Page:On papal conclaves (IA a549801700cartuoft).djvu/159

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OF PAPAL CONCLAVES.
143

Not so Antici, who not only witnessed the restoration of Pius VII. to his dominions, and of the Sacred College to its good estate, but when he looked on all this pleasant recovery, desired himself to participate in it. On the death of Pius VII., Antici addressed the Sacred College to be admitted to the Conclave, on the plea that his privileges had been merely superseded. The request was at once rejected, and Moroni says that the letter written in reply to the communication of this decision was signed Thomas Antici, late Cardinal. He ended his days in obscurity at Recanati. There is still another important instance of a Cardinal who, in this century, placed himself in opposition to the Pope, and thereby became the object of proceedings on the part of the highest ecclesiastical authorities. The well-known defender of royalist principles in the French National Assembly, Abbé Maury, was created Cardinal in 1794, and Bishop of Montefiascone in the Papal States. He attended the Conclave in 1799 in Venice, where, on the testimony of Consalvi, he had much to do with bringing about the election of Pius VII., to whom he was afterwards accredited as envoy by the then titular Louis XVIII. of