1828.] Bishops and Laity in Partibus Injiddium. 27 



monuments, or the Dooms-day Book of Eastern emperors. The Bishop 

 of Hermaston, for instance, would sound as well as the Bishop of Her- 

 mopolis ; and the Archbishop of Taurus would be as good a name for a 

 prelate without a charge, as the Archbishop of Tyre. A spruce legate 

 might then be raised to the see of Venus, and translated afterwards to 

 Mercury, if occasion required a crabbed vermin-covered Franciscan 

 might be appointed to Cancer ; and a superior of the Jesuits, filled with 

 the odium theologicum, would find an appropriate bishopric in Scorpio. As 

 the planets are said by astrologers (who ought to know most of the matter) 

 to have hoiises, we see no reason why they should not also have clergy 

 and bishoprics ; and as they certainly never yet have been converted 

 to the Popish faith, their bishops might still be called bishops in 

 jiartibus. 



We are so confident in the propriety of this recommendation, that we 

 see no necessity for courting the support of any authority superior to our 

 own ; but we cannot help remarking, that a great astrologer, so celebrated 

 in the works of Swift, under the name of Partridge, the Almanack-Maker, 

 seemed to have had a glimpse of our system nearly a century and a half ago. 

 In his Annus Mirabilis, published before the Revolution, we are told, 

 that the planet Jupiter " personates the clergy of nations," and that 

 certain aspects of the upper hierarchy, in certain houses, portend depres- 

 sion or prosperity to " mother church and her babes." Surely, then, 

 it would be more eligible for his holiness to appoint episcopal superin- 

 tendents of those planetary houses, than to usurp heathen dioceses in 

 Asia and Africa. 



In the Council of Trent, where fierce disputes took place about the origin 

 of the episcopal order and the limits of episcopal jurisdiction where it was 

 discussed with much interested zeal, and much learned obstinacy, whether 

 bishops held their authorityjwre divino,jure pontificio, or jure electiones and 

 where the power of the Pope to balance the influence of a resident clergy 

 by a prelacy with only titular rank, was often presented to the consider- 

 ation of the assembly ; many prelates, princes, and ambassadors, objected 

 to the multiplication of Bishops in partibus. Secret opponents of the 

 Pope called these bishops episcopi vagabondi,* or vagabond bishops ; 

 not, of course, that these holy fathers ever could be considered as vaga- 

 bonds, in the modern sense of the word but only that they had no 

 fixed residence or local jurisdiction. Having no cure no clergy- no 

 episcopal temporalities, they received only a roving, or gipsy com- 

 mission from the Vatican, to live by the hedge-rows or the high roads 

 of the church ; which commission, as it was distributed by the Pope 

 without any control, might be multiplied without any limit, or for any end. 



In more recent times, we not only have bishops in partibus, but persons 

 of all other classes of society, from kings and emperors, down to grooms 

 and turn-spits. The Bourbons of Naples, as kings of Jerusalem, are 

 kings in partibus. The little monarch of Sardinia wears, likewise, the 

 crown of the Holy City in partibus ; and the kings of England are still 

 DEFENDERS of the (Catholic) FAITH, and long held the sovereignty of 

 France in partibus. Was not the late King of Portugal, Emperor of 

 Brazil, King of Africa and Jerusalem, by the same tenure? Is not 



* Et quoniam nonnulli episcoi i ecclesiarum qua? in partibus infidelium consistant, clero 

 carentes et populo Christiano, cum vere vagabondi sint. 



(Concilium Trid. Ssss. XIV. Chap. 2.) 



