personation in this small constituency. But this ceremony affords the opportunity of saying a few words on a point about which, more than any other connected with Roman ceremonial, there prevails misapprehension -the real nature and position of a Cardinal. That laymen can be made Cardinals is generally known; but we venture to say that whoever has tried to elicit an explanation in Rome of the particular distinction between such lay Cardinals and their colleagues in holy orders-the difference is standing between the two-will have been perplexed with the confused answers he will probably have received to his inquiries. The only means of obtaining the requisite information is by a perusal of Papal edicts. The Sacred College is now fixed at seventy members— six Cardinal Bishops, fifty Cardinal Priests, and fourteen Cardinal Deacons, according to a rule that has been in force since 1585.* Now, there is no canonical injunction which imposes any qualification for a Cardinal that can limit a Pope's selection, except, it would appear, the condition of celibacy. Provided a man has not a wife alive, he is quite able to be promoted to this rank in the Church any moment it may suit a Pope to confer it. It is a more perplexing point to ascertain how far, as Cardinal, the layman is subject to ecclesiastical obligations, and can return to the world with only the sanction of the Pope. A long list of Cardinals who have done this can be made out, but in almost every instance the change in condition happened by special dispensation from the Pope. The only instances in which, to our knowledge, Cardinals returned to the former state without the Pope's declared assent, are against their having the privilege of taking by themselves such a step; for they are instances of Cardinals, like Chatillon, in rebellion against the Church. On the other hand, the instances on record of Cardinals who were relieved from their ecclesiastical obligations are extremely curious, and testify strikingly to the

church they attend a mass of the Holy Ghost, and listen to a sermon, after which, preceded by their attendants, and the full string of office-bearers, the Cardinals walk in procession across the Piazza, and solemnly enter Conclave, which, however, is not finally closed until a late hour in the evening. Till that moment the Conclave presents a scene of busy activity; for it is customary for every person of rank in Rome to pay his respects to each Cardinal in his cell. The Conclave therefore offers the gay appear ance of a public State reception such as every ambassador holds in Rome on his arrival, and every Cardinal on his nomination, with this difference, that only the male sex is present at the Quirinal. But there is more done on this afternoon than merely to whisper words of compliment. The swarming hive of busy beings hurrying from cell to cell is alive with political emotions. Hither hie, then, all the ambassadors, and envoys, and political agents in Rome, to snatch the last opportunity afforded for unrestricted conference, to give the last stroke to eager appeals of soft persuasion or deterring menace, the last touch to cunning combination, and particularly to deposit in the hands of an intimate confederate the knowledge of those whose nomination their Courts will absolutely not brook. At the third ringing of a bell, three hours after sunset, the Master of the Ceremonies makes his appearance, and calling aloud 'Extra omnes,' obliges strangers to withdraw beyond the sacred precincts, to which every ingress is then jealously walled up, except the door at the head of the principal staircase, on which bars and bolts are drawn, and heavy locks are turned, with due formality-those on the outside in presence of the Prince Marshal-those within, of the Camerlengo and his three Cardinal colleagues; and now is proclaimed the commencement of that solemn confinement, which by law should be absolute until a new Pope has been created, or at all events, according to the constitution of Gregory x., until a vote of two-thirds of the immured Cardinals shall have ruled its *It adds much to the confusion on this subject, suspension. Often, however, this prelimi- that this division into classes is often only nominal, nary work of clearance has proved a task of a Cardinal being put by favour or for other reasons into an order he does not belong to. The present trouble, and poor Masters of the Ceremonies Dean of the College, Cardinal Mattei, for a long time have been driven distracted by the obduracy figured as a Cardinal Deacon, although he had taken of ambassadors in giving no heed to their priest's orders. More perplexing is it to find Cardirepeated summonses, and earnest supplica-nal Priests who have never taken these orders. Such tions that the final conferences with confidential Cardinals should be concluded.

merely a deacon, was made in 1823 a Cardinal was the case with Cardinal Dandini, who, when Priest and Bishop of Osimo. 'Only nine years later,' says Moroni, did he take priest's orders, having in the interval taken part in three Conclaves In reas a Cardinal Priest, without really having that char acter. Nor is this all. Moroni speaks of persons having ranked amongst six Cardinal Bishops when they had never been more than deacons,

Before proceeding to actual business, the Cardinals go through the formality of proving their right to attend Conclave.

ality, this is nothing more than a form glibly run through, for there can be no danger of

wonderful elasticity in the regulations of the longer laymen. The real state of the case Church. These dispensations constitute a is that the rank of Cardinal is an ecclesiashighly instructive, but also a little-read chap- tical dignity, but that practically it has been ter in the history of the Romish organiza- conferred on laymen by the intervention of tion. Cardinals even in orders have repeat- a fiction like that invented to make Protestedly been permitted to divest themselves of ants capable of receiving the cross of St. their dignity and to marry; but in every Louis in France, which was given only for such case well-defined political influences ninety-nine years to heretics, who forfeited appear to have been the predominating cause it, if still unconverted at the end of that pethat induced the Pope to concede the favour. riod. So also laymen were named Cardinals Thus in 1588 we find Ferdinand Medici au- only for twelve months, being bound within thorized to throw off the purple, and become that period to take deacon's orders; but Grand Duke of Tuscany; in 1642 Cardinal then the same plenary power which had eleMaurice of Savoy to take a wife and a vated them could extend its favours to an duchy; in 1695 Cardinal Rainaldo of Este indefinite renewal of the expired dispensato make the same change in his condition. tion at the end of each year. By the Bull On the death of King Ladislas of Poland, of Pius IV. it was, however, distinctly ruled his brother Casimir, a member of the Society that no Cardinal still a layman could exerof Jesus, and named Cardinal in 1646, re- cise the privileges of his dignity in Conceived a dispensation not merely to abandon clave. To be entitled to vote in the electhe purple, but also to marry the King's tion of a Pope he must have taken deacon's widow, his sister-in-law, Mary Gonzaga. orders, and this rule has been observed in Still more astonishing were the favours con- practice until in Rome it is the general offceded to two brothers of this lady's house. hand statement that this is so fixed by canTo prevent extinction of the family, Paul v., on law. But here we find, on going to the in 1615, permitted Cardinal Ferdinand Gon- fundamental authorities, that, as is so often zaga to go back into the world. On this the case in all matters connected with the change he became enamoured of a woman of subject of Conclaves, the current version is inferior rank, Camille Erdizzani, and mar- not accurate. In Gregory xv.'s (1621-23) ried her; but becoming afterwards tired of elaborate Bull and Ritual, which are at the his wife, he sought and procured the Pope's present moment the ruling statutes for Papal authority for repudiating her, when he es- elections, it is distinctly laid down that this poused Catherine Medicis, daughter of Duke exclusion is only against such lay Cardinals Cosimo II. But there was at the time a secas may not be furnished with a specific Paond Cardinal Gonzaga-Vincenzo, the pal dispensation. The power of especial fabrother of Ferdinand,—and he also succeedvour here recognised has not been exercised ed in obtaining permission to give up the generally, and it may be practically correct Church for the sake of indulging his passion to say that lay Cardinals have had, as a rule, for a kinswoman, Isabella Gonzaga.* In to take orders before being admitted to a all these cases, it is clear that some orders Conclave. In this century, this was certainhad been taken; and therefore, in the strictly the case with Cardinal Albani, who be. sense of the term, these Cardinals were no came a deacon only when in 1823 the Pope's death offered the opportunity of giving a *Perhaps the most remarkable dispensation on record is one granted by Alexander III. for the exOne instance of a lay Cardinal adpress purpose of preventing the extinction of the Giustiniani family, then reduced to one male mem- *Cardinal Albani's proceedings are recounted in ber, Niccola Giustiniani, a Benedictine monk who the following way by Crose, Sardinian Envoy to has since been beatified. In virtue thereof Niccola Rome, in a confidential dispatch: 'Another histoleft his convent, married the daughter of the Vene-rical observation is supplied by Cardinal Albani, tian Doge Micheli, and when he had begotten a sufficient number of sons to secure the continuation of the line, went back to his religious profession. Amongst the curiosities of Papal history that are little known, is the fact that the chair of St. Peter has been occupied successively by father and sonPope Silverius, 536, who was followed by his son Hormisdas. In this instance the Pope had become a widower before election. But in the third portion of the Annales Bertinianorum, written by the celebrated Archbishop Hinemar, and to be found in Pertz, Mon Germanica, vol. i., there is given an account of the abduction of a daughter and the wife Stephania of Pope Hadrian in 868-that is to say, a period to which the Archbishop was a contemporary witness. The story is narrated with much detail, nd with the name of all the parties implicated.

vote. *

who at the period of Conclave was not yet ordained. Until then he had always expressed his intention to abandon the purple and to marry, with the view of not letting his most noble family become extinct. While in this state of hesitation, he had always obtained from the Pope a prolongation of the terms within which he had to come to a decision; but it happened that this term would have expired just during Conclave, so that he would have been obliged to go out of it, inasmuch as, during the vacancy of the See, there existed no authority which could renew the requisite authorization. From a sense of this, Cardinal Albani made up his mind to become Sub-deacon on entering Conclave, and thus he was qualified to exercise his influence in behalf of the Imperial Court.'-Bianchi, Diplomazia Europea in Italia, vol. ii. p. 389.

mitted to Conclave did, however, certainly | ruled that no censure, suspension, interdict, occur when Sixtus V. was elected (1855.) nor even excommunication, can involve forThe Cardinal Archduke Albert (who event- feiture by a Cardinal of his right to exercise ually married) arrived in hot haste from this specific privilege of his order. There is Innspruck, and having exhibited his license no more startling provision in the whole from the late Pope, was permitted to co-op- Roman organization; indeed it is so starterate with his fellow Cardinals in giving a ling that many Catholics will be disposed at new chief to Catholic Christendom, although, the first blush to doubt its authenticity. Yet as is explicitly stated, he never had taken does this enactment stand not merely as an any orders. At the present moment there obsolete curiosity on some forgotten page in are no lay members of the Sacred College; the statute-book; Roman Curialists hold it but this is so only since, quite recently, the to be still in full force, and when the last reigning Pope expressed his desire that those case in point occurred, in 1740, with Cardiamongst the Cardinals who had not taken nal Coscia, it was invoked, and strictly acted deacon's orders should do so. Amongst the upon without discussion. The principle number was Cardinal Antonelli. dictating this provision is to be found in the feeling (very natural in times of bitter feuds) that, unless this particular privilege of Cardinal were set beyond the reach of confisca tion, a Pope of strong partisan views would have only to impose from his plenary authority ecclesiastical penalties to disable Cardinals of a faction opposed to his own from having any weight in the choice of his successors. Nor were such apprehensions without their warrant in facts. Like all the organic laws concerning the mode of Papal elections, this provision was due to no abstract theory, but was simply the result of a want that had been practically encountered. On the 10th May 1297, Boniface VIII., blinded by furious passion against the house of Colonna, excommunicated and degraded from their rank the Cardinals James and Peter Colonna, declaring them stripped of every privilege appertaining to their dignity. The extraordinary severity of a sentence, manifestly dictated by the bitter hatred of family feuds, because not justified at the moment of promulgation by adequate canonical delinquencies on the part of these Prelates, produced a profound sensation. was evidently a point of principle with Boniface VIII. to wield his power for extermination of the Colonna influence, if not for actual extinction of the race. Solemnly degraded from their rank, these Cardinals, on the death of Boniface, found themselves excluded from the Conclave, and vainly sought from his successor restitution to rights which they declared to have been taken away in defiance of justice. The consequence was a protracted state of angry feelings, rendered formidable by the material power of the malcontent Colonnas, and accompanied by muttered protests against the canonical legality of a situation in which dignitaries of the Church were arbitrarily excluded from their inherent prerogatives. A sense of the danger to be apprehended from the recurrence of arbitrary acts of the same nature was awakened. It was felt that

A freshly-named Cardinal is subjected to a form of novitiate, during which he is technically said to be cum ore clauso, being invested with the symbols of his rank, but precluded from uttering an opinion on or taking an active part in any matters falling within a Cardinal's sphere, until he shall have been relieved from apprenticeship by the Pope solemnly unsealing his mouth. Of late this phase of preparatory state has in practice been reduced to a mere form-the closing injunction and the opening confirmation in full rights being performed in one consistory. Still, this is as yet an innovation, without written authority, and a return to stricter observance of primitive custom is at any time quite possible. At the time when this novitiate was a reality, it was a matter of importance to decide how far this limitation of powers in a Cardinal actually created could extend even to the suspension of the franchise belonging to his rank in the event of the Pope's demise before his mouth had been solemnly unsealed. Eugenius IV. Eugenius IV. (1431-47), by a Constitution prohibited Cardinals in this state from taking part in elections; but that prohibition was repealed by Pius IV., and the question must be considered absolutely set at rest by the confirmatory ruling of Gregory xv., that every promulgated Cardinal (in distinction to those in petto) has an inalienable right to participate in Conclaves, which ruling has been still further confirmed by the circumstances which marked the Conclave convened on the death of Clement ix. in 1670. At that moment there were seven Cardinals cum oribus clausis. All went into Conclave, and one of their number, Altieri, came out of it as Pope.

A Cardinal's right to record his vote at Papal elections is regarded as so sacred that it has been guarded by perfectly exceptional provisions, such as seem to constitute in canon law the single limitation set on the Pope's plenary authority. It has been distinctly

It

a Pope of headstrong passions like Boniface | berini, preserved in the Gaetani archives, VIII. must absolutely be precluded from describes him to have arrived more dead exposing the Church again to grave peril than alive from fright. Under the protecfor the sake of purely personal hatred and tion of a safe-conduct from the Sacred Colambition. Accordingly, just thirteen years lege, Cossia stole back into Conclave. The after the memorable degradation of the Co- new Pope, Clement XII. (Corsini), was unlonna Cardinals, a Bull in reference to able to withstand the clamour of denunPapal elections was issued by Clement v., ciation which from all sides was raised in which the following most remarkable against the member of the Sacred College. clause was inserted: But in order that, Cardinal Coscia was brought to trial for as concerns the before-mentioned elections, fraud, malversation, and peculation of the dissensions and schisms be so much the more most scandalous kind; the charges were avoided, as the occasion for dissent is remov- fully established, and he was sentenced to a ed from those elections, we decree that no fine of 200,000 crowns, to ten years' close Cardinal may be expelled from the said confinement in St. Angelo, deprivation of his elections on the ground of any excommuni- see of Beaevento, and to absolute degradation cation, suspension, or interdict whatsoever.' from the rank and privileges of the CardinalThe provision thus made has been subse- ate. Before long the Pope felt misgivings quently confirmed by Pius Iv. and Gregory about the sentence so pronounced, and wrote xv. in so full a manner as to remove all ambi- a Chirograph bearing date 11th December, guity on this head, for not only have those 1734, to regulate and modify the conditions under sentence been declared relieved at of Coscia's penalties. This Chirograph we election times from the disabilities involved have found in a volume* of manuscript thereby,but, what was quite as necessary, their documents in the Corsini Library, relating colleagues were dispensed, during the inter- to the Conclave held on the Pope's death, val, as regarded them alone, from the obli- which is manifestly composed of papers gation to hold no intercourse with an excom- that belonged to the Cardinal-Nephew of municated and censured individual. There Clement XII. There does not exist a more are instances of Cardinals who since this remarkable Papal utterance than this docuenactment have undergone extreme penal- ment, wherein the Pope explains fully the ties, even decapitation, but we know of no afterthought that induced him to revoke his instance in which this particular provision first sentence as objectionable, if not actualin regard to the indelible_right of franchise ly faulty in principle, in spite of his having has been set at naught. In the time of Leo pronounced it, as he admits, with the delix. several Cardinals were convicted of a berate intention of cancelling the binding conspiracy against his life. Of these, one, force of previous Papal edicts of limitation. Cardinal Petrucci, was strangled in the That a person laboring under such grave Castle of St. Angelo on the 6th June 1517, convictions as Coscia should have part in while Cardinals Saoli and Soderini were in- creating a Pope was contrary to propriety; deed degraded, and declared stripped of both therefore, said Clement XII., it has been oriactive and passive voice in a Conclave-that ginally pronounced that every election in is, of the power of either voting or being which he intervened should be ipso jure elected; but this sentence was cancelled be- null and void, 'every power and faculty before the Pope's demise tested its validity. ing taken away of calling the said Cardinal Under Leo's successor Cardinal Soderini Coscia to give his vote in such election on again stood convicted of conspiracy, and was the ground of any claim or motive specified imprisoned in the Castle of St. Angelo; but in canon law, or in virtue of any constituon the last day of the Pope's obsequies he tion whatsoever of Pius IV., Gregory xv., was let out by the Sacred College, and gave and other our predecessors. A more carehis vote in Conclave for Clement VII., by fully worded expression of Pontifical pleniwhom he was then restored to all the hon- tude so as effectively to override every apours of his rank. But the ruling case on parently opposing enactment cannot be conthis point is that of the notorious Cardinal ceived. Yet Pope Clement goes on to state Coscia, who under Benedict XIII. (1724-30) that having reflected on the grave consewielded the whole power, and dispensed the quences that might follow on such annulwhole patronage of the State. On this lations and invalidations, he feels himself Pope's death, his favourite was so universal- bound to put forward the declaration that ly an object of detestation, from his iniqui- he did not in any way pretend of his autously corrupt proceedings, that he fled thority to impugn the validity of a yet fufrom fear of popular vengeance to Cisterna, ture election. Wherefore,' writes the Pope, then as now the family seat of the Duke of Sermoneta, who, in a letter to Cardinal Bar

6

* Vol. 1618 in Catalogue of Mss. in Corsini Library.

เ

we declare that never has it been our wish | pronounced by the same Pope on the 26th or intention to prejudice the canonical elec- September 1791 against Cardinal Lomenie tion of our successor, or the supreme dignity de Brienne, for having sworn the civil constiand authority of the Church which after tution of the clergy that had been voted in our demise shall be lawfully vested in the France. He was pronounced to be a schisperson of him who has been chosen with the matic, and as such perjured, degraded, and accustomed forms, it being according to wholly stripped of all his dignities and privneither reason nor equity that the transmis ileges. But it happened that both these sion to his person of a penalty attaching to Cardinals died before there had been any the delinquent be assumed capable of occur- opportunity for testing the validity of these rence, and that injury should befall the free-sentences to disable them from claiming at dom and union of the Apostolical College in its so needful mystic body.' By this Chirograph the Pope accordingly abrogated the sentence stamping with invalidity an election in which Coscia took part, with the proviso, however, that an election, to be canonical, must not gain its obligatory majority of two-thirds by his individual vote, and that during his ten years of strict confinement this Cardinal's electoral privileges should be restricted to voting, and not entitle him to obtain the suffrages of the Sacred College, because it would be unseemly to consider eligible for Head of the Church an individual let out of prison only for as long as a Conclave lasted. This is what happened therefore on the death of Clement XII. In the same volume containing the chirograph, there is the autograph letter of Cardinal Coscia, dated the 6th February 1740, from the Castle of St. Angelo, and written to the Cardinal-Nephew of the late Pope, in which he claims to be set free for admission to Conclave, a request which was at once conceded. The President de Brosses, as he was going home from witnessing the procession of the Cardinals walking met Coscia in the shut chariot of Cardinal Acquaviva, who had been to fetch him from prison in the Castle of St. Angelo, and was taking him to his cell.'*

election time to be admitted to the exercise of indelible rights. The stormy days in the wake of the French Revolution furnished also some instances of Cardinals smitten with the prevailing passion for repudiating oldfashioned institutions, and indulging in a display of new ideas. During the heyday excitement of a republic that seemed established on the Capitol, two Cardinals, of whom one belonged to a great and princely family in Rome, thought it good policy to turn their backs on what looked like a foundering fortune. In March 1798, Cardinal Altieri wrote to the Pope expressing his wish to divest himself of the purple, on the ground of a growing sense of bodily infirmities. But Pius VI., who knew that other motives prompted the unusual application, addressed a letter to the Cardinal, remonstrating against his setting an example of faint-hearted desertion. Before this appeal reached Cardinal Altieri, he had however already taken an irrevocable step, and sent his absolute renunciation of the Cardinalate to the Pope, in imitation of Cardinal Antici, who, on the 7th March had done the same in two letters, one addressed to the Pope, and the other to the two consuls of Rome. Yet Pius VI. declined to accept these renunciations, and continued to regard the two renegades as still Cardinals, and canonically not relieved from their obligations, until the consideration of the consequences that might follow from their claiming, in virtue of this refusal on his part, to take part in the Conclave, induced him from his prison at the Certosa, by two briefs of the 7th September 1798, to declare Altieri and Antici, on their own renunciation, stripped of all the privileges and rights appertaining to their former dignity, espe cially any voice, active or passive, in Papal elections. Altieri died soon after, in 1800, without seeing any turn in Pontifical fortunes which might have made him regret his step as hasty. Not so Antici, who not only witnessed the restoration of Pius VII. to his dominions, and of the Sacred College to its good estate, but when he looked on all this pleasant recovery, tried himself to participate in it. On the death of Pius VII. Antici addressed the Sacred College to be admitted