giving a vote.[1] One instance of a lay Cardinal admitted to Conclave did, however, certainly occur when Sixtus V. was elected. The Cardinal Archduke Albert (who eventually married) arrived in hot haste from Innspruck, and having exhibited his license from the late Pope, was permitted to co-operate with his fellow-Cardinals in giving a new chief to Catholic Christendom, although, as is explicitly stated, he never had taken any orders. At the present moment there are no lay members of the Sacred College; but this is so only since, quite recently, the reigning Pope expressed his desire that those amongst the Cardinals who had not taken deacon's orders should do so.
A freshly-named Cardinal is subject to a form of novitiate, during which he is technically said to be cum ore clauso, being invested with the symbols of his rank, but precluded
- ↑ Cardinal Albani's proceedings are recounted in the following way by Crose, Sardinian Envoy to Rome, in a confidential despatch:—'Another historical observation is supplied by Cardinal Albani, who at the period of Conclave was not yet ordained. Until then he had always expressed an intention to abandon the purple and to marry, with the view of not letting his most noble family become extinct. While in this state of hesitation, he had always obtained from the Pope a prolongation of the terms within which he had to come
