The final court of appeal in all matters
ecclesiastical was before the Pope at Rome or Avignon, and the
proctors and doctors, and all the canonists and officials, actually
required to be paid for their work.
When a monastery was in for a great fight with a bishop, it was a
serious matter for both parties. But it was much more serious for the
bishop than for the convent. The bishop had always his state to keep
up and his many houses to maintain, and his establishment was
enormously costly. His margin for law expenses was small; and I
suspect that a bishop in England during the thirteenth century who
had no private fortune outside his mere episcopal revenues would have
been likely sooner or later to find himself in serious difficulties.
On the other hand, in a great monastery all sorts of expedients could
be resorted to in order to effect a salutary retrenchment--as when
the monks of St. Alban's agreed to give up the use of wine for
fifteen years, and actually did so, that they might be able to
rebuild their refectory and dormitory in the days of John the twenty-
first abbot. Moreover, inasmuch as a corporation never dies, the
convent could raise very heavy sums on the security of its estates,
and take its own time to repay the loans. A bishop could not pledge
his episcopal estates beyond his own lifetime, and the result was
that, in the days when life assurance was unknown, a bishop who had
to raise money for a costly lawsuit would have to pay a rate of
interest which would make our blood run cold if we had to pay it, or
our hearts leap for joy if we could get it in these days of two and
three per cent.
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