cardinal or bishop, whom the pope sends as his ambassador to sovereign princes. See Ambassador.

There are three kinds of legates, viz. legates a latere, legates de latere, and legates by office, or legati nati: of these the most considerable are the legates a latere, the next are the legates de latere. See the article Latere.

Legates by office are those who have not any particular legation given them; but who, by virtue of their dignity and rank in the church, become legates: such are the archbishop of Rheims and Arles; but the authority of these legates is much inferior to that of the legates a latere.

The power of a legate is sometimes given without the title. Some of the nuncios are invested with it. It was one of the ecclesiastical privileges of England from the Norman conquest, that no foreign legate should be obtruded upon the English, unless the king should desire it upon some extraordinary emergency, as when a case was too difficult for the English prelates to determine.

The term legate comes from legatur, which Varro derives from legere, "to choose;" and others from legare, delegare, "to send, delegate."

Court of the Legate, was a court obtained by Cardinal Woolsey of Pope Leo X. in the ninth year of Henry VIII. wherein he, as legate of the pope, had power to prove wills, and dispense with offences against the spiritual laws, &c. It was but of short continuance.