The Conclave: A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally Bloody History of Papal Elections (4 page)

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relented and in 358 allowed Liberius to return, on condition that he would share the episcopal authority with his rival. It was a compromise that was unlikely to work, and it didn’t. Anti-Felix demonstrations continued and he was driven from the city, settl- ing on an estate on the via Portuensis in the south-west of Rome. But he, or his followers, were discontented with their humbler role. He attempted a comeback, seizing the basilica built across the Tiber from the imperial heart of Rome by Pope Julius – probably what is now the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere: it was the nearest important church to the place where he had taken refuge. He did not, however, hold it long. He and his followers were driven out and peace was restored.

Felix continued to claim the title of bishop right up to his death, and out on the via Portuensis he had a following of both priests and people. At his death in November 365, Liberius, who was ensconced in the Lateran basilica, the first of the churches which the Emperor Constantine had founded after his adoption of Christianity, made an e
ff
ort to integrate Felix’s followers into his own clergy. And then Liberius himself died. His own candidate for the succession was the deacon Damasus.

Damasus had something of a shady history. Professing loyalty to Liberius, he had gone with him into exile in 355 but had not fan- cied a prolonged stay in Thrace. He returned promptly to Rome and threw in his lot with Felix. Liberius the conciliator received him back into favor on his return, but there were people in the city who still resented what they saw as an act of treachery. When Damasus was proposed as pope his enemies rallied behind another of Liberius’s deacons, Ursinus; seized the basilica in Trastevere; and there elected Ursinus as pope. Damasus, on the other hand, was elected by members of his own party in a parish church where San Lorenzo in Lucina now stands. But it was not just the election which made someone bishop, it was also the act of consecration. Who was elected first was a matter of dispute, but there was no doubt that Ursinus was consecrated first. The act of consecration

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The Conclave

infuriated Damasus’s followers. They stormed the basilica occupied by Ursinus and his supporters and captured it for the party of Damasus – but only after three days of fighting and much blood- shed. Damasus then had himself consecrated in the episcopal church of Rome, the Lateran basilica, and Ursinus and two of his deacons were expelled from Rome by the civil authorities. Seven priests from among Ursinus’s supporters were arrested and imprisoned.

They did not stay long in detention. As soon as they were released they, and other followers of Ursinus, seized control of the basilica built by Liberius – which was probably near, if not actually on the site of, the present church of Santa Maria Maggiore. Again fighting broke out as Damasus’s men battled for control of the Liberian basilica. They won – but at the cost, says the pagan histor- ian Ammianus Marcellinus, of 137 dead. Never before, or indeed ever since, had there been quite so much death and destruction surrounding the election of a pope, and it was not quite over.

These riots took place at the end of September and the begin- ning of October 366. A year later Ursinus was allowed back into Rome, but violence again broke out. The would-be pope was hustled away. His supporters, however, managed to capture the supposed tomb of St. Agnes, which lay on the via Nomentana. Once more Damasus’s men went into action. Once again many died. But this time the imperial authorities lost patience. They banned fractious meetings within an area bounded by the twentieth milestone on the roads out of the city, and Damasus was left in charge of the see of Rome.

Though he proved to be a very e
ff
ective pope, his troubles were not yet over. Ursinus and his followers went north and appear to have allied themselves with the Arian heretics in Milan. When a convert Jew called Isaac took Damasus to court in 374 (the charges against the pope are unclear, though he may have accused him of adultery), Ursinus took advantage of Damasus’s discomforture to agitate for the removal of the ban against him coming to Rome.

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Damasus was cleared of the charges, Ursinus’s followers were dispersed, and he himself was exiled to Cologne. Nevertheless he eventually made his way back to Northern Italy and in 381 attempted to intervene in the Council of Aquileia which met to discuss, and condemn, Arianism. The bishops attending the Council complained to the emperor that Ursinus was interfering.

At the death of Damasus on 11 December 384 Ursinus re- emerged, putting himself forward yet again as a candidate for the bishopric of Rome. However, Siricius, who had been a deacon under Damasus, was unanimously elected as pope – as a letter from a relieved emperor to the Prefect of Rome reveals.

With the exception of the election of Damasus, there were no complications in the election to the papacy for a century after Constantine. Roman priest or deacon followed Roman priest or deacon. Damasus himself had been the son of a prominent Roman clergyman; Innocent I, elected in December 401, was even said to be the son of his predecessor, Anastasius I, who was elected in November 399, though the sonship was probably spiritual. Pope Innocent’s father’s name is also given as Innocent.

The pattern of the fourth century was, for the most part, repeated in the fifth, except for the pontificate of Zosimus. Zosimus was elected in March 417, on the death of Innocent I. He was not a Roman but a Greek, and perhaps of Jewish descent – his father was called Abraham. He ruled the church in Rome for less than two years, dying at Christmas 418, but his imperious manner won him few friends. The clergy of Rome complained about him to the imperial court at Ravenna, and though Zosimus appears to have won his case against his critics, his last months were filled with intrigue. A plot was hatched to elect a successor as soon as he was dead.

His death occurred on 26 December. The following day the priest Eulalius (possibly, like Zosimus, a Greek) barricaded himself inside the Lateran basilica with his supporters and proceeded to an election. That was a Friday, and the consecration of a Bishop of

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Rome traditionally took place on a Sunday, so the newly elected Eulalius stayed put until he was made a bishop in the approved manner by the Bishop of Ostia.

However closely Eulalius stuck to the letter of the law, it is evident from the haste in which he procured his election as Bishop of Rome that he did not feel confident in achieving the o
ffi
ce by following the normal processes with more circumspection. If he was a Greek that would not be surprising, following the Roman clergy’s problems with Zosimus. The majority of the priests of the city were indeed opposed to Eulalius, and on 28 December, one day after Eulalius’s election, they chose Boniface as their bishop. He was elected in the now unknown basilica of Theodora and con- secrated the following day in the church of St. Marcellus, from whence he was taken, not to the cathedral of Rome, because the Lateran was occupied by Eulalius, but to St. Peter’s.

Boniface was an obvious candidate. He was a priest and the son of a priest. He had held important posts in the church of Rome, serving as Pope Innocent’s representative to the imperial court at Constantinople – though without much to show for his diplomatic endeavors. By the time of his election he was old and in poor health, but nevertheless had the support of the majority of the priests of the city. They admired him, it was recorded, for his learning – and perhaps because he was Roman born. He had, how- ever, been elected the day after Eulalius, which gave his rival the edge.

He also had the support of the prefect of the city, the pagan Symmachus. Symmachus duly reported all these doings to the Emperor Honorius in Ravenna, where the capital had been moved out of danger, as Honorius hoped, from invading barbarians. He came down firmly in favor of Eulalius and ordered Boniface to be expelled from Rome. Boniface obediently withdrew into the suburbs, while Eulalius celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany in St. Peter’s, the basilica Boniface had been forced to abandon. Boniface’s supporters were outraged. They complained to the

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emperor that Symmachus was biased (which he was) and Honorius agreed that the two contenders should meet at Ravenna to settle the matter. But the matter remained unsettled at Ravenna and another gathering was arranged for Whitsuntide in Spoleto. Mean- while, Honorius ordered both claimants to keep out of Rome, where riots had broken out.

Boniface obeyed, but Eulalius did not, which was a mistake. No doubt thinking to impress himself on the Roman populace, he returned to the city intending to carry out the Easter ceremonies in the Lateran. He seized it on Holy Saturday, 26 March, but after something of a struggle was thrown out by the civil authorities and detained by them outside Rome. Honorius by this time had tired of the controversy. He ordered Boniface to be recognized as pope and allowed back into Rome. Eulalius seems to have been granted a diocese elsewhere in Italy, and there is even a hint that when Boniface died on 4 September 422 there were some in the city who wanted Eulalius back – but there is no evidence that he tried once more to claim the papacy. Archdeacon Celestine was elected a week later in the customary fashion.

So Eulalius is listed among the antipopes. This is a little hard on him. Clearly there was more than a hint of skulduggery in his rushed election. But he was certainly elected before Boniface, and then consecrated on the same day as Boniface in the proper church by the proper bishop. What was most significant about the whole a
ff
air, however, was that the claim of Boniface to be the rightful bishop of Rome was not simply endorsed, but positively decided, by the emperor. Boniface himself, when seriously ill in 420, wrote to the emperor asking him to ensure that when a new election was needed he would maintain the peace in Rome. In his response Honorius went further and decreed that if two people were elected, both should be ruled out and the civil authorities would recognize only a bishop who had been unanimously elected. He also banned election intrigues. Although in the eyes of churchmen all this went far beyond legitimate imperial authority, the decree entered the

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law of the Church. In practice it remained a dead letter, but it was a hint of things to come.

For the moment, however, papal elections proceeded without major problems. There were a few oddities, such as the rather long vacancies when Celestine I and his successor Sixtus III died, but there was no suggestion of anything untoward. The deacon Leo was in Gaul on a papal mission when he was elected in August 440 and was not consecrated until mid-September. The Bishops of Rome continued to be priests or deacons in the city in the approved fashion, though Hilarus (elected in 461) was originally from Sardinia, and Felix III (elected in 483) was not only, like Boniface, the son of a priest, but had even been married. By the time of his election he was a widower with at least two children, from one of whom the future Pope Gregory I was descended, providing thereby the merest hint of a dynastic papacy.

Felix and his successor Gelasius (pope from 492 to 496) had a particular problem with Zeno, emperor in Constantinople. Zeno was faced with a serious theological dispute in the Eastern Church over the person of Christ. In an attempt to reconcile the war- ring parties he produced a compromise formula known as the
Henotikon
. Felix regarded the
Henotikon
as thoroughly heretical and eventually excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople for accepting it. Gelasius, who had been Felix’s archdeacon and was responsible for many of his policies, refused to rescind the excommunication, which brought him into head-on collision with the new emperor in Constantinople, Anastasius. Gelasius’s own successor as Bishop of Rome – also called Anastasius, the second ponti
ff
of that name – did not deny the heresy, but adopted a more conciliatory approach. It did not go down at all well. The
Liber Pontificalis
, or “Book of the Popes,” a biographical history of the popes begun in the first half of the sixth century but containing much reliable earlier material, records the controversy. “Many priest and deacons removed themselves from communion with him,” says the
Liber
rather tartly of Pope Anastasius. This division

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led to conflict when Anastasius died on 19 November 498. There was a disputed election, with the majority of the clergy meeting in the Lateran on 22 November to choose the deacon Symmachus, a convert from paganism. He was known to be very critical of e
ff
orts to improve relations with Constantinople and the churches of the East. On the very same day, however, Archpriest Lawrence, a man highly regarded for his asceticism, was elected in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. Lawrence was the candidate of those who favored better relations with Constantinople. This party included only a minority of the clergy, though they appear to have been the more senior priests and deacons. It was led by the senior senator, Festus.

So once again there were two claimants to the papacy, backed by rival groups of Romans. One group, the politicians, were concerned to curry favor with the emperor in the East (there was by this time no longer an emperor in the West): they had more cultural and family ties with Constantinople than with the new barbarian rulers of Italy. The other group, the theologians among the Romans, put theological orthodoxy above political expediency

– except that when the two sides agreed to arbitration they went o
ff
to Ravenna, to the Ostrogoth Theodoric, King of Italy, who by all Roman standards was himself a heretic. Theodoric opted for Symmachus, on the grounds that, by a whisker, he had been elected first and was supported by the greater number.

Back in Rome, Symmachus called a gathering of clergy, includ- ing his rival Lawrence, in an attempt to prevent future disputes over the succession. His ideas about that, however, were somewhat unorthodox. The synod met on 1 March 499. The pope proposed, and it was agreed, that the Bishop of Rome should be elected by a majority of the clergy of the city – there was no mention of laity – but apparently only if the previous holder of the o
ffi
ce had died without naming a successor. Only if the clergy were equally divided were lay people to have a say. Meanwhile it was strictly forbidden during a pope’s lifetime to canvass for his successor. If anyone