Note 176 — Chapter I · INTERNATIONAL PERSONS

The case of Montagnini, which occurred in December 1906, cannot be quoted against this assertion, for Montagnini was not at the time a person enjoying diplomatic privileges. Diplomatic relations between France and the Holy See had come to an end in 1905 by France recalling her envoy at the Vatican and at the same time sending the passports to Lorenzelli, the Papal Nuncio in Paris. Montagnini, who remained at the nunciature in Paris, did not possess any diplomatic character after the departure of the Nuncio. Neither his arrest and his expulsion in December 1906, nor the seizure of his papers at the nunciature amounted therefore to an international delinquency on the part of the French Government. The papers left by the former Papal Nuncio Lorenzelli were not touched and remained in the archives of the former nunciature until the Austrian ambassador in Paris, in February 1907, asked the French Foreign Office to transfer them to him for the purpose of handing them on to the Holy See. It must be specially mentioned that the seizure of his papers and the arrest and expulsion of Montagnini took place because he conspired against the French Government by encouraging the clergy to refuse obedience to French laws. And it must further be mentioned that Lorenzelli, when he left the nunciature, did not, contrary to all precedent, place the archives of the nunciature under seals and confide them to the protection of another diplomatic envoy in Paris. Details of the case are to be found in R.I. 2nd Ser. IX. (1907), pp. 60-66, and R.G. XIV. (1907), pp. 175-186.