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RELIGIOUS LIFE AND ORGANIZATION 413
of stenography, fik'cabinets, stencils, microfilms, and media'
nical calculators deployed by an army of trained accountants
and statisticians in the work of helping or hindering the
efficient conduct of a great combine or National Board,
survive from the middle decades
Episcopal lists and registers
of the thirteenth century, isolated and summary at first, but
soon ubiquitous and full, all covering the activities of the
bishop in his diocese, and we soon begin to see the whole group
of officials in action. These varied considerably from diocese
to diocese and from age to age in number, function, and title,
but speaking generally the administration had finally crystal'
lized by the second half of the fourteenth century, when the
custom of appointing as bishops government officials who con'
tinued to occupy posts
in the king's service became normal,
implying a quasi'permanent absence of the bishop from his
diocese and the consequent devolution ofimportant duties on
subordinates. The group surrounding the bishop when in his
diocese, and acting as his council and executive, were still
known as his clerks, but they were in fact a group of officials
with defined spheres ofaction in which they were all but Ordi'
naries 1 themselves. Besides the bishop's Registrar, a notary pub'
lie, the most important of the group were the Official and the
Vicar General. The former was the bishop's permanent delegate
and alter tgo in judicial affairs; he had full powers in the con'
sistory court, and there was no appeal from him to the bishop,
though the latter reserved his right tojudge in person, anywhere
in the diocese, special
cases at will. The Vicar General was the
bishop's delegate with full powers in all jurisdictional and ad'
ministrative functions. Originally appointed for the occasion
when the bishop was leaving his diocese for a considerable
time, he was in later centuries, when bishops were often ab'
sentees, appointed in permanence to take over whenever the
bishop was away. He never, in the mid'medieval period,
formed an essential figure in every diocese as he does in modern
1 An Ordinary, in canonical terminology, is a prelate with full jurisdiction, i.e.
having the right to issue and enforce commands and to judge causes and allot
penalties.