The Conclave: A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally Bloody History of Papal Elections (15 page)

With the help of Louis II of Anjou John XXIII recovered Rome from the King of Naples and entered the city in April 1413. But Louis went back to France and John was once more driven out. He appealed to Sigismund, who was king of Germany and king of the Romans and ambitious for the imperial title. Sigismund demanded that John call another council of the Church to settle the schism – and then issued an edict announcing that the council would be held at Constance, and would open on 1 November 1414. John had little option but to agree. He formally opened the council on 5 November.

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Its numbers were small at first, but rapidly grew. It had much on its agenda, from the condemnation for heresy of John Hus to hear- ing complaints against the behavior of the Teutonic Knights. Reform of the Church was the chief thrust of the council, but that required, first of all, the reestablishment of union between the three rival claimants to the papacy, Gregory XII, Benedict XIII, and John XXIII. The biggest problem was John XXIII, and he knew it. He fled the city on the night of 20–21 March, but was caught by Sigismund in Freiburg and brought back to stand trial. There was a long string of accusations, including immorality and having poi- soned Alexander V (the latter being almost certainly untrue). On 29 May 1415 he was deposed as an unworthy pontiff. He was not accused of being an illegal one; those gathered at Constance accepted that the Pisan election had been a validly conducted conclave.

Next it was Gregory’s turn. He was – reluctantly – ready to resign his o
ffi
ce, but could not do it to a council summoned by his rival John. On 4 July one of his cardinals solemnly called the council together, and then another announced Gregory’s resignation.

That left Benedict. Envoys were sent to him at Perpignan, but he rejected all offers. The next tactic was to persuade those nations who supported him to withdraw their obedience – which meant the Spanish kingdoms. This took time, but it was eventually accomplished, and on 26 July 1417 he was deposed.

Now came the matter of choosing a new pope. On 30 October 1417 the council decreed that the election, on this occasion only, should be conducted not only by all the cardinals of the Pisan and Roman obediences, but by six representatives of the five “nations” represented at the council, the same five which had been repre- sented at Pisa: the English, the French, the Italians, the Germans, and the Spanish. The successful candidate had to gain not only a two-thirds majority from the cardinals, but also from the nations. There was to be no doubt that this time the whole of Christendom was behind whoever was chosen as pope.

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On 8 November the electors entered the Merchants Hall beside Lake Constance. The first ballot took place two days later. By noon the next day Cardinal Odo Colonna was chosen by the required majority of cardinals and “nations.” It was unexpectedly swift. It was the feast of St. Martin, so Colonna, the only one of this influential Roman family ever to achieve the papacy despite its many members in the college of cardinals down the centuries, became Pope Martin V. Effectively the Great Schism was at an end. Benedict XIII held out in his fortress at Peñíscola, and he persuad- ed his four remaining cardinals to hold a conclave after his death. This they did – though only three were present – and a last antipope of the Schism, Gil Sanchez Muñoz, was chosen as Clement VIII. Well, not quite the last. The one absent cardinal, Jean Carrier, decided that the election of Clement VIII reeked of simony and secretly elected, on his own, a Bernard Garnier. Garnier took the name Benedict XIV and appointed one cardinal. This cardinal, afer Garnier’s death, then elected, again on his own, Jean Carrier as pope, and Carrier also took the name Benedict XIV. Clement VIII, in the meantime, had been reconciled with Martin V, though not before he had joined his cardinals in conducting a conclave of his own which elected Odo Colonna to the o
ffi
ce which he had, by then (1429), held for a dozen years.

While John XXIII had been on the run from the Council of Constance, the gathering had produced a decree which proclaimed that a council was superior to the pope and related to him rather as a board of directors to a chief executive o
ffi
cer. This was not too far removed from the way in which the college of cardinals had regarded the pope, but it was not a vision of papal authority that any holder of the o
ffi
ce was likely to endorse wholeheartedly. Later the Council of Constance had demanded that the pope call a general council of the Church at regular intervals to ensure that the reform program that had been demanded was being carried out.

Martin proved to be a fairly stern reformer, especially of the curia, and the cardinals did not like it. They particularly did not

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like his attack on their financial dealings while he himself liberally bestowed wealth upon his own family, contrary to his own prin- ciples. When he died on 21 February 1431, therefore, they were determined to choose a successor who was very different. There were thirteen cardinals in the conclave, which met in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. There were indeed a good many more cardinals, but for various reasons they were not present – two of them because Martin V had elevated them to the college without revealing their names, creating them
in pectore
(literally, “in the breast” or secretly; the Italian term
in petto
is sometimes used), a practice which is still occasionally employed when an appointment may be controversial. The conclave decided upon a capitulation, namely that the cardinals should get back control of the Church and control of the revenues, of which Martin had deprived them in the name of reform. Cardinal Gabriele Condulmaro, who on 3 March 1431 became Pope Eugenius IV, had signed the capitula- tion and endorsed it after his election.

In accordance with the demands of Constance, Martin V had summoned another reforming council to meet in Basel; it was inherited by Eugenius, who tried, but failed, to dissolve it. The council abolished almost all papal taxes, which would have made life exceedingly di
ffi
cult for the pontiff. He protested. Part of the task of the council was reunion with the Greek church, but when a place was proposed for this reunion, the Greeks chose to asso- ciate themselves with Eugenius’s choice rather than that of the council. The council fathers demanded that the pope come to Basel. He responded by moving the council to Ferrara. It opened there on 8 January 1438; on 24 January those who refused to move from Basel to Ferrara declared Eugenius suspended from o
ffi
ce and on 25 June they deposed him. On 5 November they – a cardi- nal, eleven bishops, sundry abbots and theologians – elected as pope Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy, a pious layman who had founded a religious order and who had retired from running the affairs of his dukedom to become a hermit. He was visited in his

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hermitage – the Chateau de Ripaille on Lake Geneva – and only reluctantly accepted the position of pope, taking the name Felix V. He did not go to Basel until 24 June 1440, where he was ordained priest and crowned as pope. His claim to the bishopric of Rome did not win many supporters, and he made his peace with Eugenius’s successor in 1449.

Eugenius’s successor was Pope Nicholas V, Tommaso Parentucelli, elected on 6 March 1447, very soon after Eugenius’s death. The choice, though excellent as it turned out, was unexpec- ted. The eighteen cardinals met in the Dominican house attached to the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva and the most likely candidate was a Colonna, but family feuds and memories of how the last Colonna pope enriched his relatives, ruled him out. The new pope, however, showed himself favorable both to the Colonnas and to their great rivals the Orsinis. Nicholas has been hailed as the first Renaissance pope. He was a patron of the arts, summoned scholars to his court, and loved books; he also per- formed the last imperial coronation to be held in Rome. He had great plans, largely unrealized, for the architectural adornment of Rome.

Callistus III, who came next, was wholly different. Alfonso de Borja was renowned for his piety and his skill as a jurist rather than as a patron of the arts. He was a compromise candidate, the sixteen cardinals who entered the conclave on 4 April 1455 being too evenly divided between the Orsini and Colonna factions. The other possible candidate was Cardinal Bessarion, but he was ruled out because he was a Greek; the fact that Callistus was a Spaniard was problem enough. It was balanced by his age: he was seventy-seven when elected after a conclave of only four days, and the cardinals could expect another election in the near future.

Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who was elected to succeed Callistus on 19 August 1458 after a three-day conclave, was undoubtedly a humanist. He had several literary and historical works to his credit, as well as a couple of erotic texts and sundry children – all born, it

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should be said, before his ordination to the priesthood. He even took the name Pius II as a play on his given name, a classical reference to Vergil’s “
at pius Aeneas
.” Given the usual tensions of Colonnas and Orsinis, the most obvious candidate in the con- clave was Cardinal Domenico Capranica, and he would have been elected had he not died as the cardinals were assembling. Piccolomini was chosen because of his demonstrable political skills

– the international scene right across Europe was extremely gloomy, and the papacy needed someone of his experience of statecraft. The Turks in particular were making inroads and Pius was committed to leading a crusade against them. A crusading army was to gather at Ancona and Pius, though seriously ill, made his way there. He died in Ancona on 14 August 1464.

The tradition had been that conclaves met in the place a pope died. Pius II, who knew he was dying, tried to insist that the cardi- nals follow the old ways, but although preparations began in Ancona, the conclave took place in the Vatican. Pietro Barbo was elected on the first ballot. The conclave nevertheless lasted three days because a new and lengthy capitulation was drawn up, which Barbo signed, to restore the finances and the administrative importance of the cardinals, the number of whom was to be set at twenty-four, as Constance had required. As soon as he was elected, Barbo, now Paul II, modified the regulations he had earlier accepted. His modifications, however, still committed him to reform. It is not easy to account for the speed with which he was elected except that, as a man of great wealth, he had indulged in ostentatious displays which attracted much attention; he had built the Palazzo San Marco, now the Palazzo Venezia, for himself, for example, and lived there even as pope, amassing a great collection of art and antiquities.

Francesco della Rovere, who was elected to succeed Paul II on 9 August 1471 with the title of Sixtus IV, was a Franciscan, but exhib- ited none of the modesty and humility associated with that Order’s founder. The conclave lasted four days, partly given over to the

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drawing up of capitulations similar to those just mentioned, which Sixtus promptly ignored two weeks after his election by promot- ing two of his nephews to the cardinalate – nepotism played a conspicuous part in this pontificate. His candidacy was supported by the Duke of Milan and therefore by the pro-Milanese cardinals. It was also supported by generous payments to the other electors.

It was the same when Giovanni Battista Cibò was elected on 29 August 1484 after a three-day conclave. Sixtus had died on 12 August; the delay in calling the electors together was caused by rioting in Rome, whose citizens felt that the late pontiff had filled too many positions with Genoese. Even when they met, the twenty-five cardinals were deeply divided between a group led by Giuliano della Rovere, Sixtus’s nephew, backed by the Colonnas, and one headed by Rodrigo Borja (“Italianized” to Borgia) with the support of the Orsinis. Della Rovere wanted the papacy for himself, but recognized that there was no chance he would be elected, such were the numbers ranged against him. He therefore promoted Cibò, who was ill and susceptible. The night before the formal vote Cibò sat in his cell signing the petitions that cardinals brought to him. As soon as he became Innocent VIII he organized suitable marriages for his illegitimate children.

But at least he had not continued his affairs with women beyond his youth; his successor, Rodrigo Borja, Pope Alexander VI, carried such liaisons into his papacy. As early as 1460 he had been severely rebuked by Pius II for his immorality and greed for wealth. But the reprimand had not slowed him down in acquiring either riches or children; he had fathered six before his election and had two more afterward; for all of them he displayed a strong fatherly affection. Moreover, he carried on an affair with Giulia Farnese into the early years of his pontificate; she was the sister of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, the future Pope Paul III.

Despite della Rovere’s tutelage, Innocent had left Rome and the papal states in chaos; his death, therefore, was the signal for more rioting in the city. What was wanted was a strong and consummate

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politician, which was no doubt part of the reason why Rodrigo Borja was elected on 11 August 1492 after a six-day conclave. But it was not the whole reason. The twenty-three cardinals who took part were divided along, by now, traditional lines. On one side was della Rovere, who had no chance of being elected because he had alienated so many of the cardinals by his haughty behavior during the reign of Innocent; della Rovere was, however, backed by the faction in the college which favored the Neapolitan cause. Borja favored the Milanese, and as the votes were taken it swiftly became clear that neither side would produce the required two-thirds majority. Yet suddenly Borja became the favored candidate, late in the evening of 10 August. It is inconceivable that the opposition to Borja’s candidacy was not won over by bribery of one form or another – not perhaps direct exchange of funds, but by the prom- ise of high and lucrative o
ffi
ce. Neither this, nor his immoral life, worried the college of cardinals, still less the governments of Europe. The papacy had become secularized, the pope one more Renaissance princeling among many others, with the papal states as his principality and Rome as his capital city.