On Papal Conclaves/Chapter 2

by W. C. Cartwright

II.

IT will hardly be necessary to remind the reader that the existing mode of Papal election, by which the prerogative of naming the Supreme Pontiff is vested exclusively in those ecclesiastical dignitaries who have attained the rank of Cardinals, is a matter of comparatively late creation. For centuries, athwart the many political vicissitudes which, with frightful rapidity, came tumbling over Rome in wild confusion, the election of its bishop, who was ever growing steadily in might, remained yet fixedly lodged in a joint action of the whole community, as falling into the three classes, of civil authorities, people, and clergy. Every other provision connected with public institutions was subjected to incessant revolution; but, amidst this endless influx of change and counterchange, it never occurred to make the nomination of the Pope, in law, independent of the civil power, still less to lodge it in the hands of a select body of ecclesiastics, whose choice should be entitled to exact the homage of clergy and people, until the middle of the eleventh century. That was a period when the Church, as represented by the dignitary who presided over the See of Rome, had drifted down the troubled stream of time, to find itself wedged in against the rocky mass of the Empire, hardened by centuries of high imperial traditions, and specially sharpened by the individual action of the vigorous princes of the Salic race, who then were its imperious representatives. The situation was one in which the timbers of the Church's barque must either push stoutly over obstacles to freer waters beyond, or that vessel would inevitably wreck itself upon the jagged sides of the hard harrier against which it , as jammed. Such a predicament instinctively inspired a demand for increased motive power to the ecclesiastical machinery in the breasts of those who might not be disposed to acquiesce in a timid abandonment of the Church to its fate. It happened, by one of those coincidences which some call providential, and others organic, that at this conjuncture the destinies of the Church were lodged in the bands of men, and especially of one man, pre-eminently endowed with the instincts demanded by the moment. The commanding figure of Hildebrand looms before us grandly as the over-shadowing genius of the Papacy during the eventful reigns of six Popes, by whose sides he stands as the unfailing counsellor and prompter, until at the culminating hour of time he chooses to seat himself upon that episcopal chair, which, mainly through his own fostering efforts, had meantime become actually transformed into a throne of might. It was Hildebrand who, taking advantage of public discussions in Rome, secured by adroit management the sudden nomination of Nicolas II. at Florence in 1059, and then induced his nominee to issue the Bull which must be regarded as the original charter of the College of Cardinals—the Magna Charta on which reposes the existing structure of that body—a deed of abiding importance for the constitution of the Roman See. By it the College of Cardinals was called into creation as an Ecclesiastical Senate, invested organically with the elective franchise which can give a Head to the Church. What may have been before the peculiar prerogatives of the dignitaries bearing this title is a point difficult to define with certainty; but what does not admit of doubt is that from the Bull of Nicolas II. dates first the organic consummation of a revolution that had long been working its way underground, by which the highest constitutional functions in the government of the Roman See came to be taken away definitively from the ecclesiastical body at large, and vested exclusively in this corporation. The preamble of the Bull rehearses succinctly the political causes that moved the Pope to issue the same—the troubles, namely, which supervened on the demise of his predecessor, and the great grief which the Pope felt at the sad consequences that had befallen the Church through a disturbed election. To obviate similar occurrences for the future, Nicolas II. solemnly decreed, therefore, that the election of Pope appertains first to the Cardinal Bishops who officiate for the Metropolitan, then to the Cardinal Clerks, and that the remainder of the Clergy and the People tender but their acquiescence in the election, so that the Cardinals have the lead in making choice of Popes—the others but following them.' The innovation thus ventured upon was two-edged. It was calculated to provoke at once the resentment of the tumultuous populace, civil and ecclesiastical, of Rome, that saw itself deprived of the privileges which practically it had enjoyed of actively sharing in the choice of a Pope, and of the Imperial Crown that had always claimed an influential, and generally even an absolutely controlling voice in such an election. To propitiate these influences Nicolas II. introduced two rather vague provisions. The Roman populace received the sop that the Pope should be selected in preference out of the bosom of the Roman Church, and only in the event of no fitting subject being there forthcoming, out of that of another congregation. The Emperor was sought to be conciliated by inserting the proviso, 'saving the honour and reverence due to our beloved son Henry, at present King, and who with God's favour it is to be hoped will become Emperor, as likewise to his successors, who may have personally acquired this right from the Apostolical See.' This reservation is memorable, for in after times it was often invoked in the conflicts between the Papacy and the Crown, while a quite recent historian, Gfrörrer, has fallen into the mistake of making this special saving clause for soothing the Emperor's pride the origin of the privilege which certain Catholic Powers still claim of applying a veto in Conclave against the election of some particular Cardinal.

The rights so conferred were exercised not without much contest; but it was not until after more than a century that the constitution so roughly hewn out received any further touches at the hands of Alexander III. This great Pope, the unbending antagonist of Barbarossa, and the protecting genius of the leagued cities of Lombardy, won his way to high position, athwart as various and as persistent hardships as ever fell to the lot of any Pope. Of a reign of twenty-two years, during more than half of which Alexander was an exiled wanderer, eighteen were spell in the bitterness of a schism which was perpetuated through three anti-Popes, and had commenced at the very instant of Alexander's elevation. At that conjuncture the leading divisions between the Empire and Holy See had penetrated also into the College of Cardinals; and when those who represented the ecclesiastical party combined to proclaim Alexander with a clear majority, the leader of the Emperor's partisans, Cardinal Octavius, pulled away the purple as the new Pope was about to be robed, and had it flung over his own shoulders. The Conclave broke up amidst wild tumult. Cardinal Octavius, borne in procession to the Lateran by his friends, was there installed Pope, while the rightful one, on delivery from imprisonment by Odo Frangipani, fled away from Rome, and got himself hastily consecrated in the parish church of Ninfa, that wonderful forsaken town which stands still in the Pontine Marshes, though without one soul to dwell in it any longer, wildly overgrown with the rank vegetation of those luxuriant but pestilential regions, and mirroring in the transparent waters of a hushed mere its church towers and frowning dwelling-houses and crenellated walls-the silent ghost in stone of the baronial life of the middle ages. It is but natural that a Pope who suffered so much from the persistent opposition of successive pretenders, backing their claims with an embarrassing show of canonical election, should have been deeply impressed with the necessity for surrounding such elections in future with safeguards against the recurrence of similar perplexing returns. Accordingly, when Alexander at last found himself the acknowledged victor in the struggle he had so long waged with undying spirit, he immediately convoked a Council in that Lateran Palace which was the official residence of the Latin Metropolitan, and therein caused a decree to be promulgated that no Papal election should he valid with a majority of less than two-thirds of those voting,—a provision that has remained in force ever since.

It had thus been solemnly ruled that the power of making a Pope should reside with the Cardinals alone, and that no Pope coùld be legitimate except by the vote of two-thirds of the electors present; but as to any obligatory conditions of form to be observed in such election, little, if anything, had as yet been defined. On this head, as on the others, the organic laws that have definitely regulated matters were plainly dictated by instincts springing out of practical experiences. The importation through the direct agency of the Papacy of a French dynasty into Italy, in the person of Charles of Anjou, led to the existence of two distinct parties in the Roman Curia; the one favourable to the French invasion, and composed of French elements; the other not exclusively Italian in composition, but yet by its feelings against. Charles of Anjou identified with the national sentiment. The inevitable consequences of this division were protracted and hotly contested elections, attended during the interregnum by a series of convulsions and tumults which reduced the Papal authority in Rome to a shadow. These lamentable circumstances reached a climax on the occasion of the Cardinals haying to choose a successor to Clement. IV., who died in Yiterbo on the 29th November 1268, one month after the head of the last Hohenstaufen had fallen on a scaffold in Naples, at least with the assent, if not by the direct complicity, of the Pope. In Yiterbo the Cardinals assembled —eighteen in number,—and for two years and nine months^[1] Viterbo became the point on which remained fixed the anxious gaze of Christendom, awaiting the nomination of its Spiritual Head. The scenes that occurred then at Viterbo were terrible. It was during this vacancy that Henry of England^[2], returning from the Crusade, was there stabbed to the heart at the very altar of the Cathedral by Guy de Montfort, in avengement of his own father's death. In vain did Charles of Anjou take up his residence at Viterbo in the hope of coercing the refractory Cardinals of the national party into electing a creature of his own. His presence only added fuel to the flames of this memorable contest. At last the burghers of Viterbo rose in fury against an intolerable state of things, which bade fair to convert their city into the standing cockpit for unquenchable passions, and made their streets the scene of daily bloodshed. Under the direction of the Town-captain, Rainer Gatti, the citizens proceeded to try the effect of physical hardship upon the party-spirit of the Cardinals. The episcopal palace wherein they resided was stripped of its roof, so that the inmates became exposed to wind and weather. There is preserved a remarkable letter^[3] dated 'in Palatio discooperto Episcopatus Viterbiensis vi. Idus Junii MCCLXX. Apost. Sede Yacante,' and addressed to the Podesta, the Town-captain, and the Commonalty of Viterbo by seventeen Cardinals, whose seals are affixed, in which it is requested that, on the ground of sickness, free passage out of the palace in which they are shut up, be allowed to their colleague Cardinal Henry of Ostia, it being expressly stated that he has waived for this one occasion his right of voting. The careful insertion of this clause deserves attention, as proving that at this period it had not yet been definitively ruled that every Cardinal's active participation was not an indispensable condition for setting a Papal election beyond challenge. The sharp measures devised by the Viterbese proved, however, as powerless as the remonstrances of kings in making these stiff-necked prelates concur in a Pope. For more than a year longer did they quarrel and fight on amongst themselves, until at last, it is said mainly by the fervent words of the great Franciscan preacher Saint Bonayentura, they were induced to endow six out of their body with the absolute power of nominating a Pope, whom the others stood pledged to acknow- ledge. This is the earliest precedent we believe for a Pope made by the electoral process technically termed compromise—a process that has been put in practice repeatedly, and which is still held not to have become obsolete. On the 1st September 1271, the choice of these six Grand Electors fell on Theobald Visconti, Archdeacon of Liege, and not a Cardinal, who assumed the style of Gregory X.-a man worthy of his august position, and whose conscientious nature was painfully affected with a sense of the spectacle which the Church had been exhibiting during the interregnum. He at once called together at Lyons a General Council to regulate abuses, and make provisions for securing harmony in Christendom. The assembled fathers of the Church solemnly promulgated a Constitution, 1272, wherein, with elaborate minuteness, are prescribed forms to be observed in Papal elections, that were manifestly suggested by the sad occurrences of the last Conclave, and the desire to establish safe-guards against their recurrence. As the Constitutions of Nicolas II. and Alexander III. are the fundamental instruments for the organic powers of franchise vesting in the College of Cardinals, so must that of Gregory X. be held to be the fundamental instrument for the ceremonial which has come to be observed on the occasion of Cardinals meeting in Conclave; for the modifications that have been subsequently introduced affect only points of detail. In this memorable decree the principle was first laid down of locking up the Church's electors, with the view of shutting out the action of secular influences. It had before happened that Cardinals suffered imprisonment at the hands of violence, but now it was decreed that they should always be immured as long as they were engaged in the sacred avocation of creating a Pope. It was ruled that on a Pope's decease ten days must. be allowed to elapse before his successor could be chosen, with the view of thriving time for Cardinals at a distance to come to Conclave; on the tenth day the Cardinals present could proceed to an election, the legitimacy of which could not be impugned on account of the absence of any colleagues. Meeting in the very palace wherein the Pope died, in the event of the decease happening in the city which was the seat of the Papal Court, the Cardinals were enjoined that they might be accompanied only by one attendant each, unless for particular reasons in individual cases a special permission for two were conceded; they were to inhabit one hall in common, without any division in the shape of wall or hanging, and so closed on all sides that no one could get in or out; excommunication was to be incurred by who- ever should presume to look in upon the Cardinals while engaged in their electoral labours, although it was lawful, by general consent of all the assembled Cardinals, to confer with a person outside, whom it might be deemed necessary to see in reference to matters appertaining to the election. One window alone should be opened upon this hall of assembly, of sufficient size to admit the necessaries of life, it being expressly prohibited under the aforesaid pain of excommunication, that this aperture be ever used to admit any human being. Should it happen, 'which God forefend,' that no Pope were chosen within three days, the Cardinals should then be restricted to one dish each at dinner and supper during the next five days, and if after that the chair of St. Peter were still vacant, they should be furnished during the remainder of their stay in Conclave with bread, wine, and water alone; nor should it be lawful for a Cardinal to profit by any benefice falling vacant during the interregnum, or to draw any revenue from sources appertaining to the Pontifical Chamber; nor should a Cardinal be re-admitted who had left the Conclave for any reason except stress of health, although its doors were to be opened to the same on recovery from sickness, as to every Cardinal who arrived after commencement of the election, it being expressly decreed that in neither case could absence invalidate aught that had been done in the interval. If the Pope's decease occurred away from his established residence, the Cardinals were to assemble in the city, or the region dependent on that city in which he had died, except in the case of these localities being under interdict; and finally, the faithful observance of these provisions was intrusted to the guardianship of the civil authorities of the locality in which the Conclave met, under penalty of incurring excommunication for neglect of this duty. Taken together, these three Constitutions of Nicolas II., Alexander III., and Gregory X. comprise all the essential features in the mechanism which is now still in force at Papal elections. In the last quarter of the thirteenth century the Pontifical Court had thus definitively attained its present organism, and slid into the groove in which its wheels since have run.

Once alone has there been a memorable innovation upon what may be considered the principles embodied in these prescriptions, though on one other occasion, when the question of the transfer of the Holy See back from Avignon to Rome was at stake, a remarkable deviation from the prescribed forms was sanctioned, as will he mentioned. This innovation happened on the occasion of the Papal election which ensued in consequence of the resolutions arrived at in the Council of Constance. The Church of Rome has never since beer exposed to trials of the same intensity as those from which she delivered herself by the intervention of this Council. She has indeed been subsequently confronted by difficulties of no slight order, but these have all preserved more or less the character of an external origin, whereas then the Church was racked by inward throes convulsing her very heart, which reduced her to the condition of a house torn asunder within itself. Until such time as a sentence of reversal, accompanied by deliberate rejection of this precedent in the emergency of an analogous crisis, shall have been pronounced by the Church against what then was done, this incident must be taken therefore in evidence of what the Roman Establishment would hold it to be not contrary to its principles to sanction, in the event of equally critical circumstances coming once more into play. The Council of Constance is distinguished from every other Council by its convocation having been due, not to the individual impulse of a Pontiff, but to the spontaneous instinct of society in general, panting for repose from confusion and discussion, and exhausted by the evils flowing from the great schism. All the landmarks of legitimacy had become removed, and an Egyptian darkness enveloped society, rival pretenders to the Papacy circulating freely in the world without its being possible to arrive at a conclusion who was legitimate and who was spurious. Against such a bewildering state of things the conscience of the Church instinctively rose, and the Council of Constance is the act of this uprising by the Churchmen of the day, in rescue of the institution they cherished, from what were felt to be exceptional evils requiring exceptional remedies. Accordingly, in this assembly, which restored peace to the Church, and the proceedings of which have been recognised without the sound of protest as legitimate by the authorities of the Church, two Popes, who then divided the world—John XXIII. and Gregory XII.^[4]—and whose elections, let it be borne in mind, were originally so little impeachable in form that they have both continued to figure as Popes on the list put forth by the Roman Church-were solemnly compelled to abdicate, and in their stead a new Pope, Martin V., was created by a special constituency formed for that occasion, so as to secure for him a broader title than under the deplorable Circumstances of the schism could be furnished by Cardinals alone, all of whom had more or less participated actively in its incidents. It is this acknowledgment of the necessity of special measures for special situations, and this dispensation from a pedantic observance of specified forms, when felt to be hurtful to vital interests— a dispensation which has been ratified in the unhesitating acknowledgment by the Church of what was done on this occasion, —which renders the election of Martin V. a most memorable event. At this time the exclusive prerogative of the Cardinals to provide a Pope had been in force nearly four centuries without challenge. All popular memory of those other rights of franchise which once existed had quite passed away. No antiquarian reminiscences weighed with the assembled divines, but simply the living instinct of what was demanded by the gravity of the moment, too great to be trifled with, and by the claims of interests too important to be sacrificed from a rigid spirit of formalism. Accordingly, the Council constituted an especial electoral college, composed of the Cardinals and thirty divines, selected from out of its members, five from each nation present, who together could represent the genuine conscience of the Church; and these were able to supply a Pontiff who was in a condition to appease the troubles which had so long afflicted Christendom. The measure was distinctly proclaimed exceptional, and explicitly limited to a particular occasion, whereby its importance as a precedent is heightened; for this involves the principle that the Church considers itself free to invent new forms, when their adoption may seem advisable for meeting the exigencies of particular times. The Roman Bullarium contains, indeed, a string of Bulls subsequent to the three we have mentioned, that hear on Papal elections; hut where they do more than solemnly confirm the above, they deal with matters of quite secondary importance, modifying points of mere detail. No new organic principle has been imported into the machinery of Papal elections since the days of Gregory X. The only subsequent pontifical utterance on this subject that can lay any claim to the importance of an organic law, is the Bull issued in 1621 by Gregory XV., and supplemented in the year after by an elaborate injunction of ceremonial, which is the one still observed. To go through these successive enactments in their chronological order would, however, be merely to run through a wearisome catalogue, without any but a dry antiquarian interest.^[5] Our object is not to inquire what may have been the particular forms and practices embodied in the Roman Court at each period, but what are the powers and forces that come into play in its present organization; and to this end it will be enough if we confine our notice of Papal enactments to such points as may incidentally stand in connexion with, or tend to serve in illustration of, the practices and regulations which at the present day are still in force.

1. This is the longest interregnum on record. The next in length was the one on the death of Nicolas II., 1292, which lasted two years three months and two days.
2. Son of Richard of Cornwall. Dante, Inferno, Canto XII. 1. 119.
3. See Dissertazioni Stories-Critiche del Canonico Yovaes. Rome, 1822, vol i. p. 12
4. In putting these two Popes' names together, there is no intention of ranging them on a level as to legitimacy—a most vexed question in Church history.
5. These confirmatory Bulls are to be found in the Bullarium Romanum and recent editions of Gregory X. V.'s Ceremonial.