On Papal Conclaves/Chapter 9

by W. C. Cartwright

IX.

AT a moment when, in the ordinary course of nature, a Papal election must be a thing not far distant, it will not be inopportune to append to this outline of the constitutional law of Conclaves a summary of the incidents that marked the last one held. At this season precedents may be usefully reverted to, and though vast physical changes, reacting necessarily on Conclaves, as on all human institutions, have been introduced since 1846, the moral elements which then came into play cannot be said to have become obsolete. There was then no railway communication in Italy, and no electric telegraph was then known. Tidings took many days, in 1846, to travel with the greatest expedition from Rome to Vienna or Paris, whereas now, a few instants after the Pope's decease the fact can be brought to the knowledge of the antipodes, so that long before the old prescribed nine days of mourning are elapsed, every Cardinal in existence will be able to reach Rome with perfect case. It has not escaped observation, therefore, that this Conclave will assemble under physical conditions entirely different from former ones. But this does not hold equally good of the moral elements in the field. A striking analogy presents itself at once between the kinds of influence that, on the last occasion, stood, and again will stand, over against each other. In 1846 the struggle lay between the Cardinal who, during the late Pope's reign, as Secretary of State, had been the absolute distributor of patronage—the Grand Vizier, whose word had been law, and whose smile had been favour,—and all those who had been offended at his protracted greatness, and who desired to supplant him. At the coming election we may expect to see once more in the field a Cardinal who for an even longer period has been in possession of a yet more marked and more detested preponderance, and between whom and his enemies the struggle bids fair to prove proportionately sharp. On the last occasion this antagonism decided the election; and with intensity not diminished, why should it not again prove the determining element? But the intention here is not to speculate on the future, but only to narrate facts of the past. Gregory XVI. died, then, as has been said, unexpectedly, although his advanced years should have prepared the public for such an event. He had, however, been so robust that his eighty years had dropped out of sight. Not merely the population of Rome was taken by surprise on hearing of his death, but likewise the Catholic Cabinets, who had unaccountably neglected to be prepared for a sudden emergency with proper candidates, and confidential agents, instructed how to exercise their respective vetoes. This was the more extraordinary inasmuch as the relations of the Court of Rome and general political considerations connected with the state of Italy had occupied not a little the attention of those Catholic Cabinets which have an especial interest in the Holy See. The closing years of Gregory XVI.'s reign had been marked by various incidents that had given rise to much agitation in diplomatic circles. In 1845, there occurred the rising in the Romagna, which was indeed suppressed forthwith, but only to revive in a far more effective shape—in the famous pamphlet I casi delle Romagne, which, written and acknowledged by Massimo d'Azeglio, circulated as the testament of a new political gospel throughout the peninsula. Then there came the memorable visit of the Czar Nicholas to Rome, and those interviews in which the Pope had dared to speak to the dreaded Autocrat words of firm protest against the treatment to which he subjected the Catholic Church in Russia. The interest excited in the political world at the time by this remarkable conference was very great, for on the one hand the religious agitation in Poland had assumed serious proportions, while speculation was stimulated by the mystery surrounding this interview, at which only two witnesses^[1] had been allowed to be present. Finally, there had happened the startling nomination as French ambassador of M. Rossi, a born subject of the Pope, fugitive professor from Bologna, and notoriously compromised Liberal, who came avowedly to obtain from the Holy See its concurrence in the principles of free education then being advocated in France, and its compliance in the desire of the French Government for the reduction within moderate limits of the establishments that had been opened in France, more or less clandestinely, by the Jesuits, in evasion of the law. All these circumstances had brought about a degree of inward agitation which, though still outwardly suppressed, was sufficiently declared to be acknowledged by all who had not some special interest in speaking against the truth.

During his reign of sixteen years, it befell Gregory XVI. to create no less than seventy-five Cardinals, which are five more than the Sacred College can count, according to the Bull of Sixtus V., in force. The mortality amongst his nominees was, however, inordinately rapid, for at the moment of the Pope's death the whole College did not amount to more than sixty-two, of whom two dated still from Pius VII. and seven from Leo XII.^[2] Those present in Rome were but thirty, who, the day after the Pope's demise (2d June), met in congregation as appointed, and devoted themselves to the prescribed formalities. Singularly enough, instead of shortening the preliminary period, they even extended this; for it was only on the 14th June that the Cardinals, who had been reinforced to fifty in the interval, entered solemnly into Conclave. The state of parties in the Sacred College had been sharply defining, from the moment of the Pope's decease, between the faction of the Cardinal Secretary of State and an opposition which went by the appellation of the Roman party, from its leading members being Romans, and their assumed opinion that the times required the elevation of a born Roman to the throne of the Roman States. In contradistinction, the Cardinals who acted along with Lambruschini—a native of Genoa—went by the appellation of the Genoese party. Between these two sections it was evident from the first that the contest would lie, and both parties entered Conclave with names in circulation as likely candidates. The leader of the so-called Roman party was Cardinal Bernetti, who had been twice Secretary of State. That he himself should be elected Pope never came into question; but, although out of the field as a candidate, he was very forward in it as the active organizer of an opposition against the colleague who had so long and so completely supplanted him in the coveted post of First Minister. The names mentioned as of Cardinals who might be candidates for this party were Gizzi, De Angelis, Soglia, Falconieri, and Mastai Ferretti. Of these Cardinal Gizzi was the best known, and amongst the public, most popular name, for he had the character of an opponent to the late Pope's reactionary system of government; also, in the golden days of the new era, this Cardinal became Secretary of State to Pius IX., the Pope of amnesties and reforming action. De Angelis is the Cardinal who since has made a figure, as Bishop of Fermo, for his hostile attitude to the Italian Government, and consequent deportation to Piedmont. Falconieri had the advantage of being member of a great noble family in Rome, and a prelate of such exemplary nature that, as Archbishop of Ravenna, he conciliated all. His funeral (which took place since the Revolution) was a demonstration of universal sympathy. Of Soglia, it may be remembered that, during the ephemeral period of constitutional government, he figured as Premier of a Cabinet; while of Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti little was known beyond the fact of his having, as Bishop of Imola, acquired much respect, and of his having conducted himself in a charitable spirit on the occasion of revolutionary outbreaks in that neighbourhood. Of the five indicated, his was the name least spoken of, and certainly least familiar. On the opposite side the moving spirit ought also to have been aware that it was useless for him to expect to become Pope. It has grown into an admitted point of Papal electoral custom that a Secretary of State practically forfeits his chances of becoming Pope.^[3] But in this instance there were many additional reasons why Cardinal Lambruschini should never be able to obtain a majority. He was a thoroughly unpopular man, of a hard, narrow, and avaricious nature, that weighed tyrannically on such whose timid nerves quailed, but could elicit sympathies only from dependants by disposition or parasites by choice. He was a man feared and detested. Cardinal Lambruschini was, besides, a prelate incapable of cloaking his passions, or of checking his tongue in the transports of his humour. During his administration he had governed in concurrence with the Court of Vienna, to which he owed elevation; and when he entered the Conclave as chief of a party, it was with the view of maintaining the conservative principles of policy he had clung to for sixteen years, and with the hope of securing to himself, at the least, a renewed lease of his former position if he were forced to give up the tiara itself to another. The men who followed his standard were the incarnations of retrogradism, or individuals specially bound to him; though it is believed that, in the event of finding himself obliged to forego all hope of his own election, he contemplated making a candidate of Cardinal Franzoni—a man more open to generous feelings, more likely to secure suffrages, but who proved, precisely for this reason, in the critical moment, no trustworthy supporter of the strictly personal views of the Lambruschini party. There was also Cardinal Micara, the Capuchin, who occupied an anomalous position, which made him influential. He was a man like Sixtus V., energetic, hasty, and even violent in his temper; so that at Frascati, where he was Bishop, he once forgot himself so far as to strike in the face a man he was conversing with on the square, from whom he fancied himself to have received a slight. Cardinal Micara was an oddity, and an object of terror to his colleagues, but a man of the people; a true Capuchin of the homely type in his habits—great in charities and familiar with the poor: he was so popular, in spite of his known narrowness of ideas and truculent temper, that the populace cheered him as Pope-elect in the streets of Rome. A different stamp of man was Cardinal Altieri, who, it was believed, aimed at the Secretaryship of State, and intrigued to secure that office against the votes of himself and a few hangers-on. When the Cardinals, therefore—fifty in number,—began to ballot on the 13th June, they appeared divided into one compact body at the beck of Cardinal Lambruschini, and an opposition, not so compact as to vote systematically together, but yet sufficiently united in hostility to the late Secretary, not to give him any votes; while a small flying troop, under the command of Altieri, acted like shrewd electors on the look-out for a profitable windfall. The first ballot gave at once the measure of Lambruschini's following, and led to the crisis that decided the election against him. To have thus revealed from the very first the full strength of his forces was an error in electoral tactics eminently characteristic of this Cardinal's inability to control his passions. Instead of exercising the virtue of patience until the arrival of reinforcements to his party, known to be on their way, Cardinal Lambruschini, driven by an irresistible avidity to clutch the coveted prize, ventured upon an attempt to snatch its possession by a coup de main—impossible of success under the circumstances, and which had for sole effect to determine his final and immediate defeat by the instantaneous coalition of all his enemies in a common effort. It will be borne in mind that the voting goes through two processes—the first being an ordinary ballot, at which each Cardinal has to give his vote; the second, termed technically the accessus, where it is allowable for a Cardinal to transfer his previous vote to any candidate who may have obtained votes on that same previous occasion. The general practice has been to hold each day only one ballot in the forenoon, and a supplemental one, the accessus, in the afternoon; but on the present occasion the Cardinals doubled the votings, so that both morning and evening there was a ballot, followed immediately by its supplement. When the votes on the forenoon of the 13th June were cast up, it was found that Lambruschini had come out with fifteen votes on the two processes, while Mastai counted twelve, the other twenty-three Cardinals having scattered their votes in driblets on a variety of names. The importance of these numbers could not escape observation. The fifteen men who had voted for Lamhruschini would require the addition of only five to make him sufficient master of the Conclave to prevent a canonical majority for any candidate he did not approve of. That Cardinals, and especially foreign ones, were on the road who would go along with Lambruschini was a fact perfectly known. Consequently the immediate feelings on the part of the opposition were of alarm lest the arrival in time for voting of these Cardinals should confirm Lambruschini's ascendency, and of instinctive desire by drawing together in quick support of the same man to carry the election by the very stratagem of surprise which Lambruschini had vainly sought to ply. Who that man might be, most properly, was sufficiently indicated under the circumstances by the morning's poll; and thus by general consent Cardinal Mastai, from the mere fact of the votes that had been recorded in his favour, in part probably without serious intentions, came to occupy the position of a natural candidate for the opposition. The afternoon's poll already gave experience of the work that had been in operation in the interval of a few hours. Cardinal Lambruschini's following had been broken in upon; two of his adherents had been induced to fall away; and while he now counted only thirteen votes, Mastai came out with his numbers raised to seventeen. From that instant Lambruschini's chances were gone, as regards his own election, and it only remained a question whether he might still succeed in averting a conclusive vote until the arrival of those Cardinals who would combine to prevent the complete victory of the opposite faction. But this hope was not destined to be realized. The incidents of the day had produced a deep impression. The Cardinals felt that they were exposed to an indefinite Conclave if they allowed it to be spun out until the intervention of their still absent colleagues; and a protracted Conclave in the peculiar condition of the Romagna, and the revolutionary agitation throughout Italy, all Cardinals who postponed personal to general interests concurred in deprecating as a most disastrous event. Next morning the action on the Cardinals of the night's consultation was unmistakable. On the ballot papers being examined, Mastai was found with twenty-six votes, while Lambruschini had gone down further to eleven. So successful a progress instinctively elated the opposition with hope of being able by an energetic effort to complete their victory, and this much desired consummation was really achieved the same afternoon. When Lambruschini had become aware of his having no chance of coming out of the contest as the winning man, he thought of pushing forward Cardinal Franzoni, in the hope that his milder nature might counteract the rising opposition. But just because the Cardinal was a man of conscience, he was little fitted for the party character which he was expected to assume. He declined to be lured away from giving his adhesion to Mastai when he perceived the real drift of the manœuvre, and his example had much influence on others. Cardinal Franzoni refused to serve as the puppet of factious ambition, and in the afternoon ballot Mastai's name came out with the addition of one vote, numerically, indeed, a small, but in reality a very substantial addition, while Lambruschini once more had gone along his downward course to eight. Things therefore stood thus:—In Conclave there were fifty Cardinals, requiring thirty-four votes on the same head for a canonical election. Accordingly seven were wanting to make Cardinal Mastai a Pope when the supplemental ballot was entered upon in the afternoon of the 16th June 1846, and resulted in the decisive addition of nine to his former numbers; Lambruschini's eight proving faithful to the last. The gain was therefore on the floating portion of the constituency; and it is believed that Pius IX. owed his election to the adhesion of Cardinal Acton, who is credited with having commanded nine votes, which at this crowning moment he carried to Cardinal Mastai Ferretti. The day following divers Cardinals arrived, and amongst these was Cardinal Gaysruck, with those secret instructions from his Court which would have arrested this momentous election had they only been in Rome twelve hours earlier. The whole duration of the Conclave was not more than fifty hours, and the last of these were marked by a singular incident. In the afternoon of the 16th June, it transpired that the Cardinals were on the point of proclaiming a Pope, and the report spread through the city with the rapidity of electricity; but till midnight the population, and even the highest and best informed personages, remained under the firm conviction that the Pope was to be Cardinal Gizzi. When therefore the error was exploded, the announcement of a name so little known added to the universal surprise at the change of scene that had been happening with such extraordinary quickness. One point may be worth drawing attention to in this Conclave, as illustrative of the difficulties attending an estimate of the nature and temper of the constituency of Cardinals. If ever there was a Sacred College which would have appeared to give every guarantee for its strictly conservative composition, it might have seemed the one composed under the selecting influence, during sixteen years, of a Pope like Gregory XVI., acting hand in hand with a minister of Lambruschini's stamp, not to speak of the no less pronounced conservative dispositions of the preceding sovereigns, Leo XII. and Pius VIII. Surely the door might have been deemed to have been tightly enough closed against the ingress of liberal elements under the vigilant watch of keepers of such uncompromising rigidity. Yet out of a Sacred College of such carefully exclusive construction there sprung up the element of opposition, which carried the election of Pius IX., under the sole reaction of personal feelings against the galling ascendency of a grasping, an avid, and an imperious minister. Undoubtedly Pius IX. has been in the highest degree careful in the selection of members for the Sacred College whose minds are not given to new-fangled teachings; but let it not be forgotten that in their human natures these invulnerahle giants of orthodoxy are liable to be swayed by the same currents of personal passions as their fellows and predecessors; and that the same, and, of its kind, even a more powerful instrument for irritation, is forthcoming at present, in the shape of a minister whose grasping, and avid, and all-usurping nature has been most poignantly felt, nay, has thrown into the shade the hateful memory of Lambruschini.

We have now brought to a close our survey of the elements that are forthcoming in the living organization of the See of Rome in relation to that capital function of its system—Pope-making. Much which is curious might still be added on a subject so vast and abounding in strange incident. The object, however, has not been to write a history of Papal elections, but only to point out the provisions existing in the constitution of the Court of Rome to this end, and the facilities these may furnish for new combinations, if recommended as expedient by circumstances. It will have been seen that an organism which at first sight appears framed on principles of the most rigid formalism, contains within it a vast stock of elasticity and capacity for adaptation to new forms. This faculty has been called into play on various and capital occasions, and such departures from precedent, under a wise regard for policy, have been approved of by the concurrent conscience of generations in the Church. The great schism was healed by one of the boldest and most revolutionary measures on record,—the creation of what was a religious Constituent Assembly for the nonce,—calling into existence for a special purpose an electoral body without precedent. On other occasions, Popes have of their own authority dispensed with the most time-honoured and the most carefully enjoined prescriptions, when these were found contrary to sound policy; and the Church has never considered them to have exceeded their legitimate attributes by such stretches of authority. The constitution of the Court of Rome is therefore so far from being what it is popularly supposed, a thing of strictly limited nature, over-weighted with the encumbrance of absolute injunctions, that it will be found, when the heart of the system is reached, to be actually one of the most elastic in existence. Let only the instincts of the body representing the Church be alive to a necessity, however new, and that body can at once, without taint of illegal and revolutionary pretension, recognise the call for new conditions. There is in fact no limitation on the plenary power of the governing body, in spite of the stringent formalism within which at first sight it seems to he tightly hound. If, then, it be the case that the circumstances now besetting the Papacy exact concessions from it for the removal of otherwise insuperable difficulties, it is certain that there is nothing in the nature of its tenure which must on principle put it out of the power of him who holds that dignity to make freely any such concession as may be demanded by reasons of sound policy.

1. Cardinal Acton and M. Boutenieff, the Russian Minister in Rome.
2. Gregory left five Cardinals in petto, whose sealed-up names were communicated to his successor by the Cardinal Camerlengo—the dignitary who takes in charge the inventory of the Papal palace, and therewith of the Pope's writing-table, in which it is customary for him to deposit their names. It was in a drawer of this table that Gregory XVI. kept the deed dispensing the Cardinals from the obligation to wait nine days before proceeding to election.
3. The last instance to the contrary is the election of Cardinal Rospigliosi, Pope Clement IX., 1667.