CARDINAL’S PLATE. - It is an annual allowance that the pope grants to cardinals, resident in Rome or employed elsewhere in the service of the Holy See, who lack sufficient income to maintain the cardinalitial dignity with decorum. This allowance is added to what the cardinals receive from their offices, so that, at times, the pope does not assign them the entire c. s., but that portion which the cardinal lacks to reach the amount of the c. s.
The so-called c. s. already existed in the pontificate of Callistus III, because in the Conclave of 1458, held upon his death, and from which Cardinal Piccolomini emerged elected with the name Pius II, this matter formed the subject of the cardinalitial capitulation subscribed there (v. Pastor, II, p. 9). To those cardinals who did not have 4,000 gold florins of annual ecclesiastical income, the Apostolic Chamber was to supply 100 florins monthly, until that sum was reached. All this was confirmed in the capitulation subscribed in the Conclave from which Paul II emerged elected (ibid., pp. 283-84).
In the time of Paul V the c. s. was 1,500 gold scudi per year and was bestowed on cardinals who did not possess 6,000 scudi of revenue from ecclesiastical property, a sum deemed sufficient to maintain the decorum of the purple. Alexander VII, Benedict XIII and Pius VI created cardinals only when they could provide them with the said 6,000 scudi. Napoleon, when he sought to enter even this field of ecclesiastical activity, assigned to each of the cardinals, called red, as cardinalitial endowment 30,000 scudi. The new cardinals did not receive the c. s. until their mouth had been opened, that is, authority had been given them to express their sentiment before the pope and their most eminent colleagues; but since before obtaining such authority several months could sometimes pass, during which the cardinal, without income, had to bear the heavy expenses of the cardinalate, Gregory XVI decreed that as soon as they were created, without awaiting the said formality, the c. s. should be supplied to them. Pius IX in the fundamental statute for the temporal government of the States of the Church, promulgated on 14 March 1848 (§ 49), determines among other things the sum needed for the maintenance of the Sacred College of cardinals.
At present the c. s. still exists and is paid in proportion to the increases that all other stipends receive; however, its amount is rather modest.
Before 1870 the c. s. was supplied by the Apostolic Chamber through the prefect of the Holy Apostolic Palaces, now it is paid by the Administration of the properties of the Holy See, still in monthly installments.
Bibliography3 works
Guglielmo Felici