oo THE CURIA
cepts a request to voice such interference and makes known the fact to the College or to individual members of it. The second, which re- affirms regulations concerning the interregnum and the Papal election in force since Pius IVs time, also changes the previously customary form of election by discontinuing the "access" i. e. the practice by which the vote which directly followed an unsuccessful ballot was added to the one preceding, with the result that the candidates were given the sum-total of the two ballots. Today every ballot is inde- pendent of the preceding one, and there are four daily instead of the formerly customary two. In the same manner every cardinal partic- ipating in the election binds himself on oath to keep the strictest silence all his life long concerning what went on in the Conclave. Doubtless Cardinal Mathieu's essays in the Revue des deux Mondes during 1003-04 were the occasion for this ruling* Furthermore each cardi- nal pledges himself to protect unceasingly the temporal rights and the secular power of the Pope as well as the freedom of the Holy See, and promises to renew this vow in case he is chosen Pope.
The word Conclave (closed room) with which Papal elections are today defined is of course primarily a term applicable to the place of meeting. Adjoining rooms of the Vatican Palace are walled up and partitioned so that they form a suite shut off from outside excepting for a few carefully watched exits and revolving doors on both sides of which sentries are posted to permit only such intercourse as is abso- lutely necessary. The windows are covered with blinds and are sealed from within with lead. This isolation and the restriction of the Cardinals 1 personal comfort which formerly was rigorous, but is now less so serves the well-understood purpose of hastening the business of the election and of making impossible every contact be- tween the electors and the outer world. In-coming and out-going letters are censored, and the censors also handle telephone conversa- tions, which the cardinals must carry on in writing. Each cardinal may be accompanied by a priest-secretary and a servant, but Pope Pius XI has recently decreed that the secretary must be a layman, Formerly every person in the Conclave had to bring along his own food, consisting of bread, wine and water; but today there are kitchens inside the Conclave which provide, according to rules that are still in force, nourishment for the three hundred odd people locked up in the
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