Crown Cardinal

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The cardinals who owe their appointment to the proposal of a prince are called Crown Cardinals or National Cardinals .

The appointment of such crown cardinals was a well established practice towards the end of the 16th century. Both the Catholic princes of the Italian states and large Catholic monarchies made use of it. As a rule, these cardinals felt more indebted to the prince who proposed them than to the pope who made the appointment. The Crown Cardinals were an important political means of influencing the Curia for the royal houses . As a rule, non-Italian clergymen owed their appointments to a princely proposal. For the respective pope, the appointment was usually a way of compensating for a political debt and ensuring that a princely family felt obliged to him. There were no hard and fast rules as to how many candidates for cardinals a prince could propose; however, the number of proposed candidates was generally low.

literature

  • Hillard von Thiessen: Family ties and creature wages. The (cardinal) duke of Lerma and the crown cardinals of Philip III. von Spanien , In: The Hunt for the Red Hat, ed. by Arne Karsten . Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-525-36277-3

Examples of crown cardinals