Gone Medieval - Conclave: Picking Popes

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

Choosing a new Pope has always been a blend of the sacred, the political, and the downright theatrical. In the middle ages, the papal election was a high-stakes game, with powerful families and entire cities invested in the outcome and willing to pull strings to get their man into the job.Dr. Eleanor Janega takes a look at the medieval origins of the process of deciding the next Pontiff. She is joined by Jessica Wärnberg to look into the origins of the papal conclave, explore its medieval twists and turns, and uncover the very human, sometimes bizarre, stories behind one of history’s most secretive and suspenseful elections.More:Pope Joan: Sacred Scandalhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/6f8OBBcJAjceSfr6vW6weXThe Rise of Christianityhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/4OadirQmTlIrxRjUFYhrEJGone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. It was edited by Amy Haddow, the producers are Rob Weinberg and Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanorianica and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades.

We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were. And how we got here. Picture this. Rome, shrouded in anticipation. Crowds gather in St. Peter's Square, eyes fixed on a humble chimney atop the Sistine Chapel. Will it be black smoke? No decision. Try again tomorrow. Or white smoke? the signal that a new pope has been chosen, and the world is about to meet its next pontiff.

These days, the smoke is carefully engineered with chemicals to ensure that the right color billows forth, all while the world holds its breath. This tradition will be beamed around the planet in the next few days as cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church elect the man who will lead the world's almost 1.4 billion Roman Catholics. But how did we get here? The story of papal elections is a tale of intrigue, improvisation, and occasionally sheer desperation.

Long before cardinals were locked away in conclave, the process was a bit more, let's say, free form. Take the election of Pope Fabian in the third century. He was a country squire, not even a priest, who popped into Rome probably for a cheeky latte and some amaretti. The debate over who should be the next. Pope dragged on for nearly two weeks. Suddenly, a dove swooped down and landed on Fabian's head. The crowd took one look at this feathery omen and, in a moment of divine inspiration, unanimously declared Fabian the new Pope. Sometimes it seems the Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways. Or maybe the assembly was just ready for lunch.

By the Middle Ages, the papal election had become a high, stakes game, with powerful families and entire cities invested in the outcome. When the Cardinals couldn't agree on a new Pope after the death of Clement IV, the people of Viterbo took matters into their own hands. They locked the Cardinals in the palace. When that didn't speed things up, they removed the roof, exposing the electors to rain, wind, and not so gentle Italian sun. Still, no Pope.

So the townsfolk cut the food supply to bread and water. Starving, shivering, and probably regretting their career choices, the Cardinals finally reached a decision after nearly three years. Two Cardinals died, a third had to leave, and the rest, presumably, never looked at a loaf of bread the same way again. It was this very ordeal that led Pope Gregory X to lay down the law. From then on, Cardinals would be locked together in conclave, literally with a key, until they reached a decision. If they took too long, the menu would shrink, first to one dish, then to just bread, water, and a splash of wine.

Nothing like a little medieval hunger games to focus the mind, and the vote. So whether it's a dove from above, starving cardinals, or the world's most scrutinized smoke signals, The election of a pope has always been a blend of the sacred, the political, and the downright theatrical. Today I'm joined by Jessica Vonberg, author of City of Echoes, a new history of Rome, its popes and people. To look into the origins of the papal conclave, explore its medieval twists and turns, and uncover the very human stories behind one of history's most secretive and suspenseful. elections. Jessica, welcome to Gone Medieval. Great to be here. You know, we have you here in very specific circumstances because it's one of those times when medieval history is as relevant as it can

possibly be. I don't want to say that it isn't usually, but this is really it. But, you know, we've got this papal conclave this week to elect the next head of the church. And I think that there is this tendency when you are presented with anything the papacy does to think that from time immemorial, this is how things happened. The church has always done things this way. And that's really, really not the case. Because, I mean, you can't even start thinking about how the papacy is appointed, how people are elected in the medieval period without talking about the initial foundations of the church. because, I mean, I guess you have to go right back to St. Peter. He's considered the first Pope.

And there's no election to get us, St. Peter, is there? Yeah, maybe a one-person election. He's a really good person, though. Yeah. Yeah. So it's fundamental to go back to St. Peter. The entire claim for the Bishop of Rome to be Pope, to be first among equal of all bishops,

head of the Catholic Church, perhaps even, you know, authority over emperors, kings and princes, even slightly in the temporal realm and very much in the temporal realm, in his own land. All of those claims go back to St. Peter. Peter is, according to the Gospel of St. Matthew, elected by Christ himself, to be the rock, the head of the church. And when he dies in Rome in the 60s, 60s of the first century, these 60s, he sets a precedent. He's established in Rome. His blood sort of steeps it with prestige. So all of the bishops that come after him gradually are considered to be the head of the entire church. How the bishops that come after him are actually selected varies. Many of them we don't know. Peter's immediate successor, Linus, is said to have been selected by Peter himself. But then we get into a process where there are lots of different modes. Some work. well, some work less well, and then the process is refined over centuries and centuries. So we have to start with Peter, but his election is far from typical.

I mean, here there is that issue that we end up having a lot of the time in the late Antique period or indeed the early medieval period where there just aren't great records. You know, perhaps people are being elected, I would think it's probably more likely that they're just being appointed, which is how most bishops get made. And I mean, I think also when we consider the state of Christianity at the time. You know, if you ask, you know, the patriarch of Constantinople, is the bishop of Rome the most important person in Christianity? They would say, you what? I don't even know what that means, you know. But it's part of this great myth-making that the papacy is so able to do is by having people like St. Peter. I suppose there's another

important saint that you have to mention whenever. you talk about papal appointments, and that is St. Fabian. And can you tell us how this particular Pope was selected? I think this is a perfect example, actually, for thinking about the legends that come to surround people once they've been made Pope. We have to remember that whether a Pope is selected by selection, by an emperor or by Cardinals or by the Pope that's gone before him, by election, by bishops, clergy, yeah, members of the church, all by acclamation. So people just shouting out, even during the funeral procession of a pope, it's happened in the 8th century, you know, make Gregory the pope. And that's a form of election by acclamation.

All of these are said to be guided by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit just finds different vessels through which to speak. But the election of Fabian is a really great example of the sort of miraculous element that comes into stories more explicitly because he was said to be, you know, he was a Roman nobleman, he came into town at 2.30s to see what was going on with the papal election. Nobody had him in mind. So say, slightly later historians, but a dove, the ultimate sign of the Holy Spirit, landed on his head and suddenly the Cardinals, bishops, clergy in Rome didn't have to worry because the Holy Spirit had made it very clear who was going to be Pope. And actually, he's a saint. And he was a good Pope. He had good relations with the emperor when there was persecution under the

next emperor. He was martyed and he started missions. So yeah, the Holy Spirit chose explicitly and chose very well in that circumstance. But we have to remember that even when it is, you know, a bunch of cardinals in a room, locked in a room or not locked in a room or clergy or, you know, a combination of the nobility and the clergy, all of these means were said to be a way in which the Holy Spirit was speaking. Some of them are just less poetic than a dove landing on somebody's head. I mean, I think a great job, Dove. Wonderful, wonderful work that you've done here. But it's interesting because I think that it's easy to kind of giggle at acclamation, and I'm doing it right now as a way of picking a Pope. But fundamentally, throughout this period,

we're really looking at a lot of popes who are appointed fundamentally by emperors. Whether that's the emperor of Constantinople or in some cases the exarchate of Ravenna, right, who is kind of controlling Rome for Constantinople at that point in time. We have this long period where these are political appointments like any other. And I think that we forget about that in amongst all of the divine inspiration of certain doves. Yeah, I think what we have to remember is that for so many people, yes, for the emperors who have an interesting controlling Rome, but also for the Roman people themselves, the local nobility in Rome and around Rome, who sat on the throne of St. Peter was really, really important. This is the period, certainly after the fourth century when the Emperor Constantine, so legitimizes the Christian church. And slowly as the Western Roman Empire crumbles, the Pope emerges as the sort of temple leader over Rome.

and then gradually the lands around Rome as well, people really care about who's Pope, because he's overseeing the city, but he's also becoming really politically important. So, yes, you have the emperors intervening with vetoes, pushing people onto the papal throne, getting involved with the election of anti-Poves, but you also have Roman noble families,

some of them in the medieval period like Gitea incredibly notorious of sort of heralding a period that's known as the pornography because it was so debauched, people having children with popes, you know, getting their favorite candidate elected by violence. And all of this starts very early on as soon as the Pabcy starts getting temporal power. In the fourth century even, 366, there's an election in which a local non-Christian noble says, make me the Pope and I'll become a Christian. You know, this is really worth having.

And in that election of the year, there are street factions fighting. There are people chucking tiles on the roof of the facility. more than 130 people die. So this is something really worth having. And it's also something really worth having an influence in. So so many people have a stake in this that politics inevitably becomes part of the story of papal elections very early on. I suppose to an extent, this is rather honest. It's just admitting that the papacy has a lot of temporal power, that there is rather a lot of money at stake. There are lands that need to be governed. It's not solely a spiritual calling that popes need. They also do need the political nows to run a huge area of land to know how to make

deals with other members of the nobility as well as the church to be able to interact with emperors as well. And I mean, I suppose in the following kingdoms, you know, the Austrogan also appoint people, you know, quite famously, you know, because they're attempting very hard when we get to the Roman successor states to still behave as Romans do. So like, oh, who appoints the Pope? Oh, the Emperor does. Oh, okay, well, we're kind of like the Emperor. All right. So here we go. This is the guy, you know. And Theodoric is out here picking popes just as much as they are over in Constantinople. And I don't know that it's necessarily a bad thing. You know, I think that we tend to kind of look down on this now. But I think that we tend to kind of look down on this now. But I I think it's just kind of a, I don't know, a medieval thing. I think it's actually even deeper than medieval. I think that it goes back to those roots with Peter. The power is tied to the land.

The spiritual authority that is the fundament of the entire church is tied to the patrimony of Peter. The very reason that the popes start building relationships with, you know, the Frankish kings and who become the Holy Roman emperors, then with their successes and other. that even members of the nobility is to protect this land on which their authority rests, they have to be tied to the city of Rome, which is why it becomes such a scandal when they start moving out to places like Avignon in the medieval period. It's seen to undermine their prestige because they're tied to Rome through St. Peter and he's the source of their authority. So I think it's honest and I think that the popes and the cardinals do try to get politics

sort of political maneuvering out of the process and even the gods say, look, we have to put limits on how much money people are spending, you know, how much, you know, fighting there is during these election processes. But the fact is there also is spiritual side to this, that the popes and Rome are kind of intrinsically intertwined. And so they have to protect the land and also keep their sort of pastoral responsibilities over the people that they've become past a fore, but also a ruler of because of historical circumstance. I mean, they also are so incredibly tied up with imperial authority, especially in the medieval period. In that, you know, by the time you get Charlemagne on the throne, we have this

direct back and forth between both popes and emperors, because this is the beginning of the idea that popes crowned emperors. And attentantly, if you asked any Carolingian, And they'd say, oh, yeah, and we appoint popes very quickly to stop anyone else from appointing them. You know, and we're seeing people like Charles the Fat having a turnaround of sort of a day to pick a new pope in order to get out in front of infighting and this political intrigue, which, of course, is its own form of political intrigue in and of itself. But this is incredibly dangerous if you control such a wealthy and important area. Yeah, I think that the consequences of these unclear and multifaceted modes of election, to put it very politely, are huge. And one of them is violence. If you have multiple people with a stake, multiple powerful people with a stake, you've often got Roman nobles like the Tiafilati, like the Creschenzi, having their candidate they want to put on the throne to protect their interests and also the direction they want the church to go in and whether they want reform, whether they don't want reform. And then you've got the emperor on the other side. side, you know, whether that be, you know, a Carolingian emperor, whether that be sort of Frederick Barbarossa later on, you've got these very powerful interests that ultimately clash in bloodshed

on the streets of Rome. And you have this simultaneous sort of enrichment and beautification of Rome with the Carolingian Renaissance and all of the consequences of the Pope's sort of new material wealth and sort of spiritual splendor, which you see in churches in Rome, Santa Preserde, for example, that you're sort of clustered in these sparkling mosaics and filled with the bones of martyrs of earlier centuries. I mean, this is the elevation of the church in full technicolor. But in the same time period, at least in the centuries afterwards, you're getting kind of sword fights inside outside because one candidate for the papacy is celebrating mass inside and the supporters of another candidate found out and said, you know, he's on our turf celebrating mass. We're going to go in and,

you know, and capture him. So it causes factions, which is, lead to anti-Poops. And again, this has an effect, a direct effect on the procedure of the paucs seed, not only because Pope's probably shouldn't be getting involved in brawls, but because if you have two popes, how can you have a direct line to St. Peter? How can we be sure? Who knows when it was really continued or where it was really broken? So one of the major problems with anti-pokes, yes, of course it's practical. Yes, it's problematic for administration. But all of this politicking, both in its nature and its consequences, start to dilute or at least muddy the prestige of the church,

which is about that line back to Peter. You've mentioned them tangentially a couple of times, but can you tell us a little bit about the Tiafalati and the Crescendi and who they are and why they are so involved in this era of people politicking? Yeah, so the Tiafalati are a family that have been made famous maybe through their detractors more than anything. And of course, a lot of these accounts, Louis Vuittano Cremona is incredibly politically charged. He's on the imperial side. He's trying to

please the man he at least wants to be his patron. So we have to take them with a pinch of salt. But the stories that come through certainly reflect an age of the papacy of people elections that was incredibly seedy. So you have mothers pushing their daughters to seduce cardinals, you know, who then become popes and then have children that then become popes. You have in this period, you know, one of the most striking stories in the 10th century of, you know, a Pope elected from amongst these families who has the prefect of Rome strapped to a donkey back to front, stripped, feathered, a bell is put around the donkey's neck. And it said charging through the streets of Rome to shame him for promoting arrival. Who's handed him over to the Pope, the emperor? So these very high-faluting,

powerful people are engaged in some really low tactics of kind of humiliation and manipulation. And this is really seen as an adair for the church, is a really low period, a period in which it seems that, you know, the Holy Spirit, anything beautiful is really gone and everything's been undermined by politics. And whilst things certainly recover, one could say, after this period of these noble families having a really dominant influence over and the character of elections and the actual elections of popes, these trends do continue into the later period. You know, political leaders are still interested in who becomes the Pope.

They might have cleaned up their act a little bit. Their methods might be a little bit more refined, not always. But, yeah, it's the same sorts of interest and often, not the Tiofalati, but some, you know, other families, the Orsini de Colonna. The same sorts of families persist in influencing people elections for centuries and centuries later. I mean, and these are the same families that end up driving the papacy out of Rome as well and into Avenue. You know, this kind of ongoing political violence doesn't end with this particular period. It's kind of, you know, comes and goes. I think it's one way to say it. We love Roman political

intrigue, don't we? Yes. But by 1059, I think everyone is at a point where they're like, yeah, this can't keep happening. We have to do something. to make us look like we're a little bit more in control. We have to get the papal ship righted, and we need to get ourselves looking holy again. So who is it that is really pushing these reforms at the time? So these reforms are about cleaning up the image of the church, but they're about something more fundamental as well.

They're about actually reforming the church in a way that makes it a holier institution and that is more independent from the emperors. And that's really crucial. You know, this is the period we're sort of running up to the investiture controversy where the popes and the emperors really go kind of nose to nose on who really has the supreme power. And it's in 1059 that we see the reform of people elections after a schism in which the Tiafalati and the Cresensi

have got their candidate on the papal throne. there's been a coup, there's been violence. And after this, we have Nicholas II elected when his side finally win. And he says, never again. We're getting politics out of papal elections. If only, well, maybe not for sort of history, if only it would have been true, but, you know, the kind of hopefulness of that moment. And he restricts the power of voting to the Cardinals. It's absolutely transformative for the Cardinals. It doesn't get politics out of paper elections. But before this, you know, if the Pope's the representative of Christ on earth, the Cardinals are kind of the representatives of disciples, but, you know, they've got lots of roles. It's kind of unclear. Now the Cardinals know exactly what they've got to do.

They are the sole electors of the Pope on paper, and they become extremely powerful. And we see sources, you know, telling us that even by the 12th century, you've got Cardinals saying to Poets, you know, you don't belong to yourself anymore. we made you. You were just a private person before. Now you're the head of the Universal Church. You know, don't you forget that? And then over centuries, you know, you have cardinals in conclave saying to popes, right, will elect you, but you have to do this once you become Pope.

And often the popes don't do that because once they're Pope, they can not do what they want, but they don't have to keep to their promises and pacts with Cardinals. But all of that politic in which we really see in the early modern period, has at least its sort of largest foundations in that transformation of the Cardinals' position in the medieval period. I think it's such an interesting point because in nominee-dominie,

as the papal bull is called at this point in time, is really trying to do this thing. They're saying, okay, we're transforming how this process works. It's not going to be political anymore, but of course what it ends up doing is creating a new political class, who are the Cardinals. And you can understand why, at this point in time, the church is more particularly interested in, I don't know, at least bringing that politics more directly into the clergy because, yeah, the papacy is eyeing up the imperial powers and the emperor is starting to be really powerful again.

You know, you don't want to go back to the days when those are the guys who are saying things. Yes, there's always all this mob violence. And granted, I wouldn't say that I think the creation of the College of Cardinals stops mob violence. violence, you know, quite to the contrary. But you can see the line of thought here. But I think unfortunately, it is just such a powerful position. I don't know. Everything is politics, right? You cannot ever take anything outside of it. It's a really great idea. But, you know, is it possible to ever have this be unpolitical? I would say no. I don't think so. I think that it changes the focus of the polish cooking and puts it in the hands of fewer people, which feels like it's going to be perhaps

inevitably more political if you're then dealing one-on-one with cardinals who have their own family interests, who have their own ideas about how the church should be reforming, not reforming the direction it should go into. And I think perhaps maybe it's too grand a statement, but maybe we're all more easily manipulated on an individual basis, right? So yeah, I can see the thinking, but the Politicking goes on. There are factions, there are anti-Popes, Cunnels are dealing with spies, influences, ambassadors all around the time of the conclave. We get delayed conclaves, we get schisms still. So no, the old problems are still there. The situation is always political and not to jump forward too dramatically in the centuries,

but I thought this when we've got Macron going to the Vatican to talk to the Pope about the war in Ukraine. and you think, well, what is the president of a secular republic doing, going to the Vatican to a man who really has no temporal power beyond the walls of the Vatican to intervene? You know, in an increasingly secular West, well, because there is a huge amount of prestige there that somehow, in a way that is very difficult to define the edges of I've tried many times, somehow still persists. And certainly in the medieval period when there were many more believers in Europe, yeah, they had a lot of clout and people still wanted to have the benefit of that influence. So I don't think it's possible to take politics out of the papacy, which is perhaps a shame for the church.

Yeah, I mean, God love them. They sure do try, right? I'm speaking of these things as though they don't know. But, you know, by 1179, we've got the third Lateran Council who realizes that the process needs further refinement. Can you tell us a little bit about what they were attempting to ensure at that point? Yeah. So you have an attempt there to deal with one of the consequences of putting the decision in the Cardinals' hands, which is factions and antipopes caused by split interests in the conclave. So you have one group of Cardinals who are made. be on the imperial side, because of course they're still involved, one set of cardinals who are on the

side of anti-imperial side or some other side. Everything gets very drawn out. And you get contested candidates. So what happens in 1179 is you get the foundation of a rule that says, okay, anyone who wins needs a two-thirds majority. That aims to ensure that any rival candidate would have to win, I mean, a huge chunk of the supporters of the winning candidate in order to say, I have a real claim. And what they're trying to stop there is exactly what we discussed earlier. The administrative and practical consequences of having rival papacy, so blood on the streets of Rome and elsewhere and chaos in the church,

but also the undermining of the papal prestige that comes when you have two, I'm those three people saying, I'm the Pope, no, I'm the Pope, I'm the Pope. He's not the Pope, you know, and sometimes being absolutely unwilling to give up their claim, you know, even when asked by emperors, the aim of that two-thirds majority, which is one of the things that persist to today, was to undermine the consequences of factualism, to make it very hard for there to be a serious anti-Pope, meaning somebody who says to the Pope, but in the end, it's been decided that they're not. But then, of course, this just leads to a new problem, right, because it's very difficult to get two-thirds of the cardals to agree on. anything, which is how we end up getting to the emergence of the conclave, right? Because conclave comes from cum clave, which means with the key. And it means that they are locking these guys up in a room and saying sort it out because it can take absolutely ages to get two thirds of the cardinals to agree on anything else. Yeah. And the conclave or election that that

process emerged from in the late 1260s running on into the early 1270s was nearly three years long and so something needed to be done. This has been tried before. So in the 1240s, a Roman senator locked the Cardinals into a really horrible decrepit palace in Rome with kind of leaking loos and really substandard facilities in order to speed up the election and they elected somebody who didn't last for very long. Maybe that was deliberate, maybe it wasn't, but they wanted to wanted to get out, you know, people were getting really sick. And so there was some practical aspects of the conclave that could be, or the election process, that could be adjusted to try and speed up the process. So the election that we're talking about, this is the beginning

of the conclave process, takes ways in the turbo. I think it's something we can often forget now because we associate elections so much with the Vatican Hill, the Sistine Chapel, you know, that's a sort of renaissance splendor of the process that we see so often, you know, in TV series and films, but conclates took place in the medieval period and before, wherever the last Pope died, or wherever his court was. So often that's in places like Viterbo, could be in Perugia. I think one of the last ones that took place outside of Rome was in the 18th century in Venice, because the French were in Rome, and poor Pope was crowned with a papio-mache tiara. So when there are problems in Rome, the Pope needs to move out, and that's where the conclave would take place. It happened in Viterbo, and it took so long because

of factions. So you have lots of French cardinals by this point. There have been lots of French popes. So you have lots of French cardinals and they want to support the interests of of the French who are trying to gain more power in Italy. And then you have the Italians who don't want the French to have interest and what other things as well. So it gets incredibly drawn out. Three cardinals die in the process. It's long. It's unpleasant. It's arduous. And so somebody, maybe some of the Cardinals, probably the magistrates and local people of Viterbo, maybe the French royals, said, lock them in, reduce their food, take the roof off, just get them to take a decision. There are some amazing stories, some of them painfully difficult to corroborate, but really

illustrative of how long drawn out and frustrating this conclave was. I mean, there's one story of ahead of a religious order coming to Viterbo to tell them to hurry up, and then having to flee because they try to elect him. There's a sense just wanting to find anybody who's agreeable. And they try different methods. They say, you know, let's set up a committee and have a candidate by compromise. And let's look outside of our ranks. You know, let's look outside of the cardinal.

And so it's a desperate situation which shows up all of the problems that the church is facing with paper elections over this period. Political involvement, factions amongst cardinals, the possibility of having two candidates, you know, with a strong claim and backing from maybe local and foreign political powers. And so, yeah, after that conclave, they say never again. And Gregory the 10th puts in some new rules, which really, yeah, established the conclave as we know it. Yeah, Big Greg, right? We love him. I always say that actually when I think about papal elections, this is sort of where my brain kicks in,

which also shows me up to be a late medievalist fundamentally. but in 1274 we get Ubi Periculum and that establishes how the format of conclaves is going to work because it seems that Gregory the 10th kind of agrees that these guys need some outside pressure in order to come up with ideas. Divine inspiration is not enough at this point in time. There has to be some kind of desperation added into the works. Yeah. It's interesting you say that.

And one of the really tasty quotes that comes out of the sources is that there is a Cardinal John of Toledo who says, take the roof off, let the Holy Spirit in. So there's a divine element in some people's eyes. But yeah, I think most of this is practical. So no one can leave unless they're sick. You're only allowed a couple of servants. How awful. Oh, no. But these are old men. I mean, some of them are really, a lot of them are in their 60s, which I think is old for the medieval period, but some of them are older. And they're living in a shared living space with no interior walls. They have restricted rations. So if they don't elect a pope, they get their rations reduced to one meal a day after three days. I think after a week or eight days, it's then bread, wine and water. They need to still have wine. No decisions are going to be made.

But these are very practical pressures that stop the cardinals from feeling like they have the leisure. to discuss, to dispute. I mean, the beginning of the Viterbo election, they're voting once a day, they're going back to their residences, they may be meeting with people. They shouldn't be meeting with in discussing politics, which is also bad now. So there are several aspects to this, both practical and, yeah, also political. And I suppose it's a practical as well. If you're locked up, you're going to come to a decision more quickly. And if you're locked up, then hopefully ambassadors, spies, your rulers themselves can't come and put pressure on. on you to vote in a particular way.

So does this hold as a system? You know, has Gregory cracked the code at this point in time? Some level of secrecy and being cut off holds. And it's perhaps even stronger now than it was in the medieval and early modern period. I mean, the Vatican is secured, you know, sweet for bugs. There are, you know, the Wi-Fi shut off. things are very closed now, so we can definitely see that today. But yeah, people get in. I mean, in one 14th century conclave, there's a Roman rabble outside crying out that they want, you know,

an Italian pope, preferably a Roman, or they're going to cut up the Cardinals. They break through the walls of St. Peter's and they get inside and ransack the place. So you can seal it, you can put the pressure on, but those influences are still going to get in, whether they're in the form of representatives of monarchs disguised as servants, spies, you know, who are checking on the Cardinals what they're doing and what they're discussing, or ordinary people who are breaking down the doors to make themselves heard, they're going to get in somehow. Yeah, I mean, I think it's cute. Like, you can make all the papal law you want. You know, quite famously Boniface the 8th gets Ubi Periculum into canon law by the 13th century.

But as you mentioned, like, this is how you get the Western. schism, right? Because I think that people tend to think that everyone was just being a bit silly and isn't it odd to have a Pope and a Pope in Rome fighting with each other. But the French Cardinals maintained that they were being threatened by the mob in Rome who were demanding an Italian Pope. And they feared for their lives and just picked the closest Italian. He wasn't Roman, which the Romans didn't notice at the time. You know, he was from Naples. But they elect this guy and just get out of Dodge because it's too dangerous for them. So now suddenly they're saying, well, this can't be a legitimate election because we were in fear for our lives. And I think it's quite interesting because now we go, isn't that quite silly? But I don't think it is silly. I actually, I've always been Team Avenue on this because I'm like, I don't think that's great to threaten the lives of people to get the guy you want. I don't know.

Yeah, I think one of the problems for Team Aveniore is that they quickly get into league or at least get protection from some of Urban the Sixth, the elected Pope's enemies. And then they get criticized by really fiery, sort of brilliant critics of the papacy at the time, or at least the carlin at the time, like Catherine of Siana, who, you know, calls them all cowardly knights who are columns worse than straw. And throughout this period, there are many critics of these practices, of the decision that people are making, that the Cardinals are making. And I think a lot of this, again, comes from the fact that you've got, yes, people have got a political stake in the papacy. You've got, you know, ordinary people who want a ruler of Rome that they can trust, who want the papacy to actually be in Rome as it's meant to be. And you've also got people who see this as really damaging the prestige of the church, which is a kind of, It's not just worldly prestige. This is a spiritual prestige.

If the Pope is supposed to be Christ representative on earth, you can't treat him this way. You can't elect him and abandon him. And you certainly can't elect another one in Avignon or Pisa. What have these things got to do with the papacy? The papacy is about Rome. So there's a real concern about this that we, you know, we see from Catherine Siena, Bridget of Sweden, but also, you know, Dante, Petra, who are tearing strips of the Cardinals,

strips of the papacy for actually undermining the spiritual standing and character of the church. Oh yeah, absolutely. And, you know, in terms of my sphere of work, this is when the host sides are like, yeah, okay, we're going to go, right? Because if you're saying that there are all of these popes, then how do you keep breakaway Christian factions from saying that this is clearly a mess, right? because it's not just that you have Avignon in Rome, you then also get the Pisan Pope for a while, right? Yeah, exactly. And you get popes refusing to stand down, you know,

and dying as Pope, as anti-Pope. And then, even worse for the Cardinals in the church, you know, the schism isn't resolved by the Cardinals. It's handed over to a Council of Bishops. And this haunts the papacy going right into the early modern period. You know, if bishops, if a council of bishops, not the Cardinals can choose the Pope when who has superior authority. And these things sound really technical, but they're very practical and important for the church.

You know, you have poets who are Cardinals plotting against them. And, you know, 1517, there's a plot against Leo the 10th. And he has to flood the congregation with new Cardinals in order to kind of dilute the Cardinals. So these things have real impact for the popes, the Church. and all the people who have to live in Rome around this and live in the papal states. Yeah, it's not just a technical problem. Yeah, I think that that's a really important point because obviously, you know, now with the slightly diminished power of the papacy,

I think that we forget that this is essentially a state, you know, and it's a state that is involved in every kingdom in Europe at the time. They are the heads of a massive leap. body that needs to be considered. So it is, you know, this important. It is a huge structure that needs this rigidity in order to continue to function. Otherwise, it doesn't make any sense that they're promulgating law, which they are, very important law. And I think also, I mean, the entire reason that the Pope is still ahead of state today is because the Pope needs a state in order to be independent. If the Pope doesn't have a state, then the Pope's boss isn't God. It's

Georgia Maloney, you know, the Pope needs to be a sovereign in order to have that independence that they've, you know, by tooth and nail, clawed together over centuries. So it seems paradoxical, but in order to protect the kind of spiritual integrity of the church, the Pope needs to be involved in politics. The Pope needs to defend his lands. And yeah, it's why we get these brilliant figures straying a little bit out of the medieval period, but like Julius II, the warrior Pope, who's hugely criticized, probably by Erasmus, you know, for turning up at the gates of heaven in blood-stained armour, slightly drunk, you know. But Julie Suisse, I think, not to speak for him.

I'm actually defending the independence of the church by defending the lands of the church in the Italian wars. You want to hand all of this over? Well, fine, but you're going to have Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, running the church, as he'd no doubt love to do. So, you know, it's the tie between the political and the spirit, I think can make us cynical, it can make us uncomfortable, but it's actually integral. And the Vatican state is the neatest solution, you know, this tiny land that nobody's really worried

about, but it gives the Pope total independence. But obviously, that's many centuries down the line at this point. It's at this point when we get into the early modern period that we start getting all of the traditions that we're incredibly familiar with, for example, holding the conclave in the Sistine Chapel. So when does this era begin? So when the papacy's return to Rome after the schism, you start getting conclaves much, much, much more regularly in Rome. At first, there are at other places in Rome, so the Church of Santa Maria-Sopra Minerva, and then on the Vatican Hill, either in the Apostolic Palace or St. Peter's. So the Sistine Chapel is not built until the 1470s, consecrated in 1480s. And we see the first conclate in the Sistine Chapel in the 16th,

in 1492. But it flits around the area of the apostolic palace and the Sistine Chapel. You know, the Cardinals are in their cells of sort of three to four meters square and there are more and more cardinals so they're spilling out into the corridors. Sometimes they're doing voting in the Pauline Chapel or doing their voting, you know, in the Apostolic Palace. But it's in the safety of the Vatican Hill. But we also see conclaves that happen outside of the Vatican area. So up on the Quirinale Hill, much nicer, particularly in the summer. Nice air, not down by the river, not so dangerous for lots of, you know, old men in quite enclosed surroundings, much more pleasant. But then they moved, yeah, down to the Vatican where it's seen as slightly safer and they stay there

quite consistently. There are conclates that occur outside of the Vatican and even Rome, like the one in Venice that I mentioned earlier, but they're really exceptional. And yeah, in the modern period, conclaves have more or less always taken place in the Sistine Chapel, although the Cardinals don't have the sleep there or in the corridors around there. They're up in the Casa Santo Matta, which is a proper dormitory, where the last pope actually lived. So things are a bit more pleasant, I think, now. You know, let them have some comforts, I say. Yeah, they act a bit more quickly nowadays. So, you know, we have this process that is now

in place. And here you go. You've got to go to the conclave. in the Sistine Chapel, wonderful, wonderful. But this is also the period when you get the Borgias and the Medici's, and they have this incredible influence on papal elections. So it seems to me, like, the system isn't always respected. Yeah, I think so. I think we can definitely say that.

I think that, you know, the papal lands, as we've talked about them, the papal states, which kind of swayed across Italy at this time. They're a blessing in terms of independence. There are curse in the fact that you have to defend them. And they're also a curse in the fact that they make people hungry for a position in the church. The other thing about papacy that I think it makes it so unique is that every Pope is a new dynasty. Every Pope brings a fresh opportunity for outside rulers to lobby, to get influence, their nationality can help.

but also all their friends and relatives come flocking to Rome, wanting to benefit from it. And the Borgias, I think, look, I'm not saying that we need to kind of sanctify the Borgias, but they're more typical than I think perhaps some people think. You know, there really is a black legend about them that, you know, Rodrigo Borgias is trying to help his family in the brief time that he's got. And I'm not in any way condoning his behavior. But this was something that was characteristic of the Paisy and right throughout to the late early modern period, and say sort of the 1600s, 1700s, there are laws trying to get this aspect of politics or of sort of worldly affairs out of the papacy that people are using it to enrich their family in the time

that they've got. Not every pope, to be clear, but lots of them, and particularly when they're tied to these border dynasties like the Medici. I think it's quite illustrative that Leo the 10th, I think, was the last non-priest to be made pope, but he, was made a cardinal when he was 13. So I think that sometimes anecdotes can speak much more loudly than critical analysis. So I'll let that one stay on its own. I just, the very idea, it just, it makes me giggled. Some 13-year-old kid with this level of influence is just very funny to me.

But it's this period too that is quite interesting because that's when we start really seeing, you know, Protestantism. crop up, you know, and you can really understand, I think, when you look at this era, what people are on about, you know, why they're saying, okay, I'm not sure the PPC is the best system. But still, as you say, it makes sense. You know, it makes sense that if you are someone who has a big family that you want to see succeed, and especially in the hyperaccumulationist world of the early modern period, you get why things are kind of like going off the rails and why everybody wants a lot more money because that's just what's going on in the Renaissance. You know, everybody thinks about the art. Nobody thinks about the banking.

Paying for all with the art and lending a lot of money to the popes. And yeah, I think that the kind of curse of the church is that, you know, its job is to save souls. But in order to do that on an increasingly global scale as we get towards throughout the medieval period and then goes into turbo charge in the early modern period. It has to be an institution. And that comes with all of these things that seem kind of inimical saving souls sometimes, you know, power, lust for power, competition, you know, bribery factions. A lot of these people obviously thought what they were doing was good for the church. So lobbying for a particular candidate, they weren't necessarily always thinking about worldly concerns. They were thinking about the direction of the church

and what was going to be best for its survival within the world. So, yeah, it's a problem that perhaps follows the church to this day. Again, I think the church's decreased direct political influence on the world has been a blessing for its survival. And I think also that's another thing that I would add. It has survived. So, yeah, okay, Luther, maybe some of your criticisms of the church and Rome were valid. But show me a better system for running an organization

with this huge responsibility and souls turning to it across the globe. It's not perfect, but it persists. It's arguably the longest lasting institution of the same character of any in the world. I couldn't agree more. And I mean, I suppose it's one of those things that it's quite funny is that people love to look at Luther and his condemnation of the particular indulgences that were being sold at the time. And they don't connect it with the fact that that's what pays for the Sistine Chapel,

which everybody loves. We all agree that the Sistine Chapel is really great. But, well, yeah, okay, that's cute. But how are you going to pay for it? And the answer was indulgences. And there's this kind of disconnect between what it means to create these institutions and these places where we have these powerful displays. And the fact that, yeah, that costs money, right?

I think there's also a religious aspect to it as well. I mean, you wouldn't balk, I think, at somebody giving money, you know, for a good cause, you know, for a charitable cause. Well, for most of, you know, the existence of Rome, you know, in the medieval and early modern period, you know, praying to God, worship, you know, all the other things that come along with the church, arms giving. You need churches for that. So we think of the Sistine Chapel as a beautiful place to go and, you know, look at McElanillo's work and the work of all these Renaissance masters, but the Sistine Chapel, the Basilica of St. Peter's, These are places that were seen as necessary for ordinary people to practice their religion,

to do the things that they wanted to do, to save their souls as they had the firm conviction, you know, as far as we can ever know, you know, that would help them to do that. And for them, you know, this would have been presumably like giving money to any good cause. You know, it was not that they thought that they were having to hand over money to aggrandize some prince who called himself the No, they were paying for the building of a church that they would, you know, hope and pray maybe to go on pilgrimage and pray at themselves. So just to kind of bring us back to this day and age, in what ways are we going to see or not see? What differences we have from medieval conclaves? And, you know, what survived, I suppose, from the Middle Ages and what would be completely unrecognizable?

if we found a 13th century cardinal and made him have a look at the conclave. So two-thirds majority, they've got to get it. Secrecy. Again, perhaps more so than ever before do we have secrecy. I mean, I'd like to see a spy try to get through these Swiss guards

at the Fortesendana to get in and spy on these cardinals. I mean, they're locked in, they have fewer attendants, the place is swept for bugs, the Wi-Fi shut off. I mean, being sealed in is absolutely a part of there's also a period of weight. So we were just coming to the end of that. It was shorter earlier, I think 10 days with Ubi Periculum. And now it's kind of 15 to 20. I've been thinking a lot about

why that is because I think, well, medieval period takes a lot longer to get around. But now, one of the most famous things about Francis is you've got Carmel's coming from everywhere. And it takes time. And it's been Easter. So yeah, they need their 15 to 20 days, perhaps. Lots of the offices cease function. So everything kind of shuts down. Again, that comes from the medieval time. Thinking about what's different, they don't have to sleep anywhere near the Sistine Chapel. They're up in the Doma Sanctiata. It's within the kind of Vatican complex, but it's a place that's actually set up, not a four-meter-square-square-hut with a chair-a-loo and a piece of Mazza pan to eat or, you know, whatever they were getting in earlier periods. Yeah, and we are also

going to see a media tension that obviously wasn't possible in the world. medieval period. I know that sounds silly and maybe, you know, you think, well, what does that matter? Because these media outlets, maybe they're superficially concerned with who's going to be the Pope, but they're probably not believers. But I think, you know, that pressure of everybody watching, which you wouldn't have it in the medieval period, right? You could probably elect a Pope that could die and you could have another one and, you know, people would find out even later. It might just possibly speed things up. Even if the world looking on from outside is increasingly safe. secular doesn't look good if the church takes too long to elect a pope. So I think that's an aspect

of it again, a bit like to travel that it's hard to work out. You know, how different is this? You know, there's always been pressure. There's always been interest. It takes on a different tone. And I think the last thing I would say is there are so many cardinals and there are 135. I think of the, you know, the Vittabo election, there were, you know, 20 or so, you know, less than 20. and they couldn't make a decision. There are a lot, a lot of cardinals. And some people have said, I mean, you know, goodness knows what the motivations were. You know, certainly there was this idea of France is making the church more global in how it's represented

because the church is, you know, incredibly global. It's now majority outside of Europe. But others say more cynically, he was trying to stop factionalism in the conclave because these carmals, they don't know each other. You know, they've never met. They're, you know, on different sides of the world. So there are a lot of cardinals. And so maybe we'll see the return of factions or delays. But yeah, we're not going to know about many of these things or any of them because it is, yeah, more secret perhaps than ever before.

It's so interesting, isn't it? Because I think you're bang on that there's still this pressure that we have from the medieval period of this desire to come to some decision quickly in order to prove that the church is still a relevant. structure. And perhaps there's more pressure now. You know, when you don't have all of Europe united in saying this is somebody that we really believe in, that we really believe is going to be God's representative on earth, that there are many people all over the world who believe that. And so to an extent in an increasingly secular age, the politics is once again really at before, I would argue. There are two really interesting aspects of that. One is this question that rings around in my head a lot is, why does everyone care so much? I mean, I care, of course.

Yeah, we're allowed to care. Yeah, we're allowed to care. But why? If you don't believe that this person is the representative of Christ on earth, why do you care so much who it is? And then the other aspect of this, and I think the answer to that question has something to do with this residual prestige that the papacy has, kind of in spite of everything. Of course, one logical answer is, well, you know, he oversees a child. of, you know, nearly two billion people. So he has a lot of influence. But, yeah, I think there's something more than that. I think that, you know, there's a reason why state leaders still go to the

Pope and why even Donald Trump, you know, seems like he wanted the Pope to like him. You know, he wanted that meeting to go better than it did. And then the other side of it is maybe the world, and this isn't any kind of criticism, you know, they expect people to be one around being people experts. But it's, I think that people find it more difficult than ever to understand the conclave and what's going on. One sees a lot of people talking about, you know, left-wing cardinals, right-wing cardinals, this man is the successor to Francis, doesn't work like that. You know, a lot of the candidates who would be seen as progressive, for example, being the first African pope, they're not progressive, as we understand it. You know, so right and left doesn't work. And also,

I mean, the tradition is enter the conclave, a pope, leave a cardinal. If you're seen as a shoe-in, you're probably not going to be Pope. So perhaps the world is looking on with more pairs of eyes, you know, up to date than ever before. But perhaps that the understanding of how these things work and how the church functions is less and less. So, yeah, there's a tension there between persistent interests and maybe a world on a papacy that are getting more and more out of step, at least in terms of mutual understanding. That's interesting because I think to an extent that's also what we want of the papacy. I think non-Catholics are interested in it because they like the tradition.

They like the kind of pomp and the ceremony, which I think is also quite funny because those are the things that the church was accused of, which is how you get Protestants. There's this strange tension in our secular society between what it wants of the church. and what the church means to actual believers, I think. You know, even if you don't think someday you're going to go on pilgrimage to see the Sistine Chapel, I think it's incredibly common to wish to go to the Sistine Chapel someday. I think it's a really interesting point because I would argue that there was a tension between what people want of the church and what people want of the church.

They want the church to be both traditional and to speak to the modern world. And I think that's the problem. The biggest problem on the Cardinals' hands, perhaps, if I made Dane to say that, you know, I had a friend send me a text message out of the blue a few days ago. When did they get rid of the people's Tiara? I think it was, you know, in the 60s, 70s of Paul the 6th. I don't know. Oh, it's such a shame, you know.

And it's seen as this maybe a broader denigration or erosion of tradition that somehow people find precious. maybe in a cultural sense, maybe in a sense that, yeah, we can't fully, fully define. But then on the other hand, one of the things I thought was so interesting about Francis's papacy was that whenever he said something that seemed to speak to the modern world or to modern sensibilities, they deviating from the kind of moral tradition of the church in some respects. It was often picked up by media and praised, or people were really happy were saying that, even if they're never going to step foot in a Catholic church.

It's great that, you know, he says this or, you know, he thinks that. I think on the other hand, he had lots of very traditional messages, you know, like help the poor, you know, love one another. But yeah, there's definitely, I think, a tension between what the world is calling the next Pope to do. So good luck, Cardinals. I think perhaps the most medieval thing about this papal ceremony is the pressure and the politics, right? You're never going to get rid of that. There's no possibility of having a papal con. enclave that isn't highly pressurized and essentially political, I suppose.

Yeah, yeah. As I said, I think it is, it's a shame in one way, but yeah, you can't be the institution to whom so many millions of people term without being an institution. And so I can't see that changing. Jessica, this has been such a delight. Thank you so much for coming on and talking about papal politics with me. I've loved it. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks to Jessica Von Bark and to you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit.

If you can draw your eyes away from the scenes unfolding in St. Peter's Square in the next few days, there's plenty more intriguing church history in our back catalog to delve into, including our look at Pope Joan. Did a woman really rise to become Pope and give birth during a procession? Or Matt's episode on the rise of Christianity. Or if you are interested in the investiture controversy, check out my episode with Dr. Felicity Hill. Do go back and find them.

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and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.