The Conclave: A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally Bloody History of Papal Elections (6 page)

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Boniface III was followed by Boniface IV, who had been Gregory I’s treasurer and was very much in the mold of his old master – so much so that he, too, turned his family home into a monastery and once again gave prominence in his administration to monks. “He greatly loved the clergy: he restored the priests and the clergy to their original places,” says the
Liber Pontificalis
about his successor Adeodatus I. Adeodatus was an old man – and, unusually, a priest

– by the time of his election. He had worked his way steadily up the clerical ladder in Rome, so it is hardly surprising he should then promote his colleagues over the recently arrived monks. Not only that, he left each of the priests a year’s salary in his will, as did his successor, Boniface V. Clearly the antimonastic party was in the ascendant.

It did not last. In one of those changes of fashion which frequently mark the preferences of papal electors, Boniface V’s successor, Honorius I, was monastically inclined. He employed monks rather than the priests of the city and also turned his home into a monastery. Honorius was also confirmed in o
ffi
ce remark- ably quickly, presumably because the imperial exarch was in the city at the time of the election, but Severinus, who came next, had to wait a particularly long time because the emperor wanted him to agree to a doctrine which the pope regarded as heretical. There was a stando
ff
which lasted from October 638 to August 640, when Severinus was finally consecrated. But there may have been more to it than that. Severinus bluntly refused to pay the wages of the imperial army which was quartered in Rome. The exarch’s patience finally snapped. He took the money by force, so the
Liber Pontificalis
reports, and sent it o
ff
to the emperor. As a result of this quarrel over papal funds, Severinus formally governed Rome for very little more than two months.

The confl between pope and emperor continued over the next several pontifi even though one of those elected (John IV, in succession to Severinus) was the son of the legal adviser to the exarch himself, which might have suggested that he would be

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The Conclave

more favorably inclined toward the religious policies of the emperor. John IV’s own successor, Theodore I, was a Greek, and possibly not even a member of the Roman clergy but the son of a patriarch of Jerusalem and, most probably, an exile from the East precisely on account of the religious policy of the emperor. If that is so, it demonstrates a remarkable determination on the part of those electing him to have no truck with the emperor’s heretical ideas.

Martin I, though from a noble Tuscan family, was of the same mind as Theodore. He had been papal ambassador to Constantinople, which had clearly not left him with a favorable impression. After his rather delayed election he had himself con- secrated pope without bothering to wait for confirmation from either the exarch or the emperor. Martin was such a fervent adver- sary of the imperial heresy that the emperor sent the exarch to arrest him. This backfired. The exarch was won over by Martin and proclaimed himself emperor – though he did not survive long. When an imperial representative again came to arrest the pope, he arrived with a large army. Martin was taken o
ff
to Constantinople, humiliated, condemned as a traitor, and sen- tenced to death. This was commuted to lifelong banishment, dur- ing which he died; the Romans regarded him as a martyr, the last pope to be so styled.

While Martin was still alive, though condemned, the Romans elected Eugene to replace him. As Martin had not resigned his o
ffi
ce he was deeply distressed, particularly, perhaps, because it seemed that the new, but aged, pope might do a deal with the emperor. He might well have done so, but the clergy of Rome, who may have elected him because they hoped he would be able to improve relations with Constantinople, prevented him taking the only step which would placate the emperor: adopting his – to the Romans heretical – views on the nature of Christ. The emperor was furious and threatened Eugene with the same fate that had befallen Martin, but Eugene died before it could be carried out.

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The controversy dragged on through the pontificates of Vitalian, Adeodatus II, and Donus. It improved under Agatho, who was an Eastern monk from Sicily. By his skills in negotiation he achieved the abandonment of the heretical position adopted by successive emperors in Constantinople, and, perhaps as a tribute, the Romans elected another Greek-speaking Sicilian, Leo II, to succeed him. One unmistakable sign of Agatho’s skill was the agreement of the emperor that the payment of 3000 solidi to the imperial court (cf. above, p. 27) would be waived – though in return the emperor demanded back the right, briefly transferred to his exarch, to confirm papal elections. The delay between election and confirma- tion (and therefore consecration) once again grew longer – eighteen months in the case of Leo II, a year for Leo’s successor Benedict II. Benedict, however, got the procedure transferred back to Ravenna, so John V, after a trouble-free election, took up residence in the Lateran to await confirmation by the exarch, which arrived in a matter of weeks.

What mattered to the electors in the papal elections of these years in the middle of the seventh century was the suitability of a candidate to deal with the emperor in Constantinople. The emperor was still – though by this time only just – their ruler, albeit a ruler far too prone to heresy, which was troubling. But the alter- native to governance from Constantinople was the domination of a Lombard king who was not only a barbarian and a heretic, but rather too close for comfort. So elections ran, it seems, relatively smoothly, and imperial confirmation was sought either from the emperor directly, which took time, or from the emperor’s repre- sentative, the exarch in Ravenna.

There was a blip in this more or less tranquil series. In August 686, at the death of John V, there was a disputed election. John had been unanimously elected – the
Liber Pontificalis
makes a point of saying so. But at his death the army took a hand. It was the first recorded instance of troops in the city of Rome playing a part in the process, but they came from the same families who in times past

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The Conclave

had been counted as the nobility. Now, with the withdrawal of the imperial army from the city, the large landowners emerged as the new military o
ffi
cer-class. They took charge of not only the local militia, but the civil administration as well.

To succeed John the clergy of the city chose as their candidate Peter, the archpriest of the city; the military, who, as we have seen, headed the civil administration, wanted Theodore, also a priest but lower than Peter in rank. The sources do not indicate why each faction favored their particular candidate, but clearly the election was fraught. Soldiers closed the Lateran basilica to the clergy, so they could not use the traditional venue for the election. The army gathered in the basilica of St. Stephen nearby and proceeded to the election of Theodore. There were therefore two candidates, neither yet pope because imperial ratification had not been given. Leaders on both sides looked for a compromise. They found it in Conon, an ino
ff
ensive Roman cleric who happened to be the son of a soldier. The military were mollified and the clergy slipped into the Lateran palace and elected Conon.

But the new pope was elderly, and it was clear he would not survive long; in fact his pontificate lasted only a year. The Archdeacon of Rome, one Paschal, realizing that Conon would not live long, started to plan his own succession. Crucial to any appointment was the approval of the exarch. Paschal now wrote to him, o
ff
ering a substantial bribe which the exarch was only too pleased to accept. But at Conon’s death in September 687 it became clear that Theodore still had the support of the army, while Paschal was backed, naturally, by the exarch in Ravenna and the civil authorities in Rome. The two groups occupied di
ff
erent sec- tions of the Lateran. The solution which had prevailed last time was tried again. Leading figures from the army, the clergy, and the civilian population of the city met in the Palatine palace to find a compromise candidate. They chose the priest Sergius – the
Liber Pontificalis
makes it sound as if the decision was sudden and spon- taneous. He was, it says, “taken from the midst of the people,”

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rushed o
ff
to a chapel in the imperial palace, there acknowledged as pope (there does not seem to have been a formal election), and hurried on to the Lateran.

The Lateran was still in the hands of the rival factions, who were unwilling to allow Sergius’s entry but, says the
Liber Pontificalis
complacently, Sergius’s supporters were in the majority and they were able to force an entry. Theodore promptly gave way. Paschal, however, did not. He sent for his supposed ally the exarch, who came hurrying from Ravenna, but in secret – so secretly that the usual welcoming ceremony could not be mounted. He arrived, sized up the situation, and backed Sergius, pausing only to exact from Paschal the bribe which had been promised him. So Sergius, Syrian by origin and born in Sicily, became pope, and was a very good one.

The elections which followed in the early eighth century had none of this drama. For the most part those chosen were, like Sergius, of Syrian background or were Greek in origin, perhaps elected because the people of Rome, or at least the clergy, the army, and leading nobles who cared about such things, thought those of an Eastern background might have some chance of understanding, and coping with, the imperial court at Constantinople. There was one curious election, if “election” is the word. In February 731, during the funeral procession of Gregory II, the people of the city seized hold of the priest Gregory, rushed him o
ff
to the Lateran basilica, and made him pope by universal acclaim. Gregory sought, and the following month received, confirmation of his election from the exarch. But he was the last pope to seek it.

The emperor in the East, threatened as he was by the rising tide of Islam and beset by (to Roman eyes) theological vagaries, was of only modest significance. The real power with which the pope had now to deal lay elsewhere, in Italy itself or across the mountains in France and Germany.

3

The Syrian Pope Gregory III died on 28 November 741. He was followed remarkably quickly (a sign of a trouble-free election) by the Greek Pope Zacharias. There had been a long succession of Greek or Syrian popes, broken only by the Roman Gregory II. They were not, and Zacharias certainly was not, sympathetic to the emperor in the East, but clearly the clergy and people of the city thought it wise to have as bishop someone capable of understand- ing and dealing with the – to the Roman mind – peculiar problems of theology that arose in the Greek-speaking part of the Empire. But now they were going to look more to the West. Zacharias was not only the last pope in the sequence of Greek-speakers, he was the last pope ever with Eastern Christian origins – so far at least. The emperor and the Patriarch in Constantinople had not ceased to matter, but they no longer mattered as much. In 751, still in Zacharias’s pontificate, Ravenna was overrun by the Lombards and the exarchate went out of existence.

Zacharias died the following year. The election of Stephen to succeed him was swift and trouble-free – except that he died within a couple of days of being installed in the papal residence of the Lateran Palace. He died before he was consecrated bishop, which meant that, according to the rules in place at the time, he was not the pope. He was therefore at first not included in o
ffi
cial lists of ponti
ff
s, but he was rehabilitated in the sixteenth century when election rather than consecration became the point at which some- one became pope, so that he became Stephen II. Which meant that

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the erstwhile Stephen II, who was again elected without trouble of any sort immediately after the earlier Stephen’s death, became Stephen III. Now in the lists there has to be a dual numbering, so that Stephen III is referred to as Stephen II (III). It was not the last time there was to be confusion over numbering.

Stephen II (III) was succeeded, again immediately, by his younger brother Paul. They were wealthy Roman aristocrats, typical of the powerful noble families which were by now ensconced among Rome’s clerics as they were among the militia. Just as earlier popes had sent news of their election to the emperors in Constantinople, so Paul now informed Pepin III, King of the Franks. Pepin had become a significant figure in papal politics because, when the Lombards were threatening Rome, Stephen II

(III) had asked for his help and it had been given. The Franks had decisively defeated the Lombards, and despite protests from Constantinople that the Lombard lands should be handed over to the emperor, Pepin gave them to the pope, thus formally establishing what were to become known as the papal states.

These states needed some ideological justification, real or imag- inary. It was in the end invented, in a document which is generally known as the Donation of Constantine, written possibly in the pontificate of Stephen II (III). This claimed that Constantine had decided that the earthly emperor could not reside in the same city as the pope, who was the earthly representative of the eternal emperor. He had therefore moved his seat of power to his new city of Constantinople. He had also conceded to the pope, the docu- ment went on, sovereignty over an imprecisely defined western territory and all islands. The popes, then, had not only spiritual authority over the Church, but territorial ambitions as well. But in order to make these work, in the eighth century they had to rein in the territorial ambitions of the secular nobility of Rome.

Dissatisfaction with this policy may have been the reason for a modest attempt to challenge the election of Paul I in 757. Though the process progressed smoothly, a small, dissident group gathered