[Sidenote: The Curia imperfectly informed.]
[Sidenote: Scope of the nuncio's mission]
Giovanni Battista Rinuccini was of a good old Florentine family, and had been carefully educated. He was in his fifty-third year, and had been Bishop of Fermo since 1625. In 1631 he refused the archbishopric of Florence, telling the Grand Duke Ferdinand II. that he was too much attached to his flock to leave them. When the Irish Confederacy begged for a regular nuncio, Luigi Omodei, afterwards a cardinal, was first chosen, but passed over as a Spanish subject, whose appointment might be disagreeable to France. This was the reason given, and it seems sufficient, but according to Bellings Rinuccini was preferred to please Ferdinand, and that the revenues of Fermo might be applied for a time in liquidation of the bishop's debts. He was given almost unlimited ecclesiastical authority and patronage in Ireland, with power to visit all monasteries and nunneries, even exempt jurisdictions, and to settle disputes between the various orders. He was directed to be chiefly guided by the advice of archbishop Queely and Bishop Emer Macmahon, and he was to establish the Tridentine decrees firmly. With regard to church lands in lay hands, he was to use his own discretion, treating each case on its merits, and giving grants or leases as he thought best, but always with the proviso that a sufficient part of the profits should be retained for the support of the clergy. About ecclesiastical matters in Ireland the Roman court was very well informed, Luke Wadding being at hand to answer every question. But political affairs were less well understood. Rinuccini was told, for instance, that the Parliament had 'bound themselves by a sacrilegious oath to maintain and defend what they called the true reformed Protestant religion against all Popish inventions and innovations, and determined to extinguish every spark of the Catholic religion, by extirpating all who adhered to that faith, not only in England and Scotland, but even in Ireland. This dreadful sentence came to the knowledge of the Irish at a time when four thousand men were in arms, who had been levied for the service of the King of Spain, but were then detained in Ireland by order of the Parliament.' The detention of the troops was indeed one great cause of the outbreak in 1641, but the men had been levied originally not for any foreign prince, but to enable Charles and Strafford to crush the English Parliament and their Scots allies. Parliament was undoubtedly ready to oppress the Roman Catholics, but there is no evidence of any intention to extirpate them. The friars persuaded the people that this had been determined on, and the argument was too convenient to be neglected. The main object of Rinuccini's mission was to 'restore and re-establish the public exercise of the Catholic religion in the island of Ireland, and further to lead her people, if not as tributaries to the Holy See, such as they were five centuries ago, to subject themselves to the mild yoke of the Pontiff, at least in all spiritual affairs--thus to gain over souls innumerable to the glories of Paradise.'[78]