11*

Rome, where, as an old contemporary diarist tells us, he "kept his dominions quiet and tranquil, so that one could go about with gold in one's hands for a couple of hundred miles around Rome, and be safe by day or by night; and he did great good to the city of Rome.' I should not have liked to make the experiment suggested. But the statement may be taken to indicate the general impression made at Rome by the pontificate of Martin V. He died on the 13th of February, 1431; and on the 2nd of March, six days, it will be observed, after the due time, thirteen cardinals went into Conclave at Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and on the following day elected the Venetian Gabriel Condulmieri Pope as Eugenius IV. If Pope Martin had kept Rome quiet while he lived, all law seemed to have come to an end there at his death and during the pontificate of his successor. The Colonnas, the late Pope's kinsmen, seized on the treasure of the Church, and very nearly succeeded in their rebellion against Eugenius. They had to be, and by the assistance of Florentine and Venetian troops were, put down; and the Pope launched against them the first of those excommunications of which he had to make such frequent use in the course of his pontificate of all but sixteen years, for the whole course of it was one continual struggle with opponents and rival authorities of all kinds. The history of his reign, a very interesting one, cannot be entered on here. And it must suffice to remark that the story goes to show that the Church had learned nothing of moderation, of prudence, or of the duty of preferring the welfare of Christendom to the

Diario del Ceremoniere Paolo Benedetto Nicolai.

most paltry private interests, by the terrible misfortunes through which it had so recently passed. A new schism, though, as it chanced, a less important one than the last, was created. Pope and Council were again opposed to each other, the Pontiff dissolving the Council by Bull, and the Council deposing the Pontiff! Nevertheless, Eugenius did contrive to live and die as Pope, exclaiming, we are told, on his death-bed, as well he might, "Ah, Gabriel! How much better for thee it would have been, instead of being either cardinal or Pope, to live and die in thy cloister,* occupied with the exercises of the monastic rule!"

Eugenius IV. died on the 28th February, 1447; and on the 4th of March their Eminences went into Conclave-too soon this time, as on the last occasion the Conclave had been deferred too long, possibly in deference to words which fell from the dying Pope in his last address to the cardinals whom he had assembled around his bed. "Further," he concluded, after many exhortations to unity and concord, "I earnestly beg of you all that, as soon as I shall have passed from this life, you lose no time in matters of pompous exequies." It may have been considered that these words constituted a dispensation from the exact observance of the Gregorian rule, which required a lapse of nine days between the death of a Pope and the entrance of the cardinals into Conclave. Eugenius IV. left a College consisting of twenty-four cardinals, all save one created by himself, of whom eighteen (all who were then present in Rome)

• He had belonged to the congregation of Celestines of St. Giorgio, in Alga, at Venice.

entered into Conclave, in the dormitory of the monks of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, much against the will of that body, who maintained that the Vatican was the proper place to hold the Conclave in. It is recorded that on this occasion the cells for the cardinals were not constructed, as was usual, of wood, but of green or violet-coloured cloth, save only that of the Cardinal of Bologna, who gave especial orders that his cell should be of white material-" perhaps," says slily the conclavist who has written an extant account of this Conclave, "because his mind was neither more white nor more black than that of the others."

The first incident in this Conclave was an irruption of several of the Roman barons, who pretended the right of taking part in-or perhaps the word used may signify only being present at the election. But the cardinals would not submit to this, and succeeded in getting rid of the intruders, the most obstinate of whom was the aged Gio Baptista Savelli, who furiously protested that he had a right to be there by virtue of a special papal grant. What the old blockhead had got in his thick baron's head was the privilege granted to his family by Gregory X. to hold the hereditary position of keepers of the Conclaves, which duty required him to be on the outside and not on the inside of the door!

When the cardinals went into Conclave, the universal opinion was that Prospero Colonna would be elected. He must have been the Dean of the Sacred College, for it is recorded that all the cardinals save one were of the creation of Eugenius IV.; and Colonna must have been that one—a creation of his kinsman, Martin V.—for

he was certainly a cardinal at the time of the election of Eugenius, and was then thought to have a good chance of the Papacy. He had at the first scrutiny ten votestwelve, it will be observed, being needed to elect, i.e. two-thirds of eighteen-the other eight being given to the Cardinal of Fermo. The next day Prospero Colonna still held his ten votes, though many attempts were made on the part of the other eight to entice away from him some of his ten, by putting forward a variety of other candidates, several even who were not cardinals, as the Archbishops of Benevento and of Florence, and others. Prospero Colonna's ten supporters, however, stood firm, and nothing was done on that second day.

There were reasons, indeed, for electing Colonna, but they were reasons of a kind which indicate the fatal consequences which have fallen upon the Church from the universal sovereignty of its head-reasons of European policy, and in no wise reasons having any regard to his fitness as a supreme bishop of souls, nor even to a right recommending him as a governor of Rome. He was acceptable to the French party in the Conclave, and was deemed more likely than any of his colleagues to command the means of compelling the obedience of the different Italian States. But, Colonna as he was, he was not the favourite candidate of the Roman people. They wished the Cardinal of Capua to be Pope, perhaps from having had too much experience of Colonna's highhanded and lawless violence. On the third day, the 6th of March, the steady phalanx of Colonna's ten supporters still continued unassailable; and on that day, after the first of the two scrutinies that take place daily,

the Cardinal of Fermo, seeing matters thus at a dead lock, and that his own eight voices could do nothing for him, and thinking that the next best thing to getting the tiara for himself was to be the conspicuous means of obtaining it for another, rose and addressed the meeting.

"Why," exclaimed he, " are we thus losing time, seeing that there is no greater danger to the Church than a long delay in the election of a Pontiff! The city of Rome is divided into parties! The King of Aragon is close at hand on the sea with an army! Duke Amadeus of Savoy is in opposition to us! The Count Francis is our enemy! Suffering, then, from all these evils, why do we not rouse ourselves to give to the Church of Christ a pastor and a guide? Here is that angel of God, the Cardinal Prospero Colonna, mild as a lamb-mansueto agnello-why do we not elect him Pope? He has already ten votes. He needs only two more!* Why do not some of you rise and give him these two? If only one will do so, the thing is done; for then a twelfth is sure to follow!"

But not a man moved! It was a trying moment, for any one of the eight, acceding to Fermo's call, might have had, in the eyes of Colonna, the merit of giving him the Papacy.

"Mansueto agnello!"-a mild lambkin!-his Eminence of Fermo had called him! And of course that was a characteristic that always recommended itself very

It seems, therefore, that the Cardinal of Fermo, although voted for himself at the first scrutiny by eight cardinals, must have been himself one of Colonna's original ten supporters. Otherwise he could not have said that Colonna needed two more votes, seeing that he, Fermo, would have been the eleventh, and only twelve were needed.