a member of the Society of Jesus, and named Cardinal in 1646, received a dispensation not merely to abandon the purple, but also to marry the King's widow, his sister-in-law, Mary Gonzaga. Still more astonishing were the favours conceded to two brothers of this lady's house. To prevent extinction of the family, Paul V., in 1615, permitted Cardinal Ferdinand Gonzaga to go back into the world. On this change he became enamoured of a woman of inferior rank, Camilla Erdizzani, and married her; but becoming afterwards tired of his wife, he sought and procured the Pope's authority for repudiating her, when he espoused Catherine Medicis, daughter of Duke Cosmo II. But there was at the same time, a second Cardinal Gonzaga—Vincenzo, the brother of Ferdinand,—and he also succeeded in obtaining permission to give up the Church for the sake of indulging his passion for a kinswoman, Isabella Gonzaga.[1] In all these
- ↑ A very remarkable dispensation was granted by Alexander III. for the express purpose of preventing the extinction of the Giustiniani family, then reduced to one male member, Niccola Giustiniani, a Benedictine monk who has since been beatified. In virtue thereof Niccola left his convent, married the daughter of the Venetian Doge Micheli, and when he had begotten a
