SECRETARIAT OF BRIEFS TO PRINCES. - It is the first Latin Secretariat of the Roman Curia. Its name derives from one of the tasks entrusted to it: namely, that of drafting in Latin the letters to sovereigns and heads of state, which the Supreme Pontiff himself signs with his autograph (litterae in forma brevi ad Principes).
Besides these documents, others no less solemn are entrusted to this Secretariat for their drafting in accordance with can. 264 of the CIC, namely encyclicals, consistorial allocutions, homilies for the canonizations of saints, and also certain apostolic constitutions, motu proprios and pontifical letters of greater importance. Accordingly, this office is at the direct service of the Sovereign Pontiff in the exercise of his universal magisterium, inasmuch as under his high guidance and following precise orders, which it receives from time to time, it lends its work to the Latin composition of the most important documents.
The head of the office is the Secretary of the Briefs to Princes, who, as such, is a member of the noble pontifical antecamera. Furthermore, in public consistories, in which the causes of saints are treated, he replies in Latin on behalf of the Holy Father to the consistorial advocates who have pleaded the said causes; in the sacred rite of canonizations he announces to those present, speaking always in the same language, the solemn proclamation of the new canonized, which is about to be made by the Pontiff; should a Catholic sovereign die, he reads the funeral eulogy of the deceased in the solemn Papal Chapel, which is customarily held on this occasion; and in the event of a vacant See, before the conclave begins, he delivers before the Sacred College, assembled in the Sistine Chapel, the oratio de eligendo Summo Pontefice.
The historical origin of this office is traced back to the Apostolic Secretariat, which had the task of drafting all the correspondence in the Latin language of the Roman Curia; it was then regulated by the constitution of Innocent VIII of 31 Dec. 1487, and comprised 24 apostolic secretaries. It later became a separate and completely autonomous secretariat with the bull Romanus Pontifex of 1 April 1678, when the College of Apostolic Secretaries was suppressed.
In its long history the Secretariat of the Briefs to Princes numbers Latinists of great worth, such as, among the earlier ones, Bembo and, among the more recent, Nocella, Volpini, Angelini and Galli.
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