curred in creating Pius VII. It is true that Consalvi's Memoirs fail in speaking to the correctness of this asssertion; but as these Memoirs are avowedly but fragmentary, and even not quite free from suspicion, the absence of such confirmation in this quarter does not seem to us of itself necessarily to invalidate its authenticity. Gregory XV. has closely prescribed the form to be employed for the mode of election, but they are not of his own invention, being only an adaptation of those already contained in an ancient ritual by Cardinal Giacomo Gaetani Stefaneschi, to be found in Mabillon's Museum Italicum.
The ordinary election by ballot is performed by two processes repeated daily, in general,—one in the forenoon, which is a simple ballot; the other in the afternoon, which consists in the process technically called of acceding, whereby an elector, revoking his morning's ballot, transfers his vote to some one whose name had that morning already come out of the ballot-box.[1] Hence
- ↑ There is no law fixing that only one ballot of each kind be held the same day. This is a point left to the discretion of the Cardinals, who regulate their decision according as procrastination or expedition may suit best their humours. In the last centuries the prevailing practice was as stated above, but in the very latest
