Historical sidelight on Papal Election

In centuries past emperors, kings and dictators have tried threats, bribery and coercion to get the cardinals to do their bidding.

The term "conclave" comes from the Latin words *** and clavis ? meaning "with" and "key" ? and suggests a place that may be securely closed. Over the years, Crooker says, the lockdowns have proved helpful.

In the first millennium, which was pre-conclave, most popes were chosen by clergymen and influential families in Rome. The process became increasingly political and sometimes violent, and some of the men chosen were unsuited to the job.

One of the first decisions made by Pope Stephen VI, for example, was to put the body of one of his predecessors on trial for alleged crimes against the church. In 897 during the Cadaver Synod, Pope Formosus' corpse was exhumed, displayed, convicted, abused and finally tossed into the Tiber River.

A sympathetic soul plucked the remains from the water and made sure there was a second burial.

Papal selection improved somewhat in 1059 when Nicholas II gave the job to the church's cardinals. The hope was to squeeze laypeople and political forces out of the process.

When that didn't work, the successors of Nicholas II and other churchmen continued to tweak the system. In 1179 the church decreed that future popes had to earn two-thirds of the cardinals' votes.

That system, still pre-conclave, wasn't perfect, either.

The election of Pope Gregory X in 1271 took two years and nine months, and the deal was sealed only after exasperated church members ripped the roof off the cardinals' living quarters and reduced their food to bread and water.

Less space and food
No more, Gregory said in 1274, and he established the conclave with stringent rules.

Upon a papal death, Gregory wanted the cardinals to assemble within 10 days, then adjourn to one locked room where they had to coexist until they agreed on a new man for the job.

If the process took more than three days, Gregory said, the cardinals' food would be reduced from two plates to one for the noon and evening meals. If an additional five days elapsed without a decision, he said, the cardinals would be reduced to bread, water and wine.

Punishment for those who didn't maintain the vow of secrecy was excommunication.

Crooker says the next three popes were selected speedily, but the conclaves proved so unpopular they were suspended in 1276.

After another long and acrimonious election, Celestine V restored conclaves in 1294. He was a Benedictine monk elevated to the job of pope after cardinals bickered for two years and finally settled on him.

Unfortunately, the hermit monk didn't want the job, wasn't suited for it, and after he resigned, he was imprisoned.

A mixed record
The conclave track record has been mixed, said Frederic Baumgartner in The Conclave: What the Media and the Rest of Us Need to Know about its History.

"When Paul III died in 1549, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and French King Henry II vied to control the conclave. From the dispatches between their diplomats in Rome, letters to and from the rulers and the cardinals within the conclave, and diaries of participants, we get a clear idea of the maneuvering that went on before and during the conclave, the huge sums the monarchs spent to bribe the cardinals, and the ease with which the royal orders reached cardinals inside the Vatican. A diplomat wrote that Charles V will know when they urinate in this conclave."

What was notable about that particular papal election, Baumgartner wrote, was not the blatant interference but the thorough reporting.

Until now, life in a conclave has been intentionally uncomfortable. In Conclave: The Politics, Personalities and Process of the Next Papal Election, author John Allen Jr. describes cramped cubicles with cots and a shortage of bathrooms for dozens of aging men unused to sharing facilities. Allen wrote that England's late Cardinal Basil Hume complained about the cots, saying they must have come "from a seminary for very short people."

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/page1/3139420

Rob