of Rochester are two survivors of what is now the “Old School” –bishops appointed under the influence of Jean Jadot, the Apostolic Delegate in the late ’70’s.  They have done wonderful work in their respective dioceses, but their influence has been eclipsed by the mediocrity of the vast majority post-Jadot appointees.   There are other bishops of note, but they seem to be in the minority.  Wilton Gregory, once the hope for the future, has fizzled into a bit of a disappointment. Gerald Kicanas was maneuvered out of leadership by the machinations of the intelligent but visionless Cardinal George of Chicago; Timothy Dolan of New York was George’s candidate for president of the Bishops Conference in place of Kicanas.  Dolan seems to have some promise, if not of above-average intelligence at least of good pastoral sense.  Wuerl of Washington has a record of being overly cautious.  He lacks his predecessor’s (McCarrick’s) Machiavellian streak, but he also lacks McCarrick’s dash.  As for Olmstead, Bruskewitz, Chaput, Sheriden—well, alas but mediocrity is beyond their highest reach.  Chaput’s move to Philadelphia and its prospects of a red hat are an indication that the system is broken.   Archbishop Chaput is no Raymond Burke; his Capuchin-Franciscan roots save him from Burke’s pomposity and make him a decent human being but he is not a man of any but the most narrow vision.  Overall, the state of the American Episcopacy is appalling.  When one looks at the outstanding work done in the early ‘80’s with two superbly researched and well thought out  pastoral letters, one on economic morality and the other on the moral issues surrounding nuclear weapons, it is frightening to reflect that today’s hierarchy lack the talent to deliver much needed guidance on contemporary issues.  Sometime I will have to write on why (I think) there has been a dumbing-down of American bishops.  But that will be in the future.  Perhaps a blog on the relationship of John Paul II and Ronald Reagan will give us insight.     

Election of bishops

John Carroll, the United States’ first Catholic bishop, was elected bishop by the clergy of his new diocese in April 1789. Twenty-six priests cast the electing ballots, Carroll received 24 of the votes. His election was confirmed seven months later by Pope Pius VI. Carroll favored the idea that his successor(s) would also be elected. This was not as radical an idea in 1789 as it would be today. In fact, until the French Revolution most Catholic bishops were elected rather than appointed by the Pope. The right of election generally belonged to the canons of the Cathedral Church and the “chapter” of canons, in turn, was most often comprised of the rectors of the principal churches of the See City of the Diocese. More precisely the canons of the Cathedral generally held “prebends” (an endowed “stall” or seat in the chancel of the cathedral) whose endowments consisted of the title (the rectorship) of the principle churches of the Diocese and thus were often called "prebendaries." The French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic conquest of Europe deprived the Church of most of its endowments, including the prebendaries, as the vast land-wealth which the Church had acquired over centuries was secularized (confiscated by the State). The Chapter of Notre Dame in Paris, for example, was allegedly so impoverished that it could barely afford to buy a broom for cleaning the Cathedral when Divine Worship was reestablished there 1802.
During and after the Napoleonic era the Holy See through a system of concordats (treaties made with the Holy See) with the various courts of Europe was able to bypass the newly reconstituted chapters and arrogate to itself the right to appoint bishops, though in a number of dioceses, particularly in Switzerland and in the old Austrian Empire, cathedral chapters often still have the right of election today. Generally this is worked out in such a way that a candidate favored by the Holy See is chosen by the canon-electors but on a number of occasions in the past three decades the Holy See has sought, if not to usurp the chapter’s rights, at least to appoint bishops to the respective dioceses before the chapter can exercise its traditional prerogative. The election of the pope by the Cardinals who are nominally the deacons of the diaconal churches and parish priests of the principle parishes (along with the seven Cardinal bishops of the seven ancient suburbican sees, and since 1965 those among the Eastern Catholics partriarchs who have been named to the College of Cardinals) is a surviving remnant of the election of bishops by the clergy of the diocese.
In the early Church the laity participated with the clergy in the process of electing the bishop. This was not always a tranquil procedure. In 374 the Christians of Milan were on the verge of riot as the Catholics and the Arians were in a bitter dispute over who the new bishop should be. Ambrose, as the governor of the region, a political post responsible for—among other things—the good civil order of the citizenry, arrived to quell the disturbance. An immensely popular governor the had the respect and trust of all. Someone in the crowd shouted “Ambrose for Bishop.” The crowd took up the cry. Ambrose insisted on declining—he was not even baptized much less a priest. But the crowd—and then the Imperial Court—would not hear of his refusal and he eventually was baptized, ordained and consecrated bishop. His disciple Augustine was elected bishop by the Christian community of Hippo Regius at the request of his predecessor who wanted a coadjutor to help him while he was still alive. Martin of Tours was elected by acclamation of the people of that city to be their bishop in 371. Lay participation in the election of bishops survived in many places of the Western Church, including Rome itself, until the Gregorian Reform in the eleventh century when the right of election was generally restricted to the clergy. At the same time, however these elections were rarely free. Political pressure by the Emperor, various kings, or powerful nobles was often applied to the clerical electors to choose the candidate that was the Imperial or Royal choice. While some advocate a return to the election of bishops in the contemporary Church, the experience of Protestant denominations which elect their bishops should give us some caution about politicizing Church leadership and about how such politics can be manipulated for doctrinal matters.
The image today is Francisco de Zurbarán's "Saint Ambrose"