[293] Crét. vol. iii. p. 312.
[294] Crét. vol. iii. p. 502.
[295] See this and other letters of this prelate in Arnauld, tom. xxxii. and xxxiii.
[296] Palafox, wishing to see the authorisation, which the fathers pretended to have, to confess without the diocesan’s order, in opposition to a decree of the Council of Trent, asked them to shew him such an authorisation; they answered that they had the privilege not to shew it. “Let me see that privilege,” said the bishop. “We have the privilege to keep secret our privileges.” “Shew me at least this last privilege.” “We are authorised to keep secret even this other privilege.” See the letter in which the prelate relates the fact in Arnauld, tom. xxxiii. pp. 486-534.
[297] Letter to Innocent X., An. 1649, ss. 14-18.
[298] Letter of Palafox to Father Rada, Provincial of the Jesuits, 1649. See Arnauld, tom. xxxiii. p. 643. Some Jesuits have denied the authenticity of this letter, others the truth of the accusation, and have called the prelate a calumniator. As to the authenticity of the letter, it cannot be denied, since the bishop himself published it in his Defensa Canonica, dedicated to the King of Spain; and the well-known character of Palafox puts his veracity beyond question; nor would he have dared to bring before the royal throne a false accusation.
[299] I forgot to mention, in speaking of the canonisation of saints, that, in general, many years are allowed to pass after obtaining a title of Servus Dei, for example, before the other title, Venerabilis, is asked for, and so on.
[300] The office of this personage in the canonisation is to raise, pro forma, objections to its accomplishment, by questioning the virtue of the man, the reality of his miracles, and so on. In Italy he is called the advocate of the devil; and our Gioberti, with perhaps more wit than Christian charity, says, “In the case of Palafox, the name (advocate of the devil) may have well become him, as he was the advocate of the fathers.”
[301] Owing to the French Revolution of seventeen hundred and eighty-nine, the proceedings for the canonisation of Palafox, which had lasted fifty-five years, were never resumed, till lately an attempt was made to make a saint of him; but the Jesuits were again too powerful to allow it, and the case is yet pending, so that it may be said that the good Palafox is in a sort suspended between earth and heaven.
[302] Gioberti, ut supra, vol. iii. p. 151.