Bread and water, conclave brawls, and conclave ghosts
Some crazy papal conclaves of days gone by
As the world watches a chimney surrounded by seagulls in the Vatican, cardinals gather in prayer and deliberation to elect a new pope.
During the conclave, cardinals are cut off entirely from the outside world. No cell phones, no interviews, no letters. Nada.
That leads to an almost absolute media blackout while the world speculates and waits for the white smoke.
After a conclave ends, reports often emerge about internal politicking and shifting alliances.
But these days, it’s clear that cardinals are not forced to survive on bread and water during the conclave, no cardinals appear as ghosts to other cardinals, there are no bomb threats, and, hopefully, no punches are thrown.
Those things sound weird. But all of them have happened in papal history. Here are some of the most unusual papal elections.
The longest conclave
The 1268 to 1271 papal election was the longest in history, lasting 2 years and 10 months.
After Pope Clement IV died in the city of Viterbo, the cardinals gathered there to choose his successor, as tradition held that the conclave should be held where the pope had died.
Due to usual medieval politicking, the conclave came to a stalemate. Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily and Naples was in Viterbo throughout the election and Philip III of France visited the city almost at the end.
In late 1269, after almost a year of deadlock in which cardinals only met sparingly, the authorities of Viterbo ordered to sequester the cardinals in the Palazzo dei Papi until a new pope was elected.
Charles of Anjou ordered that cardinals should only eat bread and water some months later, and, at the behest of the citizens of Viterbo, ordered the removal of the roof of the palace—which was quickly rebuilt after cardinals threatened to put the city under interdict.
The stalemate ended only in September 1271, when the cardinals agreed to form a committee of six cardinals to decide the election.
The committee chose Teobald Visconti, a non-cardinal, who took the name Gregory X.
Some rules
Pope Gregory X didn’t want history to repeat itself, so he issued Ubi periculum in 1274, which was an extreme reform of the papal election process.
Before the Gregorian reforms, enforced seclusion of electors had only been used as a last resort when elections dragged on—1216 in Perugia, 1241 in Rome, and Gregory’s own in 1271.
But under the new rules, cardinals would begin the conclave in full seclusion. Each cardinal could bring only two servants. Meals were restricted after the fourth day—first to a single dish per day, and then, after nine days, to bread and water.
Whether those rules would benefit some cardinals today is a matter of debate.
In any case, food was passed to the conclave through a window. The cardinals slept in a common space and received no ecclesiastical income until a new pope was chosen.
The rules had the desired effect, as Pope Innocent V and Pope Adrian V were elected in conclaves that lasted only one and nine days.
But the rules didn’t last. Adrian V abolished Gregory X’s reform in 1276.
Then, Saint Celestine V, elected in 1294 after a two-year sede vacante, reintroduced the reforms.
Celestine V’s own election was quite unusual.
After two years of stalemate, Benedictine hermit Pietro di Morrone sent a letter to the cardinals, warning of divine wrath if they did not elect a pope.
The letter so shocked the cardinals that they decided to elect Pietro himself as pope, with the hermit taking the name Celestine V.
Still, tired of the papal court politicking, Celestine V resigned four months later and returned to monastic life.
He was the last pope to resign until Benedict XVI.
Stalemates
The introduction of the sequestered conclave did not stop cardinals from taking longer than expected to decide on a pope.
For example, the 1740 conclave lasted six months.
It started on Feb. 18, with most expecting a win for Pietro Ottoboni — longtime cardinal and dean of the College of Cardinals. But Ottoboni fell seriously ill and died just 11 days after the conclave started.
Ottoboni’s death allowed more cardinals to arrive in Rome and enter the conclave (that was allowed in those days). The new arrivals solidified voting blocs: France and Austria on one side, Spain, Naples, and Tuscany on the other.
With those blocs set against each other, the cardinals saw a long stalemate, until Benedict XIV was elected as a compromise candidate.
A young Horace Walpole – the English 18th century politician and writer – was in Rome at the time wishing to attend the papal coronation, but gave up after a few months, telling to a cousin in a letter “I am sorry to have lost the sight of the pope's coronation, but I might have staid for seeing it till I had been old enough to be pope myself.”
Methods of election
Before Pope John Paul II’s 1996 apostolic constitution Universi Dominici Gregis, the cardinals had more possible methods available to elect a pope — scrutiny, accessus, compromise, and acclamation.
Most had fallen in disuse and some had already been abolished by other popes.
Today, only scrutiny—the secret ballot—is permitted.
Accessus meant that cardinals could change their most recent vote to accede to another candidate, but the method was abolished by Pius XII in 1945.
Compromise meant that cardinals could unanimously elect a committee of cardinals to choose the pope for them, as it happened in 1271.
In an election decided by acclamation, cardinals unanimously declared the new pope quasi afflati Spiritu Sancto — as if inspired by the Holy Spirit.
One “election by acclamation” ushered in the pontificate of Pope Fabian in 236.
Fabian had come to Rome from the countryside when the election began. After 13 days of scrutiny without a clear candidate, a dove descended upon Fabian’s head, which the electors said was a sign of the Holy Spirit. He was proclaimed Bishop of Rome by acclamation.
And, spiritually, it seems to have worked out: Saint Fabian died a martyr in 250.
Ghosts and conclave brawls
The 1655 conclave also reached a stalemate over political tensions. Cardinal Giulio Cesare Sacchetti was the frontrunner, but he had been vetoed by the Spanish crown in an earlier conclave, so many cardinals feared the same would happen if they elected him. And they weren’t sure who else to vote for.
As time went by, and no pope got elected, younger cardinals got bored and began to play pranks, startling older cardinals by dressing as ghosts.
One older cardinal was allegedly so frightened that he collapsed on the cold stone floor, later dying of pneumonia.
But another 17th century conclave was perhaps even stranger.
After Pope Clement VIII died in March 1605, the College of Cardinals was almost evenly split between those closer to France and those loyal to Spain.
Cardinal Cesare Baronius and Cardinal Alessandro Ottaviano de’ Medici were the frontrunners, but Spain vetoed Baronius, clearing the way for Medici to be elected as Pope Leo XI.
But Medici was already 70 at the time of his election and fell ill on his coronation day, dying on April 27, 1605, just 26 days after his election.
That meant a new conclave was reconvened, but no names convinced enough cardinals.
A group of cardinals tried to convince Saint Robert Bellarmine to become a candidate, but he refused to do any kind of campaigning and Spain ended up vetoing his candidacy.
Cardinal Domenico Toschi rose as a favorite. However, Baronius and a group of other cardinals opposed his election because Toschi was born to a poor family, and because he had a reputation for being foul-mouthed, using the Lombard term cazzo repeatedly during the conclave (we’re not going to explain to you what that means, but it’s a slang term for a body part).
Eventually, as disagreement mounted, a full-blown brawl erupted, reportedly loud enough to be heard outside the Apostolic Palace.
In the melee, Cardinal Alfonso Visconti was seriously injured, several of his bones were broken.
After the fight, the cardinals elected Cardinal Camillo Borghese unanimously, and he took the name Paul V.
As a fun fact, Paul V was the first (only?) pope to meet a Japanese samurai.
The pontiff received samurai convert Hasekura Tusnenaga in November 1615, who requested more Christian missionaries be sent to Japan and a trade treaty with New Spain.
A conclave bomb
The movie “Conclave” wasn’t accurate about much.
But it did get right one thing: that a papal election was disrupted by a bomb.
The 1830 to 1831 conclave lasted almost three months. It was held in a tense environment, because of the 1830 revolutions throughout Europe.
On December 10, four days before the conclave started, riots broke out in Rome, with rioters stealing rifles and ammunition from the Roman authorities and freeing political prisoners.
The tension lasted for weeks.
It reached a climax as a paper bomb exploded under the window of the Pauline Chapel, where the conclave was being held.
The frontrunners were Cardinals Emmanuele De Gregorio, Bartolomeo Pacca, and Giacomo Giustiniani.
Giustiniani was vetoed by Spain, and after the first rounds of voting it became apparent that De Gregorio and Pacca would not get to the required two-thirds to be elected pope.
After 83 rounds of voting and almost three months, the cardinals elected Cardinal Bartolomeo Cappellari, who took the papal name Gregory XVI.
Cappellari was then prefect of the then-Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, and was the last pope who was not a bishop when elected.
By some accounts, his papacy was the bomb.
I cannot stop imagining Cardinals Bychok and Frank Leo jumping from a dark corner and scaring Cardinal Burke.
It's amazing the difference an article will make when describing an event. (This comment is multivalent.)