ABSTRACT
Around the middle of the fifteenth century, Pope Pius II proudly characterized the papal supreme court, the so called Rota Romana, as the most important court of justice in the world, primum in orbem tribunal justum. Since so much material concerning the Rota lies scattered in local archives, impossible to overview, research into the Rota and its judicial practice is still seriously lacking. Recent German research has emphasized that the papal Curia in the Middle Ages was not a bureaucracy in the modern sense of the word, as described by Max Weber. The whole process is amply recorded in the series of admissiones in the Rota archive. This material reveals that on one point practice did not accord with the procedure prescribed in Martin V's constitution. It is important to notice that the admission of a new auditor did not begin when a vacancy occurred in the Rota, but when a man submitted a supplication to the pope for admission.
