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ON THE CONSTITUTION
merest matters of indispensable routine.[1] Of this routine the pomp and glitter revolve, as we have said, chiefly on the Cardinal Camer- lengo, who forthwith receives from the Maestro di Camera the late Pope's piscatorial ring,[2] which is broken at the first general meeting of Cardinals, held on the day immediately following the Pope's decease. His next duty, after consigning the corpse to the care of the Penitentiaries of the Vatican Basilica, is to take an inventory of all object. in the Apostolical Palace,—a very
- ↑ See Bull of Pius IV. In Eligendlis, sect. 7.
- ↑ The ring is so called from having engraved on its stone the figure of St. Peter drawing in his fisherman's net. According to Cancellieri, 'Notizie sopra l'Origine e ruso dell'Anello Piscatorio, Rome, 1823,' the earliest record of its use is of the year 1265. Originally it was nothing more than the Pope's private signet for his own correspondence. From the middle of the fifteenth cen- tury its use became reserved to the Pontifical utterances called Briefs, and bas remained so ever since. The dis- tinction betwet!n a Brief and Bull lies in degrees of weight and solemnity. The Bull is the most authori- tative expression of the Pontifical infallibility, as such almost incapable of repeal; while the Brief is directed to something of comparatively immediate and passing importance. The name of the former comes from its leaden seal, which is tied by a hempen cord to Bulls of ordinary import, and by a silken to those conferring Sees, and containing matters of grave weight. The style of the Bull runs always—' Pius IX., Episcopus Senus Servorum Dei, ad futuram' or 'perpetuam rei
