MASTER OF THE SACRED PALACE. — Title of a dignitary of the Papal Court whose duties have undergone various changes. Only modern studies conducted (by Denifle, Altaner, Ehrle, Creytens) on authentic sources (the constitution *Cum de diversis* of Innocent IV, repeated and abbreviated by Boniface VIII [2, V, 7, in VI] and the *Life of Innocent IV* by N. di Carbio) have fully illuminated the origins and early development of this office, created by Innocent IV in the second year of his pontificate (1244–45). In the interest of those who flocked to the Apostolic See from all over the world, as well as of the curial officials themselves, the pope established in his Court, then in Lyon, a general school comprising theology, canon law, and civil (Roman) law, a school that followed the court wherever it went.
The first known master to teach theology in this school was the Dominican Bartolomeo da Vicenza (also called da Breganza), who, promoted in 1252 to bishop of Limassol (Cyprus), was succeeded by an archdeacon of Durham (England). In the relevant bulls they are referred to as “regens” and “docens” *apud sedem apostolicam*. Indeed, in papal documents the title *Magister S. Palatii* appears only from the 14th century onward. Another title in the 13th century is “reader” (= professor) of the Sacred Palace, used for Giovanni Pecham and his successor Matteo d'Acquasparta and other Franciscans. The holder of the office in the 13th century was not yet part of the curial officials forming the “family” of the pope. He continued to reside in his own convent and from the 15th century in the Vatican, sometimes at the Quirinal. From 1306 onward the office was, with some exceptions, generally entrusted to a master of the Dominican Order, to whom it then remained exclusively. However, after the school of the Sacred Palace ceased in the early years of the sixteenth century, other duties were assigned to the office holders: from Leo X until 1925, he granted the *imprimatur* to books printed in Rome; since the 15th century he reviewed the sermons to be delivered on certain days by the procurators general of the mendicant orders in the papal chapels; he was also president of the Theological College of Rome. Today he still belongs by right to the Holy Office, as well as being a prelatic official of the Sacred Congregation of Rites and the trusted theologian of the Supreme Pontiff.