In the Middle Ages the word is extended in the literature of Christianity to a king od mystical embodiment, “applied to the Christian community in its most incorporeal aspects. ” But its real expansion begins in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, when the Pope and the cardinals are often said to represent the persons of Christ and the Apostles. The connotation is still neither of delegation nor of agency; the church leaders are seen as the embodiment and image of Christ and the Apostles, and occupy their place per successionem. At the same time, medieval jurists begin to use the term for the personification of collective life. A community,although not a human being, is to be regarded as a person (persona repraesentata, repraesenta unam personam, unium personae repraesentatvicem). The stress is on the fictve nature of the connection:not a real person but a person by representation only (persona non vera sed repraesentate).