The Aragonese took Ramiro out of a monastery and made him king, marrying him without papal dispensation to Agnes, sister of the Duke of Aquitaine, then betrothing their newborn daughter to Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona, who was then named Ramiro's heir.

A papal dispensation was also necessary for the marriage to take place, as the couple was closely related, and was issued by Pope Gregory XII on 6 December 1374.

However, the church was reluctant to rescind the earlier papal dispensation and felt heavy pressure from Catherine's nephew, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, in support of his aunt.

That marriage of Edward, Prince of Wales, was in King Edward's mind is clear from the fact that a papal dispensation was received from Pope Nicholas IV ten days after the treaty was signed.

A papal annulment of Magnus ' alleged first marriage and a dispensation for the second ( necessary because of consanguinuity ) were issued ten years later, in 1286.

Though John was requesting papal dispensation for the marriage of Margaret and the Black Prince in 1343, the alliance with England unravelled as Edward's coffers emptied and his attentions turned elsewhere.

A papal dispensation was finally awarded in 1059 by Pope Nicholas II.

In 1554 Cardinal Pole, the Papal Legate, negotiated a papal dispensation allowing the new owners to retain the former monastic lands, and in return Parliament enacted the heresy laws in January 1555.

One of the effects of this vow is that members of a religious institute are no longer free to marry ; and should they subsequently want to leave the institute after permanent profession, they would have to seek a papal indult of dispensation from their vow.

" Donaldson goes further and debates the legality of the canon law marriage of Robert and Elizabeth Mure following the papal dispensation but acknowledges that the acts of succession in 1371 and 1372 although sealing the matter in the eyes of Parliament did not end the generational feud of the descendants of Elizabeth Mure and of those of Euphemia Ross.

In 1533, Leland received papal dispensation for four benefices, on condition that he became subdeacon within two years and priest within seven.

Later the younger brother of Louis XI, Charles, Duke of Berry, made an approach, to the intense annoyance of his brother the King, who attempted to prevent the necessary papal dispensation for consanguinity.

He had married, by papal dispensation ( 13 January 1799 ) Mary Anne, the eldest daughter of his brother, General Joseph Edward Acton ( 1 Oct 1737-12 Jan 1830 ), who was in the Neapolitan service, and had three children:

Kelly, however, has effectively demonstrated that this belief is likely false as John of Gaunt having sexual relations with two sisters would have been considered incest and would have required additional papal dispensation for him to marry Katherine.

This later gave rise to stories that she had become a nun and required papal dispensation to forsake her vows and marry, or that she was impossibly ugly.

A papal dispensation was dated for 28 May 1406, making it most likely that the marriage took place in May or June.

Having been captured, he was released from his imprisonment by a Turkish woman, who returned with him to Germany and became his wife, a papal dispensation allowing him to live with two wives at the same time ( see Reineck, Die Sage von der Doppelehe eines Grafen von Gleichen, 1891 ).

They were both from the House of Trastámara and were second cousins, being both descended from John I of Castile ; on marriage they were given a papal dispensation to deal with consanguinity by Sixtus IV.

In August 1756, he married, with papal dispensation, his young niece Charlotte Bouzia of Estouilly.

As king, he received a papal dispensation to abdicate from his monastic vows in order to secure the succession to the throne.

* Firstly, by papal dispensation dated 15 June 1514, to Lady Margaret Courtenay, daughter of William Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon, by Catherine of York, daughter of Edward IV, King of England.

Dudley married Elizabeth Southwell in Lyon in 1606, after they had received a papal dispensation because they were blood relatives, and they first settled in Florence.

The marriage required the approval of the King of France and a papal dispensation.

Another potential problem was Geoffrey's illegitimacy, which normally disbarred a person from holding ecclesiastical office, but that was dealt with by the granting of a papal dispensation.

When the negotiations began, his quarrel with the king of France was temporarily in abeyance, and he had no intention of reviving it so long as there was hope that French money would come to pay the troops who, under Charles of Valois, the papal vicar of Tuscany, were so valuable in the crusade against the Colonna cardinals and their Sicilian allies.

`` Tact '', by its very derivation, implies that its possessor keeps in touch with other people, but the author of Clericis Laicos and Unam Sanctam, the wielder of the two swords, the papal sun of which the imperial moon was but a dim reflection, the peer of Caesar and vice-regent of Christ, was so high above other human beings that he had forgotten what they were like.

In 1060, Ealdred was elected to the archbishopric of York, but had difficulty in obtaining papal approval for his appointment, only managing to do so when he promised not to hold the bishoprics of York and Worcester simultaneously.

And, Offa is not known to have issued a law code, leading historian Patrick Wormald to speculate that Alfred had in mind the legatine capitulary of 786 that was presented to Offa by two papal legates.

Although he was in charge of the project for the papal villa, the Villa Pamphili, now Villa Doria Pamphili, outside the Porta San Pancrazio in Rome, he may have had professional guidance on the design of the casino from the architect / engineer Girolamo Rainaldi and help with supervising its construction from his assistant Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi.

He was next sent by the Pope to the Emperor Sigismund to ask his aid in the pope's efforts to end this Council, which for five years had been encroaching on papal prerogatives.

Although female roles were performed by castrati in some of the papal states, this was increasingly rare ; by 1680, they had supplanted " normal " male voices in lead roles, and retained their position as primo uomo for about a hundred years ; an Italian opera not featuring at least one renowned castrato in a lead part would be doomed to fail.

In early times the privilege of papal election was not reserved to the cardinals, and for centuries the pope was customarily a Roman priest and never a bishop from elsewhere ; to preserve apostolic succession the rite of consecrating the pope as a bishop had to be performed by someone who was already a bishop.

In the past, during papal coronations, the Proto-Deacon also had the honor of bestowing the pallium on the new pope and crowning him with the papal tiara.

It closed with a series of ritual acclamations honouring the reigning Pope, the Popes who had convoked the Council, the emperor and the kings who had supported it, the papal legates, the cardinals, the ambassadors present, and the bishops, followed by acclamations of acceptance of the faith of the Council and its decrees, and of anathema for all heretics.

The papal backers had been busy propounding arguments to show that royal power was not of divine origin.

Note the four tiers on the helmet, which he had commissioned from Venice, symbolizing his imperial power, and excelling the three-tiered papal tiara.

The doctrine of papal infallibility was not new and had been used by Pope Pius in defining as dogma, in 1854, the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

He had been named the papal legate to France by Pope Paschal II.

What Contarini had to do with it is shown by his letters to the pope in which he complained of the schism in the church, of simony and flattery in the papal court, but above all of papal tyranny, its least grateful passages.

But the papal party had gladly sent him, thinking that through him a union in doctrine could be brought about, while the interest of Rome could be attended to later.

The papal legate had revised the Catholic proposal and assented to the formula agreed upon.

Meanwhile the papal policy had changed, and Contarini was compelled to follow his leader.

Although Scotland and England had both rejected papal authority, the Reformation in each country proceeded in slightly different directions.

The Declaration of Rhense issued in 1338 had the effect that election by the majority of the electors automatically conferred the royal title and rule over the empire, without papal confirmation.

It was not until 1854 that Pope Pius IX, with the support of the overwhelming majority of Roman Catholic bishops, whom he had consulted between 1851 – 1853, promulgated the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus ( Latin for " Ineffable God "), which defined ex cathedra the dogma of the Immaculate Conception:

Many of the kingdoms, principalities and dukedoms in the Italian peninsula had come together under the leadership of Victor Emmanuel II, but Rome and Venice had remained separate papal states.