However, a regular canonisation may be obtained from Rome, and in two different ways. The first is the more simple:—Whosoever is interested in obtaining a canonisation must prove before the Congregation of the Rites,[248] that, for more than a hundred years, the man who is proposed as a candidate for saintship had been worshipped either by a burning lamp before his image or his sepulchre, or by a person praying before it, &c.; and that these signs of veneration had been repeated before they had been prohibited at no greater distance of time than ten years. If the congregation deliver their opinion in a dubious form, that the immemorial worship seems to them to be proved, _videtur constare de cultu immemorabili_; and, if the omniscient and infallible Pope affirm, _constare_, “it has been proved,” then the man becomes a _beatifice_, and mass, prayers, and offerings may be addressed to him with a perfectly safe conscience. This was the mode of canonisation resorted to after the famous bull of 1634. More difficult is the other way, now generally followed, to obtain a canonisation. The man must pass through many stages—as it were, serve an apprenticeship before he become a saint; first, the name of _Servus Dei_, servant of God, must be obtained for the candidate; and that is neither difficult nor expensive. Then, if the Congregation of Rites find, on examining his printed life, that his virtues seem to be proved, _videtur constare de virtutibus_, and the Pope says, _constare_, the _Servus Dei_ is to be called _venerabilis Servus Dei_, venerable servant of God. Again, if the authenticity of the life, and of the virtues and miracles, is proved in another congregation, in the same way, then the _venerabilis servus Dei_ assumes the title of blessed, _beatus_; a feast, mass, prayers, &c., are voted to him, and the Pope goes to St Peter’s Church, to be the first of all to worship that same man who, had he pronounced only those two words, _non constare_, would have been a Pagan, or little better. That the blessed (_beato_) should become a saint, nothing more is necessary than that he should have worked three first-class miracles[249] (such as those performed by St Anthony, I suppose), and that there should be paid (not by the blessed—_beato_—for the offerings are only shewn to him, but by whosoever would make a saint of him) twenty thousand pounds sterling for the diploma. As may be perceived, the degree is somewhat dearer than in any other university; but only consider the difference betwixt a doctor and a saint![250] However, as the expenses are too great, families or religious communities who wish for a saint, now unite together, each proposing a candidate for saintship, and a single proceeding serves to decide the fate of five or six saints, and the expenses are paid in common. Under the last Pope, Rome witnessed two or three of those wholesale canonisations.