As far as theoretical origin goes, the Pope is the most democratic of
sovereigns; for there is nothing to prevent his being taken from any
rank or order of the faithful. The sons of peasants and mechanics have
sat upon the Papal throne, and the thunderbolts of the Vatican have been
launched by hands familiar with the pruning-knife and the plough. But in
practice these bounds were effectually narrowed, when the college of
cardinals tacitly restricted the choice to the members of their own
body,--and still more effectually, when, by the same silent usurpation,
they resolved that Adrian of Utrecht should be the last of foreign
pontiffs. For three hundred and forty years none but Italians have been
called to the chair of St. Peter's, thus, by an inevitable result of the
unnatural alliance of temporal with spiritual sovereignty, confining the
birthright of Christendom to the nation which all Christendom delighted
to humiliate and oppress.
Theoretically, also, the election of the Pope is made by the special
intervention of the Holy Ghost, although the doings of most conclaves
fill many pages of very unholy history.
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