EXCLUSION, RIGHT OF (Exclusiva): In the wider sense, the right of a sovereign or secular official to veto the nomination of a candidate for an ecclesiastical office. In the narrower and more usual sense, the jus exclusivæ is the right to exclude a candidate for the papacy who is unacceptable to the power exercising it. The constitutional influence of the emperors on papal elections ceased in the eleventh century; but since the fifteenth the great Roman Catholic powers (the Roman-German Empire, Austria, France, Spain) have, as a matter of fact, attempted to exercise a certain influence in the direction of what appeared to be their interests by means of cardinals devoted to them, and to exclude undesirable candidates by getting together so many votes for their own that the others failed of the necessary two-thirds. As this practise became publicly recognized, since the seventeenth century it has developed into a formal assumption of the right to exclude from election one candidate for each power, by a declaration made before the termination of the balloting through a cardinal authorized for the purpose. Besides the powers named, Naples and Portugal claimed this right. Though it was not exercised at the election of Leo XIII., at that of Pius X. in 1903 the emperor of Austria attempted to enforce it against Cardinal Rampolla. It was understood, however, that the Sacred College paid no heed to it, and that there was little prospect of its being allowed at any future election.