The Conclave: A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally Bloody History of Papal Elections (11 page)

Clement, however, had survived into the pontificate of Paschal. After his death in September 1100 his supporters met secretly in St. Peter’s at night and elected, consecrated, and enthroned a Cardinal Theodoric. He was swiftly captured by Paschal’s supporters and sent o
ff
to a monastery. Clement’s followers then elected a certain Albert, but the same thing happened to him – except that he was betrayed into Paschal’s hand for a bribe. Four years later another antipope emerged, promoted this time not by those who had once

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favored Clement but by a group of Roman aristocrats who met secretly in the Pantheon and elected Maginulf, Archpriest of Sant’Angelo. Maginulf ’s supporters acted, so they said, because Paschal was guilty of simony and heresy. Maginulf managed to get himself into the Lateran, where he was consecrated on 18 November 1105, taking the title of Sylvester IV. His hold on Rome was tenuous and lasted only as long as he could distribute money to his supporters, who clashed in skirmishes with Paschal’s troops. Eventually the money ran out and Silvester fled the city. He returned to center stage only when the German king Henry V wanted to use him to put pressure on Paschal – and then he was dropped. In April 1111 Sylvester formally resigned his claim to the papacy – just about the time, as it happened, that his old adversary Paschal was thinking similar thoughts because, he believed, he had conceded too much to the German king over the question of investiture and had thereby betrayed the Gregorian Reform.

Paschal’s final years were troubled both by rioting in Rome, which forced him to leave the city, and by the coronation of Henry V as emperor by the Archbishop of Braga. Paschal died in Castel Sant’Angelo in January 1118. His successor was a cardinal deacon who had retreated back to his monastery at Monte Cassino during the troubles of Paschal’s final days. John of Gaeta was summoned back to Rome and hastily elected by the cardinal bishops in the church of Santa Maria in Pallara. But just as the election finished the church was broken into by a band of men led by Cencius Frangipani, who took the newly elected pope prisoner. This out- rage provoked a riot in the city, led by the rival Pierleonis, and the Frangipanis were obliged to release the new pope, who had chosen the title Gelasius II.

Gelasius was, however, still only a deacon, and in the midst of all the rioting it was impossible to conduct the ceremony of consecration to make him a bishop. Then came the news that the Emperor Henry V was on his way to Rome. Gelasius and most of his cardinals fled the city, and Henry, when he arrived, was advised

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by the Frangipanis that the election of John of Gaeta was invalid. Henry therefore created an antipope, Archbishop Maurice of Braga, the bishop who had crowned him as emperor at Easter the previous year and now, as Pope Gregory VIII, repeated the ceremony at Pentecost 1118. Gelasius, meanwhile, who had been ordained priest and bishop on successive days, excommunicated both antipope and emperor. He managed to return to Rome when Henry left the city, but was once again attacked by the Frangipani and fled, this time to France, where he died almost exactly a year after his election.

It was reported that Gelasius had, on his deathbed, recommended Cardinal Conon of Preneste and, when he refused the papacy, Archbishop Guy of Vienne as his successor. Guy accepted. There had been two cardinal bishops in Gelasius’s entourage in France. They elected Guy on 2 February 1119 and then told the other car- dinals in Rome, who organized an act of acceptance by the clergy and people of the city in the Lateran basilica on 1 March. By that time Guy had been installed as pope in his cathedral church in Vienne. He took the name of Callistus II. What lay behind the choice of Guy was his lineage. He was related to the kings of France and England and, most importantly, to the emperor in Germany. He was powerful enough by birth to stand up to the leading fami- lies in Rome, and he was a convinced reformer in the Gregorian tradition. He seemed to be, and proved to be, ideally suited to end the strife between pope and emperor over investiture.

The Concordat of Worms, formalized on 23 September 1122, made a distinction between the spiritual rights of a bishop, over which the king had no say, and the temporal rights (the territories a bishop controlled which entailed legal feudal duties), over which he did. The emperor acknowledged that he had no claim to the right to invest a bishop with the crosier and ring, symbols of spiritual authority, but instead of these it was accepted that the emperor could invest a bishop with a scepter as symbol of his temporal authority.

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When Henry realized he had no more need of him, he abandoned the antipope Gregory. The luckless Gregory was then captured by the pope’s troops and processed through the streets of Rome sitting backward on a camel. Gregory’s French family name was Bourdin; from then on this was Latinized as “Burdinus,” meaning “little ass.” He was sent to jail, where he survived not just Callistus II but Callistus’s next two successors.

5

The last chapter recounted the growing role of the cardinals, at the expense of the Roman laity, in the election of popes. For a group that was to play such an important part in papal a
ff
airs, remarkably little is known about the origins of the title – or even what it means, though it is commonly thought to derive from
cardo
, meaning a hinge or pivot. By the end of the seventh century the term was applied to what we would now call the parish priests of the major Roman churches, other than the four great basilicas. They were cardinal priests. But from the reign of Pope Stephen III (IV), bishops from the seven dioceses around Rome, who frequently presided at liturgical functions in the basilicas and acted as advisers to the pope, were also given the title. The deacons who looked after the welfare of Christians in the regions of Rome and those who attended papal liturgies in the Lateran were also among the popes’ advisers, but they do not seem to have been given the title of cardi- nal until sometime in the eleventh century. By the middle of the eleventh century there were, therefore, three ranks of cardinals: bishops, priests, and deacons.

The decree of 1059 had restricted voting rights to the cardinal bishops, but in the Rome ruled by the antipope Clement III the cardinal priests had become increasingly significant when the cardinal bishops supported his various rivals. Urban II, therefore, had to win over the support of the cardinal priests, which he did by giving them more or less equal status to the cardinal bishops. In 1119, during the pontificate of Callistus II, two of the cardinatial

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sees around Rome – the “suburbicarian” bishoprics – were united, reducing the number of cardinal bishops to six. The cardinal priests were the clergy attached to the “titular” churches – the oldest ones

of the city, who served the four great basilicas: St. Peter’s, St. Laurence Outside the Walls, St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, and Santa Maria Maggiore. Seven priests were assigned to each of the basilicas from the twenty-eight titular churches in Rome. In addi- tion there were the cardinal deacons, though they seem only to have carried the title “cardinal” from the beginning of the twelfth century. They consisted of the seven deacons from the seven regions into which Rome had originally been divided; these were now called “palatine” deacons. But a later subdivision of Rome produced ten regions – and there were ten more deacons to serve these. About the beginning of the twelfth century the number of deacons was fixed at eighteen, which meant that, with the six bishops and twenty-eight priests, there were fifty-two cardinals in all, when the complement was full.

Increasingly these men played a role as advisers to the pope and as his representatives at foreign courts (legates). The papal admin- istration itself began to take on the appearance of a royal court or, to give it the Latin name by which it was, and is, commonly known, the papal “curia.” Many of the o
ffi
ces in this curia were held by cardinals and as a body they began to develop a conviction that the Roman Church was constituted by the cardinals as a group, a group which became known during the twelfth century as the “Sacred College” of cardinals.

When Pope Callistus II died in December 1124, divisions among the cardinals, encouraged by rivalry among the Roman nobility, occasioned one of the more complicated of papal elections. First of all, the majority of cardinals, with the backing of the Pierleonis, agreed on one candidate, but then switched their support to Teobaldo Boccapecci, who was unanimously elected and chose the title Celestine II. Celestine was invested with the red cape of the popes and the cardinals were singing a Te Deum, when the

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Frangipanis burst into the church of San Pancrazio, seriously wounded Celestine and, with swords drawn, insisted on the elec- tion of their candidate Lamberto Scannabechi, who took the name Honorius II. The following day Celestine wisely resigned the o
ffi
ce to which he had been perfectly legitimately appointed and disap- pears from history.

This extraordinary happening reflected more than the rivalry between two Roman families. The cardinals themselves were divided, partly by origin, partly by background. There were the old-style “Gregorians,” who saw the reform of the Church in terms of its clergy, freeing them from lay control, inisting on the obser- vance of celibacy, abolishing simony. And then there were the new-style cardinals who were concerned far more with raising the spirituality of the laity and with pastoral care. The latter included cardinals from Northern Italy and France, who had been given o
ffi
ce under Callistus II; their leader was Cardinal Aimeric, the papal chancellor. The “Gregorians” were a slightly older group of cardinals who mainly came from Rome itself, or from Southern or Central Italy. With the resignation, willing or enforced, of Celestine a schism between the two parties was avoided. It came out into the open, however, when Honorius died on 13 February 1130.

Aimeric, determined that his own party among the cardinals should furnish the next pope, had already taken the dying pope to a monastery in a part of Rome controlled by the Frangipanis and organized an electoral commission of cardinals, of whom five belonged to his group and only three were drawn from among his rivals, although they were in the majority among the cardinals. When Honorius died during the night of 13 February two of the three from the (Pierleoni) majority were present. A Frangipani supporter, Gregorio Papareschi, was swiftly chosen by the electoral commission, dressed in papal robes, and hurriedly escorted to the Lateran. He assumed the name Innocent II. A few hours later the opposing group of cardinals, meeting in San Marco, elected Piero Pierleoni, who took the title of Anacletus II. The rival popes were

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consecrated on the same day, 23 February, Anacletus in St. Peter’s, Innocent in Santa Maria Nuova.

Neither had been chosen in accordance with the electoral decree of 1059, but Innocent, who had been elected first even if through dubious means, has been regarded as the true pope, Anacletus as an antipope. While it was Anacletus who at first held power in Rome itself, Innocent won the propaganda war and eventually returned to occupy most of Rome, except the Leonine city around St. Peter’s. Anacletus’s supporters elected a successor on his death in January 1138, Victor IV, but he resigned after only a few months in o
ffi
ce, leaving Innocent as the sole claimant to the papal throne. Two days after Innocent’s death, Guido of Città di Castello, cardinal priest of the church of Santa Maria on the via Lata, was unanimously elected pope, taking the title Celestine II, as the previous Celestine II had never been recognized as Bishop of Rome. Guido had been one of the five recommended by Innocent himself to succeed to the papacy and was one of those who had been close to Aimeric (who was probably a relative). He was also considered particularly skilled in political matters, and during his pontificate the papacy had to come to terms with a new power, that of the Roman commune. It has been said often enough that popes did not always control the whole of the city, and what control they were able to exercise depended upon the patronage of one or other noble families. Shortly after the death of Innocent a municipal government was formed for Rome which drove the nobility out of the city, set up a new senate, and handed control of the militia, and e
ff
ectively leadership of Rome, to Giordano Pierleoni, the brother of the late antipope Anacletus. The popes did not win back the city for almost half a century. Lucius II, Celestine’s successor, died in the attempt; he was hit by stones as he led an assault on the Capitol, which was occupied by the commune. Eugenius III was hurriedly elected in Lucius’s stead, but had to flee Rome to take up residence in Viterbo; in his eight-year pontificate he never managed to estab-

lish firm control over the city, and died at Tivoli in July 1153.

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Anastasius IV was elected on the very day of Eugenius’s death. He was probably chosen because he was Roman born and bred and so considered to have a good chance of negotiating with the commune. He was also very old on his election (he lived only for a year and a half afterward) and had acquired considerable political skill. He succeeded in making the Lateran his residence and con- tinued living in Rome until his death in December 1154. The fol- lowing day, 4 December, Cardinal Nicholas Breakspear, the only Englishman so far to be elected Bishop of Rome, was unanimously chosen (he took the title Hadrian IV), almost certainly on the grounds of his administrative skills and the cardinals’ belief – which proved not to be wholly well founded – that he could deal with the commune.

On Hadrian’s death the cardinals had apparently decided that only a unanimous vote would do when electing the next ponti
ff
. This went beyond the provisions of the 1059 election decree but they no doubt thought unanimity essential because of the efforts of Frederick I Barbarossa, who had been crowned emperor by Hadrian IV, to reassert all the rights of imperial power which, he believed, included control of the German bishops and of Italy. There was, however, a faction within the college of cardinals who were sympathetic to the Empire, and although the majority elected Orlando Bandinelli on 7 September 1159, a small group chose Cardinal Ottaviano of Monticelli; the final vote was split in Bandinelli’s favor 24–3. There was a riot and the new pope had to flee first to the safety of St. Peter’s, then to Ninfa, outside Rome, where he was consecrated on 20 September, taking the name Alexander III. Bandinelli was chosen because he had established excellent relations with the Normans of the Kingdom of Sicily, who were a counterbalance to Frederick’s imperial pretensions.

Alexander’s rival Ottaviano was related to the counts of Tusculum, and the support of his family had been bought by gifts from Frederick. He was consecrated on imperial territory, at the abbey of Farfa, on the same day as Alexander, taking the name

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Victor IV – despite the fact that there had already been an antipope of that name. When Victor died at Lucca in 1164 the imperial chancellor had Guido of Crema elected with the title of Paschal III, and on Paschal’s death four years later the cardinals in his entourage chose Giovanni, abbot of Struma, as his successor with the title of Callistus III. Abandoned by Frederick, who had decided to come to terms with Alexander, Callistus abdicated in August 1178, after almost nine years in o
ffi
ce.

The following year Alexander III summoned a general council of the Church – the third Lateran Council. The first of its decrees, or canons, laid down that, in order to avoid dissension in future papal elections, the person chosen had to have a two-thirds major- ity from among the cardinals. Anything less than two-thirds and there was no election. Although it did not make mention of it specifically, it is clear from the decree (which is known, like most papal documents, after its opening words as
Licet de evitanda
) that all cardinals were to vote and not just (as in the decree of 1059) the cardinal bishops. The rule that there should be a majority of two- thirds was in force until the middle of the twentieth century, when Pius XII made it two-thirds plus one. John Paul II, as we shall see, reduced it back again to two-thirds, but with the possibility of a straight majority in certain circumstances.

Lucius III was elected in accordance with the Lateran decree. He was elected in Rome, but was unable to establish himself there because of the commune’s opposition and lived outside the city. He died at Verona, where Urban III was elected unanimously on the day Lucius died, and governed the church from there until the very end of his life, when his clash with Frederick Barbarossa so angered the civic authorities in Verona that he had to flee to Venice and died on his way there, at Ferrara. At Ferrara the cardinals decided to choose someone to succeed Urban who might be able to achieve some sort of reconciliation between the papacy and the Empire, and decided on Alberto de Morra, a pious man and a par- ticularly skilled member of the papal curia. He took the name

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Gregory VIII. There were two other candidates, the Cistercian Bishop of Albano, who did not want the job, and Paolo Scolari, who was ill. Gregory, who was possibly already in his eighties when elected, died after only fifty-seven days in o
ffi
ce. He died at Pisa, while trying to make his way back to Rome. Paolo Scolari was now elected, taking the title Clement III.

When the cardinals gathered in Pisa for the election, Scolari was not their first choice; that was the Cardinal of Ostia, who would not accept the papacy. Clement was an obvious next best. The pope – and the cardinals in his entourage – wanted to get back to Rome; Clement came from a high-born Roman family (recent popes had been nobly born, but not Roman). He belonged to the Roman faction among the cardinals and was backed by the Roman consul who was himself close to the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Clement was indeed able to make peace with the Roman commune and to reenter Rome to take up residence in the Lateran, some- thing his last two predecessors had been unable to achieve. Clement died in Rome, and his aged successor Celestine III (he was certainly in his early eighties when elected, probably on 21 March 1191) was chosen in Rome in the approved fashion, his candidature enhanced by the fact that he, too, was of noble Roman birth.

And then came Innocent III. Innocent was one of the great popes of the Middle Ages – indeed, one of the greatest popes of all time, even if he disapproved of the attempts of the English barons to limit the tyrannical authority of their king in the Magna Carta. He was an obvious choice – so obvious that he was elected on the second ballot. He was chosen because of his learning and skill – and also because he was descended on his father’s side from the counts of Segni and on his mother’s from the powerful Roman noble family of the Scotti. What commended him, therefore, was the cardinals’ judgment that he could handle the situation both in Rome and the Empire, which he did, though only after a struggle. Some have described Innocent’s election as the first true conclave. Because of unrest in Rome the cardinals, who were

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meeting in the Lateran, decided they would be safer in a fortified spot, so they repaired to the Septizonium, which belonged to the Frangipani family. It was a palace dating from the time of the Emperor Septimius Severus, who ruled Rome from 193 to 211, but it had served many purposes in its time, having been a fortress and a prison. Once inside the Septizonium they said the prayer for electing a new pontiff, set about deciding what sort of man the Church needed, and distributed ballot papers.

In 1215, toward the end of his pontificate, Innocent held another Council in the Lateran – the fourth according to the traditional numbering of general councils. It did not deal explicit- ly with electing popes, but canon 24 made rules about the election of bishops which could readily be applied to the election of the Bishop of Rome. It laid down three methods of proceeding. The first was a small committee of three electors, whose job is to find out everyone’s opinion and name the new bishop on the strength of these views. The second method was to set up a larger commit- tee, and the third was “by inspiration” – in other words by the usual processes of casting votes.

When Innocent died suddenly in Perugia in July 1216 and the cardinals met there, they chose the first of the three ways just out- lined: they delegated the task of choosing a pope to two of their number (not three as the Lateran Council had required). Honorius III was elected only three days after Innocent’s death, perhaps on the strength of his undisputed ability as an administrator; the fact that he had once been tutor to the future Frederick II must have helped. He crowned Frederick as emperor in 1220. When Honorius died a decade later, the choice of a successor was dele- gated to three cardinals, though their first choice declined the o
ffi
ce. Gregory IX was then elected, probably by a unanimous vote. Like Honorius, he seems to have been chosen for his bureaucratic skills – and perhaps because he was distantly related to the late Innocent III. His pontificate, however, was dominated by a bitter struggle between himself and the emperor: first over the emperor’s