VISITS OF HEAT. - This is the name given to the visits that the newly elected cardinal, immediately after receiving from the Cardinal Secretary of State the note informing him of his appointment, begins to receive from those persons who wish to express their congratulations to him.
These visits continue on the evening and on the two days following the appointment, with the antechamber of the new cardinal being opened: in the morning two hours before noon and in the afternoon until ten o'clock at night. Besides, it goes without saying, the relatives of the newly elected cardinal and those who have ties of friendship and habitual association with him, there come to congratulate him the members of the Chapel and the Pontifical Family, the Roman Curia, the officers of the pontifical armed corps and the ambassadors accredited to the Holy See. In past times the Senator of Rome also went there, and the principal personages fixed the hour of their visit.
The new cardinal, in receiving the visits, always stands on the threshold of the room where the baldachin of the throne is later to be raised, and although he gives seats to the most illustrious personages, he himself sits down in the place where the baldachin will be placed. As the visitors arrive, the hall dean of the new prince of the Church notifies the Master of the Chamber, who signals the cardinal to dismiss the one he is holding in audience. The cardinal's noble court is charged with receiving and accompanying the visitors. The dress in use for receiving such visits - before the imposition of the biretta - has differed in various periods. At present, the new cardinal wears the cardinalitial cassock and mozzetta, with the red biretta in his hand.
There have been cases of dispensation from such visits (Pius IX, for example, granted it in the cardinalitial promotion of 7 March 1853, since it fell in Lent) and cases of substitution in receiving such visits because of illness or other reasons (an example occurred in the promotion of 15 March 1858: Card. Milesi-Peroni-Ferretti, being ill, had himself replaced by Mons. Camillo Narducci-Boccaccio).
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Guglielmo Felici