Abstract
Reviewed by: Oliver Logan, University of East Anglia, UK
This is the first extended study of papal elections in English. It is more wide-ranging thematically than its title suggests. Hitherto the most significant works on the subject have been Günther Wassilowsky’s Die Konklavereform Gregor XV. (1621/22) Wertekonflikte, symbolische Inszenierung und Verfahrenswandel im postridentinischen Pappstum (2010) and Maria Antonia Visceglia’s Morte e elezione del Papa. Norme, riti e conflitti. L’Età moderna (2013). The former, which is again more wide-ranging than its title suggests, examines calls for reform of the conclave from the early sixteenth century, culminating in the relevant bulls of Gregory XV of 1621–1622; these finally made secret ballot the only canonical mode of papal election, thereby excluding the informal practice of ‘acclamation’ after a deal had been struck between contending factions. Reform of the conclave was widely seen as the key to a general reform of the Church and Wassilowsky’s book contains a rich study of the ideology of the ‘zealots’ pressing for such a reform in the early seventeenth century. Wassilowsky is strong on theology and the semiotics of ceremonial. Essentially, he sees the aforementioned Gregorian reform as a key moment in the ups and downs of the early-modern process of the reform of the Papacy. Visceglia is well known as a historian of ceremonial, but here her concentration is more on funeral and accession rites than on those of the Conclave. There is also a valuable chapter on factions in the Sacred College, viewing them in the context of European power relations. As well as these works, Pattenden, who declares his study to be one of a political elite, draws upon German and Italian studies of cardinals’ careers and cardinalatial dynasties, most notably works by Wolfgang Reinhard, Christoph Weber and Antonio Menniti Ippolito. Pattenden has examined ambassadorial intelligence on conclaves from a wide range of archives in Italy and in Europe generally, a range somewhat different from Visceglia’s. Such geographically extensive investigation relates to the intense interest which Italian republics and principalities, together with European monarchies, had in papal elections and in the factions within the Sacred College.
The present work, according to the author, concerns ‘the values and objectives that shaped how the cardinals and others engaged in electing the pope’ (5). The key theme, perhaps, is the tension between a formal papal absolutism and the elective principle. The nub of the issue was papal dynastic aspirations. After the death of Paul III in 1534, the attempt by popes to carve out ‘principalities’ (autonomous duchies and archduchies) for their families in Italy was abandoned. Henceforth the objective was to establish them as princely dynasties in Rome, with at least one representative in the College of Cardinals at any given time; this was to be combined with intermarriage with other Roman and, more widely, Italian princely families. Popes from the same family were never elected in immediate succession. In a context of intense but unstable factionalism and heady speculation, cardinals in Conclave sought to secure the election of men whom they hoped would not, as sovereign pontiffs, divest them of their offices in the Curia and the Papal States. A pope would award red hats to men whom he trusted would prove loyal to his own dynasty, thereby normally making the official Papal Nephew the most powerful faction head in the next Conclave. Alliances in Conclave, however, were volatile and electoral outcomes accordingly unpredictable. This made electors play for safety, plumping for candidates who were unlikely to be new brooms and unlikely to live too long. Popes would be reluctant to alienate cardinals promoted by their predecessors through assertive action and threats to vested interests; nothing like Pius IV’s attack on the Carafa was repeated. Thus the elective principle, Pattenden argues, imposed limits on papal absolutism and made for stasis in the papal institution. However, this was only one factor here. Others limiting papal initiative and innovation were venality (official sale of office), the increasing bureaucratization and routinization of papal government in the late seventeenth century in the face of an increasing complexity of business such as no individual pope could master, and, thirdly, growing public debt which forced the Papacy to mortgage resources as collaterals for loans. Here the book branches out widely in its concluding sections.
In his earlier work of 2013, Pius IV and the Fall of the Carafa: Nepotism and Papal Authority in Counter-Reformation Rome (reviewed in EHQ 44(4)), Pattenden questioned whether Pius’ lethal attack on his predecessor’s ghastly relatives was really motivated by reforming intentions, seeing it, rather, as a peculiarly savage episode in the historic power-struggle between Pope and Sacred College; it was a measure designed to intimidate the latter. A similar scepticism marks his account here of papal legislation on election procedures. Unlike Wassilowsky, he does not see the regulation of 1621–1622 as a high point in some grand narrative of papal reform. In the examination of factions, Visceglia’s account is more helpful regarding their international context. Presumably Pattenden was concerned to avoid duplication. Broadly, this is a most valuable work in English on broad aspects of papal history, not least in the seventeenth century, which is not particularly well covered in that language.