on, counted much and was keenly felt. Abbots
of smaller monasteries found themselves inferior to Bishops, especially
in freedom from papal interference; while from the inherent wealth and
power of their foundations, the heads of the great monasteries ranked
sometimes with Archbishops, sometimes even with Cardinals. The Pope had
the right to elevate an Abbey or a Priory into a Bishopric, and those
who could offer the "gratification" or the "provocative," might
reasonably hope for the desired elevation which at once increased their
local importance, belittled a neighbouring diocese, and freed them to
some extent from the direct intermeddling of the Pope. The applications
for such an increase of power became numerous, and by 1320 a number of
Benedictine Abbeys had been made Bishoprics. Their creation greatly
decreased the direct and intimate power of the Papacy, but temporarily
increased the papal treasury; and John XXII, who left ten million pieces
of silver and fifteen million in gold with his Florentine bankers, seems
to have thought philosophically, "After us, the deluge."

[Illustration: NOTRE-DAME-DES-DOMS.--AVIGNON]

Another favourite diplomatic and financial device, which was invented by
these famous Popes of Avignon, was the system of the "Commende," which
enabled relatives of nobles and all those whom it was desirable to
placate, not alone ecclesiastics, but mere laymen and bloody barons, to
become "Commendatory Abbots" or "Commendatory Priors," and to receive at
least one-third of the monastery's revenues, without being in any way
responsible for the monastery's welfare. This care was left to a
Prior or a Sub-prior, a sort of clerical administrator who, crippled in
means and in influence, was sometimes unable, sometimes unwilling, to
carry out the duties and beneficences of past ages, and who was always
the victim of a great injustice. The depths of uselessness to which this
infamous practice reduced monastic establishments may be inferred, when
it is remembered that before the XVIII century the famous Abbey of La
Baume had had thirteen Commendatory Abbots, and that the bastards of
Louis XIV were Commendatory Priors in their infancy.

The Popes found the Commende useful, not only as a means of income, but
as a method--at once secure and lucrative--of gaining to their cause the
great feudal lords of France, and making the power of these lords an
added buffer, as it were, between Avignon and the grasping might of