Page:On papal conclaves (IA a549801700cartuoft).djvu/55

 Cardinals, which meets each day for the transaction of business that is itself laid down and defined with extraordinary minuteness. It comprises the arrangements for the Pope's funeral, the preparatory disposition for getting the Conclave ready, and the nomination of various officers specially charged with duties either in the Conclave or for securing the peace of the town. Most of the great functionaries in the Court of Rome hold their offices only for the Pope's lifetime. His decease produces therefore an instantaneous absence of authority which the Cardinals have to make good, and in former times, when tumults were the order of an election season, the appointment of the military officer, who, with the title of Lieutenant of the Holy Church, held the Castle of St. Angelo, and, together with the Bargello, the chief of the city police, the Sbirri, had the duty of preserving order in the town, and of protecting particularly the Trasteverine quarter, where lies the Vatican, in which Conclaves then met, was a matter of very great importance. On all these points the Board, at the head of which figures the Camerlengo, has no power of initiative, while the general assembly is itself bound