Glusiano de Casate
Comes Glusiano de Casate was an Italian ecclesiastical lawyer and Roman Catholic cardinal. He came from an important family, as his funeral monument describes him as de magno sanguine natus. He was learned in the law, "tu sapiens pectus iuris vexilla ferebas."
Casate served as Archdeacon of the Church of Milan.
The Roman Curia
Casate was later brought to Rome, where he became a papal Chaplain and, under Pope Nicholas III, served in the papal Chancery as Auditor sacri palatii. The Vice-Chancellor, the effective head of the papal Secretariat, and Comes' superior from 1276 to 1288 was Pietro Peregrosso of Milan, and it is not an unreasonable conjecture that he was the original patron of Comes de Casate.He was one of the officials, along with Pietro Peregrosso, who were charged by Nicholas III in 1279 with producing the finished version of, the papal bull which granted a favorable constitution to the Franciscan Order.
Cardinalate
Comes de Casate was named a cardinal-priest by Pope Martin IV in the Consistory of 12 April 1281 and assigned the titular church of SS. Pietro e Marcellino in Rome. He was appointed an ecclesiastical examiner of canonical validity and personal worthiness by Pope Martin in the final stages of the long-running case of the election of an Abbot of the monastery of S. Benedetto de Padolirone in the diocese of Mantua. Although the bull had been signed on 14 January 1285 it had not yet received the bulla when Pope Martin died on 28 March 1285, and had to wait for Pope Honorius IV to order his seal to be affixed. He was also appointed the Auditor in the case of the double election of a bishop of Nevers. The two candidates were persuaded to spontaneously and freely resign their elections into the hands of the Pope. The matter of the vacancy in the bishopric came to Honorius IV after the death of Martin IV, and he appointed his chaplain, Egidius de Castelleto. Cardinal Comes de Casate was also appointed Auditor by Pope Martin IV in a lawsuit over the income of a prebend in the Cathedral of Paris between one of the Canons and the Monastery of S. Victor; he finally issued a judgment on 31 August 1285, and Pope Honorius IV finally confirmed it on 22 October. It took another mandate from the Pope, however, to get the verdict obeyed. Cardinal Comes was also appointed, on 31 July 1285, to serve as Auditor in the dispute between the Bishop of Poitiers and the monastery of Aureevallis. He had also been appointed that Summer to examine the election of a new Abbot of Monte Cassino, Thomas the Dean of the monastery, which was approved on his recommendation by Pope Honorius on 28 September 1285.Cardinal Comes was one of fourteen cardinals who were present in Consistory on 17 September 1285, when the "Constitution for the Organization of the Kingdom of Sicily" was promulgated. This document was made necessary by the disastrous events which had ruined the control of the Roman Church over the island of Sicily and loosened its grip on southern Italy. King Charles I of Anjou had suffered disastrous losses in the rising called the Sicilian Vespers in the Spring of 1282; he had died on 7 January 1285, with Sicily in the hands of Peter III of Aragon. The entire island of Sicily had been excommunicated and laid under interdict by Pope Martin IV, ever the compliant friend and abettor of King Charles. But there is a certain unreality about the whole occasion of the issue of the Constitution. The Pope had no means at all to enforce his decrees, which had the form of an overlord dictating to a villain, and overlord who had not fulfilled his feudal duties to his vassals. Martin IV had been a major part of the Sicilian problem, and Honorius IV's response provided rhetoric, but no solution to the Church's problems.