Though against the papal theory, which denounced usurious practices, an immense papal banking system had sprung up, in connection with the Curia, and sums at usurious interest were advanced to prelates, place. hunters, and litigants.  The papal bankers were privileged; all others were under the ban.  The Curia had discovered that it was for their interest to have ecelesiastics all over Europe in their debt.  They could make them pliant, and excommunicate them for non-payment of interest.  In 1327 it was reckoned that half the Christian world was under excommunication:  bishops were excommunicated because they could not meet the extortions of legates; and persons were excommunicated, under various pretenses, to compel them to purchase absolution at an exorbitant price.  The ecclesiastical revenues of all Europe were flowing into Rome, a sink of corruption, simony, usury, bribery, extortion.  The popes, since 1066, when the great centralizing movement began, had no time to pay attention to the internal affairs of their own special flock in the city of Rome.  There were thousands of foreign cases, each bringing in money.  “Whenever,” says the Bishop Alvaro Pelayo, “I entered the apartments of the Roman court clergy, I found them occupied in counting up the gold-coin, which lay about the rooms in heaps.”  Every opportunity of extending the jurisdiction of the Curia was welcome.  Exemptions were so managed that fresh grants were constantly necessary.  Bishops were privileged against cathedral chapters, chapters against their bishops; bishops, convents, and individuals, against the extortions of legates.

The two pillars on which the papal system now rested were the College of Cardinals and the Curia.  The cardinals, in 1059, had become electors of the popes.  Up to that time elections were made by the whole body of the Roman clergy, and the concurrence of the magistrates and citizens was necessary.  But Nicolas ii. restricted elections to the College of Cardinals by a two- thirds vote, and gave to the German emperor the right of confirmation.  For almost two centuries there was a struggle for mastery between the cardinal oligarchy and papal absolutism.  The cardinals were willing enough that the pope should be absolute in his foreign rule, but the never failed to attempt, before giving him their votes, to bind him to accord to them a recognized share in the government.  After his election, and before his consecration, he swore to observe certain capitulations, such as a participation of revenues between himself and the cardinals; an obligation that lie would not remove them, but would permit them to assemble twice a year to discuss whether he had kept his oath.  Repeatedly the popes broke their oath.  On one side, the cardinals wanted a larger share in the church government and emoluments; on the other, the popes refused to surrender revenues or power.  The cardinals wanted to be conspicuous in pomp and extravagance, and for this vast sums were requisite.