PALATINE COUNT (OF THE SACRED PALACE)
Palatine Count was an honorary title with which popes, emperors, and sovereigns honored meritorious persons. This title derived its origin from an office of great importance held by a high official at the sovereign’s court. From the Carolingian age onward, palatine counts were the various heads of the civil and military administration of the kingdom; initially, they were removable at the sovereign’s pleasure;
then, as they too became feudal lords through the fief attached to their office, they transformed this office into a hereditary one, like the greater fiefs. Such palatine counts are found at the courts of Germany, Italy, England, Poland, and Hungary.
Over time and with changes in curial institutions, this office was reduced in importance until, in the Renaissance, it became a purely honorary title, which was bestowed with a certain liberality and carried with it certain privileges, such as the power to confer the degree of doctor, to create notaries, to legitimize bastards, to award laurel crowns to poets, to ennoble commoners, to grant coats of arms, motor vehicles, and adoptions or emancipations, to issue letters of benefice, and so forth. Later, as this title became very common, it somewhat degenerated.
Pius IV created the knights of the Order of St. John Lateran, commonly called the “More Participating Knights,” who were also counts of the Lateran Palace; this title was confused with that of palatine count. This chivalric order fell into disuse after the death of its founder.
Until shortly after 1800, the popes used to create palatine counts of the conclavists of the cardinals, the noble pages who had assisted them in the solemn possession procession, and, up to Pius VI, their intimate and noble household members.
Palatine counts were also the knights of the Golden Spur; but first Pius VII (1815), then Gregory XVI by apostolic letters of 31 Oct. 1841, and subsequently Pius X by a brief of 7 Feb. 1905, revoked every noble privilege attached to this chivalric order.