the instances on record of Cardinals who were relieved from their ecclesiastical obligations are extremely curious, and testify strikingly to the wonderful elasticity in the regulations of the Church. These dispensations constitute a highly instructive, but also a little read chapter in the history of the Romish organization. Cardinals even in orders have repeatedly been permitted to divest themselves of their dignity and to marry; but in every such case well-defined political influences appear to have been the predominating cause that induced the Pope to concede the favour. Thus in 1588 we find Ferdinand Medicis authorized to throw off the purple, and become Grand Duke of Tuscany; in 1642 Cardinal Maurice of Savoy to take a wife and a duchy; in 1695 Cardinal Rainaldo of Este to make the same change in his condition. On the death of King Ladislas of Poland, his brother Casimir,
to Cardinal Altieri, when he insisted on throwing off the purple, wherein the Pope gives it as his opinion (subject to correction, as writing from prison, and without the means to consult the canonical authors), that a Cardinal has not the power to divest himself of his faculty of Papal Election, that faculty being summe publicum.—Mém. du Card. Consalvi, t. i. p. 203. The editor says that the original draft of this letter is in his possession.
