should be prepared for discussion in two separate congregations, and should be taken into consideration in full sessions simultaneously; finally that the Papal Legates should alone have the privilege of proposing resolutions to the fathers.  This last point, by which the Court of Rome reserved to itself the control of all proceedings in the Council, was carried by a clever ruse.  Until too late the Spanish prelates do not seem to have been aware of the immense power they had conferred on Rome by passing the words Legatis proponentibus.[43] The principle involved in this phrase continued to be hotly disputed all through the sessions of the Council.  But Pius knew that so long as he stuck fast to it he always held the ace of trumps, and nothing would induce him to relinquish it.

[Footnote 43:  See Sarpi, vol. ii. p. 87.]

Fortified in this position of superiority, Pius now proceeded to organize his forces and display his tactics.  All through the sessions of the Council they remained the same; and as the method resulted in his final victory, it deserves to be briefly described.  At any cost he determined to secure a numerical majority in the Synod.  This was effected by drafting Italian prelates, as occasion required, to Trent.  Many of the poorer sort were subsidized, and placed under the supervision of Cardinal Simoneta, who gave them orders how to vote.  A small squadron of witty bishops was told off to throw ridicule on inconvenient speakers by satirical interpolations, or to hamper them by sophistical arguments.  Spies were introduced into the opposite camps, who kept the Legates informed of what the French or Spaniards 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.