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The 'cardinals' were simply the senior clergy of Rome. The word itself is probably derived from the term for hinge or joint, and was first given to the twenty-eight parish priests of the titular churches of Rome. The cardinals had been crucial to the success of the reform movement from the very beginning. And the cardinal bishops emerged as the pope's principal advisers during the 1050s. The prominence of the cardinal bishops in the counsels of the pope dates from the inception of the reform papacy in the pontificate of Leo Ⅸ.
The Roman aristocracy was opposed to the papal reform movement, which had robbed them of their control of papal territory and revenues. Nicholas' papacy was to be a further landmark on the road to reform. He manifested itself on a new procedure for papal elections.
A synod at the Lateran in April 1059 promulgated a new papal electoral decree, confining the actual choice to the seven cardinal bishops, with the subsequent assent of the cardinal priests and deacons, and then the acclaim of the people: vague and grudging provision was also made for imperial approval. Peter Damian had called cardinals 'the spiritual senators of the Roman Church', and considered that the prerogatives of the cardinal bishops transcended those of patriarchs and primates.
The three orders of cardinals had become absorbed into a single college. These orders in the college exercised this right as equals. Henceforward there was no longer any question of the special right conferred on the cardinal bishops by the decree of 1059 nor of the exclusive rights of election claimed for the cardinal priests and deacons by Cardinal Deusdedit. There were in theory up to fifty- four cardinals at any one time. The term collegium, designating the cardinal bishops, priests, and deacons as a single unit, first appeared in 1150.
Later twelfth century, furthermore, references to college tended to assume that the authority of the cardinals was independent of that of the pope. After the mid-twelfth century there was no doubt about the cardinals' exclusive right to elect the pope. In conclusion, we could recognize that the college of cardinals was to develop gradually democratic system, that is its own institutions independent of papal curia, even though is not completed.