"WHEN PICKING THE POPE WAS A PERILOUS AFFAIR"
Eamon Duffy, Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324162304578303982099...
The conclave that assembles at the Vatican on March 15 will be the first for six centuries to elect a pope while his predecessor is alive. With 118 names to choose from and no obvious front-runner (as yet), the outcome is impossible to predict. But we can be sure that the pope will be chosen from the cardinals themselves.
For much of the Church's history, not even that much has been certain. The cardinals didn't become the normal papal electors until the mid-11th century, and the first formal conclave wasn't held until 1241. The word "conclave" itself means "with a key," a reference to the policy of locking the dithering cardinals up in squalid conditions to focus their minds and encourage a speedy outcome.
For more than a thousand years, however, the papal electors were the whole clergy and people of Rome. As a result, most of the early popes were celebrities from local aristocratic families, often career administrators among the deacons of Rome, the clerical rank responsible for most papal business.
In these early elections, priests were seldom chosen, and bishops of other dioceses hardly ever, since a bishop was thought to be "married" to his see for life. Papal elections might be sudden or protracted, and election by "acclamation" wasn't uncommon. A likely candidate might be seized by the crowd during the previous pope's funeral and rushed off to church to be consecrated.
Unsurprisingly, corruption and conflict were common features of papal appointments. Rival claimants brought confusion over who was the "real" and who the "antipope." But negotiated solutions could produce unpleasant surprises.
In 686, Rome was deadlocked over the choice of a pope, the clergy promoting their own man, the local militia insisting on another. The standoff was resolved by the election of an elderly nonentity, Pope Conon, a Sicilian priest whose father had been a famous general, so he was acceptable to both sides. He proved to be a disaster, dimwitted and ineffective, and too old and ill for even routine duties.
But the popes weren't always elected. Ninth- and 10th-century Rome was run by Mafia-style noble families, who appointed the popes from their own kindred. The notorious Marozia Theophylact appointed three popes, including John XI (931-935), her bastard son by her lover Pope Sergius III. Her legitimate son, Prince Alberic II, appointed five popes, including his bastard son Octavian, "elected" Pope John XII in 955 at the age of 18, dead of a stroke at the age of 27, from his exertions, it was claimed, in the bed of a married woman.
The popes appointed by the German Holy Roman Emperor Henry III in the early 11th century were equally unconventional but far more edifying. Determined to purge the corruptions of Rome, Henry personally appointed four outstanding popes, reformers to a man, all of them Germans. The greatest of them, St. Leo IX (1049-1054), arrived in Rome as a barefoot pilgrim and was the first pope to travel widely through Europe, stirring local bishops to tackle corruption and undertake renewal.
Henry III's German popes ended the tradition that the Bishop of Rome had to be a local man, and medieval conclaves chose popes from the small but international College of Cardinals. Exceptions to this rule were seldom a success.
The most notorious case was St. Celestine V (1294), an 85-year-old hermit and visionary from Naples chosen in the hope that an "angelic Pope" would free the papacy from its financial and political entanglements. But the old man was hopelessly incompetent and easily swayed by forceful politicians. After only six months, he was badgered into resigning by Cardinal Benedetto Caetani, who succeeded him as Boniface VIII and promptly imprisoned him.
The experiment of electing a non-cardinal was tried again in 1378. After a run of seven French popes based in Avignon, the Roman mob demanded an Italian. Sixteen terrified cardinals obliged by electing Urban VI. A distinguished administrator as Archbishop of Bari, Urban VI was unhinged by his elevation. Aggressively paranoid, he alienated all supporters and appears to have murdered five of his cardinals. The French cardinals elected a rival pope, who returned to Avignon, starting a schism that would last a generation.
Catholics like to think of Papal elections as the work of the Holy Spirit. History suggests a more complicated picture, with no guarantee of a godly outcome. The cardinals in March will need information and common sense, at least as much as divine inspiration. We must hope they prepare themselves well, and don't try too hard to surprise.
—Mr. Duffy is professor of the history of Christianity at the University of Cambridge and the author of "Saints and Sinners," a history of the papacy.
A version of this article appeared February 16, 2013, on page C3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: When Picking A Pope Was A Perilous Affair.
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