On Papal Conclaves/Chapter 4

by W. C. Cartwright

IV.

During these latter years of Pius IX.'s reign the question has been frequently mooted in whispered talk, how far this prescription of nine days' ceremonial preliminary to the creation of a Pope might not he dispensed with by a simple Papal injunction. The idea has, in fact, been entertained in circles 'worthy of credit, that, in view of the political dangers besetting the Holy See, some Papal instrument has been duly provided by Pius IX., absolving the Cardinals from the obligatory observance of the prescribed forms of election, and empowering them to make, if they saw fit, a new Pope over his yet warm corpse. There can be no question as to the Pope's perfect competency in principle to authorize so grave a departure from the custom of ages by an individual act, even without the concurrence of any Cardinals. There are precedents for similar proceedings. Adrian v. (1276), who reigned only a few days over a month, actually abrogated the great Bull of his predecessor Gregory X., and this repeal remained in force through six elections, until the scandalous consequences of the abolition of disciplinary provisions induced Celestine V., with his hermit nature, to revive the law of Gregory X. Still more in point would be what was done by Gregory XI. It was the time when the Holy Bee, for nearly three quarters of a century, had been pining in self-willed exile at Avignon. It was felt by all devout minds that the situation into which the Church had got herself, through tl1Ïs step, was ruinous to her interests. The Pope himself, although a Frenchman, was fully alive to the fact that to save the Church it was indispensable to satisfy the outraged conscience of Christendom, by carrying back to its natural seat, Rome, the Holy See, from its spurious residence in Avignon. But to do this effectively it required an effort of force, for the Pope in those days was in the same plight as many of his successors, of being surrounded by a cabal of hostile interests,—a network of opposing Court influences, in our times called a Camarilla. The Pope might himself flit, indeed, to Rome, and yet, with the individuals composing the Sacred College, in great proportion creatures of the French Crown, and with the existing distribution of political interests, the same might be expected again to occur which already had occurred, namely, that the transfer would be only for so long as the Pope lived. To secure a lasting re-establishment of the See in Rome, Gregory XI. perceived it to be necessary to make, for once, a radical change in the value attached to specified forms in the machinery of Papal elections. By a Bull bearing date 19th March 1378, Gregory XI., at one stroke of the pen, suspended every existing regulation on the subject of Papal elections, set the Cardinals free from the observance of any obligations they might have sworn to in accordance to prescription, and specially empowered them not merely to meet for election on his decease, whenever it might seem convenient, but to nominate by simple majority. This memorable exercise of Papal authority, constituting a true coup d'état, stands justified by the approving voice of all ecclesiastical authorities, who have accepted it, without, so far as we know, one observation conveying an insinuation of usurpation against this Pope for what he did on this occasion. He dealt with a special emergency, as the Council of Constance did, by the application of measures drawn from the inspiration of the moment, and fashioned without slavish deference for precedent; and in both cases the result proved the wisdom of such bold action. A more recent and far more pointed precedent for an instrument such as Pius IX. has been supposed to have secretly made, is furnished in certain provisions taken by Pius VI. to secure the free election of a successor when he found himself exposed to personal violence at the hands of the French Republicans. The little known history of the Papal measures adopted to meet the threatening exigencies of that serious crisis is full of curious instruction.^[1] In the beginning of 1797 the States of the Church were invaded by the French armies, which carried all before them with so great rapidity that, on the 19th February, the Pope's plenipotentiaries signed the politically-disastrous treaty of Tolentino. Yet humiliating as its terms were for the Sovereign of Rome, the Pope could accept them with a feeling of relief, for the conditions imposed involved merely secular losses; whereas he had been threatened with a demand for the recantation of the solemn Pontifical Brief condemnatory of the civil constitution of the French Church. The acquiescence in this demand would have been tantamount to a sacrifice of principle which the Church could not have made without denying her nature altogether. The Pope conveyed the Cardinals, in Council, and their vote was distinctly against giving way on this head; rather than yield thereon, they were of opinion that the worst should be confronted with the spirit of martyrdom. In this state of affairs it was natural that measures should have been revolved to render possible the unbroken action of the Church as a hidden institution in that season of persecution which then seemed to threaten her public existence with extinction. To this end it was considered primarily essential that those provisions should be modified, the observance of which, as enjoined by the statutes of the Church as they then stood, would unavoidably surround the election of a Pope with formalities that must increase the difficulty of effecting it in the teeth of an overwhelming conqueror who did not recoil from the use of physical force to extort moral concessions. In the month of February, therefore—the very time when the French troops were pressing on rapidly, and no one in Rome could say at what point their chief would arrest his triumphant advance,—the draft of a Brief was indited, suspending, for the sole occasion of the next election, the provision which, for the benefit of Cardinals at a distance, imposes an obligatory delay of nine days after the Pope's decease before a ballot can be taken in Conclave. There can be no ambiguity as to the intention that prompted this very concise Pontifical utterance in derogation from previous statutes. The course of events, however, rendered its promulgation superfluous. It was never transcribed from the draft; all knowledge of which would have passed away but for Baldassari, who saw the original, as he believes, in Pius VI.'S own handwriting, and gave the text in his memoirs of that Pope's captivity.^[2]

The hopes of Pius Yr., that he had purchased peace by the heavy sacrifices he had made, were quickly dissipated. Before the year 1797 was out, on the 28th December a tumult occurred in the streets of Rome, when the French general Duphot was killed, and Joseph Bonaparte, the diplomatic representative of the Republic, left the city, in spite of the Papal Government having offered to make every apology that might be required for the crime that had been perpetrated. It was manifest that a fixed intention was entertained to make the worst of an untoward incident, and that the French authorities meant this time to avail themselves thereof to push the Pope against the wall. Accordingly, two days after the out. rage, on the 30th December, a Bull, beginning with the words^[3] Christi ecclesiæ regendæ, was issued by Pius VI. to give formal validity to the provisions contemplated in the former Brief. There can be no doubt as to the authenticity of this instrument; for although it is not to be found in the Bullarium, it is referred to in the second Bull issued by Pius VI. in the year after on the same matter. The rapidity with which its promulgation followed on the outrage, is also evidence of its having been duly prepared beforehand, and in the anticipation of emergencies. After a preamble, to the purport that novel circumstances call for novel provisions,^[4] and that an inflexible law cannot meet the needs of an unsettled time, Pius VI. empowers those Cardinals in situ at his death to act, as may seem best to their wisdom, in the observance of the prescribed nine days' interval before electing a Pope. The Cardinals on the spot are authorized, without taking account of their colleagues at a distance, either by unanimous vote or on mere majority, to put off indefinitely, or to any period they may appoint, the election, in the event of grave dangers threatening, and no safe place offering for assembly, as likewise to proceed offhand to an instantaneous election if deemed expedient,-such extraordinary dispensation from the ancient customs of the Church being, however, expressly declared to be limited to the event of grave peril. Between the before-mentioned draft for a Brief and this Bull there is only one difference of consequence. The validity of the proposed Brief was expressly limited to one occasion, pro hac vice, whereas the provisions in the Bull are as expressly appointed to hold good on the recurrence of any like state of public affairs that would threaten the legitimate action of the Church's grand electors. What in the former document was expressed as a mere act of dispensation, in this deed assumed the expression of an organic law, modifying permanently the practice of the Church under given circumstances, and promulgated with the formally-declared concurrence of its princes-the Cardinals. Grave peril was not slow in overtaking the Holy See. On the 20th February 1798, Pius VI. was carried away a prisoner into Tuscany by the French, the Cardinals were dispersed, and Rome converted into a Republic. After a short sojourn at Siena, the Pope was finally deposited in the old Carthusian monastery near Florence, under strict guard, with the smallest conceivable retinue, and cut off from free intercourse with his ministers and the scattered Sacred College, the most of whose members were divided between the states of the King of Naples and of the Emperor of Germany. The situation was of a nature that unavoidably imposed the necessity of taking thought for the future, for the health of the Pope, stricken with years, indicated an approaching demise, while the complete dispersion of the Papal Court utterly unhinged and disjointed its machinery. There was a general sweep of established organism, and a state of things had been produced like a void, wherein the dispersed atoms of the Court of Rome had to steer themselves as they best could by lights adapted to the novel atmosphere. If the Pope expired in the Certosa, as there was every reason to anticipate, his death would occur away from all Cardinals, and under conditions that would render every formal summons to a Conclave impossible. To provide, therefore, means calculated to meet the exigencies of this unprecedented situation was a thought that could not but anxiously occur to the conscientious dignitaries of the Church; but the serious difficulties naturally inherent to this task of framing forms suitable to the occasion were materially increased by the failing energies of the breaking Pontiff, who hesitated to act, and by cross currents of a political origin that obstructed a concert of views amongst the dispersed Cardinals—a most serious drawback when it became a question to frame provisions with the view of promoting the union of the Church in this season of extraordinary trial. The capital difference of opinion which divided the Cardinals had reference to the locality in which the election of the next Pope should be held. As we have already said, a portion of the Sacred College, comprising its Dean Cardinal Albani, had taken refuge in the kingdom of Naples, while another batch had sheltered itself under Imperial protection. Both governments had received these dignitaries not merely readily, but actually competed against each other for preference by the fugitive Princes of the Church as an asylum. The motive prompting this rivalry was to be found in the disposition ascribed to the Neapolitan Court to turn the presence in its territory of the Church's Electors to the advantage of its interests, by inducing the choice of an accommodating Pope, and the very natural desire of the Imperial Cabinet to defeat a project so detrimental to its own influence. In July 1798 eleven Cardinals were in the Neapolitan States, one of them being Dean of the College, and the fear was entertained, in some quarters, lest, in the event of the Pope dying without having made special dispositions for the convocation of Conclave, in accordance with the exceptional circumstances of the times, the minority, in part composed of Neapolitan Prelates, might proceed to an uncanonical election, under the influence of royal pressure, on the plea that the Cardinal Dean's presence constituted them the legitimate representation of the Sacred College. There is no proof that Cardinal Albani, the Dean, was prepared to lend himself to a move so full of risks, and than which a more disastrous one could not be conceived in the plight in which the affairs of the Church then stood. But the apprehension did undoubtedly exist that the Court of Naples might be disposed to avail itself of the presence of a knot of Cardinals in its dominions to make these proclaim themselves in Conclave, and attempt to impose their individual choice on the Church; and the effect of this apprehension was to stimulate those members of the Sacred College, who had most at heart the independence of the Church and her freedom from schism, to get the Pope to promulgate an instrument which might effectually obviate the danger in question. Of the Prelates so minded the most prominent for energy and resolution was Cardinal Antonelli.^[5] On the great dispersion of the Court of Rome, he had taken refuge neither with the Emperor nor with the King of Naples, but on the coast of the Tuscan Maremma,^[6] until, after the capture of Malta, he proceeded to Venice at the express desire of the Pope. On his way thither, Cardinal Antonelli passed through Florence, where he contrived to obtain two audiences of Pius VI., but only by an artifice, and became painfully impressed with the Pope's decaying powers of body and mind, and the isolation in which he was placed from intercourse with men equal to giving him counsel in his delicate position. The Cardinal made the best use of his opportunity, therefore, to urge on the forlorn Pope the necessity of taking measures, without loss of time, to guard effectually against the not improbable danger of a controverted election, in the event of matters being left in so novel a situation to the undirected instincts of a dispersed and disorganized Sacred College. Pius VI. shrank at first, with the timidity of his advanced years, from the energetic counsels of the resolute Cardinal, who, however, pressed him so vigorously that before leaving Florence he had succeeded in obtaining the Pope's acquiescence in his proposals. These were to the purport that a special Bull was indispensable to give the Cardinals the requisite facilities for securing the certain election of a Pope under existing circumstances; and for a Bull to meet the case a sketch was accordingly submitted by Cardinal Antonelli^[7] to the Pope, who expressed his agreement with its substance, and charged his secretary, the ex-Jesuit Marotti, to draw it out in a formal shape. This draft was 'seen and copied' by Baldassari, who affirms its contents to have empowered the Dean, with two or three colleagues, to name the locality for the election of the new Pope, the Cardinals being authorized to give their votes in Conclave by proxy left with one of their body, and to have dispensed from all enjoined rites and prescriptions connected with a Pontifical election, except the obligation of a majority of two-thirds to render a result canonical. The innovation in this Bull is sufficiently great to impress us with a sense of the counsellor's daring who conceived it, and to render intelligible the repugnance which the proposal met with. It has been ruled over and over again in Pontifical canons, that the major penalties should befall any Cardinal presuming to concert for a Pontifical election—the Pope being yet alive and not privy thereto;^[8] whereas by this Bull such a proceeding was directly incited; while the proposed power of proxy is quite without precedent. In the end of August, Cardinal Antonelli had arrived in Venice, and was congratulating himself on this act, the final promulgation of which he thought that he had secured. But the hesitation of old age reverted on Pius VI., when in his lonely cell he saw brought to him for ratification the instrument wherein, by a stroke of his pen, he was so gravely to modify ancient constitutions. The Bull of the previous year had been promulgated in concert with his Cardinals; but this one, involving far more radical changes, had been the work of one single daring Cardinal, who, the Pope was uncomfortably conscious, had used in some degree over him the ascendency of an imperious nature that coerces rather than convinces. Pius VI. became uneasy at the consequences of what he had engaged himself to do of his own authority, and postponed the issue of the Bull until he had obtained on its contents the opinions of a certain number of Cardinals, especially of those in Venetia, according to Baldassari. Means were found to communicate with them, and their replies reached the Pope. The impression made on the minds of the consulted Prelates by the document was undisguisedly unfavourable. The notion of proxies was particularly condemned; and the poor old Pope, frightened and troubled at the angry feelings excited by the draft, timidly drew hack, and determined to drop entirely a Bull which he himself had been so loath to entertain at first. But a complete abstention of this kind from remedial legislation was not what was wanted by those whose criticisms had so painfully moved the Pope. They had objected, indeed, to the Bull as framed, but they had not intended to advise that nothing should be done against a manifestly threatening contingency. The feeling prevalent was in favour of some special measure to put the Church in a condition to deal effectively with its unprecedented situation; and for the Pope not to act at all in this sense, simply because the radical proposals of Cardinal Antonelli had been deemed excessive, was contrary to the general desire. Accordingly, a second forthcoming draft for a Bull to meet the needs of the case came to be taken into consideration. This one was due to the inspiration of a Prelate—who had shown himself all along a fervent advocate for taking steps to obviate the dangers of a protracted, or, still worse, a disputed Papal election—Monsignor Michele Di Pietro, then resident in Rome as the Apostolical Delegate of his expelled master. It is not clear whether he knew what had occurred on the subject—communications with the Pope and Cardinals being in those days difficult; or whether it was a spontaneous composition made by him suggestively, and in ignorance of Cardinal Antonelli's draft. Anyhow, he drew up an outline of what he considered requisite to provide for the safety of the Church under impending eventualities; and this paper was taken to Florence for the Pope's inspection by an ecclesiastic, brother to Cardinal Sala. There was then in Florence Monsignor Emmanuel Di Gregorio, a Prelate of considerable resoluteness, who strongly sympathized with those who strove to get the Pope to issue a modifying Bull, and had been a channel of communication for Cardinal Antonelli, whom he had gone to visit several times in his retreat in the Maremma. To Monsignor Di Gregorio the emissary from Rome addressed himself, and received from him pressing advice not to say a word to the Pope about his errand until he had obtained the opinions of the Cardinals in Venetia on the paper he had brought. This counsel was followed; the Roman emissary proceeded to Venetia, consulted the Cardinals on the instrument he had in charge, and brought back to Monsignor Di Gregorio the assurance of their willingness to agree to the same. Thereupon Di Gregorio addressed Cardinal Antonelli, stating the opposition advanced to his draft, and the concurrence expressed in the other, and finally persuaded him, although hardly with good grace, to acquiesce in the general view. With this concurrence of favourable opinion, the difficulties in the way of inducing the Pope to act were materially lessened. What he shrank from was responsibility and independent action; but as soon as the approval of the Cardinals had been given he again felt safe to proceed; and on the 13th November, accordingly, he formally executed his second and last Bull^[9] for the registration of his successor's election. In virtue thereof, every previous Papal edict on the matter, without exception, was derogated from—such derogation to hold good for the Conclave immediately following, and every other that might unhappily occur under the auspices of equally adverse circumstances. To insure, therefore, the object of this act of legislation—the quick and safe election of a successor,—the Cardinals were empowered forthwith to confer amongst themselves on all points of importance for the election, as the appointment of a suitable locality to hold it in, and the mode in which to conduct it, the faculty of dispensing, if they saw fit, even with the practice of immurement in Conclave being conceded, though not that of canvassing in behalf of a specific candidate during the Pope's lifetime. So direct an approach to election was absolutely forbidden. The death of the Pope was to be notified by any Cardinal, or the senior amongst the Priests with him at the time of decease, the Conclave being constituted by the larger number of Cardinals who might be together in the territory of one Catholic sovereign. To this Conclave summons should be issued by the Cardinal Dean, if one of this majority, or, in his absence, by the senior Cardinal; and on this acting Prelate should devolve the selection of the place for assembly. Moreover, the Cardinals composing a majority under the said conditions of residence were declared to constitute a Conclave de facto, and empowered to proceed to a canonical election of themselves without any summons, provided ten days had been allowed to elapse, after notification of the Pope's death, for Cardinals at a distance to join their colleagues. Under no circumstances, however, was an election to be valid without the majority of two-thirds of the Cardinals in Conclave. Such were the ample and very carefully-considered clauses in this important piece of Papal legislation, which dropped out of general memory in a manner difficult to understand. In comprehensiveness, it cannot be said to have fallen behind Cardinal Antonelli's rejected draft; the only provision in which that was not adopted being the questionable proposal for proxies. In every other respect the new Bull was even larger and more defined in its dispensing clauses; so that certainly the duration of Conclave, when it actually met after the death of Pius VI., was not due to its having been forcibly tied down by dictatorial forms hampering independent action. In the Chancery of the Vatican, the precedent thus afforded was, however, not allowed to pass out of mind. It has not been forgotten by the men who are charged with the custody of the machinery of the Papacy, that there exists this authority for dispensing with old-established formalities for a Papal election when deemed inexpedient, and the authority, we know, has been appealed to at least on one occasion before Pius IX.'s time. We have it on the authority of one yet alive, and who was admitted to Gregory XVI.'s especial intimacy, and, in virtue of his position, attended him in his last moments, that this Pope left behind him a document, under his own hand, empowering the Cardinals to proceed to an immediate election on his demise if they saw danger to the free action of Conclave, in observance of the traditional formalities. This document, we are informed, was indited at the period of the insurrectionary movements in the early part of this Pope's reign, which were formidable, and required Austrian intervention for suppression. It was ever after kept by Gregory XVI. in the drawer of his writing-table (where it was found after his death) with so great solicitude, that every time he moved from one palace to another, the individual who is our informant was specially charged to watch over the transfer of the precious document.^[10] What may be the precise form of document which Pius IX. is believed to have prepared we cannot say; but we cannot doubt his having been guided by these precedents in the Papal archives in any provisions he may have taken to meet exigencies of an analogous nature.

1. The authorities are—Baldassari, in his Relazione delle A vversitá e Patimenti del glorioso Papa Pio VI. negli ultimi tre anni del suo Pontificato, Ed. seconda, Modena, 1840; Moroni, in article 'Conclave,' who, however, is very confused and inaccurate on the subject; and Novaes, Storia dei Pontefici, vol. xvi. parte seconùa, p. 131. Besides, we have been favoured with the perusal of manuscript letters of various Cardinals, and especially Antonelli, on the matter. Baldassari's book abounds in valuable material—he having been an attendant on Monsignor Caracciolo, who acted a part in these transactions, and from whom Baldassari obtained much precious information, which he transcribed faithfully.
2. This Brief begins—'Nos Pius Papa Sextus, attentis peculiaribus præsentibus Ecclesiæ circumstantiis,' and is to be found in Baldassari, vol. ii. p. 219, note. Moroni quotes the opening words, but ascribes them to the Bull issued in the following year, and is altogether wrong in what he says, mixing up two totally distinct occurrences. Baldassari, who here, as generally, is painfully minute, gives details which speak for his accuracy:—'A questo affare importantissimo aveva egli rivolto le sue cure apostoliche anche nel febbrajo dell' anno medesimo quando i soldati di Bonaparte marciavano alla volta di Roma e giunsero sino a Foligno. Mi é ignoto il giorno ch' egli sottoscrisse e muni del suo sigillo privato un decreto a cio. Ben so di certo che il decreto fu ultimato ed antenticato nel detto modo, perche mi lo disse persona degnissima di fede, chi vide quel foglio; come ancora ne so il tenore, perche n' ebbi fra Ie mani la minuta che mi parve fosse scriUa di mano del Papa ed é precisamente tal quale io la pongo nel Inogo delle annotazioni.' It was dated simply Romæ apud S. Petrum die. . . . mensis Februarii anni 1797.
3. This Bull was not seen in the Latin text by Baldassari. who. at p. 222. vol. ii.. gives an Italian summary of its contents. We have been favoured with a précis from the Latin in MS. Baldassari says that all his researches failed to make him find R Latin copy, which he ascribes to the losses that the Papal archives experienced at that period.
4. 'Novis incidentibus rebus nova parari iisdem debent accomodarique consilia,'
5. This Carflinal Antonelli was in no manner connected with the one of the same name in our day.
6. Up to June the Cardinal found a retreat with the Passionists at Monte Argentaro. But the Republican Magistrates of Viterbo threatened these friars with confiscation of property if they continued to give shelter in their dependency to the Cardinal, who then betook himself to San Stefano, a small fortified place on the coast—the same whereon Garibaldi, while sailing for Sicily, made a descent, and whence he carried off a couple of rusty cannon—the whole artillery with which he landed at Marsala.
7. Baldassari distinctly fixes the authorship of the draft.- V 01. iii. p. 147.
8. The very earliest of canons on record about Papal elections, issued by Symmachus in A.D. 499, is directed against all treating and dealing in the matter of electing a Pope while one is alive, in full health (incolumis), and excluded from knowledge of what is going on. But the capital act on the subject is the Bull Cum secundum apostolum nemo debeat sibi honorem assumere of Paul IV. (1558), which is levelled in the fierce tone of that truculent Pope against every act savouring of human ambition and human exertion to attain the dignity of the Papacy. In the spirit of an ecclesiastical Cato, every proceeding flavouring of this nature is savagely stigmatized as a crime, and subjected to all the severities of ecclesiastical punishment. Amongst the many cases repudiated, that of canvassing for a Pope, without the knowledge of the living one, is considered so heinous as to have a whole clause specially devoted to its absolute condemnation. The object of the Bull is laudable; it was inspired by a just indignation at the interests of a manifestly secular nature which had decided, elections in more than one recent Conclave; but its tone and fierce denunciations are signally characteristic of that intemperate zeal which has made the name of Paul IV. survive only as the ill-sounding synonym of cruel and precipitate passions; whereas once it was hopefully expected to express the fearless uprightness of a genuine man of God.
9. This Bull stands in Barberi's Bullarii Romani Continuatio (Rome, 1845). It begins 'Quum nos superiori anno,' and decides the point of the actual and formal promulgation of that other Bull of 30th December 1797.
10. The fact that a document of this nature was found amongst Gregory XVI.'s papers is mentioned incidentally by Emil Ruth.—Geschichte von Italien vom Jahre 1815 bis 1850. Heidelberg, 1867. Vol. ii. p. 80.