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Every day new congregations come in from new dioceses. The beacon fire goes leaping on, from point to point!"
And now at last the Bishops understood that the doubling of their dioceses was but a device of Machiavellian subtlety for the halving of their temporalities. The Bishops had just opened their holy mouths to protest when the approach of the Jubilee festivities shut them up.
The manner in which he divided his lands was this: he gave to Don Sancho the kingdom of Castille as far as to the river Pisuerga, on the side of Leon, with the border, which included the dioceses of Osma, and Segovia, and Avila, and on the side of Navarre as far as the Ebro, as he had won it from his nephew Don Sancho Garcia, King of Navarre.
Most of these prelates were at that day nominees of the English King, and many of them were English by birth. Some of them never had possession of their sees, but dwelt within the nearest strong town, as pensioners on the bounty of the Crown, while the dioceses were administered by native rivals, or tolerated vicars.
The bishops, on returning to their dioceses, were received with magnificent proofs of the people’s fidelity. Some parties pretending that the Constitution, Pastor æternus, was not obligatory, because the council was not terminated, Cardinal Antonelli addressed to the Papal Nuncio at Brussels a letter under date of 11th August, which removed all doubt on the subject.
These officers, at first merely attendant on the bishops at public services, were gradually entrusted by the latter with their own jurisdictional powers, owing to the vast extent of dioceses, so that "the holding of General Synods or Visitations when the Bishop did not visit, came by degrees to be known and established Branches of the Archidiaconal Office, as such, which by this means attained to the dignity of Ordinary instead of delegated jurisdiction."
The King continued to appoint prelates: the Pope continued to refuse their institution: and the consequence was that a fourth part of the dioceses of France had bishops who were incapable of performing any episcopal function, The Anglican Church was, at this time, not less distracted than the Gallican Church.
The Nicene creed was next confirmed, and a statement added in defence of the word essence. This done, envoys were sent to report at court and ask the Emperor to dismiss them to their dioceses, from which they could ill be spared. Constantius was busy with his preparations for the Persian war, and refused to see them. The few changes made in it need not detain us.
Father Sempe, however, had once more prevailed on the Bishop to grant his favour exclusively to the Grotto. There was even a talk of some confidential circulars distributed through the various dioceses, so that the many sums of money offered by the faithful should no longer be sent to the parish.
The excessive fees charged in the episcopal courts for the probate of wills, the gifts known as mortuaries claimed on occasions of death, the absence of the bishops and the clergy from their dioceses and parishes to the consequent neglect of their duties to the people, the bestowal of benefices oftentimes on poorly qualified clerics to the exclusion of learned and zealous priests, the appointment of clerics to positions that should have been filled by laymen on the lands of the bishops and monasteries, and the interference of some of the clergy both secular and regular in purely secular pursuits were the principal grievances brought forward in 1529 by the House of Commons against the spirituality.
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