The Conclave: A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally Bloody History of Papal Elections (10 page)

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time in 1055 or 1056. He had exercised the o
ffi
ce of pope three times, and had he stayed in post from the time of his election until his death he would have been pope for nearly a quarter of a century, a remark- ably long time for almost any period of papal history, and an aston- ishingly long time for the Middle Ages. In contrast, Pope Damasus II lasted only twenty days before succumbing, it seems, to malaria.

The emperor had to appoint a bishop for Rome for the third time. There was an understandable suspicion in Germany that both Clement and Damasus had been poisoned, and there was therefore an equally understandable hesitation among German bishops to accept the see of Rome. Eventually Henry settled on his cousin, Bruno of Egisheim, Bishop of Toul. It was an inspired choice. Bruno was a holy man (the Church acknowledges him as a saint) and an energetic reformer. He was also canny enough to insist that his appointment should be followed by an election by the clergy and people of Rome – as indeed it was. As a consequence, it was not until six months after the death of Damasus that Bruno, as Leo IX, was installed as pope.

Leo survived five years as a reforming pope and was particularly concerned to expand the role of the cardinals as advisers to the ponti
ff
. Unhappily he spent almost a year as prisoner of the Normans, after leading an army against them in a vain attempt to liberate Benevento. He died in April 1054 and it was a year before Gebhard, Bishop of Eichstätt, was installed. First there were pro- longed negotiations in Mainz between the Emperor Henry III and representatives of the Roman church. Henry named Gebhard in September 1054 but it was not until March the following year that Gebhard accepted. He then had to travel to Rome for the installa- tion. He was the last of the four Germans appointed directly by Henry to rule the church of Rome, and like his three predecessors, he chose the name of a pope from the early Church – in his case the title of Victor II – to indicate that he, like them, was to restore the presumed purity of the primitive Christian community. He did not have long in which to achieve his aim: he died in July 1057.

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He died only a few months after returning from Germany where, after the death of the Emperor Henry III, he had helped to ensure the succession as king of Henry’s son, Henry IV. The new king was a minor and his mother, as Regent, was too weak to inter- vene significantly at that moment in papal politics. The election of Pope Stephen IX (X) in August 1057 was therefore made without reference to the German court. It was almost certainly not a snub, but a desire by reformers among the cardinals to get on with the election before the Roman nobility could interfere. The reformers turned for advice to the powerful abbot of Monte Cassino. He was powerful not so much by virtue of his o
ffi
ce but because Abbot Frederic of Ardennes was the brother of Godfrey the Bearded, Duke of Lotharingia and Marquis of Tuscany. Frederic suggested several names, but in the election which followed he himself was the one chosen. He was consecrated the following day, opting for the name Stephen because the feast day of Pope St. Stephen I fell on the day of his election, and possibly also because, like his recent predecessors, he wished to be identified with the papacy of the early Church.

Stephen IX (X) died only eight months later – so far the last of his name, which ended the confusion over the enumeration of Stephens. When he became ill he was much exercised about the succession to the papacy, particularly because he was just about to leave Rome for Florence (indeed, he died there). He asked the clergy and people of Rome not to proceed to the election of a successor until his close adviser Hildebrand should return from the German court, whither Stephen had sent him.

But with the leader of the reform group among the cardinals out of the city, the Tusculani and their supporters saw a final chance to reassert their former influence. Going back on their oath to wait until Hildebrand returned to Rome, they put forward for the o
ffi
ce of pope John Mincius, Bishop of Velletri, a member of the Tusculani clan. It was an inspired choice; John Mincius was himself a reformer, and he had been one of those whom the late pope had

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suggested as a suitable candidate before his own election. Mincius protested against the violation of the oath, but none too vigorous- ly. He was elected on 5 April 1058 and installed in the Lateran, though all the other cardinals, including Peter Damian, the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, whose role it should have been to preside at the enthronement of the new Pope Benedict X, fled the city.

They gathered again in Siena and, under the guidance of Hildebrand, proceeded to a new election. They chose Gerard, Bishop of Florence, who had been born either in Lorraine or Burgundy and had impeccable reformer credentials. The troops of Duke Godfrey of Lorraine escorted the new pope, who took the title of Nicholas II. In January 1059 he held a synod at Sutri, before he reached Rome, and pronounced the banishment of Benedict – who promptly fled the city. Nicholas was installed in the Lateran on 24 January, and there the following April he held another synod. On 12 or 13 April the synod declared in a decree entitled
In Nomine Domine
(“In the name of the Lord”) that in the future the pope was to be elected by the cardinal bishops alone. The rest of the cardinals would then be asked to give their assent, and after that the clergy and laity of Rome. In normal circumstances, the decree went on, the pope should ordinarily be drawn from among the Roman clergy, but if necessary anyone might be chosen. Similarly, the election should be held in Rome, but in case of necessity could be held anywhere – which of course had just happened. Even if a pope elected outside the city was unable, for whatever reason, to enter it, he still, said the decree, had full power. The emperor was to retain the right, for what it was worth, of confirming any elections made to the papacy, but only as a privilege conceded by the pope himself; it was not to be regarded, the decree made clear, as a right inherent in the imperial o
ffi
ce. It was the chief concern of the reforming group within the cardinals to free papal election from the intervention of the laity, and especially from intervention by the German emperors on the one hand, and the nobility of Rome on the other.

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This election decree, which provided a
post factum
justification for what had happened in the election of Nicholas, was drafted by Hildebrand. Its purpose was to remove papal elections from the control of the noble families of Rome, such as the Crescentii and Tusculani, who had for so long dominated the city, and also from the vagaries of the Roman crowd. It was henceforth to be in the hands of Rome’s senior clergy, the cardinal bishops. As Peter Damian later wrote in a letter, the cardinal bishops do the electing, other clergy give their assent, and the people are able to give their applause.

Later the same year, on 23 August, there was another synod, held this time at Melfi. In the course of it Nicholas recognized the rights of the Norman conquerors of Sicily and Southern Italy to the lands they had gained by conquest. The Normans in their turn accepted the pope as their liege lord and undertook to guarantee the succes- sion to the papacy of whoever was the candidate of the reform group of cardinals. The Normans then proceeded to besiege Benedict, capture him, and hand him over to Nicholas, who had him degraded from his o
ffi
ce of bishop.

Of itself, however, the decree of 1059 did not guarantee a peaceful transition of the papal o
ffi
ce. On Nicholas’s death Alexander II was elected in accordance with its terms – though only after a six-week delay occasioned by an uprising in Rome. Although he had the support of Norman troops, Alexander was unable to hold his installation in the Lateran; it had to take place instead in the church of St. Peter in Chains. He did not seek the approval of the German court, which proved to be a mistake because it gave his enemies, the Roman nobility, a chance to travel to the German court and propose an alternative candi- date, one thought to be more sympathetic to the imperial cause. The name the Germans put forward was that of Cadalus, Bishop of Parma, who assumed the title of Honorius II; he was formally elected by his Roman supporters in a ceremony at Basel. His pontifi lasted some two and a half years, though he was never

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able to install himself formally in either the Lateran or the Vatican, and he was eventually dumped by the German court when the Archbishop of Cologne replaced the king’s mother as regent to Henry IV. Honorius simply went back to being Bishop of Parma, and remained so for the rest of his life, though he never abandoned his claim to the papacy.

Alexander died on 21 April 1073. He was buried the following day, the ceremony taking place in the church where he had been installed, St. Peter in Chains. But at the church the crowd started to shout out that they wanted Hildebrand, the man who had for three decades been at the center of the reform movement, as their bishop. This election by acclamation was clearly contrary to the rules so carefully formulated by Nicholas II under the guidance of Hildebrand himself. Cardinal Hugo the White, who may well have orchestrated the whole event, gathered together the cardinals and proceeded immediately to a proper election, so that all due formal- ities should be observed. Hildebrand accepted on the spot and, like his predecessor, was enthroned in the church of St. Peter in Chains. He took the title of Gregory VII, and so gave his name to the movement of which he had long been the chief protagonist: the Gregorian Reform.

Essentially, the program of the Gregorian Reform was to free all clerics, but especially bishops, from interference by the laity. No great magnates, not even kings or emperors, were to have any say in the choice of bishops. No bishops, or any other clerics for that matter, were to be beholden to any among the laity. The pope was leading the attack on the practice of “investiture,” the handing over of the symbols of ecclesiastical authority – the bishop’s crosier and ring – by the secular authority, especially to bishops and abbots. The conflict around this action was known as the “investiture controversy,” and it lasted until it was settled by a compromise at the Concordat of Worms of 1122 – though some rulers, including the king of England, had reached an accommodation with the papacy much earlier.

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Gregory had an exalted vision of the papal o
ffi
ce – he was the ponti
ff
who restricted the title of “pope” to the Bishop of Rome – and his antipathy to the role of magnates led inevitably to conflict with the king, Henry IV. So exasperated did Gregory become with the German king that he not only excommunicated him but also declared him deposed. Henry, equally exasperated with the pope, called a council of bishops of the Empire. It met at Brixen and, urged on by Henry, on 25 June 1080 chose an antipope to replace Gregory. Their choice was one Guibert, who was himself a reformer, at least as far as simony and clerical concubinage were concerned. At one time he had been close to Gregory VII, but he was wholly unsympathetic to the pope’s opposition to the German court, which Guibert had served for a number of years as chancellor for Italy.

But Guibert had also been in the entourage of Cadalus, Bishop of Parma, and had seen his master’s rise and fall. He therefore regarded himself only as a kind of pope-in-waiting until he could be elected by the Roman people. When Henry seized Rome in March 1084 Guibert had his election and called himself Clement

III. He then crowned Henry IV as emperor. All this happened while Gregory was still in the city, having taken refuge in Castel Sant’Angelo before he was rescued by his Norman allies and taken, eventually, to Salerno, where he died in exile on 25 May 1085.

The cardinals were in disarray. They, too, were in Salerno, but they did not get around to electing another pope until exactly a year after Gregory’s death. Perhaps the delay was compounded by the death of the man – Anselm of Lucca – whom Gregory had wanted to succeed him. Their eventual choice, on 24 May 1086, was Desiderius, the cardinal abbot of Monte Cassino. He was a pious man, but possibly rather more concerned about the good health, spiritual and material, of his monks than he was about the Church at large. He went to Rome but could not establish his authority there and returned to his monastery, more or less aban- doning his claim to the papacy. It was not until March of the next

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year that he could be persuaded to lay claim once more to the bish- opric of Rome. The Normans seized the city on his behalf, dislodg- ing the antipope, and Desiderius was consecrated as Pope Victor III on 9 May 1087. At the end of June Pope Victor was finally able to celebrate mass in St. Peter’s – but almost immediately returned to Monte Cassino. As he lay dying that September he recommend- ed Odo (or Eudes), the Cardinal of Ostia, as his successor.

Victor III had created no cardinals; the antipope Clement III, his rival, on the other hand, had created a good many. And despite the irregularity of his “election” while Gregory VII was still alive, Clement had also established himself as a respected ponti
ff
– if not exactly one in the Gregorian mode, at least determined to purify the Church. Odo of Ostia, who took the name of Urban II, there- fore faced an uphill struggle when he was elected by a minority of the cardinals on 12 March 1088 and installed as pope in the town of Terracina. He was only slowly able to recover Rome from Clement, partly with the aid of his Norman allies, partly by bribery. Clement’s supporters held on to Castel Sant’Angelo right up to 1098, when it was captured by the Pierleoni family, who were sup- porters of the Gregorian Reform. The result of all this was that when Urban died on 29 July 1099, Cardinal Rainero could be elected pope in the proper manner, as Nicholas had decreed, the election taking place in San Clemente on 13 August. As Pope Paschal II he immediately took possession of the Lateran and was consecrated on the following day in St. Peter’s, with the Cardinal of Ostia presiding.