[27]. The Moors called Montserrat Gis Taus—the watch-peaks or towers.
[28]. History of Spanish Literature.
[29]. There was formerly an old sculpture in this palace of the counts of Barcelona, representing the prince in the arms of his nurse, and the hermit of Montserrat at their feet. This is now in the museum of antiquities in the old convent of San Juan at Barcelona.
[30]. The apostolic chamber, called in Rome the Reverenda Camera Apostolica, dates from the pontificate of Leo the Great, who constructed in the year 440 a small but elegant suite of chambers which served as a sanctuary for the bodies of the apostles SS. Peter and Paul until proper crypts, called Confessions, had been prepared for them beneath the high altars of their respective basilicas at the Vatican and on the Ostian Way. When these relics had been deposited in their present resting-places, the Leonine sanctuary was used, as a strong and venerable place, to contain the public treasury of the Holy See, which was given into the safe-keeping of certain officials called camerarii. Their successors are the present chierici di camera, who are eight in number and form one of the great prelatic colleges of Rome. The present institution was reorganized by Pope Urban V. in the fourteenth century. The cardinal-chamberlain is ex officio its head, and it acts as a board of control over the finances.
[31]. It is known to all visitors to Rome that Pius IX. prepared a beautiful tomb for himself before the high altar of St. Mary Major’s.
[32]. Roman bibliophilists anxious to possess—what is rare indeed—a complete set (una biblioteca, as the Italians say) of the funeral orations pronounced over the popes, and of the hortatory discourses addressed to the Sacred College about to enter conclave, eagerly contend at book-sales for these pamphlets, which are always in the choicest Latin of the age, and sometimes have a sentimental value on account of the subsequent fortunes, or misfortunes, of their authors. They are much more than mere literary curiosities for book-worms to feed upon. The form of the title-page, excepting of course in proper names and dates, is about the same in all; for instance, Oratio habita ad Collegium Cardinalium in funere Innocentii IX., Pont. Max., vi. Id. Januarii, 1592: Romæ, 1592, in 4to: by Father Giustiniani, a famous Jesuit; and Oratio habita in Basilica SS. Apostolorum Petri et Pauli pridie Kalend. Aprilis, 1721, ad Emos. et Rmos. cardinales conclave ingressuros pro Summo Pontifice eligendo: Romæ, ex Typographia Vaticana, 1721, in 4to: by Camillo de Mari, Bishop of Aria.
[33]. Arnulfus of Seez apud Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, tom. iii. p. 429, says that on this occasion the cardinals told the elect of their choice: Si acquiescis, exhibemus obsequium; si recusas, exigimus de inobedientia pœnam; and on his still hesitating parabant excommunicationis præferre sententiam.
[34]. This notarial function which the first master of ceremonies here performs is the reason why he is always an apostolic prothonotary; but his title to this prelatic rank rests entirely on custom, since he is not appointed by papal brief, as others are. It is by a similar analogy, although in matters theological, that the master of the Sacred Palace, who is always a Dominican, ranks with the auditors of the Rota.
[35]. “Kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and queens thy nurses: they shall worship thee with their face toward the earth, and they shall lick up the dust of thy feet.”—Isaias xlix. 23, which St. Jerome interprets of the apostles; but in Peter’s successors all honors and prerogatives continue. A very learned writer of the last century, Gaetano Cenni, has gone profoundly into the historical and antiquarian part of this singular and most venerable custom, in his dissertation Sul Bacio De’ Piedi Del Romano Pontefice, which is the thirty-fourth of the third volume of Zaccaria’s great collection of dissertations on subjects of ecclesiastical history—Raccolta Di Dissertazioni Di Storia Ecclesiastica.... Per cura Di Francesco Antonio Zaccaria, etc. Seconda edizione. Four vols. Rome, 1841.
[36]. The celebrated antiquarian Cancellieri has written with his usual diffuseness and erudition on this matter in a little work, Notizie sopra l’Origine e l’uso dell’ Anello Pescatorio, etc., etc., published at Rome in 1823.