Keywords

• The Curia in the Modern Era
• even after the Council of Trent
• is staffed by clergymen formed only within the minor orders
• or by just laymen. Even among those eventually elevated to the pontificate were not even priests at the moment of their election. The presence of ordained clergymen in minoribus and of secular persons
• was indeed significant even within the same body of the people of the Church. The essay describes this reality and proposes some interpretations of the phenomenon
• not unknown
• but substantially ignored by historiography