tude.

"Fear nothing; I have the Madonna on my side," said the master the other day to a prelate who had warned him of the danger incurred by the present system. That word explains the enigma of our present situation.

The quarrels with the Orientals, which I shall perhaps relate more fully by and bye, have again thrown a clear light on the existing condition of things and the maxims adhered to. In a dispute about the privileges of a Convent here, an Armenian Archbishop with his secretary and interpreter were condemned by the Inquisition to imprisonment in one of the Jesuit houses -nominally "to make the exercises." The unfortunates for whom this fatherly correction was decreed, were to "exercise themselves" till they were reduced to submission. They first betook themselves to the protection of the French embassy, but in accordance with instructions from Paris they were repulsed. Then they were taken under the charge of Rustem Bey, the Turkish ambassador at Florence, who has lately been residing here and transacting business with Antonelli. But the Cardinal soon intimated to him that Catholic priests, of whatever nation, were in Rome simply subjects of the Pope and under the jurisdiction

of the Inquisition. So the helpless Armenians had to succumb, and were favoured with domestic imprisonment, while a monk of another Order was made Abbot of the convent. The affair has naturally excited double astonishment. German, French, and English priests, who are here in great numbers, have had the unpleasant surprise of discovering that, according to the theory accepted here, they belong not only spiritually but bodily to the Pope, who is the absolute lord of their persons, and that the Inquisition can seize and incarcerate any of them at its pleasure. And the occurrence has recalled some very unlovely reminiscences. Men acquainted with Roman history have shown that Paul v. got Aonio Paleario and Carnesecchi to surrender themselves and had them burnt by the Inquisition; that Paul v. enticed to Rome by a safe-conduct the priest Fulgentio, who took the side of the State in the Pope's quarrel with Venice, and had him burnt there as “a lapsed heretic;”1 that the English Benedictine Barnes, who was seized on Belgian soil and dragged to Rome, was first imprisoned in the Inquisition till he became insane, and then had to die in a lunatic asylum. It is

1 66 Relapsum flammi ex lege addixit," says the Dominican Bzovius in his Panegyric Paulus V. Borghesius, Rome 1626, p. 57.

true that the Inquisition no longer inflicts torture and death, but nobody who has once come into its power would escape without having an abjuration extorted from him. The best security for a Western priest consists in the dread of the Curia of involving itself in trouble with his Government; were it not so, a foreign clergyman would be compelled to confine his conversation with clerics here to the weather, for there is always the most stringent obligation of denouncing any one the least suspected of heresy to the Inquisition, and a German clergyman, who got into any theological talk could hardly avoid that suspicion, so many would be the points of difference and opposition.

There have been movements among the Hungarian Bishops, the connection of which is not quite clear. But the following facts are authentic. Simor, Archbishop of Gran and Primate, who for two months adhered with the rest of his countrymen to the minority, has gone over in the most demonstrative way to the majority, who pride themselves not a little on their conquest. It had been previously agreed between the Emperor and the Pope that he should be made a Cardinal, and he had been informed of this; but for a Cardinal-designate before his actual creation to vote against the

formally and energetically expressed will of the Pope would be monstrous. Such a thing is quite inconceivable in Rome. Moreover, before he became Primate, Simor spoke in favour of infallibilism.1 Another Hungarian Bishop is gone over with him. Other Hungarian Bishops whom the minority, whether rightly or not, reckoned deserters, have gone home, and have there, it is said, represented the state of things in the very darkest colours, saying that there is no real freedom in the Council and the minority is breaking up. The Government at Pesth have consequently sent a confidential agent here to invite the Hungarian Bishops to escape the storm and return home. But they replied that the Government had better provide for the return of those already gone home, so as to add more strength to the minority on whom all the hopes of Catholics are now centred.

1 [It will be seen that Simor, with the other Hungarian Bishops, eventually voted among the Non-placets and signed their protest. Cf. Letters lxiv. lxv.-TR.]

THIRTY-SEVENTH LETTER.

Rome, April 15, 1870.--The Constitutio Dogmatica de Ecclesiá Christi will receive its definitive form in the Congregation of Easter Tuesday, but the substance is already fixed. It received many significant alterations in the course of discussion, and the ready reception accorded to it as a whole is due to the many detailed amendments which have been conceded. These changes are so important that the spokesman of the Commission, Pie of Poitiers, said in his closing speech it was really the work of the whole Council, so that the Fathers might truly say, " Visum est Spiritui Sancto et nobis." After the insertion of the word Romana " before "Catholica Ecclesia," the three first chapters were accepted in their amended form. The fourth, on faith and knowledge, was debated only cursorily and by a few speakers on April 8. But this chapter contains a passage of the greatest practical importance. At