網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

Pope, and was composed of his uncle's "creatures." Of course there was also to a certain extent a natural bond of union and sympathy between the cardinals made by the same Pope; and they naturally gathered around the man who had held the place of favourite, cardinal nephew, and prime minister during the time of their promotion. But the great and all but unlimited power which was always enjoyed by a cardinal nephew rarely failed to excite against him an immense amount of enmity and jealousy among the other cardinals of the creation of preceding Popes. None in that position had ever possessed this authority to a greater degree, during at least the latter years of the pontificate of Clement VIII., than the Cardinal Aldobrandino, who was in many respects a very able man. The creatures of former Papacies were equally naturally banded together in the Conclave against him. The strength of Cardinal Aldobrandino's party in the present Conclave was estimated at twenty-six votes.

Next in force came the independent party of his opponents and enemies. They were chiefly under the influence and lead of the Cardinal Montalto, and counted twenty-one votes.

Then there were thirdly and fourthly the cardinals wholly in the interest of the Court of Spain, and those wholly in the interest of the Court of France. The total number of votes, as we have seen, was fifty-nine. Of these, forty-seven have been already accounted for; there remain twelve. And as the conclavist tells us, though without mentioning the numbers, that these two latter parties were of equal numerical strength, we must

suppose them to have commanded six votes each; bearing in mind, however, that some of those who owed their primary allegiance to their leader in the Conclave were doubtless also attached by preference either to the Spanish or the French interest. The action of the two great Catholic Powers in the Conclave generally was exerted to secure the exclusion of certain possible candidates especially obnoxious to them. And a much smaller number of devoted adherents, of course, sufficed to attain this object, than would have availed to secure the election of any given individual. The number of votes necessary to make an election in the Conclave in question was, it will be observed, forty, that being the nearest possible approach to the requisite majority of two-thirds.

It is clear, therefore, that, if all the members of the two strongest parties had remained obstinately true to their colours, no election could be effected, even if the strongest of them, that of Aldobrandino, could have united to itself all the voices commanded by both Spain and France-a consummation entirely out of the question, inasmuch as any candidate acceptable to the one Power would be precisely the one whom the other would be most desirous of excluding. But it is not to be imagined that there was ever any chance that all the adherents of a party should remain perfectly staunch and to be trusted by its chief. Too great a number of subsidiary motives influenced different individuals, in a vast variety of ways, for this to be possible. One man would wish a Pope of his party to be elected, but not this or that particular individual; and if such a result appeared probable he

would desert his party to avert it, more especially as he could do so without detection, unless it so happened that the scrutiny in which he had done so turned out to be the successful and final one; for if the scrutiny of that voting resulted in no election, the papers containing the votes were burned without further examination. It will be readily imagined how tangled and vast a mass of hypocrisies, false promises, and cross purposes such a system, together with all the variety of motives and interests at work in those scarlet-hatted old heads, must have occasioned.

The first move in the Conclave was an attempt on the part of the allies-i.e. the creatures of Popes anterior to Clement VIII.-to elect Cardinal Saoli, one of their number. Cardinal Visconti, who belonged to Aldobrandino's camp, had lately, it was known, felt less well disposed towards his leader; and as Saoli was Visconti's mother's cousin, he was easily induced to enter warmly into the scheme for electing him, and he succeeded in drawing several of the Aldobrandino party with him. Moreover, San Marcello, another of Aldobrandino's friends, though adhering to him firmly in every other circumstance, had declared that he could not vote against Saoli, because that Cardinal's brother, when Doge of Genoa, had favoured the reception of the San Marcello family as patricians of that republic.

Aldobrandino, it must be observed, was very far from well at the time of entering into Conclave. It had been feared and hoped that he could not have joined it. He would not give up, however, and went in with the rest, but immediately retired to bed in his cell.

Under these circumstances the friends of Saoli thought

that there was a very good chance of carrying his election by a sudden "adoration" at the very outset of the Conclave. But the Cardinal Saoli himself was unwilling to risk it. He was fully persuaded, says the conclavist, that Aldobrandino's illness would compel him to quit the Conclave, in which case he would have been sure of his election by the ordinary means of voting. He was mistaken in his calculation, and lost a chance which, the conclavist thinks, would have in all probalbiity turned out successful by his timidity. Some whisper, however, of the projected step had reached Aldobrandino and his friends, and kept them in great anxiety all the first day and all the first night; so much so that Cardinal Cesi went to him about ten o'clock at night, and told him that he must get up, ill as he was, and go round among their friends and show himself. Had he not done so, the conclavist thinks, the attempt at adoration would have been made by Saoli's friends. The Aldobrandino faction, however, "in order to give the opposite faction something to chew," as the conclavist expresses it, in the meantime put about a rumour that very possibly an "adoration" of Cardinal Tosco, a favourite candidate of their own, would be attempted in the course of the night; and this had the effect of causing many of the allies to quit their beds and remain on the alert.

The next morning after mass, said by the oldest Cardinal, Como, the Conclave proceeded to the first scrutiny, in which, to the general surprise, fourteen votes were given to Cardinal Bellarmine.

The only names in all the Conclave that have retained any place in history, besides that of the successful can

didate, were the Cardinals Baronius, Bellarmine, and Borromeo. All three of them belonged to the party of Aldobrandino. This unexpected result of the scrutiny puzzled the majority of the assembly exceedingly. The Conclave, says the conclavist, was all in the dark; for though Bellarmine was of the Aldobrandino or Clementine faction, that party had not thought of making him Pope. Though he was much beloved, and his character stood high, still, as our author remarks, his being a Jesuit, and being known to be "delicate of conscience," did not recommend him for the Papacy. The fact was that the motion of putting him forward had originated, not with his own party, but with that of Montalto and the allies. Sforza was his relative by the mother's side; and to Acquaviva, a nephew of the General of the Jesuits, his quality of Jesuit was a recommendation. The plan was originated by these two, who easily persuaded several of their own party to join them by the considerations that, as matters stood, there was no hope of electing Saoli; that it was certain that the elevation of Bellarmine would not suit the views of Aldobrandino; and that, let the matter turn either way, they could not but be gainers; for if a sufficient number of his own party joined them to elect him, they would have the merit of having given him the Papacy; and if, on the other hand, the attempt failed, they would in all probability cause disunion among the Clementines, and very likely obtain Bellarmine's support for their own candidate Saoli. The whole of that day was spent in the intrigues to which this unexpected move gave rise. Baronius was an intimate friend of Bellarmine, and was known to have spoken with Bor

« 上一頁繼續 »