Despite frequent crises in the diplomatic relations between the Holy See and temporal governments in the later Middle Ages, the authority of the Papacy as the dispenser of grace and spiritual licences remained almost totally unchallenged. It took many decades for the reservations of those such as Wyclif to obtain sufficiently wide currency to upset the established order, and the manifest excesses of the Renaissance Papacy probably had greater influence than any academic or theological objections to the papal dispensing power. Certainly in the period before the Great Schism such objectors were kept on the sidelines, and the popes were approached by numerous individual clerics and laymen seeking dispensations and indults which only the Papacy could grant. These were essentially of three types: release from some provision of canon law to allow the recipient to take some action in the future; pardons for past transgressions so that they would no longer prove disadvantageous in this world or the next; and favours so as to permit pious Christians to enjoy a fuller spiritual life. Some clerics needed to be dispensed from certain requirements of canon law to enable them to hold benefices and be promoted in the church, especially if they were tainted with illegitimate birth; laymen required papal absolution for attacks on clerks, the burning of churches, participation with excommunicates in religious services or criminal acts, forging papal bulls, and more commonly if they had married within the prohibited degrees of kindred or affinity or intended to do so.