The Conclave: A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally Bloody History of Papal Elections Read Online Free PDF Page B

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
    22 The Conclave
    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
    The End of Empire 23
    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