RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

Tall, gaunt, with clear-cut and unmistakably New England features, and feet that would not admit of Cinderella slippers, is the tout ensemble which Emerson photographed upon our retina when we heard him lecture recently. We liked his calm and self-poised manner. There was no heated concern when the Sibylline leaves on which his lecture was written became inextricably mixed. Paradoxically enough, his theme was “Orators and Oratory.” His high, shrill voice, his ungainly manners, and his utter absence of gesture make him the most unattractive of speakers. But there was a certain “fury in his words” which fastened the attention. The next thing to being an orator is to love oratory; and his reverence and admiration for the eloquent in speech pass his own eloquent expression.

Emerson’s sentences are so pointed that frequently the point is so fine as to be lost. His eloquence is anything but Asiatic, and, indeed, its terseness very much resembles affectation. He is called the American Carlyle, but his proper title is the American Montaigne. There is not an idea in Emerson that cannot be traced to the garrulous old Frenchman. The first reading of Emerson is an era in a young man’s life. The short, apothegmic sentences strike him with the force of proverbs. The happy quotation and illustration seem inspirations of genius. The misty transcendentalism has a roseate hue, in delightful contrast with the bald practicality of Watts’ hymns and orthodox sermons. The stimulating style, resultant from exquisite taste and the manly resolve to carry out Pope’s advice about the “art to blot,” is high perfection when compared with the weak and weary prosing of moral essayists. Yet there is nothing original in Emerson. He has contributed little or nothing to the body of ideas. Not even his poetry, which is supposed to be productive of ideas, presents anything new or striking. The passion for nature-worship, which Wordsworth carried to its highest expression, becomes tiresome and unnatural in Emerson’s short metre and careless versification.

What is the source of his power? Why do New England critics rave over him? Even J. Russell Lowell, who, with all the limitations of a narrowed culture, ranks respectably as a literary critic, cannot find words in which to laud the New England philosopher. He finds the secret of his influence to consist in his “wide-reaching sympathy” and his being able to understand the use of a linchpin equally with the stellar influences. Lowell himself is under the witchery of mere words. His cultivated mind is drawn to the beautiful by acquired æsthetic taste. His estimate of Dante, as published in the New American Cyclopædia and afterward in Among my Books, fills the thoughtful Italian student with amazement. He is a critic of words, and is childishly led by a bright figure or exquisite metaphor. Emerson, whilst seeming to disregard words, pays profound attention to their collocation and effectiveness. This school is not a school of thoughts but of words; and it is under this aspect that we intend examining it. It is the thorough embodiment of poor Hamlet’s objection to the book which he is reading: “Words, words, words.” We read and read, and are charmed with Thucydidean terseness and Solomonic wisdom; but when we begin to reflect “all the riches have escaped out of our hands.” It is about time to expose this wily old philosopher, who has been throwing rhetorical dust into the eyes of several generations. He may have a noble manhood; he may be sincere; but there can be no question that it is the ignotum pro magnifico which has been the cheap cause of his popularity.

Thomas à Kempis tells us that “words fly through the air and hurt not a stone.” There is certainly no objection to a writer’s careful elaboration of his style. The study of words is a part of rhetoric. But there is a subtle and elusive application of words, outside of their obvious and generally-used meaning, which is at once a rhetorical and a logical vice. And as ideas fail, so words are sedulously cultivated. The style is the man, as Buffon did not say; but what of an affected style? If there is any truth in the saying, it convicts Emerson of being stilted, unnatural, and affected. No man thinks by jerks and starts, and no man writes so. The fanciful and abrupt indicate either affectation or an unbalanced intellect. All the great philosophers write calmly and equably. The sustained strength of Plato, on whom Emerson professes to model himself, is in direct contrast with the abruptness of Seneca, who was a mass of conceit and hypocrisy. We have no quarrel with Mr. Emerson on account of his studied style; only, with Sydney Smith, we object to a discourse in which are hung out preconcerted signals for tears or excitement. It is quite easy to form a quaint style. The success of Charles Lamb’s imitation of Sir Thomas Browne, or of Bret Harte’s or Thackeray’s burlesques of popular novels, shows how quickly a ready writer can fall into a philosophical diction. Emerson attempts the epigrammatic. Like Pythagoras, he disdains reasons. The ipse dixit, he supposes, will suffice for his disciples. He contradicts himself on his very self-satisfactory theory of “not being in any mood long.” He admires opposite characters; but, to the credit of American good sense be it said—good sense even in a philosophe—he does not “boil over,” like Carlyle, in all sorts of oddities of hero-worship. The Yankee hard head which he has cannot be softened by all the philosophy and poetry in the world; and, notwithstanding his ethereal views, he drives a hard bargain.

Can we review this philosopher to the satisfaction of our readers, or must they peruse him themselves in order to form a vague idea of his system?

It may be Emerson’s boast that he has no system. This restlessness under any, even nominal, régime is a characteristic of contemporaneous philosophy outside the church. There is liberty enough in the church; and, in fact, beyond it we see nothing but imprisonment, for nothing so practically chains the intellect of man as irresponsible freedom. It is like the liberty of the ocean enjoyed (?) by a mariner without sails or compass. A Catholic philosopher can speculate as much as he pleases. The security of the faith gives him a delightful sense of safe freedom. Like O’Connell’s driving a coach and four through an act of Parliament, he may go to the outermost verge of speculation. St. Thomas moves the most outrageous fallacies, speculations, and objections, and discusses them, too, with all the boldness of intellectual freedom. It is Dr. Marshall, we think, who shows that all intellectual activity and freedom are enjoyed within the spacious bounds of Catholic truth. Even in theology there are wide differences. The Catholic intellect is supposed to be completely bridled. We once read a powerful arraignment of our Scriptural proofs for purgatory, written by an eminent Protestant theologian. He must have been surprised to learn that Catholic theologians do not attach all importance to the Scriptural argument for purgatory. The different schools of Catholic theology argue pro and con. as keenly as old Dr. Johnson himself would have desired, but without the slightest detriment to the unity of the faith. Nothing can be falser than the received Protestant notion that we are helplessly bound by a network of petty definitions and regulations. There are, however, great and immovable principles which are understood to guide and vivify the Catholic intellect. And such systemization is necessary to all knowledge. Without it a man’s mind, like Emerson’s, wanders comet-like, attracting attention by its vagaries, but is of no intelligible use to the universe, and gives no light, except of a nebulous and perplexing nature.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, of all American writers, had the true transcendental mind, ridicules it unsparingly. His doleful experience upon Brook Farm, when he attempted to milk a cow, may have had a practical awakening effect upon his dreams. In a little sketch entitled The Celestial Railroad, in which he whimsically carries out Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, he introduces Giant Transcendentalism, who has taken the place of Giant Pope, and Giant Despair, that interrupted Christian’s progress to the Delectable Mountains. Giant Transcendentalism is a huge, amorphous monster, utterly indescribable, and speaking an unintelligible language. This language, which Emerson strives to make articulate, we read with mingled amusement and astonishment in the German writers. Emerson is not a member of the Kulturkampf, like Carlyle. His mind does not take in their wild rhapsodies. His essay on Goethe (in Representative Men) is cold and unappreciative when compared with the Scotchman’s eulogies. We firmly believe that no healthy intellect can feed upon Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, or even Kant, who was the most luminous intellect of the group. Emerson has not the stolid pertinacity of Herr Teufelsdröckh. His genius is French. He delights in paradox and verbal gymnastics. Carlyle works with a sort of furious patience at such a prosaic career as Frederick the Great’s. He gets up a factitious enthusiasm about German Herzhogs and Erstfursts. Emerson would look with dainty disdain upon his Cyclopean work among big, dusty, musty folios and the hammering out of shining sentences from such pig-iron.

Whence his transcendentalism? We believe that it has two elements, nature-worship and Swedenborgianism. Of nature-worship we have very little. Like Thomson, the author of the Seasons, who wrote the finest descriptions of scenery in bed at ten o’clock in the morning, we are frightfully indifferent to the glories of earth, sea, and sky, whilst theoretically capable of intense rapture. This tendency to adore nature, and this intense modern cultivation of the natural sciences, we take as indicative of the husks of religion given by Protestantism. Man’s intellect seeks the certain, and where he cannot find it in the supernatural he will have recourse to the natural. The profound attention paid to all the mechanical and natural sciences, to the exclusion, if not denial, of supernatural religion, is the logical result of the absurdity of Protestantism. Perhaps Emerson’s poetic feeling has much to do with his profound veneration for fate, nature, and necessity, which are his true god, with a very little Swedenborgianism to modify them.

And here we meet him on his philosophy of words. A word, according to St. Thomas, should be the adæquatio rei et intellectus, for a word is really the symbol and articulation of truth. Where words convey no clear or precise idea to the mind they are virtually false. The terminology of Emerson falls even below Carlyle’s in obscurity. What does he mean by the one-soul? What by compensation? What by fate and necessity? Explica terminos is the command of logic and reason; yet he maunders on in vague and extravagant speech, using terms which it is very probable he himself only partly or arbitrarily understands. He is not master of his own style. His own words hurry him along. This fatal bondage to style spoils his best thoughts. He seems to aim at striking phrases and ends in paradox. His very attempt to strengthen and compress his sentences weakens and obscures his meaning. The oracular style does not carry well. He is happiest where he does not don the prophetic or poetical mantle. When we get a glimpse of his shrewd character, he is as gay as a lark and sharp as a fox. He muffles himself in transcendentalism, but fails to hide his clear sense, which he cannot entirely bury or obfuscate. It seems strange to us that such a mind could be permanently influenced by the fantasies of Swedenborg, whom he calls a mystic, but who, very probably, was a madman. The pure mysticism of the Catholic Church is not devoid of what to those who have not the light to read it may seem to wear a certain air of extravagance, which, apparently, would be no objection to Emerson; but it is kept within strict rational bounds by the doctrinal authority of the church. We do not suppose that Emerson ever thought it worth his while to study the mystic or ascetic theology of the church, though here and there in his writings he refers to the example of saints, and quotes their sayings and doings. But it must be a strange mental state that passively admits the wild speculations of Swedenborgianism with its gross ideas of heaven and its fanciful interpretations of Scripture. Besides, Emerson clearly rejects the divinity of Jesus Christ, which is extravagantly (if we may use the expression) set forth in Swedenborgianism, to the exclusion of the Father and the Holy Ghost. He is, or was, a Unitarian, and his allusions to our Blessed Lord have not even the reverence of Carlyle.

Naturalism, as used in the sense of the Vatican decrees, is the proper word to apply to the Emersonian teaching. He has the Yankee boastfulness, materialistic spirit, and general laudation of the natural powers. His transcendentalism has few of the spiritual elements of German thought. He does not believe in contemplation, but stimulates to activity. In his earlier essays he seemed pantheistic, but his last book (Society and Solitude) affirmed his doubt and implicit denial of immortality. He appears to be a powerful personality, for he has certainly influenced many of the finer minds of New England, and, no doubt, he leads a noble and intellectual life. His exquisite æstheticism takes away the grossness of the results to which his naturalistic philosophy leads, and it is with regret that we note in him that intellectual pride which effectually shuts his mind even to the gentlest admonitions and enlightenments of divine grace.

It is a compliment to our rather sparse American authorship and scholarship that England regards him as the typical American thinker and writer. We do not so regard him ourselves, for his genius lacks the sturdy American originality and reverent spirit. But Emerson made a very favorable impression upon Englishmen when he visited their island, and he wrote the best book on England (English Traits) that, perhaps, any American ever produced. The quiet dignity and native independence of the book charmed John Bull, who was tired of our snobbish eulogiums of himself and institutions. Emerson met many literary men, who afterward read his books and praised his style. He has the air of boldness and the courage of his opinions. Now and then he invents a striking phrase which sets one a-thinking. He has also in perfection the art of quoting, and his whole composition betokens the artist and scholar.

There is a high, supersensual region, imagination, fantasy, or soul-life, in which he loves to disport, and to which he gives the strangest names. One grows a little ashamed of what he deems his own unimaginativeness when he encounters our philosopher “bestriding these lazy-pacing clouds.” He wonders at the “immensities, eternities, and fates” that seem to exert such wondrous powers. When Emerson gets into this strain he quickly disappears either in the clouds or in a burrow, according to the taste and judgment of different readers. There is often a fine feeling in these passages which we can understand yet not express. Sublime they are not, though obscurity may be considered one of the elements of sublimity. They are emotional. Emerson belongs rather to the sensualistic school; at least, he ascribes abounding power to the feelings, and, in fact, he is too heated and enthusiastic for the coldness and calmness exacted by philosophical speculation. Many of his essays read like violent sermons; and his worst ones are those in which he attempts to carry out a ratiocination. He is dictatorial. He announces but does not prove. He appears at times to be in a Pythonic fury, and proclaims his oracles with much excitement and contortion. It is impossible to analyze an essay, or hold on to the filmy threads by which his thoughts hang together. It is absurd to call him a philosopher who has neither system, clearness of statement, nor accuracy of thought.

It is a subject of gratulation that Emerson, who has been before New England for the past half-century, has wielded a generally beneficial influence. With his powers and opportunities he might have done incalculable harm; but the weight of his authority has been thrown upon the side of general morality and natural development of strength of character. We know, of course, how little merely natural motives and powers avail toward the building up of character; but it is not against faith to hold that a good disposition and virtuous frame of mind may result from purely natural causes. He has preached the purest gospel of naturalism, shrinking at once from the bold and impious counsellings of Goethe and from the muscularity of Carlyle. He has given us, in himself, glimpses of a noble character, and his ideals have been lofty and pure. New England could not have had a better apostle, humanly and naturally speaking. Its cultivated and rational minds turned in horror and disgust from its rigid Calvinism, its outré religious frenzies, and its sordid and prosaic life. They found a voice and interpreter in Emerson. He marks the recoil from unscriptural, irrational, and unnatural religion.

Puritanism, always unlovely, despotic, and gloomy, began to lose its hold even upon the second generation of the Puritans. Its life will never be thoroughly revealed to the sunshiny Catholic mind. Perhaps its ablest exponent was Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, in the Scarlet Letter, revealed its possibilities and, in fact, actualities of hideousness. We have no fault to find with any elements of stern self-control or ascetic character that it might develop, but its effect on the intellect was darkening and crippling. The whole Puritan exodus from England was a suppressed and blinding excitement. The rebound from their harsh and unbending discipline was terrific. The frowning-down of all amusement, the irritating espionage over private life, the high-strung religious enthusiasm which it was necessary to simulate if not feel, the abnormal development of ministerial power and influence, and the baleful gloom of Calvinistic doctrine, were elements that had necessarily to be destroyed, or they would madden a nation. They could no more endure, if it were possible to extirpate them, than could a colony of rabid dogs. Human nature, as created by God, tends to preserve the primal type. It asserts its functions, its rights, its powers, and its aptitudes. After a century, in which religious intolerance ruled New England with a rod of iron, the long-pent-up storm burst with indescribable fury and scattered orthodoxy to the four winds. The people breathed more freely; the atmosphere cleared; there was a healthy interchange of sentiment. The predominance of public-school education, combining with the multiplication of books, developed that crude and half-formed culture which has characterized New England to the present day. The best-educated portion of the Union, filled with all the insolence of a little learning, aspired to rule the nation, and succeeded. Its ideas were zealously propagated. Wherever a Yankee settled he planted all New England around him. The peddler did not need religion, but the philosopher did. The culture of æsthetics engaged some; others went off into Socinianism. The doctrines of Fourierism had charms for many, among whom was Emerson. He longed for an ideal life. The country was not leavened then, as now, by the solid thought and practice of Catholicity. The mystic radiance and grace of the Adorable Sacrament did not sweetly pervade the whole atmosphere of the land. Satan was busy and jubilant. The strangest and most eccentric forms of religion sprang up like rank mushroom growths, with neither beauty nor wholesome nutriment. It was then that Emerson’s call to a high manhood seemed to have the right ring in it. At least, it attracted and fixed the wandering attention of New England. For many a winter he lectured, speaking great words, the heroic wisdom of old Plutarch and the practical sense and insight of Montaigne. His fine scholarship won the scholars and his homely maxims charmed the farmers. It was well that in that dreary, chaotic period there was a brave and bold speaker who did not entirely despair of humanity, even when he and his companions had broken adrift from their anchorage in the rotten and worn-out systems of Protestant theology.

The grace of the faith has thus far escaped the Concord philosopher, but who shall speak of the ways of God? The theologian will solve you quickly all questions in his noble science, except questions upon the tract of grace. There he hesitates, for the most intimate and personal communications of God with the soul take place in the mystery of grace. Every man has his own tractatus de gratia written upon his own heart in the all-beautiful handwriting of God, sealing us, as St. Paul says, and writing upon us the mark that distinguishes us as his beloved. It is the miserable consequence of the New England system of early education, which inheres in a man’s very spirit, that it perversely misrepresents the Catholic Church. It is simply astounding how little Americans know about our divine faith. They have never deemed it worth their while to examine it, taking it for granted that all that is said against it is true. We remember, as a boy, reading Peter Parley’s histories, which were very popular in New England, and not a page was free from some misrepresentation of the church. Emerson classes “Romanism” with a half-dozen absurd theories; which goes to show that he has not even reached that point of culture which, according to its advocates, understands and embraces all the great creeds of humanity, in their best and most universal truth.

Mr. Emerson is now in the sere and yellow leaf, and it is to be feared that his intellectual pride, and that nauseating flattery which weak-minded people assiduously pay to men of great intellectual attainments, have left in him a habit of vanity which is fatal to truth. We have known very able men who were prevented from seeing the truth of Catholicity by the dense clouds of incense that their admirers continually wafted before their shrines. The fulness of divine faith which he lacks, and for which he seems mournfully to cry out, is in the happy possession of the humblest child of the Catholic religion; not, as he would think, merely instinctive or the result of education, but living and logical, the gift and grace of the Holy Ghost. Emerson is no theologian, though once a Protestant minister, which fact, however, would not argue much for his theology. But he has a heroic and poetic mind whose native strength manifests itself even in the very eccentric orbit through which it passes.

PAPAL ELECTIONS.
III.

In view of the sad affliction which has so recently befallen the church in the demise of Pope Pius IX.—now of happy memory—we shall preface this article on papal elections with a brief account of the ceremonies that follow upon the death of a Sovereign Pontiff.

As soon as the pope has breathed his last amidst the consolations of religion, and after making his profession of faith in presence of the cardinal grand-penitentiary—who usually administers the last sacraments—and of the more intimate members of his court, the cardinal-chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, accompanied and assisted by the right reverend clerks of the apostolic chamber, takes possession of the palace and causes a careful inventory to be made of everything that is found in the papal apartments.[[30]] He then proceeds to the chamber of death, in which the pope still lies, and, viewing the body, assures himself, and instructs a notary to certify to the fact, that he is really dead. He also receives from the grand chamberlain of the court—Monsignor Maestro di Camera—a purse containing the Fisherman’s ring which His Holiness had used in life. The cardinal, who, by virtue of his office of chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, has become the executive of the government, sends an order to the senator of Rome, who is always a layman and member of one of the great patrician families, to have the large bell of the Capitol tower tolled, at which lugubrious signal the bells of all the churches throughout the city are sounded. Twenty-four hours after death the body of the pope is embalmed, and lies in state, dressed in the ordinary or domestic costume, upon a bed covered with cloth of crimson and gold, the pious offices of washing and dressing the body being performed by the penitentiaries or confessors of the Vatican basilica, who are always Minor Conventuals of the Franciscan Order. It is next removed to the Sistine Chapel, where it is laid out, clothed in the pontifical vestments, on a couch surrounded with burning tapers and watched by a detachment of the Swiss Guard. On the following day the cardinals and chapter of St. Peter assemble in the Sistine and accompany the transport of the body to the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in the Vatican basilica, where it remains exposed for three days, the feet protruding a little through an opening in the iron railing which closes the chapel, that the faithful may approach and kiss the embroidered slipper. The nine days of funeral services—Novendialia—which the Roman ceremonial prescribes for the pope now begin. These are his public obsequies. For the first six days the cardinals and prelates of the court and Holy See assemble daily in the choir chapel of the canons of St. Peter, where, the Office for the Dead being chanted, a cardinal says Mass; but during the remaining three days the services are performed around an elevated and magnificent catafalque which in the meanwhile has been silently erected in the great nave of the basilica. This structure is a perfect work of art in its way, every part of it being carefully designed with relation to its solemn purpose, and in harmony of form and proportions with the vast edifice in which it is reared. It is illustrated by Latin inscriptions and by paintings of the most remarkable scenes of the late pontificate, and adorned with allegorical statues. A detachment of the Noble Guard stands there motionless as though carved in stone. Over the whole is suspended a life-size portrait of the pope. A thousand candles of yellow wax and twenty enormous torches in golden candelabra burn day and night around it. On each of these three days five cardinals in turn give the grand absolutions, and on the ninth day a funeral oration is pronounced by some one—often a bishop, or always at least a prelate of distinction whom the Sacred College has chosen for the occasion. In former days the cardinal nephew or relative of the deceased had the privilege, often of great importance for the future reputation of the pontiff and the present splendor of his family, raised to princely rank, of selecting the envied orator. Ere this, however, the final dispositions of the pope’s body have been made. On the evening of the third day, the public having been excluded from the basilica, the cardinal-chamberlain, cardinals created by the late pope, clerks of the chamber and chapter of St. Peter, headed by monsignor the vicar—who is always an archbishop in partibus—vested in pontificals, assemble in the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, in which the pope still lies in state. The body is then reverently enfolded in the gold and crimson cover of the couch, and taken up to be laid in a cypress-wood coffin, into which are also put three red purses containing medals of gold, silver, and bronze, as many of each sort as there were years of the pontificate, bearing the pope’s effigy on one side, and a design commemorative of some act of his temporal or spiritual government on the other. If there should be a relative of the late pope among the cardinals, he covers the face with a white linen veil, otherwise this last office of respect is performed by the major-domo. When the coffin has been closed it is placed inside of a leaden case, which is immediately soldered and sealed, while the metal is hot, with the arms of the cardinal-chamberlain and major-domo. A brief inscription is cut at once on the face of this metal case, giving simply the name, years of his reign, and date of death. The coffin and case are now enclosed in a plain wooden box, which is covered with a red pall ornamented with golden fringes and an embroidered cross, and carried in sad procession to the uniform temporary resting-place which every pope occupies in turn in St. Peter’s, in a simple sarcophagus of marbled stucco which is set into the wall at some distance above and slightly overhanging the floor of the church, on the left-hand side of the entrance to the choir chapel. A painter is at hand to trace the name of the pope and the Latin initials of the words High Pontiff—Pius IX., P.M. Before the pope’s body is taken up from the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, some workmen, under the direction of the prelates and officers of the congregation for the supervision of St. Peter’s—Reverenda Fabrica di San Pietro—have broken in the sarcophagus at the top and removed its contents (which in this case were those of Gregory XVI., who had been there since 1846) to the crypt under the basilica until consigned to the tomb prepared, but not always in St. Peter’s, either by the pope himself before his death[[31]] or by his family or by the cardinals of his creation, and the new claimant for repose takes his place there.

During the nine days that the obsequies of the pope continue the cardinals assemble every morning in the sacristy of St. Peter’s to arrange all matters of government for the States of the Church and the details of the approaching conclave. These meetings are called general congregations. At them the bulls and ordinances relating to papal elections are read, and the cardinals swear to observe them; the Fisherman’s ring and the large metal seal used for bulls are broken by the first master of ceremonies; two orators are chosen, one for the funeral oration and the other for the conclave; all briefs and memorials not finally acted upon are consigned to a clerk of the chamber, etc., etc. On the tenth day the cardinals assemble in the forenoon in the choir chapel of St. Peter’s, where the dean of the Sacred College pontificates at a votive Mass of the Holy Ghost, after which the orator of the conclave—who, if a bishop, wears amice, cope, and mitre—is introduced into the chapel, and, after making the proper reverences, ascends a decorated pulpit and holds forth on the subject of electing an excellent pontiff: the pope is dead; long live the pope; the Papacy never dies![[32]]

After the sermon and the singing by the papal choir of the first strophe of the hymn Veni Creator, the cardinals ascend in procession to the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican palace, where the dean recites aloud before the altar the prayer Deus qui corda fidelium, and afterwards addresses his brethren on the great business which they are about to engage in, exhorting them to lay aside all human motives and perform their duty without fear or favor of any man. All the persons who are to remain in conclave, as the prelates, custodians, conclavists or attendants on the cardinals, physicians, barbers, servants, are passed in review, and take an oath not to speak even among themselves of matters concerning the election. Every avenue leading into the conclave, except the eight loop-holes or windows, as mentioned in a former article, are carefully closed by masons; one door, however, is left standing to admit any late-coming cardinal, or let out any one expelled from, or for whatever cause obliged to leave, the conclave. It is locked on the outside by the prince-marshal, and on the inside by the cardinal-chamberlain, both of whom retain the key of their own side. The lock is so combined that it requires both keys to open the door. On the following day the cardinal-dean says a votive Mass de Spiritu Sancto, at which all the cardinals in stoles receive Holy Communion from his hands.... Fervet opus....

As soon as the cardinal upon whom the requisite two-thirds of all the votes cast have centred consents to his election, he becomes pope. This consent is absolutely necessary, and, although the Sacred College threatened Innocent II. (Papareschi, 1130-1143) with excommunication if he did not accept,[[33]] it is now admitted that no one can be constrained to take upon himself such a burden as the Sovereign Pontificate.

Thirty-eight popes, from St. Cornelius, in 254, to Benedict XIII., in 1724, are recorded in history as having positively refused to accept the election, although they were afterwards induced by various motives, however much against their own inclinations, to ratify it. As soon as he has answered in the affirmative to the question of the cardinal-dean, proposed in the following very ancient formula: Acceptasne electionem de te canonicè factam in Summum Pontificem? the first master of ceremonies, turning to certain persons around him, calls upon them in an audible voice to bear witness to the fact.[[34]] The new pope then retires and is dressed in the ordinary or domestic costume of the Holy Father, three suits of which, of different sizes, are ready made, and disposed in the dressing-room for the elect to choose from. It consists of white stockings, cassock and sash with gold tassels, white collar and skull-cap, red mozzetta, stole, and shoes. He then takes his seat on a throne and receives the first homage—adoratio prima—of the cardinals, who, kneeling before him, kiss his foot and afterwards his hand, and, standing, receive from him the kiss of peace on the cheek. We see, from the ceremonial composed in the thirteenth century by Cardinal Savelli, that the present custom is not very different from the mediæval one; for, speaking of the pope’s election, he says: Quo facto ab episcopis cardinalibus ad sedem ducitur post altare, et in ea, ut dignum est, collocatur; in qua dum sedet electus recipit omnes episcopos cardinales, et quos sibi placuerit ad pedes, postmodum ad osculum pacis. The custom of kissing the pope’s foot is so ancient that no certain date can be assigned for its introduction. It very probably began in the time of St. Peter himself, to whom the faithful gave this mark of profound reverence, which they have continued towards all his successors—always, however, having been instructed to do so with an eye to God, of whom the pope is vicar. In which connection most beautiful was the answer of Leo X. to Francis I. of France, who, as Rinaldi relates (Annal. Eccles., an. 1487, num. 30), having gone to Bologna, humbly knelt before him and kissed his foot, se lætissimum dicens, quod videret facie ad faciem Pontificem Vicarium Christi Jesu. “Thanks,” said Leo, “but refer all this to God himself”—Omnia hæc in Deum transferens, et omnia Deo tribuens. To make this relative worship more apparent a cross has always been embroidered on the shoes since the pontificate of that most humble pope, St. Gregory the Great, in the year 590. It is curious to read of the objection made to this custom by Basil, Tzar of Muscovy, to Father Anthony Possevinus, S.J., who was sent to Russia on a religious and diplomatic mission by Gregory XIII. in the sixteenth century. His eloquent defence of the custom, appealing, too, to prophecy,[[35]] is found in the printed account of his embassy (Moscovia, Cologne, 1587, in fol.)

When the pope is dressed in the pontifical costume he receives on his finger a new Fisherman’s ring, which he immediately removes and hands to one of the masters of ceremonies to have engraved upon it the name which he has assumed. The popes have three special rings for their use. The first is generally a rather plain gold one with an intaglio or a cameo ornament; this is called the papal ring. The second one, called the pontifical ring, because used only when the pope pontificates or officiates at grand ceremonies, is an exceedingly precious one. The one worn on these occasions by Pius IX., and which his successor will doubtless also use, was made during the reign of Pius VII., whose name is cut on the inside. It is of the purest gold, of remarkably fine workmanship, set with a very large oblong diamond. It cost thirty thousand francs (about $6,000), and has a contrivance on the inside by which it can be made larger or smaller to fit the wearer’s finger. (Barraud, Des Bagues à toutes les Époques. Paris, 1864.) The Fisherman’s ring, which is so called because it has a figure of St. Peter in a bark throwing his net into the sea (Matthew iv. 18, 19), is a plain gold ring with an oval face, bearing the name of the reigning pope engraved around and above the figure of the apostle, thus: Leo XIII., Pont. Max. On the inside are cut the names of the engraver and of the major-domo. The ring weighs an ounce and a half. It is the official seal of the popes, but, although the first among the rings, it is only the second in the class of seals, since it serves as the privy seal or papal signet for apostolic briefs and matters of lesser consequence, whereas the great seal of the Holy See is used to stamp the heads of SS. Peter and Paul in lead, and sometimes, but rarely, in gold, on papal bulls. This ring was at first a private and not an official one, as we learn from a letter written at Perugia on March 7, 1265, by Clement IV. to his nephew Peter Le Gros, in which he says that he writes to him and to his other relatives, not sub bulla, sed sub piscatoris sigillo, quo Romani Pontifices in suis secretis utuntur. From this it would appear that such a ring was already in well-known use, but it cannot be determined at what period it was introduced, or precisely when it became official, although it is certain that it was given this character in the fifteenth century; but another hundred years passed before it became customary to mention its use in every document on which the seal was impressed by the now familiar expression, “Given under the Fisherman’s ring,” which is first met with in the manner of a curial formula in a brief given by Nicholas V. on the 15th of April, 1448: Datum Romæ, apud Sanctum Petrum, sub annulo Piscatoris, die xv. Aprilis, MCCCCXLVIII., pontificatus nostri II.[[36]]

Briefs are no more sealed with the original ring, which is always in the keeping of the pope’s grand chamberlain, who, as we have said, delivers it to the cardinal-camerlengo on the pope’s decease, to be broken in the first general congregation preliminary to the conclave, according to a custom dating from the death of Leo X. A fac-simile is preserved in the Secretaria de’ Brevi which serves in its stead; but since June, 1842, red sealing-wax, because too brittle and effaceable, is no longer used, but in its place a thick red ink or pigment is employed. Briefs are pontifical writs or diplomas written on thin, soft parchment and more abbreviated than bulls, and treating of matters of less importance, requiring, therefore, briefer consideration[[37]]—whence, perhaps, they derive their distinctive name, although it has been suggested that the word comes from the German Brief, a letter, and was introduced into Rome from the imperial court during the middle ages. They are signed by the cardinal secretary of briefs, and differ from bulls in their manner of dating and their forms of beginning and ending. Their heading always contains the name of the reigning pope and the venerable formula, Salutem et apostolicam benedictionem, which was first used by Pope John V. in the year 685. When the pope sends a brief to a person who is not baptized he substitutes for this form the other one, Lumen divinæ gratiæ. Both briefs and bulls are always dated from the basilica nearest to which the pope resides at the time; thus, we understand why the brief erecting the diocese of Baltimore was dated (6th of November, 1789) from St. Mary Major’s, although Pius VI. was then living at the Quirinal palace. Another of the very ancient and venerable forms used by the popes is Servus servorum Dei—Servant of the servants of God. It is a title first assumed by St. Gregory the Great in the sixth century as a hint to the arrogant patriarch of Constantinople, John the Faster, who had taken the designation of universal bishop, which belongs only to the Roman Pontiff: “Whoever will be first among you shall be servant of all” (Mark x. 44).

As soon as the cardinal who has been elected gives his assent to the election, the cardinal-dean asks him what name he would wish to take. This custom of assuming a new name is very old, and has been much disputed about by writers on papal matters. The great Baronius has expressed the opinion in his Ecclesiastical Annals that John XII., who was previously called Octavian, was the first to make the change, which he did probably out of regard for his uncle, who was Pope John XI. Cardinal Borgia has observed in this connection, as showing that the change of name was yet a singularity, that the pope used to sign himself Octavian in matters relating to his temporal, and John in those relating to his spiritual, government. Martinus Polonus started a fable that Sergius II., elected in 844, was the one who first changed his name, because known by the inelegant appellation of Pigsnout—Bocca di Porco; but the truth is, as Muratori says in one of his dissertations on Italian antiquities (Antiquitatum Italic., tom. iii. dissert. xli. p. 764), that Sergius IV. (1009-1012), and not Sergius II., had this only for a surname or sobriquet, as was commonly given in that age at Rome, but was baptized Peter. He changed his name, indeed, according to the custom then becoming established as a rule, but, as Baronius observes, not ob turpitudinem nominis (Os porci), sed reverentiæ causa: cum enim ille Petrus vocaretur, indignum putavit eodem se vocari nomine, quo Christus primum ejus sedis Pontificem, Principem Apostolorum, ex Simone Petrum nominaverat. It has long been usual for the new pope to take the name of the pope who made him cardinal. There have been, however, several exceptions even in these later times. In some special cases, as in the signature to the originals of bulls, the pope retains his original Christian name, but, like all sovereigns, he omits his family name in every case. There have also been exceptions to this change, and both Adrian VI. and Marcellus II. kept their own names—the only two, however, who have done so in over eight hundred years.

The word pope—in Latin Papa, and by initials PP.—was once common to all bishops, and even to simple priests and clerics; but when certain schismatics of the eleventh century began to use it in a sense opposed to the supreme fatherhood of the Roman Pontiffs over all the faithful, clergy as well as people, it was reserved as a title of honor to the bishops of Rome exclusively. Cardinal Baronius says, in a note to the Roman Martyrology, that St. Gregory VII. held a synod in Rome against the schismatics in the year 1073, in which it was decreed “inter alia plura, ut PAPÆ Nomen unicum esset in universo orbe Christiano, nec liceret alicui seipsum, vel alium eo nomine appellare.”[[38]] Another singularity about one of the pope’s titles deserves to be noted. The word Dominus in Latin—lord—was originally used only of Almighty God, and a contracted form—Domnus—was employed in speaking of saints, bishops, and persons of consideration; but in course of time, although a vestige of the once universal custom still lingers in the Jube Domne benedicere of the Office recited in choir, the term Domnus came to be specially reserved to the Roman Pontiff, for whom we pray in the litany as Domnum Apostolicum. Cancellieri, who, as usual, has sought out an abstruse subject, gives everything that can be said upon the matter in his Lettera sopra l’Origine Delle Parole Dominus e Domnus e Del Titolo Don che Suol Darsi ai Sacerdoti ai Monaci ed a Molti Regolari. In Roma, MDCCCVIII.