COUNT PALATINE (OF THE SACRED PALACE). — An honorific title by which popes, emperors, and sovereigns honored deserving persons. This title derived its origin from an office of great importance held by a high official at the sovereign’s court. Comites palatii were, beginning in the Carolingian age, the various heads of the civil and military administration of the kingdom; at first they were removable at the sovereign’s pleasure;
then, as they too became feudal lords through the fief attached to their office, they transformed the latter into an hereditary one, like the major fiefs. Such c. p. are found at the courts of Germany, Italy, England, Poland, and Hungary.
With the passage of time and the alteration of curial institutions, this office was reduced in importance until, during the Renaissance, it became a purely honorific title, bestowed with a certain liberality. It carried with it certain privileges, such as conferring the degree of doctor, creating notaries, legitimizing bastards, awarding laurel crowns to poets, ennobling commoners, granting coats of arms, authorizing adoptions and emancipations, granting letters of benefice, etc. This title, having subsequently become very common, declined somewhat.
Pius IV created the knights of the Order of St John of Lateran, commonly called Cavalieri più partecipanti, who were also counts of the Lateran Aula, a title that was confused with that of c. p. This chivalric Order fell into disuse after the death of its founder.
The popes, until shortly after 1800, used to create the conclavists of the cardinals c. p., as well as the noble pages who had assisted them in the solemn cavalcade of the possession and, until Pius VI, their intimate and noble household members.
The knights of the Golden Spur were also c. p.; but first Pius VII (1815), then Gregory XVI, by the apostolic letters of 31 October 1841, and subsequently Pius X, by a brief of 7 February 1905, revoked every noble privilege attached to this chivalric Order.