rds
deliberated in their private meetings. The Legates meanwhile established
a daily post of couriers, who carried the minutest details of the
Council to the Vatican. When the resolutions of the congregations on
which decrees were to be framed had been drawn up, they referred them to
his Holiness. Without his sanction they did not propose them in a
general session. In this fashion, by means of his standing majority, the
exclusive right of his Legates to propose resolutions, and the previous
reference of these resolutions to himself, Pius was enabled to direct
the affairs of the Council. It soon became manifest that while the
fathers were talking at Trent their final decisions were arranged in
Rome. This not unnaturally caused much discontent. It began to be
murmured that the Holy Ghost was sent from Rome to Trent in carpet-bags.
A man of more imperious nature than Pius might, by straining his
prerogatives, have produced an irreconcilable rupture. But he was aware
that the very existence of the Papacy depended on circumspection. He
therefore used all his advantages with caution, and resolved to win the
day by diplomacy. With this object in view he introduced the further
system of negotiating with the Catholic Courts through special agents.
Instead of framing the decrees upon the information furnished by his
Legates, he in his turn submitted them to Philip, Catherine de'Medici,
and Ferdinand, agreed on terms of mutual concession, persuaded the
princes that their interests were identical with his own, and then
returned such measures to the Council as could be safely passed. In
course of time the Holy Ghost was not packed up at Rome for Trent in
carpet-bags before he had gone round of Europe and made his bow in all
cabinets.

It must not, however, be thought that matters went smoothly for the Pope
at first, or that so novel a method as that which I have described,
whereby the faith and discipline of Christendom were settled by
negotiations between sovereigns, came suddenly into existence. In its
first sessions the Council, to quote the Pope's own words, resembled the
Tower of Babel rather than a Synod of Fathers. The Spanish prelates
contended fiercely for two principles touching the episcopacy: one was
that the residence of bishops in their dioceses had been divinely
commanded; the other, that their authority is derived from Christ
immediately. The first struck at the Pope's power to dispense from the
duty of residence; a