Page:On papal conclaves (IA a549801700cartuoft).djvu/164

 148 Andrea the 12th October, and publicly promulgated in Rome the 4th December, declared him to have forfeited all the privileges of his Cardinalitian dignity, with the explicit inclusion of his vote, unless he presented himself in person before the Pope within three months from date of the Brief; and furthermore imposed on the Sacred College the solemn obligation not to admit the said Cardinal into Conclave, if, after continuing contumaciously to disregard this citation, he were to venture on claiming a right of franchise. The gravity of the sentence is self-evident, and without straying into the delicate region of pleadings replete with points of controversy, it is undeniable that in uttering this injunction to bind the Sacred College after his demise, Pius has gone against not only historical precedent, but the explicit ruling of predecessors; and that here is a stretch of authority, which at all events one rope acknowledged to lie beyond the attributes of his power, after having himself sought to assert the same. The reader will call to mind the declaration of Clement in the Chirograph whereby he repealed his own sentence of exclusion from Conclave against Cardinal Coscia, on the