The death of a pope results in a conclave to elect another. It’s a secret process that none of us are permitted to witness. In the medieval period, it could be a dangerous affair surrounded by murder, intimidation, corruption, nepotism, and bribery. Let’s investigate the sordid conclaves in Vatican history.
The earliest conclaves
In the 18th century, a Catholic writer, Ferraris, claimed the first pope – Peter the Apostle – created a “senate” for electing popes made up of twenty-four priests and deacons. But this is more than likely a fiction. The concept of a “pope” came much later. The earliest bishops of Rome were leaders of a band of Christians meeting in houses who would have selected a leader from amongst themselves in a relatively informal manner.
When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the emperors took a direct interest in the appointment of the pope – and other key posts in the church. This interference in the election process continued with the so-called “barbarian” kings who divided the western Roman empire between themselves after the fifth century CE. The new Goth kings of Rome were not indifferent to who was sitting on the papal throne. After all, they were paying for it.
Byzantine Bondage
In the year 537 CE, the eastern Roman Empire (which we refer to as the “Byzantine” empire) conquered Rome from the Goths who had ruled the city since the collapse of the western empire decades before. The empire was ruled from Constantinople and it was from there that every new pope would now be approved by the imperial authorities. This situation continued until 752 CE.
One pope, during this period, Martin I, made the mistake of imagining that he had some kind of independent existence and could express views contrary to the emperor. To put him right, the Byzantine ruler had him arrested in Rome, shipped to Constantinople, stripped naked, dragged through the streets, and then exiled to Cherson in the Crimea.
When Pope Zachary died in 752 CE, the church resolved to shake off the Byzantine yoke. They were enraged by a new policy from Constantinople called “iconoclasm”. The emperor ruled that worship of graven images was banned. While this was enforced across the empire, the popes decided they rather liked their statues, paintings, and reliquaries. So, they elected a new pope, Stephen II, without Byzantine approval.
Meanwhile, in what is now France, the Merovingian dynasty of kings had been replaced by the Carolingians and they aspired to become the new Caesars of Europe – reviving the glory days of the Roman Empire. Or at least that was the theory. In return for some military muscle, the popes were happy to help in that endeavour.
To cosy up to the Carolingians, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as the first “Holy Roman Emperor” in the year 800 CE. Charlemagne and his successors now insisted on the right to meddle in papal elections, effectively deciding the outcome. And as a reward to the popes, they carved out a middle section of Italy to be the Papal States – land ruled directly by the pope until the 19th century when Italy unified as a new country.
Pornocracy: Rule of the Harlots
Things started to go badly wrong for the papacy at the end of the 9th century. Pope Hadrian II (792-872 CE) was elected, already an old man, and moved into the Lateran Palace, the residence of the popes at that time, with his wife and daughter from his pre-priesthood past. The Holy Roman Emperor, had a spy in the papal palace, Anastasius, who was the librarian. His son, Eleutherius, abducted and murdered Hadrian’s wife and daughter. This was a sign of things to come.
There was then a period of relative calm until the reign of Pope Formosus (816-896), who got himself embroiled in the politics of both the Byzantine and Holy Roman empires – plus the Muslim Saracens were invading southern Italy. After he died, the next but one pope, Stephen VI (died 897), exhumed Formosus and put his mouldering body on trial. This ghoulish event became known as the Cadaver Synod pictured below.
FIND OUT MORE: Trial of the dead pope Boniface VIII
After this horrific incident, the church passed a law forbidding the trial of dead popes! The next attempt to put a dead pope on trial would be in the early 14th century when King Philip IV of France tried to indict the corpse of Pope Boniface VIII on charges of heresy, simony, and diabolism. Mercifully, that failed.
This led to a very dark period for the papacy. Stephen VI was overthrown and strangled to death in a prison cell. The next pope, Romanus, reigned for three months and was then deposed. Pope Theodore II lasted twenty days before dropping dead. Two popes later, Leo V was murdered, possibly by his successor.
We then get the emergence of a local aristocrat, Theophylact I, Count of Tusculum (864-925 CE) whose family would decide on the choice of pope for the next century. Theophylact’s wife and daughter, Theodora and Marozia, installed their respective lovers as popes. It was this feminine influence over the election of popes that resulted in the rather misogynistic label for this period: Rule of the Harlots.
Pope John X (died 928) fell out with his lover, Marozia, who had him suffocated in prison. Marozia then became de facto ruler of Rome installing the weak puppet pontiffs: Leo VI and Stephen VII. Then she engineered the election of her illegitimate son as Pope John XI (910-935 CE). His father may have been an earlier pope, Sergius III (860-911 CE). He was followed by Marozia’s grandson, a teenager, elected in 955 CE as Pope John XII.
This teen pope fell out with the Holy Roman emperor who had him deposed on charges of ordaining a deacon in a stable, simony, adultery, incest, hunting, blinding and mutilating priests, wearing armor, invoking pagan gods, and turning “the holy place into a brothel and a resort for harlots.” He was fired as pope and replaced, but then mounted an astonishing comeback to be pope again, before being murdered by the husband of a woman who discovered His Holiness in bed with his wife.
The period of the Pornocracy ended but not papal scandals around medieval conclaves.
Corruption in the early medieval church
In the year 1058, Benedict X was elected pope after the death of Stephen IX. Hostile cardinals immediately declared this had been a rigged election, fixed by the Count of Tusculum. They then fled Rome for their lives. Very soon, they found a candidate to put up against the new pope: Gerard of Burgundy, bishop of Florence. Elected as pope Nicholas II (died 1061) in Siena, he decided there couldn’t be two popes so marched on Rome to depose Benedict.
He succeeded but having secured the papal throne, Nicholas decided that things had to change. There was something rotten at the heart of the Roman Catholic church. The vicar of Christ had to be chosen in a more dignified manner without bribery, bullying, and beatings. He issued a papal bull to this effect. It was powerfully worded and pulled no punches:
Ye know, most blessed and beloved fellow bishops and brothers-nor has it been hidden from the lower members also – how much adversity this apostolic chair, in which by God’s will I serve, did endure at the death of our master and predecessor, Stephen of blessed memory: to how many blows, indeed, and frequent wounds it was subjected by the traffickers in simoniacal heresy; so that the columns of the living God of the chief seemed almost to totter already, and the net of the chief fisher to be submerged, amid the swelling blasts, in the depths of shipwreck. Wherefore, if it please ye brethren, we ought prudently to take measures for future cases, and to provide for the state of the church hereafter, lest-which God forbid-the same evils may revive and prevail.
The reforms put in place by Pope Nicholas II ended a long tradition of papal elections involving both the clergy and rich lay people – including emperors. The cardinals would meet after the death of a pope, select appropriate candidates, and then start voting. It also allowed for the new pope to be elected outside of Rome. Because of the turbulent politics in the city, the papal court often had to move to other places in Italy and later, to other countries.
France versus Italy in medieval conclaves
In 1268, Pope Clement IV (1190-1268) died. For nearly three years, there was no pope as French and Italian cardinals wrangled. This was because the college of cardinals was evenly split between the two kingdoms with rival candidates. This conclave was held at Viterbo and local people got so fed up that they gradually ripped the roof off the building where the cardinals were deliberating. The logic was that if things got progressively uncomfortable, they would hurry up and make a decision.
To stop this kind of delay happening again, it was decided that after three days, food supplies would be reduced. And then curtailed further after ten days. Essentially, the cardinals would be starved into a faster election. Interestingly, at this time, it was still permissible for a non-cardinal to be elected pope (as happened with Clement V in 1305 – the pope who acted against the Templars). They could also have been married or even, be a lay person. The only exclusions were heretics and women.
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