Papal Elections

I first thought of doing a blog on some little known aspects of the the history of the Church while I was living in Rome and after walking home one evening from dinner with some friends.  As I passed the manica lunga of the Quirinale palace it struck me that most people think that papal elections have always taken place in the Sistine Chapel when, in fact, the regular use of the Sistine for papal conclaves is rather recent. The 1800 conclave was held in the Benedictine abbey of San Giorgio in Venice due to the French occupation of Rome. The elections of 1823, 1829, 1831, and 1846 were all held in the Pauline Chapel of the Quirinale Palace, then the principal papal residence in Rome. (At the fall of the Papal States, Pius IX abandoned the Quirinale to take up residence at the Vatican and the Quirinale became the official residence of the Italian Kings and later, with the establishment of the Italian Republic, the Presidents of Italy.
While many of the popes of the sixteenth-through the eighteenth centuries had been elected in conclaves held in the Vatican Palace, the actual elections were not necessarily in the Sistine Chapel. The Pauline Chapel (The Capella Paolina) was also used for conclaves. I have also read that the small chapel frescoed by Fra Angelico, the Chapel of Nicholas V, was used at least for the 1464 and 1534 conclaves but I find this hard to believe as the chapel probably could not hold ten cardinals standing in their underwear much less even the small number of participants (15-25) typical in that period seated in their full regalia. Before the sixteenth century popes had been elected in the Dominican convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, in the Lateran, in Santa Maria Maggiore, in Santa Sabina, in Santa Maria in Cosmedin, San Pietro in Vincoli, San Gregorio Magno, San Marco, San Pancrazio, and a ramshackle palace on the Palatine called the Septizodium. In the High Middle Ages—the 12th, 13, and 14th centuries—when the papacy was notoriously peripatetic, conclaves had been held in Perugia, Viterbo, Naples, Agnani, Bologna, Ferrara, and Pisa. Some conclaves were even outside Italy—the Abbey of Cluny and in Lyon (both in France), along with Konstanz (in Switzerland) and of course Avignon where conclaves were held in 1334, 1342, 1352, 1362, and 1370.
Paul VI had residential facilities constructed for the Cardinals participating in future conclaves rather than the makeshift accommodations that had been arranged ever since the conclaves had been moved to the Vatican from the Quirinale in the conclave of 1878. He also had a potential voting hall incorporated in the Audience Hall which he had designed by Italian architect Pier Luigi Nervi, but in the interregnum after his death, the Cardinals decided that they would prefer to retain the Sistine Chapel as the place for elections.

People are surprised to discover that the Sistine Chapel has not always been the sight of papal elections.  Part of the problem here is that moderns, and especially Americans, have no sense of history. If something has been done twice in the last fifty years, it is a “tradition” and one presumes that it comes directly from Jesus to the Apostles. We need to develop some good historical sense.

Let’s talk today a bit about papal elections because you may be a bit surprised about how that procedure has evolved and also because it ties into the issue of electing bishops which is something else I would really like to explore. When St. Peter was martyred in 64 AD, the Cardinals did not gather and lock themselves into the Sistine Chapel and then proceed to dump their ballots into a golden chalice placed on the altar from which they would then be counted until one had enough votes for white smoke to signal the waiting crowds that “habemus papam” we had a pope. Indeed, there were no cardinals, no Sistine Chapel, probably no golden chalice, and really not even a “pope.” As for the crowds—hey, this was a time of persecution and the small Christian community in Rome was hiding out to protect their lives. In the early centuries, Rome chose its bishop like other local Churches. The clergy met with neighboring bishops and an assembly of the faithful to elect the bishop. They usually elected one of the principle deacons of the Church, or on occasion a priest. The neighboring bishops would then lay hands on the bishop-elect, consecrating him to his new office. They did not elect a bishop to the post as through most of the early history of the Church, once a man was made bishop of a diocese he could not transfer to another diocese. A bishop was considered “married” to his diocese. This prevented the sort of ambition and careerism which has often been a problem in the Church. As American monsignori joke “no one wants to be buried in the Cathedral of Peoria” meaning that many bishops always have their eye on a more important diocese.
It was Pope Nicholas II who at a synod of bishops in 1059 mandated the election of the Pope would be limited to the cardinals. It really wasn’t a departure from the practice of the time when popes were elected by the principal clergy of the diocese of Rome and the bishops of the seven suburbican dioceses. The Cardinal Deacons were the 14 principal deacons of the City of Rome—deacons of churches whose primary function was not a parish but a food distribution point for the needy or, in times of famine, for the general population. The major role of a deacon was not liturgical, but rather care for the poor and the suffering. The Cardinal priests were the parish priests (pastors) of the principal Roman Churches. The Cardinal bishops were (and are) the bishops of those seven sees that surround Rome. Up to this point an important (and actually essential) part of the election of the bishop of Rome was not only the election by the priests and deacons of the diocese, and the confirmation of the surrounding bishops, but the assent of the faithful. The clergy would meet, choose their candidate and receive the approval of the bishops and then present the newly elected bishop for the assent of the faithful. Crowds are fickle, however, and were often manipulated by the various factions—rival family/political groups vying for power—which would sway the election. This left the papacy at the mercy either of the Imperial faction (later called the Ghibellines) or what might be termed the “nationalist” party of the Counts of Tusculum or other local nobility (later called the Guelfs). Nicholas’s reform was primarily to eliminate the influence of the Roman rabble in order to bring stability and good decision making to the process—and it worked. He also wanted, as far as possible, to keep the influence of the Emperor to a minimum. This was part of what historians call the “Gregorian Reform” (after Pope Gregory VII, elected 1073 and the successor but one to Nicholas). By the twelfth century good order had been restored to the papacy and indeed the Gregorian Reform would see some of the best popes in the history of the Church, culminating with Innocent III who, in some respects, may have been the greatest pope in the history of the Church, and certainly one of the most significant.
So not only is the Sistine Chapel a relatively recent innovation in papal elections, but the conclave itself along with the College of Cardinals.  There are many quaint ceremonies and customs that have developed over the centuries, many of which are still functioning, but none of which are essential.  There is, for example, no reason that the College of Cardinals could not include women  Now that’s a thought. 

Gay Clergy and Married Clergy--An 11th Century Program of Reform

13th centur Bas-Relief on the facade of Lucca

Cathedral depicting the celebraiton of Mass--notice

the celebrant is facing the people over the altar, a

witness to the fact that this is not an innovation but

the restoraiton of an ancient practice.  The 11th century

bishop of Lucca, Anselm da Baggio, was a key

reformer of the Church. 

We spoke in our last post of Saint Romuald of Ravenna, a monastic reformer who founded several monastic communities, most notably the Hermits of Camaldoli, and who laid some of the spiritual groundwork for the Gregorian Reformation.  Over the years, the Camaldoli Monastery and its daughter houses—the Camaldolese Benedictines—have made a great contribution to the Church including Pope Gregory XVI, (reigned 1831-1846), one of the more conservative popes (understatement) who, in his zeal for the modern world, condemned railroads as the work of the devil (literally chemins de enfer—roads of hell—a play on the French for “railroad”: chemins de fer—roads of iron.)   I’m sure he thought it was a rather clever pun but that’s what happens to sophisticated humor when you spend too much time in a monastery.  Fortunately it was not an infallible proclamation.
     Although it was Camaldoli that made Romuald famous (well, relatively famous, like Mel Brooks’ characters Frederick and Anna Bronski in To Be or Not To Be, “world famous in Poland,” it was his foundation at Fonte Avellana that proved to be the springboard of Reformation in the eleventh century.  From that foundation came many holy monks, one of them being Saint Peter Damian who was quite literally a “holy terror.” 
     Unlike the founder, Romuald, who was a serious monk but not at all rigid, Peter Damian found no penance sufficient for his desire for austerity and self-mortification.     It was Peter Damian who introduced the practice of the disciplina, that is of self-flagellation into monastic practice.  Peter Damian was determined to root out all sexual vice from monastic life and indeed from the Church.  One could say that he went after passion with a passion.  That’s a bit lame; perhaps I am guilty of the very monastic overdose of which I accuse Gregory XVI.  
   Lame as it may be, there was reason for him to go after passion with a passion.  The secular clergy were not taking celibacy seriously.  This was a time in which the Church was drawing more seriously on canons (church laws) derived from various early regional church synods (Elvira 306, Carthage  387, Turin 401, Orange 441) that prohibited bishops, priests, deacons, and subdeacons from being married.  As we discussed in some earlier postings (July 21, 23, 24) the concern in the eleventh and subsequent centuries was primarily the protection of church property from being alienated to clergy families and many bishops turned a blind eye to the fact that most of their clergy were living in what we might call common-law marriages.  To Peter Damian, however, this was not marriage of any sort but concubinage.  The clergy wives were whores; the clergy themselves men who had given themselves over to base passions. 
     Speaking of base passions, if Peter Damian thought little of the secular clergy for their loose morals, he thought less of his fellow monks.  Monasteries, whether in fact or in Peter Damian’s perception (and probably to some extent in both) were filled with homosexuals and monks, when not busy with Divine Worship,  gave themselves over to the most gross of sexual practices.  Peter Damian wrote a book, the Liber Gomorrhianus,  (The Gomorrhean Book—named after the famous Gomorrah, twin cities with Sodom) outlining the same-sex practices of the contemporary clergy with the most explicitly vivid detail.)  By the way, he did not limit his accusations of clerical homosexuality to the monks but extended it to the papal court (the Curia) whom he thought were nothing more than a coven of mincing catamites.  (Now that is a word you don’t  hear often.)  
    Peter Damian was even more intolerant of gay clergy than married clergy. He wanted men inclined to same-sex relations barred from ordination and those who were ordained stripped of their Orders and reduced to the lay state.  When Leo IX  (pope from 1049-1054 and himself an ardent reformer of the Church) refused, Peter Damian turned his anger on the pope and wrote an angry letter accusing the pope of neglect in his duties.  
    Peter Damian was by no means a stupid man, but he was quite anti-intellectual.  Steeped in monastic tradition—and the tradition of the ancient desert monks more than the urbane Benedictinism, Damian rejected the importance of secular studies, even (and perhaps especially) Philosophy.  For him, as for Cassian and the early monks of the Egyptian and Syrian deserts, the monk was a “man of one book”—the Bible.  This no doubt contributed to his zeal (some would say fanaticism) in “purifying” the Church.  He was one who, like the Gnostics in early Christianity and the Puritans in the English Reformation could simply not bear compromise with what he believed to be the Christian ideal. 
     Surprisingly, while such a “puritan” and anxious to rid the church of what was its biggest problem, simony (the buying and selling of Church offices or positions), he was not nearly as rigid with simonical clergy as with sexually active clergy.  He wrote a second book defending not simony, but the validity of the ordination of bishops and priests who had purchased their offices.  Some in the Church were saying that simoniacs   (those clergy who had obtained their position by purchase) were not validly ordained.  (The subject of valid orders is an interesting one and one that we should take a look at sometime as it has impact on contemporary ecumenical affairs.)  
     To his credit, Peter Damian was a monk and not a man of ambition; nevertheless, he was forced by Pope Stephen IX in 1057 to accept nomination as a Cardinal.  Stephen and subsequent popes frequently used Peter Damian as a legate to conduct business in the pope’s name in various places where the Church was having difficulties.  His most important legation was to Milan in 1059, representing Pope Nicholas II to decide the dispute between the clergy of Milan—who openly violated the canons on celibacy and who, for the greater part, had obtained their various benefices through purchase.  One of the cathedral canons, Arialdo of Cucciago had allied himself with Bishop Anselm of Baggio, the Bishop of Lucca, to form the pataria, an organization that motivated the faithful to reject the ministry of married clergy.  Arialdo and Anselm mobilized the middle and working classes against the Bishop, Guido da Velate, and the nobility who supported the married (and simonical) clergy.  It was a very complex issue, as married clergy were still the norm through much of the Church and as for simony—well that too, if wrong, was a well-established practice.  Beneath the surface there were other issues.  One was the attempt of the papacy to establish control over the independent dioceses such as Milan who often were allied with the Emperor and his policies.  (We will see in a future blog that a key element of the Gregorian Reform was the struggle for power between the Emperors and the Popes.)  Another issue was the social conflict between the working classes that supported Arialdo and the propertied classes that supported the bishop.  In any event, Peter Damian effected a compromise.  The archbishop agreed that no church position would be given in return for money or gifts.  He then imposed penances on all who had purchased Church office, but agreed that they should keep their positions if they accepted the obligations of celibacy.  The rigorists were furious, because they wanted the offending clergy—both simoniacs and married clergy—permanently deprived of office, but Damian’s compromise held—temporarily.  It was to break out again under Alexander II. 
    When Nicholas II died in 1061, the Cardinals met per his instruction (Nicholas was the pope who in 1059  had designated the Cardinals to be the sole electors of the pope; see blog entry January 12, 2011) and elected the aforementioned Bishop of Lucca, Anselm da Baggio, as pope.  Anselm, as we saw, was a  proponent of reform.  Several weeks later, an anti-reform group of bishops met at the summoning of the Empress Regent, Agnes of Poitou, and elected Pietro Cadalus as Honorius II.  This created a schism in the Church as the Reform Party and Imperial Party struggled for control.  This shows what the real issue for the Gregorian Reform was to be—not Church reform per se, but imperial control of the papacy.  Was the pope to be free to exercise his authority unimpeded by the Emperor or was he to administer the Church at the Emperor’s bidding?  Peter Damian was on the side of a free papacy and did his best to resolve the schism in the Church in favor of Alexander.  He was unsuccessful in the short run, but at a synod convoked in Augsburg by the Archbishop of Cologne, Anno II, in 1062 Peter Damian made a spirited defense of Alexander and the autonomy of the papacy.  Through the influence of Peter Damian, Alexander was determined to be the authentic successor of Saint Peter.