by Eamon Duffy
In theory the cardinals may vote for any adult male Catholic, and need not confine their choice to a member of the College of Cardinals. In practice, every pope since 1389 has already been a cardinal and the election of a non-cardinal is nowadays almost unimaginable.
When each round of voting is complete, the three scrutineers count the ballot papers into another chalice. If there is a discrepancy between the number of papers and the number of electors, all the ballots are burned unopened and the whole procedure is repeated. If however all is in order, counting begins. Each of the three scrutineers in turn looks at each ballot paper and records the name there in writing: the third scrutineer calls out the names so that all the cardinals can make their own record. The votes are totalled for each person nominated, and each bundle is sown together with a thread through the word ‘eligo’, ‘I elect’. The outcome is announced formally, and then checked by three ‘cardinal revisers’, again randomly chosen at the outset of the conclave. Since the eighteenth century, if the outcome has been indecisive the bundles of votes are taken to a specially constructed stove with a chimney visible in St Peters Square, and burned along with a chemical which turns the smoke a dense black. This is a signal to the outside world that the vote has not produced a pope. If the vote has been successful, the chemical is omitted and the smoke is white.
To elect a pope, there must be a two-thirds majority plus one (in case a cardinal has voted for himself). There are normally two ballots each morning, and two in the afternoon, but on the first day of the conclave there is normally only a single ballot. If after three days of voting no election has been made, the cardinals pause for prayer and reflection, for not more than a day. Voting resumes for another seven ballots, with another pause if no pope has been elected. After thirty ballots, the Cardinal Camerlengo invites the cardinals to suggest some method of resolving the deadlock. When they then resume voting, the requirement for a two-thirds majority lapses and a simple majority suffices. This is a truly startling change in the procedures in operation since the twelfth century, and, on the face of it, an unwise one. The international composition of the Sacred College and the large number of electors involved means that the cardinals may take time to familiarise themselves with potential candidates, and makes a prolonged election by no means unlikely. There is a risk that this ‘emergency’ relaxation of the two-thirds majority rule might in fact happen frequently, and result in the election of popes who do not command the consensual support of the College of Cardinals as a whole. There is room in the new rules for abuse: a determined (and unscrupulous) group of cardinals could block the necessary two-thirds majority for thirty ballots, and then shoe in their own man by a simple majority (all forms of partisan coordination and plotting of this kind are absolutely forbidden in papal elections, on pain of excommunication: they are nevertheless by no means unknown).
Once an election has successfully taken place, the secretary of the conclave (not a cardinal) and the papal Master of Ceremonies are summoned to the Sistine Chapel. The Cardinal Dean approaches the elect and asks him ‘Do you accept your canonical election as Supreme Pontiff’. If he accepts, the Cardinal Dean asks, ‘By what name do you wish to be called’, upon which the new pope chooses and announces his papal name. (With very few exceptions, for the last thousand years all new popes have chosen a name different from their baptismal or Christian name). If he is not already a bishop (cardinals are normally ordained archbishops, but a new cardinal may not have been so ordained, and some choose to remain priests) he is immediately ordained by the Cardinal Dean. The new pope is then robed in white cassock and sash and white skull-cap, red slippers, a lace rochet or episcopal surplice, and a short red cape. (Three cassocks small medium and large are kept in readiness). The pope then sits on a stool before the altar, the Camerlengo gives him the Fisherman’s Ring, and the cardinals come in order of seniority and kneel to pay homage to him. The proceedings conclude with the singing of a solemn hymn of thanks-giving, Te Deum Laudamus, We Praise Thee O God.
While all this is proceeding, crowds have gathered in St Peter’s Square, alerted by the white smoke. The Senior Cardinal Deacon goes to the balcony overlooking the Piazza, and declares ‘Annuntio vobis Gaudiam Magnam, habemus Papam’, ‘I announce to you a great joy: we have a Pope’, and he informs the crowd of the pope’s old name and his new papal name. The new pope then appears and gives his blessing ‘Urbi et Orbi’, to the City and the World. It is not customary for the new pope to make a speech at this point: when Karol Wojtyla did so, an impatient cardinalatial voice was clearly audible over the loudspeaker system muttering ‘Basta! Basta!’, ‘That’s enough, that’s enough’.
Up to and including the pontificate of Paul VI, new popes were inaugurated by being solemnly crowned with the triple tiara in St Peter’s basilica, to which they were carried on the Sedia Gestatoria, the ceremonial throne carried on the shoulders of members of the old Roman aristocracy, accompanied by two great ostrich-feather fans, relics of Byzantine court ritual. Pope John Paul I renounced this ceremony, which had come to seem too reminiscent of the medieval papacy’s conflicts with emperors and inappropriate claims of the popes to temporal dominion. Popes now are simply inaugurated at a special mass in or outside St Peter’s, at which the pope is invested with the white woollen stole, known as the Pallium, by the Senior Cardinal Deacon: the mass concludes with a repetition of the blessing ‘Urbi et Orbi’.
NOTES
CHAPTER ONE: UPON THIS ROCK
1Most of the early texts bearing on the history of the papacy up to the reign of Damasus I are conveniently collected and translated into English in J.T. Shotwell and L. R. Loomis, The See of Peter, New York 1927, reprinted in 1991. The passage from Irenaeus’ Contra Haereses III cited in the text will be found at pp. 265–72.
2For these passages, ibid., pp. 72, 236–9, 265–72.
3Ibid., pp. 266–7.
4Eusebius, History of the Church, ed. A. Louth, Harmondsworth 1989, pp. 170–4 (V/24).
5Shotwell and Loomis, See of Peter, p. 267, but following here the better translation in J. Stevenson, A New Eusebius, London 1963, p. 119.
6The cult of Peter and Paul at San Sebastiano poses many problems, not least that of whether at any stage the Apostles’ bodies were buried there. It has been suggested that the shrine was originally a schismatic one, independent of any grave, set up by the supporters of the Antipope Novation in opposition to the official Vatican cult, but there is no clear evidence for this claim. More plausibly, it has been suggested that the shrine at San Sebastiano was an unofficial ‘folk’ shrine, which the authorities were forced to adopt to prevent it spiralling out of the Bishop’s control: either way, the cult demonstrates the growing importance of the two saints. Description and plans of the site at San Sebastiano, D. W. O’Connor, Peter in Rome, New York 1969, pp. 135–58; helpful discussion and examples of the inscriptions quoted in the text, in H. Chadwick, ‘St Peter and Paul in Rome’, in his History and Thought of the Early Church, London 1982, pp. 31–52.
7Shotwell and Loomis, See of Peter, pp. 252–3.
8Quoted in K. Schatz, Papal Primacy from its Origins to the Present, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1990, p. 6.
9Shotwell and Loomis, See of Peter, pp. 334–7.
10Ibid., pp. 267, 294.
11All the texts on the disputes gathered in ibid., pp. 399–420.
12Ibid., p. 415.
13R. Davis (ed.), The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), Liverpool 1989, pp. 14–26.
14Documents for Sardica in Shotwell and Loomis, See of Peter, pp. 503–34.
15Ibid., pp. 561, 571.
16Ibid., pp. 572–6.
17Ibid., p. 686.
18R. B. Eno, The Rise of the Papacy, Wilmington, Delaware 1990, pp. 80–4.
19Davis, Book of Pontiffs, p. 29.
20Shotwell and Loomis, See of Peter, p. 633.
21Chadwick, ‘St Peter and Paul in Rome’, pp. 34–5; R. Krautheimer, Rome: Profile of a City; 312–1308, Princeton 1980, pp. 39–41.<
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22Krautheimer, Rome, p. 41.
23The whole letter is printed in Shotwell and Loomis, See of Peter, pp. 699–708.
24Eno, Rise of the Papacy, p. 94.
25Ibid., p. 100.
26Quoted in Schatz, Papal Primacy, p.35.
27Eno, Rise of the Papacy, pp. 102–9.
28J. Tillard, The Bishop of Rome, London 1983, p. 91; R. B. Eno (ed.), Teaching Authority in the Early Church, Wilmington, Delaware, 1984 pp. 161–2.
CHAPTER Two: BETWEEN Two EMPIRES
1Text of Gelasius’ letter in S. Z. Ehler and J. B. Morall, Church and State through the Centuries, London 1954, p. 11 (translation slightly altered).
2P. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, London 1971, pp. 146–8.
3Latin text in C. Rahner (ed.) Henrici Denzinger, Enchyridion Symbolorum, Barcelona, Freiburg, Rome 1957, no. 171–2.
4R. Davis (ed.), The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), Liverpool 1989, p. 49.
5Quoted in K. Schatz, Papal Primacy from its Origins to the Present, Collegeville, Minnesota 1996, p. 54.
6J. Richards, Consul of God: The Life and Times of Gregory the Great, London 1980, p. 36.
7P. Llewellyn, Rome in the Dark Ages, London 1993, p. 90.
8Jeffrey Richards, The Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages, 476–732, London 1979, p. 283.
9J. Barmby (ed.), The Book of the Pastoral Rule and Selected Epistles of Gregory the Great, Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, end Series vol. 12, New York 1895, p. 176.
10Ibid., p. 176.
11Richards, Consul of God, p. 31.
12Barmby, Selected Epistles of Gregory the Great, pp. 140–1.
13Ibid., p. 179; Richards, Consul of God, pp. 64–8.
14R.W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, Harmondsworth 1970, p. 172.
15Barmby, Selected Epistles of Gregory the Great, p. 170.
16Ibid., pp. 166–73 for a series of letters on the dispute about the ‘Ecumenical’ title: the letter cited is ibid., pp 240–1, but I have preferred the translation in J. Tillard, The Bishop of Rome, London 1983, pp. 52–3 (Latin text pp. 203–4).
17Barmby, Selected Epistles of Gregory the Great, p. 88.
18Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English Pope, i 27, para. III, ed. Judith McClure and Roger Collins, Oxford 1994, p. 43.
19Ibid., iii 25, p. 159: for King Oswiu’s smile, Eddius Stephanus, Life of Wilfred, in J. F. Webb and D. H. Farmer (trans and eds), The Age of Bede, Harmondsworth 1983, p. 115.
20Davis, Book of Pontiffs, p. 72.
21Ibid., p. 85.
22R. Davis (ed.), The Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes, Liverpool 1992, p. 13.
23W. Ullmann, A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages, London 1974, p. 72; Southern, Western Society and the Church, p. 59.
24Davis, Eighth-Century Popes, pp. 26–7; Llewellyn, Rome in the Dark Ages, pp. 202–3.
25Text in Ehler and Morall, Church and State, pp. 15–22.
26Text in J. Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church, Oxford 1983, p. 186.
27This is the interpretation of Charlemagne’s reservations offered by Notker the Stammerer: L. Thorpe (ed.), Two Lives of Charlemagne, Harmondsworth 1969, p. 124.
28Ullmann, Short History of the Papacy, pp. 105–8; R. Davis (ed.), The Lives of the Ninth-Century Popes, Liverpool 1995, pp. 201–2; H. K. Mann, The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, London 1902–32, vol. 3, pp. 58–61.
29R. W Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages, London 1987, pp. 131–2.
CHAPTER THREE: SET ABOVE NATIONS
1Text of Cluny’s foundation charter printed in R. C. Petry (ed.), A History of Christianity: Readings in the History of the Church, Grand Rapids 1981, vol. 1, p. 280–1.
2Quoted in G. Tellenbach, The Church in Western Europe from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century, Cambridge 1993, p. 170.
3For a translation of the Dictatus, S. Z. Ehler and J. B. Morall, Church and State through the Centuries, London 1954, pp. 43–4.
4Tellenbach, Western Church, pp. 206–7.
5Text of Henry’s letter printed in Petry, Readings in the History of the Church, vol. 1, p. 237.
6Text in H. Bettenson (ed.), Documents of the Christian Church, Oxford 1954, pp. 144–5.
7Letter to Bishop of Metz 1081, in ibid., pp. 145–53.
8Quoted in C. Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250, Oxford 1991, p. 125.
9Quoted in R. W Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, Harmondsworth 1970, p. 105.
10J. D. Anderson and E. T. Kennan (eds), St Bernard of Clairvaux: Five Books of Consideration: Advice to a Pope, Kalamazoo, Michigan 1976, p. 121.
11Ibid., pp. 66–8.
12Ibid., pp. 57–8.
13Morris, Papal Monarchy, p. 213.
14R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages, London 1987, pp. 147–8.
15Quotations on Crusade and indulgences, I. S. Robinson, The Papacy; 1073–1198, Cambridge 1993, pp. 326–30.
16Ibid., p. 299; W. Ullmann, A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages, London 1974, pp. 182–3.
17Robinson, Papacy, p. 24.
18Quoted in Morris, Papal Monarchy, p. 431.
19Southern, Western Society and the Church, pp. 144–5.
20Morris, Papal Monarchy, p. 440.
21My translation from Dante, Inferno, XVIII 25–33.
22Edited texts of both Clericos Laicos and Unam Sanctam in Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church, pp. 157–61.
23Kenelm Foster and Mary John Ronayne (eds), I, Catherine: Selected Writings of Catherine of Siena, London 1980, p. 94.
CHAPTER FOUR: PROTEST AND DIVISION
1L. Pastor, History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, London 1912–, vol. 2, p. 30.
2C. B. Coleman (ed.), The Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine, New Haven 1922, p. 179.
3Pastor, Popes, vol. 2, p. 166.
4Ibid., pp. 125–37.
5A. Grafton (ed.), Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture, New Haven and London 1993, p. xiii.
6L. C. Gabel (ed.), Memoirs of a Renaissance Pope, London 1960, p. 81.
7J. C. Olin (ed.), The Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola, Westminster, Maryland 1969, p. 9; Pastor, Popes, vol. 6, p. 17.
8J. A. Froud, Life and Letters of Erasmus, London 1895, p. 158.
9Ibid., p. 165.
10P. Partner, Renaissance Rome, 1500–1559: A Portrait of a Society, Berkeley 1976, p. 158.
11Pastor, Popes, vol. 28, p. 348.
12M. Walsh, An Illustrated History of the Popes, London 1980, p. 181.
13Sanctissimi Domini Nostri Benedicti Papae XIV Bullarium, Tomus Primus, Venice 1777, pp. 4–7.
CHAPTER FIVE: THE POPE AND THE PEOPLE
1Text in S. Z. Ehler and J. B. Morall, Church and State through the Centuries, London 1954, pp. 236–49.
2Consalvi’s letter and the details of the Conclave in F. Nielsen, The History of the Papacy in the XlXth Century, London 1906, vol. 1, pp. 191–218.
3Owen Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution, Oxford 1981, p. 484.
4Printed in Ehler and Morall, Church and State, pp. 252–4.
5A. Dansette, Religious History of Modern France, Edinburgh and London 1961, vol. 1, p. 152.
6E. E. Y. Hales, Revolution and Papacy, Notre Dame, Indiana 1966, pp. 180–1.
7Nielsen, Papacy in the XlXth Century, vol. 2, pp. 10–11.
8Quoted in K. Schatz, Papal Primacy from its Origins to the Present, Collegeville, Minnesota 1996, pp. 148–9.
9A. R. Vidler, Prophecy and Papacy: A Study of Lamennais, the Church and the Revolution, London 1954.
10E. E. Y. Hales, The Catholic Church and the Modern World, London 1958, pp. 93–4
11Vidler, Prophecy and Papacy, pp. 184–220.
12K. O. von Aretin, The Papacy and the Modern World, London 1970, pp. 64–6.
13H. E. Manning, ‘Roma Aeter
na’, a lecture to the Roman Academy in 1862, printed in Miscellanies, New York 1877, p. 22.
14‘Occisi et Coronati’ in Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects, Dublin 1863, pp. 273–5.
15F. Heyer, The Catholic Church, 1648–1870, London 1969, pp. 186–7; see also H. E. Manning, The True Story of the Vatican Council, London 1877, pp. 42–3.
16H. E. Manning, The Glories of the Sacred Heart, London nd, pp. 167–88, ‘The Temporal Glory of the Sacred Heart’.
17E. E. Y Hales, Pio Nono, London 1954, pp. 278–9, 329.
18Ibid., p. 227.
19[W.S. Bainbridge, (ed.)] The Westminster Hymnal, London 1941 no. 226 (words by Cardinal Wiseman).
20S. Gilley, Newman and his Age, London 1990, p. 344.
21Extract from the encyclical, and the whole of the Syllabus, in C. Rahner (ed.), Henrici Denzinger, Enchyridion Symbolorum, Barcelona, Fribourg, Rome 1957, PP. 477–90 (nos 1688–1780); translated extracts from the Syllabus in Ehler and Morall, Church and State, pp. 281–5.
