The Sceptre with the Cross, another sceptre in the Crown Jewels, represents temporal or lay authority.

By Article 8, it belonged to the Council of State, a purely lay authority, to pronounce upon the orthodoxy of any religious associations; the revenues were to be subject to state regulation.

The former were still happy to recognize lay authority and lay material rights provided that the essentials of communal liturgy and communal living which went with it were safeguarded.

At the same time Protestant states criticised the calendar reform, mostly because it was proposed by papacy rather than the Holy Roman Emperor or any other lay authority.

It was proper, indeed their duty, for the clergy to rebuke the regnum of lay authority and call on Christians to amend it.

Innocent decreed in 1200 in the decretal "Vergentis" that heretics were to receive punishment from the lay authorities.

In part this was expressed by their insistence on their right to govern and finance themselves without excessive interference by lay authority or reliance upon it.

To canon lawyers, Christendom was a group of nations governed by princes or other lay authorities submissive to the presidency of the pope.

The expectation of the lay and religious authorities was that the children would be Spaniards in culture, and marriage was a policy of assimilation and overlordship.

It makes nonsense of the idea of an articulation of papal monarchial theory in which the church was superior to the lay authorities.