This draft was 'seen and copied' by Baldassari, who affirms its contents to have empowered the Dean, with two or three colleagues, to name the locality for the election of the new Pope, the Cardinals being authorized to give their votes in Conclave by proxy left with one of their body, and to have dispensed from all enjoined rites and prescriptions connected with a Pontifical election, except the obligation of a majority of two-thirds to render a result canonical. The innovation in this Bull is sufficiently great to impress us with a sense of the counsellor's daring who conceived it, and to render intelligible the repugnance which the proposal met with. It has been ruled over and over again in Pontifical canons, that the major penalties should befall any Cardinal presuming to concert for a Pontifical election—the Pope being yet alive and not privy thereto;[1]
- ↑ The very earliest of canons on record about Papal elections, issued by Symmachus in A.D. 499, is directed against all treating and dealing in the matter of electing a Pope while one is alive, in full health (incolumis), and excluded from knowledge of what is going on. But the capital act on the subject is the Bull Cum secundum apostolum nemo debeat sibi honorem assumere of Paul IV. (1558), which is levelled in the fierce tone of that truculent Pope against every act savouring of human ambition and human exertion to attain the dignity of
