Note 30 — THE HOME-RULE CANDIDATE. A STORY OF “NEW IRELAND.” CHAPTER III. THE RIVALS. (continued 3)

The apostolic chamber, called in Rome the Reverenda Camera Apostolica, dates from the pontificate of Leo the Great, who constructed in the year 440 a small but elegant suite of chambers which served as a sanctuary for the bodies of the apostles SS. Peter and Paul until proper crypts, called Confessions, had been prepared for them beneath the high altars of their respective basilicas at the Vatican and on the Ostian Way. When these relics had been deposited in their present resting-places, the Leonine sanctuary was used, as a strong and venerable place, to contain the public treasury of the Holy See, which was given into the safe-keeping of certain officials called camerarii. Their successors are the present chierici di camera, who are eight in number and form one of the great prelatic colleges of Rome. The present institution was reorganized by Pope Urban V. in the fourteenth century. The cardinal-chamberlain is ex officio its head, and it acts as a board of control over the finances.