AUTHOR’S PREFACE. 
The countenance and active interest of so many persons were necessary for 
the prosecution of this work, and were extended to me so universally and so 
sympathetically, that my gratitude goes out to the whole community of scholars 
at Rome. In particular I wish to express my thanks for direct and fruitful 
assistance given me by: Their Eminences, Cardinals Gotti and Gibbons; Their 
Excellencies, the Spanish Ambassador to the Holy See and the American Am¬ 
bassador to the Kingdom of Italy; Their Highnesses, Princes Chigi, Doria, 
and Teano; the Most Reverend the Archbishop of Milwaukee; Mgr. Umberto 
Benigni, Sub-Secretary of the Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical 
Affairs; the Right Reverend Father Gasquet, Presiding Abbot of the English 
Benedictines and Chairman of the Commission for the Revision of the Vul¬ 
gate; the Right Reverend Father Ehrle, sub-prefect of the Vatican Library; 
Mgr. Wenzel, late director of the Vatican archives, with Mgr. Ugolini, the 
present director, and many other officials of those archives; the officials of the 
archives of the Propaganda; the directors of the archives of the kingdom of 
Italy at Florence, Naples, Rome, Turin and Venice; Director Kehr of the 
Prussian Institute at Rome and many members of that Institute, particularly 
Dr. Hiltebrandt; the late Mr. W. H. Bliss and Mr. C. G. Crump, and other 
representatives of the English Public Record Office; Professor Blok and Dr. 
Brom of the Dutch historical commission; Mgr. Duchesne, director of the 
Ecole Frangaise; to many members of the Dominican, Franciscan, Capuchin, 
and Jesuit orders, particularly Father Plapman, M. O., and Father Thomas 
Hughes, S. J.; to Professor D. Giuseppe dementi; to Professor Ettore Pais 
of the University of Rome; to Professor C. H. Haskins of Harvard Univer¬ 
sity; to Professor Ramon de Santa Maria, archivist of the Spanish embassy 
to the Holy See; to the Rev. Mr. Bannister, Fellow of All Souls, Oxford; to 
Dr. Arnold O. Meyer, professor in the University of Rostock; to Abbe J. 
Fraikin; and to Cav. H. Nelson Gay. Without swelling the list to undue pro¬ 
portions, it would be impossible to include the names of all those whose help 
it will be a pleasure for me to recall. 
Carl Russell Fish. 
