In our time Conclaves have certainly no pretensions to greater secrecy than generally pervade Cabinets and their proceedings, only the received forms in Conclave are such as to afford special facilities for operating in secrecy when its members may be so disposed.
When all preliminary observances are over, the Cardinals assemble in the Church of St. Sylvester, on the Quirinal, opposite the Rospigliosi Palace, known to visitors of Rome for the paintings it contains by Domenichino, but possessed of a yet higher interest, as haying been the scene where Vittoria Colonna, who resided in the adjoining convent, used on Sundays to hold deep colloquies with Michael Angelo and other choice spirits, of which a striking record has been strangely preserved in the diary of a Flemish painter, which
which they had bound themselves. 'How, it will be asked,' he writes, 'could some Cardinals venture on such open violation of the above constitution as to communicate so freely to their Court all that passed in Conclave, as was the case with the French Cardinals and with Orsini?'—a question Theiner vainly tries to meet satisfactorily, for all he can say in palliation of the practice is, that the Cardinals specially in fault happened to stand in specific official relation with their Courts, which is tantamount to invoking an accumulation of abuses as justification for further delinquencies.
