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Updated: June 17, 2025
When, however, an alternative was presented to him of returning to the Pontifical Secretariate, through the intercession of one of his powerful Italian friends, Cardinal Adimari, Archbishop of Pisa, he rudely scouted the overture upon these grounds: that he would "rather be a free man than a public slave"; that he had "a smaller opinion of the Papacy and its limbs than the world believed"; that "if he had thought as highly of the Secretaryship to the Pope, as many did, he would long before have gone back to it; and that if he lost everything, from what he now had, he would not want."
In the wonderful military events, in which during the next seven years Sir Arthur was to play a leading part, the comparatively unimportant particulars of his Irish Secretariate have been long since forgotten.
Then, broadly speaking, we may put down one million for the Italian sees, another for the Secretariate and the Nunciatures, and another for the Vatican. In this last sum I include the expenses of the pontifical Court, the military establishment, the museums, and the repair of the palace and the Basilica.
We have seen that Bracciolini did not avail himself of what was proffered to him in this matter on account of his re-appointment to the Papal Secretariate: had it not been so he would have unquestionably called upon his friend Lamberteschi to fulfil this part of the contract; as before his appointment to an ecclesiastical living in England, he had been boarded and lodged by Cardinal Beaufort, and that too, on a scale of regal magnificence.
And by degrees the two great divisions of Christianity were formed, on one hand the Catholic nations, those where the faith simply had to be kept up, and which the Secretariate of State installed at the Vatican guided with sovereign authority, and on the other the schismatical or pagan nations which were to be brought back to the fold or converted, and over which the Congregation of the Propaganda sought to reign.
He could not have carried out the forgery had he remained in England, because he would not have had the necessary leisure, on account of the heavy duties attached to his cure; and we have seen how he could get neither a sinecure nor a simple prebend; but to be in the Secretariate of the Papacy was to be the holder of an office with little or nothing to do, which gave him ample leisure for literary pursuits.
II. Everybody knows the fable of the old man, the boy and the ass; but not one in a thousand knows that it was written nearly four hundred years ago by a man who for forty years was a member of the Secretariate to nine Popes, from Innocent VII. to Calixtus III. First in the Bugiale of the Vatican, where the officers of the Roman Chancery, when discussing the news of the day, were making merry with sarcasms, jests, tales and anecdotes, one of the party having observed that those who craved popularity were chained to a miserable slavery, it being impossible from the variety of opinions that prevailed to please everybody, some approving one course of conduct, and others another, the fable in question was narrated in confirmation of that statement.
Peter's, Pierre well understood that his affair had not made the slightest progress, and that if he ever managed to force the Pope's door, it would not be by way of the Secretariate of State.
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