It was confined to the successors of Charlemagne, and to them only on Christmas-day. On all other festivals these Imperial deacons were content to serve the pope, as he said mass, with the book and the corporal. Yet the abbé de Sade generously thinks that the merits of Charles IV. might have entitled him, though not on the proper day (A.D. 1368, November 1), to the whole privilege. He seems to affix a just value on the privilege and the man (Vie de Petrarque, tom. iii. p. 735).