BOOKS.

PAPAL CONCLAVES..

THERE are very few Englishmen alive—not more than two or three—who understand the Papal organization as well as Mr.

Cartwright. A man of singular political knowledge, acquainted with all Courts and almost all statesmen in Southern Europe, with an intellectual fondness for ecclesiastical studies and an intellec- tual doubt as to the divine origin of any ecclesiastical organiza- tion, he has resided years in Rome, and has studied the Papacy, of all human institutions the one most worthy study, with the eager curiosity of a scientific anatomist. Inquisitive, patient, and wholly unprejudiced, he has accumulated facts rather than con- clusions, questioned, listened, and read till there is scarcely a sub- ject connected with Rome, from her variations in doctrine to her most secret political ideas, from her view of Dollinger's last effort to reconcile science and the Church to her judgment upon the policy of the Bonapartes, with which he is not as familiar as a squire with his parish business and the Poor Law. In the pre- sent volume he has undertaken to explain one of the most complex and one of the most interesting portions of the Catholic system, the mode by which the Church periodically elects her Sovereign and infallible mouthpiece. He has compressed into a little volume of barely two hundred pages a mass of knowledge which seems almost limitless, which, for example, is certainly co- extensive with Papal history, with the Bullarium, with all that Italian statesmen, cardinals, and courtiers know of the pro- ceedings in the last three conclaves. The result is a book which will, we believe, charm careful students of history, while it will dissipate much of the ignorance which in this country surrounds the subject. The popular English idea is, we believe, that the Pope is elected on the occurrence of a vacancy by "the Cardinals," who are locked up in a building for that purpose until they can unanimously agree upon their nominee. Those who are a little better informed know that certain extremely stringent rules are binding on the electors, that a majority of two-thirds is requisite to a valid election, and that certain secular authorities have a limited right of interference ; but even they are hardly aware of the specialty of the process, the splendid elasticity and freedom which under all her formal rigidness the.Church has con- trived to retain, or are conscious how completely she has reconciled permanence with pliability, system with a despotic authority with which any system whatever would appear to be inconsistent. We shall, we believe, best content our readers by first giving a de- scription of the mode of election as now practised, and then explaining the extent to which that mode may be modified, loosened, or even, if need exist, abrogated entirely.

Immediately on the death of the Pope, all power, which for- merly reverted in theory to the Senate and people of Rome, and

in reality to nobody, the interregnum being a carnival of crime and debauchery, passes to the Cardinal Camerlengo and a Com- mittee of three Cardinals chosen by ballot, who form a kind of

provisional government for Rome, strictly charged, however, to do nothing which can by possibility be postponed until the election of a new Sovereign. The law Courts suspend their sittings, the Congregations intermit their functions, the departments are left headless, and the police alone remain, so to speak, alive. Nine days must expire before an election can commence,—a regulation intended to prevent a surprise vote by the Cardinals resident in Rome,—but on the tenth, the electors assemble in the Palace on the Quirinal :—

" The portion of the Quirinal Palace devoted to the accommodation of a Conclave is that which runs from Monte Cavallo to Quattro Fontana. Here there is probably the longest corridor in the world, upon which opens at equal intervals a range of doors—exactly like those of monks' cells in a convent corridor—that lead into apartments comprising each three or four rooms. These form the habitations of the Cardinals during Conclave, who draw lots for them as they did for the booths. On all points of form and ceremonial, however obsolete for practical purposes, there is observed a minute imitation of what was the rule in the Vatican. As formerly the Barge, so now the street running towards

* Papal Conclaves. By W. C. Cartwright, London: Edmonston and Douglas.

Ports Pia, Is closed by chains, while at the top of the great staircase are met the same turning-boxes that figured at the head of the Scala Reggio. At these wheels Cardinals are now allowed the privilege to hold conversation with visitors, though subject to being overheard by atten- dant guardians, as also to receive letters under the restriction of their being first perused by these. It is superfluous to add that in spite of the severe penalties launched with the full weight of Pontifical anathema against every violation of the command that an inmate of Conclave should hold no intercourse with the world, and the non-repeal of these Papal enactments, the correspondence between the Cardinals within and their political friends without has yet at all times been general."

The right of election is now confined to the body of officers . belonging to the Roman Court known to Europe as "the College of Cardinals." This body, which has no corporate existence, may comprise six cardinal bishops, fifty cardinal priests, and fourteen cardinal deacons, distinctions which for all purposes of election may be taken as merely nominal; but in practice it seldom exceeds fifty or fifty-five, selected by the Pope at his absolute discretion. Even laymen have been among them, and there seems to be absolutely no restriction upon choice, except the obligation of celibacy ; but once appointed, no subsequent sentence of degrada- tion, or excommunication, or civil punishment can bar the right of a Cardinal to vote in the Electoral College,—Cardinal Coscia, for instance, having been conveyed in 1740 from the prison to which he had been sentenced for theft to vote in a Conclave. The actual election takes place in the Paolina chapel of the Quirinal, in one of three ways. The assembled Cardinals may proclaim their choice at once, and if they are unanimous, the subject of that choice is considered to have been nominated by the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which, of course, overrides all vetos, rules, etiquettes, and customs. Mr. Cartwright dismisses this mode as "ideal," though Papal writers quote instances of such an election, and it may be regarded as one which would never be employed except when the

Church was in extremis. The second mode is "compromise," when the power of selection is delegated to a small Committee, which has been frequently employed ; and the third is the ballot,

now the regular plan. Each Cardinal writes any name not his own and a Scriptural motto,—which motto he must not change during the election,—on a paper, which he seals up and drops into a chalice, whence it is extracted by the Cardinal Seratators. It is the popular idea that the name thus given must be that of a Cardinal, and this is, no doubt, the practice ; but the Church has never been so entirely false to its own principles as to lay down any such rule. The theory is that the election is at all events guided by the Holy Ghost, and, consequently, the election of any Catholic Christian whatsoever would be lawful; indeed, it is a moot point whether the election itself is not in itself the supreme quali- fication,—whether the choice of, say, a Mussulman would not be proof from above that he was a Catholic. Votes were ten- dered and received so late as 1758 for Father Barberini, who was not a Cardinal; John XIX. was when elected a layman, and Adrian V. never was ordained. There is no law whatever which would

prevent the election of a King, if umnaftied or a widower, or of a Catholic negro, or indeed of any male human being unmarried and baptized into the Catholic Church, a curiously perfect example of that universality which is the distinctive claim of the Roman

Catholic Church. If the Scrutators find that two-thirds of the Cardinals present have voted for any one name, he is Pope ; but if not, two daily ballots are taken on a very curious system. The Cardinals whose minds are made up give in their evening papers inscribed with the word " Nemini" (" No one"), while those who are more pliable " accede " in the evening ballot to any particular name among the votes given in the morning. The introduction of an absolutely new name on the same day does not appear to be forbidden, but it has never occurred. Usually the ballots are very numerous, but the election of the present Pope, which was wholly unexpected, and carried only by the gradual reduction of the great following of Cardinal Lambruschini,—who fully expected to be Pope,—was over in three days. One method of influencing votes is remarkable as the only intrusion of secular agency into the affair. The Sovereigns of Austria, France, and Spain possess each a right of forbidding the election of one Cardinal, and usually entrust the power to a Cardinal selected from among their own subjects, who when needful announces the fact, and thus finally strikes that candidate out of the list. This veto is absolute and

conclusive, but it must be tendered in the Conclave, a regulation. which saved the present Pope, whose election had been vetoed by the Emperor of Austria. The Cardinal who brought it arrived a

little too late, but the fact transpired, and may help to explain one or two events in the Pope's reign. The moment the ballot shows a majority of two-thirds and the candidate has announced his acceptance the Conclave is declared at an end, the windows are thrown open, and from a balcony window the Cardinal Dean pro- claims, " Habemus Papam," the shout which follows being solemnly recorded as the assent of the Roman People, still in theory essential to the election. The visit to the Atrium of St.

Peter follows, then the procession to the Chapel of St. Gregory, then the mystic gift of burning tow, with the words, " Sancle Pater, sic transit gloria mundi!" and then the coronation; but none of these ceremonies make the Pope. He is the infallible mouthpiece of the Church, the absolute King, above all earthly law, from the instant of his election, of which, however, his own consent is a necessary

part.

Mr. Cartwright enters at some length into the question whether it is within the competence of a Pope to alter this mode of election, and decides that except on one single point he is as absolute on this matter as on every other. He cannot deprive a Cardinal of his privilege, because that power would in practice enable him to nominate his own successor ; but he can authorize the Cardinals to dispense with every formality, even the ten days' delay, and to elect a Pope over his own corpse. Such a decree has once been actually passed :—

"To secure a lasting re-establishment of the See in Rome, Gregory XI. perceived it to be necessary to make, for once, a radical change in tho value attached to specified forms in the machinery of Papal elec- tions. By a Bull bearing date March 19, 1378, Gregory IX. at one stroke of the pen suspended every existing regulation on the subject of Papal Elections, set the Cardinals free from the observance of any obligations they might have sworn to in accordance to prescription, and specially empowered them not merely to meet for election on his decease, whenever it might seem convenient, but to nominate by simple majority. This memorable exercise of Papal authority, constitut- ing a true coup d'etat, stands justified by the approving voice of all ecclesiastical authorities, who have accepted it, without, so far as we know, one observation conveying an insinuation of usurpation against this Pope for what he did on this occasion."

Again, on the 30th December, 1797, Pius VI. issued a Bull empowering the Cardinals to postpone an election, to hurry an election, and to do any other act necessary to election, provisions formally repeated in the Bull of the 13th November, 1798, a bull which is still in force, and which Mr. Cartwright significantly adds the Vatican has not forgotten. It is considered in Rome extremely probable that at the next election this power may be used, and the ascendancy of Napoleon in Rome thus completely neutralized. An election could not apparently be dispensed with altogether, but in the event of any regular ceremonial being prevented, say, by an outbreak of revolution, or by a usurpation such as seemed pos- sible in 1798, the Church has still her remedy. She can gather together without aid from Princes a General Council, and such Council can pass, for that occasion only, decrees modifying the whole system of election. This has been done once, the Council of Constance having been summoned by the Church without sanction from Pope or Prince, and having solemnly decreed that in the next election thirty divines, five from each of the six nations present, should elect with.the Cardinals. The result was the elec- tion of Martin V., whose title has from that day to this been fully acknowledged by the Catholic Church.