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LEFT ROMANCE 98 ROMANCE LANGUAGES tween what is of doctrine and what of discipline; the former belonging to the deposit of faith taught by Christ and the Apostles, which is invariable, while the latter, founded on the decisions and canons of councils and the decrees of Popes, is the Church's external policy as to government, and may vary accord- ing to times and circumstances. The Sacred College of Cardinal. — The College of Cardinals — 70 in number, af- ter the 70 disciples — is the supreme council or senate of the Church and the adviser of the sovereign pontiff, and at the death of a Pope its members elect his successor (see Pope). They are also the chief members of the Sacred Congre- gations, or permanent ecclesiastical com- missions (about 20 in number), to which much of the business of the Holy See is intrusted. Among the best known of these congregations are the Propaganda, the Index, the Inquisition or Holy Of- fice, and the Congregation of Rites. The number of cardinals is hardly ever com- plete. In 1919 there were 14 patriarchal sees; 8 belonging to the Latin Rite and 6 Oriental. Archbishops, Latin Rite, 178; Oriental, 19. Bishops, 874, Latin Rite, 49 Oriental. There were 300 titu- lar Bishops as coadjutors or engaged in mission work. Sacred congregations pre- sided over by the Pope or cardinals for adjusting the spiritual and temporal affairs of the world, 13. The leading prelate in the hierarchy, apostolic delegate and personal represen- tative of the Pope at Washington in 1920, was his Excellency Archbishop John Bonzano. There were 14 archbish- ops (among them two cardinals at Bal- timore and Boston) ; 96 bishops and 21,- 019 priests. There were 10,608 churches with resident priests and 5,573 mission churches. The Catholic population of the United States was 17,735,553, and including Alaska and insular possessions over 26,000,000. In the World War 762 secular and 264 priests of all orders were engaged in religious work. ROMANCE. Romance has long since lost its original signification in every country except Spain, where it is still occasionally used in speaking of the vernacular, as it was in the Middle Ages when Latin was the language of the lettered classes and of documents and writings of all kinds. < But even there its commoner application is, as elsewhere, not to a language, but to a form of composition. In English it has been almost invariably applied to a cer- tain sort of prose fiction, and, in a sec- ondary sense, to the style and tone pre- vailing therein. By "the romances," using the term specifically, e^ally mean the prose fictions which, as read- ing became a more common accomplish- ment, took the place of the lays and "chansons de geste" of the minstrels and trouveres, and were in their turn re- placed by the novel. Of these the most important in every way are the so-called romances of chivalry, which may be con- sidered the legitimate descendants of the "chansons de geste." The chivalry ro- mances divide naturally into three fam- ilies or groups; the British (which, perhaps, would be more scientifically described as the Armorican or the An- glo-Norman), the French, and the Span- ish; the first having for its center the legend of Arthur and the Round Table; the second formed round the legend of Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers; and the third consisting mainly of Amadis of Gaul followed by a long series of sequels and imitations of one kind or another. ROMANCE LANGUAGES, a general name for those modern languages that are the immediate descendants of the language of ancient Rome. In those parts of the empire in which the Roman dominion and civil institutions had been most completely established the native languages were speedily and completely supplanted by that of the conquerors — the Latin. This was the case in Italy itself, in the Spanish peninsula, in Gaul or France, including parts of Switzer- land, and in Dacia. When the Roman empire was broken up by the irruptions of the Northern nations (in the 5th and 6th centuries) the intruding tribes stood to the Romanized inhabitants in the re- lation of a ruling caste to a subject population. The dominant Germans con- tinued, where established, for several centuries to use their native tongue among themselves; but from the first they seem to have acknowledged the supremacy of the Latin for civil and ecclesiastical purposes, and at last the language of the rulers was merged in that of their subjects; not, however, without leaving decided traces of the struggle — traces chiefly visible in the in- trusion of numerous German words, and in the mutilation of the grammatical forms or inflections of the ancient Latin, and the substitution therefor of prepo- sitions and auxiliary verbs. It is also to be borne in mind that the language which underwent this change was not the classical Latin of literature, but a popular Roman language (lingna Romania rustica) which had been used by the side of the classical, and differed from it — not to the extent of being rad- ically and grammatically another tongue — but chiefly by slovenly pronunciation,