CARDINAL’S ALLOWANCE. — This is an annual allowance granted by the pope to cardinals residing in Rome or employed elsewhere in the service of the Holy See who lack sufficient income to maintain the dignity of the cardinalate with due decorum. This allowance is added to what the cardinals receive from their offices; thus, on some occasions, the pope does not assign them the entire cardinal’s allowance, but only the amount lacking for the cardinal to reach the total of the cardinal’s allowance.
The so-called cardinal’s allowance already existed during the pontificate of Callistus III, because at the Conclave of 1458, held upon his death, from which Cardinal Piccolomini emerged elected under the name of Pius II, this matter formed the subject of the cardinalitial capitulation signed there (v. Pastor, II, p. 9). For those cardinals who did not have an annual ecclesiastical income of 4,000 gold florins, the Apostolic Camera was to provide 100 florins monthly until that sum had been reached. All this was confirmed in the capitulation signed at the Conclave from which Paul II was elected (ibid., pp. 283-84).
In the time of Paul V, the cardinal’s allowance was 1,500 gold scudi per year and was granted to cardinals who did not possess 6,000 scudi in income from ecclesiastical property, a sum considered sufficient to maintain the dignity of the purple. Alexander VII, Benedict XIII, and Pius VI created cardinals only when they were able to provide them with the aforesaid 6,000 scudi. Napoleon, when he sought to enter this sphere of ecclesiastical activity as well, assigned each of the cardinals known as the “red cardinals” 30,000 scudi as a cardinalitial endowment. The new cardinals did not receive the cardinal’s allowance until their mouths had been opened, that is, until they had been granted authority to express their views before the pope and their most eminent colleagues; but since several months could sometimes pass before they obtained this authority, during which a cardinal without income had to bear the considerable expenses of the cardinalate, Gregory XVI decreed that, immediately upon their creation and without awaiting this formality, they should be provided with the cardinal’s allowance. Pius IX, in the fundamental statute for the temporal government of the Papal States, promulgated on 14 March 1848 (§ 49), determined, among other things, the sum required for the support of the Sacred College of Cardinals.
At present the cardinal’s allowance still exists and is paid in proportion to the increases received by all other salaries; its amount, however, is fairly modest.
