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constitutions of Alexander III. (ob. 1181). It remains to be shown that the practice thus ordained did not succeed in getting itself carried out with satisfactory regularity till a yet later epoch. Nothing had yet been established, as a matter of rule, as to the mode in which the cardinals were to elect, save that, as has been seen, it needed two-thirds of the votes to make a valid election. We find early instances of the shutting up of the cardinals, for the purpose of the election; but in most of these cases the imprisonment seems to have been involuntary, and imposed on them by force ab extra. Thus Honorius III. (ob. 1227) was elected on the 18th of July, at Perugia, by nineteen cardinals, whom the Perugians constrained to enter into Conclave, on the day after the death of Innocent III., who died in that city, keeping them imprisoned till the election should be completed. Such a case very clearly indicated that by that time the idea, that the body of cardinals and they alone could create a Pope, had entirely entered into the popular mind, and been recognised and accepted. The people of Perugia, in their anxiety to avoid the terrible evils of an interregnum, are determined to have a Pope elected with the least possible delay. But they consider that the only possible means of accomplishing this is to catch the cardinals and compel them to do their work.

His successor Gregory IX. (ob. 1241) was elected under somewhat similar circumstances, the Romans apparently thinking that the experiment made at Perugia had answered so well as to deserve imitation. The chronicler Rainaldi relates, on the authority of

Riccardo di San Germano, that the cardinals, who had assembled in Rome for the election of a Pope, were shut up at the Septisolium (the hill on which the Church of St. Gregory stands, near the Coliseum) by the Senator of Rome and the people, that they might against their will proceed to the creation of a Pope,* which expedient, says Cancellieri,† was perhaps adopted to avoid the invasions of the Emperor Frederick, who, encamped at Grotta Ferrata, was devasting all the neighbourhood of Rome.

Gregory IX. died in 1241. Celestine IV., who succeeded him, reigned seventeen days only. Innocent IV., who came next, reigned eleven years and nearly a half. The papacy of his successor Alexander IV. lasted six years and nearly a half. The next in the list, Urban IV., reigned three years and a month. Clement IV. succeeded him, and, after a reign of three years and nine months, died in 1269. These twentyeight years, from the death of Gregory to that of Clement, had been disastrous and stormy ones for Italy, mainly by reason of the contests between different pretenders to the crown of Sicily, and by the pretension of the Popes to have the nomination of the sovereign in their hands. Clement IV. introduced a new and fatal element into the troubled skein of Italian politics by

Cardinales qui in Urbe ad Papæ electionem convenerant, per Senatorem et Romanos apud Septisolium includuntur, ut at creandum Papam inviti procedant.

Notizie Istoriche delle Stagioni e de' Siti diversi in cui sono stati tenuti i Conclavi nella Città di Roma, &c. Raccolta da Francesco Cancellieri. Roma, 1823. A very rare tract, as are many of the great number of gossiping and amusing tracts on very various subjects, written by the same author.

conferring this crown on Charles of Anjou, thus bringing a French dynasty into Italy, and, what is more to our immediate purpose, causing thus a profound and irreconcilable division in the College of Cardinals, some of whom attached themselves to the French interest, and some feeling the most bitter resentment against the French prince, and against the policy which had called him into Italy. At the death of Clement IV. in Viterbo, just a month after the last of the Hohenstauffens, the hapless Conradin, had lost his head on a scaffold at Naples -(he had never once during his pontificate of three years and nine months been at Rome)-the discrepancy of opinion between the cardinals led to a most bitterly and obstinately contested struggle for the election of the next Pope, which resulted in an interregnum, the longest on record in the annals of the Church, of two years and nine months. Seventeen* cardinals went into Conclave in Viterbo, which small town, as Mr. Cartwright truly says, "became the point on which remained the fixed and anxious gaze of Christendom." Seven of the cardinals in Conclave were in the French interest, and seven as entirely opposed to it. Moroni remarks that perhaps the length of the interregnum was due to the division of parties!-the "perhaps" being introduced in deference to the theory and claim that let what may be the motives and intentions of the electors, the result is due to the

• Mr. Cartwright says that they were eighteen; but I cannot find that more than seventeen are recorded as being present. Moroni says fifteen, or seventeen. Perhaps the circumstance of the Cardinal Henry of Ostia having quitted the Conclave on account of illness, may account for the discrepancy, one reckoning having been of those who went into Conclave, and the other of those who participated finally in the election.

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direct action of the Holy Spirit. He adds that the delay could not be due to the want of any person among their own body fitted for becoming Pope, inasmuch as no less than four of those then present became subsequently Popes, under the names of Adrian V. (ob. 1276), Nicholas III. (ob. 1280), Martin IV. (ob. 1285), and Honorius IV. (ob. 1287). Unquestionable, however, as the " рараbility," to use a word which has become a cant one in Conclave language-of all these four may have been, the cardinals at Viterbo could not come to an election, for the opposing parties were so evenly balanced, and the interests at stake so great, that neither side would yield. Charles of Anjou came to Viterbo, and remained there, hoping that by throwing the weight of his personal presence into the scale, he might intimidate the cardinals on the opposite side. He had not calculated on the patient obstinacy of an Italian who trusts for victory to the policy of doing nothing! The desired election was none the nearer for the presence of the foreign prince, who was so odious to all save his own creatures in the College.

The citizens of Viterbo, and the town captain, one Ranieri Gatti, who as such had the custody of the Conclave, which seems to have implied the imprisonment of the cardinals, in his hand, understood their countrymen better. Despairing of seeing an end put to the shocking condition of disorder and anarchy, which always, down even to quite modern times, made the Pontifical States a hell upon earth during the period of every interregnum, they resorted to the novel expedient of unroofing the palace in which the Conclave was sitting, at the same time gradually

diminishing the rations supplied to the cardinals. But not even did this strong measure succeed in producing the desired result. There is a curious letter extant, addressed by the cardinals to Gatti, the town-captain, the purpose of which was to request him to allow one of their number, the Cardinal Henry of Ostia, to quit the Conclave on the ground of illness. This letter is dated in Palatio discoperto Episcopatus Viterbiensis, VI. Idus Junii MCCLXX., Apostolicæ sede vacante: *—" From the unroofed episcopal palace of Viterbo."-The letter in question is curious, moreover, from the statement specially made in it, that the cardinal, whose release from Conclave is requested, has altogether renounced his right to vote on this occasion.† But not for more than a year after this incident,-and more than a year, therefore, after the unroofing of the palace,-did the imprisoned cardinals, exposed to the elements as they were, come to an election. At last, moved, it is said, not by any threats or persuasions from without, nor by their own sufferings within their prison, but by the persuasions of the Cardinal Bishop of Porto, and those of the Franciscan Saint Buonaventura, the Conclave was

Cancellieri, p. 6.

Mr. Cartwright remarks that the "insertion of this clause in the letter deserves attention, as proving that, at this period, it had not yet been definitely ruled that every cardinal's active participation was not an indispensable condition for setting a papal election beyond challenge." It does not seem likely to me, that the insertion of the clause in question was dictated by any such intention. I am not aware that it was ever held, that the active participation of every cardinal is necessary to a canonical election. And it seems to me, that the notification that His Eminence of Ostia had renounced all right and purpose of voting, was intended to assure those outside that his departure from the Conclave need not be speculated on as exercising any influence over the result of the contest.

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