The Conclave: A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally Bloody History of Papal Elections (5 page)

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The Conclave

knew that such canvassing was going on, the synod declared, then he was obliged to report it and the whistle-blower was to be rewarded. This decree governing papal elections is the oldest to have survived, preserved by the eleventh-century lawyer Gratian. Lawrence was made a bishop.

However, this did not put an end to conflict, even during Symmachus’s own pontificate. When he decided in 501 to celebrate Easter on the day fixed by the old Roman system for cal- culating that date, rather than the Eastern one which had been employed in recent years, those favoring closer links with Constantinople accused him of breaking Church law and he was again summoned to Ravenna. Once there, however, he learned that he was also going to be accused of immorality, which made him rush back to Rome. It was a mistake. His failure to answer the charges appeared to many, including King Theodoric, to be evi- dence of his guilt.

In the meantime Lawrence’s supporters, the majority of the senior clergy, had occupied most of the Roman churches, includ- ing the Lateran. Symmachus had to take refuge in St. Peter’s. Theo- doric proposed a council for Easter 502, which was attended by many bishops from around Italy. It took place in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, in the midst of riots in the city. Many Christians were killed, reports the
Liber Pontificalis
, and it was not safe for priests to walk the streets either by day or by night. The bishops appealed pathetically to King Theodoric: “the simplicity of priests is not equal to the cunning of the laity,” they said. Theodoric was unmoved, but the synod was adjourned to meet again in September.

By September the violence had still not stopped. On his way to Santa Croce, Symmachus was attacked by supporters of Lawrence and two of the priests with him were killed – one of them Gordianus, the father of the future pope Agapitus (celibacy had not yet been imposed on the church and many clergy were married, though those elected as bishops were expected to separate from

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their wives). Despite this, the synod came down on the side of Symmachus, much to the irritation of both Theodoric and Festus. Symmachus had the backing of the Roman mob and was conscious of it. As pope he increased both the level of poor relief and the stipends of the clergy. He built a public toilet just outside St. Peter’s. But he was not immediately able to regain control of Rome’s churches. So he called another synod for November. High on the agenda was the annulment of the 483 decree that popes could not dispose of papal property. It had been passed at the instigation of Basilius, the praetorian prefect, who was also chief minister of Odoacer, the first barbarian (i.e., a mem- ber of one of the Germanic tribes that had entered the empire; the word “barbarian” comes from ancient Greek and means “non- Greek-speaking” and so “uncivilized”) to become king of Italy. The purpose of the decree has been much disputed. It may be that it was an attempt to limit the papacy to rich men who would have no need to spend the papal inheritance – and Felix, elected in 483, was indeed a wealthy aristocrat, the first to be chosen, as far as we can tell. Or it may have been intended to cut down corruption in papal elections; paying o
ff
those whose support had been bought regularly bankrupted the papal treasury. Whatever the reason behind it, the decree was repealed on the grounds that Basilius was

a layman and had no right to legislate in the a
ff
airs of the papacy. After the November synod the situation rather calmed down.

Theodoric withdrew his support from Lawrence and eventually persuaded Senator Festus to do likewise. Lawrence himself, who had been deposed from his bishopric, seems to have spent the rest of his life at the country house of his patron and disappears from history. His erstwhile supporters were finally reconciled by Symmachus’s successor (and possibly his nominee) Hormisdas, who also managed to improve relations with Constantinople. When Hormisdas died the deacon chosen as bishop was the first Pope John, who had originally been a supporter of Lawrence (that is, pro-Eastern) and one of the last to be reconciled to Symmachus.

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The Conclave

His appointment, therefore, indicated a decisive shift toward the East, one which the barbarian kings in Ravenna understandably resented. As a result, John’s successor was only chosen after a prolonged vacancy; the pro-barbarian Felix IV was imposed by Theodoric, and as he lay dying himself he chose someone of barbarian origins, Boniface, son of Sigibuld, to succeed to the papal throne. He even handed over the pallium, the symbol of o
ffi
ce, to Boniface – though on strict instructions that he was to return it should Felix recover.

Pope Symmachus had earlier made personal nomination by the dying pope the preferred method of papal succession, but the Roman senate was having nothing of it. They rejected Felix’s choice and held an election in the Lateran. By a large majority they chose Dioscorus, a refugee in Rome from the church of Alexandria. Once more the danger of schism loomed, but Dioscorus solved the problem by dying only three weeks later. Meanwhile those sympa- thetic to Felix had formally elected the late pope’s candidate, so Boniface remained in control despite the unconventional method of his election. He, however, wanted a say in the choice of his successor and in 531 called a meeting in St. Peter’s where he attempted to impose the deacon Vigilius as bishop and force all the clergy to agree to it. Afterward he admitted that he had gone too far and ceremoniously burnt the decree appointing Vigilius. But he was right in one regard. Following his death in October 532 the succession was plagued by controversy and bribery which was resolved only after a compromise candidate, the aged priest Mercurius of the church of San Clemente, was elected. Mercurius changed his name – the first pope to do so – to John, perhaps because, as the name of a pagan god, Mercury was hardly approp- riate for the Bishop of Rome. King Athalric, who succeeded his uncle Theodoric as leader of the barbarian tribe of Ostrogoths in 526, issued a decree forbidding corrupt practices in papal elections and limiting the amount of money that could be spent on them. That he felt obliged to do so suggests that bribery had been rife. He

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fixed the sum that could be spent on the poor to 500 solidi – six times that amount could be paid to royal o
ffi
cials for the necessary documents.

Perhaps as a result of Athalric’s ruling, the election of Agapitus (the son of the murdered priest Gordianus) passed o
ff
uneventfully, but his pontificate was short, little more than a year. He died in Constantinople, trying, unsuccessfully as it turned out, to dissuade the energetic young Emperor Justinian I from attempting to re- establish Byzantine control over Italy. He had gone there on the instructions of Theodahad, the last Ostrogothic king, and Theodahad now imposed the subdeacon Silverius, son of Pope Hormisdas, as someone whom he believed would be sympathetic to the Ostrogoths. It was not a popular appointment, but the pro- imperial clergy accepted it for the sake of unity.

By this time Justinian’s forces, under General Belisarius, were attempting to reestablish imperial rule in Italy. They landed in Sicily in 535 and drove the Ostrogoths from Rome in December

536. The barbarian forces did not flee. They laid siege to the city, and Silverius was accused of helping them. Belisarius had him removed from o
ffi
ce and ensured that Vigilius was elected in his place. Vigilius had spent a long time as papal representative in Constantinople, where he had become a friend of the Emperor Justinian’s dubiously theological wife, Theodora. It seems that she had promised him the papal throne in return for showing sympathy for her pet heresy. The promise, it was said, had been backed by generous donations, and the ambitious and greedy Vigilius gave way – though as far as approval or otherwise of heretical views went, in practice his hands were tied by the actions of his predecessors.

When Vigilius himself died at Syracuse on his way back from Constantinople, after a prolonged and at first enforced stay at the imperial court, another of the emperor’s protégés, the deacon Pelagius, was imposed seemingly without election. There was another long vacancy. Vigilius died in June 555; Pelagius did not

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The Conclave

become pope until April 556. There were several reasons, not least the fact that Pelagius objected when Vigilius finally caved in to Justinian’s importuning and accepted the emperor’s theological views, which in the eyes of the Roman church were heretical. Pelagius had been Vigilius’s ambassador in Constantinople and was still there when Vigilius himself arrived. When he fell out with the man whose papacy he had almost certainly helped to engineer, Justinian sent him into exile. Then, when he had been recalled from exile and reconciled with the emperor, he had to make the long journey back to Rome.

He was not, however, popular with the Roman people – hence no election, as far as is known. Perhaps as a result, he also found it di
ffi
cult to find a bishop who would consecrate him Bishop of Rome. The one who had the right and responsibility to preside over the episcopal consecration of a pope, the Bishop of Ostia, simply refused to do it. When the ceremony eventually took place, the Bishop of Ostia was represented only by a presbyter. All of this added to the length of time between the pontificates of Vigilius and Pelagius. And such delays became common because for nearly two centuries, up to the reign of Gregory III (elected in 731), successive popes thought it necessary to seek the approval of the emperor in Constantinople. So John III (a pope of senatorial birth) and Benedict I had to wait four and eleven months, respectively, before they could be consecrated.

With Pelagius II, however, it was di
ff
erent. By the year of his elec- tion, 579, Rome was threatened by a new kind of barbarians, the Lombards. They had arrived in Italy in 568 and eventually domi- nated the whole of Northern Italy and the separate duchies of Spoleto and Benevento in the South. During the Gothic wars, when the emperor in the East reestablished his authority over Italy, much of the old Roman senatorial class had been destroyed. But the vari- ous kinds of “goths” had lived within the borders of the Roman Empire for a long time. They understood how the system worked. And they were also Christians, even if, in the eyes of the Bishop of

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Rome, unsatisfactorily Arian ones. The Lombards, on the other hand, were new to the empire and many of them were even more unsatisfactorily pagan. Those who were Christian were, once again, heretically Arian. Imperial power in Italy was once more destroyed, limited to the region around Ravenna itself, which was governed by an “exarch” who was the imperial representative, Rome, Liguria, and the southernmost provinces of the Italian peninsular.

The office of exarch most probably did not yet exist at the time of Pelagius’s election. Rome was under siege from the Lombards. Perhaps as a sop to the new barbarians the Romans elected a man from a family of barbarian origin, though he had been born in Rome. He seems to have been consecrated immediately, even though the
Liber Pontificalis
says firmly that before he became pope the see had been vacant three months and ten days. The most likely explanation is that his pontificate was dated from the time imperial approval arrived, even though he did not wait for it.

And then Gregory was elected. Pelagius had died on 8 February 590 of the plague which, among all the city’s other misfortunes, was now rife among what remained of the population of Rome. The choice of Gregory was unanimous; the only voice against it was apparently his own. He came from a wealthy family which had already produced two popes (cf. above p. 22). He had been prefect of the city, then given it all up to convert his family house into a monastery, and become a monk. He was, therefore, the first monk to be made pope. He had protested at being made a deacon. Now he wrote a letter to the emperor in Constantinople which, instead of informing him of the decision of the Roman church and people, asked him to reject their choice and allow Gregory to return to his monastery on the Caelian Hill. His brother Palatinus, who was prefect of the city, intercepted the letter and substituted one simply announcing the election. In far-o
ff
Constantinople the Emperor Maurice gave his approval. Gregory, the pope who sent mission- aries to England to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons, was conse- crated Bishop of Rome on 3 September.

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The Conclave

Gregory and Leo I are the only two popes to be called “the Great.” But that is the judgment of history, rather than of their con- temporaries. The people of Rome who had elected him so readily turned against Gregory in the closing years of his pontificate as cri- sis followed crisis in their city. Moreover the clergy were unhappy because Gregory seemed to be employing monks to run the papal o
ffi
ces rather than the priests of the city. The choice of Sabinian as his successor, in the middle of a major famine, reflected their dis- contents. Although the Bishop of Rome was by now e
ff
ectively the governor of the city in civil as well as religious matters, the emperor in far-o
ff
Constantinople still claimed jurisdiction, and it was important for Rome to maintain good relations with the imperial authorities. Sabinian had been Gregory’s representative in Constantinople but the two had fallen out over policy toward the East, Sabinian being the more sympathetic toward imperial aspirations regarding Italy. He was also what would now be called a diocesan priest rather than a monk. He was, in other words, a striking contrast to Gregory. But he, too, incurred the anger of the mob when, in the continuing famine, he chose to sell grain rather than give it away. When he died, he was so disliked that his funeral procession had to steer clear of the city itself.

So just as there had been a reaction against Gregory, the election of Boniface III seems to have been a reaction against Sabinian. There was a long gap between the death of the pope and Boniface’s consecration, only a few days short of a year, which suggests that the election was controversial. Boniface, whose pontificate after his consecration lasted only ten months, held a synod in which the ban on canvassing – and the o
ff
ering of bribes – was once again enacted. What is more, the clergy agreed that discussion about the succes- sion was not to take place until three days after a papal death. At that point there was to be a meeting of the clergy and of what looks like the upper echelons of Roman society, when a vote would be taken. Clearly the notion that all the people of the city had a say in choosing a pope had by this time (607) already disappeared.